Chapter Text
Crash.
The feeling of something solid connecting with Viktor’s legs throws him off guard and off balance. His eyes go wide, and his upper body begins rapidly readjusting itself in an attempt to keep him upright. But it’s a failed mission. In less than a minute, Viktor finds himself falling with a loud thump as his body connects with the the cold ice below him.
Frustrated, Viktor turns his head head to look at who had run into him. He doesn’t recognize the young boy staring up at him wide eyed, soft face a shade of rosy pink that tells him that he’s been on the ice for at least some time now. Enough time to know to watch where he is going. Viktor is close to opening his mouth to yell at the boy for not paying attention, anger bubbling in him, when he sees tears gathering in quickly reddening eyes, a hint of fear pronouncing every micro movement of them. He quickly reconsiders. Instead, he raises to his feet and holds a hand out to the little boy, trying his best to give a reassuring smile to him.
The little boy looks at Viktor’s hand for a second before grabbing it, his grip as strong as Viktor could expect from someone his size. Viktor lets a small, reassuring smile spread across his face as he pulls the boy up. “Are you okay?” he asks.
With the small click of blades connecting back with the ground, the boy is back on his feet, though his unsteadiness on skates is obvious. “Y-yes,” he stutters, lowering his eyes down to his feet. “Thank you very much sir, and I’m… I’m sorry for running into you.” Nervously, he pulls his hand back, and he wobbily skates off to the side before Viktor can respond.
“Vitya!”
The shout pulls Viktor’s attention, and he looks over to Yakov, who is standing at the boards with a scrunched expression, face tinted just a little bit more red than the cold alone would warrant. What does he want?
“Come off the ice, we will continue tomorrow morning. When there are less people here.” The last part is added last second, a pointed look going to the door that the little boy had made a quick escape through. "Just go home. Rest."
Viktor does not want to leave just yet, especially not on such a sour note. Despite this, he complies, not in the mood to argue. There's too many people around to start what would inevitably devolve into a competition of who could raise their voice the loudest because that is all that trying to argue with Yakov is good for. Viktor learned that lesson very quickly years ago. So he nods, going to grab his guards from next to where Yakov’s hands rest along the boards.
As soon as Viktor sits down on the bench next to his bag, hands going to his laces, Yakov starts talking. “If you're going to insist on taking me outside of our normal sessions, at least find a more private, less busy rink, Vitya,” he says, annoyance clear in his voice. "Things like people running into you is a distraction. It ruins a practice, throwing you out of where you need to be. It throws off your concentration. Not to mention the commute is taxing. You aren't special enough to have me running from one place to another.”
“I was fine, Yakov,” Viktor tells him, but doesn’t say anything else on it with his coach beyond that.
“I saw it in your eyes. You had become distracted. I bet good money you wouldn't be able to keep a damn spin under you for the rest of the day. You’re too young. You’re attention span is too small.”
Irritation grows in Viktor as Yakov continues to speak. Viktor can take criticism - this entire sport is built upon people watching him and criticizing him - but the way Yakov speaks so little of him, thinks he knows so much about Viktor based solely on his age, is quickly beginning to irritate him. Yakov knows nothing of how well he can concentrate. He knows he could have gone back into the mindset of practice swiftly and easily, but he doesn’t say so. There’s no use in saying it. Yakov has always been a stubborn, sturdy minded man, hard to be swayed in anything. Unfortunately, that stubbornness worked hard to plaster itself to Viktor as he grew older under his coach’s tutelage.
“I’m going to go home, then,” Viktor says instead. "Like you want." He doesn’t feel like hanging around Yakov anyway. Not right now.
“Good, and I expect you to be at practice tomorrow. Five sharp,” Yakov tells him firmly.
“Yes, yes,” Viktor grumbles, slipping custom made soakers over his blades. Poodles, courtesy of his grandmother. From there, he secures them in his bag. “I will see you then, Yakov.”
“You’re a good skater, Viktor,” Yakov says, his tone changing to that of a more fond nature, if that’s possible with Yakov. “I'm not arguing that, you know. You can go far. Will go far. You just need to practice. You’re sixteen with two quads, beautiful spins, and a face everyone else would kill for. Even your footwork gets better every time you go out there. You just need practice. Keep yourself consistent and not let age drag you down like all the others. You’ve been a winner for as long as I can remember. Gold after gold - Hah! We show them why the Russians are at the top of the sport. Keep it up, and your name will be talked about alongside the best of them."
Viktor nods his head absently as he shoves his skate into his bag and zips it. “And so I will practice,” he says.
The walk home is chilly, but, in a way, refreshing. The cold air of late September persistently bites at Viktor’s nose and fingers, the tips of his ears beginning to grow numb, but it helps to clear his mind a little. It helps his thoughts drift away from Yakov’s all-knowing speech.
