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In his younger days, before skating became the centre of his life at the expense of everything else, Yuri had danced every single day. He was a fidgety child - he liked to move - and dance had been convenient. His aunt had run a dance school and had taught him ballet and jazz, as well as tap and traditional Russian folk dancing. Dance was his life and his soul and his joy. Dance was safety. He has spent every moment he wasn’t in school or in bed at his aunt’s studio. Except for Sundays, when Grandpa would bribe him in to attending church with the promise of skating afterwards. Skating was like dancing but with extra speed and young Yuri’s brain liked that very much. It was worth suffering through a boring church service where he wasn’t supposed to move or fidget or dance at all, if he got to go skating afterwards.
That was where Yakov had first seen him, not on the rink, but at church, whilst on a visit home to his dear mama. He and Nikolai were old friends and so Yakov had agreed to indulge his friend’s grandfatherly pride by stopping by to see little Yuri skate. After that, there had been less and less time for dance as skating had become Yuri’s whole life. It was worth it though, of course it was. It kept the lights and heat on in Grandpa’s flat, paid for Yuri’s schooling and living expenses. But sometimes Yuri missed the dancing.
The way that Yuuri Katsuki skated had lit a spark in Yuri. Watched the Japanese skater at the Grand Prix Final, even when he’d bombed during his Free Skate, had been like remembering something he’d lost long ago. He had wanted to connect with a skater in a way he never had before and had tracked the man down, moving instinctively and without clear thought - only to find Katsuki crying in a toilet stall. Yuri’s brain, his fourteen year old brain, saw the emotional act as a rejection and a personal attack and had lashed out in true adolescent fashion. He’d wanted to talk about dancing and felt robbed by Katsuki’s inability to provide. He had hidden his embarrassment and disappointment behind an extra layer of anger and aggression after that and hated Viktor for not noticing the pain he refused to show. Viktor was good at not seeing; Yuri was good at hiding.
The anger had bubbled and boiled, a driving force but also a shackle. Yuri had tried and tried but Agape eluded him. Until Lilia. Madame Lilia Baranovskia reminded Yuri of his aunt, in her harsh discipline and the flowing lines of her body when she moved. Lilia was dance and Yuri sold his soul to her, his chest aching, not just to be the best skater he could be, not just to win, but to dance more, a yearned he’d squashed down for so long that he’d almost forgotten.
It worked. Even when he hated the early mornings and the strain and the realisation that he wasn’t the best - as he had been in his childhood ballet class, as he had been in the Junior Division - it was still wonderful. Dancing induced euphoria, even when Lilia was telling him, “Again! But this time better!” and as Yuri relearned that figure skating could also be dancing that euphoria found him on the ice. He could do what Katsuki did. Perhaps not in the same way but he could, and the euphoria and rage began to mingle in equal measure in his mind.
At the Grand Prix Final, his first as a Senior, when Otabek Altin had confessed to him that he’d been first drawn to the small ballerino with the eyes of a soldier, a spark had flared in Yuri’s mind. Otabek saw him. He did not see a fairy, a kitten, or a princess, or even an irrational and emotional teen. Otabek saw fight and sacrifice and drive and dance. The spark of friendship grew into an inferno fast. A burning swirl of movement and music. Otabek didn’t do ballet anymore but he did dance and the way he listened - the stillness of him - allowed Yuri to move and to talk and smile. If church had been still like Otabek was still, Yuri might not have hated it so much.
Otabek had been taught traditional Kazakh dancing as well as studying contemporary, hip hop, and breakdance in North America. As their friendship bloomed and Yuri learned new steps and styles from his friend the world grew, his world grew. His dancing grew.
Once Yuri would have said that his style was locked in place, the way he moved on the ice was dancing but only of a certain kind and he considered himself at peace with that. Ballet had been his first love and being able to bring that to his skating was bliss. But sometimes… sometimes Yuri still craved. He began to explore and improvise. He remembered once, when he’d been so small that it was a strain to reach the barre, that dancing had also been play. It began to be so again.
Otabek made it a game. They would dissect the styles of their competitors and recreate them on any spring floor they could find. If a spring floor couldn’t be found they would make do. The urge to dance overrode most everything and soon Yuri found that it was an almost equal joy to see Otabek smile when the music and movement swept him up in the euphoria Yuri knew so well.
