Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Yuuri had been ignoring his phone most of the time since returning to Hasetsu. It had been more important back in Detroit, when Phichit would text him requests while he was out, or Celestino might call if something happened with their planned time on the ice. But here, there wasn't much need for that. His parents didn't need him to pick up groceries on the way back, Yuuko and Takeshi could talk with him at the rink, and Minako's ballet studio was always open for him.

So when he lay down on his bed and clicked his phone on one evening, he was surprised to see several message notifications pop up. For a moment, he thought that maybe it was Phichit, or perhaps the triplets; but when he unlocked it, he saw that the texts were from Chris.

Chris. Huh. Not that Yuuri didn't get texts from Chris sometimes, but generally only when they were at a competition together, or during summers when they'd been invited to the same ice shows. (There was also an email inviting him to an ice show. He was surprised anyone had bothered with a screw-up like him. Maybe they were banking on him being over whatever mysterious thing it was that had caused him to fail so badly. He swiped that notification aside to be dealt with another day.)

Maybe Chris was still in Japan from Worlds? Yuuri opened the messages, but they didn't mention anything like that – just Hi, Yuri! and some well-wishes and asking if he could call him.

Yuuri didn't like phone calls, but Chris was nice. Perhaps he wanted to see if they might have any shows together. He slowly typed out a reply, and had almost sent it before he remembered – crap, right, Worlds. Another stunning performance by Victor, which Yuuri had copied for Yuuko; another hard-won silver medal for Chris. Congratulations, he added, before he agonized over the punctuation for another minute and sent it.

It was maybe twenty minutes before Chris replied, and after a couple more messages, he rang. Yuuri ignored the jump in his pulse and turned over on his covers while he answered. Chris's deep voice was smooth and familiar even over the phone, and they chatted lightly for a few minutes. Chris didn't ask about shows, or say much about skating at all.

"How are things in Switzerland?" Yuuri asked when the conversation hit a lull, since Chris hadn't mentioned.

There was a sigh in his ear – not a wistful kind, or the exaggerated kind Chris might give if Yuuri turned down an invitation to go out together. Just a tired one. "Not so good, I'm afraid. I had – this is going to sound stupid, you're allowed to laugh – I had a fall. Not on the ice. On the ground. Tripped over my feet and went down some stairs at the same time."

"Is it bad?"

"Torn ACL. No skating for me for about six months, depending on how fast it heals."

Yuuri sucked in a breath through his teeth. What luck. At Chris's age, he had to be wondering if it was worth going back to skating afterward. Though Yuuri wasn't sure why Chris had called him, of all people, to tell him this. He was friendly with lots of other skaters, lots of whom were friendlier than Yuuri was.

The silence stretched out awkwardly. "I hope it doesn't hurt a lot," Yuuri said, unsure of what else to say.

"Not too much. They gave me some nice pain meds. Mostly I'm moping around at home with Mimi." That was his cat; he posted a lot of pictures of her, curled up on his furniture or gazing out the windows at the pretty Swiss mountains beyond the glass. "So! No skating."

"That sucks. And in summer." Chris was popular in the summer ice shows, and for a good reason. Yuuri had heard firsthand how audiences screamed for him.

"No ice shows, no. So I've been considering what else I could do with my time while I heal, and, well. I was thinking, you know, it was too bad Yuuri couldn't make it to Worlds, and then I read that you had left your coach."

"Yeah."

"Are you still searching for another one?"

"I haven't really started looking yet," Yuuri admitted. He was tired of sitting around, yes, but so far he'd just been easing back into practice by himself, with a little help from Minako and Takeshi. Soon he was going to have to check his bank account, start thinking about who to work with, and put out feelers, but the season had just ended, so he had time.

"Well – if it wouldn't interrupt your plans too much, I thought it would be nice to try out coaching." Yuuri blinked at his ceiling and ran that sentence through his mind again; when he took too long responding, Chris added, "With you."

"Why me? Uh, not that I don't appreciate the offer – I mean, it's just, why not some Swiss kids?" Why one of his direct competitors? Was he really thinking of retiring after all? Why someone from Japan, instead of someone from Switzerland, or at least Europe?

"We've worked nicely together in the past, I thought. And of course I could teach some adorable little novices, but – I already do that for a few weeks most summers. Have to help provide our secret spin training to the next generation." Yuuri gave a little laugh. He could vividly imagine Chris's wink even over the phone. "It would be nice working with someone my age for once."

"I see," he said. It was true that he and Chris had always gotten along well. Yuuri had never been as close to him as he'd been to Phichit, but they'd known each other for... almost a decade now, wasn't it? Seeing Chris at competitions was nice. They'd danced together at more than one banquet, they'd paired up in a couple of group performances for shows and galas, they'd definitely gotten drunk together a few times. And it wasn't like he would be interrupting much in Yuuri's case if they trained together for a summer. "So, um... would I go to Switzerland, then, if we tried it, or...? And is it okay with your injury?"

They talked for a few minutes about possible logistics. As they conversed, Yuuri could feel his brain trying to talk him out of it. Sure, Chris was kind, and this was an interesting and unique opportunity. On the other hand, didn't he have enough of a hole to dig himself out of without chancing someone who didn't have a lot of real training? If he went to Switzerland, could he even afford the extra expenses, never mind whatever Chris might charge him? Didn't Chris need to focus on getting better? Shouldn't he be trying to find more permanent coaching arrangements than whatever temporary thing Chris was offering him? (Unless Chris's coach would want to – ugh, probably not.)

"And it would be fun," Chris was saying. "Maybe we could recreate our dance at the banquet when my knee is better. We were very good together there, hm?"

Banquet. What banquet? The last time they'd been together at one had been... the Grand Prix Final, of course. Yuuri could only remember drowning his sorrows in champagne. Had they danced together afterward? "Huh?"

"You remember – you, me, the pole. The champagne. I didn't know you could dance like that, Yuuri. You do tango, you do ballet, you do a nice pole dance, one wonders—"

"Pole dance?!" Oh, no, what had he done? What wasn't he remembering? Had they gone to a club?

There was another awkward silence. "You do remember?" Chris asked.

"Not a thing."

"Oh, ah." Chris cleared his throat. "You were very drunk."

"Things kind of sucked. There was a lot of free champagne."

"I understand," Chris said, although Yuuri was sure he was being nice. "Would you like me to...?"

"Please," he said, draping his arm across his eyes.

He listened in growing horror as Chris recounted his dance battle with little Russian Yuri, how he'd stripped in front of his competitors and a bunch of officials and sponsors to dance with Chris. Possibly even more embarrassing was learning that he'd danced with Victor while blackout drunk. (And he couldn't remember it? Wow, and he was probably never going to get a chance to get that close to Victor a second time.)

Chris went quiet afterward. Yuuri was at a complete loss for words. He was never, ever going to touch alcohol again. And Chris still wanted to coach him after that stunt? Sure, Chris was shameless, but....

"I'll let you think it over, then," Chris said, giving him an out. "Let me know if you have any more questions, or when you make a decision, okay?"

When they hung up, Yuuri stared at his ceiling for a minute more, then turned over so he could thud his head into the mattress. So he was a fuck-up when it came to skating, and now it turned out he was also a fuck-up when it came to appropriate professional conduct in front of a bunch of people whose opinions were important for his career. Great. It was too much to hope that everyone else also forgot that night, wasn't it?

Eventually, though, Yuuri had to drag himself off of his bed to get ready for sleep. It was hard not to dwell on the newfound embarrassment, but he tried to put it in the same category as all of his other screw-ups from last year. Maybe it was better that he couldn't remember it. Easier to pretend it hadn't happened and focus on getting himself back on track.

He let Chris's idea stew for a while. He played games on his phone until he fell asleep, then woke up and went skating and told himself that at least the extra couple of kilos he'd put on over the winter were slowly coming off. The triplets came by to bug him about his plans for next season, as they probably would every day until he told them, despite receiving 'no comment' each time.

Minako seemed displeased during their lesson that afternoon. "Is something happening?" she finally asked. "You seem distracted."

He was distracted. He'd been going back and forth on the pros and cons of Chris's offer all day. That it might be nice to try something so radically new; that Chris wasn't actually a coach; that Chris probably wouldn't be offering in the first place if he had absolutely no idea what he was doing; and so on and so forth. And of course the whole thing about their pole dance together. At the banquet. Which he was never going to be able to live down.

(It was good proof of how well they could work together, a part of his brain kept pointing out, if they'd danced together in the way Chris had described.)

"It's about my coaching situation," he said, reluctantly, when she gave him a look. He lowered his leg and turned so he was no longer facing his reflection. "Um, so, yesterday, I got a call from Chris."

Minako brightened immediately. Right, Chris was her favorite. After Yuuri. Yes. "Don't tell me you're going to work with his coach? Josef Karpisek?"

"Actually, he called to ask if he could coach me over the summer."

Minako's eyes went wide with surprise, and then she burst into a grin. The expression faded to confusion a moment later, though. "You mean Chris himself?"

He explained the situation in generalities, not going too much into Chris's injury and definitely not mentioning the stripping and dancing. Minako had a thoughtful look on her face by the end of it. "I still don't know what to say," Yuuri said. Minako had experience with training abroad, with having to consider opportunities like this; maybe she would have advice.

"Well, you're right to take your time to think about it. Are you sure he meant teaching you all by himself? Surely he could have his coach involved, too?"

"I don't know. We didn't talk about details that much."

"On the other hand... a fresh start could be what you need, Yuuri. Pushing yourself to try something new. You improved a lot when you changed to Celestino, but every artist needs to do something different once in a while. Chris is really expressive, you know that, and maybe he could give you advice on catching up, after how last season ended." She shrugged and leaned forward on the barre. "If he's injured, you'd be going to Switzerland, right? So that would be a new start, too."

"We haven't really talked about that, either." A new start, something different. Yuuri wasn't sure about running off to another new country to try and solve his problems – he knew from experience that most of them would follow him there – but he knew he wouldn't imagine disappointment in Chris's eyes the way he'd kept thinking he'd seen it in Celestino's. And if it didn't turn out well, at least Chris might learn something and it wasn't permanent.

He thought about it some more the next day, going on an early run along the beach. In the locker room at Ice Castle, after a session on the ice, he looked up some things about Switzerland, and then about whether hot springs really were good for helping injuries to heal. In his room that night, he went over some of the past text messages he'd exchanged with Chris.

The next day, he took a deep breath, told the butterflies in his stomach that it was just a phone call and that he was doing the right thing here, and called Chris back.

"Um," he said, once they'd traded greetings. "About your offer... I think I'd like to take it."

He wanted something new. He wanted Chris's confidence, though maybe not his shamelessness. He wanted to get himself all the way out of this funk, already – he didn't think he could stand any more moping around, but he needed more direction than trying to work on the same things he'd been working on with Celestino.

"I'm so happy to hear that, Yuuri." It sounded like he really was – his voice suddenly brighter. "Shall we start figuring out how to do this, then?"

Chris, it turned out, still needed to have surgery, and he would have to recover for a couple of weeks after that before he'd be flying anywhere, or probably wanting to coach anyway. "I'd be willing to move there," said Yuuri. "It, ah, it seems a little expensive, but it's a very pretty country."

"You could always stay with me," Chris said. "I have the space, I wouldn't mind. But your hometown seems nice, too. Lovely beaches on the tourism page. Didn't you say that your parents own a hot spring resort or something like that?"

"There are hot springs, but it's not really a resort." When had he said that? Maybe at that banquet, or maybe some other time he'd gotten drunk with Chris. "We have a room you could probably use, but it's not that big."

"What's the ice time like?"

"They have good hours, though there aren't a lot of skaters here. Mostly kids, so if you go at the right time of day, it's almost empty. They let me skate when they don't have regular ice time, too, since I know the people who run it. I used to get it for cheaper during the day when I helped the kids out."

Not that Yuuri was ever very good at teaching learn-to-skate, but he could hold a child's hands and gently tell them to push with their feet. And it had been worth the money he'd saved, back when he'd done it during high school. Right now, there was just the embarrassing posters all over Hasetsu. Yuuko claimed that they did work for promoting the rink.

"Hm. Sounds nice. Maybe for the summer, at least? It would be nice to get out of the house and make up for the traveling I can't do with shows."

Right. Chris often posted pictures from all kinds of places in the summers. Sometimes with Victor, sometimes with other skaters, sometimes all by himself, tanned and smiling, usually shirtless, unless it was taken at the rink where he was doing a show.

"Minako-sensei – sorry, my ballet teacher – um, if you wanted to come here, maybe she could help you with doctors and... whatever you need. She knows English, and if there are any therapists around who speak English, she would know. You would probably have to go to Fukuoka for that, though."

"Helpful locals, check, lack of access to services a potential minus. I'll have a talk with my doctors and see what they think. My stupid knee aside, though, it sounds like a nice place. A small town like here."

"It's not really small."

"Oh. But that sort of feeling?"

The inescapable posters of himself, how there were so many reminders of his life growing up, people who recognized him from either his childhood or the PR – yeah, it sort of did. It was a little choking sometimes. There was comfort in the familiarity of his parents' food, in the routine of cleaning the onsen, but he'd sometimes enjoyed being a nobody in strange Detroit, too. No expectations to live up to. Though no recognition when he did manage to succeed, either, outside the rink.

It was just... kind of weird. Yuuri wasn't sure he wanted to remain here forever, even after he did retire. But a summer should be okay. People would like Chris. (Minako would be over the moon about Chris, and so would Yuuko.)

They ended up talking for a long time. Yuuri eventually had to get up from his bed and start taking notes at his desk, as they wandered from wondering about visas to more questions about location to an entire conversation about the ice shows they'd been in last year that drifted back to what Hasetsu was like. By the end of their call, Yuuri had a lot of things written down, as well as more than a few questions that he wanted to find out the answers to, or that he would have to wait on Chris to hear back about.

Looking at the notes, Yuuri let out a sigh, suddenly conscious of how he was the only person on this floor of the building. He could hear Mari's music playing from somewhere below, but other than that, it was quiet. No Phichit talking to his family in Thai over in the next room. There wasn't his Japanese university roommate sitting a couple of meters away, silently pretending he didn't exist at all times.

It was different, being alone and having this kind of space again for the first time in years.

The room next door could be emptied out and would make an okay bedroom. His parents would like Chris. They would probably be happy that he had a foreign friend who was nice enough to come all the way to visit.

Yuuri looked over the notes again, this time with a more critical eye. He'd been tired of figuring out how to move forward; well, here was a set of instructions. He crossed parts out, rewrote others that were almost too sloppy to read, circled things he needed to do, wrote down another question, and when he went to bed, he felt more sure of what he was doing than he had been since the Grand Prix Final.

Chapter Text

"I kept meaning to ask," Chris said. They were talking over video chat, Yuuri leaning over his desk to peer at his laptop, Chris relaxing on his couch on the other end and looking up toward his webcam. "Were you injured this year?"

"No?" For a moment, he couldn't think of why – right. Nationals. That disaster. There had been a lot of speculation. "I'm doing fine."

"Oh, I see. You know how rumors are. Just wanted to make sure you didn't have anything to recover from yourself. Actually," he said, sitting up on his couch and making Yuuri's view of him shake, "maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to send me a video, so we can see how you're doing. I know you don't have programs yet, but it would be a good place to start."

"I kind of let up on training to finish getting my degree, since I didn't have Four Continents or Worlds," Yuuri said. "I mean, there is a—" He cut himself off.

"A?" Chris prompted.

Yuuri swallowed. "Ah, never mind." The triplets had taken a video of him recently. But Chris didn't need to see that one in particular, where he'd been performing Victor's routine for Yuuko like they were kids again. It had only been meant for her – he hadn't seen the kids – and it would be embarrassing to show Chris a video of Yuuri skating his biggest rival's program, even though Chris already knew how much he liked Victor's skating.

"Hm? Are you sure?" Chris smiled. "You don't have to be shy. I won't tell if you've been secretly practicing something too spicy for the competitive world."

"Chris!"

Chris just grinned. "Or we can wait, if you don't want to show me. We can take things slowly."

"Chris." Yuuri put his hands over his eyes and listened to Chris laughing and apologizing. "It's not like that. It's – it's kind of silly. I was skating for a friend of mine after I came back, and it was a program I thought she would like. That I liked."

