Work Text:
Victor listened to him quietly.
His blue eyes had widened a little bit when let's end this left Yuuri's lips, but he didn't yell, gasp, or shake him by the shoulders and ask him what was wrong. He only seemed a bit taken aback when he gently took Yuuri's hand in his, and his question, when it came, was nothing more than a quiet "Why?"
The quietness and gentleness of it reminded him of that day on the beach in Hasetsu. The quietness gave him strength, the gentleness reminded him of what it was all for. Victor. All of this, for Victor's sake. Even if what he had to say felt like ripping out his own heart and tearing it to pieces, he would do it for Victor. No matter how much it hurt him or how saw Victor would be at first----it was all for the best, he knew.
And at least this one last time, Victor would still be here for him when he fell.
"Because it doesn't work," he said, the rehearsed syllables sounding like they came out of a stranger's throat. "You haven't said it out loud, but you've got to know it's true. I tried. You know I really did---but it doesn't work. This doesn't work. You and I, we---all this, it's just holding you down, Victor, and I can't hold you down. I can't. All of this is a mistake."
He remembered how it had felt so giddy, so exhilarating, to skate knowing that he alone in the world held Victor's eyes. Knowing that he'd stolen Victor from everyone else, secure in the knowledge that he could proclaim this with every movement of his legs, his arms, his fingers. He had been so scared of being hated before, and it turned out that hatred was such an intoxicating thing, this hatred earned from keeping Victor by his side and away from the entire world.
He'd do anything for Victor, he told himself then. Anything to keep Victor's eyes on him and away from the envious world that wanted him back, keep his attention on him and never let it go. Anything to bring out the light of wonder in his eyes. He would do anything for that, he thought. He could do anything for Victor. Impossible jumps, impossible feats, bringing down the sun for him to hold in his hands. He'd told himself that he could do anything, if Victor only wanted him to.
But he couldn't.
"I couldn't land the quad flip," Yuuri continued. "I told you I'd land one, a quad flip with GOE+3, and I couldn't. You've given me everything I could ever need and I was still a failure out there on the ice. Making a fool out of you in front of everyone."
"You didn't make a fool out of me, Yuuri!" Victor said hurriedly, an odd tinge he'd never heard before in the gentleness of his voice. "Quad flips are difficult and I know that better than anyone. If anything, it's my mistake as a coach that you have to feel like this---you did well, Yuuri. And you'll do well tomorrow, too, I'm sure of it."
And there you go---you just wouldn't stop, Yuuri thought, a bitter thing rising in the back of his spine. The weight of his ring hung heavy on his finger. The cold of Victor's ring bit into his palm.
He'd asked this of Victor : to believe in him more than he believed in himself, and Victor had given him exactly that. Everything he asked for. Things he shouldn't be given. Things beyond his wildest dreams. Victor was gentle and Victor was kind and Victor only wanted the best for Yuuri, the same way he always wanted the best for everyone.
Victor was just like that.
And Yuuri knew it would kill Victor one day, if they kept on like this.
"But you would've landed it," he said, smiling, oddly contented with the searing pain in his heart. "It's your jump, so you'd land it, the crowd would cheer, the announcers would shout your name. Everything would be fine and guess what, Victor? You'd still remain Victor Nikiforov."
Victor's eyes widened and he made a little gasping noise, like the one he made when Yuuri laced his fingers together with his and asked for his absolute attention for the first time. The gasp he made when something caught him off-guard, entered his space unwarranted. It assured Yuuri that he was right.
Not that he could've been wrong, the way Victor looked at the competition today.
"What do you even mean by that?" Victor asked, an anxious rush in his voice. "This isn't about me, Yuuri. It's about you. You're the one competing! I'm your coach! I-I don't understand what you're trying to say at all. Are you.....ending us because of the quad flip? Did you feel pressured into it because of me?"
You're wrong, Victor.
For me, this has never been about anything but you.
He freed his hand from Victor's, and now it was his turn to pull Victor's right hand into his, cupping it between his palms like the precious thing that it was.
"It's not because of the quad flip, no," Yuuri said. "The quad flip just proved to me that we needed to end this, but I made the decision a while ago."
Victor's breath caught. Yuuri looked at his face, then at the ring Victor was wearing. The ring he'd chosen himself and slipped onto Victor's finger with his own hands.
Victor didn't need to wear it. He didn't even need to accept it, but did all the same because Yuuri asked. Victor was gentle and Victor was kind and he would do anything if he thought Yuuri needed it. Anything, if Yuuri would only ask.
