Work Text:
The Grand Prix begins with --
Avoidance
Yuuri doesn't have brain space to think about his skate. It is too busy with the fact that Viktor Nikiforov is right there. In this same building. On this same ice.
(Just like any other competitor. Like Yuuri.)
His mind is all Viktor and hiding from Viktor at once, and even on the ice he's--
Unaware
Nerves burst in and cut his thoughts down to quick exhalations of panic. He can see, but the shapes don't construct reality.
The cold and brightness is beneath his feet, and he trusts in that. Music nudges him to move, and he trusts it until it slips away.
Muscles slip into stillness and stiffen, inviting him to remain on ice forever.
Not today.
The kaleidoscope world of shapes releases Celestino, and he turns from him a jewel into a man. Yuuri skates to him, then follows him across a world that paints florettes and swirls on a carpet of colour.
Viktor is somewhere, adding his silver threads in this carpet, he thinks, unaware of a critical--
Absence
None of those colours were Viktor.
The skate is delayed.
Yuuri is supposed to be back to normal now, but this is not the "normal" place he left only a few hours ago.
This is a place of rapid speech, of conspiracy, as people wonder whether the evil that has taken the champion is magic or mundane, of soul or body.
The hours pass. Coach is nearby. Yuuri tells himself that despite the absence of normality, and his wavering vision, he will exist beyond this--
Shock
A blinking, dithering screen phone screen. Broken.
Yuuri had been furious. Or… or shocked. His phone case is broken, and the phone screen shines chaotic lights as the speakers drone on:
"No way! No way he's dead. Someone has to have snatched him up and bottled him. Can you see any dramatic increases in skill among the competition?
"That skill? That talent? I'd have him transfigured in a heartbeat if I could. Imagine holding Viktor Nikiforov's soul in your hand."
Someone had signed their fate in a moment of shocking stupidity. Could anyone be that--
Desperate
Who would be so vile as to steal the champion's skill from his living body?
There is a gaping hope in skating where Viktor should be. And his skill -- his self -- maybe it's still out there.
But soul stealing? No-one would dare. It would be too obvious. And yet, if shaped like a thimble or pair of glasses, and hidden in a draw, he might be lost forever.
There is a gaping hole in Yuuri's heart. He is Viktor's follower, and now his leader is gone. If he found Viktor's soul, he'd thread it through a needle and sew himself together because he's in desperate need of a new--
Identity
After months of careful watching, Yuuri sees a stranger carrying Viktor's soul.
That's Viktor's flair in the movements of a body he's never seen. The artistry and skill is clumsily masked, like it keeps trying to bubble up from beneath the stranger's identity.
The soul might be anything from a button on the stranger's jacket to a ring of keys in the his pockets.
Yuuri's hands strike and before he knows it there's a--
Fight
Reaching for everything he ever learned of martial arts, he paws through his mind, touching old knowledge while the stranger grabs his body and tosses him to the ground -- Judo?
Viktor practiced Judo last season.
The ground holds his back. There are hands at his neck. Yuuri fights to look into the eyes the stranger, skater, junior, searching for--
Viktor
His idol is a glimmer in the stranger's oceanic eyes and strength. He is right here, soul and body twisted into something inanimate and dead. The key to Viktor's freedom is somewhere just above him.
Yuuri will let that trapped soul run free and wild in his own body, he just needs to find it before the still cool pool of unconsciousness skirting his vision invades his nose and mouth.
"They'll know. Let me. Give me Viktor."
"They won't be able to move against me without moving against their--"
Prince
The door to Yuuri's room opens to a flash of silver hair, and Yuuri tries to hide in a card that reads "get well soon hero xox".
But truly, there can be no avoidance or ignorance of Viktor's presence. He approaches and thanks Yuuri -- but how can Yuuri answer? His lips try to smile but they're already in position.
"Yu-uri," warbles Viktor at his bedside. His hip sinks with the mattress and a warm buttock presses into thigh. "Thank you for fighting for me!"
A hand reaches his elbow. Viktor's voice comes out somber and his eyes flicker down. "You didn't have to, I would have done it myself... "
Dread collapses Yuuri's stomach, and then it expands with irritation. He reaches for the wrist to pull it away. It's the first time he's approached his idol. Yuuri's fingers touch skin and--
"But I didn't have to! My prince gave the bad guy such an ass-whooping he toppled over at a touch when we stepped on ice!"
(Yuuri's fingers touch skin and stay.)