Chapter Text
Yuri Plisetsky begins failing art class on a Tuesday.
At first, Yuuri can’t believe his eyes. The scrawled 53% sits in the furthest right-hand column on the page and stares up at him in crisp, blue-black ink. With a surprised huff, he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and checks the number again just in case sleep deprivation is finally giving him the hallucinations that technically should’ve started three hours ago.
He blinks. The scrawled 53% does not magically turn into a 93% as soon as he reopens his eyes, so that must mean—
This is real.
“Oh my god.” Yuuri drops his face into his hands and groans.
How is this even remotely possible? In the five years Yuuri’s taught at Hasetsu High School, he’s never had a single student flunk out of one of his art classes. Honestly, as long as his students show up, turn in their projects on time, and remain conscious from the time the bell rings to the end of class, they should be able to pass with flying colors.
But if that’s the case, then why is Yuri Plisetsky failing fucking ceramics?
Yuuri blearily peeks through the fringe of hair that hangs in front of his eyes. The clock reads 4:39 AM in the lower right-hand corner of his laptop. His brain is running on fumes of two bottles of hot sake and chocolate-covered espresso beans—a winning combination if ever there was one—but through sheer force of will, he is able to squeeze out the final vestiges of his brain power to do some basic math:
It is 4:39. School starts at 7:45. If Yuuri goes to sleep right now and drinks no fewer than four cups of blacker-than-tar coffee as soon as he wakes up, he should be able to make it through fifth period without collapsing in on himself like a dying star.
It’s a generous estimate.
With a sigh, Yuuri closes his gradebook and tosses it across the room where it lands splayed open on a pile of student work in the corner by the door. He is not fortunate enough to make it to the bed before he passes out, curling up unceremoniously on the carpet instead.
There’s a week until midterm grades are due. A week isn’t a lot of time to boost a grade by seven points, but damned if he isn’t going to try.
The coffee, as it turns out, does not rid Yuuri of the residual bone-deep exhaustion he feels upon waking two hours later. It just makes him pee a lot in between second and third period, and the entire situation is remarkably inconvenient in every possible way.
That 53% in Yuuri’s gradebook lingers at the back of his mind like a specter, shadowing his every thought and feeling. He can’t focus on teaching, can hardly function with the knowledge that Yuri Plisetsky is failing ceramics class. It’s an odd, twisting sensation that settles in his gut, cold and horrible and so very, very persistent. The lack of sleep doesn’t help matters, either.
Yuuri’s fingers are jittery and unsteady during a demonstration on portraiture in his first period drawing class. During second period, he stutters over his words during a lecture on Pre-Columbian art history and somehow ends up talking about his personal feelings on the animation style of The Emperor’s New Groove versus Atlantis. During third hour, he forgets how to use the lasso tool—the fucking lasso tool— in Photoshop and spends ten solid minutes fighting with it, cursing pixels and every CMYK color on the spectrum until he figures out what he’s doing wrong.
The entire morning is a disaster, plain and simple.
53% pulses a tattoo behind his eyelids, mocking Yuuri relentlessly as he stumbles down to the teachers’ lounge during his planning period for yet another cup of half-burnt, wholly-terrible coffee. He’ll accept the frequent bathroom breaks as his punishment just as long as it wakes him up before ceramics class, dear god.
The teachers’ lounge is small and utilitarian with barely enough space for a coffee-stained kitchenette in the corner, a trashcan, a small circular table, and two plastic chairs that look like they’ve been through war—which, in this school, is actually a possibility. Phichit Chulanont, the tenth grade geometry teacher, is taking up one of the aforementioned plastic chairs when Yuuri enters. He smiles and offers a congenial wave as Yuuri passes him on the way to the coffee maker on the far side of the lounge. Of all the teachers who could be in the lounge right now, Yuuri is glad that that it’s Phichit; the bond between an art teacher and a geometry teacher is an unlikely one, but theirs is forged in steel and a shared love of competitive figure skating.
“Oh, hi Yuu—“ He greets, but stops short upon noticing the purple shadow beneath Yuuri’s eyes. His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Whoa. You look terrible. Please don’t tell me the kids gave you the flu. It’s going around again.”
He knows; he has to prepare fifteen make-up folders for students after school today. Yuuri shakes his head and presses the button on the coffee maker with a little more force than necessary. “Just tired.”
“You look dead.” Phichit sets his novel aside—the 2009 novelization of The King and the Skater IV: Skate Harder, dog-eared and worn down to its threadbare binding. Phichit laces his fingers together. “Midterm grading?”
“Yeah.”
