Work Text:
What it was that he saw, for the first time in a long time: a body lithe with joy. The bones were alive with it, the veins carried away, scattered constellations of luster, like a handful of glitter thrown into the air. The man was drunk. Completely, outrageously, hilariously drunk.
Just a day before, leaving the Grand Prix Final, he’d turned to see a young, bespectacled man gazing after him. Quiet, gentle, embarrassed, yearning. A fan? A cute one. Japanese? He’d stretched a hand out with a smile. “A commemorative photo? That’s fine by me,” he’d said. Most fans reacted immediately- if a little shy and unbelieving. Victor always believed in being good to his fans.
This young man’s eyes had widened. His face had flushed, but not in pleasure. A hot, quick flash of something in his eyes: humiliation? And then he’d turned without a word and walked away, while another man yelled after him in Japanese. Victor had stared, his eyes following that small silhouette out the door and into the snow, dumbfounded. This was a first. No one had ever walked away from him before.
From behind him came a familiar sound: Yuri’s stifled, condescending yip of a laugh. The kid had been cute once, but now that he was going through puberty, he was kind of an asshole.
“Victor, you jerk,” he said. “Did you think that was a fan? That guy skated against you.”
“Huh?”
“That was the other Yuri. The one in last place.”
“What?”
Victor had never had the luxury much of watching his competitors while competing himself. Usually he focused his attention inward, concentrating the energy, allowing no distractions in. It was easier to win that way. But, he remembered now, vaguely, that there had been one, the other Asian competitor- Yuri Katsuki, hunched over tight like a tiny, injured animal in the kiss and cry, not even lifting his head to see the score, his coach doing his best to comfort him. It was like watching a well-meaning ghost trying to interact with a grieving person who couldn’t see or hear him.
“He was crying in the bathroom like a little bitch earlier. And now the guy who took the gold just treated him like a member of the crowd. Good job, Victor.”
Something had twisted in his stomach just a little bit. And now his stomach was twisting again, though in a different way. The way his stomach twisted last night had felt… bad. And the way it twisted now, felt confusingly enough… good.
He’d seen him coming into the banquet tonight, led by the shoulders by his coach, like a man to the gallows. The guilt nagged at him- should he talk to him? Apologize? Acknowledge him? This, too, was a first: to be at a loss as to how to approach another person. People usually came to Victor, not the other way around.
Instead he ended up watching him out of the corner of his eye for most of the evening. The young man was quiet and kept to himself. His coach ended up getting roped into other conversations, and then eventually stepped out to take a phone call. Left to his own devices, he’d fingered a flute of champagne, then, breathing in and out almost cartoonishly, downed it in a gulp. And then he reached for another. And another. And another. Victor watched, fascinated. How much fluid, let alone alcohol, could any human being take in at once? It looked like Yuri Katsuki was doing his best to find out.
Soon enough he’d clearly decided that the champagne flutes were not an efficient enough delivery method and had started on the actual bottles themselves. Those did the trick. An entire bottle tipped backwards into a waiting mouth. Was anyone else watching this? Was Victor the only one? It wasn’t long until he was completely trashed, swaying, rocking, and continuing to drink. He was making a scene now. But it was almost a cute one, like watching a tiny kid go a little nuts on a sugar rush. Victor lifted a phone up, his finger clicking on the camera button. He couldn’t have said what it was that possessed him to do it- after all, he’d had no idea of what was going to come after.
Yuri Katsuki rocked towards him, nearly colliding with the phone. The image on the camera was a blurred, reddened face. Victor stepped back hurriedly, suddenly embarrassed. But Yuri’s target hadn’t been him at all, but the other Yuri, who had been behind Victor, sulkily being teased, as usual, by Mila.
“You think you’re suuuuuch a fucking big deal,” the Japanese Yuri slurred at his smaller, younger Russian counterpart, “just because you won the Junior Championship? Just because you won some little contest for kids?”
