Work Text:
Lord, what will become of me
Once I've lost my novelty?
I've had too much to drink tonight
And I know it's sad, but this is what I think about
And I wake up in the middle of the night
It's like I can feel time moving
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?
And will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
At sixteen, Viktor wins gold at the Junior World Championships. With his long silver hair flowing behind him, he is like nothing the world has ever seen before. When he stands atop the podium, he knows everything he wants. He was dedicated to skating, he wouldn’t have made it to the top of this podium if he wasn’t. Everyone skates with gold in mind, but with the added weight around his neck, he has never felt lighter. And he knows he wants this, wants to win for the rest of his life. So really, nothing much has changed. But everything has changed.
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At twenty-three, Viktor wins gold at the Grand Prix Final for the first time. It's taken him seven years to fulfill the promise he made himself at sixteen, but he’s never been good at remembering promises. This time the podium feels different. It took him seven years fighting tooth and nail to claw his way to the top of this podium. And Viktor’s determined to cling to it. Already his mind is swimming with music and colors. He can picture himself skating clips of a new program. It’s stiffer, stronger; more masculine. A stark contrast to the graceful elegance of the program that won him his first meaningful gold of his senior career. Viktor wants to surprise the audience; wants to leave them gasping in shock. He cuts his hair.
One morning he walks into the rink to find Yakov lecturing a skater that for once isn’t him. He glances at the ice to find that it’s little Yuri, only thirteen yet burning with a fiery determination that leaves him reeling from the sheer juxtaposition of fire on ice. Viktor isn’t nosy, he just prefers to be well informed, which is why he lingers perhaps closer than necessary doing his warm up stretches. By the time he's finished he has gathered what little Yuri wants. Viktor allows himself just a moment to wrangle his shock. Little Yuri wants to learn a jump Viktor himself hadn’t attempted until he was four years older than Yuri is now.
He’s not quite sure why he makes the promise, but he tells little Yuri that if he listens to Yakov on the jumps, Viktor will choreograph him a marvelous program for his senior debut. Yuri really is too young for that jump. Or maybe he feels some delayed sympathy for every time it was him who put Yakov in the same position. He doesn’t know.
Viktor sees his younger self in Yuri. If he knew, little Yuri would probably threaten to kill Viktor with his knife shoes and then once again declare that he won’t be like Viktor, he’ll be better than Viktor. But the way Yuri looks at the him reminds him of something Viktor once felt standing atop a podium at sixteen. He doesn’t know when he became the landmark young skaters see when they gazed at the horizon. He doesn’t know how to feel about all the people following his career, hoping to one day surpass him.
I know someday I'm gonna meet her, it's a fever dream
The kind of radiance you only have at 17
She'll know the way, and then she'll say she got the map from me
I'll say I'm happy for her, then I'll cry myself to sleep
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At twenty-six Viktor wins his fourth consecutive Grand Prix Final gold medal. He’s been on top of the podium long enough to watch his name on magazine headers and newspaper titles shift from Champion Viktor Nikiforov to Legend Viktor Nikiforov. This time, the medal around his neck is heavy, as if delayed compensation for the weightlessness it had once granted him at sixteen. That must be how physics works, conservation of gold medal weight or something.
He needs to change, to reinvent, to be different. To change the manner of his next performance along with the costume. He can’t risk merely drawing the worlds’ attention. He needs to keep it; grab it in his hands and hold that attention hostage. Needs every mind to immediately paint his face when figure skating is mentioned. The only way to be immortalized is to change. To tear down those paintings of himself each season, rip them apart into tiny pieces so his audience is forced to paint another one, in new lighting. He doesn’t know how many more times he can shed the skin of his past seasons, fly out a different yet still beautiful thing.
When he walks off the ice, Yuri greets him with a screech of Old Man, and promises again to be the one that breaks Viktor’s gold streak when he finally makes it to seniors. In just two years Yuri will be competing on the same ice as him. Already he’s been dominating the junior competitions in a way Viktor never did. His chest feels even heavier with the weight of more medals he has yet to win, might not ever win.
Viktor doesn’t often drink, between his training schedule and Yakov’s tight control. However, tonight he finds Chris and they make their way through the loudest clubs in Quebec, and he tries to satisfy his mind with the music and alcohol.
Are we only biding time 'til I lose your attention?
And someone else lights up the room?
People love an ingénue