Chapter Text
The point of figure skating is to tell a story with your movements--to transport the audience as they watch your turns and footwork into another plane where art is both a tangible and a visceral experience.
The story Yuuri tells in the Grand Prix Final is that he is a complete disgrace to the sport. Also that his dog died, and he overate the night before, and that he is at his worst both emotionally and physically.
And with my whole family watching? A public viewing? Yuuri wipes his tears away with his sleeve, snot smearing on the fabric.
Thank god he's not alone at the after party. It's a media thing, mostly, and all Yuuri wants to do after Yuri Plisetsky threatens him with acute bodily trauma in an isolated bathroom after his terrible performance is go back to his hotel room and take a long, hot bath and cry more into the steam, but somehow Celestino convinces him to go.
But Phichit is there, so it’s bearable.
It's a small affair, the party. There were only six competitors in the Grand Prix, after all, so just them and their few guests, some of the regular press faces idling about, coaches making nice despite their decades of rivalry, and a handful of other skaters who attended the event as spectators.
"It's going to be okay," Phichit says as soon as he can corner Yuuri. He puts his hands on Yuuri's shoulders and smiles at him. It makes a bit of the tight, painful feeling in his chest melt away,
While he lived in Detroit, Phichit attended the University of Michigan with him, and over time they grew close despite Yuuri's usual inability to make friends. It was likely a proximity thing more than anything, given that they'd had years worth of practices and competitions and daily commutes to Ann Arbor for classes bonding them in a way that only unrelenting physical contact can.
So he's used to Yuuri's moody spells, and doesn't seem too concerned. He just leads Yuuri around and makes polite chatter with the people at the party on his behalf.
At some point a woman walks in holding a little brown poodle puppy and Yuuri nearly breaks down into gross, loud weeping again.
I'm sorry Vicchan, Yuuri thinks to himself, staring at the puppy's sweet brown eyes.
Phichit has led him into a group with Viktor and, unfortunately, the Russian Yuri, who is still glaring at him with the snarling face of a baby tiger ready to prove it can take down a weak deer just like the older tigers. He doesn't catch all of the conversation.
"Commemorative photo?" Viktor asks. He speaks in English, since it's the most common language between the four of them.
"I'll add it on my Instagram!" Phichit agrees with a wide grin.
Yuri huffs and shuffles into a spot next to Viktor as Phichit hands his phone to someone and a few other skaters hop into the photo. Yuuri ends up between Phichit and Jean Jacques Leroy, and he manages to at least keep the frown off his face when the person taking the photo says "Cheese!" in a thick European accent.
"Can I have it?" a guy Yuuri doesn't recognize asks, and a few others chime in.
Phichit gives his usual amiable smile, "Of course! I'll text it to everyone. Yuuri will get everyone's numbers."
He gives his phone to Yuuri, who dutifully starts typing in whatever numbers people say to him. He doesn't bother with names, just adds them all next to To: and hands it back to Phichit.
Phichit says, "Oh I just got a new phone," he says, and pulls out another device from his back pocket. "Now I'm like a fancy businessman with one for business and another for pleasure," Phichit laughs, and Yuuri offers a quirk of his lips. He's looking for the puppy in the crowd again as a way to further deepen his pain. "Yuuri I'm gonna add my new number to this chat, too, so if you want to text me, text the new number, okay?"
Yuuri nods.
"Are you listening?" Phichit asks again, putting his face directly in Yuuri's line of sight.
Yuuri nods again, this time turning up both corners of his mouth. He spends another ten minutes or so trying to be a person, but soon excuses himself back to his hotel room.
He looks at his phone when he lays down, surprised to see a text, but it's just the photo from Phichit, his name alongside all the unknown numbers he typed in earlier. He hadn't paid attention to whose was whose, but he could probably figure it out if he tried. And his dog just died, okay? And he lost basically the most important competition of his life? So maybe Yuuri doesn't feel like putting the names into his phone right now, so he just leaves the screen on, staring at the picture of him and Viktor—and sure, everyone else. But. Still. It's their first photo together.
Yuuri wakes up to a text, sent around 11:30 the night before. He must have fallen asleep early. It's from an unknown number, one of the ones from the photo message.
- Are you okay?
That's all. He saves the number as Phichit, and brushes his teeth before he responds.
