The first time Viktor steps on ice, he hates it.
He's six and his mother holds his hands tightly. He can feel the warmth escaping from her leather gloves and into his red knitted ones. He focuses on not falling, sticks his tongue out, and falls anyway.
(Earlier, in another time, his mamochka would laugh airily and kiss his forehead, and brush the nonexistent dust from his warm winter coat, and then help him up with a joke on her lips and a glint in her eyes, and they would be off trying to skate again).
(Somehow, it's different this time and Victor knows it before it happens).
She helps him rise, without a word, a ghost of a smile on her lips, tight and forced, and Viktor can see right through it.
They skate together, slowly, clumsily. People pass them, content in a whirl of brown coats and grey hats and in a snippets of chatter. Victor ignores them with the whole bursting will of a six-year-old, and desperately focuses on the warm, gloved hands that keep him steady.
The first time Yuuri steps on ice, he promptly lands on him bum.
Mari laughs. After a flicker of hesitation – should he cry or should he be offended or... – Yuuri's laughter follows. Mari glides to him and helps, still laughing, tousles his hair mercilessly before he's even remotely steady on his shaky legs, and takes his hand.
'Come on, little brother', she says. 'I'll show you how to do that'.
She teaches him, impatiently. The tone of her voice carries the ultimate wisdom of a ten-year-old who has just learnt how not to fall, and Yuuri believes it with the unequivocal conviction of a younger brother.
Their parents skate there, too, vigilant and protective, but let them have their fun. Yuuri sees his mother's well-rounded silhouette in the periphery of his sight.
He waves. She waves back, and it's then that his father snaps a picture.
Yuuri clutches his sister's hand as she tries to bossy him around, disappointed that he still can't master her skill, even after ten minutes of her masterful coaching. She tugs at his clothes and they tumble together.
Yuuri grins. He loves it.
'Vitya', his mamochka mutters, watching him closely. Her hair is down her shoulders like Rapunzel's, but she holds little of the charm she used to have before papa's disappearance. She looks solemn and far older she should.
Viktor has tried, for her. He's brought her good grades and drawings, given flowers and hugs, and put his adult brave face on when he heard her crying at night.
(When Viktor cried, she would rush to his room and sing him to sleep, Spi mladyenets, moi prekrasný, bayushki bayu, so when he first heard muffled weeping coming from mamochka's bedroom, he ran into her arms, and they sang together).
She takes him ice skating, still. Sometimes, she even cracks a smile, crooked in such a way that Viktor prefers he hasn't seen it.
Skating is less hateful, though. Viktor glides through the ice pretending to fly, and feels freer than at home, in their flat with old wallpapers and furniture that soaks sadness.
'Vitya', his mamochka repeats, 'would you like to train ice skating?'.
Viktor doesn't say no. There are other things he can hate instead.
'Yuuri-kun', Yuuri hears one day when he watches TV with his father. It's quite at home. Mari and Hiroko has gone to town – and Yuuri is still a bit miffed that his sister decided to quit the skating practice after dragging him to it with her, when she knew he was apprehensive to meet so many new people there – and Yuri relishes in the calm atmosphere. He's not sure whether he'd like to attend the skating practice on his own. He's got ballet. Maybe that's enough.
His dad still watches the programme, but his attention shifts to Yuuri.
'Minako-sensei has praised you a lot', his dad says, ruffling Yuuri's hair. 'And she thinks that ice skating can help you'.
Viktor starts his ballet classes when he's nine, to help with his ice skating. His mother's face thins and pales, but her gloved hand carries his all the same. She waits on the corridor during his practices, reading newspapers or old novels, and leads him back home dutifully every time, often without a word.
(Once, she was in a better mood and they stopped for ice cream. It was lemon, Viktor still remembers).
(His father never comes back. Viktor begins to forget his face; it blurs like an old dream. There are no photographs of him at home, have not been for a long time, and so when they still cry at night, Viktor misses the idea more than a person. Or maybe not. He certainly doesn't know).
Yuuko introduces Yuuri to Viktor Nikiforov when Yuuri is ten and in love with skating.
(Not personally, no. She shows him a poster, and before he knows it, Victor's eyes fall at Yuuri from every wall of his small bedroom at home. Mari just sighs and decorates her room with rock bands instead).
Yuuri practices more and more, evenings spent at Minako's studio or at the ice rink. There are moments when he can lose his shyness.
