Chapter 7: September

~|Week 1|~


"Yuuri?"

Yuuri flinched slightly. He hadn't been sleeping, but the tired daze he'd fallen into blotted out most of his surroundings. The spread of the hot baths before him steamed gently, the faint glow of predawn bathing the gardens beyond, the faintest sheen of dew that dampened the pale rock pavers.

Blinking rapidly to drag himself from his grogginess, Yuuri glanced towards the doorway alongside him. He hadn't heard it open, couldn't even remember if he'd closed it in the first place, but it was cracked ajar now. Victor stood within, eyes heavy with sleep and his robe slightly askew as though he'd only just thrown it on.

Yuuri attempted a smile. He drew his legs a little closed to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees, and drew his fingers further into the long sleeves of his jumper. It wasn't supposed to be cold, shouldn't have been, but whether it was from his tiredness of something else, Yuuri felt it. He could barely suppress a shiver.

"Hi," he said quietly. "You're up early."

"Not as early as you, it seems." Victor hid a yawn behind his hand before stepping fully through the doorway and sliding it closed behind him. "What time did you get up?"

"Not so long ago."

"Are you still having trouble sleeping?"

Yuuri turned his gaze aside a little sheepishly. "Only a little."

It was a lie. All of it was a lie, or at least a bending of the truth. Yuuri had barely slept that night, just as he'd barely sleep every day that week. As soon as he climbed into bed, his head hitting the pillow and the comforting weight of Victor flopping into the blankets next to him, it was as though a switch was flicked demanding he pause, cling to wakefulness, and think.

It forced him to think about his day, and every glitch in his routine that he'd missed, every error he'd made in his jumps, or his turns, or his deficiencies in his exercise schedule. It made him remember every bite of food he'd eaten, and hate himself for the forced delay before he could rid it from his belly. It was made even worse because Victor, and Minako, and Yurio… they knew now. They knew and they told him to stop.

Yuuri couldn't stop, so he didn't. He just had to be more careful with it to escape their notice, and that deception weighed upon him like lead boots.

Those moments lying awake forced him to remember his brief glances in the mirror when he finally managed to make it to a bathroom and how he could swear he looked different. He could feel how the food had settled upon him, weighing him down just as heavily. The sight called forth the same feeling of guilt that had washed over him each time he stuck his fingers down his throat and struggled to keep himself as quiet as possible as he brought up his dinner.

It was hard. All of it was hard, because Victor now knew. Minako knew, and Yurio knew, and that was horrible, terrible, but Yuuri couldn't stop. He couldn't let himself, even if he had told them all he would try. They asked him to, and asked and asked, all but pleading, and Yuuri agreed. But he couldn't keep his promise. They didn't know. They didn't understand how necessary it was.

Each thought – the guilt, the shame, the frustration, and the self-hatred for what he was doing – rose uncalled for in Yuuri's mind when he fell into bed in an exhausted heap. If he managed to sleep, it was a bonus. That morning had not been one of those bonuses, which was unfortunate given that Yuuri felt utterly exhausted.

Victor lowered himself to the ground at Yuuri's side, crossing his legs and pressing his back against the wall. He regarded Yuuri unblinkingly, and Yuuri hated that stare. He hated it because there was a touch of pain in it, a touch of longing and sadness that Yuuri didn't know how to get rid of. The worst part of it was that Victor didn't even seem to realise he wore it so plainly. Worse, too, that Yuuri know if he didn't lie, the pain and sadness would only grow.

"Do you want to talk?" Victor asked quietly.

Yuuri shrugged. "About what?"

"About anything. Usually you have more trouble sleeping when a competition is coming up, but…"

He trailed off, but Yuuri heard the unspoken words nonetheless: but championships don't start for another few weeks. But it's more likely to be for another reason. But I want to ask you, to have you tell me, even though I know you don't really want to talk about it.

Yuuri didn't know how much Victor understood. He hadn't asked, and Yuuri wasn't sure he'd be able to bring himself to tell him even if he did. Minako he was sure had a broader understanding, and that was scary enough. But if Victor knew?

The pain and sadness was bad enough already. Victor had always had a tendency to fluctuate between childish delight and mature solemnity by the hour, but that didn't mean Yuuri wanted to induce that change himself. It didn't mean he could bring himself to upset him unnecessarily.

He's got his own programs to focus on, Yuuri told himself every day when Victor looked at him like he wanted to ask. I shouldn't – I can't – drag him down with my problems, even if he thinks he wants to know them.

That was what Yuuri told himself. Sometimes he even convinced himself it was the whole truth.

