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fivetimechamp) wrote2018-01-07 09:36 am
fivetimechamp) wrote2018-01-07 09:36 am
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9 - 10 December, 2014 - Barcelona
There's a swift, fleeting moment, between his toes breaking the water's surface and the waves he'd created closing over his head, where he imagines himself on vacation. On a break from the hectic stresses and mundanity of everyday life, floating high above a sea of lights. Free to be himself, to relax. To lose himself in those self-indulgent fantasies only possible when daily training and errands, practice and diet, aren't demanding every second of his undivided attention.
He floats on his back, spread-eagled in the water, letting it buoy him, letting his thoughts trickle along whatever path they most wish to take –– which, these days, means they wander along a well-worn path from sleepless nights and newly-opened gates. Life and love –– two words he's neglected for over twenty years, that suddenly knock at the door of every thought, nudging him further down the path before he even recognizes he's headed that direction.
Whispering, for the first time, in glimpses and sidelong glances, of a tomorrow past today.
"Ah-choo!"
A sneeze brings him out of tantalizing reverie, and he sinks further into the water to sniffle, the moment broken. It turns out even Barcelona's cold in December –– not the bone-deep freeze of St. Petersburg or Moscow, a thin wind biting through coats and scarves and jumpers with ease, but still probably a little cool to be lazing in a rooftop pool, here at the official hotel for the Grand Prix Final. Still, it's peaceful up here, and the water is heated even if the air isn't, and he has no place special to be. Yuri is still sleeping off his jetlag –– that's why they got here early to begin with. They have all of tomorrow to practice and acclimate before the Final begins.
Steps, and the gentle tinkling of crystal against glass, distract him before the words even come, but then, Chris is a prodigy of distraction. He's made it into an art form.
"I thought, other than me, only a Russian would be stupid enough to get in the pool this time of year." That robe is scandalously short, and Victor allows himself an amused moment of picturing Chris, and the accompanying distress, at the baths at Yu-topia. "I guess I was right."
And dark glasses, even at night. Victor can't hide his amusement. "Chris!"
"Hi, Coach Victor." From anyone else, that tends to sound like an insult, but from Chris it only feels like a fond nickname. They've known each other too long and too well to stand on ceremony, so Chris' complaint that Victor is in the way of his skinny dipping rolls right off Victor's back like water droplets.
"Don't let me stop you. I'll even take photos for you."
It wouldn't be the first time.
And just like that, the illusion of a vacation is over, drowned and smothered by the dozens of photos Victor finds himself taking of Chris mugging for the camera like he was born to do it. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this sex bomb was once an angelic-looking little boy with golden curls, the sort Victor could picture most clearly skipping through a Swiss meadow full of flowers, but Chris has become a force to reckon with in his own right.
He can't imagine a skating season without Chris. They've shared the podium so many times it's almost begun to feel like tradition.
But then, it's already been eight months since he came to Hasetsu, too. How much time does it really take to change the things that can't be imagined?
Gotta Supercharge It! –– The Finalists Arrive!
Downstairs in the hotel, fans await with bated breath, hands on signs and phones. If they're patient, they may catch a glimpse of their favorite skater and win the chance to wish them good luck in the upcoming battle.
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'Yuri!' Yakov snaps, keycard in hand. 'At least check yourself in!'
It it too much to ask that his coach does the things that a coach is supposed to do? 'You do it, Yakov!' Yuri snaps back. 'I'm freaking tired.'
He should have known that Yakov Feltsman shouting his name at the top of his voice would carry like the blast of a trumpet, because no sooner has Yuri started to drift away than an absolutely insane horde of young women and girls, all of whom are wearing those dumb-ass cat-ear headbands, have all but surrounded him, squealing loud enough to burst his eardrums.
'Eee, Yuratchka!'
