Chapter Text
i .
It begins in Toronto, in the winter after Otabek’s sixteenth birthday, when the snow is slick on the ground and the days are short and Otabek does not head straight home after his Saturday morning rink session.
There’s a DriveTest centre forty minutes away in the other direction, and he counts the stops as the bus rumbles along through the snow. He’s barely been able to focus that morning; his brain has been blanking in the worst possible way, and with every spin and twizzle and backwards crossover his mind hasn’t been on his form or his speed or shoulders away from your ears, Otabek, but on right of way rules and gear shifting. He has a well-thumbed copy of The Official MTO Motorcycle Handbook in hand, and tries to check through the pages he’s bookmarked, the ones with the questions he got wrong most often in the practice quizzes.
But his hands are shaking, and he can barely focus on the words, and Otabek stows the book away before he changes buses.
Before a competition, there’s a point where you can’t practice your jumps anymore, and you run out of time to go through the motions of an entire routine; where you have to trust in your body and mind and the things they have trained to do. As he stands outside the DriveTest centre in the north of North York and gathers his resolve to step inside, Otabek sends up a wish and a prayer on the wind that it works the same today.
Sixty-three days later, he gets on a motorcycle for the first time.
Otabek is the youngest person at the M2 motorcycle safety course by a long shot, and he draws himself up to stand a little straighter as they wait to start; he’s definitely the shortest. It’s hard to imagine this will be anything better than the novice ballet class in Russia, where he was the biggest and tallest, yet could barely do a développé écarté higher than his waist.
But he never wanted to do ballet, and he desperately, desperately wants this.
Getting on the bike for the first time is strange. It doesn’t feel anything like he’s ever imagined; but then, the only thing that could come close is riding a pony, from when he was much younger, and a motorcycle is not very much like a pony. There are far more things to keep track of: the speedometer, the handlebars, the clutch, and keeping an eye on the course and the people around him.
The bike is heavy, and it takes no small amount of strength to push it along unpowered. Maneuvering it isn’t easy. Still, nothing in Otabek’s life has been easy, so far, so he pushes on. It’s like endurance training; tiring, straining, but necessary. And unlike endurance training, there are new things to look forward to at the end.
The morning unfolds from there in sequence: finding balance on the bike, braking, learning to look up and ahead. Turning the bikes on and turning them off. At last, putting them into first gear, and starting to ride.
Much to Otabek’s surprise, none of it leaves him in the dust.
He finds his seat and balance fast; being secure in the position he takes and keeping his weight forward is second nature after a decade of skating. Where others on the course are hesitant over lifting their eyes from the handlebars and the path the motorcycle ploughs along the concrete, Otabek trusts the bike will move whichever way his body guides it; he’s had one too many collisions on the ice to look anywhere but ahead. There are lots of things to keep track off, and relying on his hands and the great machine beneath him over his legs to do what he wants takes some getting used to.
But he doesn’t fall. After a few rounds of slow driving, stop-starting to practice with the brakes, it feels more like the times he has to readjust to the ice after days or off for travelling and injury. As morning segues into afternoon, they learn to steer, start shifting through the gears, start to move the bikes around the course as though on a road, and the motorcycle starts to purr like a blade beneath his seat. Otabek knows how to maneuver a blade, and like letting go of the wall, he trusts the wheels will keep him upright. He stops himself from placing down his feet for longer and longer stretches; and slowly, surely, he starts to pick up his speed. He rides the bus back to his homestay with aching legs and an aching seat and unbridled excitement to get back on a bike again.
Perhaps, tomorrow, he will be able to go ever faster.
The second day he enters on the high of the first, and he thrives through the lessons. Swerving, turning corners, awareness of dangers; these are things Otabek does on his blades daily. His body knows these moves, and he launches into them with no fear. The adults comment on Otabek’s prowess and express amazement when he tells them where he’s from, and why he’s in this city, and he holds onto their words not as platitudes, but maybe as something he can be proud of.
The day wears on, and one by one they get a chance to take on the route set up for themselves, to go as fast or slow as they feel like, to get to grips with a whole track for them and the bike and no one else. Otabek awaits his turn with blood thrumming in his ears, more alight and alive than he feels before competitions. This is an electricity in his veins greater than that he felt before Junior Worlds just a few weeks ago, and he wonders how Senior Worlds next year will compare to the sheer adrenaline rush of being on this bike, and going as fast as he likes, with real wind and real ice-chill searing past him.
At last, it’s his turn.