Victor took Yuuri's silence as he always did. And, just as he always did, he leant sideways just slightly until their shoulders touched. A hand rose easily, casually, and without request, Yuuri unlocked his own from his knees and latched onto his fingers. Victor's hands were warm in his grasp.

For a long time, they sat in silence. Only when the first hint of morning light arose, pale and orange-pink, did Victor speak.

"It's very pretty, how it spills all over the baths in the morning," he murmured. "Maybe you could wake me to watch it with you when you get up from now on?"

The unspoken weight behind his words hit Yuuri hard enough that his hand tightened compulsively upon Victor's. "Iie," he replied just a quietly. "You need your beauty sleep."

"I'm beautiful even without my sleep," Victor said.

Yuuri could see his smile even before he glanced towards him. It was joking, but there was a hint of sincerity to his words, too. Victor wasn't arrogant most of the time, but he did have a confidence and grasp on reality that most people wouldn't admit to.

"True," Yuuri admitted.

"Will you wake me?"

Yuuri turned his gaze out across the baths once more. Choose your battles, arose as a thought in his mind, and he hated himself for it. It felt utterly manipulative, and Yuuri loathed that he'd lowered himself to such deflections. But if Victor asked for this much and Yuuri allowed it, then…

Then I can deny him something else that's more important. Yuuri hated that thought just as much, even if it was true. They were small battles of wits, necessary allowances so that Yuuri could get through the day. He would accept the company of those he cared for, company that almost resembled babysitting, so that he could all but beg for the permission of a morning run that he supposedly 'shouldn't need'. Just as Yuuri accepted his recent disallowance into Minako's studios in the afternoons with the agreement that he wouldn't have food all but forced down his throat.

Small battles. Small victories.

So Yuuri nodded. "Alright. When I'm up, then, I'll wake you."

Victor made a small, satisfied little sound, and his fingers rethreaded through Yuuri's. "Thank you," he murmured, and Yuuri hated himself all over again. That Victor thanked him for such a small thing…

That feeling rose like a physical itch, a jitteriness that demanded release much as the weight of food in his stomach demanded fingers down his throat and active expulsion. Sighing, straightening, Yuuri clambered slowly to his feet. Victor followed him without question, still clasping his hand.

"I think," Yuuri murmured, "I'm going to go for a walk."

"Oh." There was no inflection in Victor's voice. He regarded Yuuri for a moment before, "I'll come?"

Victor posed it as a question, a request, but it wasn't really one. He might not babysit Yuuri as Minako had taken to in attending dinner at Yu-Topia each night, but he was almost as attached to Yuuri as his shadow was. Yuuri didn't hate it, even loved it most of the time, except…

It meant that there wouldn't be a run. It meant that, sometimes, Yuuri had to put off purging after dinner out of begrudging necessity. Yuuri loved Victor, loved him more than anyone else in the world, but this?

It was a problem. Yuuri was still struggling to work out what to do about it.

Still, Yuuri would choose his battles. He'd gotten good at that. Instead of dancing around awkward denials, he nodded. The smile of relief that spread widely across Victor's lips struck him like a slap across his face.

I shouldn't be doing this to him, Yuuri thought, and it sounded like a sob in the silence of his mind. It's not fair. What hurt more was that, despite the pain of that thought, Yuuri knew it wouldn't change anything. He wouldn't change what he did. Not if he could help it.

"I'll bring Makkachin, then," Victor said, starting towards the door and dragging Yuuri after him. "Right?"

"Of course," Yuuri said.

"Are you sure you don't want to try and sleep again?" Victor glanced over his shoulder as he led them from the baths and down the dark hallway inside. "We can just go a little later and still get back before Yurio wakes up."

Yuuri had to smothered the urge to vehemently shake his head. He settled for a small smile instead and shrugged. "I'm fine. I'm not really tired anyway."

Victor's own smile didn't falter, but there was a knowing cast to his gaze. Yuuri had become somewhat aware of that acknowledgement as it surfaced both in Victor's and Minako's gazes of late. He hated it for the hurt he knew accompanied it.

But Victor didn't comment further, and Yuuri allowed the unspoken words to rest between them. There seemed to be a lot of that happening lately, too. Yuuri couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not.


~|Week 2|~


"People aren't supposed to look like skeletons."

Yuuri didn't even glance towards Yurio when he spoke, remaining bent forwards and focusing upon tying his skates. His fingers felt strangely fumbling that day, and it took more coordination that he knew it should.

"You've said that before," Yuuri replied absently, because Yurio had. Multiple times over the past fortnight, in fact.