(Minako sees it, and his parents know it soon enough, and even Mari decides that her little brother's passion is worth noting when she smuggles another poster into his room without a word).
His mother doesn't watch Viktor skate anymore. He goes to his practice, she goes to work, and they largely ignore each other.
Viktor talks to his dog more than to her, and it's not for his lack of trying. So he refuses to think about it; instead, there is ice to skate on, music to move to, stories to show with his figures, and anger to express through better ways than drugs or vodka.
(Viktor is not stupid. He could get both, even though he's fifteen and both should be quite unobtainable).
His coach could become his father figure; a replacement for his mother's silent depression and his father's, well, nothing. Viktor doesn't want him to.
His name is Viktor Viktorovich Nikiforov and he's going to win alone.
Yuuri stands in an extended fourth position. Minako's studio is eerily quiet; she's been giving him one on one lessons for a time now.
'Very good', she says now, joyfully. 'Again'.
She drills into him pliés and glissades, gently but mercilessly still, and Yuuri feels alive, alive, alive.
Later, at the rink, his Ina Bauer looks better than ever and Yuuri thinks that maybe, maybe, he's good enough at it to make it his life even more than it already is.
(He tells Minako first, of course, and she bursts with enthusiasm. He tells his parents second and they look unsurprised. He tells Mari then, and she just looks around his room, at all the Viktors staring at her back, and shrugs her shoulders.
'We had no idea you liked it so much', she snorts).
(There is no poster of a heart-broken young skater with his eyes red and his face pale, whose mother is gone, and who skates and skates and skates until he collapses on ice, alone).
Viktor moves to train in Moscow, wins his first gold at the senior level, and takes the dog with him.
The dog is the best of all of it, really – cheerful and fluffy, big and loyal, and white like the snow in St. Petersburg that Viktor misses a lot.
(Not that there isn't any snow in the wintery Moscow. It's still not the same).
Viktor names the Samoyed Bolshoi, because he loves the theatre and because the dog is really the greatest thing that has happened to him since the moment he fell in love with skating; but where the love for skating came to him slowly, gradually, until he was drowned in it, the dog captures his heart the moment he licks his hand for the first time, and Viktor knows he's found a friend for life.
(For Bolshoi's life. There is a day when Viktor skips his practice, a seventeen-year-old mess with red eyes and dishevelled long hair, and takes his dog to a vet. There is a day when Viktor skips practice again, and cries in his bed, alone, without the warmth of his best friend next to him, overcome with emotions so raw that can only be let go of at the rink).
(Viktor bitterly skates his way to gold).
Skating is life, skating is freedom, skating is expression. Yuuri could go on and on, but he doesn't think about it. He prefers not to. Instead, he just plays his music and skates, skates, and for a moment he can forget the gnawing feeling in his gut that moulds his soul.
He trains for real; at the rink, preparing for local competitions; at Minako's studio, brushing up his technique; at nights, watching Youtube videos with his favourite skaters performing so fluidly, so relentlessly, and so magically that Yuri feels like crying, it's so pure and so utterly good.
(And if he watches Viktor Nikiforov the most often, well, he can't help it if the man is simply that brilliant, can he?).
(He makes one friend at the time. They chat online, bonded by their love of skating, and somehow frequent the same ice skating forum although they live in two different countries. Yuuri silently blesses the awesomeness of the Internet and slowly opens up to the boy's sparkling personality and somehow Phichit Chulanont sneaks into his life – or rather enters it with the sheer force of his optimism and the unstoppable cuteness of his horde of hamsters).
Viktor's flat is even emptier than his fridge, and one day he brings home a dog. It's a puppy; sweet, helpless, and innocent, and absolutely dependant on Viktor. It steals Viktor's heart and unexpectedly brings him swarms of fans, because a handsome young skater is ten times more sexy when he has a poodle.
(Viktor dumps a date once when she said she wasn't fond of dogs, and since then only approves of the people Makkachin approves of. This includes, strangely, Chris Giacommetti, who always brings Makkachin treats).
And in the meantime, he wins, and wins, and wins, and medals are always cold against his skin.
(He doesn't know that far away a young Japanese ice skater gets a cute poodle).
(If Yuuri gets a dog named after his idol, Mari is too smart to tease him about it).
His parents let him go, reluctantly, when it becomes obvious that Yuuri needs more than what Hasetsu has to offer. Yuuri enrols at Michigan, moves to Detroit, and is swept by Phichit, Phichit's hamsters, and Phichit's numerous social media accounts.
