silver threads among the gold
Viktor is a much colder person than they (everyone) make him out to be. And manipulative, too. He just finds it easier to uphold a façade of silliness, a life-long charade that never ceases to amuse him.
He went to Japan because he fell a little in love with a drunk Yuuri Katsuki at the Grand Prix banquet. Viktor's interest had been piqued by the shy, black-haired man, and in him he had found, he'd thought, a way to revive his passion.
But he also went because he was bored – he held the world in his hands (or at least the part of it that interested him), a snowball-shaped world that melted and morphed at his command.
At the time, there was no one better than him. Viktor Nikiforov was not just ice skater extraordinaire, acclaimed playboy and sometimes philanthropist. No, Viktor Nikiforov was ice skating itself, Russian king and law unto himself.
He knew every weakness, every slip-up and its cause, both of himself and of others. Why they would never win gold, even without him there to steal the spotlight. Or, that's what Viktor tells himself when he leaves Sankt Petersburg in a rush with an over-stuffed suitcase and a crumpled, one-way ticket to Japan in his coat pocket.
Chris (much as Viktor loves him, and he does, because he's always been there, from the start) doesn't have a competitive bone in his body. He skates for pleasure, and often not his own – he's not quite narcissistic, only too in love with his sex-appeal and its effects to bother with anything else.
Jean-Jacques – well, there's a narcissist who goes by the book, and he knows how to enhance the audience, Viktor can give him that, but he's too volatile, and he's sure that under that bundle of overbearing arrogance lies an undercurrent of insecurity.
The Dark Horse of Kazakhstan he knows both better (they did share a podium) and not at all. He's a powerhouse, and he has the rough, tall and brooding combo working for him, but he's neither flexible nor graceful. (It's the ballet training he's missing, and nobody does ballet better than Russians, Viktor knows.)
Georgi, his rink mate is going through another phase, too absorbed in his fantasies to pay attention to technique. He's in equal measure ridiculous and sincere, and Viktor feels a strange mix of pity and disgust.
Seung-gil is too stubborn and lacks passion, and Phichit Chulanont has promise and dreams and nothing more.
Yuuri Katsuki, the one whose blades caress the ice (when he's not trying to crack it with his backside), who spins like a poem and moves like a love song – he doesn't have an ounce of confidence and he's got coward stamped across his forehead and tattooed against his heart. (He won't come back, Viktor feels this in his bones).
And then there's Yuri Plisetsky, who at fifteen they call prodigy (at seventeen his status will change to that of genius and at twenty he'll be the next Viktor Nikiforov – Viktor sees this as a prophecy, a kind of hazy dream in front of his eyes in the seconds before he wakes for good, and doesn't think to stop it.)
But Viktor knows something they don't: Yuri is ambitious but not a perfectionist, overly confident but not sensible, talented but inexperienced.
The problem, Viktor sees (but doesn't tell Yakov, doesn't tell anyone), is this: Yuri is very much like the felines he so adores, all contempt and laziness. Genius that he is, he figured how to be the best while using the least amount of effort possible.
And Yuri will be a star, Viktor knows (and this he tells to anyone who listens), but not now, not when he is but a raw-cut diamond, unpolished and harsh-edged. By the time the stage light won't be enough for them both, Viktor will be long gone, because every career has to end and Viktor plans to retire in a blaze of glory.
But no, then, Viktor had not seen Yuri Plisetsky as anything but a loud-mouthed paradox wrapped up in a pretty, cat-patterned (childish) package. He had not seen in him a usurper.
(That is his mistake).
Now, Viktor watches Yuri skate to the program he'd choreographed for himself and feels a strange pang between his ribs. He could recognize it as pride dipped in regret and washed in fear, but he does his best to ignore it, so he doesn't. (It's still there, though, fire burning his insides and turning his bones to ash.)
This is not the Yuri he left behind, the loud and bold Yuri who came to Japan, demanding a coach that was no coach and already in too over his head.
Passion still spins in his eyes, turning them from blue to green and back, but he's more focused, more aware. More mature.
Viktor left behind a broken demon and returned only to find an angel spreading his wings.
And oh, how beautiful his wings, how enchanting and luminous. Yuri spins, arm high and bold above his head, and the fake diamonds sewn into his white suit (Viktor's suit from days long gone) sparkle, but they dim in comparison to the determination in his orbs.