"Because it's true." A soft thump clattered through the change room as Yurio had slumped back against the lockers. Yuuri knew his shoulders were hunching, his frown set and his lips slightly pursed. He'd been wearing that very expression often of late.

"I believe you," Yuuri said noncommittally, tugging his laces tighter.

"You really can't see it, can you?"

"See what?"

"That you look practically like a skeleton."

Yuuri paused in his tying. Finally, he raised his gaze. "I wish you would stop saying that."

"It's true," Yurio said curtly. "And if you could look at yourself properly, you'd realise it as well. You look like you're going to collapse at any minute."

Yurio was more direct than Victor, or at least in this matter. He hadn't learnt, as Victor had years before, that such harsh words could cling to Yuuri like a resounding echo. The journalist's article that Yuuri had read months before still drew forth without request almost every day, those fateful words singing with painful persistence.

Or maybe Yurio simply didn't care. Maybe he deemed his words necessary enough to voice that it didn't matter how much they hurt. That unjustified accusation was what had Yuuri standing, regarding Yurio flatly, and replying just as curtly.

"I'm not," he said. "I know what you're trying to suggest, and I really don't appreciate you exaggerating to make a point. Please stop saying things like that, Yurio."

Yurio's frown deepened and he clicked his tongue. "You're being deliberately blind now." He strode across the room, his skate guards, and, before Yuuri could step away from him, snatched up his arm and waved it almost accusingly between them.

"This here?" he said, shoving Yuuri's hand in his face. "This is a bone."

"Yurio –"

"You shouldn't be able to see that. It shouldn't be sticking out like that."

Yuuri swallowed back a flush of distaste that rose in his throat at Yurio's words. He knew he'd lost weight; he wasn't stupid, and if nothing else, his measurements at the gym were telling. The cut of his clothes was, too, and yes, the bony bits.

But even so, there was nothing wrong with losing the weight when Yuuri had enough to lose. There was nothing wrong with seeing the bones, because what rested alongside them in visible weight justified allowing it. The measurements spoke of reduction, but that was a good thing, and if Yuuri's clothes were a little looser on him, that wasn't a bad thing either. He had weight to lose.

Yuuri tugged his hand out of Yurio's grasp. "Please stop that."

Yurio's scowl only deepened. Yuuri didn't know why he'd chosen that moment to speak up, as it hadn't happened at all in the past weeks. If anything, Yurio had seemed somewhat subdued. It could have been thoughtful preparation for returning to Russia in another two weeks, but Yuuri wasn't so oblivious as to think that was the whole reason.

Yurio folded his arms tightly across his chest, glaring through his fringe. "You're an idiot."

"If you say so," Yuuri replied shortly.

"How are you supposed to compete if you're sick?"

"I'm not sick." A flicker of anger welled within Yuuri that he brushed aside. "Please don't say –"

"You are," Yurio interrupted him. "Minako explained enough."

Yuuri folded his lips. He wasn't angry with Minako, and he couldn't be, despite that he'd suspected even before Yurio's words that she'd said something to both Victor and Yurio. They hadn't questioned Yuuri, but they seemed to know enough of the situation nonetheless. They seemed to understand. Either they'd each done their own degree of research into matters that were only vaguely relevant to Yuuri, or Minako had spoken to them.

Yuuri wasn't angry with Minako – but he was more than a little annoyed. And that telling was only a part of the cause of his annoyance.

Taking a steadying breath, Yuuri raised his chin and thrust even that annoyance aside. "If Minako explained it, then you'll also know that you don't need to say anything because I've talked to her too."

"But –"

"It's none of your concern, Yurio. Thank you for your consideration, but please stop saying such things and trying to intervene."

"It is my concern," Yurio said fiercely. "You're supposed to be competing against me, right? That makes it my concern."

For a moment, Yuuri was struck. He leant away from Yurio slightly, and his perspective abruptly shifted. Yurio really did see him as a competitor. He did want him to do his best, to be at his best, to meet as an appropriate challenge. Yurio trained as hard as the next person – harder, even – and he really did want to face the challenge head on with everything that each of them had.

And yet Yurio was… "For someone criticising me for being thin, you're enough of a toothpick yourself, Yurio."

Why the words spilled forth, Yuuri couldn't quite say. They'd risen as thoughts in his mind before, but he'd never thought about it with real attention, never beyond comparing himself so often to Victor and Yurio both and finding himself falling short. But when they spilled forth out, Yuuri was suddenly struck.

