Yurio returned to Russia that night, leaving me and Yuuri to train alone once more. The next morning, as I stood in the rink waiting for him to show up, I thought about where things stood between us. I wanted to keep a clear line between our personal relationship (however slowly it was developing) and our professional one. The trouble was that my feelings for him didn't just turn off when we stepped onto the ice. If anything, they intensified. It didn't help that I was trying to train him to skate a seduction. Still, I didn't want my feelings for him, and whatever feelings he might have for me, to interfere with his coaching.
When he dashed in half an hour late, I ignored completely (mostly... alright, barely) the sexual thrill of him on his knees in front of me. Instead, I replied cheerfully and got us started on his training.
The whole next week was a whirlwind. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Yuuri on the ice, but my favorite part of our days together was soaking in the spring each evening. The fact that we were both naked had very little to do with it. Okay, it did have something to do with it, but really, it was more about relaxing with Yuuri, unwinding after a grueling day, getting him to open up to me.
More than once we'd scandalized the others at the spring by stretching after getting out of the water. I was certain that by then everyone assumed the most titillating things about us. And that suited me just fine.
Despite our continuous work, Yuuri still seemed to have trouble finding his Eros. He trained harder than anyone I'd ever seen before, but there was still something missing. Not only that, but I wanted him to think about the music for his free skate, and he was coming up blank for that too.
"Find something that inspires you. It could even be a memory," I suggested. "Like when a girl said she loved you." Or a boy...
"What?!" he yelled. He glared at me, then froze. I could only blink. Then his hands came up and he was waving them frantically. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to snap at you! I'm just really stressed right now."
"No, it's my fault," I assured him. "I forgot you never had a lover." As if I could forget. Still, I shouldn't have provoked him. But both his reaction as well as his lack of denial told me that my assumption was right. It didn't explain the night of the banquet, but it did explain a lot about his reactions to me. He really was as innocent as he appeared. It was no wonder he was having trouble with Eros. It was something I would have to give more thought to and perhaps change my approach. Both with the program, and with the man himself.
After lunch, he was working on his step sequence when we started talking about his costume. I thought perhaps he should have a new one made for the real competitions. Not only was it incredibly distracting to see him encased in skin tight black material, but I didn't want him to feel like he was imitating me or somehow below me because the one he'd worn during Hotsprings on Ice was an old one of mine. He disagreed strongly and wanted to keep wearing it.
We bickered back and forth, our arguments getting more and more ridiculous, until I leaned against the edge of the rink and declared, "don't wear a costume at all then!"
"What?"
"We can't decide, so just go out naked." I flopped my whole upper body down dramatically.
He stopped skating and leaned against the other side of the railing from where I stood, trying to catch his breath and looking at me as if I had gone crazy. "Who would want to see me naked on the ice?"
I perked up right away. I couldn't help my grin. "At the very least, I would."
He gaped at me, cheeks flushed – though that was at least partly from exertion – and eyes wide.
"What?" I asked, casually. Considering he'd never been in a relationship before, it was likely that he hadn't even known my earlier attempts were flirting. Surely this would leave no doubt. He shook his head as if to clear it.
"N-nothing. I just thought you meant that seriously for a second." He straighten and his face became set.
What would it take to get it through to him? "Yuuri, I did-"
"I'm keeping that costume, and that's that." His tone left no argument.
This time, it was my turn to be surprised. Yuuri was so rarely assertive. Certainly he'd never before been so determined to go against my advice. Why was keeping that costume so important to him? Instead of asking him outright, I took off my blade covers and walked onto the ice. When I was next to him, I took his hand and pulled him gently toward me. We glided a little, then I turned. He turned with me. The music for the short program was playing on repeat, so we moved to the rhythm, but casually, easily. At one point, I took his other hand as well and led him back against my chest. Effortlessly, we slid across the ice in perfect symphony. If only there was a men's pair skate...
"Tell me what you thought of when you first saw me skate in that costume," I murmured in his ear.
"Beautiful," he replied instantly, half dazed by our dance. "I thought you looked so beautiful, and you moved even more so." We spun out together, then I drew him close again.
"And how do you feel wearing it?"
