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What do you do when the person you love is painted larger than life on billboards you drive by when you go to visit your family, and instead of being happy for his success, the sight of his empty, cardboard eyes fills you with dread?
Shoma blinks. The billboard passes in a flash, but the clench in his chest doesn’t.
He has an Olympic silver medal, two new skates for the new seasons, costumes, boots and blades prepared. What he doesn’t have is his coach. A coach. Any coach. There’s noone who will stand by the side of the boards for him only, noone to help him find hotel rooms or finagle dinners out of.
“It’s your choice,” his mother said, after he rejected every offer made to him. The US, Russia, coaches from home and abroad sending emails to his manager filled with offers that sound to good to be true. He’s gone, he tried. He knows they are too good to be true - because they aren’t true. He doesn’t want a stranger to try to change him, make him something he’s not.
Mihoko understood him. She understood him better than his own mother does. He pulls a face at her words and turns away. Outside the world passes in a blur that gets more gray by the minute.
***
He doesn’t want to compete. He doesn’t want to practice. Honda-sensei does his best, but Shoma can feel himself slipping. He goes through the motions, but there’s nothing to it.
He has a silver medal and a boyfriend who calls him in the middle of the night to complain about his thesis and his new rink mates and his mother, and Shoma finds himself humming on the other side of the world until Yuzu stops talking.
The pause sinks into the silence around Shoma. He hasn’t bothered turning the lights on - it’s too late to be early, too early to get up, and Yuzuru is bathed in light on his side. The video is the only thing lighting up the room, and isn’t that symbolic, somehow.
“You okay?” Yuzu asks, voice gone suspiciously soft. He only ever sounds this soft when he knows Shoma is upset. He’s all gentle teasing and not so gentle ribbing, braying laughter and annoying whining. He only ever goes quiet when it’s serious.
So Shoma takes it seriously. “I hate that my mom fired Mihoko without asking me.”
Yuzu hums, encouraging. Shoma breathes, breathes out. “And I hated Russia. The food is disgusting, and the skating is bad. All they said was “do a quad toe” and “do a quad flip” and “smile for the selfie” like I'm some sort of puppet for them to play with.”
Yuzu laughs, a soft, commiserating chuckle of a thing. “Eteri is… something.”
Shoma nods, rubs his eyes. He’s all shadow, to Yuzuru. Big dark eyes and a mess of hair.
“I miss you.” It’s brazen, but so is Yuzu. It’s taken years for Shoma to be brazen with him, but now they’re there together. Comfortable and rude and shameless.
Shoma turns onto his belly, getting uncomfortably close to his phone. His picture smudges into darkness, but Yuzuru becomes clearer, closer. Bright eyes dancing as he leans in and blows a kiss at Shoma. “I miss you, too. I’ll be home in three months, and then we'll have Nationals and Worlds.”
“Not long now.”
“Not long at all!”
They swing from event to event like that, pretending that the time in-between is just a breath, a blink, barely perceptible, but Shoma feels it. Feels it with a weariness that never occurred to him before.
His grandfather always used to say that life speeds up as you become older. But to Shoma, the first four years of his career were such a whirlwind. He never felt like he’d catch up with himself, always a step behind, a syllable too slow. Yuzuru always felt a thousand miles ahead. Now he feels a thousand miles away. Time has slowed down to an uncomfortable trickle.
Shoma sighs. “I didn’t like Switzerland either,” he admits. “Stéphane is kind. Spending time with Koshiro was good. But it’s not…”
“Not Mihoko.” Yuzu finishes for him, when Shoma falters. “But maybe it is time for a change, huh?”
Shoma presses his lips together. That’s what his mother had said, when she’d broken the news to him, after a disappointing fourth at worlds. “What, because I need someone who will push me out of my comfort zone?”
Yuzu shakes his head, hair falling into his forehead. “No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” Yuzu replies, slowly. Thoughtful. “I hope we’ll find out after it happens?”
***
It’s stubbornness that pushes Shoma to start the season alone. His mother is angry. His manager is surprised but willing to take over whatever duties he is permitted. Itsuki shrugs. “Mao did it. She won a world gold medal that season.”