It was true. It really was. Yurio was a slip of a kid, and yet Minako, and Victor, and Yurio were telling Yuuri that he was –

"Yurio is practically a pre-pubescent teenager whose body hasn't quite decided how it's supposed to hold itself yet."

Yuuri flinched at the words that echoed through the change room, seeming to resound off the cold walls. Before him, where he'd been frozen in blank-faced surprise, Yurio glanced towards the doorway, and Yuuri followed the line of his gaze. Victor, who had disappeared but moments before ahead of them, had planted himself in the doorway once more. He regarded them both unblinkingly.

Sometimes, with the careless bubbliness that infected him, Yuuri could almost forget that Victor could be so serious. That he could put his foot down, swallow every last ounce of joviality, and face the situation like the veteran athlete and immovable force that he was. It was only in such moments as that that Yuuri was truly reminded, and it struck him sharply enough that he almost winced.

Barely a moment of Victor's attention was spared for Yurio before he was turning his gaze towards Yuuri. He took a single step into the room, the click of his skates overloud in the deafening silence. "Comparing yourself to Yurio is comparing a juvenile cub to a jaguar," he said, his words clipped.

Yurio didn't protest. That was perhaps the most surprising part; far be it from his usual indignant outbursts, Yurio held his tongue. If anything, when he turned back to Yuuri, there was an expectant cast to his expression.

Yuuri struggled to reply in the face of Victor's hooded gaze. He hated it when Victor became like that. Hated it. "There's nothing wrong with being thin if –"

"There is," Yurio interrupted him.

Yuuri drew his gaze back towards him. He pressed his lips together, swallowing another influx of anger. "Being lighter will help with my jumps. I would have thought you'd have considered and appreciated that, Yurio."

"Bullshit," Yurio snapped, abruptly fierce once more. Cub he might be, but he bared his teeth like a lion. "If you really think that, you're stupider than I gave you credit for."

"Yurio," Victor said sharply.

Yurio's expression was livid. His eyes almost sparked, and his jaw visibly tightened. But after a beat, a moment of glaring at Yuuri, he clicked his tongue once more, turned sharply, and strode towards the door. Victor didn't even acknowledge his passing as he disappeared from the room.

The silence that followed was hollow. Victor stared at Yuuri, and Yuuri almost couldn't meet his gaze. Guilt had abruptly replaced his anger as it so often did, both for his words and for provoking such solemnity from Victor. He really did hate to see him so subdued. It wasn't like him.

"He's concerned," Victor finally said.

"Unnecessarily," Yuuri replied lowly.

"He's trying to offer support in his own way, I think, for something that he doesn't really understand."

Yuuri heard the unspoken double meaning of Victor's words but held his silence until Victor continued. "Maybe he sees it as repayment for helping him when he needed it."

"I don't need repayment."

"I didn't say you did."

Another pause stretched, as yawningly hollow as before. Then, "Do you really think that?" Victor almost whispered.

His voice somehow slid seamlessly into the silence, but Yuuri still flinched slightly. He dropped his chin, lowering his gaze to his hands, and his fingers wrapped absently around where Yurio had grasped. Yes, he could see the bones, but right alongside that… it wasn't like there wasn't weight to lose.

"It could just… be of benefit," Yuuri attempted. The excuse sounded faulty to his ears as it never did in his head.

"At the risk of your health and stamina?" Victor said just as quietly as before.

Yuuri twitched again. "I'm just trying to improve my skating."

"It doesn't need to improve."

"It does."

"But not like that. Not like this."

Yuuri had nothing more to say to that. How could he, when he knew better than Victor what he needed, what his body needed, and how to get there? What Victor saw, what he perceived – it was different to Yuuri himself. Victor might be his coach, but some things he didn't know.

Victor seemed to understand that Yuuri was done talking. He sighed, and the stoic solemnity of his posture eased slightly with a touch of heaviness. In Yuuri's opinion, that was even worse, and as much because he'd seen it so often of late as for the presence of that sadness itself.

"Let's go," Victor said simply, and Yuuri knew he had raised and was holidng out his hand even before he lifted his gaze. "We'll talk about this another time. For now, let's just skate, yes?"

For all of the intrusions and words, the objections and backhanded reprimands, Yuuri was blessedly thankful that no one questioned that he would persist in skating. Over the past weeks, a silent, concerted effort had been made on both Victor and Minako's part to enforce a reduced regime, and even when Yuuri denied such attempts out of necessity, they persisted.

But skating… there was no avoiding that. Victor loved skating himself and knew Yuuri well enough to understand that to forbid it would be to kill him.