Shit. The Angels. There must be a dozen of them at least, the really fucking terrifying hardcore ones who aren't content with just showing up at the practices or at the event. And he doesn't have his hotel key yet, so he can't make a break for the stairs or the lifts to get away from them. Even as the panic starts rising in his chest, Yuri growls low in his throat, ready to lash out at them. 'You ug -- '
'Yuri Plisetsky, do not be nekulturny.' Because of course Lilia Baranovskaya has ears like a bat, and Yuri nearly breaks into a cold sweat at the sound of her voice. Just like that, he's trapped. And as the Angels advance on him, his heart sinks into his gut when he spots that one of them has an extra cat-ear headband in her hands and a distinctly unsettling gleam in her eyes.
(Grand Prix Final Lesson #1: Get your hotel room key the moment you step into the lobby, lest your rabid fans get the drop on you before your luggage is out of your hand.)
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'Yuri's Angels are famous.'
Because of course, there's the asshole Canadian himself, Jean-Jacques Leroy in the flesh, with a pair of sunglasses stuck on his head and some gross woman hanging all over him. And even as Yuri looks over, nearly sick with relief to have an acceptable target for his wrath, JJ's arm candy gives the prick a simpering smile and adds an unnecessary remark of her own. 'Hm. But JJ Girls are better about following the rules, and we're cuter.'
It's like someone setting a firework off inside his head. 'Don't diss my fans and call them ugly, you shriveled-up bitch!' Yuri explodes. Where the fuck does an old hag like that get off talking shit about his fans?
'So scary....' The way the woman winds herself around that prick JJ, as if he's supposed to protect her with that bloated body of his, is nauseating to say the least. 'Save me, JJ.'
Of course, the asshole goes along with it. 'Oh, he's just jealous because my fiancee is so beautiful,' JJ says, all but cooing at her.
'Anyone who wears sunglasses on his head is a piece of shit,' Yuri sneers, pointing out the obvious. It's a lame insult, but why waste one of his better ones on someone who's too fat-headed to appreciate them? For that matter, he can't resist taking another shot at the hag who had the nerve to trash-talk his fans. 'Even your ugly old ass could do better!'
'Hey, don't be so cocky,' JJ shoots back -- but before Yuri can really wind up and let him have it (like he should have done in Moscow, oh yes, we're done fucking around here), the prick starts waving at someone over on the other side of the lobby. 'Ah, Otabek! Where are you going?'
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In the quarter- and half-seconds that follow JJ's brash voice calling out his name, he weighs his options.
1. Keep walking. He has no reason to be polite.
2. Turn and answer. He has no reason not to be polite.
JJ is obnoxious, but he has to wait for the door anyway, so it's as little an expenditure of energy to turn, slipping his sunglasses off his face, and say: "Out to eat," as it would be to keep going.
Besides, JJ isn't his rival. He doesn't fully understand why the Canadian calls him "odd" right before inviting him to dinner, but it's nothing to waste energy on. His "thanks, but I'll pass" could be any other sentence with the same level of interest. I find you boring, or what would be the point?
There isn't one, to being around JJ, who is almost as desperate to socialize with the other skaters as he is to win. He's like a mosquito that just won't stop buzzing in everyone's ear, and doesn't understand why he keeps getting slapped away.
Not like that smaller, slighter figure. The one off to the side. Otabek's gaze tracks over to Yuri Plisetsky, lands on him without any shift of expression or emotion. Yuri's simply there, in his field of vision.
He wonders if Yuri remembers the same things he does.
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Otabek Altin. Kazakh. Second at Skate America, first at the NHK. And a bronze at Worlds, of all things, behind Viktor and Giacometti, and it wasn't as if the entire rest of the field had had their kneecaps bashed in the night before the short program, either. Of course Yuri had watched his competitors' programs as well as his own, trying not to fall asleep on the sofa between Yakov and Lilia, with Potya a warm weight in his lap. Even from the cameras' choppy vantage point, it's evident that Altin's wins this season weren't flukes. He doesn't get his dick out on the ice like Giacometti; he doesn't skate like he's aiming to get points for enthusiasm like Chulanont. He doesn't do that Katsudon thing where you end up weirdly light-headed from holding your breath while he's skating -- for good or bad reasons. And he certainly doesn't act like a particular asshole Canadian, as if the world owes him gold medals simply for occupying the same air as them. He's...different, somehow.
