A/N: Written for the

The AMF Big Bang
Diversity Writing Challenge, k15 – a fic entirely in third person present tense

Tunnelling
Chapter 1

Katsuki Yuuri knows the secret to giving a gold-medal performance. Some people live for the crowd, but not him. He needs the silence: the empty stands and the creak of the speaker as it sings and the hiss of his skates and none of that being swallowed by the crowd. And he needs the cold smooth ice no-one's skating on, and the draft blowing through the rink and the stiff-looking seats where nobody sits and waves banners and the walls along which nobody stands and where nobody's eyes are poised like arrows to catch every one of his mistakes.

Unfortunately, that also meant no-one would get to watch those gold-medal performances he gave.

That would have suited him fine. Should have suited him fine. But he was greedy. He had a dream in the spotlight and so, somehow, he had to drag the dancer in the shadows out.

Instead, it was always the awkward klutz who crumbled under the light. Too many things illuminated, there. Even in plain old practice. Other skaters sharing the rink. People watching, and judging. People recording. Coach Celestino's pen scratching paper as he tears their performances apart…

No, that's unfair, isn't it. Celestino is a kind coach, but that also means Yuuri can pick up mistakes he misses in his run-downs and keep a log of things he can't ask straight out but needs to know and, more importantly, needs to fix. He's his own worst critic but alone and in the dark, he doesn't need to critique. That's where he needs a coach that'll pick up the flaws he can't see himself. But that means the weight of someone's gaze on him. That means the overhead lights. And he'll inevitably trip and fall.

And the hidden camcorder trick can only work so many times.

Even if he is eternally grateful to Nishigori for starting the trend (apparently, his triplets have picked it up too, to Yuuko's chagrin). It's the only reason he's here in Detroit in the first place.

Even if he did lock himself in his bedroom for days after seeing the video attached to the application he'd been sitting on.

At least Celestino hasn't sent him packing when he realises he's gotten a fraud instead of a winner. Others would have. But Celestino gave him chance after chance. Ignored the spills that were nothing but his own nerves and focused on the things that drowned amongst, as though he could see the night skates, and as though he was banking on one of those playing out on the grand stages.

Yeah right. If I ever manage to ignore all the people staring…

He's stiff already and all he's doing is skating slowly around the rink and warming up. 'Loosen up!' Celestino calls. Loosen up. Right. Easier said than done. He speeds up, barrier in arm's reach as he circles and it's impossible to forget the people watching because they're right there, on the other side of the barrier, and that's not even counting Celestino at the gate or the other skaters on the ice.

He loops around the rink and at least he doesn't mess that one up anymore. It's like walking, now. Or ballet. So engraved that his muscles can't possibly trip and fall… Except they can. People can fall even while walking and they spend so much of their lives walking. And skates have laces too.

'Compulsory figures!'

There are a few groans, including from Phichit who pulls up alongside him. Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut and then reopens them. He can do compulsory figures in his sleep. They all can.

He still runs a mental tally of how many times he stumbles and falls during them, though.

'Why are we still doing compulsory figures? I swear…' Phichit is grumbling by his side, and yet for all his grumbling his moves are fluid and full of his natural flair. He pours that energy into everything – and, quite honestly, Yuuri has never seen the other boy crippled with stage fright.

He's seen very few people cripple with stage fright. Usually because he's too busy being crippled himself.

'Yuuri, you're not paying attention,' Phichit cautions, closer than before. When had he gotten so close? When –

Yuuri stumbles. Phichit grabs his elbow. Coach Celestino is looking in their direction with a slight frown and so are the skaters behind them.

Yuuri's cheeks burn. He pulls away and Phichit's apology and comforting pat aren't enough to starve off the domino effect of flubs that follow. They never were.

But Phichit tries. Yuuri appreciates that. Can never blame that.

His own inability to keep his head… Well, he can certainly blame that.

.

'That wasn't a bad practice,' Phichit says, cheeks flushed with exertion.

But it was. It really was.

