This is another side-story to The Real Podium Family with focus on Yurio and his preparations leading up to the Olympic season. The story can be read independently from the main story :)

Yuri = Yuri P. & Yuuri = Yuuri K.

Yuri was surprised that Viktor came up to him first and asked if Yuri wanted another program choreographed by him. Viktor was all smiles, when he so kindly offered, but since him and Yuuri had started dating, he had been easier to read. Yuri saw right through him.

"Katsudon put you up to this, didn't he?" He stated flatly and crossed his arms, calling Viktor out on his bullshit.

"No!" Viktor said too quickly, but then averted his gaze, clearly lying, "I mean, he told me that I technically didn't keep my promise, since agape wasn't originally meant for you. Although!" Viktor injected quickly, turning his intense gaze back to Yuri who instinctively leaned a little backwards, "I did alter the program to fit you better!"

"Save you excuses," Yurio cut in, not wanting to listen to Viktor ramble on for hours, "Lilia is already working on a free skate, but I don't think I can handle two Lilia programs, so it would be nice-" Yuri made sure to put as much bitterness in that word as he could, to not make it seem like he was too grateful for Viktor merely keeping his promise, "-if you could make my short program. It's only fair too," Yurio put his hands on his hips as he made the last statement.

"Of course!" Viktor beamed, resembling his poodle more than he should. Yuri rolled his eyes and walked away.

Yuri didn't really see Viktor after that conversation. He'd sometimes run into him at the rink, but since summer holiday had started and school was out, Yurio had begun to come to practice at the rink earlier and then spent his afternoon with Yuuri in the ballet studio. That meant that he usually shared ice time with Katsudon, and that Viktor was coaching during that time. Viktor would then take the ice as Yuri and Yuuri joined Lilia in the studio.

Since Lilia had yet to completely finish his free skate, Yuri only worked on parts of it in the studio, while his ice time was reserved for jump practice and skating skills. On Yakov's insistence, Yuri was working on his triple lutz, rather than on a new quad which he would much have preferred. This was because Yuri's tendency to flutz was even higher than Viktor's, and Yakov never approved of his students neglecting a bad jump, no matter the circumstances. And Yuri didn't like this. His natural jumping preferences lay with the edge jumps, and if he could substitute his triple lutz for a quad loop, he would be very happy. But Yuri had barely run the suggestion by Yakov before he had been shut down, and not even Yuri was suicidal enough to work on a new quad behind Yakov's back. He was smart enough to know he needed a coach.

But training with Yuuri made lutz practice easier. Yuri was a competitive person. He took pride in that, and he wasn't the only one working on his jumps. Despite having the confidence of a delicate flower, Viktor had somehow managed to convince Yuuri to add the quad lutz to his jump repertoire, and Yuri couldn't believe how often he had landed it already. He had been curious enough to ask about it.

"Your lutz is good," he had said quietly, not really wanting to compliment him too much. He didn't look at Katsudon as he had said it, but he looked up to see Yuuri smiling at him, a slightly surprised look on his face.

"I used to do lots of quads at practice in Detroit," he explained casually, "Thought that if I could land a quad lutz in practice, I would have the confidence to land the salchow in competition."

Yuri huffed, "And yet it still sucks."

"Well, not everyone can be as good with the salchow as you," Yuuri teased, and Yurio struggled with finding the right response without actually saying thank you or shut up. There had to be a middle ground, but he couldn't find it and skated away. When he looked back he saw both Yuuri and Viktor snicker at the boards. Idiots.

But Yuuri's improvement and steady jumps helped motivate Yuri and his consistency was getting better. It wasn't quite as good as Viktor's lutz, which was more or less the benchmark Yuri had set for himself. He needed to do better than Viktor if he ever wanted Yakov to think about letting him try out new jumps. He knew that at the stage he was at, he could only win against Katsudon, if he made a mistake, while Yuri went clean. If he wanted to win against Yuuri, who not only had more difficult jumps and better PCS, but also stamina to perform difficult elements in the second half, Yuri needed a trump card. A technical trump card. Yuri wasn't blind to how Yuuri performed on ice, and whenever he went clean, Viktor's PCS was the only thing that could rival Yuuri's. So Yuri needed to improve. He didn't want to rely on other people's mistakes to win.