(Yakov had called it the result of what happens when you throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, but Lilia had immediately contradicted him. He skates with intention, she'd said firmly. He knows what he wants to do when he skates, what he wants to convey and in what way -- and then he does it, which is a rare enough trait these days. Yuri had been about a minute away from nodding off against her shoulder at the time, but something about that comment had stuck with him. It makes more sense than Yakov's remark, anyway, which had that sort of weird ex-Soviet rivalry thing that frankly bores the shit out of him.)
All the same, none of it really matters when the guy himself is there, and no sooner has he shot down that prick JJ like it's no big deal than he glances over at Yuri. And then just stares at him, like he's trying to dissect Yuri with his brain.
What is it? Why is Altin staring at him? Does he want something from them? Is this some kind of psych-out tactic? (Fuck, is he laughing at the stupid cat ears that he's still fucking wearing?) Whatever it is, it makes Yuri's anger sharpen, and his eyes narrow. 'What's with you, asshole?'
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Gotta Supercharge It! –– This Jetlagged Sleeping Beauty
And among the six qualifiers for the Final, the last one, who made it by a hair's width, is this jet-lagged sleeping beauty, Katsuki Yuri from Japan.
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Sleep is a sticky thick thing made of nearly a full day spent in travel and so many days, back to back, end to end, up hours before the sun and only in bed hours after it had set, using every hour possible left as they all melted away. The way the darkness keeps trying to do to Yuri, washing him back up toward the world, even though he puts it off once, twice, maybe a handful of times. Not yet.
Not yet. Sticking gummy between his teeth and under his eyelids. But a little harder each time. Until it's more futility to pretend he's not awake, hiding stubborn, like a small child, behind closed eyelids while sleep refuses to come back. Even exhausted at the concept and fuzzy with the earlier sleep. Until he's pushing up, rubbing at his eyes with one hand and feeling for his glasses with the other, mumbling the question to himself as he realizes Victor isn't there. Isn't asleep in the nearby other bed. Isn't anywhere in the darkened room.
Through a yawn, he felt around for where his phone has fallen to, too. It doesn't take more than the first swipe of opening his Instagram to have a the answer to where. A sleepy recitation of Chris's name, as he stares at a picture of them posing at a pool. In the hotel? Somewhere nearby? Somewhere else? Somewhere. Sunglasses, and pointed toes, and the kind of effortless poise that makes Yuri feel further exhausted by and incapable of just to look at.
Scrolling away with the faint press of a frown, that becomes an even worse expression of some horror when Phichit is posing in front of the Sagrada Familia. Where he was supposed to be. To have gone. With Phichit. His gaze flicked up to the time at the top of his screen, but he must have slept through it all. There was no telling where Phichit was by now, or even with whom. And it wasn't the first time he'd done that. And Phichit looked just as happy there, posing, in the selfie, didn't he?
Yuri scrolled through a picture of JJ with his girlfriend, and Yurio, in multiple shots, looking stricken as he posed with some of the girls from his fan club. Yuri fell back on his bed, arms flung out wide, with a huff. He was the only person, it seemed, not awake and out at this insane hour. All of them out, doing things, with people or the city. Ready. Looking careless and content. Like they were on casual, carefree vacations. Yuri rolled on his side, looking at his hand hanging off the bed the direction he'd rolled.
"Now that I know what love is, and am stronger for it, I'll prove it to myself with a Grand Prix Final gold medal, huh?" He asked his hand, or maybe it was his head, or the room. The night still pressed sticky to his head. So many times he'd watched himself say those words, repeated them, as the days dwindled to making that honesty or folly. So many times he'd watched all the other five contenders skates of the last four months. Over and over and over. Watching what they'd done well. What they exceeded to. What they succeeded in.
The number of things which of them could do that he couldn't.
He could name them in his sleep. Like notes of music gone sour.