“Ouch,” he sympathizes.
Yuuri glances over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “Did you turn in your grades yet?”
“Nope, and I don’t plan on having them done until the day they’re due,” he says breezily, grinning. “But seriously, Yuuri, you look like a zombie—I’m surprised you haven’t made any of the freshmen cry.”
“There’s still time left in the day.” With a scowl, Yuuri whacks the side of the ancient coffee maker; a thin stream of hot, black liquid begins to drip into the scorched pot. He lets out a relieved breath as the scent of cheap coffee floods his senses, and turns around, leaning against the edge of the kitchenette’s Formica countertop. He rakes a hand through his hair.
Confiding in fellow teachers is not something Yuuri is known for, but he ends up saying, “Hey, I’ve actually got a bit of an issue. Maybe you can help me out?”
Phichit perks up. “Ooh, sounds juicy. What’s going on?”
“One of my students,” he starts, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, “is failing ceramics.”
He waits. Yuuri expects a gasp of shock, or maybe a horrified look. What he gets, however, is a blank expression.
Phichit blinks, suddenly realizing that Yuuri isn’t going to add anything else to his sentence. “What, that’s it?” Yuuri nods gravely in reply, and Phichit snorts, leaning on the back two legs of the plastic chair. “Well, one’s better than most. Seung-Gil flunks half his physics class every semester like clockwork. Hell, five of my students are failing right now. It’s not a big deal.”
Yuuri groans and drops his face into his hands miserably. “But I’m not Seung-Gil! Phichit, I’ve never had a student fail one of my classes before.”
Phichit sets all four chair legs back on the ground with a thunk. “Never?”
He shakes his head. “A few came close, but none of them ever actually managed to go all the way.”
Phichit’s eyes are wide and slightly concerned. He leans forward in his seat, bracing his elbows against the tabletop. “You’ve… never failed a student before. That is what you’re telling me right here, right now—that every student in your class has finished the semester with a C average or above.”
Yuuri shifts, swallows. “Uh… yes?”
For several seconds, Phichit says nothing. He just blinks owlishly up at Yuuri. Then: “Wow. What is that even like?”
Yuuri lets out an exasperated sigh and turns back to the coffee maker, which is almost halfway full. A quick glance at the clock tells Yuuri he has five minutes until fifth period starts.
“It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me,” Yuuri says. “He’s been a good student up until this semester. I don’t know what happened.”
“Who is it?”
Yuuri hesitates. The door to the lounge is ajar; he steps across the room and closes it as quietly as possible before turning around. “Plisetsky’s pulling a 53% in ceramics right now.”
For the first time since initiating this conversation, concern etches itself deeply into Phichit’s olive-toned features. “Yuri Plisetsky, really?” At Yuuri’s nod, he laces his fingers together behind his neck and frowns. “Huh. Yeah, all right, that’s weird.”
“Right?” Yuuri exclaims in a whisper. He eyes the small window at the top of the door, making sure no students are in the hallway outside before pulling out the chair closest to Phichit and sitting down. He leans forward conspiratorially. “I had him in graphic design last year. He was one of my best students in the lab, honestly—always earned his marks, did extra work, the whole nine yards. This semester, though… I don’t know. It’s like he’s a completely different person. He’s only turned in, like, two assignments since we got back from winter break.”
Phichit taps his chin thoughtfully. “Have you talked to the counselor about it? Maybe there’s something going on at home that we don’t know about.”
“I was going to talk to Georgi this afternoon, but I figured Yuri should be my first stop before I do anything else.”
“Good plan,” Phichit murmurs. His eyes are strained, brow creased in consternation. “I had Plisetsky last year in geometry. Bright kid. An attitude problem, but he always turned in his homework.” Phichit meets Yuuri’s gaze and grimaces. “Want my advice?”
Yuuri nods. “Always.”
“Do what you just said. Talk to the kid and talk to Georgi, see if there’s something you can do on your own. Maybe some after school tutoring or a behavior plan would do the trick. You know, keep things in-house,” he says solemnly. A shrug. “And if that doesn’t work, there’s always plan P.”
Yuuri blinks. “Plan P?”
Phichit stands up from the chair and gives Yuuri a meaningful look and a firm clap on the shoulder. “Parent-teacher conferences.”
The final bell rings at 2:27 on the dot. As Yuuri’s ceramics students begin cleaning up their tables, hanging their clay-caked aprons on their respective hooks, and washing their tools, Yuuri tries his hardest not to fidget.