"Like..." he looked up at me, a hazy look in his eyes that I'd never seen before. "Like anything is possible. Like I might be able to make you see me the same way."
My breath caught. I slowed us to a stand still, then cupped his chin in one hand while I wrapped the other around his back and pulled him against me. "Yuuri. Have you not guessed that I already do?"
He seemed surprised, almost startled. But he didn't pull away. The tip of his tongue touched his lower lip, and I desperately wanted to kiss him. Even if it was only briefly, softly... I leaned closer.
The music screeched, then stopped. "Oh, sorry guys, the girls got a hold of the sound system. I'll get the music back on in just a second." The feminine voice through the speaker broke the spell we were under and Yuuri backed out of my hold immediately. I cursed internally. Why couldn't that interruption have come five seconds earlier or five seconds later?
The song resumed and Yuuri began to go through the program again. We didn't speak any more about the costume, but we both knew he'd won the argument.
That night, I tried to get him to go out to dinner with me. He refused. Back at the resort, I asked him if he wanted to soak in the spring with me. Again, he refused. When the evening came to a close, I caught him on his way to bed. I suggested a slumber party, like the ones we'd had before Yurio had come. He barely even acknowledged me. I went back to my room, wondering if that almost-kiss had ruined the rapport we'd developed. Maybe I had read everything all wrong and now he felt uncomfortable with me. What would I do then?
The next morning I rose early and went to the rink to wait for him to join me. I was determined to be strictly professional. No flirting, no innuendo, no casual touches. But he didn't show up. He'd been late before from oversleeping, but I didn't think that was the case this time. I took off my skates and rode back to the resort slowly, thinking of what I should do next.
Maybe it was time to clear the air between us. Lay my cards on the table and find out what he really wanted.
I strode purposefully down the hall to his room and slid open the door without bothering to knock. He jumped out of bed guiltily. "Let's skip practice today," I said with a smile. "We can go down to the ocean."
I half expected him to balk at the idea, but he rose and dressed. We walked silently down to the beach and then sat beside the water, Makkachin between us. I told him about missing the sea back home, and he opened up to me about his doubts. Again I wondered how it was possible for him to think so little of himself.
"You aren't a weak person, Yuuri. Nobody who knows you would ever think that." He said nothing, so I went on. "Will you tell me, what is it you want me to be to you?" I kept my eyes on the water, afraid I would give away my own desires if I was looking at him. "A father figure?"
"No."
"A brother, or just a friend?" He didn't reply with words, but he made a growling sound of frustration. That narrowed things down considerably. I made a gamble. "So then your lover. I'll try my best."
He shot up as if he'd been electrocuted. He was shaking his head and waving his arms frantically. "No no no!" Well that wasn't good for my ego. I tried to stifle my disappointment. "All I want is for you to be who you are."
Suddenly, my chest felt tight. I'd wanted clarity, but instead, Yuuri had once again turned my world on its end. No one had ever only wanted me as I was. They wanted the skating prodigy, the gold medalist, the world champion. Not just Victor Nikiforov, the flawed man. I'd thought that the best possible outcome would be for him to say he wanted me as a lover. How wrong I'd been. Somehow, he continued to show me that there was more to him. More to what could be between us. "I look up to you," he went on. "I always have. I was afraid to let you see my shortcomings. I guess that's why I was avoiding you. I'll make it up to you by skating my best."
After a pause, I rose and held my hand out to him. "You have a deal." I thought about his family, the unconditional love they showed him, and how it made him believe that he couldn't trust their judgment of his skating. He needed to know that despite my own feelings for him, he wouldn't have to worry about that with me. "And I won't let you off easy. That's my way of showing my love." His hand slid into mine and held there. It wasn't perfect clarity, but it was something better.
The next day, Yuuri seemed to have a new fire within him. He was making good on his promise to skate his best. He'd asked me to teach him all of my moves, and we spent the morning going over all the jumps I knew. I was again reminded that he had incredible stamina. This time, I was too exhausted to even think about the sexual implications of that.
After a mortifying moment when he noticed my greatest vanity – Bhoze, had I really gotten so old that I was starting to get a bald spot? - we rounded out the afternoon with more work on jumps and spins.