"Oh?"

After a few more minutes of cajoling, Yuuri gave in and sent him the file that Yuuko had sent him. (Apparently the triplets had tried to upload it to SmileSmileTube. Thankfully, they hadn't figured out her new password before she caught them, so he'd been spared the further embarrassment of everyone with a search engine getting to see the video.)

He watched Chris's face as the video played on his screen, unseen. Yuuri hadn't watched it yet. He didn't feel any particular need to; he didn't want to end up comparing himself to Victor and seeing all the places he fell short, yet again. The memory of skating it was a pleasant one, and he was happy to keep it that way. Yuuko had smiled so much, and skating it had cheered Yuuri up, too.

"Huh," Chris said when it was finished. He fiddled with his computer for a moment. "Hold on, let me... can you see it now?"

Yep, there he was. Pudgier than usual, though not as much as it felt sometimes. Glasses off. Chris, thankfully, skipped through most of the video, replaying sections here and there. Mostly the jumps, though Yuuri had skated it with all triples instead of Victor's terrifyingly hard layout.

Chris replayed the axel combination five times in a row. It was good, actually. Yuuri had never skated it in competition before, only trained it for fun, and he had never gotten it to a consistent enough level to use in a program if he'd wanted to. He'd spent more time on it after Nationals, and while it wasn't as good as Victor's version....

"I had no idea you were training this," Chris said. "I've only ever seen Victor's."

"I wasn't really training it," said Yuuri.

"You could put one into a program if you can land it often enough. Your triple axel is better than his – no, Yuuri, no, please don't give me that look. It is. I'm saying this as his rival! I know that triple axel. I know yours. Please believe me."

"It is my best jump."

"See, there's the spirit. And I think you did a great job with the choreography, even though it was just for fun. You're an expressive skater, when you're not... well, anyway—"

"When I don't get so nervous I have a meltdown on the ice and look like I'm trying to keep from crying." Even though he couldn't see Chris's face, he could practically hear him grimace. "You don't need to be nice about it. I know I have a problem with... with doing my best." He'd cried enough about it, had tried a few things with Celestino. He'd read his fans bemoaning his inconsistency online whenever he sunk in the standings at a competition.

"I don't want to scare you off before I even get to Japan," said Chris. "Why don't we talk about that later, when we're in the same room? Maybe there's something you haven't tried yet for it."

"Okay." He didn't think so, but maybe Chris had some sort of secret. He was always so calm at competitions. It didn't matter if he was going up against Victor, Georgi, whatever the newest young it thing was – even if Chris had a relatively poor short, he was good at making up for it in the free, and he never looked shaken when he skated, whether he was first or last or right after Victor. Yuuri had to admire that. (He wanted that for himself, too.)

"Alright! Now back to this...."

They talked for a while, not only about the one program, but what Yuuri had been working on with Celestino, what he was working on now, what he needed to improve on for the future. Confidence, mostly. Rotating his quad salchow without falling. Chris thought he needed to project more. Yuuri had heard that one before.

It felt good to have another to-do list when they signed off. Yuuri promised a few more videos that Chris could show his coach for advice on a few specific skills, which the triplets would happily provide. He needed to lose another kilo or two, at least, but that was happening already, slowly and steadily. There were a few more items on the list. Not too short, not too long.

Yuuri was ready to get to work.

As soon as he'd finished the list, he got up from his desk and grabbed his earbuds, too restless to stay put even though it was well past dark. Hasetsu was very safe, and a run out by the ocean both relaxed and focused him.

He could have even gone skating, in fact. The Ice Castle was closed, of course, but knowing the people who ran it, and being a past national champion, were both good for getting rules bent. But it was late, and he didn't need to soothe his nerves with figures right now, and there wouldn't be that much of a point of trying to get real practice in at this hour.

Instead, he returned home. Mom was finishing cleaning up in the main room downstairs; she gave him a warm smile and wished him a good night. Yuuri had never really missed his parents, in the same way that Phichit seemed to miss his own family, but it was nice to see them again for a while. To have a piece of his life that wasn't figure skating, that didn't care if he was a failure, as he put himself back on his feet.

Back at his desk, he pulled up a favorite video of one of Victor's programs, then one of his own better ones. He clicked around to find an axel in each one, then put their two videos side-by-side. Victor was taller, and the angles were different, so it was hard to compare the height they both got, but... playing them against each other a few times, he could see why Chris would say his was better. Yuuri himself had occasionally let himself think that his might be as good as Victor's, though the idea didn't tend to stay long.

It was just such a strange thought. How could he be better than Victor at anything, when Victor was so good? But it was only one element. One jump, and Yuuri's best one, as he already knew – he'd always liked axels for some reason, despite how strange they were compared to the other types of jumps. He could be better at this one thing. Chris was better at spins than Victor, though nobody would call Victor's spins anything less than good. Chris was simply that great at them, with better speed and more interesting positions.

Yuuri played Victor's jump again, then let the rest of the video run. Longing pulled at his chest as he watched. He wanted to skate against this Victor, on the same ice as him. He wanted to be like this, elegant and confident and successful.

Last season, he'd gotten so close. He'd qualified for the Grand Prix Final. He had been starting to think maybe he could even medal there. And then Vicchan, and then Sochi, and then Nationals.

He had another chance. Probably his last one, given his age and the state of his savings account, but it was there, and he wasn't going to give it up. Even if he didn't have another season, he would make the most of this one.

On the screen, he watched Victor play with his tissue box in the kiss-and-cry, not paying much attention to his coach's words. He lit up when his score was called, launching him into first place. Yuuri had known that feeling, too,though not as often as he'd wanted to. His chest ached harder; he shut his laptop and leaned back with a sigh. Tonight, sleep; tomorrow, time to make that feeling happen again.

The next morning, at the rink, he skated over to the triplets, who were watching from the side of the ice. They were still a bit young and uncoordinated for Yuuko to let them be out on a freestyle session without a coach to herd them along, but they liked to watch and handle the music system. Sometimes they shouted encouragement at their favorites, of which Yuuri was one.

"Hi," he said, and instantly, he had three sets of intensely curious eyes staring at him. "Could the three of you record some things for me? It's private!" he added, remembering Yuuko's story of their attempt to upload the other video.

They were more than happy to help, spreading out along the boards for the best angles.

When they were done, Axel stayed at the boards as her sisters compared their footage. "Do you have a new coach yet?" she asked, like she and her sisters had been asking since he'd come back.

"It's not official yet," he said.

Even saying that much caused her to brighten. "Who is it? Who is it?" She rattled off the names of a half-dozen coaches, both Japanese and foreign ones.

"It's a secret," he told her.

"Hmph." But then she lit up again. "If I guess it right, will you let us upload a video of you?"

Her sisters looked up at the words. With all three of them staring at him like that, Yuuri gave in a little. He could remember being so desperate for new information on his favorite skaters when he was a kid like them. "Only a video I approve." One wouldn't hurt. "And the three of you all together get one guess a day."

That would keep them entertained for a while.

Chris kept up with the chats and messages as the days passed. He disappeared for a few days to have his surgery, and they didn't always call, but he did message pretty much every day. Messages of encouragement, comments on the videos Yuuri sent, updates on his own condition. Yuuri got into the routine of talking to him all the time.

Trying to learn over video chat was a new experience. Yuuri wasn't used to getting so much criticism at once, though at least Chris's coach was nice about it when he joined them to look at the triplets' videos of his jumps. Yuuri swallowed the part of his mind that said that this was useless, that he might as well accept that he was never going to good enough, and took lots of notes instead.

It was helpful – certainly better than having no coach – and Yuuri could feel himself cheering up more as he got back into the swing of practice. He even started working on that quad flip again, for the first time in months. It was probably a pipe dream, but it was something he'd wanted for years, and Takeshi was willing to help him with it when he had time.

Still, Yuuri was relieved when Chris was finally given his doctor's permission to fly. Minako had been enthusiastic about helping to arrange things for Chris, and the day he was set to arrive, she offered to drive them, too. "It's a long way from Switzerland," she said, combing her hair back into a ponytail after their ballet session. "At least he won't have to deal with the train, too." She glanced at Yuuri as she said it; he'd turned down a similar offer when he'd come back, not wanting to inconvenience her.

They had to wait at the airport for a while. Yuuri started to worry if something had happened as they watched more and more people come out. Chris didn't text him or anything, either.

But then Chris suddenly appeared from around the corner, standing out among the other stragglers with his height and light hair, smiling at them through the glass wall. Minako gave him an enthusiastic wave back. He did look very tired, and he was wearing a knee brace. Other than that, though, and the slowness of his gait, Yuuri wouldn't have guessed he was injured.

"It's good to finally see you in person again, Yuuri." Chris wrapped an arm over his shoulders in a brief hug, then grinned at Minako. "And you must be his lovely ballet teacher."

They introduced themselves – Minako restraining herself to simply saying that she liked his skating, now that Chris was in front of her – and then they slowly made their way to the car. Yuuri took Chris's suitcases for him. Chris sighed as he settled into his seat and tipped his head back, adjusting his glasses.

Yuuri thought at first that he would want to sleep, but as they got going, he opened his eyes again. "It's good to almost be there now. The flights were a bit rougher than I expected."

"Because of the injury?" Yuuri asked.

"Yes – it doesn't really hurt, but, it was annoying to deal with. The flight attendants were kind enough to help me out, though. And I hear I have you to thank for help with arranging everything else," he said, inclining his head toward Minako.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm glad to help. Let me know if you need anything and Yuuri doesn't know. He hasn't been home for years, and Hasetsu's changed since then. It'll be nice to have you around for a while, Yuuri. And bringing home other skaters! It's really too bad you can't skate right now. We could have put on a show, get the tourism people all happy."

"You're only saying that because you'd want front-row tickets," said Yuuri, and she gave him a smile in the rear-view mirror. Well, letting her get to meet her favorite skater ("after you, Yuuri, of course") wasn't a bad way to pay her back for all the ways she'd helped him out over the years.

Chris was playing with his phone. "Yuuri, didn't you have a dog? What's his – her? – name, again?"

Minako's smile evaporated. Yuuri's gaze hit the floor, and after an awkward moment, he cleared his throat and made himself just say it. "His name was Vicchan."

"Oh – I'm – I'm sorry, Yuuri, I didn't realize."

"It's fine." He looked up, met Chris's sympathetic eyes, and had to look away. "You, um, you have a cat, right?"

"Yes," Chris said, taking the conversational bait. Thank goodness. "I was going to say – I already miss her. I left her with my parents, and here I'm thinking of poor Mimi and how she must be mad at being in a new place, and, well. My parents just sent this." He showed Yuuri his phone; there was a photo of his cat sitting on top of a bookcase, in a shaft of sunlight. "She's already decided she's the queen of her new house."

"She's very pretty."

"Isn't she? She's a darling, too. Loves to sit on you and be carried." He scrolled through more photos of his cat, and Yuuri made the appropriate amount of comments about how cute she was. It was a nice distraction.

It was dark by the time they reached Hasetsu, though Chris kept peering out the window anyway as they rode down the quiet streets. Yuuri wondered if it was what he had expected, what he thought of it. Hasetsu had very few pretty traditional-style buildings, and neither the fake castle nor the ocean were visible in the dark. Yuuri didn't think it was particularly exciting for an outsider. It wasn't particularly exciting for him, either.

"Ooh," said Chris, when they arrived home and stepped out of the car.

"Welcome to Yuutopia," Minako said, putting a playful quaver on the u and throwing a hand in the air. "Best hot spring in Hasetsu!" (Chris didn't need to know it was the only one.)

"I like it already," he said. He looked over at the colored lanterns, then turned to peer up at the building as Yuuri dragged his suitcases out.

Minako announced their arrival as she strode inside. Chris needed a minute with his shoes; Yuuri left him to it and tucked the luggage out of the way for now. He tried not to be too conscious of the poster of himself that was right next to them.

His parents had cleared an area of the main room for a small welcome party, which meant Minako and the Nishigooris and his family, with some of the regulars giving them curious looks from across the room. His parents jumped to their feet as Chris entered, but before they could say anything, the triplets rushed him. "Chris!"

"Chris!"

"It's really him!" Loop squealed, then switched to English: "Hi!"

"Hi!" her sisters chimed as well, and then Lutz held up one of their cameras. "Picture?"

"Girls!" Yuuko snapped, as she and Takeshi tried to hold them back. "Sorry," she said to Chris. "They're very friendly and they love skating."

"I can tell," he said, smiling down at them, which only made them squeal harder.

"You can ask for a picture after dinner," Takeshi told them. "Let him eat and rest first." Though they groaned and complained, he and Yuuko managed to drag them back to the table.

After Yuuri's parents briefly introduced themselves, their few words of English heavily accented, they started to bring out food. Dad hadn't held back – there was tempura and all manner of favorite side-dishes – and Mom's smile went from cheek to cheek as she brought out a special treat for the guest: her wonderful, delicious katsudon. Yuuri's mouth watered just looking at it when she set it in front of Chris, and he had to swallow and make himself look at something else, though that didn't get rid of the smell, which instantly made him hungry. No katsudon until he won again. He could do it. He could.

"Mari," said Mari, extending a hand over the table. "Yuuri's big sis. That's our mom's specialty, so enjoy."

"What is it?" Chris skipped over the fork Mom had thoughtfully left out for him in favor of poking at it with his chopsticks. "It looks wonderful, especially after what they serve on planes."

"Katsudon. It's, like, pork and eggs."

Chris glanced left and right, at the rest of the table exchanging dishes. "Only for me?"

"You're the guest. And it's Yuuri's favorite, but he's not allowed to have any, so." She craned her head forward to give Yuuri a teasing look. "Don't get jealous."

"I'm not," he said, and at Chris's look, said, "It has a lot of calories, so... I can only have it when I win competitions. Otherwise I'd get fat."

"Even in summer? I'll have to make sure you win something soon, then." He picked up a piece of the pork cutlet, which was still steaming, smelling so good that Yuuri had to avert his eyes yet again. Tempura was fine if he didn't have too much, right? And vegetables were good, and Dad had made lots of other food that Yuuri hadn't eaten in ages. They would be healthy and tasty.

He blinked when an arm passed in front of him – Chris deposited the slice of pork cutlet in his bowl and winked. Mom stifled a giggle, her eyes shining. Yuuri could tell she thought well of Chris already.

Yuuri saved it until he couldn't bear it anymore, and savored every small bite.

Chris must have been exhausted, and a couple of times, Yuuri caught him rubbing at his bad leg where it was stretched out under the table. But despite that, he kept up a lively conversation, with Minako, with the Nishigooris, and with the triplets, who bombarded him with questions, though their parents had to help them out. He replied to all of them in good humor. After a while, though, Yuuri started mentally willing everyone to start getting tired themselves.

"Yuuri, we never guessed it," Axel said at one point, puffing her chubby cheeks out. "You cheated! Chris isn't a coach!"

"He's my coach now, isn't he?" he pointed out. "I never said it was someone who had coached before."

The triplets all put their hands under their chins, considering this, before conceding the point with a reluctance that suggested they would be craftier next time. (Yuuri promised they could shoot one short video to post anyway.)

Chris kept trying to convey his appreciation for the food; Yuuri kept translating for his parents, although he thought they probably got the idea after the fourth of so time he said delicious. Dad kept shoving more dishes at him in return, suggesting he try everything, while Mom beamed. It looked as though they were both charmed by Chris already, like he'd thought they would be.

When they were finished eating, they let the triplets take a few pictures – with Chris and Yuuri, then of Chris and Yuuri, and then one with everyone – before the Nishigooris made them put the camera away and say good-night.

Chris managed to hide his tiredness until Minako and the Nishigooris were gone, and then he slumped against the doorway, closing his eyes for a moment. Yuuri retrieved the suitcases and started to show him up to the room, only to realize after about five seconds that there might be a problem.

"Uh, Chris?"

Chris quickly stifled a yawn and rustled up another one of his smiles. "Yes?"

"Are you going to be okay with the stairs? The room's on the third floor."

Chris followed him over to the base of the stairs and looked up them with him. They were narrow, and kind of steep, and Yuuri should have thought of this ahead of time. Stupid. Chris had a knee injury, he should have asked if stairs were okay. If they weren't, was there somewhere else where he could sleep for tonight, at least? Maybe—

"I think I'll be okay," said Chris, "as long as I take them slowly. Can you be a little patient with me?"

