Chapter Text
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)
**
Some people reveal their secrets to him without ever saying a word aloud. Others come right out and share their inner thoughts boldly. And others take a winding path before arriving at the secret they want to share.
Even after all this time, Yuuri is not always prepared for who will take which approach.
** ** **
Yuuri was several steps ahead as they crossed the hotel lobby and managed to avoid the hubbub when a group of reporters caught sight of Victor and gathered around him to pepper him with questions. Momentarily unsure whether to hover awkwardly nearby while Victor was interviewed or continue ahead, Yuuri stepped partially behind one of the mirrored columns where he was less obvious but could easily hear the first reporter’s question.
“Yuri Katsuki’s on track to make quite the comeback under your tutelage, Coach Nikiforov. It seems as though your first outing as a coach is going well.”
Victor smiled charmingly. “It’s required a lot of hard work from both of us, as one would expect, but Yuuri is an excellent athlete and certainly a skater any coach would be proud of.”
Yuuri felt the back of his neck grow hot at the praise. It still sent a thrill through him to hear Victor Nikiforov compliment him.
Yuuri basked in that glow for another question or two until one of the reporters’ questions broke through his reverie.
“You’re well-known as a skater who likes a challenge. Wouldn’t you rather face a man of Yuuri’s charisma as a fellow competitor?”
Victor’s face did… something then, in that moment’s hesitation before he answered with a deflection of their attention onto a conveniently passing Yuri Plisetsky.
Yuuri turned and walked towards the elevators, no longer interested in eavesdropping on the interview or Victor and Yuri’s now-familiar bickering.
Yuuri wouldn’t have to ask Victor for the real answer to that last question later on. They’d spent enough time together this season — practically in each other’s pockets — to know the answer already.
** ** **
Yuuri shrugged off his training jacket and held still while Victor tugged and prodded at his costume, ensuring that his image would be perfect when he stepped out onto the ice.
The excited rumble of the crowd increased when Michele Crispino elevated the difficulty of his jump sequence on the fly, and over the noise he could just hear Emil Nekola as he turned to Sara Crispino and comment, “Despite what Mickey said, maybe I should have decided to get a little nervous before my performance, given how well your brother and Lee are skating tonight!”
Yuuri gaped at the pair. Decided? Decided? What? “Who can actually just decide on whether they are going to be a nervous mess during a competition?”
Victor shrugged. “Some people have very effective ways of managing their nerves.” He turned away to find somewhere to drape Yuuri’s jacket while he performed.
“I calculate scoring and modifiers while I skate.” The composed voice came from Yuuri’s other side and he turned, wide-eyed, to find Seung Gil Lee observing the ice as Michele finished his short program.
Yuuri startled slightly, was Seung Gil actually talking to him? Unprompted?
“What?”
“It helps to focus on aspects of my skating logically and without distracting emotions.”
Yuuri was puzzled at the very thought. “And that… works?
Seung Gil nodded once. “When I skate well it maintains focus. When I make errors, the calculations cushion me from worrying about the expected deductions and can help prevent a spiral of mistakes.”
Yuuri cocked his head to the side in contemplation. “That sounds like a very logical strategy.”
Seung Gil merely nodded and turned his full attention to Michele, who was ignoring the gifts thrown onto the ice and skating directly towards his sister at the edge of the rink.
Yuuri followed his gaze and watched as Mickey basked in his sister’s excitement over his performance and guessed there were just as many ways to manage the mental side of skating as there were the physical and emotional sides as well.
Later, as Yuuri caught the usually unflappable Seung Gil’s reaction as he left the kiss and cry after his free skate, he supposed that on the fly mental calculations might work while competing, but wouldn’t necessarily shield against post-competition reflections and regrets.
And Yuuri was all-too familiar with those.
** ** **
“You’re not going to try to hug me again, are you?”
Yuuri felt his cheeks flame. “Uhh, no. I think that’s all out of my system now.”
“Good.” Michele replied, gruffly. “You wouldn’t like what happens if you try and touch my sister, either. I’m still going to protect her from everything I can. Even if she doesn’t want me around all the time, anymore.”