It stops her short, and that short break is all Shoma needs to escape from the room. He texts Itsuki a thank you later. Itsuki replies with a gaming invite.
He goes to Finland, games with Sota, sends Yuzu a selfie and receives one in return.
“I still can’t believe that Yuzuru Hanyu is indulging the likes of you,” Sota jokes. He’s laughing, but honestly, Shoma doesn’t believe it either. It feels too good to be true.
He wins, but barely. There is noone there to hold him when he comes off the ice. The ISU official whose name Shoma still does not know after all these years, but who is polite to him, when she’s kind to Yuzu, holds his jacket out for him to slip into. She won’t sit in the Kiss and Cry with him, but that’s okay.
He’s okay.
He goes home.
There is a Yuzuru standee at the supermarket three streets from his and Itsuki’s apartment. Three months turned into more, because Yuzu has exams to prepare for, and a quad axel he’s training for, and Shoma understands.
But he was swinging towards this one lovely weekend getaway, no competitions, no nothing. Just them, like they never had been before, and now he’s swinging into emptiness.
He doesn’t want to practice, but he drags himself to the rink. He skates, same slot every day, before his university peers go on the ice, and after. Honda-sensei gives him feedback, and Shoma applies it, half-heartedly, and there’s nothing. The ice is a cold expanse of nothing, and Shoma can’t find it in himself to fill it.
He goes home, starts up his laptop, and streams.
The streams have become more common over the past year, sometimes keeping him up through the night. It’s fun to play, even more fun with games - it almost feels like a sort of togetherness, like they’re in the hotel after a competition talking shit and throwing food at each other. It feels like skating used to: big and exciting and like Shoma has something to prove to himself.
He gets invited to a bigger streaming platform, and it feels like success. He plays against his heroes, and it’s fun. There’s something direct about it, a connection that makes him feel tethered.
He falls on the quad flip more often. His ankle aches, his hip is constantly bruised. Honda-sensei frowns at him, tells him to take the day off and rest.
Yuzu calls.
Shoma streams. Sometimes he’s got Yuzu on the phone while he plays, idly talking to him like he’s just another audience member. Yuzu is working on his thesis while Shoma plays, not really paying attention. It makes him feel small.
Kazuki and Koshiro join him sometimes. Sota texts, about uni, about practice, about his girlfriend and then their breakup, and always, always his Yuzu fanboying.
The quad axel haunts Shoma, while his own quads disappear on him. He falls on the quad toe. He falls on the quad flip. He doesn’t like his steps and turns. The spins make him feel sick.
He goes home, eats with Itsuki. They game.
Shoma goes to practice. Shoma streams. Shoma gets approached by a girl after practice. She’s sweet, asks him for a picture the way the Russian girls had, so he smiles his awkward photo smile and lets her take it.
He feels disgusting about it afterwards, when the other boys coo at him, tell him that the girls are going to queue up in front of the rink for him now, boyfriends or no boyfriends. Shoma’s boyfriend hasn’t called or texted in almost two weeks now.
Shoma tries to shrug it off. Shoma goes to France.
***
Koshiro texts him right after, just a little frowny face and a short “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Shoma does not want to talk about it. Shoma wants to reverse time, go back to when he was five years old and barely standing on skates, and take it all back. All the years, all the pain and the bruises and yes. All of the joy and satisfaction as well.
Yuzuru texts the next morning, but Shoma doesn’t read his message. He knows he’s an awful boyfriend, and an awful person and that he doesn’t deserve whatever kindness Yuzu typed up for him. He didn’t deserve the audience’s cheers, when he had given them nothing but falls and clenched teeth and tears.
They cheered anyway. He thumbs open the message.
“I’m sorry you were alone. I’m sorry you cried alone. I miss you.”
Shoma closes his eyes, breathes through the clench in his chest. He presses the call button.
***
“Do you love skating?” Stéphane asks him, on his first day in Champery. His rink is bright, the mountains visible through the large windows, sunlight streaming in.
Shoma’s breath comes heavily, but the air is light. There’s an odor to it, some chemical they add to the ice, that is universal. Every rink smells like home.