Yuri Plisetsky is stabbing a mound of semi-dried clay with a needle tool at the far end of the room, eyebrows furrowed and apron hanging loosely around his neck. His hands are caked with greyish slip and Yuuri spies a few chunks of dried clay stuck in his overly-long hair. The rest of the students appear to be ignoring him in favor of cleaning up and leaving for the day.
Yuuri breathes in, breathes out. Okay, I can do this.
Soon, there are only a handful of students left in the room, chatting and washing their hands at the sink in the back near the glaze shelves. Yuuri sees his chance. He takes it.
Approaching Plisetsky’s seat, Yuuri bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper. Nerves churn in his stomach, acrid and bitter—actually, it might just be the coffee from earlier. It’s probably the coffee.
“Yuri,” he says quietly. The leftover students in the back of the room don’t look over, don’t even notice them. He clears his throat and repeats himself, this time a little louder.
Yuri, however, looks up through his curtain of hair. “Hey, Katsuki-sensei. I’m gonna clean up in a minute, I promise.”
Yuuri swallows down his coffee-flavored nerves and clasps his hands behind his back to keep from fidgeting. “That, uh… isn’t why I came over here,” he says. Clears his throat. Motioning to the stool on the opposite side of the table, he asks, “Can I sit?”
The boy’s shoulders stiffen, and he looks suddenly wary. “Am I in trouble?”
Yes, sort of, maybe? “No. I just wanted to talk to you.”
But Yuri isn’t buying it. His sea-glass eyes are sharp enough to cut, and his hackles rise as Yuuri pulls the stool out to sit. “If I’m in trouble, just spit it out already,” he says flatly. “I’ve got places to be.”
Yuuri is a teacher. He is no stranger to authority, nor is he unfamiliar with how to manage student behavior. In a normal situation, he would never allow Yuri to speak to him so disrespectfully. But, as evidenced by the dancing coffee-acid nerves in his stomach and the way his eyes keep drifting shut whenever a cloud passes over the sun outside his window for more than two milliseconds, this is not a normal situation. Far from it, in fact. So he lets it slide.
Yuuri rests his elbows against the dirty tabletop and laces his fingers together as he thinks about how to order his words. His sleep-deprived mind keeps offering suggestions in Japanese, and he is doing his best to ignore them in favor of the English ones. Focus, dammit. Stay awake.
“I’m… concerned,” is what he finally says.
Yuri stares at him. Briefly, he glances self-consciously over his shoulder at the remaining students in the room. They are toweling off their metal tools and gathering up their books to leave for the day while chatting pleasantly about that evening’s basketball game and the proposed theme for the student section. As they pass, two of the girls wave at Yuuri and wish him a nice evening; one of the boys gives a meaningful head nod to Yuri, which he returns.
Once they’re gone, Yuri turns back to his teacher with a raised eyebrow. “All right, whatever. I’ll bite. What are you concerned about?”
Yuuri swallows thickly and fiddles with a small button on his sleeve. “Well, as you probably know, midterm is at the end of the week. I was working on grades last night, and—“
“And I’m failing your class,” he finishes flatly. “Yeah, I know.”
It’s—
It’s not what he expect him to say at all.
Yuuri blinks. “You know?”
Yuri’s expression is the picture of nonchalance as he begins cleaning up his area, folding his piece of canvas, reconditioning his dried-out clay with clumsy fingers. He shrugs. “Of course I do. I’ve gotten, like, a million emails about it already.”
“Oh,” Yuuri murmurs. He watches Yuri pick up his tools with wide, unfocused eyes. “Well, I guess that makes things simpler for me.“ Clears his throat. “I, uh, wanted to discuss some of your options while I have you here. I have a few things lined up that will help you boost your grade before the end of midterm, but we’ll have to hurry if we want to—“
“No.”
Silence floods the art room. The boy is staring at him through his thick fringe of golden hair, eyes narrowed and lips thin. Yuuri doesn’t move—he can’t move. A sudden numbness has overtaken his hands and feet.
“No?” he breathes, not entirely convinced this isn’t a hallucination borne of sleep deprivation and an unsafe amount of shitty coffee. Shakes his head. “You— I’m sorry, what?”
Yuri nods once, sharply. “You heard me. I don’t want your help.”
He gawks at the boy, not entirely sure he’s speaking English or any other recognizable language because what he’s saying makes no sense whatsoever. Yuuri sputters, “But you’re failing. Of course you need help!”
Yuri dumps his tools into the sink and whirls around, teeth bared. “Look, I’m only gonna say this one more time: I don’t want your help, Katsuki-sensei. Don’t want it, don’t need it, will never ask for it. I don’t care about my grades, and I sure as hell don’t care about making pots and shit out of mud for credit. So just leave me alone, okay?”
