Work Text:
After the final, let's end this.
Victor froze in the act of rubbing the towel over his damp hair. The silence in the hotel room stretched on as he turned his head slowly to stare at Yuuri. He wasn't looking at Victor, instead keeping his eyes fixed on where his hands were fisted in his lap.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Victor said lightly, willing his hearing to be faulty. Perfect health, or at least as perfect as a competitive figure skater could have, but right now he wished for sudden onset hearing loss. "End what?"
"This." Yuuri gave a short, sharp gesture with his right hand, encompassing the two of them. The ring shined dully in the light and Victor stared at it, rather than at Yuuri's bent head. "You coaching me. This engagement. You're not meant to be tied down to some second-rate figure skater who dreams of retiring back to a disappearing town in Japan."
Victor wished he was dressed for this. There was something strangely vulnerable sitting here in his robe and slippers. "Don't call yourself that," he said, because that was the most important thing to establish. He didn't let anyone get away with calling Yuuri second-rate, least of all Yuuri himself. "I am not tying myself down, I chose this." It was the first real choice he had made in a while. On the plane to Japan, he had felt himself getting lighter and lighter, as if a weight was slowly falling off his shoulders. The shackles had loosened. He had been Victor Nikiforov, living legend, no longer but instead just Victor, ace figure skater who had come to coach someone with the skill and the potential to be so much more. He had felt so comfortable as Yuuri's coach, had he not made that clear?
Yuuri shook his head and for the first time in the conversation, he lifted his head to look Victor in the eye. "It's alright, you don't have to lie to me." His eyes were soft and understanding, though his hands were still clenched into fists.
Victor set his jaw. Yuuri was supposed to be easy. It wasn't supposed to be like this. "I'm not lying to you."
Yuuri's expression did not change. It made sense, Victor hadn't known what to say as a coach and now he didn't know what to say to his fiancé. "Victor, I can see how much you miss skating. You want to be back on the ice, I know that now."
He felt sick. How could things have gone so wrong? He didn't know what Yuuri was feeling right now, despite his calm expression, but he was realising he didn't know Yuuri as well as he thought he did. "I'm glad you know how I'm feeling better than I do," he said, his voice shaking. He didn't know whether he was going to scream or cry, both seemed good right now.
"What?" Yuuri blinked, looking surprised.
Victor glared at him before getting up and hurriedly pulling on his clothes. He wasn't leaving, he wasn't running away like he had done after the banquet, so sure Yuuri had changed his mind when he had said nothing to Victor, but it would make him feel better if he was dressed. The tracksuit stuck in places where his skin was damp and his hair dripped water onto his shoulders. Goosebumps appeared on his arms and Victor told himself it was from the air-conditioned hotel room. Nothing else.
"And if I tell you that I don't want to get back on the ice, at least not as a competitor? Would that make any difference or have you already decided?" Victor stifled a laugh at the shock on Yuuri's face. God, he loved this man so much and he had no idea.
"You just think that now, all you needed was a break. You're a good coach, you can come back when you retire for real," Yuuri replied, earnest in a way that did make Victor laugh but it sounded odd and he had to cut it off before he started to cry.
"Whether I'm a coach or not after tomorrow, I'm still retiring from figure skating," Victor said. He had thought it was obvious, but judging by Yuuri's gasp, not so much. The two of them were both standing now, opposite sides and both so blind. This couldn't be it, this couldn't be everything.
"Victor, you can't!" Yuuri looked frantic. He took a step closer, his hands outstretched as if he was about to physically stop Victor from retiring. "You can't do that just because of me. I can't be the one who took you from the world you loved."
"Yuuri." Victor stepped closer, the two of them now barely a few feet apart. "You didn't take me away from something I loved, you just showed me that there was another option for me." Even if Yuuri left him now, and he didn't really want to think about that option, Victor knew he had found something he thought he had lost when he stood up wearing the gold Grand Prix Final medal and felt nothing at all. There was no changing it, no going back.
"You looked at the other skaters and missed it." Yuuri was adamant. He was so confident in this knowledge, never minding the fact Victor had told him he was wrong. If he had had the same confidence in his own skating, then he would have knocked Victor straight off the podium at the last Grand Prix Final.
"I missed that feeling I got when skating in competitions used to be fun. But it hasn't been fun in a long time." He saw his words did nothing to sway Yuuri; he seemed to have the idea that Victor missed skating in his head and nothing was going to shake it loose. Victor switched tactics. "And what about us? We were going to be married." Technically, he had asked in front of a group of their fellow figure skaters and only after Phichit had mistaken them as already married, but Yuuri was the one who bought the rings in the first place. "If you don't want me to be your coach, well, I can understand that." It hurt but Victor could understand. He was inexperienced and had a habit of saying the wrong thing to Yuuri, it wasn't that surprising he wanted to get rid of Victor as a coach. But that did not explain why he wanted to get rid of Victor altogether.
