Chapter Text
When Yuuri Katsuki is sixteen years old, he watches Viktor Nikiforov win Gold at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.
It’s … an Experience. There aren’t really any words to describe it.
It’s late at night – or early in the morning, at this point – and Yuuri is curled up on his bed, eyes glued to the live stream on his phone screen. He is tired, so tired that all his thoughts feel all sluggish, and his limbs feel so heavy he can barely move, but going to sleep is the last thing on his mind, because Viktor is on the ice and there is no way he is going to miss that. He didn’t think twice about disregarding what his coach had told him (“Yuuri, I know you want to watch the Olympics, but please remember you have training in the morning. You can still watch Nikiforov’s programs afterwards.”) because you only get to watch your idol win his home Olympics once, right? And after following Viktor’s career religiously since his junior days, Yuuri couldn’t just miss out on this.
Through watching these Olympics, Yuuri makes a few discoveries.
Firstly, he discovers that not waking up his flatmates while watching Viktor make skating history is harder than he thought. He watches Viktor’s short program and tries his best to muffle his gasps and cheers into his pillow, but then the scores come up and there is just no helping the scream that forces its way out of Yuuri’s mouth.
“Yuuri? It’s the middle of the night, what’s …”
Yuuri takes a moment to realize what’s going on, and then he dazedly blinks up at Phichit, who is standing in the door, looking at him sleepily and rubbing his eyes. For a moment, Yuuri stays silent, and then he blurts out: “Viktor just broke a hundred.”
Phichit’s eyes widen, and he sits down next to Yuuri on his bed, demanding to be handed the phone. Yuuri doesn’t even have it in him to resist, he just hands it over and then screams into his pillow a bit more. Maybe he cries a bit, who knows. It’s an emotional moment for him, and in his head, Viktor’s reaction to his score keeps replaying, his cheer, his fist-pump, the handshake with his quietly pleased coach.
“Where is it, I want to watch it. Why is Christophe Giacometti all over your screen?”, Phichit asks, and Yuuri huffs.
“It’s a live stream. But, Phichit, Viktor! Viktor broke a hundred, he was perfect, it was so good, even better than at the Grand Prix Final, it was beautiful, I want to …”
“Yeah, you want to marry him, whatever, I know”, Phichit responds with an eyeroll, and Yuuri realizes he might have been babbling a bit much. Sue him, he’s excited.
“101.45, Phichit”, he says, and Phichit groans.
“Man, I wish mom had let me stay up to watch.”
Yuuri would like to point out that he could just have done the same as him and not asked permission in the first place, but he doesn’t get the opportunity, because at that moment, said mom opens the door to his room with an annoyed expression on her face and tells them in no uncertain terms to go back to sleep, because they only have an hour left until they have to get up for training. Reluctantly, Yuuri places his phone in her outstretched hand, and she fondly ruffles his hair before escorting her son back to his own room.
Yuuri doesn’t go to sleep, though not for lack of trying. He just can’t, because his thoughts keep circling around what he just watched.
This leads him to his next discovery: drilling quads while running on approximately zero hours of sleep is a Bad Idea. The kind of Bad Idea that gets him ordered off the ice to rest and examine the bruise a particularly nasty fall has left on his hip. When Celestino comes over to check up on him, Yuuri doesn’t meet his eyes, but while he doesn’t like disappointing his coach, he can’t bring himself to regret the decisions that led him to this point.
“What’s up with you today? Oh – no, wait, don’t tell me, I already know.”
A deep sigh follows, before he continues speaking.
“Well, here’s the deal: you can either watch the Olympics or do jump practice. You’re not experimenting with quads while sleep-deprived, not on my watch. Don’t give yourself an injury over this”, Celestino says sternly.
Yuuri knows that Celestino is right. He knows which of his two options he should choose – should want to choose, really. His season is far from over, he has Junior Worlds to prepare for, he needs the practice. And yet. He can only give a sheepish shrug, knowing that, deep down, he has already made his decision. Celestino only gives another sigh.
A day later, again in the early morning hours, Yuuri makes another discovery, while watching Viktor lay his bare soul on the ice to Nino Rota’s Romeo & Juliet soundtrack. Yuuri discovers that the goal he has been training for, that is, one day skating on the same ice as Viktor Nikiforov – it’s not just a goal, a dream anymore. Suddenly, for a moment, he knows with unsettling clarity that he is going to make it reality. It doesn’t matter how long it will take him, or how many hours of training he will need to invest. While watching Viktor jump on the Olympic podium and accept his flowers and congratulations, Yuuri knows that one day, he will stand on a podium next to Viktor, whatever the cost may be.
And lastly, Yuuri discovers that he might be a tiny bit – or maybe a lot – in love with Viktor Nikiforov. It’s almost an afterthought to all his feelings as he watches Viktor bow to the audience, one hand tightly clasped around his Olympic Gold Medal. It feels like … an “oh” kind of moment. Like it should have been obvious from the start, that there is just no other word to describe it.
From that day onwards, Yuuri throws himself into training with a new sort of determination. He knows he doesn’t necessarily have the same natural talent that some of his competitors may have. At sixteen, he has no consistent quads yet and he lands his triple axel on his butt about as much as he does on his feet. His spins are good, but not outstanding. He has good skating skills, nice, deep edges and natural flow, but he can’t trust himself with his jumps enough to incorporate more complex transitional footwork in his programs. But what he lacks in the technical department, he makes up for with tenacity, with stamina, and performance.
Yuuri ends up fifth at Junior Worlds that season, and he isn’t sure what to feel or think.