And with that, Yuri discards his apron on the floor and stomps out of the classroom with his hands in his pockets, a scowl on his face, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Siberia. All Yuuri can do is stare at the surface of the table in shock, mouth agape as Yuri slams the door behind him as if to punctuate his sentence. Yuuri can’t help it; he jumps.
Silence falls heavy and resolute like a woolen blanket over Yuuri’s empty art classroom.
“What just happened?” he exhales, raking his fingers through his hair and tugging. With a groan, he discards his glasses and buries his face in his hands, suddenly feeling stupendously drained of energy.
Yuri Plisetsky, by all accounts, is a good student. He’s not on the A honor roll, but he’s above average and always works hard on his projects, even if he’s not particularly gifted in the visual arts. There has to be something else going on. That’s just all there is to it.
Striding over to the phone mounted on the wall of his classroom, Yuuri picks up the receiver and dials Georgi’s extension. It rings twice before he answers.
A muffle sniff. “Georgi P-popovich speaking.”
Yuuri doesn’t waste time. “Hey, it’s me. Have you talked to Yuri Plisetsky lately? I’m worried there’s something wrong at home. His grades have taken a major dive lately, so I’m hoping you know something that I don’t.”
Another sniffle, this one a little louder. “I don’t—I’m not sure.”
Yuuri blinks. Frowns. “You’re not sure if you’ve talked to him?” he repeats flatly. Running a hand over his face, he asks, “How can you not be sure?”
“Look, Yuuri—“ a muted sniff, and the sound of Georgi blowing his nose “—I’m not really in the best place to talk business right now. Anya just left me this morning—again. She took the cat and everything, and I’m… Oh, Yuuri, I’m so miserable!”
Yuuri closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the nearest bulletin board. He can’t even begin to describe how much he does not care about Georgi’s catastrophic failure of a love life. He and Anya break up at least once a month, and every time Georgi devolves into a sniveling mess of unproductiveness that makes everyone’s job a little bit harder until he gets over himself precisely eight days later.
You’d think the guidance counselor would be better at managing his own relationships. Jesus.
But Yuuri tries to sound sympathetic nonetheless. “Oh, uh. Really? That’s… too bad.”
Georgi lets out a breathy sob. “I think this is really the end this time. I don’t think she’s coming back.” More sniffling, and the foghorn sound of a blown nose. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I don’t know what to do. It’s like all the color has left the world and I’m drowning.”
Seek professional help, for the love of god. Swallowing, he tries for false cheer instead, hoping he can squeeze a little bit of information out of him before he completely loses it. “Hey, don’t say that! I’m sure she’ll come back, Georgi. You just have to—“ he searches for the right word, thinking back to the marathon of Hallmark movies he’d watched over the weekend “—believe. Yeah, that’s it. Just believe that it’ll all work out and, uh… I’m sure she’ll, you know, come back. With the cat.”
Yuuri can’t see him, but he’s pretty sure Georgi is nodding. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I know you’re right.” A sigh, and his voice sound much clearer than before. “Sometimes I think you should be the counselor, Yuuri, not me. You’re amazing at this stuff.”
“I… try?” It comes out sounding like a question, but Georgi obviously doesn’t notice it.
He sniffs one last time, saying, “Well, thank you so much for helping me. I feel a little better now. I’m going to go home and clean the house for when she comes back, okay? Have a good night, Yuuri.”
The dial tone hits him like a sack of bricks.
With a heavy sigh, he hangs up the phone and sinks into his desk chair with slumped shoulders. It looks like Yuuri is on his own.
“Time for Plan P,” he says grimly, reaching for his laptop so he can draft an email to Yuri’s guardians to recommend a conference; with midterm just around the corner, parent-teacher conferences are scheduled to take place Friday evening from three until nine—cruelty in its simplest form, Yuuri thinks, but a necessary evil in any case.
As he types the sickeningly polite email, he repeatedly mutters under his breath, “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job…”
By the time the email is sent out, Yuuri almost believes it.
There is not a single teacher at Hasetsu High School who actually enjoys parent-teacher conferences. Yuuri is no exception.
Parent-teacher conferences are messy affairs full of carefully-chosen words, store-bought cookies and fruit-flavored punch, and the inevitable gnashing of teeth when parents are told their son or daughter isn’t doing nearly as well as they’d hoped in their classes. The night almost always ends with lots of yelling, insults, and it’s art class, how important can it be, really? Meanwhile, the teachers simply have to sit there and take it as it comes—all while dreaming about the red wine they’ll be drinking as soon as they get home.