"Take your time," Yuuri said, letting go of the suitcases to wave his hands. "Do you need any help?"

"Let me try it," said Chris.

He did go slowly. Yuuri followed him up the first set of stairs with one suitcase, anxiously watching each time Chris took a step, then fetched the other one while Chris rested. They repeated this for the second flight, and Chris let out a long breath when Yuuri rejoined him at the top.

"Sorry," said Yuuri. Chris looked even more exhausted now than he had a few minutes ago. "I should have asked you."

"No, it's fine. I'll live. I'm supposed to be back on the ice in a few months, I'm not going to let a few stairs do me in." Chris hid another yawn. "Would be nice to finally get some real sleep, though. Which one is mine?"

"Here." He slid the door open and found the light switch. Mari had helped him put together a small western-style bed, and they had found an old low table that Chris could use as a desk. It looked more inviting than a hotel room, at least. "The toilet is over there, and my room's next door. The closet has some things in it, but you can use it, too."

"It looks marvelous," Chris said, and he promptly walked over to the bed to collapse on it. "I might sleep for twenty hours, I'm warning you now."

"That's fine. I can train by myself again tomorrow if you're tired."

"Maybe you should wake me up anyway so I get used to the time difference." Chris groaned as he pushed himself back up and took another look around the room. Yuuri helped him find the outlet to plug his phone in. "Thank you, that should be everything for now. I think I can manage a few steps to come knocking if I need anything else."

"You could probably just raise your voice a little so I could hear you through the wall. It's made of paper." That got him another of Chris's smiles. Yuuri felt his own lips twitching up.

He left Chris to sleep after that, though he stayed up for a while longer himself, playing video games to get the excited jitters out so he could sleep. Chris was here. Yuuri was going to – he was going to turn his season around, or at least he was going to try. It was really happening.

In the morning, he left early after a light snack to jog to the rink and get in a session on the ice, then jogged back in time for real breakfast. As Chris had requested, Yuuri woke him up so he could come eat with the family. It was nothing fancy, but Dad had bought bread and butter to go with the more traditional-style meal he had made.

It was kind of nice to eat like this again. Yuuri had often skimped on breakfast since going to university, with his mornings too busy to do things like make miso soup, or prepare fish, or nicely arrange some pickles with a bowl of fluffy rice. (Brown for him and Chris, so it wasn't as pretty, but Dad always remembered that point.) He'd usually grabbed a piece of fruit or maybe gulped down some yogurt to hold him over until he had a break at lunch.

Chris seemed to enjoy this meal, too, though he was quieter than last night. Probably still tired. Mari glanced up at him over her magazine a few times. "Sleep okay?" she finally asked.

"Very well, thank you."

She nodded and returned to looking through her reading. "Let us know if you need anything," she said. "And I don't know if Yuuri told you, but you're free to use the hot springs anytime."

"I'm not sure I'm supposed to let this knee get in hot water yet, but as soon as I get the okay, I'll be there. I've always liked hot springs."

"They're supposed to be good for your skin and health," Mari added.

"If it might get me on the ice again a little sooner, that's a nice bonus." Chris reached for the bread, then gave the toast a bemused look. Yuuri hadn't spent a lot of time in bakeries in Europe, but the bread in America had been a lot different, not as fluffy or thick-cut. If it wasn't like what he was used to, he couldn't blame Chris for being hesitant before he took his first bite, though he finished the whole slice.

He left Chris to rest some more after breakfast. In the afternoon, Chris texted him, saying that he was feeling up for exploring, so he finished stretching after his session with Minako and returned home. Chris looked more chipper now, and he was back to his easy smiles as they stepped out into the sunlight.

Yuuri took him to the ocean, since it was close. "Is that a castle?" Chris asked, squinting upward.

"It's not a real one," Yuuri told him. "It's a tourist thing. There's a ninja house inside."

"Still, might be fun to go see it once my leg's fit for climbing all the way up there." A couple of schoolkids passed them, staring at Chris and whispering behind their hands. There weren't a lot of foreigners who came to Hasetsu; it was probably the most interesting thing they'd seen all week. "And look at this lovely beach!"

It was too early in the year for many people to be out, so they had it mostly to themselves as they wandered along the edge of the water. Chris was still walking slowly. Yuuri wondered if his leg hurt when he took each step. Yuuri had never had a major injury like that; he thought that if he had torn his ACL last season, he might have given up on skating and focused on finishing his degree instead.

Maybe not. So far, every time Yuuri had felt like giving up, he'd found his way back to the ice somehow.

They stopped to rest before they got that far, letting their legs sprawl out on the sand. Yuuri tried to figure out how much distance they had covered. It wasn't far from home to the rink, but there were stairs leading up there, too. If it was too much for Chris at the moment, they might need to ask Minako for a ride. Or perhaps Mari would be willing to give them one with their parents' van.

Chris didn't say anything for a long time, staring at the waves. Yuuri wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe his knee, or his plans for Yuuri's training. Excitement and nerves twisted together in Yuuri's stomach, but he couldn't think of anything to say, so he let the silence linger.

Eventually, Chris reached for the sky and stretched his arms all the way out. "Let's take a picture," he said, reaching into his pocket for his phone. "Then we can get a move on. Sorry if you're bored."

Yuuri shook his head. It wasn't exactly exciting to stare at seagulls, but he had a lot to think about, too.

Chris angled his phone high above them for a selfie and smiled brightly. Yuuri tried to do the same. The first photo looked awkward; the second was less so, and that was the one that Chris posted later, after they had explored some more and then returned home. First day in Hasetsu! Missing my darling Mimi more than she misses me, but the beach is inviting and the company is great!

Yuuri usually avoided comments about himself (except sometimes when he was really depressed and felt like seeking out the stupid comments about how he sucked on SmileSmileTube and other sites). But the ones posted on the photo were nice, at least the ones that Yuuri could read. Chris had nice fans.

He turned his phone off and turned over in his bed. In the next room over, he could hear Chris sneeze through the thin walls. Yuuri hoped he felt better tomorrow, because he was ready to visit the rink with him and start their new partnership.

Chapter Text

They chose a session that was normally deserted for their first one together, and they had the rink to themselves. Yuuri warmed up and settled into the rhythm of his skates on the ice, the feel of his edges cutting in, the soft sounds the ice made under his blades. He was conscious of Chris watching, though he tried not to stare back.

It was strange to have him watching at the side of the rink instead of skating on the ice. He was still wearing his glasses, too. Maybe he didn't want to bother with contacts when he didn't have to worry about his glasses flying off.

Chris had him run through a few things, then propped his elbows on the boards and his chin on his hands. "I see you haven't magically fixed the tightness on your salchow since you sent the video," he said.

Yuuri nodded. "I've been working on it," he said. He'd compared a video of one of his practice attempts against several other skaters who had really good ones, and gone back over his notes from working with Celestino, and listened to what Chris's coach had to say. It was better than it had been a year ago.

He didn't mention the flip yet. It felt presumptuous, though it wasn't like it was only Victor's jump, and it wasn't like he couldn't work on two quads at once if he wanted to.

"I can tell," said Chris. "Why don't we leave the jumps for a bit? You have other things you want to work on, I'm sure. You seem to have a good handle on your strengths and weaknesses."

"Mostly it's my nerves," Yuuri said. "I skate a lot better in practice."

"I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more speed," said Chris, "and complexity, too – you can handle better programs. Something that shows off your lovely skating skills and has more musicality. I saw you've worked with several different choreographers. Did you have anyone in mind yet?"

"No." He was expecting Chris to figure that out. He'd always left the suggestion of choreographers up to his coaches, though he'd liked some more than others.

"What about music?" When Yuuri shook his head – maybe for the free, but he wasn't sure about that yet – Chris hummed. "It's still early. Let me know when you've decided, or let me know if you want suggestions after you've narrowed it down."

"Okay," Yuuri said. Maybe that was how Chris always did it? He and his coach seemed like they would.

Yuuri had never decided his own music before. It could be an opportunity. Chris wouldn't let him skate to anything that didn't suit him.

The rest of their session went smoothly, and as Yuuri wiped his skates down, he felt like he'd made a good decision. Of course, it was still just their first real day of working together, and Chris could still decide that it wasn't worth it, but so far he seemed happy.

Right now, he was chatting with Yuuko over at the counter in the other room. Yuuri lingered in the doorway, hesitant to interrupt, until Chris noticed and waved him over. Yuuko took his skates without prompting, whisking them away to sharpen them.

At first, he'd been reluctant to let her – even Yuu-chan who had been his first friend, Yuuko who had obsessed over Victor with him, Yuuko who had skated with him for so long – touch them. But the guy he'd used to send them to when he'd skated here years ago had closed up shop, and Yuuko had promised that she'd learned how to sharpen skates properly. He'd been pleased to find that she was right.

"Where to next?" Chris asked over the sound of the sharpener.

Next was Minako's studio, where Chris watched him dance, and then there was lunch, which they had together at home. Chris went with him to the gym, too, and then there was more ice time, shared with a few kids who stared from the other side of the ice, ducking out of Yuuri's way when he geared up for quads. Takeshi came by to watch for a bit, and helped Yuuri stretch afterward.

The next few days passed much like the first, except without Chris following him for the whole day, since he would step out to do his own exercises and therapy for his knee. Their time at home or walking around Hasetsu was okay – Chris seemed to enjoy being a tourist. Their time on the ice, however, was strange, and after the first couple of days, Yuuri found himself becoming frustrated. With himself or with Chris, he wasn't sure.

Chris's approach wasn't like Celestino's, and it wasn't that of his previous coaches. He was a little softer in his criticism – though there was still plenty of that – and Yuuri kept feeling like he was waiting for something more. Something substantial to work off of. A few days in, he went back to the boards after more work on his salchow (not entirely productive) and blurted, "Was there something else?"

"Hm?"

Yuuri scratched at the ice, restless. "It feels like there's something else," he said.

"With the jump? These things take time."

"No, it's not that." He wasn't sure how to put it, or precisely what was missing. He wasn't sure that he wanted Chris reassuring him about the jump, either. He was twenty-three already. He'd been at the GPF last year. Shouldn't he be able to land a second quad with decent consistency? Chris had been doing two by his first Olympics at only nineteen. Surely he thought Yuuri should be doing better by now.

"Did you want to work on something else?" Chris asked. Yuuri stared at him. "Yuuri? What is it?"

Yuuri was used to self-directing – when he worked on his own. When he worked with his coach, they had typically told him to do this, work on that, and he only made suggestions when he thought they were really missing something. They could see what he was doing and how it was coming along at least as well as he could, and usually better.

Celestino had been kind of like that at first. Phichit had been more vocal about what he wanted to work on. Yuuri generally liked being told what to do and then doing it. It was easier, and the reason he was paying them was for their expertise. Maybe Chris just needed more time to figure it out.

"Maybe we could work on spins," he finally said. Chris, still looking a bit puzzled, nodded. They hadn't really touched spins yet.

Spins went more easily. Yuuri had decent spins, but Chris had high standards for them. No wonder, when all of his rink mates and the famous skaters from his country had such great ones. At least with all the nitpicking, Yuuri could see all of his expectations. Part of his brain told him that there was no way he could meet them, but Yuuri did his best to ignore that.

"Come on, I know you can do better than that," Chris said after one sloppy spin. His voice was gentle, but Yuuri knew his words were correct. He did it again, better, and again, and again, until they were both satisfied.

At the end of the week, after they had washed the dishes from dinner, Mom slipped him a smile and a tray: tea and snacks. Chris's face brightened when Yuuri brought them upstairs.

"Your parents are so nice," he said, following Yuuri to the desk and slowly lowering himself next to him. "What are these?"

Yuuri turned one over to see the label and told him it was butter flavored, which made Chris tilt his head and get a bemused look. Chris tugged at his on the wrong end until Yuuri pointed out where the wrapper said to pull, too. "Oh, it's good," Yuuri said after the first bite. "I've never had these before."

"Another reason to thank your mom, then." He smiled as he broke a piece off of his sweet and plopped it in his mouth. His eyes closed for a moment, his long eyelashes settling against his cheeks. He looked so relaxed like that. "Mm, yes, agreed."

"They want to make sure you're having a good time."

"Yes, everything's fine. It's nice and quiet at night, and I like your town so far. Not really a hopping spot for figure skating, though."

"No. It used to be just me and Yuu-chan, and then she stopped skating as much, and now she only does it for fun."

"I know you warned me, but I thought Japan's top skater would have more of a team with him. Even in Switzerland, we get more than you do at my rink. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to talk about it, but – it's not a funding issue, is it?"

Yuuri shrugged and played with the wrapper for his sweet, crinkling it between his fingers. "We do get funding. Probably more than in Switzerland." It wasn't a ton and it didn't cover everything, though. "I used to train at a bigger place over in Wakayama – it's kind of near Osaka and Kyoto – when I was working on my degree at the university there. And then I went to America, and Celestino had a trainer we would work with and things like that. There's not that much out here, though, except for the rink and Minako-sensei."

"She's very good, though. And I've seen your friends helping you out, too. It's nice that you can work with people you've known for so long."

Yuuri hadn't thought of it that way before. "I suppose," he said. "Though now that you're here, the triplets have started asking what my programs are going to be."

"Have you decided yet?" Chris asked.

"I think I have music I might like for the free."

"That's a good start. And the short?"

"I don't know."

"That's okay," Chris said, and Yuuri's gaze sank to the wood of the table. He'd been listening to songs, but after last season, he didn't want to do anything classical, and the only other song which was in any way speaking to him at the moment had already been done by Victor, so, hah. No. "Yuuri," Chris said, his voice softening in a way that grated, "is there something wrong? I'm not a mind reader."

"My coach always picked my music," Yuuri mumbled.

"Oh." A pause. "Is that all? Are you just having trouble deciding, or did you want me to suggest something?" Yuuri nodded and looked up; Chris was smiling again. "In that case, I think I can come up with something good. Just for the short, right? I'd like to hear what you had in mind for the free."

That was a relief. One less thing to worry about. Yuuri reached for another sweet, then opened one for Chris, which made him chuckle and protest that he could remember how to open them. He promptly proved himself to be wrong by tugging at the wrong end of another wrapper.

When Yuuri went back to his room, he listened to the song he'd been thinking about for his free skate again; it was missing vitality, the right amount of build-up. It petered out. It had felt like it suited him, so he hadn't said anything about it before. But now he was sure that it didn't suit a program, or at least, it didn't suit the program he wanted to skate to it.

Now he just had to contact the woman who had made it. After staring at a blank email for twenty minutes, sentence fragments coming together in his head and breaking apart before he could touch the keys, Yuuri gave up and went to play a game for a few minutes before bed instead.

He tried again the next night, but found himself scrolling through social media after getting only halfway through the first sentence. It shouldn't have been so hard, but all Yuuri could think about was how excited she'd been to have someone skating to her music, to be paid to compose something specifically for his program. She'd been nice when had told her it didn't work out, and this time he would make it work, but. She had to have been disappointed, hadn't she? What would she think of receiving an email from him again? Would she wonder if it was another false start?

Phichit had posted a lot of photos. Crepes, pictures with his family, Bangkok at night, several photos of him at a rink Yuuri didn't recognize – oh. Had he changed his home rink? They hadn't talked in ages, not since Yuuri had left Celestino, so Yuuri sent him a text, and a few minutes later, Phichit called him.

It made Yuuri happy to exchange Thai greetings with him again and see his smile, brilliant even through the screen. As they talked, Yuuri pitched his voice low, so it wouldn't carry through the wall too much.

"I saw Chris's pictures from your hometown," Phichit said. "You're training with him this summer, right? How is it?"

"Still a little weird," Yuuri admitted.

"I'm not surprised – I remember when you came to train with Ciao-Ciao. You were both kind of awkward at first. I bet the two of you just need time to figure out how it works."

"I know," said Yuuri. It was true that there was always an adjustment. Celestino had treated him differently than he did Phichit, adjusting for what style motivated them best, and that hadn't happened the first day.

"Is he going to do programs with you?"

Yuuri took the opportunity to explain about the free program music. It didn't take a lot of words; Phichit had always been perceptive, and he promised to help him get in touch with the composer without Yuuri having to say everything.