He takes the course slowly, and takes care over each movement, each gear change and brake; after all, you would never do a triple jump without perfecting the double first, and he has the bruises to prove it. The bike is friendly beneath him, and he can hear it; it wants to go faster. Once he has his licence and his own motorcycle and can practise as much as he likes, he knows he’ll be able to ride as fast as the wind.
But right here on this course, there’s a corner coming up, and Otabek moves to slow down.
Only, he doesn’t. Whatever he’s turned, however he’s turned it, the bike picks up speed. He’s going too fast. Way too fast.
Brake.
He slams back his foot, pulls in the hand lever, and the bike skids—and jolts him so badly his foot slips. The back wheel snaps round.
Otabek goes flying.
By the time he’s got his wind back and is picking himself off the ground, one of the instructors, Helena, is already jogging towards him.
“I’m fine,” says Otabek on autopilot at the concern writ on her brow, although when he pulls off his helmet he finds that isn’t strictly speaking true. There’s some blood that comes off on the chinstrap, and he can feel his nose is bleeding. The adrenaline is pounding through his system and his elbow stings a little where it caught the fall—but apart from that, nothing feels that bad. It’s nothing like smashing into an unyielding sheet of ice at 220 RPM. That hurts. He still has a bruise on his hip from a series of falls practising his triple Axel earlier in the week.
But here he has on a helmet and a sturdy jacket and trousers besides, better armour by far than thin lycra against harsh ice. This won’t leave any lasting marks.
He stands up by himself, but doesn’t protest when Helena leads him away from the course, towards Pierre, the other instructor, waiting by a bench with a first-aid kit and no small hint of alarm in his eyes. He lets Pierre check him over and clean up the graze on his wrist and his split lip, and once a few minutes have passed and Helena has the next person riding and he has a wad of tissues pressed to his nose, he reasons it’s fine to ask when he can have another go at the route.
When he looks back, he sees Pierre with a clipboard rifling through papers that look suspiciously like the emergency contact forms, and his stomach sinks.
“Ah, Otabek, how’s your nose feeling?” Pierre asks, catching his eye and coming to sit beside him.
“It’s fine.” Otabek pulls the tissues away and frowns as another drop of blood seeps down. “Still bleeding.”
Pierre gathers up another five or six tissues and passes them over, and Otabek pinches them over his nose with a muffled thanks. They sit in quiet for a few moments watching as Ibuki from the music school tackles the course, and eventually Otabek opens his mouth.
“Pierre, I was wondering—”
“I just realised I should check with you—”
Otabek shakes his head, slight and careful. “You first.”
With a conciliatory smile, Pierre loosens one of the forms from his clipboard, and asks, “Do you think it’ll be easiest to reach your host mom or your host dad right now?”
The sinking feeling turns into a clawing, the kind that crawls up Otabek’s chest and lodges itself in the base of his throat. He’s suddenly very glad Pierre can’t see his face behind the tissues. “Why?”
“You took a pretty bad fall. Maybe it’s best if you come back in a couple of weeks. We can get you in the next session free, it’s no biggie—”
“But I’m fine. I want to go again,” Otabek says; and then adds, remembering the tissues still pressed to his face, “once my nose stops bleeding.”
“Kid, you don’t need to rush it. When the adrenaline wears off you might not be feeling so good—”
And there Otabek stops listening as blood roars up in his ears, because he knows exactly how he feels when the adrenaline wears off after a fall. He’s fallen more times than he can count, and that’s just in the last year. He’s pushed his body beyond its limits over and over and over again, and come out every time still breathing, still fighting.
Pierre gives him a small, empathetic smile, and pulls his phone from his pocket. And the thing is, Pierre is a decent guy; but he doesn’t understand exactly how much Otabek can take.
“Pierre,” Otabek says, “have I mentioned that I’m a figure skater?”
Looking up from the number he’s typing in, Pierre looks puzzled for a moment. “Yeah? Yeah, you were talking about it this morning, right?”
“That’s right,” says Otabek. “I’m learning quad jumps at the moment.”
“Yo, that’s cool! Like JJ Leroy does?”
JJ Leroy. Otabek sort of knows him—he’s about a year older, and his skating was through most of Juniors as up-and-down as Otabek’s, almost—unfathomably—like he too was going from coach to coach to coach in some kind of desperate bid to make a name for himself and his country. He has a lot of fans. He spent a week training at Otabek’s rink when he was looking at universities in October, and he was loud and showy, but respectful and not unkind. And Pierre is right—he has two reliable quads already, and is working on a third.