~|Week 3|~


Minako found him after dinner. In the minutes after his shower – his private showers, as it had become, rather than a communal bath – and in the momentary solitude where Yuuri allowed himself to take a beat, to gather himself, and prepare for any proceeding struggles that might arise for rest of the evening, she found him.

Minako didn't knock on his door. She'd never been one much for propriety. She did remain on the threshold, however, leaning against the doorframe and peering into Yuuri's room. She was so utterly silent that Yuuri didn't even realise she was there until she spoke.

"Do you still hate me?"

Sitting on the end of his bed, staring down at his hands, Yuuri was squeezing each of his fingers. They were tingling strangely, and had been for most of the afternoon. He didn't know why but something… for some reason they didn't feel quite right. Not bad, nor painful, but the same kind of disconnectedness that followed pins and needles. Yuuri hadn't been able to work out what it was, but…

At Minako's voice, he startled and twisted to glance over his shoulder towards the door. "Minako-san? Sorry, I… I didn't hear you…" He trailed off as her words registered. "What?"

Minako regarded him quietly. Her arms were folded across her chest as she'd taken to standing more often of late, as though in protestation, for such protest was what usually rose to her lips when Yuuri saw her.

"You're exercising too much," she'd said. "At the state you're in, it will do more damage than good to your body, regardless of how much you think you need to train."

"You need to eat more. And no, before you say anything, I'm not talking about eating crap, so don't freak out. Normal food. Healthy food, even. Your whole body will be out of whack, so it's better to take it slow."

"Sit down after a meal. No, it doesn't matter if you're finished; you should sit down for at least half an hour. No going to bathrooms or going for a run or anything."

Minako didn't speak such words were others could hear her. She didn't speak cruelly either, nor overly demandingly. Her requests were posed, presented, and requested just short of ordering in a way that still felt unavoidable.

Because Minako knew. Yuuri hadn't even suspected just how much she'd known, but she did. She'd mentioned weeks before that she'd seen 'such things' in her dancing days, but Yuuri hadn't fully appreciated what she'd meant.

Minako knew about the exercising, and she voiced her suspicions that Yuuri was doing more than he let on. Yuuri hadn't told anyone that he woke before dawn to run down the beach, but she speculated anyway.

She knew about how little he'd been eating, or at least suspected, too. She wasn't fooled when he said he wasn't hungry, that he felt unwell, or when he pushed his food around his plate in an effort to disguise the fact that he didn't take a bite.

Most of all, however, she knew when Yuuri rid himself of what little he'd been all but forced into eating. No going to the bathroom straight after meals. No sudden disappearances. Minako knew, and each time she revealed her understanding, Yuuri was nearly overwhelmed by the exhausting mixture of panic and angry indignation that he couldn't quite understand the nature of.

Minako knew, she insisted, and she enforced. And maybe Yuuri did feel angry with her, because she was standing as a block in the road to where he needed to go. It was as though she'd seen it all before – which she likely had. It was as though she knew each trick that Yuuri hadn't even noticed he'd been enacting – which she likely did, too.

"Eat, don't just fiddle."

"Walk, don't run."

"I'll time you in the bathroom if I have to. I don't care if it's an invasion of privacy."

The pervasive hand, the flat insistence, and her company at dinner – Minako was abruptly and confronting in her investment with a problem that Yuuri didn't consider problematic. Victor might remain at his side every moment of the day that he could, almost as though he feared to leave him alone, and Yurio might have swallowed many of his usual objections in place of others, but Minako was the one who demanded change.

Maybe Yuuri had hated her a little bit. He'd known her for so long, had cared for her like a sister, but she didn't see that what she was doing was hurting him. She didn't understand that her insistence wasn't helping but debilitating him.

Or at least Yuuri thought he'd hated her. That suspicion died as soon as Minako suggested it.

Wariness and a longing for solitude faded just a little at her words. Yuuri slowly turned back to regarding his hands, felt his shoulders slump, and didn't care if Minako saw. With Victor, it was different, because Victor carried the pain as though it were his own. Minako denied letting it touch her out of sheer, stubborn necessity.

"I don't hate you, Minako-san," he said heavily. "I've never hated you."

The slight scuffle of Minako's steps was the only sign that she'd entered his room at all. Yuuri didn't glance towards her, didn't raise his gaze, until she stopped directly before him. When he did, it took a physical effort for Yuuri to raise his chin.

Minako's face was expressionless but for a slight crease between her eyebrows. She'd dropped her arms from their fold, however, and their absence made her just a little less imposing. It wasn't much, considering who she was, but Yuuri appreciated her leniency. Or at least he did until she spoke again.