Yuri Plisetsky was clearly taken back. A rare sight: his mouth hung open slightly, with no ready comeback immediately available. Victor wondered what sort of interaction they’d had before for someone to actually be able to dumbfound their little tomcat.
“I could destroy you aaaaany day of the week if I wanted to,” drunk Yuri continued. Mila immediately burst into a delighted shriek of laughter. She, too, was rather tipsy by this point. She’d just missed the podium in the Women’s Skate, and her hockey player boyfriend had dumped her via text shortly afterward. Yuri Katsuki was the only one giving her a run for the money in terms of alcohol consumed tonight.
Yuri had finally regained some of his composure. “I’d like to see you try, you fucking loser.”
“Alright,” drunk Yuri had replied. Was he- was he loosening his tie? What was happening?
“I’ll take you on right now,” drunk Yuri said. “I’ll crush you in a dance-off. Right. Fucking. Now.”
Mila shrieked again, clapping now.
“Dance-off! Dance-off! Dance-off!” she gleefully yelled. Other startled guests were starting to look now.
Yuri Plisetsky smirked. “You can barely even stand, and you want to challenge ME to a dance-off?”
“Only pussies are all talk. Real men show their goddamn moves,” the other Yuri shot back. He whipped his glasses off his head, practically throwing them at Mila, who caught them like a bouquet at a wedding. She held them up and cheered.
“Hey Chris,” she yelled, “throw down a beat!”
Victor’s head swiveled. In the span of just a few minutes, from the moment drunk Yuri had accosted his Russian namesake until now, one Christophe Giacometti had somehow managed to already commandeer the sound system, plugging his phone in. The light, tinkling classical music in the background suddenly gave way to the thumping bass of hip hop. People were DEFINITELY staring now.
Wait, what? Was this man really drunk? Who was this coordinated when drunk? Was he breakdancing? What was happening? Poor little Yuri, who’d only trained in Russian ballet, was trying to match his Japanese counterpart move to move, but it wasn’t happening. Hip hop moved differently in the body, hitting hard and sudden on the downbeats, rough and tumble, spontaneous and bursting bright. It moved through this man now, and though his moves were fast, sharp, and brilliant, time suddenly, for Victor, began to slow, even as he laughed and began recording video.
There it was, sudden and sharp and bright: joy. It wasn’t even so much about dance, the technicality of it, though Yuri’s confusing ability to pop off what looked like fairly difficult breakdance moves while extremely drunk were, to be fair, quite impressive. It was something else. It was music. This was something intensely pure. And there it was- Victor saw it. Deep at the heart of the burning star that was dancing, drunk Yuri Katsuki was a white-hot pulse of music. It beat in him like a heartbeat, like the one thing that kept him upright and moving through the universe, like the thing that held his body together and gasped out breath each morning. Where had this man been yesterday at the Grand Prix Finals?
Mila’s laughter was uncontrollable now.
“He kicked- he kicked your ass. HE KICKED YOUR ASS YURI! BAHAHHAHAAA”
Yuri looked very much like he wanted to smack her, then the Japanese Yuri, then every single person who had just witnessed his personal humiliation, and not necessarily in that order, when Chris clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Stand down, kid,” he said. “Let the grown ups handle this.”
And then he winked. Yuri gave him a look like he’d just added Chris to the top of the list of people he’d personally kill that very evening.
“I can see that you know how to break dance, Yuri,” Chris purred, “but are you willing to take a real man on with a REAL kind of dance?”
Across the room, Victor could see Chris’s boyfriend roll his eyes so hard they practically went back into his head. He was a good man.
“You can handle the streets,” Chris continued. “But can you handle…. The pole?”
And here it was, another unexpected reaction in a night already full of surprises: Yuri Katsuki burst out laughing. And then he whipped his shirt off.
“Bring it on,” he said. The pants followed very shortly after.