Yuuri had been working on his short program ever since him and Viktor got back from their little vacation in Hasetsu, and Yuri knew his layout. Triple axel in the first half. Quad flip-triple toe combination and quad toe, both in the second half. On paper, easier than last year, in actuality, much harder. Yuri had seen the step sequence, had seen Yuuri run it through a couple of times. The program was ridiculous. Yurio remembered the first time he had seen it. He had been in awe. Even though he had only performed triples during the program, Yuri had been blown away. He remember how he had felt the first time he had seen Viktor skate. It had been the same sensation. It made him want to do better. He wanted to jump better, have more complete programs, perform louder.

For his free skate, Yuri would be skating to Schindler's List. It had ultimately been Lilia's choice (even if she had first suggested Clair de Lune, which Yuri had promptly turned down), but Yuri was starting to come around to it. They were working on cooperating in the expressions he had learned and worked with in the previous season. Something ethereal like agape. Something passionate like appassionato. But while Yuri was slowly growing into the piece, he kind of missed Viktor's choreography.

Lilia and Viktor had two very different approaches to choreography. Lilia was strict in her teachings, always telling him what to do and what to express, leaving little room for Yuri to impact it, but still always playing to his strengths and hiding his weaknesses. Yuri wasn't good at controlling deep edges and sharp turns, but he could skate fast and confidently, so the step sequence would be upbeat and fast-paced. Yuri was a strong jumper, but often lacked stamina to perform jumps at the end of a program (at least of the standard he wanted and Yakov required), so he had his most troublesome jumps first, a cleverly choreographed breather in the middle of the program disguised by a spin, and a long and creative transition into his next jump.

But Viktor didn't make programs like that. No, Viktor loved to see his victims (yes, they were definitely victims) suffer and work through things they were not good at. Agape had been a struggle like no other, but damn if Yuri hadn't come out stronger when he had conquered it. Viktor made challenging programs, but left room for artistic freedom and often required that his victims think for themselves. Yuri had realized only too late what the real challenge during hot-springs on ice had been. They had been required to take Viktor's program and turn it into something else, to express themselves through it. Yuri had figured that out halfway through the grand prix series and he had missed Viktor's choreography ever since. He didn't have ambitions of becoming a choreographer, but he liked the impact he could have on a piece. He liked having the sketch of the program and then coloring it in himself. It was liberating.

It was a little over a week after Viktor had approached him about the short program that Yuri got a text from him.

-Study up :P

The text was followed by a link to a youtube playlist, which contained ten or so skates. Yuri was sitting in his room at Lilia's house, playing around with Potya and connected the playlist to his tv for a better experience. Yuri actually groaned out loud when he saw what the first skate was.

-Why are you sending me Katsudon's programs? The only one who has seen this more times than me is you, because you are disgusting.

-Study or I won't give you a program :(

Yuri groaned again and began the video. It was Yuuri's eros program from when he had skated it clean at Four Continents. Yuri hated how good it was, and he could only imagine how it must have felt for Yuuri to still have lost to JJ in the end. Yuri stopped the video after the program was over, not needing to see the whole disgusting romantic display the idiots had put on just because the competition had taken place during valentine's. He moved onto the next program and groaned out loud again, Potya jumping out of his lap at the noise and turning to play with one his toys.

-I know all of these programs! Why am I watching Georgi's gross Romeo portrayal :ccc

-There is a theme! I told you to study!

-UGH!