"I don't think you should go back to Russia next week."

Yuuri felt his eyes widen, his mouth falling open. "What?"

"You're not well, Yuuri. I think you should stay at home."

"Minako-san –"

"You don't seem to realise what kind of mess you've gotten yourself into, do you?" Minako overrode him, shaking her head slightly. "And it doesn't matter if you hate me for saying it, because I'll say it again and again, as many times as I need to."

"Minako-san, I'm not –"

"You're not well, Yuuri."

"I'm not –"

"Anyone would be able to tell just by looking at you. You're not well."

Yuuri was shaking his head fervently. Not well? 'Not well' suggested illness. 'Not well' insinuated a disease, or an injury. Yuuri wasn't unwell. He was acting as befit his needs, and despite what Minako said, and how Victor sometimes glanced at him so sadly, or that he'd caught Yurio staring at him over the dinner table with an expression of uncomprehending loss, he knew he wasn't.

There was no feeling of unwell besides the self-induced nausea. There was no lethargy besides the expected tiredness of waking up early every morning, and even if it did weigh him down increasingly heavily, it was only to be expected. There was no fever, and the only aches and pains Yuuri felt were in his head after a long day, or his throat after he'd managed to slip away at the earliest opportunity to bring up the contents of his stomach.

Yuuri wasn't sick. He knew that. But Minako didn't agree, and Yuuri doubted objecting would solve anything. He wouldn't fight that but instead stood his ground for what he needed.

"I have to go back to Saint Petersburg," Yuuri said. "I have to train."

"Victor would stay here if you –"

"I'm not going to make him do that," he overrode her. "He needs to train under his coach too. He's already been here for too long."

Minako's brow creased further. "There are more important things than –"

"No, Minako-san, there's not," Yuuri said, speaking over her again. "Not to me."

This time, Minako fell silent. Her hands twitched at her sides as though threatening to rise and cross over her chest once more, but she withheld. Their mutual silence hung in the air between them, and Yuuri allowed it to remain untouched. He spoke the truth, so Minako should hear it. Yuuri couldn't give up his training, and he wouldn't ask Victor to, either.

Finally, Minako spoke, and it was in such a low voice that Yuuri could barely hear her. "Even if it's at the risk of your health? This sort of thing kills people, you know."

Yuuri blinked, startled from his resolution. "What?"

"I've seen it before, Yuuri," Minako continued, her voice silencing despite its quietness. "It's damaging, and not just physically. Mentally, too. It wears you down, and it's more than just the exercising, and the purging, and what kind of messed up fuckery you put your body through."

Yuuri flinched at the harshness of her words, but she didn't slow. "It fucks up everything. Muscle deterioration, cardiac arrhythmia, gastric ruptures, to say nothing of shredding your throat and mouth to pieces." She shook her head and, though firmly, there was a more grief than anger to the gesture. Yuuri was stupefied by it. "It doesn't take all that much, you know. I don't want to see it happen to you."

Yuuri couldn't find his voice. He struggled, and when he finally grasped it, it came out choked. "I don't think I'm the same as that, Minako-san. Not like… not like the people you used to dance with."

"You think so?" Minako said quietly. "Then tell me when the last time you threw up was."

It had been barely minutes ago. Out of necessity, as he'd taken to doing, Yuuri had forced himself to throw up in the shower. It worked, because no one questioned that he was spending a few minutes alone, and the distinct, telling smell was easily washed away. Yuuri was surprised he hadn't discovered such a opportune moment earlier.

Even so, despite the satisfaction of his discovery and the relief of purging, guilt flooded through him beneath Minako's steady gaze. Yuuri couldn't reply, his chin tucking once more, but she continued.

"How much do you still throw up every day?"

Yuuri swallowed. His throat still ached, burned raw.

"How much do you even eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I'd wager it's less than everyone thinks."

Of course it was. The sheer amount requested of Yuuri by unspoken suggestion was ridiculous. He couldn't possibly eat so much, and spent most of every meal avoiding doing just that. It was necessary. It was what he had to do. Still, guilt welled even further.

Minako sighed. "I'm not saying this to be cruel, Yuuri."

"I know," he managed, barely whispering.

"I'm just worried."

"I… I know."

"You understand that's why I had to ban you from the studio, right? It was out of necessity, not spite."

Yuuri squeezed his eyes closed. That exchange, occurring weeks before, still stung. Even if Minako claimed that it wouldn't make all that much of a difference to his training in the long run, the yawning hole in the centre of Yuuri's regime gaped like a slack-jawed skeleton. Minako had done him the kindness of keeping her forbiddance from any and everyone, but it still hurt.