Phichit's entertainment skills. Chris's mature eros. JJ's four first-place rankings. Yurio's severe specificism.
The way it blurred. Barcelona, again. With that once blue outfit. With every tumble. Every spill. Every time he slammed the ground. The inability to focus for days. The weight of Celestino's presence next to him. The grief and the weight and fear like living animal crawling from his jumbled, sleep-sour, stomach up into his throat, as Yuri flipped over again, pushing his face into the front of the pillow as his finger dug into the back pushing it up harder.
Wishing suddenly that the room wasn't empty, and pin-drop silent. A perfect track for too well-remembered pity, and tears, and silence, and disappointment. Failure. Saying the words into his pillowcase that he never could type into his phone, and never would need to say if the room weren't empty. "Victor. Help me."
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Chris is mildly chatty, filling Victor in on various details of the last few months -- his trips, his conquests, his favorite new clubs and restaurants -- they've never been much for deeply honest or emotionally intimate talks, but Chris has been one of his best friends for years...inasmuch as he's had best friends.
Inasmuch as he's had friends.
In fact, before the last eight months (and has it really been eight months, already?), and before Hasetsu, the closest thing he had to a friend was his nearest rival, and the closest thing he had to family was his cranky old coach and his loyal poodle.
(He's been able to spend so much more time with Maccachin; when was the last time he could have Maccachin with him all day, every day?)
And then he got off the plane in Hasetsu, and dipped into the hot spring for the first time, and had his first bite of katsudon, and everything changed. His whole world. From Chris' light banter to late nights dissecting the great choreography of skaters past with Misato. From Yakov's standoffish, gruff affection and barked orders to a family all a head shorter than him delighted to welcome him into their home. From watching every calorie and denying himself every good thing to eating all the pork cutlet bowls he could ever want.
From a life alone, absorbed in work, to one full of love.
It's heaven. "Ah-choo!"
And it might look like heaven up here under the stars, but he sneezes mid-way through Chris' thumb hitting the home button on his phone, and he has to admit, when Chris shakes his head pityingly, that his old friend is right, even if he doesn't say it out loud.
He's just not the same person, anymore.
"Let's go in," he suggests, climbing out of the pool and shivering against the cool breeze, tugging his towel around his shoulders in an attempt to get warm. Why hadn't he brought a robe up? Chris' barely covers anything, and he still manages to look cozy enough to make Victor jealous. "I need a hot bath!"
"And a hot drink," Chris supplies, as they head to the door and the elevator. "Since I had to share my champagne."
They're still bickering when Victor fumbles with the keycard at the door -- when did it get so cold? why isn't there a hot spring here when he really needs it? -- while Chris nearly reclines in a languid curve against the jamb, and he doesn't have the patience to open the door once it clicks, just shoves it with his foot and bursts into the dark room. "Yuri! I'm freezing!"
Dancing back and forth, towel clutched around his head, trying to get the blood moving, voice rising piteously. "Please draw a hot bath!"
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The last thing Yuri is expecting -- pillow clutched up to his face, letting those words fall out in the silence, small enough to be lost, to just evaporate in the silence and the darkness pressing into his closed eyes and filling the small room, where this admission of weakness already too early could be eaten by all of these things, an old, open sore but still unseen by anyone else -- is for the door to suddenly go flying fast open, light flooding in everywhere, the silence filling with Victor's voice.
To look up and see the disorienting sight of Victor giving little jumps back and forth, with his small black swim shorts, a white towel draped over his head and shoulders, complaining -- and asking for a bath? -- while Chris is standing in the doorway to one side of him and just a little behind, running his hand up through his hair, looking amused about all of this, asking, "Yuri, can you make coffee, too?"
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Gotta Supercharge It! –– The Day Before the Final
The ice still feels crowded, even with only six of them, but each rival is focused on his own practice. Jumps are perfect, choreography is so ingrained in muscles that many of them now wake up in the middle of the night having dreamt their way through their step sequences and pantomime.
It's been a long few months since the beginning of the Grand Prix, but somehow, it feels like not enough time at all.