The hip hop had given way to a bombastically sultry beat. What the hell kind of playlists was Chris toting around on his phone all the time? That said, it somehow wasn’t surprising to Victor that Chris could be ready at all times to give people a show on a stripper pole. What WAS surprising: the young Japanese man now wrapped around a pole in the ballroom probably used for circus acts or performances of the like, naked but for his underwear, an ugly tie, and his socks. It was ridiculous. But why was it also hot? Victor realized he was starting to sweat. He loosened his tie a bit.
Yuri continued to laugh as he jumped, clung, and swung around the pole. The muscles of his slender body tensed, relaxed, and tensed again. It was a body in motion that stayed in motion. And even here, Victor saw it: that flicker of a flame burning bright inside him.
Not to be outdone, Chris took his turn at the pole too, busting out ever more complicated moves. At one point he balanced precariously horizontal, pointed across the room at his boyfriend, and yelled, “I love you baby!” Chris, too, at this point, was pretty drunk. His boyfriend blinked at him, cocked an eyebrow, then went back to the conversation his love declaration had briefly derailed. People were already used to this kind of thing from Chris, after all.
Yuri had continued to drink while Chris took his turn at the pole, and had now seemingly forgotten that they were technically in a dance-off. He had also apparently come to the conclusion that the only thing better than one dancer on a pole was two dancers on a pole, and decided to just join in- balancing him precariously by an arm, by a thigh, then perching on Chris’s inverted split, making it rain with yet another purloined bottle of champagne.
“Hey,” came Yuri Plisetsky’s gruff, angry voice beside him. “Wipe that disgusting grin off your face.”
Bewildered, Victor reached up to touch his own face. Yes, there it was- an ear to ear grin, and one that he hadn’t even noticed. Another surprise: Victor didn’t smile like this. He certainly hadn’t smiled like this yesterday, when the gold medal had been draped around his neck.
“What is this?” he asked, realizing a moment too late that he’d just said that out loud.
“This is the WORST,” Yuri answered him, scowling.
“I don’t think that’s what it is,” Victor said, laughing, covering his face briefly with a hand. When he brought it back down again, both Chris and Yuri Katsuki had already finished up on the pole- and they were headed straight for him.
“That was great, Yuri,” Chris was saying, laughing and out of breath.
“I think…maybe… you won?!” sweet little drunk Yuri was saying. “Just barely?? But I’ll… win next time?!”
He followed this up with a little babble in Japanese- he was barely coherent at this point.
“But Yuri,” Chris was saying now, “don’t you want a piece of our gold medalist? You haven’t danced with Victor yet.”
Yuri looked up suddenly now, perhaps seeing him for the first time. Victor froze- was he going to turn around and walk away from him again? Drunk or not, surely he still remembered what had happened yesterday.
But it seemed that Yuri Katsuki wasn’t done surprising him for the night, because, in just a split second, he launched himself at Victor, crying out “Victor!” happily, clinging to his neck.
Wait, what was happening below the waist? Was…was Yuri Katsuki now DRY-HUMPING him?
Victor’s mind started to short circuit and give off sparks. He was vaguely aware of Chris laughing, and the sounds of Yuri Plisetsky’s teeth gnashing, and Yuri Katsuki babbling in Japanese (the only words he was able to catch were “onsen”- that was a hot spring inn, right? And “dance battle”) when the young man tipped his face up towards him. That face was red with exertion and alcohol, and dripping with sweat. Somehow the ugly tie had made it from his neck to his head, and he was still missing pants, which made the dry-humping all the worse. But his eyes, big and doe-like. There they were, staring up into Victor’s, sparkling and sweet.
“Be my coach, Victor!” Yuri suddenly squeaked, in English now, burying his face in his neck. How did he smell this good, even covered in sweat?
Victor gave a sharp intake of breath. His cheeks felt hot- was he blushing? No. No! Russians didn’t blush.
He gently disengaged the smaller man, and smiled down at him.
“How about a dance, first?”