Yuuri couldn't speak in reply this time, or at least not to that. "Then you know why I have to go back to Russia, right? We understand each other that well, don't we, Minako-san?"

It was a cruelty in itself, Yuuri knew. He was choosing his battle, and this was the climatic clash, even if Minako didn't realise it. Or maybe she did, because her sigh was even heavier this time. When Yuuri opened his eyes and peered up at her, her frown had twisted into something else entirely. He wasn't quite sure what it was.

"I thought as much," she murmured, more to herself than to Yuuri. Then she shook her head. "That's okay. I'll work with that. I'll just come with you."

Yuuri blinked, stunned as though slapped in the face once more, and could only stare as Minako nodded decisively, turned, and started towards the door. She was going to…? She really intended to…?

"You're –? Are you going to babysit me?" Yuuri asked, a little harshly but more pained than indignant. More ashamed than angry.

"No," Minako said quietly. He'd never seen her so solemn in her life. "I'll just be there to catch you if you fall."

Then she left his room, the doorway yawningly empty in her absence. Yuuri stared after her for a long time. He couldn't change – knew he couldn't change – at least for the moment. There was too much depending upon him pushing himself, bettering himself, ensuring that he didn't slide back to who he'd been when the speculations of his retirement had arisen in that magazine.

But he would try. Maybe. When he could. Just not yet. Regardless of Minako's concerns, he'd only been immersing himself as such for the past few months. Nothing so drastic could arise in such a short time.

Not yet. Yuuri might try, but not yet.


~|Week 4|~


On the last day of August, Yuuri fell.

Falling itself wasn't particularly uncommon for a figure skater. If anything, should a skater not fall or at least fumble at least once a practice, it was considered a remarkable feat.

That day was different, however, because Yuuri fell. He fell once, then again, then kept falling. It helped that most of the time it was when he was alone, but even so.

Sleeplessness hadn't been doing him any favours. Yuuri's rigorous training regime hadn't altered terribly but for Minako's forbiddance from her studio, but he felt its weight upon his limbs heavily nonetheless. He'd had a throbbing headache for days that simply wouldn't go away, his stomach was in a constant state of strained discomfort, and the distress of purging had mounted with each coveted attempt.

It was bad. It was bad because Yuuri had to sneak to do it, and he hated himself for it. It was bad because he had to do it more often with the frequency of his eating under Minako's eye, and bad because he had to wait for longer before he could bring it back up. It was especially bad because this – this thing that he'd been good at when necessity had requested it – had become harder. It took more effort. It demanded longer, because sometimes Yuuri couldn't bring anything up for minutes on end, and sometimes his fingers didn't seem to be able to reach far enough to trigger any kind of response at all.

It was bad. It was horrible. Yuuri still managed, but the accompanying distress was enough to have him just short of bursting and constantly high-strung. He could feel it, as though his nerves were pulled into a taut wire that would snap at just a hint more pressure.

Couple that with the unexpected bout of vertigo he'd been afflicted with all morning, and Yuuri acknowledged, if only to himself, that he was having a bad day. And that was even before the first time he tripped.

It happened when he was running on the beach, feet sinking into the sand that seemed to cling especially hard to his shoes that morning. He'd risen before dawn, as he often did, because Victor hadn't withdrawn his request to watch the sunrise with him every day.

The second fall happened on their morning walk. Makkachin's unwavering excitement got the better of him, and he stumbled in his enthusiasm into the back of Yuuri's legs. Yuuri fell, caught himself, and was able to disguise the slip as dropping to his knees before Makkachin for a sloppy, vaguely apologetic kiss. Victor hadn't noticed at first, and when he did it was only to see what Yuuri had hoped he would and smile fondly before offering Yuuri a hand to climb to standing.

The third time happened on the steps at the gym. The fourth when Yuuri had been heaving himself to his feet in the bathroom after lunch. The fifth time he'd tripped on nothing – his own feet, his own foolishness – and all but face-planted in the middle of the street.

Victor didn't smile and chide him teasingly in that instance. Yurio didn't roll his eyes, click his tongue, and call him clumsy. In Yuuri's opinion, their silence made it worse. It was 'weird', as Yurio had said weeks before, and weird wasn't a good thing. It wasn't good to be noticed.