Though Phichit is right too, from a certain point of view. Most communal practices are as bad as that. The private ones go better, when he has the ice to himself and there's just Coach Celestino (and Phichit, often, and a few other gawkers his nerves can't seem to chase away) on the sidelines. The competitions are somewhere in between. If the spectators are quiet and he's lucky, he can skate a clean routine. The moment the commentators announce his first mistake though… It's all downhill from there.

He knows it. They know it. The judges, the spectators, the people supporting him at home… They all know it.

'Yuuri…'

'Yeah?' he offers, when he realises Phichit is waiting for some acknowledgement. Though he knows what the other will say. What Coach Celestino will say during their afternoon session. What his own mind will tell him at night, when the rink is entirely empty save for him and his skates and the music in his ears.

'Your step sequences are looking great.' He grins. 'Honestly. They're getting better every year.'

He snorts at that. Good step sequences don't mean a thing if he can't even land the compulsory jumps which, to add insult to injury, he can land just fine on his own. It's part of the reason Celestino took him on in the first place. He'd watched the video the triplets had recorded of him in the Ice Castle in Hasetsu. The audition video he hadn't made himself, for an application he'd half filled out and then benched.

It had gotten through anyway. Celestino saw potential. And missed the anxiety. And now the pair of them struggle to make it work. It does, sometimes. Most afternoon practices. All the night ones. The night ones are the best but they're also pretty useless on the grand stage. An oxymoron in that he can't skate in a place no-one sees and expect the world to see him. Phichit's idea of imagining the audience in their underwear doesn't help either. Nothing does, except when someone sneaks in and watches from so far back, he can't make them out at all. Phichit was the first, Yuuri thinks, even if his roommate refuses to admit it. He can't imagine Coach Celestino working that part on his own. Phichit is in a unique situation to detect late night wanderings, after all.

And then there was Yuuko and Nishigori, back in Hasetsu.

It fell apart anyway, that fragile peace he'd skated too even though it was Phichit, just Phichit. But they'd gotten it back. Through trial and error and Phichit creeping around like the hamsters he loved. Through ignoring the knee-jerk reaction of reaching for the bridge of his nose as though glasses still sat upon it, or reaching for the glasses themselves when he got too close to the other skaters and they grumbled at him. But Coach Celestino just made sure he could see well enough to skate without his glasses on the ice, and then left the matter. Still leaves it alone. And it helps, when the only people in the rink are right at the back and he doesn't know they are there until after the fact.

It makes it just that much easier to forget there might be someone watching in the shadows.

Which doesn't work at all when he shares the ice.

The glasses are gone, suddenly. There's a blur of brown in front of him. Phichit has pinched the glasses right off his face. Again.

'You're over-thinking.' There's a soft tap of the glasses being placed on the desk. 'Skating without glasses is working, isn't it?'

'Works at night when you and Coach Celestino are there,' Yuuri replies. 'Doesn't work in the day when we've got the joint practices.'

'Though it's not like you share the ice in the actual competitions, right? It might be enough.' He's three quarters encouraging and one quarter pleading to some great deity above. But Yuuko's idea is already working, to an extent. Yuuko's offhand comment that Phichit turns into a full-time thing, where he doesn't need headbands (or tape, when the headbands are particularly unbearable) to hold his glasses in place. But they still haven't tested it out yet, on the grand stage.

Please let it be enough, Yuuri pleads with his mind. Outwardly, he only shrugs.

Phichit knows him well enough to know what he means. 'It'll be great. You'll be great. I'll even beg Ciao Ciao for a ticket and watch you do it.' He's part excited, part encouraging and Phichit has gotten awfully good at merging those two lines because empty encouragements don't work and he knows it. 'It'll be okay if I'm there, right?' His voice breaks at the end. The uncertainty… which really doesn't belong with self-confident Phichit, and it's all because of self-destructive Yuuri…

'Of course it is.'

Phichit grins. 'Then remember this fuzzy face watching you skate and no-one else.' Though it's not that fuzzy with Phichit leaning almost close enough to bump their foreheads together. And they've done it before, too.

Now, if only he can forget about the rest. The judges, the commentators, the audience…

Katsuki Yuuri knows the secret to giving a gold-medal performance. Trying to replicate that on stage is another story.