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Three pictures; two private, one public.
The public one: a familiar motorbike, framed by the crooked alleyway behind it; a sliver of patio at the very edge, the cafe they’d had lunch at between the final and the gala, eyes occasionally darting sideways to check for overzealous fans. Yuri’s gold medal is looped around one of the handlebars. The caption, on Instagram several days later: for services rendered to the Russian Federation.
(It gets picked up by all the skating blogs.)
They take two more that day, Yuri posing with one arm splayed back against the bike, affixing the photographer with a haughty stare. He’s wearing his favorite tiger sweatshirt. Otabek had loaned his leather jacket to the second. His hair’s loose in the wind, and his cheeks–owing to the cold, of course–are faintly pink.
He doesn’t post those. Flicking through them, some part of him is struck with the conviction that they reveal too much.
*
(translated from the Russian)
Congratulations on your victory. Winning the Grand Prix Final in your first senior season is quite a way to announce your arrival.
Thank you. I’m grateful to have been able to bring this home for my country and my supporters. Winning here shows that all the effort put in over the past few months has not been in vain.
You barely won by a hair, after Japan’s Yuuri Katsuki surprisingly surpassed all expectations in the free skate and broke the record set by your former rinkmate, Victor Nikiforov. Do you think the scoring was fair?
What kind of question is that?
The score given to Katsuki did seem unprecedented, considering his previous history with this program–
Yeah, because he stopped falling on his–I mean, he performed the program to its full potential. It’s a technically difficult routine. But I made it up in the short program.
What do you think allowed you to pull out the victory?
Everything I had, I put into my skate. I’m not one of those types who can smile and say I’m ‘satisfied’ because I skated well or did my best. I don’t ever want to be satisfied. I’m going to keep skating, and getting better, no matter what.
Will you carry that attitude forward into Europeans and Worlds?
Obviously.
Is your goal a title sweep?
My goal is always to win. I won’t accept being less than the best.
*
He’s no stranger to the press. They’d get reporters and the occasional local news crew around the rink every so often, mostly looking for Victor, but there are grainy interviews with him on Youtube going back to age ten. When he took gold at the Junior Grand Prix at age thirteen–when he did it again the year after, his last year on the junior circuit, everyone wanted to know his name. There were features, magazine covers with Russia’s Next Ace? stamped across his forehead.
This is different.
Yakov’s hand is a heavy weight on his shoulder as he answers questions, first from the international press, then for the Russian newspapers and television networks, longer interviews. There’s a woman from what he’s pretty sure is a teenage girls’ magazine, asking about Twitter and his “style influences,” whatever that means. He talks for over an hour. The other competitors trickle, one by one, into and out of the media scrum: JJ unusually taciturn, Phichit chatty, Chris downright annoying.
They keep the porkchop second-longest, microphones waving as much in Victor’s face as in his, until at long last Victor drags them both out with a glossy-photo smile and a, “Well, if you didn’t have any more questions for Yuuri … . ” He’s good at charming reporters, Yuri admits grudgingly. Yakov used to use him as an example, admonishing Yuri for his lack of tact.
(Yuri, having overheard ten minutes in that the spineless, indecisive idiot of a pig is not, in fact, retiring, pointedly ignores them both.)
His throat is dry, his hands and mouth strangely numb. He doesn’t know why it hits him right then, as he’s nodding along to some question about do you consider this the beginning of–like a heavy blow to the stomach. He barely manages to grind out an, “Excuse me,” interrupting the reporter mid-sentence, before bolting for the nearest bathroom, where he bites the back of his hand and takes gasping breaths and very definitely does not cry.
I did it. I made it. I won.
Afterwards, he wipes his face and returns to the scrum. He was taught discipline.
*
Yuri Plisetsky, you astonished the world yesterday with a record-breaking short program, and today, despite mistakes, you skated an awe-inspiring, emotional routine to hang on to gold. Are you happy with your performance?
As happy as you can be about a performance with mistakes.
You hold yourself to a very high standard.
What do you want to hear? That I’m perfectly fine with falling because I won? … I think that’s a quitter’s philosophy. I don’t want to tell myself nice words to make myself feel better.
Going forward, is there anyone in particular you’re aiming for? Anyone you consider a rival?
No one. [pause] But I’m coming for Katsuki’s record, too.
*
“You did well,” Yakov says gruffly, on the ride back to the hotel; Lilia, more sparing still, merely graces him with a nod and the suggestion that he should “take these few days to recuperate. We will discuss your routines further when you return to Russia.” He understands this as the high praise it is.
He leans heavily against the car door. He is also very tired.
There are several voicemail messages and dozens of texts, from everyone from distant relatives to old classmates. He deletes most, saves some, answers only one: you shouldve been there too, he taps out one-handed, cheek pressed against the windowpane.
Otabek is a quick respondent, apparently: :), comes the reply, moments later, followed by a Need a break? I would like to congratulate you in person.
He sends just a thumbs up in reply, and the next message is a number, room and floor.
*
Do you have any thoughts on the rumors that Katsuki’s coach this season, and your former rinkmate, Victor Nikiforov, will be returning to the ice?
I don’t care.
You don’t consider him a rival, either?
If he comes back, he’ll have to prove himself first. I’ve been training. He hasn’t. And I’m not just going to stay still and wait for him to catch up to me, either.
*
Half an hour later–he had to call his grandfather, of course–Otabek answers the door in a turtleneck and jeans, hair damp as though he’d just showered. Something about the sight renders Yuri awkward, tongue-tied, as if he hadn’t seen Otabek in casual clothing just two days ago.
It seems, weirdly, not to suit him.
“Your coach isn’t here?” he asks, peering in.