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After Rostelecom, back in St. Petersburg, he and Yakov and Lilia had come together for their usual post-performance review of his technique and stylistic elements, and to his surprise it hadn't been quite the shitshow that he'd feared it would be. For all that he'd cringed the entire time that Yakov made him watch his abysmal short program again, he had to admit (when Yakov pointed it out) that his recovery from his extremely bad start hadn't been too terrible. It certainly could have been much worse. And watching the free skate, it was clear that reloading his jumps had been a last-ditch gamble that had paid off, and was worth the effort required to improve it. To that assessment, combined with Lilia's artistic evaluation and Yakov's own observations after handling Yuuri Katsuki's free skate, the two coaches had given Yuri two assignments to work on for the remainder of the GPF preparations.
First, he would have to focus on recovering from mistakes, whether from falls or popped jumps or bad landings. (Yakov has no intention of letting yet another skater of his slip through his fingers on this front.) And second, he would have to make better use of his arms on every single jump in his programs.
The former is the lesson of the short program: No matter what happens, you have to keep going, and your recovery is critical to victory. And the latter is the lesson of the cold-eyed analysis that Yuri had done in the minutes before his free skate: He can't win on base score alone. He doesn't have enough quads in his repertoire to make it happen; he simply doesn't have the physical strength yet to power through his challengers' quad lutz or quad flip, no matter how many hours he spends in a jump harness. But there are extra points to be scraped out of increasing the difficulty of the jumps he can do, with one or even both arms raised, and that is where he'll make up the difference needed to win.
It had meant long days on the ice, gritting his teeth while he tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and occasionally succeeded, until he was a mass of bruises from the hips down. It had meant extra work in the studio, building the muscle memory and sense of equilibrium needed to make everything come together. He'd won the Golden Spin without it -- not wanting to tip his hand too early and lose the element of surprise at the GPF -- but now it is time to pull out all the stops.
Not in this first warm-up, though. For now, it's enough to test the ice, to learn how it feels beneath his blades. To run through the basics with an eye to tomorrow's morning practice...and the real start of the competition.
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The stands are more packed than they were for last night's practice and less packed than they'll be for all of tonight's actual Prix beginning for the Juniors, followed by the Pairs and Ladies short programs. Which doesn't, by any means, keep those stands from being more packed than any of the stands during the practice days of the earlier qualifiers. There's a different kind of buzz in the crowds watching, talking, cheering, picture taking, though. Even though it's another practice. Even though it's only a few hours away from the beginning of everything.
The same way there's a different edge of tension, of focus, every time any of them out here on the ice meet eyes passing in the constant repetition of their routines, or circled laps. Three sets of forty minutes practice, across three days, is the slimmest shiver of ice shaved thin, but they all know they have to have it now or they might not at all when it counts tomorrow night. It's all too familiar, and Yuri tries not to let himself find himself counting just how much as he counts his competitors taking their turns through the center for the full run down each.
(The boards are the same.
The seats are the same.
The light are the same.)
He isn't.
He isn't.]
Yuri closes his eyes the beat of one heartbeat. He forces a breath out. He has to be here. Here. Right here. Turning in a bracket. Not catching the ghost of his shadow falling over this same line he crosses with ease, while breathing in the chilled air and feeling it dry in the back of his throat. A twist and two side steps puts him out of the way of Chris sliding past on his left, and pulls him a sidestep outside his routine that leaves him a second to spot on where Victor is leaning on the far wall and then to the dramatic flare of Phichit's arm movements in the middle. All showman, and all serious.
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Back in Hasetsu, at the Ice Palace, Yuri would be the single point of focus. Not just for his attention, but in the whole rink. It's an almost unheard of luxury, the entirety of the rink belonging only to the two of them. A single coach, with a single skater, and a wide, wide, waiting expanse of ice. A blank sheet of paper holding its breath. A frozen river patient with the potential to erupt under Yuri's blades.
Here, there's no such privacy, but it's not such a bad thing, either. There's Yuri, out of the corner of his eye, looking a little tighter than Victor might like, but within reason.
