Chapter Text
Yuuri looks over the ice, body slumped over the railing, the sky dark above him, a single lamp casting its light over the glittering surface.
He’s hungry and he knows, objectively, that he shouldn’t be here at all, should be catching a cat nap before heading for his morning work, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to leave – wants to stay there forever, memories of a young boy encroaching on his mind as he raises his cigarette and inhales, allowing the nikotine to dull the hunger, at least for a bit.
It’s cheaper than food but it’s a weak substitute and he knows it and yet he buys them.
Yuuri wonders when it is that he stopped caring.
He’s twenty-one and the world feels like an endless place of rinse and repeat and he exhales, watching the smoke against the cold dark night, snuffing it out and flicking it into a nearby dumpster as he drags himself away and back to his apartment.
-
There’s a point in his life when Yuuri wants – his eyes wide on the television screen as Viktor Nikiforov sweeps across the ice with his silvery hair and blue eyes that threatened to swallow the world.
He swallows Yuuri’s world, becomes it, and his obsession leads him stumbling onto the ice with determination set in his chubby face.
Before that his world is dancing. An escape from everything inside the small studio of his teacher who lets him hide there when his anxiety becomes too much for him, drowns out the world until it’s ringing and he wants nothing more to escape it.
Viktor makes him want to become more.
It’s a dangerous thing, Yuuri knows even then, touching his small fingers to the screen where his idol raises his hands to the sky, his chest heaving, sweat trailing down his neck and a flush to his cheeks as he lowers them to the roar of the public.
I want you, he thinks, with all the feverish obsession in his tiny body.
-
Twenty-one-year-old Katsuki Yuuri wants food.
He can hear his boss yelling as he stares blankly down at the simmering cauldron in the kitchen at his morning work.
There’s a strange ringing in his ears and a desperate craving for a smoke and his stomach feels hollow, turning on itself, an obnoxious reminder that he hadn’t been eating in nearly three days now and he knows he should care but he doesn’t as he scoops up the noodles and adds the toppings like he’s supposed to with a slight grimace.
Work faster, work harder, work more moremore.
He slides it in place and rings the bell to let the server know it was done.
Yuuri is so very tired of the world.
-
There’s a package of hard noodles in his pocket, stolen, and there’s a niggling guilt at it but it’s hard to care when he drops down by the ice and fumbles for it.
The packaging rustles as he pries it open and bites down, the dry noodles crunching strangely in his mouth as he chews them carefully, washing them down with some water from the bottle which he’d filled up in the bathroom before leaving.
It’s only five p.m. but he’s exhausted and yet his gaze lingers, watching the way the skaters laughs as they make their way around – young and old.
He draws some strange looks where he sits with his hood pulled low, huddled up in an old jacket and knitted gloves, one shoe roughly duct taped to keep it from gaping open in the Russian winter weather.
Homeless, they whisper, and in many ways they aren’t wrong for all that Yuuri has an empty apartment waiting for him.
-
Yuuri wakes to a soft touch to his cheek, jerking back, eyes shooting open to find a girl peering at at him, her head tilted, far too close.
Her hair is red, brushing at her shoulders, and her eyes are impossibly dark blue where they peer at him, a slight furrow to her brow.
“Oh, you’re alive. Good." She speaks in Russian and he stares at her, heart pounding hard in his chest. “You’ve been here for hours,” she tells him as he takes in the dark sky behind her – a glitter of stars that makes him swallow.
He’s stiff, his limbs colds, but he forces himself to rise – a slight stumble to his steps as he draws away from her.
The girl huffs as she straightens out.
She’s slim, he notes even as he fumbles for his bag and pulls it up onto his shoulder. Muscles built for strength beneath her pale skin – skates dangling from her fingers where she’d knotted them together for easy transportation.
“I didn’t mean to chase you away,” she calls to him as he pulls his hood lower over his face. “You looked like you were enjoying it – before falling asleep, I mean.”
He halts, turning to peer back at her.
“Do you like skating?” she asks curiously as she takes a step closer, head angling to peer up at him in the darkness of the fabric casting its shadow on him. “I love it,” she tells him. “One day I’m going to be the best female skater in the world.”
