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Art by @lamenart
Though the pressure’s hard to take // It’s the only way I can escape //
It seems a heavy choice to make // But now I am under, oh…
It was a thrumming thing; it was alive. It was beckoning.
It shook the rafters of the stands; it made the mirrors quaver with its furore, reflections trembling. It skittered along the floors like running water and shocked the feet that waded through it. It ran up their ankles and the tops of their thighs, and settled, shivering across clenched stomachs and fists, into the base of closing throats.
‘Are you ready?’
Yuuri swallowed it away, and tried to shake it off like water droplets, but it had already settled; it was already singing inside him; it knew how to cling.
He made himself turn in the chair, and made himself look at Viktor, leaning in the doorway, arms folded, an ankle crossed over the other, some pale, statue of a youth in languid repose.The dark costume made him a striking thing, and Yuuri thought how they would look together: dark cloth and blood red accents, against the whites and blues of a frozen lake. Pitch nights and young spring days.
There was a smile lingering on Viktor’s lips, and Yuuri couldn’t even think about tasting it.
‘Yuuri?’ he said, warm.
It just slipped out. ‘I’m scared.’
The door clicked shut. It took three strides for Viktor to kneel in front of him and put his hands on his thighs, the hold warm and strong.
‘Why are you scared?’ Viktor said. It was too soft. His eyes were too earnestly bright; Yuuri wanted to fall into them, but they were a hard reflection of winter skies and Yuuri’s own fearful face: eyes too large, a mouth opening and closing with short, wordless breaths.
‘Why aren’t you scared?’ Yuuri whispered. His voice shook over the syllables.
Viktor’s head tilted. ‘Am I supposed to be?’
‘Most people would be.’
‘Do I have to be?’
‘Well—no.’
Viktor nodded. ‘Then I’ve elected not to be,’ he said. ‘It makes things easier, doesn’t it?’
Easier. Everything was getting stuck in his throat. Maybe soon it would close it up, and stop him breathing. ‘How do you turn it off?’
Viktor, somehow, leaned in closer. His hands moved further up Yuuri’s thighs, sliding over muscle and flesh draped in ice-white fabric, and his face was craning upwards. Yuuri could meet him halfway—if he wanted to.
‘Turn it off?’ Viktor said, breath hot on the underside of Yuuri’s jaw. Nerves meant Yuuri was feeling everything with a heightened awareness; Viktor’s touch was electric. ‘I didn’t realise there was a switch.’
Yuuri swallowed. ‘Then how do you—how do you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Viktor.’
‘Yuuri.’
Yuuri closed his eyes. ‘Kiss me,’ he said.
He heard Viktor’s quiet, huffed laugh. He would be shaking his head. His eyes would be a shining, deep sky blue. ‘My lips aren’t a switch, Yuuri. I can’t take it away so easily.’
‘You can make it better,’ said Yuuri. ‘Kiss m—’
A hot of rush air, and surprised bloomed in his voice as he felt the first, blushing press of Viktor’s lips against his. I can’t take it away, Viktor had said, but suddenly all Yuuri could feel—all he could think about was this. The hot slide of Viktor’s tongue in his mouth, the tight press of Viktor’s fingers biting into his thighs, the touch of lips moving sure, so sure, against his own.
Yuuri put his hands in Viktor’s hair, fingers knotted in the silken strands. They tightened.
Viktor made a sound in the base of his throat, a low vibration that carried between their mouths, and Yuuri was lost in the promise of that sound.
They broke away, and Viktor’s eyes had fallen dark, pupils large, lips tulip red. He was breathing shallowly. His body, craning upwards from where he knelt, chest taught, abdominals straining against the mesh of his shirt, was heaving.
‘You were saying?’ said Yuuri.
Viktor’s answer was a low, amused groan. His forehead dropped onto Yuuri’s knee.
‘The death of me,’ he said. ‘The absolute death of me.’
And Yuuri passed a hand over his head, a tender touch, nails running lightly across his scalp. Viktor’s whole body shivered with it. It was wonderful.
‘You can’t die yet,’ Yuuri said. ‘I can’t do this without you.’