I collapsed into bed that night, utterly spent. It seemed that my eyes had barely closed when I heard my door being opened hastily and Yuuri came dashing in the room. Makkachin got stepped on somewhere along the way, but after a moment, Yuuri was settled onto the bed and had put earbuds in my ears. I listened intently, hoping against hope that this one would be more fitting than the last one.
The music started slowly, then began to change. Just like Yuuri himself had. It was beautiful. It was perfect. I nodded and smiled. "This is exactly what you should skate to," I told him once I'd pulled the earphones out. He nearly vibrated with excitement. I shifted to the side so that he could stretch out beside me.
"You really think so?"
"I do. But more importantly, do you think so?"
"Yes!" he replied emphatically. I smiled again. There was the excitement I was looking for. We stayed up late discussing the choreography he would use for the program. In the wee hours of the morning, he fell asleep, head pillowed on my bicep. I wanted nothing more than to stay awake and watch over him, to take in every moment of it, but my own eyes were so heavy that I succumbed to sleep only moments later.
Two days later, the event schedule came out, and Yuuri's entire extended skating family was abuzz with the news. They explained to me that he would need to go through national competitions before qualifying, though, because of his losses the previous season. I could already see the pressure beginning to hit him (and his family's talk about the skating world hating him for taking me from competing didn't help) so I decided that we needed to take some time off before facing it.
The next day I packed us a bag and we went down to the beach again. It had warmed up considerably since I'd arrived in Japan, and the weather was perfect for swimming. Yuuri balked at first, but then I picked him up and tossed him in the water. He came up sputtering and laughing, then tackled me into the water as well.
We wrestled, seeing who could dunk the other more, splashing and playing like children. And perhaps we both needed it. In careers like ours, there's little chance for frivolity or idle play. For most skaters, training is the main focus of their lives. Everything else is put on the back burner. Even finishing college, like Yuuri and I did, is uncommon.
It was refreshing to see him so lighthearted. To see his smile come so easily. When we finished swimming, we rinsed off under the fresh water spigot, Makkachin dancing and barking around us. I tried to spray him and he pushed my head under the shower. After a few moments, we were nearly hugging under the water, bodies slick and pressed close together. The laughter we had been sharing faded from one moment to the next, and then we were staring at each other, tension thick between us.
Yuuri stared up at me, his dark lashes spiky with water. I watched the line of his throat as he swallowed thickly, his adam's apple bobbing down and then back up. My eyes trailed lower, across his chest and down to the band of his swimming shorts. Not good. I jerked my gaze back up and pulled back a little before he could feel the evidence of my body's reaction to such close proximity with him. I wasn't ashamed of it by any means, but I didn't think he was ready to even begin thinking of things in those terms yet.
I'd already scared him more than once. I didn't have any intention to do it again. I would go slow, give him time to adjust, to open himself up to the idea. And until then, I would be happy with what was already between us.
June passed far too quickly, and then July slipped through my fingers as well. Yuuri was incredibly driven in his training. Nearly every free moment he had was spent either on the ice or pushing his body to its limits. More than once, I'd walked into the locker room at the rink to find him bandaging his bloody feet. The gruesome sight wasn't one I was unfamiliar with, after all, my own had looked like that often enough, but still I hated to see it. I began demanding that he let me doctor him so that I could at least feel like I was helping in some way.
There were other injuries, too, all relatively small but still enough to grate on me. Bruises from falling on the ice too many times, strains and sprains, even a cut on his hand that required stitches after he'd slipped holding his blade in a toe grab. I'd bought him a new pair of gloves to replace the torn and bloody pair that had been his favorites.
Often, I would ask him for a sleepover, or we would fall asleep together talking. I tried to minimize the physical contact between us on those nights because I wanted us to get to know each other more, to ease into anything further, but it was hard to keep my hands off of him. Despite my flirtatious personality with my fans and friends, I'd never considered myself a tactile person until Yuuri. I didn't feel the need to hug and hold and touch any of the other people in my life nearly the way I did with Yuuri.
At first, he'd been nearly paralyzed when I would touch him. After a while, though, he seemed to anticipate and even look forward to me having my hands on him in one way or another. I took that as a good sign that things were moving in the right direction with us.