Her tone is all confidence and it makes him ache as he swallows and gives a rough shake of his head.
“Liar,” she says, all youth-ish charm. “I’m Mila.”
“… Yuuri,” he answers after a brief moment of hesitation.
“Ah, that’s no good,” Mila says immediately, stepping closer, a finger raising to touch against her lips. “I already know one Yuuri, there can’t be two of you. But-“ And here she gives him a critical look. “I suppose you’re the older one so my Yuri can be Yurio.” Her mouth curls teasingly, a glint in her eyes that lets him know that someone is going to be very unhappy with the nickname tomorrow.
“Why are you talking to me?” Yuuri asks in English as he draws away only to have her follow, keeping easy pace with the skates swinging from her fingers. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Their breath ghost in the air and he craves for his smokes, pawing for them to curb the hunger in his gut.
“I know you love ice skating,” Mila says immediately, switching language easily as he gets his cigarettes up, getting a frown and a wrinkle of her nose as he lightened one up. “No one looks at the ice like that without genuine love,” she says when he shoots her a look, drawing a breath of smoke. “Those aren’t good for you,” she tacks on.
“I know,” he grunts but it eases the anxiety from his shoulders as he turns his head away from her and exhales.
“You’re not from Russia, are you Yuuri?”
“… Japan,” he answers after a brief moment.
She whistles. “That’s, like, far away. Don’t you get homesick?”
“No,” he answers immediately, not sure if it was really truthful or a lie but quite unable to care.
He’s tired – exhausted despite his nap and he knows it’s not just a physical thing these days. Everything tires him. Eating. Sleeping. Working.
Existing.
“Oh.” Mila doesn’t look like she knows how to react to that, her dark blue eyes lingering on him for a moment before looking away. “I’d miss Russia, if I were to leave it,” she confides in him. “Sometimes during competitions I want nothing more than to come back here despite only being gone for a week. But it’s worth it – skating.”
Yuuri had known that feeling once, that all-consuming passion.
But that felt like another life-time entirely.
She keeps up a steady stream of chatter until they part ways, her arm waving and he finds himself raising one in response, watching her small figure disappear down the lightened streets.
-
There’s a pole in Yuuri’s apartment – right in the middle of the small living area that doubled as his bedroom.
It had been there since he moved in and during the first months it had remained mostly undisturbed but brief touches to watch it spin had become small swings and, eventually, he’d found himself hanging from it during hours of nothing when work was slow and he was surviving on scraps to keep the bills paid.
He’d started going to the library to use the computer, pick up new things to try, a cheap escape inside his apartment.
It wasn’t home but it was safety inside the four walls of something that was his.
Brought his mind back in time to simpler times and a small ballerina studio which had been more his home than the onsen where strangers came and went.
Stupid, piggy Katsuki Yuuri belonged the best where there were no one to see him.
He hangs upside down from it, stomach rumbling as he stares out the dark window.
-
“Yuuri!” Mila’s excited voice makes him pause, head craning around, hands buried into the pockets of his jacket as he watches her approach.
There’s a heavy backpack secured to her, moving with her eager steps as she practically stumbles into his path.
“Mila,” he greets mildly, mouth curling up faintly.
It’s hard not to like the girl – loud and enthusiastic and with a genuine passion for her ice skating.
Somehow she’d gone and decided that Yuuri was to be a part of her life.
The first time he’d caught her waiting for him it’d been late and she’d been shivering but she’d brightened up at the sight of him and somehow it had just continued like that, no matter how he pushed and prodded and disapproved about her being out late on her own.
“I’m not on my own, I have Yuuri,” she’d tell him.
He finds himself wondering if she’s lonely.
She complains about her rinkmates and it’s clear to him that she’s craving attention but skating with people older than her, more famous than her, hardier, better, brighter.
Mila wants to be the best but she’s still young and frustration and wanting more Yuuri understands.
“I brought my skates,” she tells him as she catches his hand in hers and his eyes turns down to look at the way her fingers curl around his own with a strange feeling in his chest even as she tugs at him. “I want you to watch me,” she tells him. “I keep messing it up but I can’t – I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Yuuri hasn’t skated since he was fourteen, nearly seven years out of the rink, but he follows along and he drops down to watch as she secures them on with her lip bitten down on in concentration as she snares herself up.