The short program set to Romeo and Juliet (Yuri's least favorite warhorse) was performed during the Sochi Olympics, and Georgi was no less dramatic than usual. Yuri remembered thinking that it had been weird that they hadn't named Georgi to the team competition, and had instead made Viktor skate in both the short and the free skate. All because he was their golden athlete. Honestly, he stole the spotlight from everyone else. He had even been the flag-bearer.

Yuri skipped the program after Georgi. Viktor was not going to make him watch JJ skate in his free time. Absolutely not. And especially not that egocentric short program of his. The fourth program on the list was Leo's short program from the previous season, and the rest were Phichit's programs. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. From his entire Senior career.

And Yuri got it. He understood what Viktor wanted to show him with this, and he groaned in frustration as he replayed Phichit's programs a couple of more times, taking notes alongside it.

After ballet practice the next day, Yuuri invited him over for dinner, and Yuri gladly accepted. Since Lilia's studio was literally inside her house, Yuri took a couple of his things as well as Potya before they left for the love couple's apartment. Yuuri's company could be quite nice, at least Yuri could tolerate him a little longer than he could Viktor, only because Viktor sometimes got stupidly excited about stupid things - like his fiancé and some dumb irrelevant thing he had done. Honestly, Yuri had lost all faith in him the day Viktor had talked for thirty straight minutes about how Yuuri had this great technique for folding socks. Socks! Yuri had straight up ignored for a week after that.

But Viktor was better that evening, because they were talking about Yuri's short program and he had been waiting for this.

"What did you learn from the playlist I send you?" Viktor asked him, trying to put on a teacher facade. It would have worked if Yuri didn't know him as well as he did.

"Connecting with the audience creates a good atmosphere and positive results," Yuri said like a good student. There was a reason Viktor had spammed him Phichit's programs. Pandering to the audience was his specialty after all.

"Exactly, and why is it important if you want good scores?"

"First rule of competitive figure skating: The judges are the first row of the audience. It will boost PCS to connect well."

"Correct. I want you to remember that when I give you your music."

"Why can't I listen to it now?" Yuri demanded, "Wouldn't it be better to let me know what I'm skating to?"

"No," Viktor smiled mischievously, "I don't think you would be able to sleep."

Yuri's stomach dropped. He was almost scared of what Viktor had in store for him. He feared Clair de Lune, or worse, a Romeo and Juliet piece. He wouldn't be able to sleep if that was his music for sure.

It was incredibly early in the morning, when Viktor woke Yuri up and dragged him into the kitchen, placing him in a chair next to an equally dead Yuuri and forced the two of them to eat breakfast. That was another thing Yuri preferred about Katsudon. He was not a morning person, unlike his idiotic, bubbly and stupidly energetic fiancé, who should not have been this awake at five in the morning.

At six they were on the ice, going through some basic warm-up exercises, enjoying their alone time in the rink before the eight a.m. people began showing up. It was so early that even Yakov wasn't here yet. It made sense, of course, that Viktor would try to get them to the rink when there were no people - although Yuri didn't know exactly why Yuuri had to be there as well. Katsudon would probably have chosen sleep if he had been given a choice considering how tired he still looked. It was one of those moments where Yuri was sure that Yuuri must love Viktor a lot. Yuri would never have gotten out of bed to see someone else get their program.

"Are you ready?" Viktor asked. He was talking in Russian, which meant that Katsudon was not fully awake to follow a conversation even in English, so Yuri shot him a glance only to find him lazily spinning around in circles (not doing actual spins, but just, skating in a small circle).

"Hit me," Yuri said determined and Viktor hit play on the music.

Yuri could have cried at the music choice. He could have cried tears of actual joy. Unless Viktor was playing an evil prank on him (which was unlike at best), Yuri would be skating his short program to his favorite rock song by his favorite artist. Viktor's smug smile at Yuri's expression (which he himself couldn't quite tell what was, as he was both surprised, happy, in disbelief and actually floating on a cloud at the same time) told Yuri that this was definitely his music, and when Viktor stopped the song, he honestly had to stop himself from just dropping to his knees and thanking him for the wonderful music choice.