"It looks like you're back in Bangkok," he said, when that was done. Phichit lit up, and he nodded so hard that his hands shook his phone, too.

"It's not just a vacation – Ciao-Ciao came with me! We're making Bangkok our new training base. I have another coach now, too. She's Japanese, so I surprised her with the words you taught me. She came here to run a clinic for our skaters, but she's going to stay to help me with my jumps."

"I'm looking forward to seeing your quad this season, then."

Phichit beamed. Yuuri had seen him struggling to increase his difficulty, but last year, Phichit had started to land the quad toe in practice sometimes and had tried it in a couple of competitions. He had a lot of charm, and he connected well with audiences, but charm wasn't enough to win competitions on, and the judges didn't seem to care how beloved he was on social media.

"Ciao-Ciao wants me to add it this year. We're working really hard on it, and I think being back home is going to help a lot...."

Yuuri was smiling by the time he finally hung up with Phichit. Phichit was certainly a lot more enthusiastic about being home than Yuuri was. Even when they were training in Detroit together, he'd returned to Bangkok a couple of times a year.

It had been good to talk to him again. Yuuri could feel his energy rubbing off on him, relaxing and happy, and it was another reminder that he couldn't slack off. Phichit was trying to come after him with his new quad. Yuuri needed to get his salchow down, and look at anything else he could upgrade in his layout since last year. Even though they weren't at the same rink any more, it seemed Phichit could still egg him on from afar.

There was a new email in his mostly empty inbox the next day. Yuuri opened it as soon as he saw it, then replied before he could start thinking too hard about it. The composer said she would be happy to work on the music. Yuuri couldn't wait to hear the new story she wove in the notes, one with a better ending than the last version.

~!~

"I think I might have found your music," Chris said at dinner, so afterward, Yuuri followed him into his room. "I have a couple of backup options," he said, clicking around on his laptop, "but this one was my favorite. I think you'll like it. Come on, sit down."

So Yuuri sat. Sitting next to Chris at the little table felt different than when they were at the rink. Like this, they felt like friends, not like Chris trying to be a coach despite only being a couple years older than him, awkward in the role, and Yuuri trying to be the student. Sitting with each other and listening to music was more like the time they had spent together as competitors, drinking in hotel rooms and watching the other skating disciplines or old videos.

Chris found the file he was looking for, and Yuuri closed his eyes as it started to play. He listened closely, letting his fingers tap as the beat picked up in the middle.

When it was over, he said, "It's a tango."

"It was difficult to find one that hasn't been used by a million ice dance teams," Chris said, a wry twist to his smile. "This one reminded me of you."

Yuuri played it again, and he thought he could tell why. The music started small, subtle, before blooming into something more powerful and overtly sensual, the music building on itself and growing stronger till the very end.

It was a lovely piece of music. It made Yuuri want to dance, to lose himself to the beat and grab a partner like he was back in one of his many dance lessons. He could skate to something like this. Except there was only one problem.

"It's." He paused. "Sexy."

"Yes," Chris said, drawing the sound out with a little laugh. "Come on, what do you think? You can be honest."

"It's not that I don't like it, but... Chris, I can't skate to this." Dancing with a partner in class and putting on a façade of old-fashioned seduction for a few minutes to fit the music was one thing. Skating in front of thousands of people – even more on the broadcast, including his family, and then it would be recorded and put on video sites for the rest of forever – that was something else entirely.

"Why not?"

"For one thing, I'm not sexy enough to pull it off."

Chris didn't look disappointed or move on to the next file; he laughed, harder this time. "Yuuri, you don't need to be that modest."

Yuuri frowned at him. "I'm not being modest. You don't need to flatter me."

"And I'm not flattering you." Chris propped his chin on his hand and looked at him; he was close enough that Yuuri could practically count his long, dark eyelashes. "You're pretty cute, but it's not that. Remember what I said about the banquet? I was dancing with you on the pole. I got to see up close just how you can move. Or remember the time we went to the club in, where was it, Montreal a couple of years ago? I don't think you got as drunk then. The way you moved was amazing – and I think you can make your body move however you want it to. Soft, or strong, or sexy." After a moment, he added, "You don't have to. But I'd like you to see you try it – you could do a really memorable program with this kind of music."

Yuuri reached out and touched the laptop's keyboard to play the song again. His first instinct was to say that there was no way he could measure up to that. He'd taken pole dancing and tango, sure, but that was because he loved dancing, and he'd taken every different class he could find in every city he'd lived in, willing to try everything once. That was different from skating to center ice and putting on a performance. And he'd only done that particular pole dance that had apparently inspired Chris because he was super drunk and didn't know better.

But it would be different. Chris was right; a program with this music could be memorable. Strong. Yuuri had never skated to music he didn't like, but the programs he'd liked best had been like that. Ones that weren't generic and that let him put himself into the song and movements.

It was a good song. And it did make him want to dance. But it demanded confidence to pull off, too, and wasn't that always the problem?

Chris was still looking at him as he played the music once more. Waiting, patient. But trying to push him. He knew Yuuri could do better than pretty classical songs with moves plopped into his choreography between the jumps, programs he could practically do in his sleep. No risk.

It reminded him a little of an old coach he'd had, when he was still struggling with his triples. She'd made him jump close to the wall of the rink, over and over. Get the rotations in and finish the jump or crash into the boards. Those were the options. Skate the program with commitment and confidence or let it fall apart. And Yuuri was tired of failing. That was why Chris was here.

"I'll skate to it," he said, and the smile Chris gave him said that he'd made the right choice. Said that Chris was sure he had this confidence and energy in him.

"Wonderful! And how's your free skate music coming along?"

"Hold on." It was a short trip over to his room and back with his own laptop. The composer had just sent it back to him a few hours ago, and he'd spent his run home from the rink listening to it on repeat.

In this new version, he could hear struggles, but he could also hear hope, and accomplishment. He already had ideas for the costume. A dark color, not too fancy or flouncy. Something that sparkled, but wasn't overwhelmed by crystals. He just needed to figure out who to contact and send the email.

"This is lovely," Chris said, when the song was done, and this time, Yuuri smiled back at him. He had thought Chris would like it, too, but he'd spent enough time debating Phichit's song choices with him to know that opinions could vary by a lot. "It's definitely your style. I can almost see you skating to it already, all nice lines. What's it called?"

"The composer said I can name it," he said, and Chris's eyebrows rose.

"You had it made specifically?"

"Yeah. I always wanted to try that."

"Like Victor does," Chris said. "That's pretty special. Give it a good name."

Yuuri nodded. Maybe it was the music, or maybe it was the pleasant tone of Chris's voice, or even the words like Victor, but he suddenly felt warm and relaxed, like the pretty piano notes at the beginning of the song. It was a good, cozy feeling. "And I need a choreographer."

"You know, I was thinking that perhaps we could use mine." Chris's choreographer? All the way from Switzerland? Chris must have read his expression, because he quickly added, "He's going to be in Japan in a few weeks to work with a couple of Japanese skaters anyway. It's not that far out of the way for him to come here for a few extra days."

Chris's choreographer was very good. And Yuuri was pretty sure he'd had a hand in making most of Chris's more... explicit... programs. So it would make sense to go to him for a sexy tango.

Chris introduced him to his choreographer, Nicolas, over email, and while they waited for him to arrive, the two of them kept busy. Yuuri worked hard on the ice, with Chris standing (or sometimes sitting, when his leg hurt) at the boards; it was still a bit strange between them, but as Phichit said, they probably just needed time to figure out how they needed to work together. And Chris needed more experience as a coach. They consulted together with his own coach a few times, too.

A couple of nights, Yuuri went to Minako's studio. Doing figures at the rink with nobody else around calmed his heart, but dancing cheered it up. He put on the tango music that Chris had picked and let himself dance the way it made him want to.

He even tried imagining the banquet that he'd been trying to push out of his mind. He still couldn't remember anything about it, but he tried to picture what Chris had seen: him, stripped to the waist (okay, he did have a lot of muscle, like any athlete), bending himself around the pole (was Chris into flexibility?), then supporting Chris's own weight and dancing with him, their sweaty skin pressed together for lack of room—

Okay, maybe he could see where Chris would get 'sexy' from. In that one specific situation. In the studio mirror, Yuuri tried pushing his hair back, and then he took off his glasses. It was supposed to work in movies, but Yuuri thought he looked the same either way. Maybe a little better with his hair back, the way he usually had it for his programs. Either way, he wasn't someone who was going to attract a lot of attention of any kind from his looks alone.

At least he could dance. He would have to make up for his appearance with the way he moved. Yuuri poked one of his cheeks, watching his hair fall back into place, and wondered what that would look like and if anyone would be able to take him seriously when he tried it.

Chapter Text

Minako was just as happy to pick up Nicolas when he arrived as she had been when it was Chris. "He was a wonderful ice dancer – not the most technical, he and his partner, but they both had good musicality," she said when he asked her for the favor. "Always a pleasure to watch. But honestly, I think he's better as a choreographer. Did you see the program he made for Hirata-san last year? No? You should look it up. It's a little calmer than the ones he makes for Chris, but you can see the same attention to the music. Speaking of which – when are you going to show me your songs?"

She raised her eyebrows at the tango, but she thought it was a good idea – he needed to expand his expressive horizons, she said – and she liked the other song. Yuuri still hadn't named it. He took it with him to the rink after she left to fetch Nicolas and played it on his phone, an earbud stuck in one ear as he simply skated around the rink.

It was supposed to be about his career, his years on the ice, hopefully with a happy ending even if this season was all he had left. His skating – as Chris had said, it suited him. It was made to suit him and his favored style.

Yuri on Ice it was, then. He couldn't think of a better name.

Nicolas was easy to work with – he wasn't quite as easygoing as Chis, more distant, but still friendly. Certainly, he was skilled. He could recognize that Yuuri had practiced tango before, and the choreography he had come up with flowed naturally with the music.

They worked on the programs for a couple of days, off the ice and on the ice. Yuuri let the triplets have a sneak peek in exchange for them playing the music over and over again. (Yuuko frisked them down for phones and cameras before letting them in, and then hung around the side of the ice herself when she had time.)

The free skate was the easier of the two. There was inspiration from ballet behind it, and Nicolas had put an emphasis on smooth, complex footwork and elegant positions, the mood of the skating well-matched with the story of the music at each point. It wasn't an easy program, but it was a comfortable one, and he enjoyed skating it as soon as he'd done his first run-through.

The tango program, on the other hand, was demanding in a different way. Yuuri didn't have a problem with expressiveness, but he'd never been an extroverted person or an extroverted skater, and a tango demanded that. Demanded to be the center of attention, demanded eyes on his every movement, demanded that Yuuri meet those eyes and draw them in further.

When Nicolas first showed him the program, Yuuri could only think of how awkward it would look on him. But he'd decided to take the challenge, Chris's challenge, and he knew how the dance worked. He was an adult man. He could totally be sexy for three minutes. Not in the same way as Chris dripped sex on the ice, but, well. Chris was very special.

It got easier as he practiced it more and worked with Nicolas for longer. It still felt more silly than sexy by the end of their time together, but probably that would come with time and more run-throughs. Once he was more comfortable with the choreography and not thinking about it so much, he could figure out how to make the sexy part work when he was fully-clothed and sober.

When it was time to show Chris the programs, he and Nicolas left Yuuri plenty of time to warm up, chatting quietly at the rinkside in French, laughing a little. Yuuri did a few basic exercises, some small jumps, skated in circles for a minute – it was a lot more than he would get at a competition, but there was no need to rush. They had the rink to themselves at this hour, and no broadcast schedule to be held accountable to.

For some reason, Yuuri felt jittery. He was no stranger to stage fright, but here there was only Chris, and the choreographer. If he messed up, they would simply play the music again. Chris and Nicolas were still talking, so Yuuri tried to work the energy out, doing simple edges on the ice until Chris called his name.

While Nicolas fiddled with the music player, Chris sent him a warm smile and leaned forward on the boards, clearly eager to see what they'd been working on, to see Yuuri's version of a seductive tango.

It started off fine; Yuuri ran through the opening choreographic movements. There was still tension in his stomach, but he did his best to push past it, trying to remember all the instructions Nicolas had given him. Turn his hand like this here, lean into his outside edge there, then a smooth transition in a spin. At least Yuuri didn't have to think too much about that, his mind going pleasantly blank as he concentrated on the spin and the music.

The problem came when he finished the spin, and his body suddenly hesitated. Which way was he supposed to go, again? Left or right? He couldn't see the ice marks with his bad eyes, and he couldn't remember which way he'd come into the spin from. He picked one at random, with the sinking feeling that he was supposed to go the other way.

Marking his jumps didn't erase the feeling of unease, which only grew as the number of mistakes did. His next spin was all over the place, and he was so tense during his step sequence that he could barely finish the turns.

It felt like forever before the music and the program came to an end. Yuuri put his face in his hands as soon as it was over. That had been a disaster. Forget sexy, that wasn't even competent – it was nowhere near what he was capable of.

He didn't need to look up at them to know that Chris had to be giving Nicolas a look like what the hell was that and Nicolas was probably giving him back one like I swear he wasn't like that when we were practicing.

It was just a stupid run-through. He could do it again. He could do it better. He'd done it fine just yesterday – not great, not yet, but not a disaster like this. He would get his hands to stop shaking and the knot in his stomach to untwist, and then he would ask for the music to play again and he'd do it right this time. Everything would be fine. Why did he feel so sick? Stupid.

"Yuuri," Chris called, and Yuuri peeled his hands away from his face and went over, so he could at least see Chris properly. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." There wasn't any need for Chris to be so worried; Yuuri hadn't fallen, at least. Probably would have if he'd put the jumps in. "Sorry. Can we just do it again?"

"Are you sure? I don't think that's a good idea."

Chris was giving him a concerned look, while Nicolas was carefully inspecting the advertising around the rink as though he could read Japanese. "Why not?" Yuuri asked. "I forgot the choreography a little, but—"

"It's not that," said Chris, and his eyebrows drew closer together. "Yuuri, you're trembling. Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," Yuuri said again, but Chris didn't seem to believe him; he reached for his hands. And yes, Yuuri's hands were trembling, but he didn't need Chris taking them gently and trying to rub them with his own fingers. Yuuri snatched them away. He didn't know what else to say, and he didn't know what to do with the expression that flashed across Chris's face, hurt or confused or worried, or some combination.

The sudden silence between them was too awkward, and he didn't want Chris trying to soothe him in that pitying way again. He skated away from the two of them, back to center ice. He waited for someone to call him back, or to give up and play the music, but neither happened. Chris was murmuring with Nicolas again, though not in the relaxed manner of before.

Figures were usually a good anodyne for his brain when it was being dumb, but Yuuri tried a couple and found that they lacked their usual effects. Maybe it was the murmuring. It was too faint to hear what they were saying, and probably it was in French anyway. He knew they were talking about him, and he knew they were likely just worried that he wasn't skating like normal, but he could imagine other things. Chris wondering why he was here, Nicolas asking why Chris had bothered contacting him about such a poor skater, speculation about what had happened and whether he'd be able to skate this season.

From one moment to the next, Yuuri found he couldn't stand listening to them or breathing the thick atmosphere in the rink a second longer, and they still didn't move, heads bent together. He turned and went to the other rink exit, where his skate guards were sitting, and came off the ice. "Yuuri," Chris called again, but Yuuri turned away to head toward the locker room instead.

Chris caught up with him while he was unlacing his skates. "Are you not feeling well?" he asked again, sitting next to him. "You don't have to push through it. Nicolas said you were fine in practice yesterday and he thinks you were doing well with the choreo, so you can show me another time. Yuuri?"

"I know it sucked," he said, staring at his skates as he yanked them off. "You don't have to make excuses for me." He could still remember all the comments after Nationals last year.

Is Katsuki injured or something?

No, he's just being a headcase again.

He's never been this bad, and he looked so hurt and upset by the end.

It really sucks being a fan of his because he's so good but this always seems to happen. Can't he just get it together for once?