He skates, and gets better, and then he gets worse. Skating becomes contradictory – it used to be an escape from his anxiety, and now it's both a blessing and a curse. On ice, Yuuri lets go. And yet, the thought of competitions, of pressure, of failure, it keeps coming back like a boomerang.
Yuuri takes deep breaths, learns his jumps, and when he fails, he fails spectacularly.
(Mari wants him to get help and backs down after a spectacular shouting match on Skype, and Yuuri never mentions his anxiety to her).
Viktor wins his third consecutive Grand Prix Final.
Every year, it feels less like winning and more like emptying himself, pouring out his whole being until he's just ice cold.
He goes off to search for inspiration. He watches seagulls in St. Petersburg and then tries to copy their motions on ice, sharp but fluid, gentle but keen.
It's thanks to the seagulls that he wins his fourth Grand Prix Final gold next year, but this is something he never discloses in any interview.
(Yakov watches his spins and his jumps and his footwork but doesn't see Vitya, not even when he calls him that. It's always Viktor Viktorovich. It's always Viktor Nikiforov).
No matter how much Phitchit tries to persuade him, Yuuri keeps low profile in social media. He knows it's for the best – no need to deal with angry comments under your pictures, no need to count to ten after every piece of criticism he sees.
(He spends a day once browsing the same forum where him and Phichit met years ago, and finds a whole thread dedicated to him, and feels dread after a user calls his skating inconsistent).
(Yuuri knows he's very consistent in his inconsistency though, and when he messes up his jumps at the practice the following day, he is not even surprised.
Just tired).
Viktor needs to reinvent himself.
This is what skating was all about, he thought. And so he does try to be born again; he goes to yoga and loves the stretching but hates the meditation, and quits after three times because the mantras make him laugh and apparently it's rude to ask other participants to Instagram your downward dogs; he listens to different music, discovers joik and unearths all Youtube recordings he can find but it's still not this, still not enough; has sex with women and has sex with men, and then buys treats to Makkachin when he's had sex with somebody that Makkachin doesn't like; has sex with Chris and it's mindblowing and Chris posts dubious evidence on Instagram that sends their fans into a frenzy; takes calligraphy classes because he sees gifs online and it looks so elegant, like ice skating, but it's still not enough, not quite this, and he quits.
(He almost asks Yakov to pick the music for his short programme, and how demeaning that would be, but then something changes, swiftly, and Viktor knows he has to skate away his longing, and he does).
(It's brilliant and awesome and terrifying, fulfilling and emptying, and emptying, and emptying).
(He kisses his gold, and hates it).
When he crashes on ice, it feels as if his mind crashed, too, and for a flash of a second Yuuri thinks this is it, the end, and that there is nothing more.
He skates, frantically, his movements brash and uneven and fragmentary, and focuses on how hard it is to skate when your nose is runny and your eyes are puffed and your contacts just hurt them more.
(He wants, desperately, to both move and stand still).
He comes in the sixth place, and there's a burning shame, and there's no Vicchan.
Deep down, Viktor lost.
He drinks champagne, just a bit because it's just smoother to socialise with a long glass in your hand, and because it's expensive as hell so why not. He schools his face – it has to be smooth, it has to be satisfied, it has to be perfect – and laughs when he has to laugh, smiles when he has to smile, and jokes when he has to joke. He hates this part, and keeps thinking that maybe Makkachin would like to have an evening walk now, but there's nothing to do about it.
(He's a really terrible dog owner).
(He's no longer a genius skater, either).
He has to keep himself from blurting out that he's been considering taking a season off, or maybe retiring completely. The ice is demanding, it's a cruel mistress – not a mistress, more, it's a fate, and Viktor knows he cannot give it the absolute perfection it demands, not when he only skates to emotions that are fake.
(It's all a performance, he knows, but it doesn't mean it can't be true).
And so he mingles. Yakov watches, after all. Viktor gets bored with this, gets bored so easily, but he comforts himself that this is going to be over soon, and he won't even be here next year. He takes a sip of his champagne, nods to something he doesn't really listen to, and suddenly there's a push and he's grabbed by his tie, and is it the sad Japanese skater who had trouble earlier today too and...
(Viktor is dragged into a dance, languid and fluid and emotional and true, and he can't look away).
Oh.