Yuri has found his Agape, and Viktor, though proud (so very proud though he has no reason to be), allows himself to feel a sliver of regret for not guiding him along himself. But Yakov is a better coach than Viktor will ever be. (His own career is proof of that).
(Still, Viktor wonders who had it harder. Himself, who had taken under his wing a skater with no confidence and no genius but with a wish for improvement, a certain something that drew the eye whenever he moved across the ice, or Yakov, whose own student had perhaps too much confidence and ability and was stubborn to a fault).
Yuri jumps, high and effortless, and Viktor swears he sees translucent wings unfurling from his shoulder blades (maybe who named him first fairy was right); he finds himself wondering who the boy is skating for – his grandfather? (Viktor doesn't know his home situation exactly, only that his parents haven't been around for a long time now, and suppresses another pang of guilt – because he'd abandoned him, too, and only now realizes it) His country? (Viktor has never liked a nation over another, but he'd traveled so extensively that the colors on his flag are nothing more but colors, but he remembers Yuri, quiet and thoughtful for once, head thrown back and tongue out to swipe the snowflakes falling in the Moscow night, and Yuri again, always in the window seat in the plane, always looking back as though afraid to step forward). His friends? (Viktor also knows it's hard to be the best so young and Yuri's attitude is not exactly forthcoming, but exactly that rebelliousness against the world is what draws people to him like infatuated moths to too hot flames)
He might wonder, but Viktor will never guess, because the answer is a mix of all of them and something else, something he doesn't know because he never resolved to ask. (He'd like to thank them, though, whomever they are.)
Yuri reaches another quad and this time he jumps with both arms raised, hands clasped high above his golden head, and Viktor muses he feels the change in the room, the bewitched spectators bowing forward with baited breath, hanging onto his every glide and twirl.
(Viktor's breathing remains firmly controlled and not through any force of will – because he is certain, in his hearts of hearts, that Yuri won't fall, because it would be unjust and even the Heavens are not that cruel.)
Viktor can't bring himself to wish to see the prodigy sprawled on the ice, despair filling his eyes and surprise jerking his limbs – not even when he knows that the Russian's program is perfect (or as close to perfection as mere mortals get) and Yuuri's isn't.
He doesn't hear his lovely student call him, because Viktor's mind is too preoccupied to change every jump into a number. He knows, somehow, or he feels as though he knows, and dread creeps on him and settles as a mourning cloak across his shoulders: with the Russian Punk's every footfall his score gets bigger and bigger and it dwarfs Viktor's own World Record (and it amazes him, because Yuri is just fifteen, still a child by any standards, except, perhaps, ice skating's).
And the numbers keep piling up and it is in this moment that Viktor realizes that even though he left, the skating world (the only one that matters) has stayed in place, and someone will have to win the gold (Viktor can see another legacy starting, and only now does he realize how much it hurts, how, all these years, he'd thought of those golden medals as his').
And even though he wants Yuuri Katsuki to win –and by God, he does, so much that he considered sneaking into a Spanish church come night and praying- he wouldn't mind seeing little Plisetsky snatch the grand prize, either.
(Even though that means he'll set another men's singles record and Viktor Nikiforov's name will slink back in shadows and get lost in obscurity. He suddenly envisions his life as a wild ride in a mountain rousse and his career is up, up there in the clouds, at breaking point, and its precarious equilibrium is endangered by all sorts of things – like the harsh wind and the downpours and the birdcalls that sound suspiciously like "love"- and Viktor lives on the edge, in the now, all the while knowing that the smallest slip-up will sent him tumbling down hard enough to crack ice that had him bewitched since childhood)
The commentator calls Yuri an ever-evolving monster, and Viktor can't help but agree. He's always known he had promise, an innate water well of talent buried behind heaps of arrogance (he still remembers –how could he forget?- when Yakov came back from Moscow with stories of a young boy, no more than eight or nine, who flew through double axels and double loops with no formal training, like he'd been born to skate, a boy who loved the ice, who lived in the seconds between jumping and landing and whose soul resided in the sparks between blade and frozen water –such a poetic man, Yakov, when drunk)
Viktor hadn't believed it, not at first, though his coach wasn't really the type to joke around – and it wasn't like the child was entering competitions he could follow, having no formal training. So Viktor forgot about the young boy (he still didn't know his name) until next year, when Yakov went to the capital and came back with a scowling slip of a kid who proceeded to make their existence hellish – or, well Yakov's, because Viktor didn't really spend time with the boy.