One day they found themselves in a practice room of a Canadian dance studio, hiding from the charity event that JJ had thrown to coincide with the Trophy de Quebec. It annoyed Yuri that JJ’s aunt also ran a dance school, and that it was so large and successful, but in that moment he was relieved that there was space for him to hide away from the awkward social niceties that came with events like this one. The store room stocked with character shoes and tap shoes was a nice bonus.
“Did you see Kenjiro’s short for this season?” Yuri asked, standing in the doorway of the store room, eyes fixed on the tap shoes.
“Tap inspired for sure. You think you can recreate it?” Otabek smirked as he looked over Yuri’s shoulder. His smirk grew when Yuri’s first response was to roll his eyes.
“Every piece that kid does is ripped straight from Broadway. Of course I can.”
“That ‘kid’ is older than you, you know that, right?”
Yuri snorted. Otabek understood and bumped their shoulders together in the doorway.
They each grabbed up a pair of shoes and made their way back out to the practice room. The floor bore all the marks of being used for tap so there was no worry that they’d scuff a floor they weren’t supposed to, and tap was easy enough to do in suit pants and shirts, so they were ready to go within a minute, moving silently around one another as jackets and ties were removed, shirt sleeves rolled up, muscles stretched and loosened.
Truthfully it had been a while since Yuri had worn proper tap shoes but his formal shoes were of the same style - because he preferred them to boring, standard, men’s shoes - and after a few experimental moves he gave Otabek a nod. The music started up, tinny thanks to Otabek’s phone and the room’s acoustics, but good enough for their purposes. Yuri grinned. Some might think it odd that Otabek downloaded and kept the performance music for every one of their competitors but Yuri got it. Music was Otabek’s lifeline, it was what made his blood sing, and it was the key to their ability to recreate the choreography of others.
Yuri had a memory for choreography, a one track mind for it in fact; Otabek had a memory for everything. It was what made their choreography and dance sessions so much fun. It was a new kind of competition but at the end everybody won.
They ran through Kenjiro’s piece a few times, coming up with alternatives for the jumps and spins which could only work on ice, and improvising slides and footwork to fill in the gaps which in a skate would be used for building speed. It was fun. Yuri had tried to come up with other words to describe it but couldn’t. With Lilia dancing was power; with Otabek dancing was fun. It was as simple as that and Yuri had made peace with it. He was an athlete, not a linguist.
Both he and Otabek noticed when their fellow figure skaters began to peek around the open studio door, but they chose not let it interrupt their time together. They were used to performing, even if what they were currently doing wasn’t dance made for an audience. Yuri was too busy smiling at Otabek smiling as their feet moved in unison. Kenjiro wasn’t the best skater on the circuit but he sure had a knack for picking bops and there was no way either of them would waste the music by stopping before it ended.
They couldn’t ignore the applause that met them when the music ended, though, and Otabek hurried to his phone to stop it before the song played again. They’d had it on a loop as they worked to get the steps just right.
“Wow! Amazing!” Viktor gushed, hugging his husband tight from behind. “Yuuri, did you see that?”
Yuri scoffed as Yuuri rolled his eyes. Viktor’s ability to be both obvious and oblivious would forever be a point of frustration for them both and Yuri didn’t understand how his Japanese namesake put up with it.
“I didn’t know either of you did tap,” Yuuri said instead of responding to his husband. “It looks so much fun. And hard.”
“It is,” Yuri smirked with a tilt of his chin. He had eventually found a way to talk dance with Yuuri - it had been difficult to keep himself from gushing to be honest - but Yuuri’s dancing was so intuitive that sometimes he lacked the vocabulary to sake Yuri’s thirst. He was even less a linguist than Yuri or Otabek. It had given them a way to be friends at least, another thing dance had given him.
“Do mine next!” Leo said, bouncing through the door, puppy dog eyes aimed at Otabek. “You’ve done Minami’s off ice, now do mine!”
Otabek grinned. They’d figured out choreography to Leo’s short earlier in the season because Otabek had a real soft spot for hip hop and, of course, neither had forgotten the steps.
As he bent to remove the tap shoes and his socks Yuri pretended not to notice how many of his fellow skaters were trouping in to sit against the mirrored wall of the studio. He’d allow it this one time, he supposed. As long as it didn’t become a regular thing. Otabek’s expression, when he caught his eye as he looked up from his phone, seemed to say the same thing. Dancing like this was Their thing, but it didn’t hurt for their friends to get a peek at what they were missing. They all understood the language of dance in their own way, and the fizz of euphoria that sent through Yuri’s soul made it impossible not to move.