It’s cold and late but she still shrugs out of her jacket, revealing tights and a simple red shirt that flares at her arms.
Nostalgia tugs at him, a strange heavy feeling in his chest as she inhales before breathing out.
“Don’t take your eyes off me,” she tells him with her blue eyes burning into his and then she moves.
Mila is good.
He understands this, knows that she has to be with her dedication and confidence, but it’s another thing entirely to see it in person. Her form is smooth and flowing and while there’s stumbles and abruptness in her movements that needs to be polished she has all the basic components to make for one of the best.
But then she tries a salchow and there’s a stumble and she falls, frustration flashing briefly over her face as she pulls herself up.
He’s not there for advice, not really. Mila hardly knows him, just knows that he’s drawn to the ice the same way she is.
But he pushes up, leaving his bag at the side-lines as he hesitantly braves the ice, ignoring the way his stomach swoops from beneath him as he approaches her carefully, her head snapping up to focus upon him.
“Again,” he tells her.
Mila gives him an unfathomable look but after a brief moment of hesitation she does as told, tucking down all of her frustration and replacing it with determination as she repeats it once, twice, five times, eleven times, stumbling, falling, getting up again with steel in her gaze and what is sure to be bruised knees and elbows.
Yuuri steps closer to her and then touches her elbow, giving it a little tug as she watches him, allowing him to guide her through the motions, her skates sliding obligingly through the beginning motions until he pauses her.
“Here,” he tells her. “Your arm should be straight here but you pull it in and it throws your jump off-course.”
He releases her, stepping back, waiting.
She stares at her arm for a long moment but then she moves into a starting position, mindful of her arm this time and Yuuri holds his breath as she pushes into motion, skates scraping against the ice as she pushes into the jump, turning, spinning and – landing, a bit clunky but not falling.
She turns to him, euphoria filling her gaze and he finds a small nostalgic smile tugging at his lips.
But then he’s squawking as Mila tackles him to the ice, hood and hat the only thing preventing injury as she buries close to him.
“You’re the best, Yuuri,” she breathes into his ear.
-
Yuuri has a secret – one he refuses to acknowledge to himself.
Yuuri never stopped loving ice skating, he just grows tired of the world.
With his family gone he’d been unable to stay in Japan, travelling to Russia of all places on a ticket paid with the last money he had left after settling his parents bills in an attempt to cling to the only thing he had left.
But life is cruel and harsh and instead of finding Viktor Nikiforov he finds himself drowning.
He makes a fool out of himself and his dreams and he has no-one to blame but himself.
-
If Mila was relentless before it’s nothing compared to her after learning he knew enough to help.
He’d always been intuitive to his own faults, practicing endlessly until he could stand confidently on the ice on his lonesome only to crumble under the expectation of others.
Yuuri’s biggest flaw when he skated had always been his lack of confidence, never his skill, he’d always known this objectively but it translates now – during these moments together as he watches her, helps her, corrects her, allows her to vent her frustration and soothes them as best as he can.
He finds that he wants to see her rise above them all – to stand with gold around her neck on the podium.
“I don’t want to be the one to be lifted,” Mila tells him one day when she arrives with frustration written into every line of her body. “Teach me how to be the one to lift.”
He stares at her and she stares steadily back, determination and something hard but also vulnerable in her gaze.
She’s expecting him to say no, he realises.
So instead he invites her to his apartment.
-
Yuuri knows that no matter how one twists and turns it a twenty-one-year-old man inviting a fifteen-year-old girl into his apartment doesn’t look good and a part of him doesn’t expect her to appear – convinced he’d pushed the limits of their acquaintance.
But he also should stop underestimating her because she knocks on his door and they stare at each other as he opens it up.
He’s showered, out of his wintery gear and wearing simple sweats and a long-sleeved white shirt, feet bare, and her eyes widens at the sight of him, head tilting.
“Hello Katsuki Yuuri,” she says, switching his name around for the traditional Japanese way of doing it. “You have very pretty hair.”
Yuuri should really stop finding himself so charmed by the other as he steps aside and invites her in.