"I love it," he said instead, trying to control his non-smile smile, preserving the last percent of dignity he had left.

"Of course you do," Viktor said knowingly, and Yuri couldn't even think of a clever comeback, "But I am taking a risk with this music, so if I don't think you can handle it, I will change it."

Yuri's eyes widened: "No! I can do it!"

"Brave words from a little kitten who doesn't know what's about to happen."

Yuri just pouted, wanting Viktor to continue and actually walk him through the program.

"The key to this program will be performance," Viktor began his lecture, "When you skate, you tend to only think about yourself, but you can't do that with this program. You need to connect with the audience. Connect with the judges. Connect with the music. And most importantly, you need to make this program your own. The music by itself is exciting and well-known, which means that it can easily overpower you, take the focus away from you. You need to make this music your own. Can you do that?"

"Yes!"

Viktor huffed and smiled, almost looking down on him. It reminded Yuri of when him and Yuuri had first gotten their short programs last season and Viktor had more or less told them that the were average skaters at best. And Yuri realized that this morning, he wasn't dealing with the bubbly, heart-smile Viktor, but with sadistic demon coach Nikiforov. He would have to behave unless he wanted to be sent on another weird soul searching quest through temples and waterfalls.

Learning the basic choreography was easy enough. Yuri could do a pretty well runthrough of the program on day one, began to understand and implement the details on day two, and on day three they worked on small tweaks, which would change it from a Viktor program to a Yuri program. But of course, that was only the bare minimum for Viktor to be satisfied with him.

Day four was Viktor's rest day, where he was more or less banned from the rink, so Yuri went back to Yakov to work on jumps and whatever else his coach felt that he was horrible at that day.

"Yura," Yakov called sternly (when was he not?) and Yuri skated to the barrier, prepared to get all his flaws pointed out, and was surprised when that didn't happen, "What's your short program, Vitya isn't telling me anything."

Yuri raised an eyebrow. Viktor hadn't told him. It took him a second to figure out why, and he wondered if Yakov would believe him if he said he didn't know.

"Um," he started off intelligibly, "It's an old song, you probably wouldn't know it."

"I am older than you," Yakov pointed out, not in the mood for messing about (again, when was he ever?).

"Right," Yuri said, "But you're into the same stuff as Lilia, classical music, you know, this is more my style-"

"No." Yakov said horrified, "He didn't."

Well, at least Yakov was blaming Viktor and not Yuri. That was fantastic, but Yuri was slightly scared that he was about to lose the best piece of music he had ever skated to. He didn't even get to defend himself, before his coach stormed off, presumably about to literally storm into the love couple's apartment to yell at Viktor. Yuri would have loved to be there for it, but his blatant bias might work against him. He could have faith in Yuuri - who was hopefully also there - that he would rationally explain to Yakov that it was all fine.

Yuri finished up practice at the rink a half an hour later, and didn't even bother to take off his skates as he plumped down on a bench to check his phone. There were a long string of messages from Yuuri.

Yakov's arrived. Took him longer than I expected.

You'd probably enjoy their fight.

The third message was a short clip of Viktor and Yakov. They were both yelling, trying to drown out the other. It was near impossible to tell what they were saying, but Yuri did catch his own name several times. Yuuri continued texting.

Ah. Yakov broke a vase. I'll make him replace it.

Damn. I think I just heard Viktor swear.

Add it to the list.

I wish I had some popcorn

This is the best entertainment I've had in a while

They stopped fighting when Makka barked at them.

There is no way this is over.

Knowing that Yakov would surely yell at him too, Yuri decided to go to Viktor and Yuuri's place after practice. They might be overbearing, but at least, in this argument, they were all on the same side. Yuri was also secretly hoping that Yuuri could give him more details about their fight, because it sure had sounded hilarious. It was always fun when Viktor was upset about something and started yelling about it.