At the ice rink, practice was a disaster. Dizziness had never been a problem for Yuuri before, and he'd had a head for it from years of dancing, of skating, of merging the two into a combined entity. But that day was bad, just as each day leading up to it had grown increasingly so. Yuuri could hardly land a jump. His was tripping through footwork that should have been simple for him. Even the very ice itself seemed to skitter out from beneath him, seemed slicker than usual, and standing had never been so hard.

Overcoming dizziness was a product of practice. That day, however, Yuuri's practice seemed to have abandoned him.

His taut nerves quivered on the brink of collapse all afternoon. It wasn't truly a surprise when they snapped, though Yuuri hated that they did. He hated how it happened just as much.

"You should know your limits, idiot," Yurio said, his voice echoing across the rink from the opposite wall. "Otherwise you'll hurt yourself."

A part of Yuuri heard his words and understood where they came from. That Yurio was referring to his own injury. That his voice hadn't even been heated, despite the addition of his derogatory term. But the greater part, the part that throbbed beneath a headache, and the nausea in Yuuri's belly, and the weight of failure that constricted his chest as tightly as his heavy breathing did – that part objected and reared its hackles.

Yuuri wasn't letting himself go, but he seemed to be going anyway.

"Maybe you should spend less time watching other people and more time worrying about yourself, Yurio," he snapped, shooting a glare towards him. "If you don't like seeing it, then don't watch."

Yurio froze. Or he froze more where he'd already stopped. All except for his eyes, that was, which widened slightly, his mouth which parted just a little in blatant surprise. But it was less Yurio's response – or lack thereof – and more Victor's that immediately tore away any frustration that Yuuri felt.

Victor knew. He knew Yuuri was insecure in his skating. He knew that he lived to skate and how much it hurt him to fumble even more than Yurio did. He knew that Yuuri panicked, that he spoke irrationally and almost cruelly when he was frustrated to the point of fear, even more than Minako did. Victor, who could smile so brightly, could tease for such fumbling but knew when to stop, and who could pick out Yuuri's fear almost before Yuuri perceived it himself these days…

He saw that. Yuuri knew he did from a glance. Across the rink where he stood, Victor's eyebrows crinkled, his lips thinned, and face tightened. He didn't quite leap across the ice, racing like a speed skater, but he did draw slowly towards Yuuri. There was no accusation in his expression, no disappointment, and in many ways that was worse. It felt far, far worse than the sadness, the helplessness, that welled in his eyes.

I'm hurting him, Yuuri thought, and that very thought speared through him like a javelin. I'm hurting him, and I'm distracting him, and it's not – it's not fair. He shouldn't be weighed down. He should be practicing, and smiling, and laughing because… because this isn't going to last forever and…

"Yuuri," Victor said quietly, and there was so much spoken in that single word that it seemed to coalesce in the air.

Yuuri was familiar with the feeling of nausea. Once, it had been merely induced by fear, or by the occasional bout of too much drinking, but now he knew it more intimately. The weight of a meal in his belly, the sickening rise of food in his throat, the roil of vomit as he heaved and retched until nothing else could come out. Yuuri knew that feeling.

This was just a little different, but Yuuri was reacting before he could even consider that difference. Spinning in place, he leapt and skidded towards the gate in the boards, threw himself through, and nearly tripped in his speed. Victor's cried, "Yuuri!" and even Yurio's surprised, "What-?" didn't slow him.

Out. I have to get out. I have to get it all out.

Purging was good for the food, helped with the necessary, but it also helped to escape the bad thoughts. And Yuuri needed that right now. He needed it desperately.

He didn't know if Victor or Yurio followed him. Yuuri didn't glance back, didn't slow in his headlong flight, could barely even pause to think –

Which was probably why he fell. Stupidity, pure need, made a fool of him, and he didn't even pause to step into a pair of skate guards, let alone slip out of his skates entirely. The rubber floors surrounding the rink didn't extend all the way to the bathroom.

Yuuri slipped.

He fell.

His legs, already trembling with something more than exhaustion, skittered and crumbled.

The crack of knees, of elbows, of his head upon the hard, tiled floor – it resounded through Yuuri's body like a struck gong. Dizziness didn't even cover it. A moment of blackness, then blurriness, that a wild whirling, and the nausea that clamped Yuuri's stomach in a tight fist abruptly gave a sharp tug.

It hurt. Everything hurt. His head, his legs, every muscle, the burn in his oesophagus. The sudden second hand that seized his chest and squeezed until he couldn't breathe. Thumping throbbed in his ears, a roaring sound swallowed every other whisper, and Yuuri –

He didn't try to stand. He couldn't. The last time Yuuri fell that day, he didn't get back up.