-
That afternoon Yuuri strips down to his underwear and he shows her how to use the pole in his apartment, what exercises he did to strengthen his core, how it would translate into movement on the ice, slim but hard muscles regarded with growing consideration.
“If this is not for you we’ll find you something else,” Yuuri tells her as he reaches for his clothes but she’s already shrugging out of hers to leave her in a sports bra and black underwear.
“Teach me,” she tells him as she grasps for it. “I trust you, Yuuri-sensei.”
Yuuri swallows and drops his shirt.
-
“I’m aching,” Mila tells him as he’s feeding her some simple vegetable soup bought in sacrifice of his cigarettes. “But it’s a good ache. I see why you chose this.” A mischievous sort of curiosity creeps into her gaze. “I didn’t know Yuuri-sensei was a master of the pole.”
He nearly chokes.
“Please,” he says feebly, “don’t say it like that.”
She smiles at him, broad and free. “I’m going to become master of the pole as well and then the ice and I’ll never be the one being lifted again. I’m going to conquer the world.”
Yuuri stares at her, hopelessly infatuated with this tiny slip of a girl.
“I’ll watch you,” he hears himself promise her. “Every step of the way.”
“Good,” she tells him, content.
-
It’s a doomed thing from the beginning, Yuuri knows.
Mila is loved, Mila is cherished, Mila has family and she has rinkmates and coach who cares.
It’s only natural for them to get curious when she keeps disappearing, mastering her skills and perfecting her movement and growing in strength as she becomes more and more confident on the pole.
He copies a key for his apartment and allows her to use it when he isn’t there and when he returns from work she’s sweating and aching and turning to smile at him with satisfaction oozing languish from her frame.
Yuuri loves Mila – it’s not a romantic thing but the world feels less like a tired thing and more like something that stings like ozone on his tongue and warms the coldness inside of him when he is with her.
Yuuri knows that all good things comes to an end and this is not an exception.
So he isn’t surprised when he’s dragging himself home one evening and there’s not Mila waiting for him but a tall stern faced man with grey hair and a hat on his head and Yuuri’s mouth dries at the sight of the silver haired man beside him, hesitating for a moment before dragging himself closer to them both, aware of their judging looks.
He’s worked a twelve hour shift, he’s exhausted and he hasn’t smoked in weeks in favour of buying vegetables, stretching what he had in at least an attempt to give Mila something when she gave him so much.
But he craves one there and then as he fishes for his keys and steps inside – quietly leaving it open for them to follow.
Yuuri drops his backpack and steps out of his shoes, throwing his gloves in place and wrestling his jacket and fleece off, pawing tiredly at his eyes as he stares into his small apartment.
He drops down on the floor, waving for the only couch as the door clicks shut.
Yuuri doesn’t know what judgement they make of him – exhausted and grimy from work, smelling of noodles inside the bare walls of his apartment where the only bright colours were a red shirt left from Mila’s training and a picture of a cat which she’d hung on his fridge for reasons beyond him.
“So you’re the Yuuri-sensei that has been helping our Mila.” It’s the man who speaks, Yakov Feltsman, coach of the Russian figure skating team and the one and only who’d raised Viktor Nikiforov to fame under his tutelage.
The famous figure skater is watching him quietly, not speaking, so different from his television persona here and then that Yuuri feels the hair at the back of his neck rise.
“Yes,” Yuuri agrees.
There’s a hole in his sock and he tugs at it a bit absently.
Yakov’s gaze is heavy and Yuuri feels it into his very soul as he looks up.
“You understand why we’re here then.”
“Suppose I do,” Yuuri agrees and he knows he’s going to miss Mila, isn’t looking forward to going back to the endless stretch of tiredness that hounded his steps and robbed will and life from his trembling fingers.
For some reason his words makes the Russian coach frown.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning forward. “Describe to me the changes you’ve made in her routines.”
Yuuri rubs at his eyes, pushing the glasses up on his nose and breathes out noisily.
“You mind if I eat something first?” he asks. “Haven’t eaten since the beginning of my shift.”
His stomach twists on itself at the reminder and Yakov studies him for a moment before turning to his protégé. “Go pick something up,” he tells the Viktor Nikiforov and gives him a righteously upset look, mouth opening. “No arguments,” Yakov says firmly. "Get a pizza or something."