"Yuuri?" Chris started to put an arm around his shoulders, but he must have felt Yuuri tense, because he took it off again. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Yuuri shrugged. His words seemed obvious enough to him. Chris didn't move away, but he didn't say anything else, either, or try to touch him again. He stayed as Yuuri wiped his blades down and stowed everything away in his bag. Yuuri didn't know if that made him feel better or worse. "I'm going to Minako's," he mumbled as he stood. He would be super early for their lesson, but if she had a class going, he could find something to do there.

"If you feel up to it," Chris said, slowly. It sounded like he was expecting Yuuri to say something else, and Yuuri could see it when he glanced at him, but he still didn't know what else to say. Chris didn't seem mad, at least.

Minako did, indeed, have a class going. Yuuri sat in her office and tried to distract himself with a game for a little while, before he gave up and went to go warm up in a quiet spot instead.

The ballet lesson went much better than skating had. Minako commented on him being tense, but she didn't push it. It went away over the course of the lesson, but came back as Yuuri approached home. He wondered what Chris was thinking.

To his surprise, Chris was waiting for him in the entry, all smiles. "I thought we could go see Nicolas off together," he said. "I'll just wait for you to put your bag away."

Yuuri nodded and scrambled up the stairs. Right. Nicolas. On his way back down, the thought struck that he should thank him properly for the choreography – screwed up or no – and diverted to grab a few of the local snacks that the onsen sold.

Chris raised his eyebrows when he saw them. "Are those the ones your parents insisted I try the other night? They were good."

"I think so." They seemed to delight in getting Chris to try any new thing. Homemade pickles, different fish and vegetables, tea and sweets. Chris always gave them a good opinion, and when he liked it – he didn't seem to be a picky eater, so that was most of the time – he gave them a winning smile, too.

They went to see Nicolas off to the train station. "Good luck," he told Yuuri, with no hint of what had happened earlier. "I can't wait to see you skate them."

Chris wasn't a chatterbox, but his silence on the way back was unusual. Yuuri felt too awkward to say anything, either. He would have been happy to escape to his room when they got back, or maybe head out on a run until he could think clearly. But Chris asked for help making tea, so Yuuri had to show him how to use the kettle, and then he said that his leg hurt and would Yuuri mind carrying the tea up for him, and when they were both inside his room, he asked, "Could we talk for a few minutes?"

Yuuri sank to the tatami and wished he could sink further. "About what happened earlier."

"Mm-hm." Chris sat with a lot more care and rubbed his injured knee for a moment, then reached out to pour the tea. He was smiling, like usual, but the corners of his eyes were pinched. "I'm not mad about it, if you're worried. Or at least, I'm not mad about you having trouble with the program. Nicolas said you started to go the wrong way halfway through, and I'm sure that threw you off. We all make mistakes. But in the future, if something's wrong and you don't want to talk about it, you need to at least say so. Walking off like you did was rude, and we were worried about you."

"Sorry," Yuuri said. He glanced up from his teacup and met Chris's eyes for a second before looking back down. It was a nice tea, very green, steaming. It was warm outside now, but not yet so hot that he couldn't appreciate a warm cup of tea.

"Is it okay if we talk about it now?" Chris asked. "I know we still aren't completely on the same page when we're at practice, but today, I think I did something wrong when I was trying to help you. Was it trying to touch you when you were freaked out?"

"It's not touching," Yuuri said, and he needed a moment to figure out what he wanted to say, how to string the words together. Maybe he should start from the beginning. Chris was his coach, after all. Celestino had also tried to help him with his competition nerves, though the attempts had only been somewhat successful. "Really, I'm very weak."

"What?"

"Not physically. I know I can do the jumps, and I have better stamina than most of the field. But sometimes I get nervous, even when I know I have a good chance at winning, or one thing goes wrong and I can't keep it together. That's why I never made the GPF until last year. I'd do well at one competition and then get my hopes up and know I should be able to medal again, and everyone wanted me to make it, and then I'd do terribly. Or I'd do terribly at my first event and then I could do well at the second, when it didn't matter as much and people weren't expecting it."

"Really? You didn't strike me as having nerves all that often," said Chris, and that had Yuuri looking up at him in surprise. "I mean, whenever I saw you at competitions, I'd sometimes joke to my coach, look, there's Yuuri, he has his murder face on. And you would never talk to anyone during the event. You'd jog right past us with your eyes set on the far wall. You were always a bit up and down, but a lot of the men have trouble with consistent quads. A lot of people have trouble saving a program after a mistake. It's not a sign of weakness. I don't think you could be a competitive skater if you were weak."

"Maybe," said Yuuri. It didn't feel true. "Anyway. It's not touching, it's... I don't like it when people intrude on my feelings. It's like I want to deal with it on my own, or ask for support on my own terms when I know what to do. So when you were trying to grab my hands and hug me to calm me down...."

"It felt like I was babying you?" Chris guessed.

Yuuri nodded. "I don't really like being pitied."

"It wasn't pity – I was trying to help because you were worrying me," Chris said, a note of irritation in his voice that made Yuuri's stomach sink further, but then Chris sighed and took a sip of his tea. When he spoke again, the words were smoother. "Would it have been better if we'd let you do figures for a few minutes and then tried the program again? I saw you doing a few."

"It might have helped. I couldn't concentrate on them very well today."

"Okay, then, no grabbing you next time. As long as you tell me you're dealing with it, so I don't worry so much about you, okay?"

Yuuri nodded again. "Sorry," he repeated.

"It's fine. There, now we've cleared the air." He waved his hand, before setting it back around his teacup. And then he chuckled. "Don't tell me you were nervous when were at Nebelhorn last year, at least. You looked like you were going to have heavy words with the judges if they didn't score you well, before you skated that great free."

"I got them all out in the short. Afterward, I was kind of angry at myself, so I just wanted to do well. And I did. Sometimes it works."

"We all have our secrets, I suppose."

He couldn't help but ask, "Even you?" Chris seemed so open and friendly. It was difficult to imagine that he might have much hiding behind his frequent smiles.

"Ah, yes." Yuuri didn't push – Chris could keep the secrets if he wanted them – but he kept talking, fiddling with his teacup. "You've told me yours, I'll tell you mine?" He winked; Yuuri knew perfectly well what he was referring to and felt a bit of heat rise in his cheeks. "Don't tell anyone. I've never had stage fright, but... you know, it's great to always be on the podium with Victor. And I do like him. Our friendship isn't made up by magazines and fans. But it's a little tiresome to always be in the same place as soon as he steps on the ice. There have been a few times where I've had to push past that and remind myself that there's hope, and that we both have our unique qualities."

Yuuri had never thought of it like that. He could only dream of standing next to Victor on the podium, let alone over, and over, and over, and it wasn't like Chris didn't have golds, from when Victor wasn't at the competition. Victor was just that much better than everyone else. "You do have very creative choreography," he said.

"Is that the word they're using now? I thought we were past such delicate phrasing," Chris said, laughing. "Yes, there is that."

"It's very you. Like, whenever you skate, you're totally committed to the program. Even if not everyone likes it, nobody can say you don't perform. And you do so every time, so it's never boring to watch."

Chris looked pleased. "Thank you, Yuuri."

Yuuri took a sip of his tea. They'd steeped it a little overlong, but he didn't mind the bitterness. "Even if you've never won over him, you're still a great skater. Although there was this one time...." He propped his head up, deliberately staring off into the distance, and tapped his teacup with his finger.

He held the silence until Chris leaned in. "Yes?"

"Euros 2014. Even I can see you should have won there." Chris laughed again, his eyes bright. "I admire Victor a lot, but he didn't look like he wanted to be skating that day, and your free was amazing. That quad lutz you opened with was huge."

"Hah, you're right about one thing, at least. Though I think I'll believe you on both counts. Victor wasn't skating at a hundred percent that day. He told me afterward. Oh, well, such are the mysteries of judging." He shrugged. "I'm sure Victor has his thing, too. All those wins, his reputation – I'm not saying I don't envy them. At the same time, that's also a lot of pressure. People act like he's a god, but of course he isn't. He's human. He's had injuries and headaches and bad days, like the rest of us. I think he deals with it well, but it's still there."

He didn't seem very human. But Chris had actually talked to him, not just seen him from across the rink and read about him for years and exchanged two words at one competition. Maybe he seemed less god-like during a real conversation. Maybe Yuuri would get to find out someday.

(Victor probably never got nerves, though, pressure or not.)

Yuuri breathed in the scent of the tea, then let it out. "I'll be able to skate the program right tomorrow," he said.

"I'm looking forward to it. And no grabbing at you this time. Or is that only when you're not feeling well?" He leaned forward and drew his fingers up Yuuri's hand, sliding them along the soft skin of his wrist, his smile taking on a different air. "Is touching in general still okay?"

"Chris!" Yuuri felt more heat go into his cheeks, though he didn't feel a need to jerk away this time. Chris had touched him far more than this, an it was Chris. He was like that.

And he was friendly. And he was kind. And, of course, he wanted to win. Even when he knew it was probably going to be Victor, he wanted to be the gold medalist for once.

Yuuri was like that, too. He hadn't gone to the GPF last year and just been happy to be there. He had wanted to win it without thinking too hard about his odds or how he was going to manage that given his programs. Of course Chris would want to break his streak of silvers behind Victor.

"How's your knee doing?"

"A little better," said Chris, letting go of Yuuri to rub at it. "I've been following all the doctors' instructions to the last word. I can't wait to be able to skate again, even if all I can do is follow you around the rink at first."

And then he was going to try to come back, even if it was difficult to finish recovering. He wasn't giving up on that goal. Yuuri could hear it in his voice.

Chapter Text

The familiar notes started to play, and Yuuri skated. This time, he kept a level head when he came out of the spin that had tripped him up before, and the rest of it went fine. The program was still in its early stages – there were parts that were empty, and he wasn't leaning into the performance like he should be yet – but when it ended, he felt better about working on it.

Chris clapped for him and gave him time to rest, and then they did the free skate, too. He looked approving when Yuuri straightened out of the last pose. "I knew Nicolas would know what to do with your lines," he said, when Yuuri skated over. "It brings out that lovely quality you have."

"The short needs more work," he said.

"It does. We really need to figure out how to bring that sexy part of you out when you're not pole-dancing. Is there a studio nearby that has one? Maybe you could at least start there."

"I don't know. I didn't take it up until I was living in America. Phichit found some kind of deal and we took the first class together."

Chris's eyebrows shot up. "Now that would have been a sight. Perhaps some day? Anyway. We have time to figure out how to make it come more naturally. And I know we already planned layouts before Nicolas came here, but I was trying new ones in a spreadsheet last night, and—"

"I," Yuuri blurted, before stopping himself. But Chris, though startled, waited, so he finished. "I know it's not ready to put in yet, but I've been working on a quad flip." Chris's eyebrows, which had settled back down, went up again and stayed there. "I know my salchow still needs improvement, too, but I want to do the flip."

Chris's lips turned up. "You want to, hm? I like the sound of that. Okay. How far along is it? Still in the harness?"

"Mostly. I practiced it out of the harness a few times when I was with Celestino. The success rate on it still wasn't that good... and I know I should probably get the salchow down first, but...."

"We can try the flip," said Chris. "Nothing says we can't work on both at once, or that we have to start with the easier one. I can do the lutz but not the toe loop, after all. As long as you have someone else to hold the harness?"

"Nishigoori's been helping me with it."

"And you didn't tell me? Yuuri, you sly thing." Yuuri just grinned back at him, and then it was to work.

As Yuuri had suspected, there were no such exotic things as pole dance studios near Hasetsu. But there was Minako's studio, and he spent hours there working on the programs. Minako was delighted with the programs once she saw them, and then she was eager to help him work on expressing them. "It's not exactly a Chris-style program," she said, imitating some of Yuuri's moves across her dance floor. She made them look... he might have thought it was sexy if he hadn't known her since forever. "It's more subtle than that."

It was. Yuuri listened to the music at night in his room a few times, closing his eyes and listening to the story it contained. He liked having stories to skate to; it made it easier to step into the role if he didn't have to be himself. In his head, the music held a slow seduction, teasing and enchantment, ending with a different kind of climax than Chris's programs.

On the ice, maybe as a result of their talk, the way they worked together was more natural. Chris grew more bold in telling him to do things, and while with Celestino, Yuuri had usually preferred to defer to his opinion unless his own was very strong, it turned out that he didn't need to be like that with Chris. It was kind of fun to push back against him, especially when it made Chris get a little smile on his face and then push him harder.

He pushed the hardest when it came to Yuuri's expressiveness, though it didn't always work. "Yuuri, you're doing it like this, not like this," he said, demonstrating on the ground. His version looked a lot better. "Do you feel seductive when you do that?"

"I never feel seductive," Yuuri pointed out, and Chris sighed.

"Maybe we should just get you drunk and put you in the studio," he said. "No, don't get that face, I'm not entirely serious. More serious than when I was thinking it last week, though. Come on, Yuuri. Is there anything that makes you feel attractive? Handsome? Sexy?"

Yuuri gave him a blank stare.

"Let's try this – is there anyone out there you'd like to seduce? You don't have to tell me."

"Um," said Yuuri, trying to think. Someone he liked, or could like that way, someone he could possibly seduce, someone who wasn't already taken....

"You like Victor, don't you? Imagine he was at the boards, watching—"

"I would die," Yuuri said flatly, smiling at the way it made Chris chuckle. "Isn't that setting the bar too high?"

"What, do you think Victor is that picky? Okay, okay. Phichit? He's young and handsome and he already likes you."

"He'd say something nice even if I just did okay." Though he would be honest when Yuuri did poorly. Not in a mean way. They'd helped each other with programs before.

"Then, what about me?"

"Would I need to dance to seduce you?"

"No, a kiss would do," Chris said, his grin widening. "But it can be fun to show off for someone's attention anyway, can't it? It doesn't have to be me, either – it can be whoever. But try it."

Yuuri tried thinking about it when he did his next run-through. Chris, at a bar in a hotel or something, Yuuri on the dance floor, wanting him to look his way. It was more realistic than the thought of trying to catch Victor's attention for the night, and it was easier to imagine him than Phichit, with Chris right there at the side of the rink.

What would Chris want to see? How would he want Yuuri to move? What would he be paying attention to? Yuuri's hands, sliding across his waist and chest? The graceful movement of Yuuri's legs? His easy confidence on the dance floor – on the ice – unafraid to show the world his hard-won skills?

He wasn't sure how he felt about the idea at the end of the run-through. Chris said he thought it might have been a little better.

"I think it's coming along pretty well," Takeshi said later, as they got Yuuri into the jump harness for quad flip practice. "It's not the image I would have guessed for you, but I think you'll be able to pull it off. Make the judges so in love with you that they'll give you all the PCS they can."

"Maybe that's what I should be thinking of when I skate."

"Blow them a kiss at the start. Or do that wink." Takeshi did an exaggerated version of Victor's famous wink, the one that had reporters and fans alike falling over themselves, and Yuuri had to pause to stifle his laughter.

The triplets were waiting to watch the quad flip practice, standing next to Chris with cameras in hand. Yuuri gave them a wave before he and Takeshi skated off. They happily sent Yuuri the video they had taken afterward, chattering with each other in their excitement.

Later, Yuuri and Chris studied that video, and others the triplets had taken, and they brought in Chris's coach again. He had useful advice, and paying closer attention, Yuuri could definitely see where Chris had gotten his coaching style from.

When they were finished, Josef added, "If you're still looking for a more permanent coach when Chris is healed, feel free to send me a message. I have room for one more over here."

"I'll think about it." He hadn't been considering his coaching situation at all. The days were passing so quickly with Chris. Work, walks along the beach, adventures in town when they had time. He'd forgotten for the moment that it wasn't going to last forever, with Chris aiming to make a comeback, and that he had to start considering someone for when the season started.

"And Chris, how are you feeling? Is that knee doing okay?"

"It's healing. Not as fast as I'd like, but I'm doing my best to be patient and baby it." He was rubbing at his knee yet again. "Been doing some light jogging. Nothing more than that, yet."

"Take all the time you need." Even over the grainy video – the wifi connection in this part of the house wasn't great – his expression was fond. "We'll all be waiting right here for you when you're ready to come back."

"I'm really hoping to be ready for Nationals. Can't let some upstart take my title if I can help it." His voice went a little lower, more serious. "As for coming back – I talked with my doctors about when I can expect to get on the ice again, and I'm hoping they'll approve me for the lightest of work by August, but it might be a bit longer than that based on how it's doing."