Yuuri is one of the few teachers in the school who takes as much pride as he can in such events. They only happen twice a year—once in the fall, and again in the spring—so first impressions really, really count. Luckily, Yuuri has never failed any students before, so his turnout is usually pretty minimal, and the parents he manages to meet with are polite and understanding.
But Yakov Feltsman is coming tonight, and Yuuri is scared. Yakov is Hasetsu’s professional skating coach over at the Ice Palace, and he is known for his ruthlessness and his uncontrollable temper, especially when it comes to his adopted son, Yuri. He is tough, bristly, and frightening to look at for extended periods of time; Yuuri doesn’t even like seeing the man in the grocery store, let alone seeing him in Yuuri’s classroom to talking about his failing son.
He has the urge to make sure the emergency exit of his room is propped open just in case he has to make a run for Kyoto. Changing his name and moving someplace far away wouldn’t be too difficult, right?
Taking a deep breath, Yuuri smooths out the manila envelope of Yuri Plisetsky’s paperwork on the table in front of him. He might die a grisly death tonight at the meaty hands of Yakov Feltsman, but he has to take that risk. He won’t let Yuri fail ceramics right before he graduates—not on his watch.
For the millionth time, Yuuri glances at the clock. It’s 8:15 PM—he has another fifteen minutes before conferences end, and there’s still no sign of Yakov. His email had agreed upon 8:10 PM for their meeting. It’s strange, Yuuri thinks. Yakov doesn’t seem like the type to be late.
He waits a few more minutes, idly letting his fingers trace a ridge of dried glue on the tabletop. He checks the time again; the clock is pushing 8:27 now, and Yuuri lets out a soft sigh. He had really hoped Yakov would make an appearance. He begins to gather up his materials.
Suddenly, the faint sound of footsteps down the hall. Yuuri perks up in his seat, re-straightening the folder and wiping a few specks of dust off the screen of his tablet. That has to be him, but Yuuri is too terrified to get up and check. He simply waits as the footsteps get closer, heels echoing down the hallway at a clip. He plasters on a smile and—
And it’s a damn shame that he spent so much time planning this meeting, because his brain short-circuits immediately when a man who is decidedly not Yakov Feltsman comes to a stop in his doorway.
Viktor Nikiforov, the world-renowned figure skating champion and PyeongChang Olympic gold medalist, is in his art classroom, looking between the number above the door and his phone with a frown curving his perfectly-shaped mouth. He is standing, breathing, existing in little Yuuri Katsuki’s high school art classroom like he’s supposed to be here. Like this isn’t some wildly-fabricated dream sequence, like Yuuri hasn’t died and gone to some strange circle of hell that reeks of sweaty teenagers, feet, and damp clay.
Contrary to popular belief, Yuuri does not, in fact, live under a rock. He goes outside just like everybody else, reads the news every once in a while, and watches an unhealthy amount of competitive figure skating whenever the season’s in swing. He has watched Viktor Nikiforov skate his way through the junior and senior ranks of the ISU for the last several years; he’s watched him grow as a person and stood by as his talent bloomed like the cherry blossoms that always burst forth from the trees in April.
Yuuri also knows Viktor Nikiforov because he may or may not have had an unhealthy number of posters of him when he was a teenager. But he’s not admitting anything.
And then Viktor looks at him, and Yuuri’s mouth goes dry.
It should be illegal for someone to be that beautiful, Yuuri thinks numbly. His silver hair and alabaster skin deserve to be preserved in the finest oil paints money can buy, transposed onto a canvas and placed in a museum for the world to see. The blue of his eyes is a specific shade of phthalo turquoise that reminds Yuuri of tropical seas and slow-moving glaciers. Given a hunk of the finest Italian marble and a chisel, Yuuri could sculpt those cheekbones for the remainder of his days and die a happy man.
Viktor must be lost—heinously, embarrassingly lost, but lost nonetheless. The real Viktor Nikiforov is supposed to be doing a post-Olympics press tour in Russia right now, not stumbling into random high schools in Japan and staring wide-eyed at Yuuri Katsuki, Hasetsu’s resident nobody.
Viktor’s eyebrows draw together at the yawning silence, waiting for it to be filled with something. Yuuri knows he wouldn’t be able to speak even if someone paid him, so he doesn’t try.
Viktor shifts from foot to foot in the doorway. “Hi,” he says, shattering the silence. “Sorry to barge in like this, but I’m looking for the art teacher—“ he squints at his phone screen “—Yuuri Katsuki? I was told this was his classroom.”