It was only three days later that Yuri decided that Viktor yelling was not so fun anymore. There was plenty of tension between Viktor and Yakov already, as Viktor was as decisive about his own programs as Potya was about where to take a nap - meaning, Viktor seemed to change the whole thing every day and Yakov was already halfway to madness. The fact that Viktor then wouldn't budge at all when it came to Yuri's program just pushed Yakov over the edge and every damn day became an actual yelling match. It wouldn't have been so bad, if only Viktor didn't come to the rink at the same time as Yuri, but since he was coaching Katsudon, whom Yuri shared ice time with, it was impossible to escape. More often than not, Katsudon would take Yuri to Lilia's earlier than normal, as he too was getting tired of their bullshit.

It was on day five that Yuri asked Lilia for her opinion, hoping that maybe she could convince Yakov - or just intimidate him into letting Yurio do the short program. She was quite good at intimidating people.

"It doesn't complement the free skate I made for you," was Lilia's dismissive answer and Yuri felt his heart sink. So much for that plan, "You should have something more elegant. It's the olympic season, you can't just fool around like you did at the last season's Finals."

"A lot of my fans liked that program!" Yuri insisted, but she just scoffed, trying to close the topic and get back to the ballet practice.

"I think it's refreshing," Yuuri said from the other end of the studio, his leg resting on the wall, almost in a perfect split as he typed something on his phone - most likely discussing dinner plans with Viktor, "It's like in Black Swan. The eccentric wildness of the short program will highlight the more traditional beauty of the free skate. I think they go quite well together. And it will certainly grab people's attention."

"Grabbing people's attention doesn't mean that it's a beautiful piece," Lilia argued, "Most often, it's the ugly which people look at."

"But it's not an ugly program," Yuuri continued, looking up at Lilia, "It's fun, different, and certainly more refined that Yurio's gala performance at the Finals. I think you should give Viktor the benefit of the doubt. He's a good choreographer."

"He's used to choreographing for himself," Lilia pointed out.

"And yet the world records for the short program and free skate are set by me and Yurio with the help of Viktor's choreography. At least let Yurio skate the program before you judge it."

"Very well," Lilia gave in, "But I won't help you convince Yakov."

Yuri would have thanked Katsudon if she had ended up being of more help, but instead just showed that his split was the better of the two.

On day seven, Yuri took matters into his own hands. Yakov was yelling something about this being Viktor's 'last chance' and whatever that meant, and Yuri could not do with another day of practice where the music - which wasn't even his short program music - was being drowned out by two supposed adults yelling like they were children fighting over a toy.

"Let me skate to the program," Yuri said confidently, and Yakov just let out the most frustrated sigh Yuri had ever heard.

"It is not proper," Yakov said for the millionth time, "This type of program isn't fitting of someone who is one of the top skaters. I will let you skate it for an exhibition only."

There was something in Yuri that wanted to yell, but the whole point of him interfering was to stop the damn yelling, so he turned to another strategy.

"Please," he said and looked up at Yakov like Potya did when he wanted more food, "I've always wanted to do this kind of program, and I would be so happy if I could do it at the Olympics. I promise I will make it fitting of my standard."

Yuri caught a small victorious smile on Viktor's face, and Yakov looked at Yuri, trying to win the battle of wills, but eventually had to back down.

"Fine!" He caved and threw up his arms in defeat, "You have exactly one week to show me that this program is worth it. We'll have a showing next week, you against Katsuki, and if I feel that your program cannot compete, we're making it your exhibition."

"Yes! Thank you!" Yuri smiled widely, really wanting Yakov to feel bad if Yuri lost the program and ready to research how to make yourself cry in case Yakov was going to try and take it away from him. Not that it would be entirely necessary, Yuri was sure he would nail this. Yakov hadn't said that he needed to win against Yuuri, that would be unfair as Yuuri had had his program for much longer than he had. Yuri just needed to be competitive.