The approaching skating season mildly worries Viktor, the rapid advance of time leaving him little room to think of other things. He knows his past is a trail of one gold after another, a fan base built upon shoulders that seemed to keep rising inch by inch these past few months. It's a tale as old as time: a growth spurt. Maybe Yakov is right. Viktor wants to make a name for himself on the senior circuit as well, and not with a tragic fall from grace that happens all too often with such a transition as he faces.
He needs to be doing his best. Distractions can’t be made a common occurrence for him off the ice, but on the ice, Viktor feels he needs to be exposed to them more than already. They’re necessary to grow as a skater. In a competition, you can’t afford to be taken down by a fall, or thrown off guard should the worst happen - a collision in a practice. Neither small or big things should be throwing him off of his game. Distractions must be fought through, and if Yakov thinks that Viktor will learn how to deal with these things without being exposed to them out of competition, he must be insane. While no skater wants to ever fall or hit something - or someone - it's unavoidable. He's seen the greatest hit the boards from a delayed jump.
It doesn’t take long for Viktor to make his way home. His parents had chosen somewhere close to a rink just so that he could walk there on his own, even on the coldest of days.
After entering through the front door, Viktor quickly makes his way up to his room to drop off his bag. Neither of his parents are home yet, which would have been unusual if Viktor wasn’t home earlier than normal himself. But he’s happy about it for now. Being alone will give him time to think without the interruptions that Yakov seems to think he can't handle.
Viktor makes his way to the washroom and stares at himself in the mirror as he turns on the water. What stares back is a young, naive skater. While sharper edges are beginning to form, puberty slowly coming around the corner allowing for his voice to finally start to crack and drop, his face is still holding the soft face that has graced the Russian ice for most of his life - that has displayed across TVs nationwide since he was eleven. He hasn't even had the smallest beginning of facial hair show yet, but what his face lacks is made up for by the amount of hair he has on his head, which continues to grow ever longer, reaching far past his shoulders and down his back. He had to fight his parents - and his coaches - to let it be grown out this long. His parents didn't understand why a boy could want to have long hair. Yakov thinks it is just extra weight that holds him down. Viktor hangs onto it tightly, clinging tightly to his youth that allows him to fly across the ice with such ease. Maybe, if - when - he finally cuts his hair again, Viktor will try with facial hair, but for now, he’s content with keeping his face smooth and clean. It makes him feel almost like a prince, or a faery.
After the water reaches a warm enough temperature, Viktor leans over the sink and splashes some on his face. He doesn’t feel any change to his mind or thoughts, doesn’t feel the clarity that he’s half chasing. In all honesty, Viktor actually didn’t know what he was expecting to gain from it, but he’s still disappointed by the lack of anything happening.
As he looks back up at himself, Viktor notices just how tired he looks, bags already collecting under his eyes. He feels tired as well. While he may only be sixteen, it feels like the weight of the world rests on him. At least the weight of Russia. His body aches from lifetimes that he's never lived, knees singing the song of bad landings and falls as his parents and Yakov continue to push him to the limits. Not that Viktor doesn’t want it for himself, isn’t pushing himself as far as possible too, but it’s taking on a toll on him.
He’s caught a little off guard with a small longing for a break. Just a little bit to rest, give his body the time that it yearns for to simply exist. To be a normal teenager for a moment. But at this time of the year, anything like that would ruin Viktor.
With a sigh, he unzips his jacket and pushes it off of his shoulders. The least he can do is change into something more comfortable. He’s at home. He doesn’t need to be thinking about skating right now. He can at least take a momentary mental break. It’s the closest he’ll be able to come to what he wants, and so he tugs down his pants, carefully stepping out of them. He nudges them over by where his jacket rests on the floor, before pulling his shirt over his head.
When he looks at himself in the mirror again, Viktor feels the breath fly from his lungs. His eyes go wide, immediately falling to the impossible spot that sits on his upper chest. It’s a spattering of dark blue that was surely not there that morning when he had gotten dressed. He would have noticed it.
“What the hell?”
Viktor moves his hand up to the mark sitting right above his left clavicle, hoping that when he touches it, he’ll feel the dull ache of a bruise. It’s a pain he’s more than accustomed to after years of skating, and he had fallen today, though he doesn't recall any part of his chest hitting the ice. But this must have just come from the fall. As his hand rests above the mark, though, no ache comes. No discoloration comes, no matter how hard he pushes into it, insistent on some hint that it's something simple.
It's not a bruise.
“Fuck. No. Not now.” Shit. Viktor has so many other things to be worry about, and doesn’t need this to add on to it.
But really, there’s no denying it. There’s nothing else that the small burst of blue could be. The small spattering of colour that almost looks like an exploding firework marking him for someone else, not even weeks before his first senior Grand Prix assignment.
“Shit.”