Oh. That’s his name, isn’t it? He blinks hard and lets out a sharp breath he didn’t realized he’d been holding. Clears his throat. “Y-yeah— I mean yes. I’m Yuuri Katsuki.”
At first, Viktor’s eyes twinkle in amusement and his mouth twitches up at one corner in a devastating half-smile. Then, when Yuuri doesn’t say anything else, Viktor blinks and his smile disappears. “Oh, you’re serious.”
Yuuri blinks. He feels like he should be offended. “Um. Yes?”
Viktor does not know what to make of this. He frowns and peers around the room as if expecting another person to pop out and say ta-da, I’m actually the art teacher! But when no one else spontaneously appears, Viktor looks back to Yuuri with thinly-veiled interest glinting in his eyes.
“Really, now? You are… incredibly young to be a teacher,” he says, taking tentative steps into the room. He glances around at the plethora of student art hung on the walls, the linoleum block prints still drying on the rack in the corner, and smiles up at the clotheslines strung across the ceiling with not-quite-dry papers fluttering lazily in the air conditioned breeze. “When I saw you, I thought you were a student. Is this your first year of teaching?”
Yuuri feels a surge of defensiveness crop up in his chest as Viktor approaches; his perfect lips twitch in a suppressed, secretive smile that makes Yuuri feel like he’s being mocked in some roundabout way. He shifts in his seat. “This is my fifth year, actually.”
Viktor’s eyebrows fly up into his hairline. “Really? I never would have guessed.”
And for some strange reason, Yuuri bristles at the implication. He’s aware of how young he looks, of course, but Phichit’s younger by three years and nobody ever asks him if he’s a first-year teacher. Age has no correlation to skill level whatsoever, and the fact that someone like Viktor thinks he’s less because of how old he is—
Well. It just rubs him the wrong way.
The smirk on Viktor’s face is wider now, reeking with self-satisfaction. Yuuri clears his throat. “Look, Mr. Nikiforov, it is truly an honor—“
He grins. “Ah, so you do know who I am!”
Yuuri’s cheeks flush ever so slightly. “Of course I do,” he mutters. “Everybody who’s anybody knows who you are.”
“I think you’d be surprised, actually. I’m glad you know who I am, though. Saves me a lot of trouble.”
With a sharp exhale, Yuuri squares his shoulders and speaks up, “Right, yeah. Well, as I was saying, it’s an honor to meet you, sir, but…” Yuuri bites his lip. “I’m not quite sure what you’re doing here. In my classroom.” Or in this country.
Viktor gives him a funny look. “I’m here for Yuri’s parent-teacher thingy, obviously.”
As if Yuuri could be more surprised. He grips each side of the seat of his chair to keep from teetering over the edge. “Yuri’s your son? What even— I mean, how—?”
But Viktor only laughs, and it fills the room with its deceptive warmth. “Oh, heavens, no! I’m his godfather. Little Yura and I don’t share blood, unfortunately; only paperwork.”
At this, Yuuri relaxes a little bit. “Oh,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know the FERPA guidelines on sharing student information with godparents. Taking a guess, he says, “I guess that’s all right, then. Is Mr. Feltsman still planning on coming?”
Viktor sheds his coat—designer, of course, because why wouldn’t he wear a designer coat in a dusty, paint-spattered art room?—and hangs it on the back of his chair before sitting down across from him. He waves Yuuri off. “Oh, Yakov was planning on coming tonight, believe me, but he needed to stay late at the rink to finish prepping Yura for his senior debut, so he sent me instead! I just happen to be in town visiting. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Wonderful,” Yuuri repeats numbly. “Right.”
Viktor lets out a dreamy sigh and rests his elbows against the tabletop, setting his chin in his hands as he looks at Yuuri. He smiles sweetly. “So, tell me: how old are you, really? I’m dreadfully curious.”
“I’m, uh…” he trails, swallowing down the sandpapery dryness in his throat as best as he can. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think my age is really important, Mr. Nikifor—“
“Please, call me Viktor. And let me assure you, your age is incredibly important.”
“V-Viktor,” he stammers, the name foreign and clumsy on his tongue. “I really don’t see how my age is relevant at all. We’re here to talk about Yuri, not me.”
He pouts, and Yuuri’s toes curl in his shoes at the sight. “But shouldn’t we get to know each other a little bit before we talk business?” he asks. “I can hardly discuss little Yura with a stranger, now can I?”
Yuuri stares, fingers curled stiffly around the edges of the manila folder. This isn’t real. “Mr. Nikiforov—“
“Viktor,” he corrects.