"That's too bad. Do you know when you'll be back here?"

"We haven't decided yet." He looked over. "What do you think, Yuuri? If you want to find another coach here before the season starts, I understand, but I'd like it if you came, too. I could keep helping you with the programs, if you want. There's a room we can make up at my place, so you wouldn't have to worry about finding an apartment. Maybe in August? Give you time to adjust before we take you to your regional competition?"

"I'd have to think about it," said Yuuri.

"We can talk more specifics later, if you decide," Josef said, and then he signed off after a few more words of encouragement for Chris.

Josef wouldn't be a bad choice. He didn't have any other notable students besides Chris, but he'd done such a great job with him. The first to land a quad lutz, consistently a podium contender – he hadn't gotten there only by himself.

Yuuri made a short list of other coaches to consider that night. A couple of Japanese coaches, one he'd worked with for a couple of summer months in the US, even Celestino. He looked over the list, mentally comparing pros and cons – easier to work with Japanese coaches, less pressure abroad, some already had more students than others, their different strengths and personalities.

After staring at the names for a few minutes, he pulled out his phone and searched for the town where Chris trained. It looked pretty in the images, smaller than Hasetsu, mountains looming green in the background. He could imagine himself going on a run in that landscape.

One thing led to another, and soon he was checking social media instead of doing research. Phichit had posted another video of his quad. It was looking better and better, at least in the successful attempts that he put online. Yuuri remembered him working hard at it, and sent him a congratulatory text.

Thanks!! Phichit replied a minute later. They texted while Yuuri scratched absent notes across his list, trying to remember what he'd heard about all of them, his mind wandering off to that quad flip.

He stayed up too late and yawned through practice the next day. He had more energy by the time they hit the gym. For a while, he focused on his own workout, but afterward, he found Chris stretching, focused on his injured leg.

Yuuri paused to fight with his water bottle, and when he looked up again, he was startled to see Chris's expression: frowning, his eyebrows drawn together. He looked frustrated, and he was adjusting his knee, prodding at it. Yuuri couldn't remember Chris looking at anyone or anything like that before.

Chris always said it was healing fine. Yuuri hadn't had any reason to question if it wasn't. Or maybe it just hurt? Chris rarely complained about it, and usually it was in a joking way, or to make Yuuri do something for him.

Yuuri took half a step back and ducked his head, then made sure to click his water bottle closed in a way that made noise. When he glanced up, the expression was gone from Chris's face. "Yuuri! Come to join me in stretching? I'm almost done, but I can help you out in a minute."

"Sure," he said. He did a couple stretches on his own, and then Chris was rolling his shoulders and standing up to come over to him. His hands were hot and damp where they pressed on Yuuri's shoulders through his t-shirt, easing him a little further into his pike. "Chris?" he asked his shins.

"Hm?"

Yuuri was curious, but – Chris hadn't pushed him too much about last year's disaster. If he wasn't talking about his knee, he probably didn't want to talk about it. "Tell me about Switzerland. I've never been."

"Planning to rectify that soon, I hope," Chris said, his voice even and carefree as he spoke.

If Yuuri was going to move countries again, it would be better to go sooner rather than later. Give him more time to acclimatize to a new place, though he'd done fine when he'd changed to Celestino. Get Chris back to his doctors sooner. Chris's coach would probably be happy to see him around again, and it would be easier than trying to communicate over video.

"Do you miss it there?" he asked.

"Not especially," Chris said. "The food, a little. But your parents' cooking is delicious, and I'm sure I'll miss Japanese food the moment I'm back. And all the vending machines and their nice, cold drinks. We don't have ocean beaches in Switzerland either, of course. I've really been enjoying our walks along them. I'm not homesick, if you're worried."

"You don't want to go back yet?"

"Sometime, yes. I'm not longing for it. And the ice time you have here is great, Yuuri – nice and clear most of the time, and even when it's full, it's never that full. I'm happy to take advantage of it for a while longer and focus on you and your programs while my knee recovers."

Yuuri turned his head down, before some part of his brain, trained long ago by Minako, admonished him to straighten out. It was natural for Chris to say something like that as his coach. Yuuri had never had the full attention of a coach before; there were always other students to split their time. Who could ever have the luxury?

...well, Phichit did, now. But his family was rich, so he could afford it, and even then, his coaches had posted photos of themselves working with younger Thai skaters in their spare time. It wasn't like with Chris, completely focused on Yuuri and only Yuuri when he wasn't working on himself. Yuuri did enjoy that part.

When they were done, they stepped outside and Chris instantly sighed. "I could do without the humidity, though," he said, immediately turning to the nearby vending machine. He'd tried a good handful of the different drinks, after having Yuuri explain what the less obvious ones were, but today he simply bought two green teas and handed one to Yuuri. The other he opened and started to down.

"You look like a commercial," said Yuuri, amused at the image – Chris the handsome foreigner, tanned deeper than Yuuri ever got, standing in the sunlight and relieving the heat with a cold drink that he looked very satisfied with. There was even a single picturesque drop of sweat on his brow.

"Quick, take a picture," Chris said, so Yuuri did. It showed up on Chris's InstantPhoto an hour later for his fans to gush over how cool he looked in it.

With the days now hot and long, Chris started to join Yuuri on his early-morning runs, though for more gentle exercise than what Yuuri did. At the end of them, it was more and more of a relief to step into the Ice Castle's cool interior and have to pull their jackets on.

One day, at Yuuri's suggestion, they were working on spins, and Chris had a thoughtful look when Yuuri skated over for feedback. "I wonder if we should try a few different spin positions. Something that fits your short better."

"I don't think there's much that's very seductive or tango about spins," said Yuuri, blinking at him.

"And you've seen my programs? Yuuri, I'm hurt."

"The one you do with your arms behind your back is cool, but that's different."

Chris's eyes lit up. "Let's start with that one. Sit spin, arms extended behind your back – can you do that? And then maybe if you drew them up when you rise up, stretch them nicely above your head, maybe bring one down across your chest when you finish the spin...."

Yuuri had good spins. He enjoyed practicing them. Still, Chris's signature spin was harder to get into and hold than he made it look, and it probably only looked half as competent when Yuuri did it. Chris called out directions to him, telling him to try this and that, working him until Yuuri's head had started to spin as well, despite how used to the sensation he was.

"Chris, I can't see straight," he finally complained, and Chris laughed and declared that he would treat him to lunch in exchange.

"I really liked the first combination," he said, handing him his skate guards. He offered a steadying hand that Yuuri didn't need as he stepped off the ice more gingerly than normal. "It suits you. You have good arms. Good hands, especially."

Yuuri thought his hands just looked like hands. But he did have a lot of experience using them expressively, so maybe that was what he meant. Minako had pounded that one into him from a young age.

They found a restaurant they hadn't been to before, where Yuuri could get something healthy and Chris picked a more indulgent dish. At this time of day, it wasn't very busy, and they had a table in the corner to themselves. The windows let in the cheery sunshine without the heat.

The conversation came easily as they talked over the meal, more than it had at the beginning. "I know we've been friends for a long time," Chris said after a lull, "but I have to say, it's nice to get to know you better. I feel like we've never really talked before, compared to this."

Yuuri poked at a weird-shaped mushroom on his plate and considered what Chris had said. They had known each other for ages – since he was still in juniors, and Chris was baby-faced and still in his first year competing as a senior. He wasn't sure if he would have called Chris a friend, exactly, before he'd come to coach him. He hadn't been a friend like Phichit was a friend, or Takeshi, or Yuuko.

They hadn't talked much outside of competitions and ice shows. He'd been closer to him than he was to the other Japanese skaters, though. Chris had always been willing to invite him out to group dinners, or dance with him in a group number at a gala. He had always had a few minutes for Yuuri in the hallways backstage, asking how he was doing, sometimes taking a photo with him.

"You were really different when we first met," he said, imagining that much smaller Chris, his hair all fluffy and golden instead of dark where it was short on the sides, the curls all chopped down. He'd had programs to match. Light, cheerful, feel-good things.

Chris got a grin on his face. "Oh, yes, very." He leaned in close across the small space of their table, close enough that he could slip his hand onto Yuuri's knee. "Do you like the change in style?"

"Chris," Yuuri whined, putting his hands on his face. This was embarrassing. At least nobody could see his hand, though, and at least it was just Chris.

"Is that a yes?" he teased, his voice lowering.

"Your skating's a lot more interesting now," he mumbled though his hands.

Chris chuckled and let him be, pulling his hand back and straightening. Yuuri could still feel the heat of his hand through the thin fabric of his pants, and there was still heat in his cheeks, too, as he lowered his fingers and met Chris's smile with a weaker one.

"My coach helped a lot with that," said Chris, picking up his chopsticks again. "He recognized that I could handle something more difficult than the pretty little programs I had before, and he gave me a lot of freedom to explore what was truest to myself. Though I still wish he'd talked me out of that awful haircut when I was eighteen."

"It was bad," Yuuri agreed. There had been bangs. Even Yuuri had been able to tell immediately that Chris's face did not suit bangs.

"Victor made so much fun of me for it, but I never believed him until I had it cut again and realized that I'd gone from, let's be modest, a six to a ten." Yuuri couldn't help how his smile strengthened. "But you know, even if it didn't work out that time, maybe it's good that I tried it. Can't find what you do and don't like if you never do something new."

"Right," said Yuuri. "Like coaching."

"I think I like it, though you're a good student, so that helps. I'm a little afraid to take you back home now – if you come to our rink, Josef is going to be telling me 'why aren't you working as hard as Yuuri?' if I slack off at all. My rink mates are going to be mad at me for it."

Yuuri laughed along with Chris. He knew he was good at putting in the hours, but Chris had to have worked at least as hard as him to get to where he was. He thought it might be nice to see that in action, once he was back in his skates.

That night, in his bedroom, he put on his headphones and listened to his short program's music, doing some of the movements across the tatami, then in front of his mirror. He wondered if flirting had always come to Chris so easily, or if there had been a time when it had been awkward for him, too. It was hard to imagine little golden Chris using that same voice Chris had used earlier, harder than it was to imagine himself reaching over to touch Chris's leg like that.

He took his opening pose and thought of how Chris had leaned in, his touch, the way he'd said the words, low and directed only at him, and tried to put that into his first movements.

Chapter Text

"What do you think?" Yuuri fought the urge to smooth down his new costume and waited as Chris looked him over. Chris's gaze went to his neck, his hands, his chest, up to his face, back to his hands.

The one for his free program was still being made – it had a lot of stones that needed to be glued on. The designer had done a good job with this one, though. Lots of black, hints of the classic tango red, but she'd also added hints of a bright violet color, too. It fit close to his frame, clinging to his wrists and waist, and was more sleek than anything else.

"I like it," Chris said. "I can't wait to see it in motion. That and the free and... did we ever decide what we were doing for your gala?"

"I think you said something about reusing one of my old programs you liked."

"Is that what you want to do?"

He wanted everything to be new this season. "No. But I don't have anything else in mind in particular."

"Then think about it. Don't be shy. This is the season to let yourself run free. Maybe pick something you've wanted to do and talked yourself out of."

Yuuri had talked himself out of more than one potential exhibition. Some of them had been songs that Victor had skated to, and as much as he wanted to try skating to them after hearing them so many times, with new choreography, he couldn't bear the thought of people comparing him to Victor's much better skating. Others had simply been too offbeat.

"I wanted to skate to video game music when I was a kid," he said, tugging on the costume's sleeve. "My coach always said no, and I never understood why until I got older."

"You play games? I didn't know that. We're learning all sorts of things about each other, it seems."

"It's on my ISU profile," Yuuri pointed out. Though to be fair, he never paid attention when announcers decided to read them out during warm-ups, either. "Mostly I play short things now since I don't have a lot of time for them, but the music in the good ones gets stuck in your head."

"Like what kinds of songs?" Chris asked, and Yuuri ended up digging through his music on his phone to find some examples. There were shorter, cheerier tracks, which he liked to listen to when he was on his computer, and battle music he listened to while running and working out, and dramatic boss theme songs that he'd tried to use to psych himself up at more than one competition.

He left Chris listening to them while he went to change back into normal clothes, and when he returned to Chris's room, he was laying on his bed. Chris gestured him over until Yuuri laid down next to him to listen.

Yuuri had played some games with really, really good soundtracks. He could still remember where most of the ones playing on his phone came from, and listening to them brought up memories. This one heralded a boss he'd crushed on his first try; this one was from a game with beautifully stylized graphics that Yuuri could easily picture, even though it had been a couple of years since he'd played it.

"You could definitely skate to one of these," Chris said, when the playlist Yuuri had made ended. Yuuri turned his head to look at him. "I'm sure someone out there has skated to game music before, and it's just an exhibition. Have fun with it. You've seen how serious mine are."

Some of them were serious. He'd had one, a couple of years ago, that harkened back to his style in juniors. It made the changes in his skating even more obvious, given how much more control he had of his body now, how much surer he was, the progression in his skills. They were usually on the silly side, though.

Chris smiled at him. Yuuri nodded and reached up to take his phone back, their fingers brushing, and scrolled through the track list. A couple of them had been more promising than the rest, he thought.

If it was just an exhibition, maybe he could even try choreographing it himself. He'd had the idea on and off for years, of making his own programs like Victor did.

The next day, he took his new costume to the rink to try out while skating. It was comfortable, despite the tight fit, and he could feel Chris's eyes on him as he did a run-through of his program. Was this sexier? Did it draw more attention to his lines, his hands?

"I think it's perfect," said Chris. "The costume, that is." He had a look on his face that suggested he was thinking of something else, as well, but he didn't say anything further for the moment, even when Yuuri prodded him with a couple of questions.

After dinner, though, he caught Yuuri's arm before he could start up the staircase, tugging him toward the entrance. "Where are we going?" Yuuri asked as Chris sat down to pull on his shoes.

"You said you have a key to Madame Minako's studio, did you not?"

Confused, Yuuri nodded and pulled his shoes on as well. The walk over didn't take long, and it was late enough that the air was pleasantly cool, especially with the breezes coming in off the sea. The studio was very bright after the dark night, but once Yuuri's eyes had stopped squinting, he felt at home in the familiar space.

"What did you want to see?" Yuuri asked, grabbing the barre and running quickly through a couple of poses, too fast for it to be a proper warm-up.

"Not see, this time. I thought maybe it would help you to practice dancing with someone else."

"Oh. A tango?"

"Of course. Now, it's been a long time since I took a lesson in it, so don't judge me too badly, please."

Yuuri glanced down. "Will your knee be okay?"

"I didn't ask, but if I can jog on it, I assume a little dancing should be okay, as long as we don't get too athletic."

He nodded and waited for Chris to finish fiddling with his phone to get the music going, then stepped up to him. His teacher had made them practice both leading and following; he took the lead, since that was more fun, and Chris let him. Yuuri had forgotten how close they had to stand, or maybe it was just that they were the only two people in the room, not a pair in a crowd of students.

It had been a while for him, too, but only a couple of years, and the steps and rhythm came back to him right away. Step, step, turn of the head, step. It wasn't showy, like a tango in the movies, or what the ice dancers did, but it was fun, and Chris seemed to be enjoying himself, too.

They got more fluid as the songs went on and they got more used to each other, more warmed up. Chris wasn't a bad dancer himself, and he had a natural grace – not the first thing people usually mentioned about him, or even the tenth, but it was obvious when he stepped on the ice. Yuuri started to improvise a little as he felt more free, more into the dance, and Chris matched him easily.

The two of them danced from one side of the studio to the other, only stopping when Chris tripped over his feet and slammed into him. Yuuri managed to catch him and stay on his feet, but it was a near thing. "Sorry, sorry," Chris said, but he was laughing, and then so was Yuuri, breathless. This was fun. He could feel it physically, a lightness in his limbs.

"Are you okay?" he asked once he overcame the laughter.

"Yes, fine. See, Yuuri, you need to dance like that when you skate. That was perfect. If we were on a date, I could kiss you right now."

Between Chris's flushed cheeks and the warmth in his eyes, Yuuri almost wondered for a moment if – but then Chris put a few more centimeters between them, straightening.

"I'll try," Yuuri said. "I – I enjoyed that."

Chris nodded at him with a wide smile, and let Yuuri go. "I think that's enough for the moment. Did you want to lock up and head back, or spend a few more minutes here?"