Shoma tilts his head, and Stéphane cracks a smile. He grabs Shoma’s arm, wraps his arm around his waist, and pulls him into a forward stroke. They cross the rink. The air is cool and dry where it is caressing his face. He can hear Deniss laughing, Koshiro cursing as he breaks his fall, and finds himself smiling. Stéphane leads him in a curve around the edge of the rink, all the while watching his face.
“You do,” he says, satisfaction clear in his voice. “You love to skate.”
Shoma understands. Skating, and love. They are concepts he is familiar with, and that he wants to reconnect with.
He nods. “Then skate,” Stéphane says, and gives him a not so gentle push towards the middle of the rink. “No jumps. Only skating today.”
And Shoma skates. He finds the satisfaction in a turn well taken, the crunch of the ice when he hits his edges right. He runs through familiar patterns: a threeturn, a spreadeagle, a counter.
He follows Stéphane’s movements when he skates ahead and says “Like this,” and when their time is up, he feels lighter.
When he falls into bed, he doesn’t check on his gaming buddies. He sends a photo to Yuzu, half-covered by his blanket, exhausted smile showing, and feels something close to hope.
***
“I’ve been an asshole,” Shoma declares, after Russia. “I’ve been an asshole and I’m sorry.”
“Oh really,” Yuzu ribs, and grins. He’s on his laptop, white wall behind him. His hair is kind of greasy, sweat shining on his skin. “I thought I was the asshole, honestly.”
Shoma shrugs. “We can both be assholes, it’s not exclusive.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Yuzu says, suddenly serious. “Fuck, I really wish I was there right now. Or that you were coming to the final.”
“Asshole,” Shoma says. Yuzu smiles, sheepish.
“I’m sorry.”
Shoma shrugs. “First time for everything.”
Yuzu nods. “It will be strange not having you there. It was strange not having you on the podium with me last worlds. I just fucking miss you.”
“I miss me, too.”
Yuzu blinks, surprised. “What do you mean?”
It’s hard to articulate, what Shoma means, but he wants to try. A lot of what he’s learned in Switzerland, with Stéphane, is that trying means a lot more than perfection. That it’s okay to fail, and fall, and really truly suck at it, as long as you actually tried, with all your heart.
It took Koshiro to translate all that to Shoma, the first time Stéphane had gone on a passionate rant about love, and skating, and loving skating.
Shoma almost doesn’t need the translation now: it’s all in the body language, too. He wants Yuzu to read him, body to body, but there is a screen between them. So instead he sighs, and looks for the words.
“For a while, I didn’t want to skate. I didn’t want to practice. I didn’t like it at all, anymore. Everything felt pointless. I started to really hate it all. My family, myself, my friends. Strangers. It was all too much.”
“And you’re so good. So focused. Talking to you, even about.. Not skating? It felt… bad.”
Yuzu is frowning, looking like he wants to speak, wants to tell Shoma that it’s all bullshit. But it’s not. And he can’t take the interruption, not right now.
“I missed you so much, but I didn’t want to be near you at all. So I was blaming you, and hating myself, and pushing you away, and…”
“Gaming,” Yuzu says, slow.
“Yeah,” Shoma says. “Using gaming to distance myself from it all. When I was gaming, streaming, I didn’t have to think. I just wanted not to think.”
“I’m sorry,” Yuzu starts, but Shoma barrels on.
“And I kept wondering if I even deserved to miss you, while behaving like this, and taking away from us all that was connecting us. Like… if I don’t skate, when will I see you? If we’re not at the same events and same shows, would we even be talking?”
“I spent so long chasing after you, and now I know I’ll never reach that high.”
Yuzuru is staring, and there are tears in his eyes, and it’s only then that Shoma realises that his breath is hitching, high in his chest.
“I can’t be your equal in this,” he says, around a sob. “And I don’t know where that leaves me.”
“But,” Yuzu says, an exclamation and a question. “But we’re good. We’re both assholes but we’ll do better. We’ll call more, work harder at staying in contact.”
Shoma shakes his head. “Yeah. And no. You want to achieve so many things. And I can’t be watching you do it and feeling bad for myself. I miss you too much and it’s not enough and I don’t know how to handle it.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I’m sorry,” Shoma says, “I think I need to focus on what I can do. I want… I want to find out if I can still love skating?”
“But,” Yuzu repeats.