“Mr. Nikiforov,” Yuuri says firmly, and Viktor’s eyebrows lift in surprise. He takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts, swallowing back the bundle of nerves that keeps trying to creep up the back of his throat. “It’s not my job to tell you my personal information. If you’d like to see my credentials to prove I’m qualified for this position, I’ll gladly give you those, but I hardly see how my age makes me any less of a teacher for your godson.”
Viktor’s eyes widen. “That’s not—“
But Yuuri plows ahead. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? Find me outside of school and I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but if you’re not going to take this conference seriously, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I requested this meeting for a reason.”
Telling a world-famous celebrity to get his shit together—politely—had not been on Yuuri’s agenda for today, but there’s a first time for everything, he supposes. He’s just thankful his Teacher Voice doesn’t waver.
Miraculously, Viktor heeds his words. His smile drops slowly and he swallows, eyebrows furrowing in a faint frown before he leans back in his chair. “Of course. I— I’m very sorry,” he says. His tone is flatter, more subdued, and Yuuri wants to kick himself. Viktor gestures widely. “Please, continue. I won’t interrupt again.”
Yuuri bites his lip and nods once, twice before lacing his finger together in his lap. “Thank you.”
This is the hard part. Telling a parent that their son or daughter is failing is a lot like walking across a bed of nails—it’s easier if you spread the pain across a larger surface area. Yuuri decides to lead with a compliment.
“As I’m sure you know, Yuri is a fine student,” he says carefully, chewing on the words before he utters them. “He never wastes class time and pays attention to my lectures and demonstrations. He’s incredibly bright for someone his age.”
A pause. Go for the kill, but make it swift and painless.
Taking a deep breath, Yuuri finishes, “But lately, I’ve been a little, ah. Concerned about him.”
Viktor’s face screws up in puzzlement. “Concerned?”
Yuuri swallows down the crushed-glass anxiousness in his throat, wringing his hands beneath the tabletop until his skin burns. “He’s acting… strange. I don’t know. He’s just different this semester. I mean, I had him in graphic design last year and he was one of my best students, but in ceramics, it’s like invasion of the body snatchers or something.”
Worry mars Viktor’s face, and he straightens in his seat. “I’m not sure I understand. Is he fighting with the other students?”
“No, no,” Yuuri assures him. “Nothing like that. He’s just… failing my class.”
Viktor blinks and does not respond. At first, Yuuri is worried he’s said something in Japanese on accident—but then Viktor lets out a surprised breath in a sharp rush. He slumps back in his chair.
“Failing?” he repeats quietly. “How on earth can he be failing?”
“I don’t know,” Yuuri admits honestly. Opening the manila folder, he turns it around and slides it in Viktor’s direction. He points to the column of Yuri’s report card where a big, fat F glares up at them both. “He has a 53% right now. Last I checked, he’s missing about five assignments.”
Viktor doesn’t look up at him, scanning the paper with narrow-eyed focus. “Out of how many?”
“Eight.”
A soft Russia curse slips past Viktor’s lips, and Yuuri can’t help but think it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. Focus, dammit.
Viktor cards his fingers through his hair anxiously. The lines on his face are taut and grim. “I had no idea. I’m sure Yakov doesn’t know, either, because there’s no way he would let Yura skate if he knew things were this bad.” Another curse. “Why wouldn’t he tell us this?”
Yuuri winces. “I don’t think most students tell their parents when they’re failing a subject. It’s hard to bounce back from a mark like this. He probably didn’t want to worry you.”
Viktor begins flipping through Yuuri’s paperwork, eyes scanning former assignments and preliminary sketches from this semester. Abruptly, he closes the file and looks up at Yuuri with his eyebrows set low over his too blue, too-beautiful eyes.
“All right,” he announces, spreading his hands on the tabletop. “What’s the plan?”
Yuuri blinks. “The plan?”
“Yes, the plan. The plan for getting little Yura back on track to graduation,” he says, waving dismissively. “How are you going to fix this?”
“Me?” he squawks.
“You have a plan, yes? Yuri needs to make an A by the time the semester finishes up. What sort of extra credit will you be offering him?”
He asks that questions like it’s the most logical thing in the world, like extra credit is the expected solution to this problem. As a rule, extra credit is not something Yuuri provides. It’s not something any self-respecting teacher provides, period. Extra credit is the fairy dust of the education world—shiny, miraculous, and not fucking real.
Yuuri only shakes his head numbly. The bed of nails he’s treading on is getting more painful by the second. “I don’t offer extra credit in my classes, Mr. Nikiforov. My students earn their points. Giving away credit like candy defeats the purpose of my class.”