That summer was one of the best of my life, up to that point. I'd lived alone for more than a decade, and it was refreshing to spend so much time with a family. Especially one as loving as Yuuri's. Not just his blood relatives, though they were wonderful, but his skating family, too. Yakov and Chris were probably the closest thing I had to family, and even they were mostly connected to me by the sport. Yurio had started to get close to me in his own gruff and bratty way, but though I saw him as a kindred spirit with our similar backgrounds, there was still a huge distance between us.
The kind of family Yuuri had was yet another thing that my success had robbed me of. Not that it had anything to do with the death of my parents, but as I'd won more and more, other skaters had shied away from me. Winning in the junior division, setting world records, had turned several of my rink mates against me. Some were jealous, some were upset, some were uncomfortable. It was a lonely existence. Alexi, my beloved poodle before Makkachin, had helped fill the hole in my life, but there was only so much a dog could do.
Yuuri had everything I'd ever dreamed of as a lonely child skating to win the affection of the world. If not for the fact that he loved and appreciated his family greatly, it would have been easy to resent him. Instead, I found myself looking up to him more for it. Yes, he had self esteem issues and it was hard for him to believe that their high opinion of him was deserved, but he never doubted their love. When we weren't training, he spent time helping out at the resort, cleaning with Mari, cooking with his mother, even tending to the gardens with his father.
They drew me into their close knit circle, accepting me as a fixture in the family. We looked at embarrassing baby pictures of Yuuri, watched videos of him skating as a child, even read some of his old school essays about how much he loved being on the ice. Monako laughed at how often I had figured into those essays, but I found it incredibly flattering.
I had been pouring my heart out through my routines, seeking love and family and a bond. Halfway across the world, my skating had reached Yuuri and he'd been giving me his support and affection for most of his life. I'd gotten what I wanted... all I'd needed to do was find him.
One night in August, Yuuri and I were stepping out of the hot spring and my knee gave out. It wasn't something that happened often, but sometimes in rapid, extreme temperature changes, it would buckle and drop me like a stone. Yuuri was at my side instantly.
"Are you okay?" His gentle hands moved over me, seeking any injury.
"I'm fine," I groaned a little, hating that it would be another few minutes before I could put weight back on the joint. "It's just my knee." Yuuri's fingers found the scar that ran for six inches on the inside of my left knee.
"From your accident when you were twenty," he murmured.
"The very same."
"I didn't know it still bothered you. After you came back the next year, there was never any sign at all-"
"I didn't want there to be. I worked tirelessly to get it to where it had been before, so that no one would even remember I'd had an injury. For a while, it had been my greatest ambition to shock the world by making a comeback and doing so with no lingering effects." I smiled at the memory. They had all been shocked, indeed.
"Everyone thought you were gong to retire."
"Perhaps other skaters would have. But I refused to do what they expected. When I retire, it's going to be on my own terms."
"I'm glad you didn't," he whispered. I looked up at him, then down to where his hand was still resting gently on my knee. The fact that we were both naked suddenly hit me full force.
"I am too," I grinned. "If you don't mind helping me, I think I should be able to get up now." He held out his hand and I took it so he could pull me to my feet. We managed to get me back to my room with him supporting me under one arm. I realized right away that I didn't really need the help, but I wasn't going to say no to the contact with him.
Once I'd pulled on pajamas, I stretched out on the bed and Yuuri joined me. He asked about the surgeries it had taken to repair the damage to my knee, what kind of physical therapy I'd done, even how I'd worked to strengthen my body again so that I could get back to skating. We talked so much about me that I would have thought I was being rude or boring him except for the smile on his face. His unique, happy smile, the one that wrinkled his nose, and showed off the laugh lines around his eyes. It was a beautiful thing to see.
As September approached, I felt as though Yuuri's personality shifted. The closeness we'd gained over the last months seemed to lessen, despite how hard I worked to maintain it. I could tell that again, the pressure was starting to get to him. When he pulled away from me, I either pulled him back or met him half way. I wasn't going to let something like nerves get in the way of the beautiful thing we were building.