Yurio, a flash of icy blonde hair and silver blades, now gaining speed in the far end of the rink. Even from here, Victor thinks he recognizes the stubborn set of his jaw, the grim line of his mouth as Yurio focuses, laser-tight. Even in practice, he only ever seems a hair's-width away from snapping under the relentless onslaught of self-inflicted pressure at any given second.
(Yakov is here, too. They haven't spoken yet.
Not really.
Not in any way that counts.)
But the real benefit of being here during the practice times is seeing where all the other competitors stand, while numbers run through his head and he checks Yuri's against the base component score of everyone who skates by. Of all of them, JJ poses the most immediate threat: even if Yuri skates his program flawlessly, JJ's base score is simply higher. With the new scoring system, Yuri's vast artistic ability could still fall against a program backloaded with jumps.
So much for the obvious, but any one of these skaters might pull off a win, if everything goes well for them and at least one thing goes wrong for everyone else. There's no room for error at the Grand Prix Final.
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Gotta Supercharge It! -- Shopping with Yuri
There's more to Barcelona than they could ever see in a single afternoon or evening alone, but Yuri said take me sightseeing and he didn't give Victor any kind of limit or caveat, and so Victor does just that.
Photos in front of Sagrada Familia. When they get hungry, it's fresh, steaming hot paella at a little restaurant what feels like a world away from the rink. Wandering around Park Güell. Innumerable photos taken by smiling natives or other tourists, as the amount of bags in their hands grow and grow.
And Yuri, next to him, happy and relaxed in a way Victor isn't sure he's seen since...maybe not ever. Certainly not the day before a competition.
Every step they take along La Rambla feeling one step further from tomorrow.
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He told Victor to take him see sighting. Told, not asked. It lingers in his head over and over. Especially in the seconds when there are people packing every space, and every shop, and every corner, and every square. When Victor is a whirl of momentum and smiles, from him and for everyone he sees, talks to, asks something of, buys something from, dragging Yuri out of each of those thoughts, which each new smile, with each new suggestion and place he drags Yuri into, evincing a smile and a laugh out of him.
It's perfect -- even when it's overwhelming and the not-so-quiet exhaustion builds at the edges.
But Victor smiles, and Yuri can't help it, trailing like the tail of a kite, a flower tipped toward the brilliance of it.
More than once almost making him want to reach out and touch it. Or feel the too turbulent flutter of the impossible, improper, urge to let his hand find Victors. He only flushes a little, embarrassment or chagrin at it, at himself, all of it matching the same shade of half of Victor's teasing, or suddenly inches away nearness. The bags pile up and Yuri notices, carrying more and more of them, not certain whether Victor notices or Victor just doesn't care. He only gets brighter the longer this goes.
Even if he tries not to Yuri still ends up dropping on a bench, probably an hour, maybe two after it becomes impossible not to realize the words that have been building and being put off are refusing to be put off anymore. Victor is rambling, voice high and so excited, like he was often at the beginning of his time in Japan, but Yuri's still trying to convince him lungs to take in air between the last shop and Victor's endless lit voice. "Let me take a breather."
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"Yay!"
Bags drop to the sidewalk, and to the bench beside Yuri, while he stretches his arms and twirls, feeling more renewed than he has in weeks. He's still not sure this was the best move for Yuri, but it's done him a world of good. "I haven't gone shopping in ages. This is fun!"
The shopping. Trying on new clothes, and seeking out new treasures. The time spent with Yuri, like this really is a vacation, and later on they'll go back to their room and Victor can have Yuri try on a series of new clothes and enjoy removing them just as much.
Like it's a date. Like they have room for that, this week, here, in this city where Yuri will prove himself a champion.
...Yuri, who is currently panting on a bench, asking for a breath, but not to stop, which only makes Victor's smile grow. "I would have liked to shop when the Euro was weaker, though."
Not that it matters. It hasn't for years. And he's had a good time finding these newest items, but: "You don't want anything, Yuri?"