Yuri could honestly say that in his entire life, he had never been happier to skate, and he almost couldn't believe that it was happening under Viktor's tutelage. The first thing that struck Yuri about this program, when they had finally settled on a choreography (leave it to Viktor to have somehow tweaked the program in the one week he had been fighting with Yakov), was that it was fast paced all the way through. There were hardly any breaks and when there were, it wasn't more than a second where Yuri would do something to appeal to the audience. And though Yuri would collapse on the ice after almost every runthrough of the program, he loved every second of it.

The second thing Yuri noticed was that Viktor didn't pay a lot of attention to his jumps, and had somewhat weak transitions for both the combination and the solo quad toe in the beginning. While Yuri's strong point didn't lie in transitions, he felt that he was better than this, but Viktor kept dismissing him and urged him to just focus on the rest of the program. It made Yuri think that this wasn't the final jump layout, which made him curious as to what Viktor had in mind.

The third thing that hit Yuri was that he wasn't as good of a performer as he would have loved to be. He blamed it halfly on the fact that during run-throughs, his only real audience was Viktor who was picking everything he did apart, but Yuri found that every single night, he'd watch an endless amount of Phichit performances to figure out how on earth he made the audience go absolutely wild with just the flick of a wrist. Yuri always got the most applause when he landed successful jumps, but that wouldn't satisfy Viktor. No, Yuri needed to have the audience screaming whenever he looked at people in the stands, even if his back was turned to half of the audience.

The show-off between Yuri and Yuuri felt a lot like Hotsprings on Ice, except Yakov had made Mila join them to show off her new program (he wanted to see how well she could execute her triple axel in her short program under pressure - they had a standing agreement that if she didn't land it, she would only use it in her free skate). There was also the fact that Yuuri was much less nervous this time around, as there was nothing for him to win or lose, as far as Yuri was aware of.

They drew lots to determine the order and Yuri got stuck with the last skate, while Mila got to go first. It was a little less glamorous than the show in Hasetsu as none of them had costumes yet. Yuri wore the same outfit as he had for his Welcome to the Madness routine, expect he had promised to not take off the jacket this time, his hair was fully pulled back in a ponytail, there was no excessive makeup, and he hadn't stolen Viktor's expensive sunglasses either. Yuuri was wearing an old costume from a couple of seasons ago. It was white and blue with frills at both the top and the bottom, and with his hair down and no glasses, it made him look younger than he was. Mila was wearing a simply black dress she usually wore to the Russian Test skates.

They had a small audience as they performed their pieces. It consisted mostly of rinkmates, and all the coaches who worked with Yakov. Lilia had of course shown up as well, although Yuri suspected that was mostly for Yuuri's sake as his program was exactly the kind of thing she loved about skating. A balletic interpretation of piano music with beautiful athletic elements.

Yuri paid only a little attention to Mila's program, mostly interested in whether or not she would land the triple axel, and when she did, he put his headphones back on and did some warm-up exercises. Yuuri was taking it much easier as he applauded Mila for every element done well. It was amazing how much the competitive environment affected him, as he usually shut himself completely off whenever a competition began.

Yuri watched Yuuri's performance with his headphones on, knowing the program like the back of his hand at this point. He just needed to see if he landed his jumps. The triple axel was almost too easy for Yuuri - honestly, if that guy didn't think of it himself, Yuri would just ask him if would ever consider going for the quad. Whether or not Yuuri would bring that to competition would depend on his self-confidence, but Yuri just wanted to see it be done. He had only ever seen a computer-generated Viktor do it, when some sports channel had discussed the possibility of someone actually attempting it in competition one day.

The insanely difficult planned quad flip-triple toe combination was less successful, but Yuuri didn't let it bother him as he decided to not do the triple toe, and put it on the end of the quad toe instead. It was the rational back-up plan Yuuri could always use in competition and Yuri knew he had practiced that layout just as many times as he had the one he planned on using in competition. The program was almost fully developed, and it made Yuri a little nervous. His short program still had a long way to go, but he had to make the best of it.

