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Yuri Plisetsky has always chased after someone's shadow.
When he's small, his hair not yet long but soft and puffy, he lands his first quad. He's proud of that, and even as he grimaces under Yakov's yelling, his heart swells in his chest. He knows that that isn't something every junior can do: just him. Only he can land these quads; only he can make his grandfather happy, only he can keep their household afloat. Yuri may be young, but he's far from an idiot. He knows that every time there was a gap between competitions, their budget shrinks. Every time he doesn't win, they have to go another few days without things they need.
So his solution is just to win.
The shadow he stayed in back then was Victor's. Vitya, the champion; Vitya, talented, suave, who could do no wrong. When Yuri first watches his programs, he can't deny below the admiration that there's a hard little core in his chest. This is the man he's going to have to beat to win when he moves up to seniors. This man: one possessing a grace on the ice so effortless that it seems like he doesn't feel the eyes of everyone on him, like he doesn't feel the pressure of having to win. Victor kisses his gold medal and casts vibrant blue eyes toward a cheering crowd. Yuri doesn't know if he can win against that.
So he resolves to do it anyway.
Victor promises to choreograph for him at his senior debut. Yuri loses himself in practice sometimes to make sure it'll happen.
When he's fourteen, Yuri storms up to someone with his name, a pathetic man who's locked himself in the bathroom after he lost. The Japanese skater. His program was pathetic. Did he even try? Yuri knows he can do better than that himself. Someone like that needs to get off the rink, and leave it for those who can succeed on it. He kicks the stall door, yells, leaves behind a terrified skater.
When he's fourteen, only hours later, he watches the Japanese skater get completely wasted and tries to win a dance-off against him. He doesn't, and frankly, he's kind of pissed off about it. What pisses him off more, though, is that Victor is so, so infatuated by him. He doesn't miss the way that his eyes spark, in the way that they didn't when Victor won his fifth gold, in the way that they didn't when he lifted his arms to the flashing of cameras glinting off the rink.
"He probably won't remember this," he says when they're leaving the banquet. "Did you see how much he was drinking?"
The expression on Victor's face doesn't change much. He lifts a finger to his lips and smiles slightly.
A year later, Yuri watches, anger knitting his brow, a YouTube video uploaded by someone named Yuuko. Stammi vicino, non te de andare. Stay close to me. Except the person skating isn't Victor. Where there had been pale, fine hair and rosy clothing, there's black hair, glasses, a dark shirt. Yuri looks down at his phone and nearly throws it.
Yuri doesn't admit it, but it's almost more than Victor's performance.
He doesn't admit that the pathetic Japanese skater is a challenge now.
He does resolve to win against him, too.
Somehow, Yuri almost isn't surprised when he goes to the rink that day and Yakov is yelling, Mila is watching him, and he can hear the tinny, cheerful voice of their prodigy Vitya on the other side of the line. He's not surprised when it turns out that he left for Yuri Katsuki. The one with his name.
He's angry, though, bubbling right under his skin and in his fingers and knees when he lands a jump, and as soon as he thinks they won't notice, he books a flight of his own to Japan. It's ill-prepared, and he doesn't speak the language, and he doesn't know where Victor is when he lands, but he'll figure it out. And he does.
Except Victor has forgotten his promise.
He'd be lying if he says that doesn't sting a little. Being overshadowed by this Yuri so easily. Victor's preferred Yuri.
But it's only a name.
Victor tests the both of them, and Yuri has to skate to Agape whether he wants to or not. The only thing he connects with in the song is the first line. Si mea vita est temporaria. He's going to accomplish everything he can with this "temporary" life. Be it by selling his soul, himself, his being to a devil.
Yuri thinks of his grandfather when he skates. He remembers that when he was small, he'd look up at the old man, and do his best to make him smile. Was his grandfather happy because Yuri was skating for him - for them? He doesn't know, but he believes that as he reaches his hands up, clasped together in a silent prayer. Si mea vita est temporaria. But help me not to waste it. But halfway through, he can't think of his grandfather any more, and forces himself through the jumps, with a lack of the ease that he always sees Vitya display on ice. His neck feels hot in shame: why can't he do even this?
Yuri Katsuki wins the competition. Yuri Plisetsky knows this. He knows before the notes of Eros even end. One look at Victor's face, one look at the figure out on the distant ice, and Yuri feels himself become less. Yuri Plisetsky looks down, at the floor, and sees it move as he walks out.
Yuri Plisetsky packs up and leaves. He promises himself, and Yuuko, that he'll win.
Yuri doesn't win Skate Canada when it comes. His program is missing something: Victor will say it's his sense of Agape, but what is that? His grandfather isn't culpable for Yuri's inability to win. It's all on himself. He stands in second place, the silver hanging heavy at his chest. His hair obscures half of his face, tickling at his jawline, and he thinks idly that he should tie it all back the next time.
When he goes to Rostelecom, he wants to win. More than before. He wants to show up the others, show them that he can do it.
Yuri Plisetsky skates a poor Agape, but when he hears, "Eat these and win, Yurochka," and feels warm paper in his hands, a smile makes its way onto his face. He will.
He watches afterward as Victor leaves the rink in a hurry, his coat born upward by the strong headwind. Yuri Katsuki stays.
Yuri skates a flawless long program. By the end of it, his throat burns, raw and ragged, and his limbs feel like they could give out - and they do, on the ice, but he forces himself to skate over to the edge of the rink toward the kiss and cry. A burst of joy flares light in his chest as he overtakes the other competitors for first, but before it can last long, he tamps it down with worry, sweat on his palms and his hands feeling almost like they aren't attached to his body, as Yuri Katsuki skates to the center of the rink.
Somehow, he still feels like the lesser Yuri, even as the other one skates distracted, his Vitenka in Japan thousands of miles away.
He doesn't win the Rostelecom Cup. But this time, he hardly stands still. He refuses to think about the hot feeling burning across his shoulders, in his chest, up his throat, shame that he couldn't reach first, once again. Instead, he seeks out Yuri Katsuki and dropkicks him with all he's got.
"Eat!"
"Huh? Right now?"
"Just eat it!"
When he shares his grandfather's food, his shoulders feel a little bit lighter.
He practices harder than before, as he prepares to fly to Barcelona. He's sold himself to succeed, and the least he can do is win now.
He hadn't expected his first few days there to involve running away from his fans instead of being able to relax. He's doubled over, almost in an alley, panting, when he hears them again, and forces himself to stand up straight so he can tuck himself into the narrow space in front of a door. He peeks around the doorframe to the end of the alley, and he can see the girls snooping around.
What he doesn't expect, even more, is the sound of a motorcycle behind him. Someone he's seen before, Otabek Altin, idling next to him with one foot bracing himself and his bike against the ground. He gapes, he knows, with his eyebrows up and his mouth open.
"Get on."
Yuri gets on the motorcycle, buckles a helmet on, and leans back as he watches the scenery above him fly by. The sky is clear, a pure light blue as they pass under it. The occasional string of triangular flags whips by in a blur. All he can hear is the sound of the engine, revving as they drive through the city without a care. Yuri finds his expression softening, blank and wondering as he stares at the sun above.
By the time they reach the park, the sun is setting to a muted gold. Otabek Altin, as it turns out, remembers Yuri.
Yuri doesn't remember him, but he's willing to meet him again, for real this time.
"Yuri Plisetsky had the eyes of a soldier," says Otabek Altin.
Yuri Plisetsky looks up, eyes seeing not wrath, but wonder.
"Are you going to be my friend or not?" says Otabek Altin.
Yuri's hand goes out to meet his, and he smiles, just a bit.