He doesn't think Yuri's spent so much as a cent yet.
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Victor is turning in circles, maybe even more like a delighted child than a swept away tourist, and Yuri found it hard not to stare at him. It was a tear of reactions in one, both, the semi-exhausting however it was Victor found the energy to do all of this and still be this bright -- no, brighter even for it, than when they began, that each step and each stop before the next -- and the one where it was impossible not to see it.
The way the brilliance of it made him lighter.
The way the happiness shone off of him more than the sun.
Victor turning his absorbed glee toward Yuri, with a question, had Yuri fumbling a quick, "Oh...no."
He isn't sure it doesn't come out as a question. Or an expelled rush at even the idea of being able to spend a single fifth of the prices Victor hadn't entirely even seen to look at, no less notice adding up across places. Yuri couldn't do that. Not on any sort of normal day, and certainly not with the fees and bills coming after this weekend for the year behind him. Them.
He, also, isn't entirely, one hundred percent, sure it isn't a lie. There is ... something.
Maybe. Or maybe not. He can't decide. He's been trying to decide for days.
Whether it's stupid. Sentimental. Desperate. Reaching.
Which makes him look away from Victor. To the building reaching into the sky right beyond the bench. Then, as if his eyes had more will that his not-knowing, than his complicating doubts, to the windows of the stores under it, to the right, and the left of it, too, and those as well.
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Gotta Supercharge It! -- Escape the fans!
Back in the other direction, Yurio is also making his way through the city -- but for less pleasant reasons. His footsteps beat a frantic, staccato pulse that echoes off the surrounding buildings, almost loud enough to drown his thudding pulse and quickened breath.
And what is he running from, one might ask?
None other than a ravening pack of fans, all sporting the cat ear headbands that make up their uniform. They've lost sight but not scent of their prey, pausing in their chase to huddle at a street corner, trying to determine which alley he'd ducked down. "Where's Yuratchka?" asks one, peering around a building corner.
"We're about to have a fan meeting!" whines another, dropping to the ground to sniff hopefully for a trail, before catching wind of something familiar. "I can smell Yuratchka! It's coming from over here!"
"Oh!" Another girl sits up, a thin gold wire glinting between her mittened fingers. "This hair is Yuratchka's!"
They're close. It's only a matter of time.
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This isn't happening. This seriously isn't happening.
(Who the hell are these fangirl freaks? They can smell him? What the shit?)
He doesn't even want to be out here. All he'd intended to do was to go down the street, breathe some air that dozens of other figure skaters haven't been breathing for a little while. Maybe stick his head in some crappy souvenir shop -- he's got, like, all of twenty euros in his wallet, and that won't buy much except something small for his grandfather's Christmas present. Just enough to not be staring at the four walls of his hotel room for the entire afternoon. And now here he is pressed up against a stone doorway in the grimy wall of some alley that stinks like old garbage and pure fear, while a bunch of rabid cat-ear-wearing psychos are prowling around so close by that he could spit on them -- and they're blocking his only fucking escape route.
Crap. Peering over his shoulder, trying to see around the corner, he can tell that they're still trying to pick up his trail. How do I get myself out of this? He could take off at a run, try to make a break for it, but where can he go? How far could he --
He's so caught up in his immediate predicament that the sound of a revving engine doesn't even register in his ears until it's practically on top of him.
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He's never decompressed the way the other skaters do. Doesn't drink much, doesn't socialize. Sees little point to wasting time rehashing previous seasons and stories with people he barely knows, doesn't care to know better.
The bike is a rental, and it, too, was a specific decision. He could share taxis with the others, share dinners, share his space, but he prefers to ride around the city himself, without having to listen to them.
Finding focus in the way wind whips around his face, catches the jacket at his waist. (He'd medaled, before. Stood on that ice with Victor Nikiforov and Chris and felt nothing but the crushing weight of the months ahead.)
Focus, but not enough to miss a glint of blonde as it disappears around a corner, with a chattering mass of girls in hot pursuit, and just like that, his plans have changed.