There was a rap of knuckles on the door. A muffled voice calling for them. Viktor’s head lifted, eyes meeting his, and they shared a moment of breathless quiet that meant startlingly nothing to anyone but themselves.
Don’t take your eyes off me, Yuuri’s were saying.
And Viktor’s: How could I bear to look away?
And it’s breaking over me // A thousand miles down to the sea bed //
Found the place to rest my head
The corridors were devoid of people as they followed the steward towards the rink, but the walls were shaking with the sound beyond them. Yuuri was shaking with the sound.
‘My hands are sweaty,’ Yuuri said, when Viktor held one of his out.
‘So?’ said Viktor. He linked his fingers into Yuuri’s, his palm soft and dry, the hold firm. It said everything it needed to; told Yuuri everything he needed to know: No matter what, I’m not letting go.
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Yuuri muttered. He could feel sweat prickling across his forehead. His make-up felt like a wet mask on his face. Whose ridiculous idea was this?
He didn’t need to ask, of course.
He could see the ISU board, sitting in front of him. An honorary performance, they’d called it. Viktor had sat in silence through the proposal, Tokyo’s dawn rising through the high windows of the meeting room. They had been able to see the whole city from that room. Viktor had watched the men and women in front of the table; Yuuri had watched the peach-coloured sunrise.
‘I’ll do it,’ Viktor said. His voice was sure and clear.
Yuuri stared at him. ‘Really?’ he’d said. For a few minutes, the board didn’t exist. They weren’t there. All that existed was Yuuri, Viktor, and the dawn.
‘There’s nothing to lose from it,’ Viktor said.
Nothing to lose. Loss or gain. Yuuri shouldn’t have been surprised that Viktor saw it like that: some transactional thing. The look, however, that Viktor gave him, was not saying what his lips were.
Oh, Yuuri thought.
‘You’ll have six months to work on a routine,’ a voice had said. ‘We imagine it wouldn’t be hard for the both of you to achieve.’
‘No,’ Viktor murmured. He was not looking at them. ‘It won’t be hard at all.’
Yuuri remembered that look now—how full it had been; how much it held in it. Promises and whispers and promises. Yuuri had felt like he was breaking to be looked at like that, but he would have gladly broken for it.
They moved through the corridors now, and the sound was growing, and building. The floor felt like it was thrumming beneath their feet. They passed no one, ducked through more hallways and through doors held open by stewards. Yuuri’s heart was careening against his ribcage. And then another door and—
Suddenly it was a roar. The light of the arena was blinding, and Yuuri felt like he had been hit with it. He stumbled, for a second, but Viktor’s hand was sure, pulling him through the doorway.
The crowd was deafening; it was hungry for this. Yuuri couldn’t think.
Viktor laced his skates for him, because his hands had stopped working for a moment. Before a competition, he used to be in ceaseless, unending motion. He moved so he didn’t have the energy to think. Now his thoughts were loud and his head was pounding white light into him so he couldn’t move.
‘Yuuri,’ Viktor was saying. He was kneeling in front of him again. Pressing fingertips to Yuuri’s cheek and the flowers pinned in his hair. Could Yuuri kiss him again? ‘Let’s go and skate,’ he said.
Yuuri had to nod. He had to let Viktor stand and pull him to his feet. He felt suddenly clunky and stiff on the blades. Viktor’s hand didn’t let him go. When they stepped onto the ice, he thought his legs might fall out beneath him, knees threatening to buckle. Viktor’s offering was a hand around his waist as they slid into the centre of the rink.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ Viktor told him. Low enough it was barely heard, and low enough that no one else would ever hear it.
Yuuri tried to let himself believe it. He tried to believe that this wasn’t a mistake; that they weren’t letting everyone in on their secret. No—not a secret. Theirs wasn’t a hidden, furtive thing. But neither was it an exhibition. The ISU had sold tickets for this.
‘They don’t exist,’ Viktor told him, lips at his ear. ‘None of them do. This is just us. It’s me. You know me.’
It was the most frighteningly honest truth he had ever told: ‘I know you.’
They came to a stop, and Viktor circled around him. Suddenly, he was close, and the lights had fallen, spotlights on, and Viktor’s eyes and hair were a shock of white and silver.