Yuuri took those few minutes at the barre, letting his body cool down as he stretched and did a few ballet positions. His cheeks were pretty flushed, too, and they still felt hot when they re-entered the cool night outside.

They took a slightly longer way back, which lead by the ocean, made pretty now that the moon had risen and glinted silver over the dark water and the calm waves. The quiet sound of the surf precluded any need for conversation, but after watching the waves for several minutes as they walked, Yuuri suddenly said: "I'll go with you to Switzerland." The words simply came out, the decision made unconsciously.

Chris bumped his shoulder with his own. "I'm very happy to hear that, Yuuri. I can't wait to let Josef know. And my parents – I'm sure they'll want to welcome you as generously as yours welcomed me."

Yuuri took a deep breath, feeling the air going all the way into the bottom of his lungs. It felt good. He felt good. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine. "The triplets are going to be disappointed not to have so much insider information, though."

"Ah, too bad for them – they're a delight, when they behave. Maybe in ten years one of them will be banging down our doors asking for coaching herself."

Yuuri thought they were rather more likely to become skating analysts who moonlighted as photographers, but they were only six. When he had been six, he had thought he would be a ballet dancer when he grew up. Maybe one or all of them would discover a love of performing and they would take over the skating world.

They spent the rest of the walk home talking about the move. Mom heard them when they came in and appeared from the main room to check on them, and when Yuuri said that they had been at the studio, she laughed and scolded Yuuri for working too hard.

It wasn't the right moment to tell her or Dad, but he felt like he had to tell someone. Mari wasn't in her room, or sitting outside to have a smoke when he peeked out a window – she was probably out or still at work somewhere downstairs. Yuuko and Takeshi might be asleep already, exhausted from a long day at the rink and with the triplets.

Phichit was online, though. Yuri! How are you doing? Ready to spill the beans about your programs yet?

No, Yuuri wrote back. It's a surprise. Phichit had already posted about one of his songs, from The King and the Skater. Based on what he had said in the past, Yuuri guessed he was going to use another one for his other program. Possibly a third for his gala. Phichit loved those soundtracks.

Can't I get Best Friend privileges here? You had the music you wanted to use before reworked, right?

Yes. It's still a surprise. Phichit texted back with several sad faces, and Yuuri bit back a laugh as he wrote, I do have a secret to tell you, though. I'm moving before the season starts.

Switzerland??? Are you going to train with Josef and Chris? Yuri, that's wonderful! Such a globetrotter :)

The conversation with Phichit – ending with a plea that Yuuri come visit him and Celestino in Bangkok next summer – left Yuuri feeling even more relaxed, and it took a minute for the smile to fade afterward.

Switzerland, huh. He could ask Minako to help him with the paperwork and everything. He wouldn't have to see the posters of him everywhere. He would miss the Ice Castle and its familiarity, and Yuuko and Takeshi, and the home cooking, but he'd lived without most of that for five years, and he was ready to take a new step forward, somewhere with a proper training center.

Yuuri's heart pounded almost too hard to sleep – not with worry, but with a wave of excitement.

~!~

Minako was disappointed to see him go so soon, but happy to hear where he was going. His parents smiled when he told them; Mari asked for Swiss chocolates. The triplets screamed in delight and demanded pictures. Yuuko and Takeshi congratulated him with smiles.

Any excitement Yuuri might have felt when their flight departed Fukuoka, leaving behind the sunshine and the humidity and the place he'd grown up, was completely gone by the time they landed in Switzerland many hours later. In its place was sheer exhaustion. Chris was yawning, too, though he perked up on the way out, after they'd found their bags.

He called out something in French and hurried up to two women, leaving Yuuri to rush after him. The sudden exchange of hugs and kisses between them was a quick reminder that yes, he was in a very different country.

"This is Yuuri," Chris said, throwing an arm around him. "My protégé for a couple more months, before Josef wrests him away. Yuuri, these are my parents."

Both of them were tall; Chris's mom had blonde hair even paler than his was, while his mother was muscled and tanned. She definitely looked like she did sports of some kind. They greeted him almost as happily as they had welcomed Chris, their accents heavier than his.

Yuuri fell asleep in the car, and then barely made it into their place before falling asleep when the bed was pointed out to him. When he awoke in the morning, he felt much better.

On the other side of the small room, Chris was just awakening, too, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes, the hair on the top of his head not quite as orderly as it should have been. Even Chris apparently didn't look like a magazine picture right on waking. "Good morning," he said. "I can almost hear Mimi demanding breakfast already."

"Wasn't she staying here?" Yuuri tilted his head; he couldn't hear anything but soft sounds from the kitchen.

"She was. They took her home a couple of days ago so she would be less upset by the time we arrived. Nicolas said she seemed back to her old self when he checked on her for me." He sighed dramatically. "I can't wait to see her – what if she's forgotten me?"

"Do cats forget that easily?"

"I'm joking, Yuuri. She'll be cuddling up to me in no time. Probably up to you, too."

Chris's parents had already cooked breakfast by the time they made it to the table. It was a filling meal, and it tasted good after all the hours of traveling. Chris's parents seemed to know more about skating than his own parents did, judging by the questions they asked. Which reminded him: he took his phone out under the table while chewing on a crepe and answered the built-up texts to let everyone know that they had arrived just fine.

When he was finished and had put his phone away again, Chris was in the middle of extolling the virtues of the hot springs. Right, no more relaxing baths in the outdoor pool, either, Chris joining him more often than not to laze against the edge of the pool. Hopefully, Chris had a good, deep bathtub, at least. Yuuri quietly ate another bite of his food and listened in until Chris prompted him with a question.

After the meal, there was more travel to reach Chris's apartment, located near the rink and a couple of hours away from his parents. Chris had insisted that he didn't need to pay rent or anything, which Yuuri took to mean that he could maybe pay him something in exchange later. Minus some amount for letting Chris stay with his family in Hasetsu? They could talk about it another time; Yuuri was relieved that he didn't have the additional stress of having to pick out an apartment or anything like that.

The first thing that struck him when he stepped inside was how lovely the light was – golden sunlight came in through the windows, lighting up the wooden floors and making the space feeling inviting and cozy, and wider than it probably was. There was a little bit of dust, but otherwise it was neat, just in need of a bit of cleaning after Chris's absence.

Several pictures were set on one shelf, and in another corner was a hanging coat rack filled with medals. A few bronzes and golds, and plenty of silvers. One weird-looking medal was set awkwardly to the side, away from the rest – must have been whatever strange plastic thing it was that they'd given out in the French Grand Prix event last year, in lieu of real medals.

"Mimi," Chris cooed. A white ball of fluff uncurled on Chris's couch and blinked sleepily in his direction. After a moment, she stood, hopped off, and trotted over. "Hello, love, did you miss me?" He switched to French as he knelt down to pick her up. Yuuri couldn't understand a word of it, but he could tell from the high-pitched, gooey sound of it that it was some kind of baby-talk.

It was really cute, actually. Chris's smile was gooey, too, as he cradled Mimi in his arms. She seemed quite pleased, rubbing her head against his chin. Maybe she liked the scratch of his beard? Yuuri didn't know much about cats.

"She's really fluffy," he said, when Chris's speech slowed to a halt. She'd always looked it in the photos, but in real life, she was practically a marshmallow.

"Do you want to hold her? She's friendly. Here – gently, yes, there we go." Yuuri stayed very still as Chris deposited her into his arms.

Mimi peered up at him. Yuuri wasn't sure he was holding her right; he could feel her paws pressing against his hands like she wasn't sure, either. Her ears were very fluffy, too, even on the insides, and she really was soft. Yuuri was more of a dog person, but he didn't think he was going to mind living with her for a while.

She slowly reached up with one paw and batted his chin. Yuuri blinked at her, unsure of what that meant; Mimi evidently decided that she wanted no more of him at the moment, for she leaped out of his hold and walked away.

"Was that okay?" he asked. Chris, holding a hand over his mouth that didn't mask the smile in his eyes, nodded.

He could see Mimi sniffing at her food bowl as Chris lead him past the kitchen, and the crunching of her kibble followed them. "Here's my bedroom," said Chris, waving at a closed door, "and the bathroom, and here—" He pushed this other door open and waved Yuuri in. It was a small room, painted a light shade of blue, with another big window – all of Chris's windows so far had beautiful views. "Sorry that it's not a proper bedroom, but the couch folds out, and it should be pretty comfortable with some sheets on it. If not, let me know and we can find something better for you. Or, of course," and oh, Yuuri knew that tone of voice, "you can always come sleep in my bed if that would be more satisfying." He said it with a wink.

Yuuri wondered again if Chris was a natural at saying things like that, or if he'd had to practice that wink in front of a mirror when he was younger. "I'll probably be fine," he said, shifting the suitcase he was holding further into the room.

"If not, feel free to complain at me." He looked around the room and let out a sigh, then crossed the carpet to open the window. "This whole place needs airing out. And groceries. Do you mind settling in by yourself while I go shopping?"

Yuuri shook his head. Having a little clear space to himself sounded nice. At least, it did until Chris was gone, and Yuuri was suddenly in a strange apartment that belonged to somebody else, and he found himself reluctant to touch anything beyond unpacking his clothes. Was it okay to leave his toiletries on the bathroom counter, or should he put them away? He wanted to take a shower to scrub the feeling of the plane off of him, but he didn't know what towel he could use.

The kettle in the kitchen was easy to figure out, at least. The tea in the cabinet didn't look especially good, but it was there. Mimi sat on the counter watching him as he waited for the water to boil, her fluffy tail going swish, swish, swish, back and forth.

Yuuri started to take the cup back to what was now his room, but suddenly he remembered what Chris had said about airing the place out, and it was a little stale in here. So he went and opened the windows, and spent a few minutes staring outside. Mountains and greenery, like in Hasetsu. That was more familiar than Detroit had been. The air was cooler, though, and the buildings were completely different, as were the shapes of the mountains behind them.

He took a deep breath before he turned away and went to fetch his tea. This time, Mimi followed him to his room, poking curiously around his bags as he finished unpacking them.

Chris eventually returned, his arms laden down. "I see you're already enjoying the fresh air," he said, smiling as Yuuri hastily took a couple of the bags from him so he could walk more easily. "Merci. Do you want to see what I bought?"

Yuuri didn't recognize everything that he and Chris pulled out the bags, and Chris was quick to explain what the mysterious items were. He rhapsodized enough about the bread and how he'd missed it that they both took a quick break to have slices. As far as Yuuri was concerned, it was bread. Less astonishingly fluffy than Japanese bread, and less sweet than either that or American bread. "It tastes different," he said.

Chris shook his head. "We'll have you used to it soon enough. I was touched by how your parents thought of me, but I must say, I was glad when they stopped buying bread for me. I'm too used to the taste of this."

"You mean real bread," Yuuri said for him, feeling his lips pull up, and Chris grinned back. He took another bite. "It's okay?"

Chris sighed. "Okay, he says. No, no, it's fine. There's still the cheese."

The cheese, as Yuuri found when they dumped it out from the last bag, was very good, and didn't taste like any he'd had before. He nibbled on his small piece slowly, enjoying the taste, and Chris, standing next to him, watched him eat it, looking pleased.

They spent the first day not doing much of anything except unpacking and then dusting a little. Chris's apartment had survived his absence just fine for the most part, though, and it looked like he'd cleaned it well before he left, so there wasn't much else they had to do.

Chris made dinner, and they ate it at the table by the window, admiring the view. He had wine for both of them, too, something sweet. "I have medical appointments tomorrow," said Chris, "but I was thinking we could go to the rink in the afternoon if you feel up to it. If not – the day after."

"Tomorrow is fine," said Yuuri. He wanted to skate again already, jet lag or no jet lag. "I saw pictures of it online. It looks amazing."

"It is," said Chris, warmth coming into his voice. "Have you met any of my rink mates? Probably not." Yuuri shook his head no. "I'm looking forward to seeing them again and introducing you – they're mostly quite young, but they're sweet. And then I can show you the good jogging routes, and there's this delightful little café, and...."

Yuuri listened to him talk about all the things he wanted to show him while he sipped on his wine. Chris sounded so excited about it, much more than Yuuri had been about showing him around Hasetsu, even though Champéry was much smaller.

But Chris's rink, as Yuuri got to see in person the next day, was much bigger, or rather, it wasn't just a rink – it was a whole sports compound, with a pool and a gym and tennis courts and, Chris said in passing, even a hotel. Yuuri had never trained anywhere that felt this fancy.

Chris only had to step into the rink for heads to start turning. He beamed at everyone and called out greetings as he tugged on the jacket he'd been carrying draped over his arm, now that they were away from the sunshine. Two boys and a girl immediately raced to the side of the rink, the boys leaning over the boards and the girl half-throwing herself over them. "Chris!" they all called out, and other things that Yuuri took to be welcomes and inquiries about his knee.

Josef gently sent them back on their way after they had a couple of minutes with Chris, then took a few minutes to converse quietly with Chris himself.

Yuuri couldn't remember ever talking to Josef in person before, but as he finished tying his skates and went to say hello, he could tell that he put out the same air that Chris tried to put out. Productive and friendly. He had a firm handshake and bright eyes behind his glasses.

"Not today?" Josef asked, glancing between their feet.

"Not yet," said Chris. "The doctors say it's healing, I'm doing everything right. But sometimes it happens slower. So no skating yet." He was frowning, but then he took a breath and wiped it off. "So! Let me show off Yuuri when you're ready. You haven't seen his programs yet, have you?"

Yuuri took to the ice. Tiredness was itching behind his eyes from the time change, but he started to forget that as he warmed up. It was always so good to go skating again after a couple of days away. When he'd had such a bad ending to his season last year and hadn't wanted to touch the ice, that had been one thing, but if something like what had happened to Chris happened to him now... how did he stand it? If Yuuri had wondered about Chris wanting to come back, all he had to do was look over while he did his warm-up stroking and see the jealousy in his eyes. At the least, he wanted to skate again.

When it came time to show off the programs, Yuuri felt his stomach twisting as he hit the starting pose for his short. What if it wasn't good enough for a real coach like Josef?

Though Yuuri knew that Chris wouldn't have given him a substandard program, the thought remained. He did his best to power through the program anyway; it wasn't his strongest run-through, but at least the jumps were landed.

Josef's eyebrows were well above his glasses when Yuuri skated over afterward. "Let me see the other one first, before I say anything," he said, surprising them both. Yuuri nodded, shared a look with Chris, and then skated off, letting his legs take a break. Was that a good sign or a bad sign or a 'Chris, what were you thinking?' sign.

At least Josef wouldn't be thinking that after the free program, Yuuri thought, as he waited for the music to start. They hadn't put as much work into polishing it yet, more focused on the short and its more difficult theme. It flowed more easily, though, and the music pulled at Yuuri as he skated.

"Well," Josef said this time, and then he paused, looking between them. "This is a very interesting pair of programs."

"Nicolas made them," Chris said, something too eager in his tone, and Josef shook his head.

"I don't mean that I don't like them. They're good programs. Are you sure about the short?" he asked Yuuri. "It's a big departure from what you've done before."

Yes, it was. "I can do it," he replied, trying not to sound too snappish. Chris wouldn't have persisted with it for so long if he thought Yuuri couldn't do it, and Yuuri could do an actual tango; a big departure was a risk, but after last season, what else could he do but take risks? Chris gave him a quick, proud smile.

"As long as you want to," said Josef, and he didn't have any more objections. He did have plenty of observations, however, along with suggestions.

There were more introductions over the next few days – Chris's fitness instructor, one of his dance teachers, various people around town. Yuuri kept busy, throwing himself into practice and trying to get used to life here as fast as possible. He went shopping with Chris and looked at what was on the shelves, converting prices to yen in his head to get a feel for what was expensive and what was cheap here; he watched him when he paid for things or when they went to his favorite little café to figure out how things were done in this corner of Switzerland.

The food Chris made was always tasty – he was a better cook than Yuuri, and sometimes while he was making dinner, he talked brightly about this and that memory associated with whatever meal he had decided on for the night.

A lot of them were of making food with his parents. Yuuri had never cooked with his parents very often. Too busy with skating, out of the house too often. Mostly he had learned how to hold a knife and how to make some basic foods; the rest, he'd had to figure out after he was on his own, and he had never had the time or interest beyond figuring out his diet plan.