“And I spent so long thinking that skating was you that I forgot that it can be simple, too. That I can just have fun.”
Yuzu stops. There are teartracks on his cheeks, and there is understanding dawning in his eyes. He shakes his head. “I love it,” he says, “why can’t you stay with me and love it, too.”
“I tried. I really tried, but I think right now it’s just one or the other.”
“I don’t understand,” Yuzu says. He repeats it. Shoma sobs. “I don’t understand you.”
***
He stays in Champery. Itsuki comes to visit, and they play together. Koshiro sends Shoma memes, Deniss brings homemade cake to the rink to share, Stéphane hosts parties and Shoma feels himself relax, for the first time in forever.
He skates. He doesn’t skate well, his quads inconsistent and Stéphane mostly unhelpful with them, but they work on his transitions, they polish the choreography, and he finds himself smiling as he keeps up with the heavy beat of his short program music.
He feels himself breaking on the wistful song of his free dance, but they keep it. Stéphane argues with him, as stubborn as he is creative, but Shoma stands fast. It suits his mood, this skate. It makes sense. He wants to skate it at home, and he wants to skate it well.
***
“Everyone knows that I’m not really the national champion,” Shoma says, offhand, while tying up his shoes. Koshiro stills. “I mean. I only win when Yuzu isn’t there, so.”
“You’re an idiot,” Koshiro says, in crisp, unaccented English. “Don’t let Yuzu hear that.”
Shoma frowns at him. “But he already knows?”
Koshiro looks at him, for a long while, and then shakes his head with a sigh. “Well, he’s competing this year, is nothing unexpected happens, so we’ll see, right?”
Shoma nods, unconvinced. Koshiro finishes tying his skates, gets up and stalks over to him. He shakes Shoma by the shoulder, cracks a smile.
“You know, Yuzuru Hanyu isn’t some unbeatable god? If Nathan Chen can beat him, so can you.”
He stalks out, shaky like a baby deer, and Shoma wonders.
He hasn’t called Yuzu in weeks, not since their last, painful conversation. But it feels odd, to leave this standing. It feels odd, to think of Yuzuru as a skater that could be beaten, that could be in second place. But Koshiro is right. Nathan reigns uncontested. Even Yuzuru has bad skates.
He calls, and despite the time zone difference, Yuzu picks up.
Shoma’s heart does something funny at that, at the rasp in Yuzu’s voice when he says his name.
“Hi,” Shoma says, stupidly, and then. “Are you okay with losing to Nathan Chen?”
“What?” Yuzu says, and then, “huh.” There is a rustle of sheets, then the sound of him groaning as he pulls himself upright. “Wait,” he says, and breathes down the line. Shoma puts his phone on loudspeaker, and goes back to tying his skates.
“Okay,” Yuzu says, sounding more awake. “Sorry, I had to splash some water on my face, it’s like.. The middle of the night here. Fuck.”
It’s good to hear him curse. During competition, Yuzu is such a polished, picture-perfect character. Every woman’s perfect son in law, well-spoken, endlessly polite. Shoma’s Yuzu… is all of this, and not. It’s good to be reminded of it. That he’s just Yuzu, too. Not just his skill and his legacy, but this person, too, who picks up a call in the middle of the night.
“Fuck, your ringtone is so annoying, but…” there’s hesitation in Yuzu’s voice, but he powers on. “I’m glad you called?”
“Yeah,” Shoma says. “Hi.”
“Uh, there was a question.”
“Right!” Shoma startles, finds himself fumbling with the phone. With Yuzu on the other side of it, the question suddenly feels inane. Like the importance he’d imbued it with had been stripped away.
“So…” Yuzu asks, and Shoma can hear the smile in it.
“You lost to Nathan Chen.” Shoma ventures. Yuzu hums an affirmative. He doesn’t sound upset at the reminder. “Do you mind it?”
“Of all the things you could call me about,” Yuzu says. “But… no. I made mistakes and he didn’t. It’s math, in the end. So I don’t mind it. I’m frustrated, and I want to do better, but honestly? My goal is something else… the titles are nice, and competing is necessary, but. Yeah. I don’t think I mind?”
“But you would have. In the past?”