“But he’s failing.”
“And I hate that as much as you do, believe me,” he says firmly, “but I can’t give Yuri free points for—I don’t know, clapping erasers after school or something. He has to make up his assignments and work harder in the future. That’s all I can do for him.”
Viktor’s face sours, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Then why did you call this meeting if you’re refusing to help him?”
Yuuri lets out an exasperated breath. “What? No! I’ve offered to help him, Mr. Nikiforov. Truly, I have. That’s why I requested this meeting in the first place. Since midterm, Yuri’s turned me down three times. I can offer him my help until I’m blue in the mouth, but I can’t force him into after-school tutoring. I can’t make him care.”
For a moment, Viktor appears to be thinking about possible solutions. His brow is creased in the most transfixing way, and Yuuri can’t help but watch in rapt attention as his index finger taps against his lower lip while he thinks.
“Well, why would he?” Viktor says smoothly. “It’s just art.”
It’s just art.
Yuuri can’t—
He can’t move.
The words hit him like the mental punch of a pendulum at the bottom of its swing. Blood runs hotly through his veins like molten metal, and his feels every ounce of nervousness drain from his body in an instant, replaced by equal parts outrage and hurt, so much hurt. It’s one thing to hear those words from an angry parent who’s upset their son’s been benched from the football team for a C on a project; it’s another thing entirely to hear it from the mouth of Yuuri’s figure skating idol and celebrity crush, his tone bland and almost bored.
Yuuri knows his hands are shaking as he reaches for the manila folder, but he doesn’t care. Closing it, Yuuri slides it back across the table and pushes his chair out as he stands.
“It’s 8:35,” he says quietly. A knot ties up his throat, and he tries to swallow past it. He carefully avoids looking at Viktor. “I’m afraid conferences ended five minutes ago. Thank you for coming tonight, Mr. Nikiforov. I’m sure you can find your way out of the building.”
Viktor sounds flustered. “Wait, what? I just got here.”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Nikiforov. If you contact the front office, I’m sure we can connect you with our guidance counselor or our academic advisor—“
“You look upset. Have I said something wrong?”
Yuuri swallows. He picks up his tablet and tucks it and the folder against his chest, eyes still downcast. “Not at all,” he lies. “It’s just time for me to go home. My dog’s been cooped up all evening, and, uh… yeah. You know. It’s late.”
“I thought you wanted to walk about Yura,” he argues. He doesn’t sound angry—confused, maybe, but not angry.
“I’m afraid there’s not much more to discuss,” he admits. “I can’t make Yuri care about his—“
“I thought teachers were supposed to help their students succeed.”
Anger is an unfamiliar emotion for Yuuri, but he knows himself well enough to know when he’s about to lose his temper. He needs to escape this situation before he says something really, really stupid.
Yuuri’s fingers spasm, and he looks up at Viktor through his fringe. “Do not presume to tell me my job, Mr. Nikiforov. Even if you don’t think so, I care quite a bit about your godson’s education. I had hoped you’d be willing to lend me some secondary support from home to get his motivation up and running again, but that’s apparently not the case if all you expect me to do is give him extra credit. I will not inflate his grade with points he doesn’t deserve.”
Viktor looks stunned. His cheeks are faintly pink, and he is shaking his head back and forth slowly. “That’s not— I mean… I-I think you misunderstood me. Sorry. My English—”
“I think I understood you perfectly,” Yuuri snaps. Stepping around the end of the desk, Yuuri heads for the messenger bag that’s slung over the back of his chair. He tucks his things inside and slings it over his shoulder. “I’ll help Yuri however I can with the time we have left in the semester. I recommend you try to figure out why he’s doing this so suddenly, and maybe we’ll be able to figure something out before he flunks out of my course. Good night, Mr. Nikiforov.”
Yuuri doesn’t watch Viktor leave. He’s not sure he’d be able to look him in the eye, given the chance, so he busies himself with straightening up his desk and setting out lesson plans and rubrics for the following Monday. A shuffle of fabric as Viktor dons his coat, the clack of expensive-sounding heels against tile as he heads toward the door.
“Well, it was very nice to meet you, Yuuri Katsuki,” he says quietly. “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”
Yuuri waves over his shoulder, not looking up from his Very Important Task of organizing his paperclips. “Of course. Have a good night, Mr. Nikiforov.”
The click of the door, and Viktor slips out, taking most of the air in the room with him. As soon as the sound of his footsteps disappears down the hall, Yuuri takes the chance to sag against the corner of his desk. He lets out a shuddering breath that almost feels like a sob.
God, parent-teacher conferences are the worst.