Or maybe he was always meant to drive along the cobbles, coming to a halt in front of Yuri Plisetsky, cutting the engine to a low growl. "Yuri, get on."
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And then its rider, in a black helmet and leather jacket (a look that pings wow, that's super-cool in some remote corner of his mind that isn't preoccupied with staving off his imminent death-by-fangirl), calls out to him by name -- and Yuri doesn't even know who or what he's looking at, at first.
'Huh?' It takes a second to for everything to come together, enough to identify the face and voice over the roaring in his head. 'You're -- '
A bad move, to say anything out loud, because the most dedicated of Yuri's Angels have been drawn to the noise in the alleyway, and not only have they found their quarry but also have stumbled upon a wholly new element that complicates matters in an absolutely delightful way.
'It's Yuratchka!' one of them exclaims gleefully, just as her companion gasps in surprise, 'Huh? No way! It's Otabek Altin of Kazakhstan!'
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Gotta Supercharge It! -- A gift for you
In another part of the city –– despite the gentle twilight softening the sky into pale periwinkles and oranges and deep, deep ceruleans ––
–– despite the happy noise of the Christmas market beginning to bustle under draping fairy lights ––
–– despite the new suit that has been measured and ordered and paid for, ready for the gala at the end of this long, long weekend ––
–– Suddenly, the mood had turned sour!
Is it the fault of the empty wooden bench they'd left hours before? Only time will tell.
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"It's not here either," Yuri said. That boulder crushing his stomach and advancing on his ribs only growing as doubt had given way to way to the fullness of its prophecy as they got closer to the bench, in the once-crowded, now empty, thoroughfare. Empty now and no one milling about, no conversations, and the bench was sitting there empty in the street. The night closing on them quickly and he still hadn't managed to find where he'd lost Victor's bag of nuts.
He couldn't even remember exactly when he'd last seen it. Sometime earlier? Sometime before he was being poked and prodded and absolutely praying to melt into his shoes as people with measuring tapes measured parts of his body no one ever needed to have their hands on. Still. It hadn't been terrible -- even if Yuri had nearly choked at the price -- which seemed to only make it even more terrible and more fitting that he'd fail at something right after.
It hadn't been in the store anywhere near where the bags had been deposited, and not it wasn't here either.
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"Yuri, calm down and remember."
The mood has shifted drastically, from amusement and relaxed delight to strain and worry, and Victor can feel it rolling off Yuri in waves. He keeps his own voice pitched even and calm, trying to get Yuri to focus. "It's the bag of nuts we just bought."
Not long ago, anyway. Evening is falling, a sheer veil over the city, but they hadn't been gone more than an hour. Two, at most. "It's a brown bag with green print."
Yuri doesn't seem to be listening, searching with increasing anxiety around the bench, and it's enough to start Victor wondering, worrying. It's been a long day (week, month, year), and he's beginning to feel a little tired, himself. Yuri, surely, must be feeling the strain.
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No. No. No. No. Yuri can feel it, building, the chain of the repeating words, crashing like repeating waves on a beach in the back of his mind. Which is quickly becoming not the back of his mind, as they press harder, faster, as he looks everywhere. Under and over and behind the bench, and even by the tree nearby, as though somehow a nearness to the exact place he stood, sat, was, they were, will produce what even five feet of vision declared not there.
Which only seems to fracture and amplify that chant more, while Victor stands where they'd first stop. Quiet, even words, tell him to remember. As though he could forget. Except that he did. And now he can't do anything but remember. He can see it perfectly. But only in his head. It's nowhere here. Just like it was nowhere in the store.
And he has to stop moving, let his shoulders slump in the admission of failure.
Both in losing it and in not being able to find it. "Sorry. I have no idea where I dropped it."
Except. Except. Except. It can't end like this. It wasn't supposed to end like this, go like this. Not this day, this one day. He has to fix it. It doesn't matter how or how much. It's the only thought when a declaration to fix it, the only way he can think, comes right after. "I'll go back to the shop and get another bag!"
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