There is another rustle, Yuzu moving around. “Yeah. I mean. There were skates that made me angry. Scoring that made me angry. But it’s… honestly? Sometimes I still get upset, but it’s at me. For not doing my best, for not giving it everything, and making stupid mistakes.”
Shoma nods. “Okay.”
There is a pause that fills with the distant sounds of the rink working. People closing doors, the hum of electronics. The changing room is quiet, all the boys already out there. Any minute now, Peter will come fetch Shoma, physically lead him out onto the ice without asking questions. Because Shoma wouldn’t understand him, anyway. The language barrier is a bitch.
“Thank you,” Shoma says. “I just.. Something came up and I needed…”
“Shoma,” Yuzu says, rushed, like the thought just occurred to him and he needs to say it before it disappears. “I would never, ever, be upset with you beating me. When it happens, I’ll be so happy for you.”
“Oh,” Shoma breathes. “I won’t, though. There’s no chance.”
Yuzuru laughs, a soft puff of air into the microphone. A laugh of disbelief that shows they still aren't on the same page at all. Still: Shoma feels warm at the sound, fond and gentle and so familiar. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
Yuzu sighs. Not on the same page, and yet. Shoma wonders if they could be. If they put work into it, once they have time for that.
“Just,” Yuzu starts, and stops. Breathes out, tightly. “Just do your best, and love it. Love skating, love competing." If you can't love me. It goes unspoken. Instead, there's a rasp in Yuzu's voice as he asks Shoma: "Make it worth it?”
The door to the changing room opens, and Peter sticks his head in. “We’re waiting,” he says, in his heavy German accent.
***
Nationals feel like coming home. Keiji laughs at him, cursing about the pressure of being defending champion, but it’s fond. “I love skating here,” he says, and Shoma knows he means it. It’s special, performing for this crowd, who loves and supports them all.
There are banners for all of them, though of course Yuzu’s fans are in the majority. It’s been a long time since he skated on this stage, people are excited for it.
Shoma is excited about it. For him. It feels like forever since they shared the ice. There’s a presence to him, electric as he crosses the eyes. He doesn’t spare a glance for anyone, laser-focused.
Off-ice, behind the scenes, he cornered Shoma with a hug that lasted a second too long for comfort. When Yuzu stepped back, his eyes were wet, and all Shoma wanted was to reach up and pull his face down to hide in his neck, make the hug an embrace.
Instead, he stepped back, and set Yuzu free for his adoring masses. Selfies with Sota, jokes with Keiji, the newly turned juniors in awe of the legacy.
Shoma watches them, and thinks of the rasp of Yuzu’s voice when woken up in the middle of the night, of his tears, and thinks of heartbreak. Thinks of the man behind the bright media smile, and wants him to know that there is so much time. It isn’t now or never. It’s slow progress.
Their eyes meet again and again, during the practice, during the warm-up. It is what it has always been, to share the ice with Yuzuru Hanyu. They skate the short, and it is alright. He rushed through his program, the beat of the music both pushing and carrying him. They receive their small medals. They smile for the media.
Somehow, there is no time for nerves to set in. Stéphane ushers them out of the rink and to the hotel, they discuss the skates, they talk about the next day while sitting together, Koshiro in turn asking questions and translating in rapid-fire Japanese, and it feels right.
And then they skate.
There’s an ease to it that he hasn’t felt before. It’s everything he’s practiced, and it’s more. If Russia was a relief, an exhale, this is breathing in cool, clear mountain air, and breaking out into laughter. The crowd breathes with him, and there is joy.
Time skips forward, a progression too quick to make sense off: there’s the interview, there’s Yuzu’s skate, there’s the results. There’s the podium, and Shoma on top of it, a gold medal around his neck and a trophy in his hands and it’s too much to grasp at.
Yuzu holds his face between both of his hands, and he beams. Shoma feels his words like sunlight under his skin, spreading warm and satisfying.
He’s tugged off the ice and into a dozen hugs, brought out for a celebratory dinner and more media interviews. He loses Yuzu in the whirlwind, but it’s okay.
There’s a number on his phone with a ringtone so annoying, it’ll wake a man up from deep sleep. And Shoma can call it, and say what’s on his mind. And when the time comes, he will.