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The moment was magical, they'd all say afterwards. The way the last competitor swept across the ice like a swath of silk, unfurling and then rolling back in ways they hadn't known a human body could bend. And in every movement was a plentiful amount of liquid love, spilling down his shoulders and skittering in droplets through the air from the flicks of his fingers.

When he touched down from jumps, a wave rippled across the mirror-like surface; that unseen love creating an invisible veneer that twitched and thrummed with his every motion. The whole program was technically flawless, swirling from sequence to sequence until that last quad flip.

Kenjirou Minami, now 21, laughed when they asked him about it, the shock of ruby red hair falling into his eyes. "What a jump," he remembered, smoothing his chin with a finger.

Yuri Plisetsky reluctantly agreed. His commentary on the jump consisted of sarcasm and backhanded compliments but even the most inexperienced interviewer could see the remnants of indescribable wonder coming back into his eyes as he slipped through the past.

"It was just like that little piggy to save the quad flip for the end. Sometimes, I think he liked surprises more than Viktor did."

The columnist caught Otabek Altin at the entrance to the Russian rink, coming in for a joint practice. He lit up, as Plisetsky did, when asked about four years ago, but the columnist suspected the almost delighted expression on the famous skater's face was more because he was finally getting to do what he loved with his boyfriend of three years.

Altin's commentary was right to the point and he moved his hands when he spoke, as if the excitement of the moments remembered needed another outlet other than his concise wording to escape through. He swung his whole arm up to describe the jump, fingers twirling for the rotations. One. Two. Three. Four.

Jean-Jacques Leroy was unashamedly excited to be asked about the jump, singing praises of the technical aspects. He said nothing of the emotion behind it and it was the columnist's initial opinion that he couldn't find the proper words. But at the end of the interview, when his wife came to pick him up from practice, the soft look in Leroy's eyes changed the columnist's original assessment.

Christophe Giacometti was the opposite, unabashedly excited about the emotion and the significance and the timing of the move, set perfectly to orchestrate the skating world's greatest romance. And orchestrate it that quad flip had.

The columnist themselves remembered sitting at home, astounded, watching the event happen on screen and wishing oh so strongly that they could move the cameras to focus on the skater's coach and lover, to see his face in front of that everlasting declaration.

Unfortunately, Giacometti had not been watching the coach at the time either, too set on the skater himself, but Phichit Chulanont, the skater's best friend, had been.

Chulanont told the story with a steadiness that clashed with his personality, but it was clear through his impassioned word choice that he only wanted to make sure everything came out just right, so the world would know what true love looked like at the second of conception.

The flip had ended out the program, the skater standing, panting, on the ice, one hand outstretched towards the love of his life, his engagement ring gleaming on his right ring finger. What came next would go down in history just as much as the flip itself would.

It was a beautiful move, said Chulanont; it was a stupid move, said Plisetsky. But Giometti, Leroy, Altin, and Minami all agreed that it was a unbelievable move, for the coach to come running out on the ice, skidding in his shoes as though he'd never won five championships before.

Then some phantom crack, some brush of shards, that the blades of the skater's feet had flipped up like fate, caused the coach to trip just a little, and the skater, despite his exhaustion, to catch him, and dip him, the two reaching for each other until their lips were woven together like two cuts of the same cloth.

Giacometti claimed he could still hear the roar of the crowd, and see the waves of people standing in a screaming, crying, gasping ovation, a tribute to the love they were lucky enough to see that day. For all of the money it had cost to get their tickets, none of them could have predicted how much the experience was worth.

Most only remembered the jump and the kiss, the way neither of the two'd had enough strength left in their legs to make it to the kiss and cry, and how they'd collapsed, sobbing, in each other's arms as the gold medal was announced.

It was only those closest to them, Altin and Leroy and Plisetsky and Giacometti and Chulanont, who had run out onto the ice, standing like Grecian pillars around the couple, who remembered all of the little things.

Things like the way they held each other, waiting for the scores; the unaffected blush that swept across the coach's cheeks in a fashion the audience had never seen before; how the skater laughed through his tears and intertwined his fingers with his coach's, their engagement bands clicking lightly.

Plisetsky had gone to get their medal, skittering and grinning uncharacteristically across the ice to the judges table, grabbing all three medals by the ribbon and rushing back, slinging the bronze around his own neck as he went. He passed the silver to Chulanont, who laughed. He didn't pull his phone out from his back pocket, preferring to document the moment in his memory.

Then, with a grimace that was more smile than smirk, Plisetsky dropped the gold around the skater's neck, who jumped at the sudden weight and stared down, wide-eyed. Leroy and Giometti pulled the two to their feet and as they turned to face the crowd only Chulanont remembered seeing Altin's hand land on Plisetsky's shoulder.

The uproar continued, drowning out the shaky voices of officials, whose announcements of the other winners were superfluous at best. Drawing upon the confidence of his short program, the skater lifted the metal, grinning out at the Japanese flag held in the blubbering hands of his sister and ballet teacher.

Then as he lifted the medal to his lips he spun his coach around towards him and their lips met the gold at the same time. The crowd, if possible got even louder.

And they lost it to an unearthly level when the skater looped the medal around both of their necks and used the proximity to kiss his coach, just as brazen and beautiful as the first time.

The assembled skaters cheered and laughed, the other two medals utterly forgotten in the happiness they were privileged enough to witness.

It took quite a while for everything to settle down and the announcers to complete their tasks; the crowd finally remembering that more than one person had competed for the honors they were all receiving now.

When every contestant got off the ice, the first person to rush forward was a well-known Japanese commentator with black hair spiked high off of his head, who the skater grinned at. His first question was the one on everyone's lips and the Jumbotron operator dutifully zoomed in so all the crowd could read the response on the lips of that fantastical pair.

The words have since been immortalized on the internet and in newspaper records but no matter what happened to be said, there was no clearer message the couple could send than the coach taking the skater's hand and kissing that golden band, amid an absolute riot of noise. People were celebrating a wedding they had only heard about recently with more joy than those of their close family members. It was triumph, a conclusive beginning of an era. But not a soul in that stadium had worries. The smiles on those two radiant faces made clear that they would be just fine.

And to top it all off, what a wedding they had. After half a year of engagement the two finally set the date and were married in the small, seaside Japanese town they had both come to call home. They hosted with a minimal wedding party, but a reception that included a couple thousands. Legend says the cleanup took several days alone.

Now, four years later, on their child's first birthday, the columnist's article went out, with interviews from everyone and anyone who thought they could add just a bit of sparkle to the canopy of stars, that was the story of Yuuri and Viktor.

Author's Note:

Please kudo or leave a comment if you enjoyed. I just wrote this for fun! :) Love to the Yoi! Fandom.

Acti