Chapter Text
The first time Binghe saw Shen Qingqiu skate was when he was nine years old.
He doesn’t have a lot of memories from his childhood, the ones that are the clearest are of skating with Ning Yingying at her family’s rink. Vaguely, he remembers falling against the ice over and over again, only to force himself back up onto his unsteady legs. He can recall constantly trying to catch up to Ning Yingying, who had the advantage of being two years older than him and had started skating when she was three. She could quite literally skate circles around him but she never teased him for it and always cheered when he got his skates back under him. And she was always there when Ming Fan would get too rough and knock him into the boards, dashing over in a spray of ice to scold the older boy and help Binghe up.
All of these memories are fuzzy, tinged with nostalgia and dampened by time, but he remembers first seeing Shen Qingqiu with startling clarity.
“A-Luo,” Ning Yingying had called sweetly one winter weekend, when they were free to skate all day. “Would you like to come over for dinner? The Junior Grand Prix is on tonight!”
Binghe hadn’t known what a ‘Junior Grand Prix’ was at the time but had agreed readily, thinking guiltily of not having to go to his own house, where the heating was out and his mother was too tired to cook for the two of them.
Ming Fan somehow got invited along too, but that was fine. He was a lot less mean off the ice.
“I’m not mean . You just gotta toughen up if you’re gonna play hockey with me one day,” Ming Fan had wiped at his snotty nose and wouldn’t look Binghe in the eye. Binghe, even then, saw it as the olive branch it was.
Ning Yingying’s house was right by the rink, big and warm and so much nicer than he was used to. Her mom let them make their own snacks even though dinner was soon, and also let them all sit in a pile in the living room with their food. Binghe laid on his stomach, sandwiched between the older kids and stared up at the Ning’s big flatscreen TV. Something strange and fluttering filled his chest as Ming Fan jostled him and Ning Yingying shushed them both.
And then he saw him.
That year, he had worn a pale green and white outfit, his long black hair tied out of his face in a sleek ponytail. When he moved, his hair flicked behind him like a paintbrush full of ink. The cameras settled on his face and it was impassive, almost blank. But his skating, the actual turns and beats of his performance, was saying something that made Binghe’s heart flutter even harder. It was like he was being seen and spoken to through the TV.
This is for you, Shen Qingqiu, only 16 years old at the time, said, this is where you are meant to be. You are wanted here.
And when he had started to jump, he wasn’t just skating. He was flying.
Shen Qingqiu didn’t win gold at the Junior Grand Prix that year but that didn’t matter to Binghe. As he watched his short program, Binghe felt something solidify in him. For the first time in his young life, he could clearly see what he wanted.
He was going to skate with Shen Qingqiu.
Going home that day, vibrating with barely contained energy and anxiety, Binghe had sat in his own smaller, colder living room with his mother, trying to figure out how to ask. He’d just about resolved not to ask at all when his mother beckoned him to his side.
“Bing-er, I can tell when you’re hiding something,” she’d said, not unkindly, and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “Tell me what it is you want.”
Binghe had cried as he asked, because he knew he shouldn’t ask at all. He’d known it was selfish of him, knew that they would never have the money to make it work. But he’d asked anyways, because he couldn’t help but hope that maybe, somehow, he would be able to reach Shen Qingqiu on the ice.
‘You are wanted here, his skating had said, and a not small part of Binghe believed that was true. Believed that Shen Qingqiu could teach Binghe what it meant to truly belong somewhere, in a way he never had before.
What Binghe doesn’t remember from that day is the logistics of what happened next. He knows his mother had gotten a determined expression on her face as he’d cried into her knees and then told him not to worry, to wait a little while.
Next thing he knew, a graying older man arrived at their door and told Binghe to come with him. He wore a clean-looking, black suit and had a shiny, golden watch on his wrist. Binghe had thrown his mother a worried look, but she had just nodded and encouraged him to go.
He climbed into the man's old beat-up truck, so at odds with the man’s appearance, and was surprised when they just went to the Nings’ rink. The man had told him to skate and watched him silently from the edge of the ice, before calling Binghe back over.
“You have potential, but you’re going to have to work hard,” the man had said. “You’ll have to give up everything else in your life for this. You’ll have to really want it.”
Binghe had known what he wanted. He said yes.
Meng Mo was his coach’s name. He never called him anything but “Elder Meng Mo” for reasons he never explained to the man himself.