Yuuri let his hands rest on Viktor’s shoulders, feeling how they were strong and firm, how they rose as he breathed deep and sure. Viktor’s hands found the slight dip of Yuuri’s waist; they held on tight and pressing, and Yuuri wanted it. He wanted that tight hardness of it all—touches soft as a breath felt too much like falling. This was anchoring.
A hush, suddenly, had fallen, and Yuuri wasn’t sure if that was worse. Now, he could hear his breathing, but he could hear Viktor’s too. The noise in his head that had sounded like cheering, he realised, was the static of blood rushing. He didn’t want to be so loudly reminded that he was alive; his heart was already too strong in his chest.
His eyes were wide in fear. He could feel something building in his throat.
‘Look at me,’ Viktor said, and Yuuri’s eyes were darting to meet his. He was looking. ‘Don’t look at anything else. Just me. Nothing else matters.’
‘I’m scared,’ Yuuri whispered, because he could feel the moment, that space of silence, before the music started.
And Viktor’s mouth quirked. Yuuri realised Viktor’s thumb was running across the indent of his waist, up and down. He said, ‘Me too.’
And the arms of the ocean so sweet and so cold // And all this devotion I never knew at all //
And the crashes are heaven for a sinner released // And the arms of the ocean delivered me
The music started slow, a voice that was melancholy and shivering, and the way Viktor circled him was haunting. The spotlights turned him white and made of snow and bottomless shadows, and it was like looking at something that wasn’t real.
The illusion didn’t last long. Before Yuuri knew it, Viktor’s hand was in his, and Yuuri was being pulled along in Viktor’s current, and he had to let himself sink into it, skate with it. For a moment he felt like he wasit.
They were a river that could become an avalanche, mirrored movements that promised a building kind of destruction if anyone got too close. The spins were clean and sharp as clear ice, and the rushing sound in Yuuri’s ears was only air as they jumped through the triple Lutz, through the triple toe loop.
Their fingers were apart for only a handful of seconds, and they alone were too much.
Yuuri rose into the first lift. It should have been difficult; it shouldn’t have worked—but it did. Viktor’s hands were hard and strong as vices on his hips as Yuuri let himself skate into them, sliding with the momentum into Viktor’s waiting hands, higher and higher, until for a moment he was suspended in the air, and Viktor’s hold on him was the only thing that kept him falling. It was the closest thing to flying he had ever felt.
He kept his core tight, kept himself still, until he felt Viktor’s arms buckling, and slowly he slid down, and they were in tandem again, pulling each other across the ice, spinning into positions that suggested intimacy but never got close enough. It was a tease, and it was longing.
It went on like that, a gradual thing. Viktor trying to pull him in, trying to entice him, a trail behind him like wings. Yuuri would have gone so willingly—and yet the way Viktor looked at him sometimes, a sharp glint in his eye, settled deep in him.
Come with me, that look said. I will give you everything and more.
And Yuuri had to stop himself. Persephone would never have fallen into Hades with a movement that was so willing. She would have bargained; would have put up some sort of fight as the god of the underworld held one hand, and her mother pulled on the other.
Yuuri knew only that her Hades could not have looked like this. The Hades that stole her away must have been stone-cold and passive for her not to want him, if she hadn’t. Yuuri was pulled into the spins, held so carefully into the lifts. When they mirrored one another with their jumps, it would have been easy to touch Viktor, so close it was a torment.
Viktor’s lips were pomegranate pink, and Yuuri was close enough to taste them.
Maybe, he thought, this is how it was. Maybe a taste was all it took. Maybe it was as easy to let him take her as it would be for him to take me. I would go so willingly.
And he did. Viktor leaned in as they pressed close for a spin, trailing fabric a whirl like smoke around them, and Yuuri did not feel the kiss until it was gone, nothing more than a shiver of skin, a breath of warm air. They were moving too fast for him to think on it, and when Viktor lifted him into the lasso they could not even look at one another.
This must have been her spring, Yuuri thought. Warm sun and bursting life. Coloured months, while the winters were half-remembered in the chill of spring and summer nights: a memory of lips—brushed, faint, lingering. The flowers and the grains promising reunion. They would be months of being unable to look, and of waiting until it was so.