Why would he? He was still at the top of the world, the metaphorical snowball spinning firmly on his finger. He was 22, Yuri's senior by more than twelve years, and he had little interest besides his skating and his conquests. (Until he watched the youngster land an almost perfect quad Salchow at twelve – after, Viktor couldn't but accept that Yuri was getting better, and he was getting older. But he still had time. Didn't he?)
The performance ends and Viktor sees Yuri's chest rise and fall in a harsh rhythm with every breath he takes, like he gave his air, too, to the audience, to the ice.
This is the first time Viktor actually respects little Yuri Plisetsky as his fellow competitor. He'd underestimated him, too, because he hadn't thought to look behind the glaringly obvious (and only now does Viktor wonder if Yuri has built a façade as pretty as his own, knowingly coming across as brash and dismissive to disguise older hurts or to play mind games, because with him both are equally as possible – and it shames him, because he's known the kid half a decade)
Viktor had seen what the world at large had seen (what Yuri had wanted them to see): a young boy bursting with talent, of a delicate, fey-like beauty, so at odds with his harsh demeanor and unpolished words.
On and off the ice, Viktor had thought Yuri to be both Fairy and Punk – now he muses that perhaps he is neither, and curses the world that labeled him as something he was not (and skewered his own vision in the process).
Yuuri comes to him, his shy, bespectacled champion (holder of his heart, if nothing else, and isn't that a worthy medal in itself?), but his stance is hesitant now that he's stepped off the ice, and Viktor loves and hates the ice in equal measure, because it unites them even as it divides them (Viktor still finds it a bit endearing, though, that for an adult Yuuri is so haltingly innocent in his affections).
Viktor answers him, though he can't hear his own voice, what with the wild thumping of his heart and the frantic cheering of the audience (he's sure it's carefree and smooth, for what it's worth). He turns and walks away but watches Yuri from the corner of his eye, biting back a smile when he sees the Russian prodigy bend, almost defiantly, to pick up a stuffed cat one of his rabid angels must have thrown in admiration to the altar of his body – still a child, after all.
Viktor takes a seat and sends a reassuring smile towards his black-haired pupil, but his hand is drumming a manic beat against his knee (and how many years has it been since any part of his body acted without him wanting to?)
Viktor's ice blue eyes stay glued to the screen, but they're unfocused, his pupils black, gaping holes, because his ears are straining for the announcement and – there it is, the beginning of his unmaking, the bittersweet start of the end.
Yuri's score, so impossibly (but not quite so, is it?) big (the biggest there is) leaves the prodigy reeling, and naked shock flutters across his features before happiness, such fierce happiness, churns in his turquoise eyes (Viktor has never seen his expression so open before, and it's a big contrast to the usual Yuri, like night turning suddenly into day, shadows into light).
A heartbeat, two, no more – and then Yuri howls his pure, unadulterated joy, and Yakov screams his champion's name (and for the first in a long, long time, it's not Vitya he screams, but Yurochka, and his words ring stark with prophecy) and even the ever stoic Lilia Baranovskaya claps and wipes a salty tear already staining her cheek.
Viktor smiles, too, in genuine delight, and he can hear Yuuri shouting his congratulations next to him.
(Still, Viktor can't help but feel that the world is missing something great for every time Yuri keeps his smiles to himself. He sneaks a peek at Yuuri and something erupts in his chest, like fireworks and bells, and hopes that there is someone in the whole, wide world that has the key to Yuri's heart – or at least enough ability to crack the numerous locks surrounding it.)
Fun fact: Silver threads among the gold is actually a very beautiful, very emotional love song, but I just borrowed the name because it's so pretty and kind of ironic, really, because Viktor's hair is already silver.
This story kept floating in my head ever since I saw episode 11, when Viktor watched Yuri's performance. It struck me, because it's one of the very few times when he's actually serious, and that got me thinking and speculating, and that got me writing.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed! :)