He supposes he shouldn’t be so surprised that Pierre knows about JJ. This is Canada, after all. Everyone seems to learn to ice skate before they can walk, and the populace follows ice hockey as religiously as Americans follow baseball and gridiron football. Figure skating can’t be that far behind.
“Yes,” he says. “Do you know what that involves?”
Pierre shakes his head. The phone goes back in his pocket, and Otabek seizes his chance.
“It means landing on the edge of a blade on ice after doing four rotations in the air. And I fall twenty—no, fifty times a week. There’s a bruise on my hip that hasn’t gone away in two weeks because I keep falling on it.”
Just slightly, Pierre’s grip on the clipboard tightens.
“Have you ever seen a développé écarté ?”
Pierre shakes his head once, very slowly.
“It’s when you unfold your leg in the air like this.” Otabek demonstrates with his free hand, high on his left diagonal. Pierre’s eyes go wide. “I have to do that in training. That hurts. This is landing on tyres. This is nothing. I want to sit for my licence today. Can I please go on the route again once my nose stops bleeding?”
Pierre has gone pale, and Otabek catches a flicker of fear in his eyes, and knows he’s won, even if only for now. But that’s enough; more than enough.
Getting thrown from the bike was scary; he won’t deny that. But his heart rate has come right down, and he’s been sorer than this after death sprints across the ice before, after breaking his wrist coming down from a jump gone wrong, and it hurts far more doing a développé écarté than crashing onto concrete.
He can prove his worth here, where there are no expectations, where there is no one forcing his leg above hip height and no one filming him falling over and over again; where so long as he can hold on while he’s braking, all he has to do is focus and drive.
That night, Otabek ices his hip and elbow as he catches up on his weekend ESL and physics homework, and tries not to think about how sore he’s going to be at practice tomorrow. There are more important things to think about: the Doppler effect, and how much of his essay he can draft during music class tomorrow, and when he can go back to the DriveTest centre and exchange his passing grade letter for an M2 licence.
It feels almost like a dream, seeing the letter in pride of place on his dresser. If he closes his eyes, he can almost still feel the bike beneath him, purring like it would take him anywhere in the world. It felt less like a battle to be fought, the way his blades are weapons to the ice; much, much more like the bike was a friend, starting him off on a journey.
He wouldn’t mind travelling the world forever if he could do it by motorcycle.
But that is a thought for tomorrow, and at last he finishes his physics, plugs his phone into its charger, and goes to have a shower.
When he gets back, there’s a string of notifications on his phone, and he follows them to Instagram. Otabek still hasn’t figured out how to turn off the alerts he gets every time someone he follows from his Colorado rink updates their status, and he’s too embarrassed to ask someone to do it for him. He’s not that incompetent with social media; he just hates exploring it, even as his coach and rinkmates encourage him to use it more often.
At the top of his feed is a black-and-white photo of what he recognises as Leo’s church youth group, Leo at the front of the hall with some friends from his church choir and his guitar, and he smiles to see it. Church is for Leo, he knows, what DJing is for him—a little oasis in this fast-moving, chaotic world they’ve thrown themselves into head-on. There are big changes coming up for both of them—Leo finishing high school, Otabek tussling with the thought of finding another coach, both of them moving up to Seniors next season—and through all that, it puts his heart at ease to know at least one of them has something solid and stable to come back to at the end of it all.
He glances to his bedside drawer, where the MTO handbook sits in its usual place. Otabek knows it back-to-front now, and supposes he can stop studying it so intently. He could find it a space somewhere else in this room.
It is a familiar weight in his hands, and opens easily, the spine cracked through long use. He flips through the pages slowly, and watches the highlighted lines sing at him. He knows which road law every Post-It points to.
And finally, he turns back the book to reach the front cover; and on it, a message in felt pen, still bright as the day he opened this book for the first time.
Happy 16th, Otabek! Got my fingers crossed for you - good luck, and ride like the wind!!!!!!
Leo (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
The words stir something inside him just the same as the first time he opened this book when it arrived in the post in October, and he reaches for his phone again. It’s always nerve-wracking to send texts out of the blue, but Leo did tell him to get in touch more often at Junior Worlds a couple of weeks ago, and Leo was the one he talked to about this what feels like forever ago. How thrilling it looked, to ride one of those machines. How much he wanted that freedom. What a far-off dream it seemed.
Leo was exactly the same about driving a car, and though he already had his permit he was itching to sit for his licence. He thinks that Leo ought to know this, if no one else just yet:
That far-off dream isn’t a dream anymore. Maybe—just maybe—there are other great things he can make reality too.