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He breathes in the cold air at the Ice Castle, the hum of fluorescent lights above him buzzing. Despite its age and, frankly, dismal business, it still carries the scent of damp towels stuffed hastily into training bags, puddles left on the floor from small clumps of ice melting off of metal, clean evening sweat after long hours of pushing and pulling and tiring.
Yuuri laces up his skates mindlessly. Yuuko stands behind the counter, filling out paperwork. He glances up at her, and she meets his eyes, smiling sweetly, the same way she has since they were children and rink mates. The laces cut into his fingers as he pulls them tight, looping them over the metal brackets. The boot fits in a way the many of his clothes have failed to in recent months.
Why is he here?
He gestures with his head, and Yuuko, still smiling, walks over, following him as he walks towards the rink. She tells him a story about her triplet's latest antics, starting to fill him in on the last five years. He looks at her and smiles, and she pauses mid-sentence before smiling back. It is easy to let his ears fill with her voice and her laughter, the way it has for years, while his lungs continue to take in chilled air. He can feel the heart in his chest start to slow.
That's better.
He slips off the blade guards, handing them to Yuuko before stepping out onto the ice. She stands by the boards as he skates laps around the rink, her chatter mingling with the sounds of metal cutting into the hard surface below. It sounds like music to his ears.
Yuuko's enthusiasm shines as he warms up, taking his body through familiar routines. She critiques his movements and applauds when pleased or excited, which is often - she would make a great coach, if she only developed a harder edge. Her voice, that familiar constant, only stops when he skates back to the boards and takes his glasses off. It must be something in his face.
"Please watch," he asks. He hopes it doesn't sound too much like begging.
After going for so long without an audience, his heart starts beating faster in his chest, a bittersweet nervousness attempting to break through the surface. He pushes it away; it is only Yuuko, after all, and if he were still embarrassed to fall and fail and skate again in front of her, he would have quit long ago. He closes his eyes and breathes deep, filling his lungs with chilled air.
The last thing he hears is Yuuko's sharp gasp as he assumes his (borrowed) starting position, bowing his head.
He doesn't bother with the Ice Castle's sound system; he doesn't need to, and besides, he can't imagine how the music would sound here, piping through old, tinny speakers. He remembers watching this in Sochi, when the roar of the crowd and Yuuri's own thoughts should have drowned out the entire atmosphere, and yet - well, certain Russian figure skaters always did have a way of getting through to him. The melody cut through to him then loud and clear, imprinting itself on him so much so that he can hear it now, in the relative silence of the Ice Castle.
He raises his eyes skyward and the yellowing white lights beam back down to him, flickering almost imperceptibly. It hardly matters - in his mind's eye, he is not back in Hasetsu, an overweight nobody recovering from a most upsetting defeat in his short career, nor is he in Sochi, a renowned skater merely winning one more gold medal to match his golden blades. Legends and championships, failures and shame fall away from his mind. He is not anyone, nor anywhere at all, except on the ice - a boy turning and lunging as the thin blades cut into the surface below, simply showing a childhood friend something new he's learned.
His body follows him, despite the weight settling around his hips and thighs, through the jumps and spins. He changes the opening quads to a triple, and steps out of the sachow later, but he gets the rotations in, and makes up for it and more through the following step sequence. The program is long, but stamina has always been Yurri's friend, even now, out of practice and out of shape. Besides, he loves it - is that not why he practiced it in the first place, tired of idleness and feeling sorry for himself? He returned to his roots, a childhood game of copying to pass the time.
And then - it's over. Yuuri stands in the final pose, eyes turned toward the ceiling again. Exertion runs high, coloring his cheeks and making his breath come out in short bursts.
Yuuko cries, and then her children and husband are there, and he is swept back into the fold, brought back down to earth and Hasetsu. The five of them smile at him, encouraging, and later in the evening, he finds himself outside, practicing his form as the cherry blossoms fall like snowflakes.
From afar, a cold wave is coming, triggered by astrological phenomenon and climate change, of course, but also, perhaps, by three small girls huddled beneath a blanket late at night, posting a video.