On one hand, he didn’t exactly expect to place that high after only coming in tenth the year before. It’s a good result, and everyone around him tells him so, and Yuuri does want to be happy about it, he really does. He worked hard for this, he has improved a lot over the last season, and it shows in his skating and got rewarded with good scores. Yuuri feels like he can’t really ask for more.
But, on the other hand, the podium is so, so tantalizingly close. It’s only two places away, only five and a half points. That’s in no way an unbridgeable gap. A clean free skate would have gotten him a medal. This is why Yuuri can’t help the tiniest sting of dissatisfaction, looking at the final results of the competition.
He could move up to senior competitions. The Japanese Skating Federation certainly would want him to. But leaving juniors with no major medals, when he had been so close to the podium at Junior Worlds – just imagining it leaves some kind of stale taste in his mouth.
Yuuri decides to continue competing in juniors for yet another season, after consulting with Celestino and his fed reps and his parents.
“You should do what you feel comfortable with, Yuuri. It’s not like there is anything to rush, you are still so young. Your career is only just starting, after all”, his parents say, and Yuuri smiles and wishes they were there so he could hug them. For now, he has to be content with seeing their faces only through video calls.
“I think that’s probably a good decision. Gives you some more time to develop your skating skills and get that triple axel more consistent, and to work on your quads. And maybe you could enter some small senior competitions, too, not like anything’s stopping you from that, and you can see how you compare”, is what Celestino has to say, before sending Yuuri off to do some jump drills, because of course it’s the axel that betrayed him at Junior Worlds. He had been watching Viktor’s axel so, so much to figure out its secret, to learn where that effortless flight comes from, but so far to no avail.
The fed reps say nothing, they just send him a vaguely displeased email pointing the lack of upcoming talent from Japan, laying open some of his other options, some information about coaching fees and financial support and sponsorship deals that Yuuri doesn’t read too carefully. He is just glad that they aren’t straight-up forcing him to compete in seniors yet.
Yuuri’s decision to stay in juniors for the 2014-15 season turns out to be the right one – not that he would have seen it coming.
Before the start of the season, he spends a lot of nights tossing and turning in his bed, unable to go to sleep while overthinking his decision again and again. At least when the season does start, he doesn’t have time for that anymore. He is so busy with training and competitions, with his Junior Grand Prix assignments and Junior Nationals, that the Junior Grand Prix Final almost catches him completely off-guard.
Well, not really, of course. After coming second in one of his Junior Grand Prix assignments and winning the other, of course he knew that he had qualified. What does catch him off-guard is the realization that the senior Grand Prix Final will be held at the same time, in the same place. It hits him about a week before they are set to fly out to Barcelona, during training, right in the middle of a combination spin, what that means: Viktor will be there, he will get to see Viktor skate live, in person, maybe he will even meet him. And the chances of meeting him, of course, are higher if Yuuri wins. That thought adds an entirely new layer of pressure and excitement and nausea to Yuuri’s already messy feelings regarding the Grand Prix Final.
In the end, the competition itself passes in somewhat of a haze for him. His memories of it, especially of the free skate and the medal ceremony, feel all foggy and distorted, and Yuuri can’t tell whether it’s from the adrenaline and the sheer shock of winning and setting two new junior world records in the process, or just the surrealness of it all. It feels good, standing on top of the podium and having that gold medal placed around his neck, but Yuuri is too overwhelmed to take it all in properly, to really enjoy it. He feels like he is being yanked around by strangers’ hands all day, having to sit through one interview after another and being stopped on the hallways all the time by people who want to congratulate him. He doesn’t remember most of what he says to them, or what he tells the reporters who want to know how he is feeling and if he expected to win and how he had been preparing for it and what his plans after this are.
The only clear memories he takes home from the Grand Prix Final are of watching Viktor skate, and his perception of just how good Viktor is gaining a whole new set of layers and depth. Yes, you do get somewhat of an impression of speed and height and distance through a screen, but only seeing it in person does Yuuri fully understand just how fast Viktor is and how big his jumps are. And, of course, that’s not all of it. What really is a revelation is his performance, the whole of it. Yuuri watches him skate to Phantom of the Opera with so much dramatic flair that he almost feels ashamed of how sorely lacking his own performances seem in comparison.
When he comes back home, after having seen Victor skate in person, he trains even harder. Celestino watches him with raised eyebrows for a few days, but then he just tells him not to overwork himself before senior Nationals, and that he should be careful about injuries, and that he has nothing to prove. He should give himself a break, for now.
For a few days, Yuuri listens. He video calls his parents and tells his mother about how much he missed her katsudon after winning the Junior Grand Prix Final. She promises to make him an extra big portion when he comes home to visit them after senior Nationals, and he can’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.
For now, he has to make do with instant ramen. It’s nowhere near as satisfying as his mother’s cooking, of course, but it’s still nice, sitting on the couch together with Phichit and for a while ignoring the fact that they are training to be actual elite athletes and should be sticking to the detailed nutrition plan that’s stuck to the fridge and that most certainly does not include instant ramen.
The break does seem to do some good for Yuuri, because he manages to get the silver in senior Nationals, only a couple of points off the gold. He gets sent to Four Continents and comes a very surprising fifth, and then. Junior Worlds. Surprisingly enough, Yuuri doesn’t feel overly nervous. He has other things to focus on, bigger goals to work towards. He doesn’t even realize he breaks the junior short program world record until a reporter congratulates him on it in the mixed zone after, and he can only let out a bout of slightly hysterical laughter in response.
Mostly, he is glad that the triple axel didn’t let him down this time, and he carries that energy with him into the free. It doesn’t go perfectly, he doesn’t manage to land his quad, but at the end of the day, Yuuri has a season in which he became Junior World Champion and Junior Grand Prix Final Champion to look back on, a season with no regrets.
It’s a solid starting point.