(In his heart, the only person who would be his true teacher, his Shizun, was Shen Qingqiu.)
Despite practicing in her family’s rink, he saw Ning Yingying a lot less. And Ming Fan, for that matter. The latter had been more than a little put out when he realized Binghe wasn’t ever going to join hockey with him. But he joined their Shen Qingqiu viewing parties and eventually begrudgingly admitted that he was a good skater.
“I just don’t get why you’re so obsessed with him,” Ming Fan had complained at one such party. “His face is always blank and he’s never placed higher than second. Yue Qingyuan is a four-time world champ, and he knows how to smile.”
“It’s not about first place,” Binghe had said, eyes still glued to the screen as he took note of how Shen Qingqiu landed out of a triple lutz. “It’s about what his skating is saying .”
Meng Mo wasn’t lying when he said that Binghe would have to give up everything for skating. Other than seeing his friends on the weekend, Binghe spent most of his waking hours on the ice. When he wasn’t skating, he was watching videos, and when he wasn’t watching videos, he was thinking about how to nail the latest step sequence. Meng Mo wasn’t a forgiving teacher either, having Binghe repeat difficult jumps and spins until he was sure his body would give out, but somehow it never did.
“You have good stamina,” Meng Mo had explained to him while he laid splayed out on the ice, panting. “That will be an advantage.”
The only thing Binghe did other than skate or go to school was ballet. He had been more than a little surprised when Meng Mo had set up private lessons with a ballet teacher for him, citing something about improving his movement and flexibility. Madam Meiyin was outwardly nicer than Meng Mo, a pretty woman always dressed in pastel leggings and leg-warmers and little floaty chiffon skirts. She doted on him most of the time, but worked him just as hard. He would go to her studio first thing in the morning, hours before school started, and go again after his afternoon practice, until the sun had set. As he lay aching in his bed that was starting to get too small, his thoughts would cycle between his skating routines and French.
When he asked his mother where the money for all this was coming, she’d just wave a hand and tell him not to worry.
When he asked Meng Mo, the man had huffed and said simply, “I owe a debt to your father.”
“I don’t have a father.” Binghe had frowned.
That just caused Meng Mo to snort and tell him to get back to his chasses.
And so the years went on like this. The first time he got on an airplane was when he was 13 years old, and he’d spent the whole trip pressed up against the window, breath fogging that glass as he stared out across a world made up of clouds. After that first moment in the sky, it felt like he never came back down.
At his first competition, he blacked out the entire time he was on the ice and awoke to a silver medal being hung around his neck. He kept going to competitions, and kept winning medals. He won bronze at his Junior debut when he was 15, and then the sponsors started to come in. All of a sudden his mother didn’t have to scrape together money for his costumes and new skates. He could afford to pay Meng Mo and Madam Meiyin. He could send home money to his mother.
Shen Qingqiu was older enough than him that they had yet to skate on the same ice. But Binghe followed his career religiously. He winced at every fall and sighed every time he was beaten out for first place. But it didn’t matter to him if his Shizun made gold. All that mattered was that, every time he watched him skate, he felt that same tingling feeling.
I’m waiting, Shen Qingqiu seemed to say. Catch up.
Binghe was determined to. He blazed through Juniors, placing high but never reaching gold. He could have, if he wanted to. But he wanted to save his first national gold for when he could stand on the same pedestal as Shen Qingqiu. Winning didn’t matter unless his Shizun could see him skate, see his response.
I am here. Watch me.
And before he knew it, it was finally time for his Grand Prix debut. And that’s where it all fell apart.
Binghe wasn’t sure what was messing with his head more, the fact that he was going to finally skate on the same ice as Shen Qingqiu, or that he’d gotten a call that morning that his mother was in the hospital.
Whatever it was, it distracted him enough that he tanked in his short program. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he hadn’t been home in five years, that maybe he would have known if he’d been there to see her. That he was in Barcelona, quite literally halfway across the world, and she was sick and alone. And then he’d fall, and remember that Shen Qingqiu was in the same building as him, and maybe he was watching him on one of the TVs back in the waiting room and that made him fall ever harder. He came off the ice winded and bruised, feeling like his head was full of cotton.
Meng Mo was quiet at the kiss and cry when he finally got his score, which ended up being the worst of his career. He was quiet on day two, when Binghe skated just as badly during his free program and placed almost dead last. He wouldn’t be progressing. His first season in the adult circuit was over.