That sounded like a conversation that Michele Crispino needed to have with his sister and not with Yuuri, and began inching away. Then he heard a soft sniffle from Michele’s direction.
Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut and counted to five, but even then he couldn’t make himself sneak off.
“Oh?”
Maybe Michele would realize who he was talking to and would become defensive again, shooing Yuuri away with one of his suspicious glares.
“Sara insists that we’ll both fail if we cannot learn to skate without each other around. That we’re dooming ourselves.” Michele’s voice sounded uncharacteristically soft and hesitant to Yuuri’s ears.
Guess not. Yuuri sighed, and contemplated the man in front of him.
“Well,” he replied, hesitantly, “It sounds like you’ve relied on each other your whole lives. Maybe she’s worried that you won’t reach your full potential if you depend on each other so much that you hold back our own progress? You won’t always be assigned to the same competitions, or have lives that allow you to schedule coordinating practices, right?”
Michele sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “I can see the sense in that, yes. But what if that is only the beginning? What if it leads to us drifting farther and farther apart? I’ve protected her forever and I don’t know how to stop.”
“Sounds like she’s ready to stand up for herself.”
Michele’s shoulders slumped further.
“But,” Yuuri continued. “Maybe this is also her way of protecting you, too.”
Michele looked up and met Yuuri’s gaze. “You think?”
Yuuri shrugged. “Maybe. You said it yourself, didn’t you? You know each other best. Maybe she sees that you haven’t achieved your full potential and wants to make sure that you have the chance to do it. She’s looking after you, but in a different way than you do for her.”
Any response that Michele might have had was cut off when Sara dashed by and caught their attention. “Come on, boys! Emil heard of a great club in the city and we’re getting anyone we can to join us for a night out after all the press is done, hurry up!”
Michele’s head jerked up and his eyebrows drew down low over his eyes in a scowl. “You are going to a club with Emil? Who does he think-”
Sara’s laughter cut off Michele’s diatribe before he could build up much steam. “No, silly, we are going to the club with him, so get your things and get moving!”
“Sara?” Michele jumped to his feet and began to chase after her. ”Sara!”
*
Emil caught Yuuri packing up his things and sharing a few last words with Yakov before leaving the sports arena.
“Yuuri! You’re coming to the club with us, right? Sara and Mickey are coming, and most of the Russian skaters. Oh, and JJ and Isabella, too. Seung Gil blew us off, of course, but he never accepts my invitations. Cheer me up and say you’ll join us?”
That sounded like the ingredients for the most awkward social event Yuuri could possibly imagine, given the available personalities. And he was intimately familiar with awkwardness.
“Ah, well, I’m pretty tired-”
“Yuuuuuuuri, surely a man with your impressive stamina can manage a little more excitement? You’re in the GPF, after all, let’s celebrate!”
“Well, Victor is expecting my call and he’ll want to talk about, well, everything, so I don’t think-”
“A phone call, tonight? What’s the time difference from here to Japan?”
Oops.
“Uhhh, well, Victor only just left, so he’s still on Moscow time. He said he’d call regardless of the hour.”
“Well, that’s considerate of him.”
Emil was apparently willing to let his suspicions go, thankfully, and not press Yuuri on his reluctance to join their potentially disastrous afterparty.
“It would have been nice to have someone other than me around for Mickey to focus his paranoia about Sara on.”
Yuuri tilted his head down and looked at Emil over his glasses. “Sorry I can’t be your scapegoat, Emil.”
“Oh, no, Yuuri, that’s not what I meant at all! Well, not really. I do really mean it about wanting you to join us. It’s just that Mickey and Sara and I have been friends for ages and he still acts like I’m a highwayman about to kidnap his sister away from him.”
“Ah, yeah, I’d noticed that…”
“Everyone has noticed that, I think,” Emil says with a sigh. “I know it isn’t personal against me, really, and is a reflection of Mickey’s own insecurities and worries over his sister. I’ve never - and I would never - do anything untoward towards Sara or anyone who didn’t want it, so it hurts a little bit to know that his knee-jerk reaction is always suspicion.”
Emil sounded genuinely distressed at the thought.