The next several minutes were a whir. Yuri managed to find his pants again, and Chris, knowing what he liked, had put on Flamenco. And of course- this man could do ballroom too. They danced in tandem first, beside each other, until Yuri took him by the waist, leading. The moves were graceful, gentle, and confident. Each line felt tenderly, achingly beautiful. Yuri’s grip on his body was strong, and the heat in the places where they touched made him feel almost dizzy, like Yuri was passing the champagne buzz through their clothing, skin to skin. Yuri dipped him, laughing into his face, sweetly, and Victor found that he was laughing too.
But no fairy tale can last for more than the span of an enchanted night. Whatever magic had powered Yuri throughout the evening ran out all at once- his eyes unfocused, and then he collapsed. If they hadn’t been relatively close to the floor already when Yuri had dropped him, it would have hurt. Instead, Victor blinked up towards the ceiling, pinned down to the floor by an extremely inebriated young man, who had finally lost against the alcohol in his system and passed out.
“Yuri? Yuri? Has anyone seen my skate-“ an Italian accented voice was making its way through the murmuring crowd.
“Oh my god, Yuri?! ….Victor?!”
Celestino was pulling Yuri off of him now, hauling him to his feet. The younger man was still passed out drunk. The coach slung one of Yuri’s arms over his shoulder, stuttering apologies.
“I’m so sorry, I had to take a call, he usually doesn’t drink like this, are you oka-“
Victor climbed to his feet again. “I’m fine,” he tried to stammer out, “Let me help you take him ba-“
“No, no,” Celestino protested, already hauling the young man away, “he’s already caused you enough trouble, I’m sorry again…”
They left Victor behind protesting weakly “It was no…trouble… at all.”
Mila, still drunk, draped herself around his shoulders as Victor watched, for the second time in two days, Yuri Katsuki disappear out of his field of vision.
“There, there,” she said. “The season isn’t over yet, kid.”
At the Four Continents, Victor looked around distractedly, fingers drumming against any surface that managed to find its way beneath his hands. He hadn’t seen the name on the list of competitors, but, it couldn’t hurt to look, could it?
“Victor,” came a familiar, sultry voice. “This is new. Are you looking for someone?”
“Not in particular,” he said, smoothing back the temporary fluster, pulling the usual suave mask back into view. He liked Chris. They’d been competing for more than 10 years and had taken the podium together more than once. His skating was solid and his Instagram, if a little slutty, was always on point. A rarity of a thing: Victor respected this man.
“Could it be,” Chris’s voice was- oh no- mischievous, “that you’ve got your eyes peeled for a certain little someone who could show even ME a move or two on the stripper pole?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“NO! You KNOW his coach dragged him off and-”
Victor clapped a hand over his own mouth.
Chris’s eyes gleamed then, predatory and pleased. “So you WERE looking for Yuri Katsuki.”
Victor’s shoulders finally slumped, surrendering. That wouldn’t keep him from sulking a bit, though. His eyes shifted away from Chris’s.
“He just peaked my interest, is all”
“If he interests you, I don’t know why you didn’t ask for his number.”
Victor looked at him blankly.
“You know? What normal human beings do when they’re interested in someone?”
Victor continued to look at him blankly.
“I’ve never asked anyone for their number before.”
“How is that possible? You’ve gotten more ass and pussy than probably any other figure skater in history.”
“They always just… sort of… show up in my bed?”
Chris’s laugh lasted 3 minutes 27 seconds, and 17 milliseconds before he wheezed to a stop.
“Oh, you poor sweet child,” he said.
“Do YOU have his number?”
“No,” Chris said, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes, “no, I do not.”
At Worlds, still no Yuri Katsuki. Victor pinched the space between his eyebrows, rubbed his brow. He was in Japan now, wasn’t he? Why wasn’t he here? Googling him had only brought up news of the Grand Prix Final, and the most recent articles were in indecipherable Japanese, which, when run through a quick Google Translate, hinted only at some sort of disappointing loss at the Japanese Nationals. His social media presence was almost nil- the last photo on his Instagram from just before the GPF, showing only, cryptically, what looked like an old photo of a small poodle that looked a bit like his own beloved Makkachin, and some text that came out to nonsense when run through a translator.