He remembered how it had felt so crushing when he realized that he didn't steal Victor from the world, not at all. He'd just made Victor give up his world for him, nothing more and nothing less. The home that he belonged to. The friends he had. The shining stage that should've been his. The world full of light and accolades and skating shapes that filled his eyes with longing, surrounded by everyone else who loved Victor Nikiforov and all that Victor Nikiforov loved.
The world he'd stolen from Victor.
The life he'd taken from him.
"When," Victor whispered. "Since when did you....decide?"
"I started thinking about it in May, about the same time we started choreographing the FS. By the time of the Rostelecom Cup it was pretty much set in stone," Yuuri answered, looking up to meet Victor's eyes. He'd always liked looking at his eyes, even back when he only ever saw them through faded CRT screens and cut-outs reverently collected from magazines. He needed to say this while looking into Victor's eyes.
Yuuri took a deep breath.
"I'm going to retire after the GPF, Victor."
Victor's eyes widened again, just like he knew they would. His hand trembled in his. 'I wish you'd never retire' echoed, and for one moment he wondered if it was cruel.
But no : Victor would give him whatever he wanted, for however long he wanted, no matter what he himself had to give up in the process. And all I wish you'd never retire meant was he would do it again and again and again, for as long as Yuuri wanted, just because Skater Yuuri Katsuki told him to.
All because Skater Yuuri Katsuki was pathetically weak.
He remembered how devastated he was when he realized this. How Victor didn't give up his world because he was worth it, but because he was too weak to fight without Victor doing so. Too weak to skate the program Victor made for him just because Victor wasn't around to give him strength. Too pathetic to skate Victor's dance for Victor's sake, even if he had all the force of Victor's love gleaming on his hand.
He'd prove how strong he had became after knowing love with a gold medal, he said. How strong indeed. This, the worth of all the love he'd declared he had.
"May," Victor said, his voice shaking almost imperceptibly. "May, and.....you never told me?" He pulled his hand back, used it to sweep up the hair falling on his face, half-covering it as he sinking back down on his seat, looking so much like he did in that garage in Beijing, all those eternities ago. "And of course, Rostelecom," he bit his lip, closing his eyes. "Was I so bad as a coach?"
And here Yuuri was the one who wanted to grab his shoulders and shake them until he saw sense, yelling, No, you weren't a bad coach, you aren't a bad coach, you're the best coach I've ever had and the best I could ever want.
Instead he said, "You're a good coach, Victor. When you retire, maybe years from now.....you'll be a great coach for any student lucky enough to have you."
The significance was not lost on Victor.
"But it won't be you?"
Because you won't be you as long as you're with me.
Because you being and remaining Victor ---that's all I ever wanted.
"It won't be me."
"And you want me to go back to the ice?"
Because that's where you belong.
Because that's where you can still remain Victor Nikiforov, in a world that you love.
Even if I never want you to leave and I never will.
"Don't you want to, Victor?"
Strangely enough, this was where Victor went completely still.
Yuuri hadn't anticipate this. He expected either honest surrender or stubborn argument but not silence, and he didn't really understand why.
"Can I ask you something then?" Victor said, his voice thin and oddly raspy. He'd never heard him like this, not even back in that airport or all the times he'd gotten drunk and sounded like an octopus walking on dry land. Something dreadful rose in Yuuri's gut like a warning----but for what?
Yuuri, not sure how to take this, nodded.
"When you gave me this ring...." Victor said, raising his hand until it was level with Yuuri's face. "....what was on your mind, Yuuri? Tell me. Why did you go into a jewelry store that day?"
The dreadful feeling turned into something like a hundred klaxons ringing all at once. But what could Yuuri answer but the truth?
"I thought.....I'd want to buy some good luck charms," he said, slowly. "And something to represent all my gratitude for what you've done. There really wasn't anything more fitting that I could think of."
Nothing more fitting for my feelings towards you.
A good luck charm for a wager I made with myself, that I could be worthy of staying with you longer. A wager I lost.
And of course Yuuri would never say that part of it out loud.
"One last thing, then," Victor breathed. "Why did you ask----why did you let me coach you, if you've been thinking about retiring since May?"
Ah. This question. The most cruel of questions. But once again, Yuuri couldn't offer anything else----didn't want to offer anything else but the truth. This question---these eight months---it meant that much to him.
"Because I'd be a fool not to."