“Have you ever talked about this with Michele?”
“No, never.” Emil paused for a moment before continuing, “I’ve never actually put how I felt into words before, actually.”
Standing there, gazing into space, he appeared distracted by his own revelation.
“Well, sometimes saying it out loud can help you really get to the center of what’s bothering you.”
“Huh, yeah. Apparently so. Thank you, Yuuri, I… need to think about this a little more, but you’re right. I will probably have to have an awkward conversation with Mickey.”
“Well, in my limited experience, most conversations with Mickey are pretty awkward, but good luck.”
“Ah, he really isn’t that bad. But regardless, I am definitely not having that conversation tonight. Tonight is for fun. Tomorrow is for potentially regrettable conversations with prickly friends.”
** ** **
Yuuri had joined the Yakov’s Russian contingent in morning warm-ups but had kept himself a bit removed from the rest of the group, not wanting his unexpected presence to throw them out of their familiar routine. As a result, he’d been too far away to have heard what led to the outburst, but he looked up from his fifteenth check of his phone for an update that hadn’t come yet to see one of the Russian women’s singles skaters attempting to demonstrate a lift of some sort with an irate Yuri Plisetsky as her partner.
Yuri shouted and wriggled free, sprinting past Yuuri in an attempt to escape her.
Mila’s laughter was as powerful as her jump sequences as she chased after the red-faced Yuri, ignoring the threats he spat at her as he darted into the men’s bathroom and slammed the door.
Mila bent over and braced her hands on her knees as she took several deep breaths in between her continued chuckles. When she stood straight again, she caught Yuuri’s eye and winked.
“Yuri makes an excellent little brother. He has such a short fuse and is reliably quick to explode when provoked.”
“Little brother?” Yuuri asked. He hadn’t gotten the sense from Victor that Yakov had encouraged a familial rapport among his skaters.
Mila shrugged. “Not really, of course, I don’t have any siblings, though I used to wish all the time for a brother and sister. But I don't really have to, anymore. I spend as much time with Yuri and the others as I do with my own family, so he might as well be my brother. And even though he says he hates it, I think there is a little part of him, buried very deep down, that thinks of me as a big sister.”
Yuri’s rage-filled voice burst from behind the bathroom door, startling both Yuuri and Mila.
”I do not, you lying hag!”
“See?” Mila says, a large smile spreading across her face. “Just like on the sitcoms, no?” Then she turned and began taunting Yuri through the door.
Well, if Yuuri was ever tempted to ask Mari what it was like being the big sister, this might well be enough to convince him to not poke that particular bear.
** ** **
When Victor rushed back to Japan and left Yuuri in the not-so-tender care of Yakov during the second half of the Rostelecom competition, Yuuri had expected to be ignored by his coach’s former coach.
Which was… mostly true, actually. Yakov didn’t bark at Yuuri about his shaky landings during the morning practice the way he did to his own skaters. Nor did he lecture Yuuri on lists of things to remember as they walked from the locker rooms to the rinkside.
Thank goodness.
His kiss-and-cry diatribe after Yuuri’s performance? Well, at that point what was done was done, so Yuuri found that it didn’t affect him as deeply as he would have expected.
All that said, Yakov also hadn’t allowed Yuuri to flounder completely alone, either. He’d made sure Yuuri got to and from the rink for practice and the competition with terse instructions, made sure Yuuri wasn’t completely overwhelmed by the media, and once or twice even nodded in a manner that Yuuri could possibly interpret as approving, particularly after Yuuri’s footwork sequences.
Once the Rostelecom Cup was over - and Yuuri had qualified for the Grand Prix Finals!!! - Yakov accompanied Yuuri to the airport for his flight home.
It was just as awkward a ride as one would imagine. They both sat in near silence right up until Yuuri reached for the door handle to exit the vehicle.
“I hope you are giving Victor a taste of his own medicine. If he insists on this foolish experiment of his then he should experience the misery of having a rebellious student flaunt his advice at every turn.”
“Ummm.” What was Yuuri supposed to say to that?