“I asked for privacy.” Otabek motions him into the room, which is neat and pristine even by hotel room standards, a team jacket draped over one of the chairs the only thing out of place. He sits down on the edge of the closer bed and fixes his gaze on Yuri. “You skated brilliantly,” he says, at last.
Yuri–admires that about him. How he can say a very large thing very simply, as though it is nothing more than true. “Thank you,” he says, and then–after a beat, to cover the silence– “It’s completely ridiculous that you weren’t on that podium too. The scores they gave JJ were a joke.”
Otabek says nothing, only affixes him with a slight, wry smile. He shrugs one shoulder, a what can you do?
His face feels hot. “It’s like they gave him extra points for not breaking down and crying on the ice,” he mutters.
The smile widens. “I’m trying to be contented with my performance on the international stage,” Otabek says. “It’s … difficult. But the season isn’t over yet.”
And this is the other thing Yuri likes about him: he’s … reliable, in every aspect of himself. How he acts, what he says, what he believes. Yuri can’t imagine him collapsing under pressure, like a punctured balloon, or gallivanting off to the other side of the world on a lark. Nothing about Otabek is frivolous.
“Yeah,” he says, and finds himself smiling too. “We’ll meet again at Worlds.”
Otabek motions to–to the medal, which, Yuri realizes, is still hanging around his neck. “You’ll be the one to beat.”
He wraps his hand around it. It occurs to him that wearing it around like this might be taken as a boast, but Otabek doesn’t seem to mind, and–as for the rest of the world? They can think so. “That’s what I want to be,” he says, meaning it as a promise. He thinks of Katsuki.
And then–maybe because Otabek is reliable, because he gets it, because he’s like Yuri; maybe because … he stood there and clapped for the man who’d knocked him off the podium at the Grand Prix Final, and gave Yuri one of his rare smiles; maybe for all those reasons, Yuri finds himself leaning back and saying, “ … it was strange.”
“Winning?”
He shakes his head slightly. “They were all fawning over me,” he says, and wants to say something more, but–there isn’t anything, really, so he shuts his mouth.
(Yakov and Lilia–clearly used to the fuss–had been implacable, and Victor had given him a wry smile, and when his grandfather had asked about his voice being hoarse he’d muttered something about doing interviews and changed the subject, feeling a strange unease.)
Otabek is watching him, in that probing, thoughtful way of his. “This is your first senior season,” he says, “… and your first big win.”
He tilts his head back, resting it against the wall. “Yeah.”
There’s a soft hmm sound, not unsympathetic. “They were watching Nikiforov,” and Otabek says it so matter-of-factly that Yuri can’t bring himself to mind. “Now they’re watching you.”
“Yeah,” he says again, more quietly this time. He brushes his fingers against the front of the medal. “I guess it’s going to be that way from now on.”
There is more to say this time: good, and they’d better, and I won’t let it be any other way, I’m going to make them watch me and keep watching me until Victor Nikiforov’s name is so much dust, and even so really, this is what I wanted all along. For someone else, he thinks, he would say it.
He doesn’t need to. Otabek already knows.
*
You don’t have any hesitation about challenging a five-time world champion, I see.
The one who took eight months off to coach another skater is the one who has to prove himself, not me. Everything I am, everything I do, is dedicated to the ice. I’ll leave it all there, not holding anything back. Can Victor say the same?
*
Victor is alone in the hotel lobby the night of the gala, slouching against the wall, wearing, of all things, his costume from last year’s Worlds. He gives Yuri an obnoxiously cheerful wave.
“Since when are you skating?” Yuri says suspiciously, looking at his feet, and then– “and where’s your pet pig?”
Victor smiles, showing all his teeth. He doesn’t answer either question. “I read your interview, Yu-ri-o. The one you did with Moscow Weekly.”
Yuri bites back a don’t call me that (it won’t work), and says, “So?”
“You had some interesting things to say about me!”
He rolls his eyes. “If you seriously think you can compete with the rest of us and play coach at the same time, you deserve it. Why bother if you don’t care?”
“Who says I don’t?”
“You don’t when you won’t even do it full time! It’s insulting.”
Victor’s eyes flash, but the smile doesn’t dim. He looks at Yuri for several long seconds, considering, while Yuri glares back at him. “A word of advice,” he says finally. “Don’t be so quick to give 'everything.’ You’ll want something left of yourself when they’re done with you, after all.”
Then he breezes out the entranceway, and is gone before Yuri can reply.
*
There must be many skating fans who’ve come away with high expectations after watching you skate here in Barcelona. Do you have anything to say to them?
That if they continue to watch me, I’ll continue to exceed their expectations. I won’t disappoint my supporters, because I refuse to disappoint myself.
*
The morning after he returns to Russia, he’s back in the rink at seven sharp, skating practice figures and watching Yakov lecture Mila about–something or other, it doesn’t matter. Victor isn’t here yet; he’ll be back next week, apparently, with all his luggage from Japan and his porkchop of a student, who is also going to train here and which Yakov is allowing for some infuriating reason.
If he thinks about it too much, he’s going to be sick.
He skates through his short program twice–with placeholder singles the first time, mindful of Yakov’s keen peripheral vision–and fills the better part of an hour practicing jumps. When he finally pulls to the side of the rink for a break, he sees he’s not the only one working hard: there’s a clip of Otabek, drenched in sweat, landing a high, flighted quad salchow. Back training. Three months until Worlds, the caption reads.
He likes it and starts tapping out a response–I’ll be waiting to see how much you’ve improved, add smiley, delete smiley.
After another moment’s thought, he makes it a private message.
(He doesn’t see the reply until a few hours later, over lunch: So will I, and then, You shocked me in Barcelona. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t do it again.
Otabek gets it. He keeps that knowledge, like a secret, close to his chest.)