He should've said 'no' when Victor turned up to coach him, no matter what Victor wanted, and his chances at the GPF be damned. To take away his time like this, in what must be one of the last seasons he had left before his inevitable retirement---it was cruel. Cruel and pathetic of him.
But Victor was his dream and he wanted it so much, he couldn't say no. Victor's time. It was all he wanted, all he prayed to all the gods in this world for.
Until he realized what holding a dream in your hands meant.
Yuuri braced himself. He'd ran this part of the conversation in his head several times, and there were several things he expected. Anger. Disappointment. Disdain. Any of those. Perhaps even hate, even if he hoped against all hopes that Victor still wouldn't hate him, no matter what he'd done.
He was still startled to an inch of his life by the strangled sound that came out of Victor's throat.
"Victor!?" Yuuri cried out in alarm, reaching for him instinctively. "What's wrong? Are you hurt? Are you----"
Victor himself seemed just as startled as Yuuri was, because he made a horrified little noise and batted Yuuri's hand away, leaping up on his feet. He was already halfway across the room by the time Yuuri could fully register what was happening.
"Victor! Where are you going!? What's wrong, I----"
He slipped into the bathroom and slammed the door before Yuuri could reach it, the door locking with an audible click, and Yuuri could only stand there flabbergasted. What was wrong with Victor? What had gotten into him? He'd expected a stern talking-to, an argument, a sad, lost conversation where Victor just couldn't understand why----but this. What was----
Someone was sobbing.
The realization of it hit Yuuri with the force of a sledgehammer. Someone was sobbing. From beyond the door. Someone who-----no no no no that was just impossible----someone who sounded like Victor Nikiforov, his voice wretched and strangled.
Victor.
Crying.
Why?
Something raised in the back of his throat and Yuuri panicked. Victor? Crying? No. This was wrong. It could't be. Victor couldn't be crying. Couldn't. Why? Why would he be crying? Victor didn't cry when he was sad---he'd just look lost and unhappy, and---and he'd understand, in the calm and quiet way he understood everything , always meeting Yuuri where he was. Victor would, wouldn't---
He didn't even realize when he started pounding on the door.
"Victor! Victor! Are you all right!? A-are you crying? Please, open the door!"
A muffled answer.
"No."
Yuuri immediately stilled, all the noises in the world drowning in the dull thud of his heartbeats and the broken sound of Victor's voice. The feelings he remembered from last year's GPF came back to him all at once. Did he make Victor feel like that ? This couldn't be. This couldn't be.
"Please, Victor," he said, softer now, desperate. It seemed so impossible, but Victor cried because of him. He'd made Victor cry. Oh God. If there was a way for his heart to sink to his ankle, then it probably did because that was how he felt right now. "Please, open the door. I need to see your face. If I said something wrong, I'll explain everything you want me to explain. But please....come out?"
The stifled laughter that answered him sounded almost hysterical. "Why would you even want to see me, Yuuri?" His voice was frayed, strung taut, strained. "I certainly don't want to see you."
If his heart could stop by itself, it probably would've done so right then.
"Victor...." he said, horror palpable in his voice.
And Victor could probably hear it, too, because he muttered something in Russian, low and nearly feral, broken between shuddering breaths.
"I'm sorry, Yuuri. That was harsh. But I just.....don't want you to see my face right now. It's not something a coach should do." He paused. "If this is my last night as your coach, I don't want to be a worse failure of it than I already am."
"You're not a failure," he said, you're the best coach I've ever had and the best I could ever want ricocheting in his mind, over and over. "I told you that, right? You're a good coach. You're---"
"Not enough," Victor whispered, almost inaudibly, the hurt so plain in his voice now, impossible not to see.
Victor was....hurt, because of him. Because of someone like him. He couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. Victor had been so light, so carefree, so invincible. He could imagine Victor being a little sad about his retirement, but how could someone like Victor be hurt by someone like Yuuri at all?
"Then talk to me, please?" he said. "I don't know what I said wrong, but I'll explain everything, all over again, if you want me to. I know you don't want me to retire, but...I won't be able to skate like you want me to for much longer, Victor. I can't give you what you want. I can't hold you back. It's time." His hands balled into fists. "Please, tell me what I said wrong. I want to make it right."
The wretched laughter from the other side of the door was the most terrible thing Yuuri had ever heard in his entire life, and if there could be anything worse, he didn't want to know.
"You didn't say anything wrong, Yuuri. I'm glad you told me everything you said," Victor said, his voice barbed, laden with....something that Yuuri thought he could hear in his own voice, sometimes. Bitterness. "At least now I know why you looked so unhappy with that part in your FS where I appeared in your life."