Yuuri hasn’t had pizza in years and it should make him excited but it’s hard to feel anything but resignation and a heavy feeling of deep bitter regret.
“Yakov, you can’t be serious,” Viktor says even as he rises sharply, his gaze heavy with suspicion on Yuuri before he huffs and leaves, looking positively pouty as he kicked the door shut behind him.
“From the beginning,” the man tells him.
So Yuuri talks.
He tells him about Mila approaching him, about the night at the ice where her blue eyes burned into his and told him don’t take your eyes off me and his advice after, a one-time thing that become something more, became friendship and reliance and trust and something he didn’t dare to name.
“I shouldn’t have invited her here before talking to you,” he says without looking up, his eyes somewhere at his feet without really seeing. “But I think… I think I was afraid.” Of losing her, he doesn’t voice but he think it’s clear anyhow.
Yakov leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasping as he studied Yuuri who has taken to tugging at the sleeve of his shirt, worrying the already fraying fabric.
“You are not what I was expecting when Mila confessed to having private lessons in a young man’s house,” the man says gruffly. “She defended you – I’ve never seen her so worked up before in my life. But you know what the situation looks like.”
“I do,” Yuuri agrees quietly. “It was never-“ He halts, face twisting. “I only wanted the best for her,” he says a bit helplessly. “And I allowed that to bypass rationality.”
“You did,” Yakov agrees bluntly. “You love her,” he observes.
Yuuri nods his head, unable to deny it, shrinking on himself.
“But not in the way I feared,” the man says after a long moment. “Tell me, what is Mila to you?”
Yuuri thinks of the blaring light, the crash of a car and the sound of his sister’s scream abruptly cut off, at the bubbly gasp of his mother as she choked and drowned on her blood with his father already dead and impaled beside her.
In the trunk Vicchan’s cage is crushed and his body with it, Yuuri will learn later, and he loses everything in a single night in a drunken accident to a young driver who vomits as they pull him out of the car.
“She’s family,” he whispers, choking on the word as his eyes burns and he paws a hand up against his eye, wiping them away before they can fall. “I-“ But the words tangles in his mouth and he bows his head, mouth twisting as he looks away.
Not soon after the door opens and Viktor halts, staring between the hunched figure of the small Japanese man and his coach as he eases back.
Hesitantly he deposits the pizzas on the table and sinks back onto the couch, aware of having missed something but not sure what, the feeling of being out of the loop making his mouth flatten.
“Yakov-“
But the man rises and Viktor stares after him, eyes widening as chipped utensils were dug forth and brought back, the first box opened up and three pieces cut off and served onto a plate and nudged across the table to the young man.
“Yuuri.” He twitches. “Eat,” Yakov commands, almost gently, and Viktor bites down hard on his cheek to keep from saying anything.
Yuuri glances up, gets a raised eyebrow in response and hesitantly uncurls just enough to grab for the plate and pull it down into his lap.
He eats without really tasting it, chewing down one piece and then half of a second before his stomach protests and he let it drop a bit reluctantly and Yakov watches him quietly as he places it back on the table.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Think nothing of it,” the man says gruffly. “I have an offer for you and I want you to listen carefully, Katsuki Yuuri.” He leans forward, eyes intent. “I want you to come to my ice rink and I want you to keep training Mila but I want you to do it honestly this time.”
Both Yuuri and Viktor stares at him.
“Mila has flourished under your attention,” Yakov admits a bit grudgingly. “It’d be a trial period, six months, and you’ll take up skating under my care when you’re not with her. She deserves the best and I want to see it for my own eyes why she chose you.”
“Yakov!” Viktor bursts out, rising and the man turns immediately, growling at him only to get a furious response.
But Yuuri hardly hears them.
His heart is pounding in his chest and his world is dark blue eyes as he closes his own and inhales.
“I’ll do it,” he says, raising his voice to be heard.
Viktor falters but Yakov’s eyes glints as their gazes meet, determination burning through exhaustion, leaving a young man very different from the slouched sad wreck he’d been as he places a hand on the table with a rattle of china and leans forward.
“Make me the best damn coach I can be,” Yuuri demands.