Yakov settled a level gaze on Yuuri, blinking slowly several times, and shook his head. “Or perhaps I shouldn’t wish that. Victor thrives on causing a stir, and if you keep him engaged then he may not return to competition where he belongs. It is not the same without him causing me to lose my hair.”
Yuuri thought back to the early days of training with Victor. “Oh, is that one of the side effects of becoming a coach to a challenging skater? I can tell him that, if you’d like. If anything will get him to abandon coaching, that might do it.”
Yakov’s eyes bugged out slightly and Yuuri could see his skin begin to flush red.
Uh-oh. Did he really just say that? To Yakov Feltsman? Yuri was dead. Dead!
Yuuri was contemplating whether he had enough time left to call his family and say goodbye and calculating the time difference in his head, when Yakov burst out laughing.
“Ah, yes,” he huffed out between gasps. “His vanity is probably my only hope.”
Yuuri took a deep breath, apparently not his last on earth, as Yakov collected himself and continued.
“Yes, tell him that he will surely lose his hair if he continues down this path. But I can already tell that it won’t work.” Yakov shook his head, a small smile still on his face, and gestured out the car window. “Go, you have a plane to catch. You had an adequate performance and I look forward to Yurotchka and I beating you and that reprobate coach of yours again at the finals.”
Yuuri thanked him, collected his luggage, and escaped one of the most awkward and surprising car rides of his life.
** ** **
Yuuri was surprised when his search for Victor ended in the room containing the family altar, discovering Victor seated on the floor with Makkachin lying beside him. They both appeared to be quietly contemplating the photo of Yuuri’s Vicchan.
Yuuri’s other Vicchan.
Yuri cut off that thought before it could bloom further.
“Are you okay, Victor?”
There was a long pause before Victor answered and he didn’t take his eyes off the shrine. “Makka’s been with me for a long time. She’s been one of my steadiest and least demanding supporters.” Victor paused and huffed out a sigh. “Overindulgence on steam buns aside.” His hand dropped down to card through Makkachin’s fur and the dog huffed softly and shuffled closer to rest her head in his lap.
Victor was quiet for a long time. Yuuri walked over to him and sat beside him on the floor, close enough to feel the line of heat against his body where it pressed against Victor’s.
“I know that she won’t be with me forever.” Victor’s voice was soft and serious. “And what happened while we were at the Rostelecom Cup made me really think about it and consider a time when I’ll have to say goodbye to her.”
Victor sighed and leaned into Yuuri, the warmth between them spreading with the increased contact. “I hate it. I try not to think about it, but I can’t help it. What will I do? How will I cope? How did you?” Victor raised his hand gesturing to the pictures of Vicchan.
Yuuri felt his eyes prickle a bit and pressed his lips together for a moment before shrugging and cocking his head enough to look at Victor’s face. “I didn’t. At least, not well. When I found out that Vicchan was gone I drowned myself in guilt, ate more comfort food than was actually comforting, couldn’t sleep well for weeks, and embarrassed myself spectacularly in front of the entire figure skating world. So.”
Victor’s eyes were wide and so very blue as he turned to meet Yuri’s gaze.
Yuuri curled his mouth in a faint smile. “I recommend against that method.”
Victor’s eyes remained wide as he nodded in agreement. “Yes, that is probably best.”
This time, Yuuri’s smile was real. “What you’ll do now is to continue to spend as much time with her as you can. Spoil her rotten and make her feel like the most loved dog in the entire world. Build memories with her, and when you can and it isn’t overwhelming, take the time to appreciate that you have the opportunity to do so. Then, when it is time to say goodbye, you’ll cry a lot and feel sad for a long time. But you’ll also know that you did everything you could to give her a good life and that she was happy.”
“That’s all I can do? No magic spell to keep her forever?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s just like with anyone you love. You love them and care for them while you can. Make them feel appreciated so they know it. And make memories that you can carry with you forever. That’s really the most we can do.”
Victor continued to look at Yuri for several silent moments, long enough that Yuuri began to feel awkward and looked away, fixing his gaze on the picture of Vicchan. Before he could start to fidget and come up with an excuse to leave, however, Victor sighed deeply and leaned his head onto Yuuri’s shoulder.
“Okay.”