-- Yeah, I'm alright. Thank you for worrying about me. I just need some time.
He hits send, and there's a response by the time he sets the phone down.
- There's still Nationals! Just work on your confidence. You have good footwork, but your jumps seem to suffer when you feel distracted.
Oh yeah, Phichit doesn’t know.
-- My dog died yesterday. My mom called me the morning before the match to tell me.
- That’s awful! I’m so sorry. ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ
Yuuri doesn’t respond. He doesn’t really know what to say. He’s never been much a texter. Despite Phichit’s constant attempts to lure him into social media, he’s never shown any prowess at phone interaction. Like his face to face interactions, he’s always helplessly awkward.
He sets his phone back down and starts to pack up, but before he gets far his phone lights up again.
- Are you going home today?
He doesn’t unlock his phone, just stares at the lockscreen photo of Vicchan for a moment before picking it up and swiping a few times until the photo is changed to one of Viktor. It’s one of his favorites, from right before he chopped all his hair off a few years ago. He’s wearing a long silver tunic and white tights, and he looks like a shard of starlight.
Eventually, Yuuri opens the text.
-- Yeah, back to Detroit for a while. I have classes tomorrow.
- GROSS. (ʘᗩʘ')
Yuuri smiles and sits down, leaving his clothes half folded on the bed while he settles down to text his friend for a bit.
Four months later, Yuuri has spent almost all of his time skating and eating alone in corner booths of cheap restaurants in an attempt to ignore any emotions that might leak in from the well in his chest that he's tried (very hard) to board up. After his loss at Nationals, he became fixated on Viktor's free program. Every day he would wake up, get an order of fried eggs and bacon from the diner on the way to the rink, and then put in headphones and skate for hours.
Honestly, his Nationals program was pretty great. He could’ve done well, but…he was still too psyched out after the last failure, and all he could think were these terrible, self-loathing little thoughts that leaked into his routine like ink in spilling into water until, by the end, he was so far under the points cut off for the next round that he didn’t even bother staying to watch the results.
Celestino called after him as he stormed out of the building, but Yuuri pretended he couldn’t hear. Later, he texted his coach that he needed to go back to Japan to figure some things out. He was done with school, finally graduated, it made sense.
Maybe he would quit skating.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
I made sense to…go home and think about it, at least.
- Did you see the final?
-- No, a customer wanted to watch basketball, so I went to the rink to practice.
- You missed a great performance!
-- Yeah, I heard Viktor won! I hope to skate on the same rink as him again one day.
- You definitely will (ᵔᴥᵔ)
“I’m sorry Yuuri. My kids uploaded the video, and it went viral.”
Takeshi’s voice fades as sounds of shouting from the girls and Yuuko take over, and Yuuri drops his phone with a choked sigh.
He can’t handle this. His phone buzzes several times with texts from Phichit, but he ignores them and just turns off his phone and goes to sleep.
The next morning, Yuuri wakes to the sounds of his mother’s yells and the sight of all his Viktor Nikiforov posters and he feel like a middle schooler again. Still, the posters bring him peace, in the same way that performing Viktor’s programs does—it makes him feel closer to his idol.
When he steps out into the genkan to open the door, it bursts open as a large poodle jumps onto his chest and knocks him backwards onto the stair. A sharp pain rockets down his spine, but he barely notices when the dog starts to lick at his face.
“Vicchan? No, he’s much bigger than Vicchan,” despite that, the dog looks very familiar. A thought crosses his mind, “No…it couldn’t be.”
His dad comes up behind him. “Yuuri, isn’t he just like Vicchan? He came with a really good-looking foreign guest! He’s in the hot spring now.”
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be it just couldn’—
But it is. Because Yuuri rounds the corner to the outdoor baths and there is Viktor—and he’s perfect, of course. Better in real life than in all the posters hanging on Yuuri’s bedroom walls. His fair skin and hair match the newly fallen snow and scattering of pink cherry blossoms like they’re made from the same magic.
And then he stands up and--
Shit.
“Yuuri, starting today, I’m your coach,” Viktor reaches out his hand, cheeks and nose flushed from the cold, miles of bare skin steaming from the onsen, “I’ll make you win the Grand Prix Final.”
And then he fucking winks.
And Yuuri can’t contain his scream of disbelief as one of his (many) fantasies seems to come true.