He’d done his stalker research. Yuri’s family lived in the middle of nowhere in Japan, running a hot spring inn in a little town called Hasetsu. But he could hardly just show up there out of the blue, could he? He’d also found out that Yuri had been training in Detroit- what if he was still there, and not even in Japan at all?
What he’d thought after Celestino had hauled the drunk, adorable young man off of him: that there was still Four Continents and Worlds coming up. They’d see each other in the venues, the hotels. Sober flirting, this time. An intimate meal. Drinks, just the two of them. His thumb tracing that delicate place where Yuri’s jaw met his ear. Hearing his breath hitch, just so. Those bright eyes continuing to soak him up the way a cat soaks up sunshine in a window. An invitation back to his hotel room. How long the trails of fantasies that spiraled outward from that point. None of those things were happening now. Instead, he felt, suddenly, blue-balled and stood up, by a man who had honestly not promised him anything. What was this? He’d never felt anything like this before. It was like being hungry for the first time after a lifetime of being hand fed every hour on the hour.
He channeled the frustration, sharpened it to a blade’s point. That blade pierced the heart of yet another gold medal. And afterwards, seated between Chris and Otabek Altin, a quiet and new rising star, as questions were lobbied to the three of them, a reporter asked about his plans for the next season. What was he supposed to say? “I used to love winning gold, but lately, it’s gotten so fucking boring”? Or: “I think I have a monster crush on this guy who dry-humped me at last year’s GPF banquet, he asked me to be his coach, so maybe I’ll go see what that’s all about”? Instead, he pasted on a charming smile, flipped back his fringe, and said, “I’m already putting together some exciting new programs. I can’t wait to share them with you all.”
Just another ordinary off-season day. His apartment in St. Petersburg, which barely felt lived in, even though he’d moved into this one five years ago. The only thing that felt like home was Makkachin curled up on the couch with him, the safety of his scent, the warmth he brought to this white space.
Victor’s phone vibrated on the table. He ignored it. It felt good to just doze on the couch with his dog, laze around with not much to do. He’d spent most of the morning at the rink, trying out first Agape, then Eros. They both felt right, but they also both felt wrong. Something was missing.
His phone continued to vibrate. Whatever it was trying to tell him, it clearly wasn’t going to let up just because Victor wanted to take a nap. Frustrated, he pulled himself up to his elbows. Makkachin stirred and then snuffled, settling back down as he palmed the phone.
Messages from Chris and Mila and half a dozen others, and so many other notifications, of being tagged on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
“Hey,” they more or less all said, “you should see this.”
The fourth time he watched it, the full body throbbing shiver had not stopped. His heart rate was faster than it had been this morning coming out of a quad flip. The video had been completely silent, but for the soft, sharp sounds of blade against ice. And yet, there it had been. Not even the melody itself, but everything that rested inside of it. The first time he’d heard it, something inside of Victor had burst open. There was something here that was wonderful- and the program he’d put together to it was wonderful indeed- but he worried, frequently, whether or not he really understood it. He’d commissioned the work, in Italian, for his theme for the season: “longing”. Given his reputation as a playboy, this had been the latest in a string of themes he hoped would surprise. But the one that had been taken by surprise was him. He knew now, that he had never fully understood this piece of music until this very moment, watching Yuri Katsuki skate, in complete silence, his free skate of the season. He’d seen just a tiny piece of that same yearning when he’d turned around in Sochi to see a young man in glasses gazing at him. It was like going from seeing a single star to seeing the entire Milky Way. His chest actually, physically hurt. He’d never felt so good in his entire life.
After the sixth time, Victor finally closed the video. And then, he did two things, one after the other. First, he booked a one-way ticket to Japan. And then, he called a moving company.
On the plane, as he nestled down into the seat, he pulled out his phone, and watched the video again. What this man had been saying with his entire body was something that Victor had never once been able to say properly on the ice itself, even with nearly a half dozen gold medals in his palm: stay by my side, and never leave me.
How could anyone refuse?