When he was in Viktor’s arms again, knees bending with the impact, ice shuddering beneath his weight, he thought Persephone must have longed for winter if it brought with it a feeling like this when she returned.
He thought, too, that he understood why skaters tended to marry their partners. How could Yuuri not look at Viktor now, his skin a white glow, his hair the silver of falling star trails, his cheeks flushed high with a pink that made his eyes gleam, offset by his dark costume. How could he not look at him and want to look at this image and be the cause and a part of it forever?
Viktor kept looking at Yuuri. He wasn’t supposed to; he’d lose his balance in the spins and the teetering lifts when Yuuri’s stomach fell out beneath him with a rush. But it was like despite the audience, despite the white lights, despite the flash of a camera and a wild scream of their names, Yuuri was the only thing in that moment that was present, and real, and willing to give that kind of look back to him.
Even when they came to their slow, eventual stop, Viktor was not looking at anyone else as he might have done before. Before, he might have let a grey gaze sweep through the stands, and take in their standing ovation, and revel in it like a god. Now, he looked at Yuuri as if he had a cup of ambrosia poised at his lips; as if he were his Ganymede. Now, on his knees, Yuuri rising over him, he looked at Yuuri as if the beauty the Greeks had seen to put in their statues stood in front of him—as something corporeal.
Viktor stood when the music closed off. He was breathing hard, and Yuuri felt his own breath echoing to meet it, heart thrumming, blood rushing under his skin. Viktor had a hand cupping Yuuri’s cheek, another at his waist, as he had when they began. Their bodies were flush against one another, and Yuuri could feel every fold in the fabric of Viktor’s clothes. He could feel the shape of his body, long and lithe and warm, with a startling certainty. Every time Viktor breathed, shifted closer somehow, darkness and a wisp of blood red, it grew even clearer.
‘I’m not scared anymore,’ Viktor whispered, close in his ear. Whispered like somehow someone could hear—like nothing they might have said would be drowned out by the audience teeming in the stands. Like he had to make it intensely personal, so Yuuri had no doubt that this was theirs, and theirs alone. The sound of the crowd was sweeping; it crashed into cymbals. It sang of waves and oceans and drowning—and it felt like it too. Yuuri had never felt so anchored to Viktor, so sure that they could stay afloat.
Yuuri spent some time looking at him. The feeling was like hot water on cold skin; the sudden burn, a quiet gasp, the body’s movement of almost-leaving, and then… staying. Letting it turn to a slow, steady warmth, until that warmth was all you thought you’d ever known, and you couldn’t remember what coldness might have felt like.
‘I don’t think you were ever scared,’ said Yuuri.
Viktor’s smile was kind, and knowing. He smiled like a god.
And it’s over // And I’m going under // But I’m not giving up // I’m just giving in //
I’m slipping underneath // So cold and so sweet
‘Persephone and Hades. That’s… an interesting choice.’
‘It was a subjective interpretation.’
The reporter tilted her head at Viktor, and a man sitting beside her held a phone out to catch Viktor’s words. ‘You wouldn’t choose something more… loving?’ he said. ‘Swan Lake. Romeo and Juliet.’
There was a pause. ‘Romeo and Juliet?’ said Viktor evenly, quirking a brow.
The interviewer didn’t seem to quite realise, but the look Viktor was giving him, high in disbelief, was enough for a flush of red to creep around the interviewer’s stubbled throat.
‘Are all relationships so destined for death?’ Viktor said, but he wasn’t asking that. What he was asking was if relationships with two men always had to end in tragedy and loss. What he was asking was why theirs couldn’t be a love, for once, that was enduring. After all, Odette still died grief-stricken in her lover’s arms. Persephone was eternalised. She was a queen.
‘I meant—’
‘I know what you meant,’ said Viktor.
And Yuuri said, ‘Persephone didn’t choose her fate. And I didn’t choose my skating failures last year. We both sunk inevitably into something dark and blackened, and we met something there that changed us.’ On the table, Viktor’s palm slid warm against his own. ‘Hades was fair and just, and I think… being surrounded by something—someone—that made him feel alive was worth something.’ He felt the squeeze of Viktor’s hand. ‘It was our interpretation. That’s what art is. Making something that has a part of yourself kept inside of it. We’ve made art out of each other.’