"I'm holding you back," Yuuri insisted. "It would be better for both of us if we went our separate ways."
God, Victor really wished they were speaking in Russian because then at least he could be sure that the complete crap Yuuri was spouting was the correct interpretation. "And you decided this? You decide what is best for both of us? I say no, you say yes and so we follow what you want to do."
"I don't want to do it." Yuuri's voice got louder and he stood a step back, as if distancing himself from Victor. "And I'm not deciding for both of us, but it's obvious that you will resent me in future if I force you to stay with me."
His heartbeat pounded against his ears. Rage was overtaking the hurt and fast. "You are not forcing me! I chose this! And I chose this because, before the banquet, before I became your coach, I felt like I was being suffocated!" He took a breath, panting hard. "I felt like I was being suffocated," he repeated, his voice considerably lower in volume. "Like I didn't want to continue but I couldn't see any other option. I was going to continue skating until my body gave out, watch myself decline until I was nothing but an afterthought in everyone's mind. For me to feel I could make that choice, to go out at the height of my career, was wonderful enough." He hiccuped and tears started to fill his eyes, blurring Yuuri's horrified expression. "And then I got you and it was even better than I had imagined." He sniffed. "If you're going to leave me, then leave because you want to, but don't you dare say this is for my sake."
"Victor, what are you- don't cry." Yuuri sounded genuinely distressed but Victor couldn't stop sobbing long enough to comfort him. Familiar arms came around him and Victor clung to the front of Yuuri's shirt, determined to make sure he couldn't run away. At least not just yet.
"When your fiancé says he's going to leave and it's your fault, you're allowed to cry." It turns out his anger hadn't completely disappeared. Yuuri flinched at the words and Victor felt a wave of remorse.
"It's not your fault, not at all." Yuuri's voice cracked in the middle and soon the both of them were sobbing on each other's shoulders. Victor wrapped himself around Yuuri, pressing his nose against the crook between neck and shoulder, determined to get as much of Yuuri's smell and touch if this was the last time he got the chance.
In the end it was Yuuri who pulled back, who leaned over to get the box of hotel tissues from the nightstand and hand it to Victor. They sat down on the bed, Victor careful to keep an eye on Yuuri in case he tried to disappear. The silence reigned between them as they both tried to get cleaned up. Yuuri had red eyes after everything and Victor was sure he looked worse.
"Gold medal or not, I'll want to marry you," he said quietly before blinking in surprise. That was not what he intended to say at all and the words hung in the air. With a start, Victor remembered Yuuri's words after Victor threatened to resign as Yuuri's coach. "Of course you can win, I believe that from the bottom of my heart. But it won't suddenly make you more desirable to me. Whether you're on the podium or not, you're my favourite." Victor would keep saying these words until they sunk in but he sort of wanted to get them tattooed on his chest so Yuuri could see them all the time (plus it would be a great excuse to walk around shirtless).
"But... how can you?" Yuuri gripped his own hair, great fistfuls of it, and pulled it taut. Victor let out a soft sound and tried to bring Yuuri's hands down, or at least loosen their grip. "If I don't win a gold medal, then what can I hope to offer you?"
"I get you," Victor said. Yuuri jerked his head up and stared at Victor with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Yuuri, I want you to get a gold medal because I know you're talented enough for it and because it matters to you. You could come last place and I would care because you would but it doesn't make me love you any less." The light of surprise was still present in Yuuri's eyes. It was humbling for Victor to realise Yuuri didn't know how much he meant to him and he vowed to do better. If he was allowed to try.
"You really mean that?" Everything about Yuuri was small at the moment. His voice was so quiet Victor almost missed it and his shoulders were hunched as if to ward off a blow.
"Of course I do." Victor leaned forward so he could rest his forehead gently against Yuuri's, who didn't move away, rather pressed closer. "How long have you been worrying about this?"
"A while," Yuuri confessed.
Victor tutted a little. "You need to tell me these things," he said gently, but still had an edge to it. He didn't want anything exploding like this again because Yuuri was bottling things up.
"It sounds stupid," Yuuri replied. His face flushed and hid in Victor's shoulder when Victor chuckled.
"It's worrying you, so it's not stupid." Especially not something like this. Victor curled a hand around Yuuri's nape of his neck and pulled him into a hug. "I want to know. And I don't want this to be over."
"Neither do I," Yuuri admitted quietly but Victor heard it all the same.