As he passed Yuuri while entering the rink, he got a supportive 'good luck' and a little pat on the back, which somehow only made Yuri more nervous.

He took his starting position and Viktor started the music. Yuri had the choreography down, and was confident that he could do almost exactly what Viktor had shown him in practice, but it was the performance part that was difficult for him. Using the right expressions and connecting with people was not as easy as some people made it seem, but that was what Yuri needed to do. Yuri was sure that even if he popped, underrotated and fell on all his jumps, Yakov would still approve of the program, if he performed it right.

So Yuri put on a confident smile and tried his best to make eye contact with whoever was within his line of sight. He did completely blow the opening quad, popping it into a triple, but that was okay, the jumps were not his top priority right now. In competition, he was confident that he would land them, especially in short program where his stamina didn't completely fade away, so Yakov could say nothing to a popped quad toe. And Yuri was still certain that Viktor some kind of plan regarding the jumps anyway, so he wasn't likely to care either. All he could do was keep the slightly cocky smile on his face, trying to make the audience forget that he had made a mistake at all.

However, Yuri did like his jumps and put effort into making his quad sal-double toe successful (a double toe only, as he had already used his triple toe when he made that first mistake and he needed to prove that he could make last minute changes to make up for mistakes). After that, the spins.

Yuri had spent many sleepless nights, trying to figure out how on earth Chris managed to make spins the highlights of his short programs. Yuri had always been particularly fond of Chris' Sochi performance, which had gotten him silver at the games, but he could never crack the code behind Chris' spins. Maybe it was the unique positions in his sit spins, or perhaps the speed with which he did a camel spin, Yuri didn't know, but he needed to be able to highlight at least one of his spins. Viktor had choreographed two of his spins back-to-back to allow for both the step sequence and his triple axel to fit into the second half, as well as the closing combination spin, so if Yuri wanted to keep people's attention during his spins, he needed them to be perfect. The whole performance was meant to grab people's attention, but for people who weren't a fan of the sport to begin with, that was hard when you just saw a person spinning for more than ten seconds.

Yuri made his spins as damn fast as he possibly could, trying to create excitement in that way, and smirked confidently as he exited the second spin, flipping his head up as he did so to create a confident persona as he gained speed to enter the triple axel. Perhaps his focus on the performance made him mess up his speed, because he barely rotated the axel and had to fight to stay on his feet, immediately entering the upbeat, fast-paced step sequence which Viktor had made look so unbelievably easy to execute, when it was by far the hardest thing Yuri had ever attempted to do. He blamed it all on a lack of experience.

The energetic step sequence almost killed him, and the final spin was not at all up to Yuri's normal standard, but he got through it and used his last remaining energy to not collapse on the ice, wanting to at least be able to take the criticism while still standing.

"Unusual for you to pop your jumps," Yakov commented and Yuri glared at him. Forget the damn jumps and just get to the point. "But the performance was adequate. Not quite at Katsuki's level, but at least we have something to work with."

"Is that your cryptic way of saying I can keep my program?" Yuri spat, trying to hide the fact that he was gasping for air.

"Yes," Yakov said sternly, "But you need to work hard. Cialdini is hosting a two week summer camp in July. I think it would be beneficial if you attended."

"Ugh, I will have to endure two weeks of Chulanont? How did you ever train with him Katsudon?" Yuri turned his attention to Yuuri who was standing by the barrier with Viktor, having listened in to the conversation.

"He's a good rink mate," Yuuri shrugged, "But you will only have to endure it for a week, Phichit is coming to visit during the second week of the training camp."

"That's the best news I've heard all year," Yuri said, slightly sarcastic, but Yuuri's mischievous smile made him a little nervous.

"I hear that JJ will be there too."

"No~" Yuri whined, "Training camps are supposed to be fun! Why am I being punished?"

"I'm sure you'll have plenty of fun," Viktor smiled and Yuri hung his head in defeat. Two weeks of JJ would likely kill him before Yakov got the chance.