What?
Yuuri heard himself gasping. "Victor, that's not true---!"
"It's late and you should go to sleep," Victor said, cutting him off with a low, tired voice. "You have your big day tomorrow. You'll need all the rest you can get."
"How can I sleep when you're---"
"Coach's orders, Yuuri," he said, and even if it was broken and shuddering, his voice brooked no argument. Then it grew softer. "Please. One last time."
Coach's orders. Yuuri bit his lip. "You know I wasn't unhappy. You know that's just not true. Why would you say something like that?"
Victor had never negated his feeling like this before.
"You know what that song means, I've told you, we've talked about it so many times, right? You can't possibly believe I don't want you. You can't."
Silence.
"And if you're telling me to go to sleep, what about you? How can I sleep while you're in there and I know you're hurting? I can't. I won't."
Silence again, or so Yuuri thought. But then Victor answered him, his voice so faded he almost couldn't hear.
"You can, and you will."
That was when he knew this conversation was over.
He would do anything for Victor, he thought. For Victor's sake. Even if what he had to say felt like ripping out his own heart and tearing it to pieces, he would do it. But then---he'd never thought, it seemed so impossible---
What does that mean if he could also hurt Victor's heart?
He gritted his teeth. Fingernails digging into the soft flesh of his palms.
All the klaxons ringing in his gut had died down, leaving nothing but a sense of vertigo and wrongness that he didn't know how to fix. He had hurt Victor. And he'd failed in convincing him to come out and wait for Yuuri while he tried to make everything better. Victor could be stubborn like nothing else when he wanted to be, they'd joked about this once, in what seemed like lifetimes ago. Like coach like student, they laughed with each other then. There was certainly nothing to laugh about now. What was he to do?
He wasn't smart or charming, didn't have all the right words for all the right times like Victor does. He was weak and pathetic. What could he do?
The right words for all the right times.
No.
There was one thing.
One thing he could still do yet, as pathetic as he was. One thing---to at least convince Victor, one last time. Convince Victor why he needed to do this, how much Victor meant to him. How Victor meant so much.
"Victor," Yuuri whispered, pressing his forehead against the door, his own voice hoarse and plaintative like he was making a prayer to an uncaring god. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I won't take it back. But I'm sorry."
Silence.
He continued.
"You might not want to talk to me. But please, Victor.....in our FS tomorrow, please don't take your eyes off me. Please don't ever take your eyes off me. One last time."
Victor didn't answer, but the air was wrecked with the quiet, muffled sounds of his misery, his sobbing wretched, restrained, like he was trying to stop himself from crying but didn't know how.
I never know what to do when people cry, Victor's voice echoed, somewhere from the distant past.
I don't know either, Victor, Yuuri thought, and for a brief fraction of a second he thought he understood why Victor offered to kiss him on that day.
His hands left the door of the bathroom. The cold was searing. He'd have to turn the heater up again so Victor wouldn't catch a cold, however long he decided to stay in there. When he looked back at their shared room it looked exactly the same as they'd left it a few minutes ago, bright, warm, filled with light, Victor's bed pushed up against his in one laughing evening when he'd teased Victor about it and Victor teased him back the entire time. Their things lay scattered about, Victor's suit hanging in the half-open wardrobe, his suitcase propped neatly against one wall.
Yuuri wished, desperately, to hear the door opening as he turned. He didn't.
He pushed Victor's bed back to its place against the bathroom wall, lay down on it and turned off the lights. In the darkness the glow of Barcelona grew the more luminous. He didn't see it like this yesterday, Victor didn't turn off the lights until later, but it was glowing as brightly as the night he and Victor walked through the crowds in the streets together, arms around each other's waist. Victor talking to him about pointless little things with his familiar heart-shaped smile.
You've got to sleep early, Yuuri. You have to rest well! You still have to show me your quad flip tomorrow.
You think I can really land the quad flip?
Of course, yesterday's Victor whispered, squeezing his hand. I believe in you. I always do and I always will.
Yuuri turned on his side. Only a wall remained in the direction Victor used to be yesterday. But Victor was there, all the same.
He gave the wall a little knock, his ring gleaming slightly in Barcelona's scattered light.
"Good night, Victor."
Nothing answered him. The room was quiet and dark save for the luminous glow of the night sky. Soon there was no longer any talking or sobbing, only the short, unsteady breaths of fitful sleep.