Never let me go // Never let me go // Never let me go // Never let me go //
Deliver me
When Viktor was rising as a star, he saw that no one, really, wanted to be something like a friend.
He understood, for the most part, why: you couldn’t be friends with someone you wanted to stand beside on a podium only for the satisfaction of having beaten them. Chris, and Georgi, and the other skaters of his generation did not want to be his friend. What they were looking for in him was competition, something that shone on its pedestal and was alluring with the desire of pulling it down.
Viktor could admit that, for the most part, the fault had also been his own. Knowing you were better meant also that everyone else was less so, so perhaps it was inevitable that he become something to be beaten and not something to befriend.
And then Yuuri. And then what they had just done together, which was not a competition. Where did that fall into the routine he had set himself? Two years, and still Viktor’s mind was reeling with the possibility that Yuuri might be his. Lastingly his.
Viktor sighed, peering out between the curtains of their hotel bedroom. The night was dark, and the distant, golden glow of the Eiffel Tower shone back at them. The streets of Paris were hushed with winter chill and the twinkle of Christmas lights. When he turned, he looked at Yuuri, sitting on their bed in a dressing gown and little else. A flash of pale thigh, a relaxed pose.
Serious, honest, dark eyes stared back. Yuuri opened his mouth.
‘You,’ said Viktor. ‘I’m thinking about you.’
Yuuri flushed. He still had the flowers in his hair. ‘I wasn’t—I was going to ask if you wanted room service.’
‘Oh,’ said Viktor, spotting the menu in Yuuri’s hand, and feeling foolish. Wasn’t Yuuri the one that made things more than they needed to be; made things more true than they needed to be? No—that wasn’t right. Yuuri simply gave Viktor something so honest, so sincere, that he didn’t know what to do with it. He had never had to face that kind of emotion before, and when he had felt it prickling beneath his skin, he had been frightened. He had never felt like this for someone.
‘Sure,’ said Viktor, eyes softening.
They ordered most things off the menu: melting camembert with half a warm baguette and a pot of fig jam, French toast and berry compote, a cassoulet with butter beans and salted sausage, a platter of fruit and bowl of honeyed yoghurt. It was a winner’s feast, and they ate it in their dressing gowns, even though they had really won nothing, a black and white film with subtitles playing low on the TV.
Occasionally, Viktor would reach over and press a grape or a piece of bread to Yuuri’s mouth, and Viktor could feel hot breath on his fingers as Yuuri’s teeth drew it from his hold. The promise of touch was dizzying, and the air was heated and strained when they piled the empty plates onto the desk and clambered back onto the bed.
Viktor was thinking about every hotel he had stayed in; every flight he’d made for a conference or a competition or an interview. Every journey and stay he had made alone. Now, Yuuri was warm at his side, and kissing was a spontaneous, lazy thing. Please, Vitya. Their feet were tangled, and soon the mattress gave way to the slow press of their bodies. The windows steamed up with the curl of heated breaths, low whimpers, and Viktor was losing himself in the softness of Yuuri’s skin, and Yuuri’s fingers in his hair, and a joining that made him find himself as he did every time with him. Yes, Yuuri.
After a while, Viktor drew sheets over their entwined bodies, loose limbs and cooling skin, and Yuuri’s eyes were pressed closed in sleep. Viktor could feel the pleasing ache of what they had done, and the ache, too, of the skate they had given to the audience. It had been a wild, cathartic thing, but Viktor could feel the truth now—that the skate had really only be been some alternate version—an interpretation.
The warm glow of realisation pressed close: in their Parisian hotel room, and tomorrow, when they returned to Hasetsu, Viktor would have the realest, truest version of Yuuri, and together they would not be the echoes of something else. They would not need myth and Greek fantasy. Already, surely, they were enough.
But if Yuuri was Persephone, and could only stay for the cold, dark months, then Viktor only hoped that he could cling to that coldness, and that darkness, and let Yuuri be his warmth, so long as the sun would never rise.