His coach found Binghe on a bench down the hall in the expo center from the waiting rooms and simply said, “there’s always next year.” Which, for some reason, was the last thing Binghe wanted to hear. It would have been easier, he thought, if he was being yelled at. Then, at least, he could feel something.
Meng Mo left soon after, telling him to rest up tonight and that they’d regroup tomorrow.
Binghe sat on that bench for what felt like hours, staring off into the distance. He was still in his costume, still in his skates, a jacket pulled half haphazardly over his shoulders. Skaters passed him without notice, or if they did, they whispered to each other. Binghe managed to tune it all out.
It took him a long time to realize he was crying.
After sitting there for who knows how long, Binghe was finally going to make himself go back to his hotel when a familiar voice echoed through the long, white hallway. It had long emptied out, so all it took was him looking up to see who it was.
Shen Qingqiu, his hair much shorter than usual, was walking towards him with Yue Qingyuan at his side. Both had changed out of the costumes and into sweatsuits and jackets, their athletic bags over their shoulders like they were about to leave. They were talking amongst themselves about something, a quiet, tense conversation, and were completely oblivious to Binghe’s existence.
He had felt his eyes widen and under his breath he whispered, “Shizun?”
Though it had been a very quiet call, Shen Qingqiu’s eyes flicked immediately towards him. Binghe felt pinned by his dark gaze and was surprised to see that the other man’s expression was not that of his usually jade-like apathy on the ice, or even the slightly more lively expression he’d wear during interviews.
It was an expression of pure loathing.
“Do I know you?” Shen Qingqiu asked, and the voice Binghe had only ever heard through TV speakers was sharp and biting.
Frozen to the spot, Binghe shook his head and was quick to respond, “my name is Luo Binghe and-”
“Am I supposed to remember your name?” Shen Qingqiu interrupted, and Binghe froze further.
“Xiao Jiu...” Yue Qingyuan called, his quiet voice pleading. “Let’s go.”
Shen Qingqiu huffed, glancing at the other man briefly, before giving Binghe a parting dirty look. Binghe didn’t know how to move, or speak, as the two world champions walked past him. His head felt fuzzy and hot, and his chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe.
Before he really knew what he was doing he was standing up, bowing deeply and yelling, “Shen Qingqiu! I am your biggest fan!”
Binghe could only see their feet as they stopped and he tried to catch his breath. It took him a long while to gain the courage to look up. What he saw there will be burned into his mind forever.
Shen Qingqiu was staring at him with absolute contempt in his eyes, nose wrinkled like Binghe was a piece of dirt stuck to his shoe. Yue Qingyuan was just a bit behind him, and strangely enough his expression was sympathetic. Binghe couldn’t parse out what that meant.
“Of what use to me is a fan that cries like a child because they lost?” Shen Qingqiu bit out and Binghe had felt it like a physical slap, flinching.
Something lit in Shen Qingqiu’s eyes and he turned to face Binghe more fully. “You said your name was Luo Binghe, right? I think I do remember you, actually. You were that little upstart who was doing so well in Juniors and completely fell apart during your first real skate. I guess you just got lucky before now. Couldn’t take the pressure?”
With each sentence, Shen Qingqiu took a step forward and for each one, Binghe backed away. Binghe was wearing his guards over his skates but he couldn’t keep his balance and abruptly, he fell to his back.
Shen Qingqiu had stood over him and sneered. “What a surprise. As ungraceful off the ice as you are on it. Why are you even here if you can’t skate? People like you waste the rest of our time.”
Binghe had thought it would have hurt less if he had been stabbed through the chest and he stared, wide-eyed, as his idol had hovered over him.
He’d been aware that he was still crying. He’d been aware that his hands hurt from when he tried to catch himself against the concrete. He’d been aware that Shen Qingqiu was still staring down at him, as far away as he’d ever been.
Then Yue Qingyuan had grabbed Shen Qingqiu’s arm and pulled, calling a gentle, “Xiao Jiu, let’s go.”
Shen Qingqiu had looked like he might resist, looked like he might push further, when another voice called from down the hall, “Yue-ge! Jiu-ge! Are you ready to head back?”
Something strange happened in Shen Qingqiu’s expression then. It had appeared to soften for a moment, cold malice dripping away to something warm and almost fond. Then that was covered once again by the blank expression he wore on the ice and he straightened, turning away from Binghe with finality.
“Coming,” he’d called as he and Yue Qingyuan had left Binghe on the floor.
They hadn’t looked back.