But Chris obviously had made meals with them all the time, and it was also very quickly clear that he liked cooking. Yuuri would help cut meat and vegetables and then stand back to let Chris take over from there, somehow knowing just the right heat to use or the right special touch to make it more than ordinary. Eggs became creamy, vegetables were magically more flavorful and satisfying, meat was cooked to perfection, and everything was a few steps up from what Yuuri could ever do.

"I made this the first time my parents let me cook for them," Chris said one evening, a couple weeks into their move. "I was so nervous about burning it that I almost under-cooked it... kept second-guessing myself the whole time. I was so relieved when I bit into it and it was fine. Do you remember what was the first thing you made by yourself?"

Yuuri searched his memories. His parents had never particularly cared about making either him or Mari cook. "I think it was miso soup," he finally said. "To go with breakfast one day. Unless being allowed to put things in the rice cooker counts."

"You should teach me how to make it," said Chris, adjusting the heat a little and giving the pan a critical eye as he stirred. Everything looked like it was cooking just fine to Yuuri. "It was so much better in Japan than I've ever had in a restaurant outside of it. If we can find the ingredients, that is. I don't know if there's an Asian grocery anywhere nearby."

"The main thing would be the miso." Maybe they could buy dashi packets or the ingredients to make it online. Miso, he was less sure about.

"While we're at it, is there anything you miss from there?"

"A rice cooker," Yuuri said, and Chris grinned; he'd already experienced Yuuri's confusion, watching him search every single cabinet twice. He had never lived anywhere without one. His parents owned a very nice one, and Phichit of course had a fancy one, too, and living away from home in Japan, Yuuri had owned a cheap one. He had assumed that it was an essential kitchen tool; apparently not for Chris. "It's okay. The food you've been making is really good." He propped his hands on his chin, leaning over the countertop next to the stove. "If you're not careful, I'm going to eat too much of it and get too fat to skate."

Chris laughed at that and nudged him with his hip. "That's a great compliment. Don't worry, I'll make you burn it all off again."

He was still working mostly with Chris at the rink. Yuuri didn't ask him about his recovery, and that was the one topic where Chris offered little. He could tell he was getting stronger as they went on runs together, but apparently the ice was still off-limits for now.

So it was Chris who stood at the boards, directing him through practice, except for smaller periods of time where Josef took over. Sometimes Yuuri saw him whispering to Chris, maybe giving him feedback on his coaching methods, though he couldn't tell much of a difference yet.

The ice itself didn't feel quite the same as the rink in Hasetsu, but it was never too crowded to work on, and the ice quality was good. Yuuri missed the big windows and the familiar view and mascots, but he didn't need those to skate.

He had the ice, and he had his skates, and he had Chris, watching as Yuuri practiced.

Chapter Text

Yuuri could already feel the nerves starting to happen whenever he counted the remaining days until their flight back to Japan for the regional.

On the one hand, all that actually mattered was that he showed up. With only four competitors, they would all qualify for sectionals, and then Yuuri would have a bye for that with his GP assignments, China and Russia. (China was fine, and Phichit would be there; he was not thinking about Russia yet). There was no question about his making Nationals.

On the other, everyone was still confused about what had happened to him last year, how their former national champion had plummeted so far so fast.

Yuuri had gone on a binge-read of all the social media comments he could find after doing so poorly at Nationals, contrary to Celestino's advice and any good sense. StumbledIt, Chirpir, even InstantPhoto (he'd found a photographer who had uploaded the photos he'd taken that, presumably, were the only ones where Yuuri didn't look about to cry). He'd read through comments in English and Japanese and Russian, and other languages he could only read with automatic translation.

He'd been feeling bad and hoping to feel even worse, for some reason. Everyone had been so shocked, so sad. I was hoping the GPF was a fluke :( :( :(, one fan had written. Is he injured? He looks like he's in so much pain, and Yuuri had almost wished that he was. I think I might be crying, someone had said, and Yuuri had dispassionately wondered if they really meant it.

All of those hopes for him, that he would be able to put one bad competition behind him and skate like usual, dashed by his stupid brain that wouldn't shut up. Yuuri had indeed felt worse by the time he was too sleepy to keep reading.

Everyone who still liked him would be hoping to see him back to his former self. Yuuri wanted to be better than his former self. Everything was coming along in practice – a better success rate on his quad salchow, surprisingly solid on his new axel combo, even quad flip attempts off the harness – but practice and competition were very different venues.

"You're quiet tonight," Chris said over dinner, two weeks before they were set to leave. "You seemed tight at practice, too. Everything okay?"

"Just thinking," Yuuri mumbled, staring out the window. Then he grimaced. "Thinking too much. Sorry. Can we talk about something?" He knew this was a bad sign, that he was trying to work himself up already.

"Of course." Chris put a hand out and patted his, and Yuuri was struck again by how much warmth he seemed to emanate even with his facial expressions. "Have I yet told you about how Mimi got her name?"

"You're always too busy saying cute things to her in French."

So they talked about Mimi for a bit as they ate dinner, and Yuuri even had a few stories to tell about Vicchan as they cleaned up, that surprisingly, didn't make him want to cry. They spent the rest of the evening curled up on Chris's couch. At Chris's suggestion, they watched a movie, and Mimi came to demand her rightful attention, and it was hard to think too much about anything with a fluffy cat in his arms.

The next day, was, finally, the first day that Chris was allowed to skate again. It was different to sit down together to lace up their skates; Yuuri pretended not to notice how slowly Chris tied them, and how he spent more time checking that they felt okay than he probably had in a long time.

They didn't make too much of a fuss about it. Yuuri clambered on first and took off to go through warm-up exercises like the kids already out on the ice were doing, but he watched as Chris put down one foot, the other, and cautiously did a small swizzle to get himself going.

It hurt to see how slowly he took it – first gliding on his good foot, then on his bad foot. Nothing complicated, not yet. It was so different from how Chris had always been. He liked to ease himself into the practice sessions, sure, but then he would be doing astonishing spins, landing quads in every corner, and looking like the champion he was as though it came to him like breathing. He was never, ever tentative.

But then he turned to do some backwards stroking, and Yuuri caught up to him, and he saw that Chris beaming, his grin ear-to-ear. Oh. It was tentative, but he was out here. He was fighting. Yuuri shared the smile with him, then pulled out his phone to take a picture the next time he passed him, in case Chris wanted to post it for his fans to celebrate over.

"You looked like you were having fun," Yuuri said, much later, toweling his blades dry.

"I," Chris said, with a great sigh, "have never been so happy to skate. Of course, it's not the same, there's a lot of work to do, but – it wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. Everything is still there. Inside."

"You just have to put it outside." Just, hah. Like Yuuri just had to make his inner potential work. But Chris smiled, and it seemed natural to put a hand on his shoulder and share the moment with him.

"I've been dreaming of jumps and spins," Chris sighed. "Literally, at night. If only I could borrow some of your stamina and have half of it back already. You can have some of the salchow."

"You're very generous."

"I have another offer." His smile curled at the side like it sometimes did when he was flirting, and suddenly Yuuri wondered—

But no, it was nothing like that. When they had everything put away, Chris announced that they had somewhere new to go. Yuuri couldn't read the signs, so he didn't realize what kind of place it was until they were inside and he was staring at all the dance mirrors.

Dance mirrors and poles.

"Haven't asked my doctors about when I can return to this yet," said Chris, walking around one pole with his hand on it, then doing a tiny hop to swing himself around anyway. "I know it doesn't have to all be sexy and flirty, but I thought it might help with the program. And I wanted to see you dance like that again."

Yuuri didn't know what to do with that admission, except to warm up, put on some music, and clamber onto the pole.

He hadn't done this in months. Not since he'd left Detroit. It took a bit to get back into the swing of it, but soon he found that the muscle memories were still there, and he eased into the movements. Not really dancing, playing around, testing holds and feeling his muscles react when he demanded from them, despite how tired he was from workouts and practice today.

"I used to come here all the time, before my knee got screwed up," said Chris, sitting nearby and leaning against the mirrors, watching Yuuri. "If you like it, we can set you up with a membership."

"It's not that far from your place, right?"

"Nope. Though it's not open at all hours like Madame Minako's studio, I'm afraid."

Yuuri shrugged; it probably looked strange, given that he was upside-down. He could live without all-hours access to ice and dance studios, though that had been very nice. If his brain got antsy, it seemed safe enough around here to go for a run, or Chris's living room was big enough to dance in if he moved the furniture a bit.

This was good, too. Maybe he would get a membership. They had to have classes – if there was a language barrier, he could probably muddle his way through anyway. Or maybe he and Chris could come here and practice together – Chris was better than he was at this particular dance style. He probably had some advice.

(What had Chris said about them dancing together on the same pole at the banquet? Yuuri still couldn't remember any of it, and at this point probably never would; he could only vaguely remember the outlines of the few other occasions they had shared a pole, because he'd been drunk for them all.)

Yuuri attempted to do something too ambitious, and his hand slipped. The rest of him couldn't make up for it, and he fell backwards onto the floor with an oof. He could see Chris trying to stifle a laugh, and after he dusted himself off, he struck a pose – hand on hip, hand on chest – and Chris's laugh was no longer stifled.

"It looked good up until then!" he called out. "You always look good when you dance, Yuuri."

"Thanks," he said, relaxing out of the pose and contemplating the pole again.

"I mean it. Even when you fell, I swear you were pointing your toes."

"You should coach me in this, too, when your knee is better," said Yuuri. Chris's eyebrows rose, and then he looked pleased with the request.

"Okay," he said, and then, after a minute, "You might want to move that left hand down a little." Yuuri moved the hand down and found it gave him better leverage. "Yes, like that. And you know what, let's get better music going." He picked up his phone, and in a few moments, Yuuri's short program started to play.

They left it on loop for a while, as Yuuri danced, and Chris watched and gave the occasional tip. Yuuri found himself thinking hard about the story in the song, blurry-faced characters dancing along with him in his mind, until he arched over backward and found himself looking at Chris. Now he felt like he was the one in the story, trying to convince someone to come over. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking at all as he slid his grip along to pole and swung his body around. Everything happened in the part of his brain that only knew movement, everything automatic.

It was a weird feeling. A sign to stop, when the song ended. Chris's eyes had gone wide by then, and Yuuri couldn't quite look at him as he bent to search his bag for his water bottle. He took a long drink, waiting for the awkwardness to disperse.

Chris was right, though; it seemed to help him when the next time they ran through the program. Yuuri wasn't even sure if he was doing anything differently, but that same spark he'd felt seeing Chris while he was on the pole came back, a little, and Josef said that it was looking ready for competition.

Yuuri repeated those words to himself when they were leaving the evening before their flight to stay with Chris's parents, and then tried not to think about any of it.

"Oh," he said, pausing in the middle of dragging the suitcases out. Chris and Nicolas, who had offered them a ride, both gave him a look. "Sorry, I just remembered – I promised my sister I'd buy her chocolates." Mari wouldn't have forgotten the request, either. She'd tease him about it if he didn't bring her any.

"You can buy those anywhere here," promised Chris. "We won't let you forget."

"Maybe some for Minako-sensei, too." And while he was at it, for the Nishigooris. That might mollify the triplets in their disappointment that he'd moved away again, depriving them of so much live skating content.

It was a pretty ride, though Yuuri dozed through most of it to the background noise of Chris chatting with Nicolas. Chris's parents greeted them just as warmly the second time, though the dinner they had cooked wasn't quite as delicious as the ones he and Chris made. They were very excited that Chris was finally skating again, and kept asking about it, though he didn't have that much to tell about it.

Afterward, Chris and his mother went into the living room with coffee, and Yuuri tried to help pick up the dishes. "Oh," his mom said, "it's okay – thank you. But that reminds me." She gestured him into the kitchen and pulled a few boxes from a cupboard. "Chris said that souvenirs are important in Japan, but he forgot to pick some up." She handed him the boxes. They smelled like chocolate, and there were three of them. Just the right amount. "Don't worry," she said. "We bought good ones."

"Chris says they're all good ones." And probably all expensive, too. "Thank you very much."

"No problem," she said, over the sound of laughter from the other room. "I think he was very happy working with you this summer. We worried after his injury, but whenever he called from Japan, he had so much to say. He was having a lot of fun."

Yuuri nodded slowly. "He – he's been a good teacher. I'm glad we're working together."

"I'm glad to hear that," she said, looking fond. "Good luck at your competition."

"Thank you," he said again, and escaped to go stuff the chocolates in one of his suitcases.

When he couldn't sleep that night, he resisted the urge to get out his phone and play with it. Instead, he tried to envision a successful short program to soothe his mind to sleep – the music, the jumps, the steps, and Chris at the boards, his eyes on every moment of it.

~!~

The start of Yuuri's comeback did not look auspicious.

"You looked upset at the draw," Chris observed. Yuuri nodded glumly, doing his best to forget his dread in favor of eating his curry. "Something happen, or not a fan of going first in the group?"

"I hate going first," he said. "It makes me so nervous. Like there's extra attention because everyone's been waiting through warm-ups, sometimes ice cuts, and they want to see some skating now. I'd rather be one of the last."

"I'd offer advice, but it's never bothered me before," said Chris. "Let's see how you feel tomorrow."

Yuuri expected not to feel great about it. Here he was, coming back to competition after nearly a year. The press had wanted interviews from him, about his goals, about what he'd been working on. Minami giving him starry-eyed looks whenever they were in the same room didn't help, given what had happened at Nationals last year. None of his three competitors could hope to touch him without a total meltdown on his part, but he cared less about that and more about making a good showing for all the people waiting to see if he was returning stronger or continuing downhill.

The next day, Chris followed when Yuuri did his best to avoid all the staring eyes and prying questions. So Yuuri stretched, and jogged down the empty back hallway they were waiting in, and blocked everything out with music. No Minami watching him, just Chris keeping an eye on the time and not saying anything to him. It wasn't as bad as it could have been.

What was it that Chris had said about him? 'Here comes Yuuri with his murder face on'? Yuuri knew what that felt like. The days when he'd fought back against a bad short, or come in high on a confidence boost, he knew his shoulders straightened and everything around him became less distracting, less relevant.

If he could do that on purpose, it seemed like it would help.

So he made himself put on a determined face as he and the three boys he was competing with hit the ice for their warm-up. While he was still careful not to run into them, he found himself skating across the surface with more confidence already, taking up the space he needed.

There was an ooh from the crowd when he took off his jacket and revealed the top of his costume, along with the sound of cameras flashing. Chris took it from him, trying to look serious, but he couldn't quite hide his smile at the reactions Yuuri was getting already.

"You look ready," Chris observed when the warm-up was over. Yuuri nodded. Oddly, he didn't feel as nervous as he'd expected, though it wasn't all gone. Maybe the murder-face look was helpful. Maybe he could just use determination to push himself through this.

They'd gone ahead and put all his jumps in the second half of the program for the extra points. It was a risk, but Yuuri had the stamina to do it; the main thing was having enough momentum from the first half that his mental state didn't make him mess them up. It had worked out fine in his GP events last year when he and Celestino had decided to try it, so Yuuri knew he could pull it off.

When his music started, he began with the step sequence, trying to get into the mood of the program, the music. The first hint of flirtation, a showing of his skills, an attempt to capture attention, then into his first spin. He came out of it raking his fingers along his hair and hoped it looked as good as it had when Chris had demonstrated for him.

The audience was so quiet. That almost made him more nervous. Shouldn't they be waking up a little by now? Sure, it was a small crowd, but not that small – here he was putting on a show for them, the best they would see all day. The least they could do was give him some feedback.

Yuuri stretched his back and arms further than usual in one pose, leaning into the edges of his skates, and wondered what they were thinking. The silence was frustrating, now, since he couldn't tell whose problem it was. What more did he have to do to get them going?

They didn't clap until he landed his triple axel with no trouble, finally, and they clapped even when he stumbled on the exit to the quad salchow, and they cheered when he landed the jump combination toward the end. And there, that was everything, no more need to be nervous, though he could feel his heart beating wildly as he finished.

"Nice work," Chris said as he handed him his guards, and he put an arm over his shoulders to lead him to the kiss-and-cry. "A little sketchy on the salchow. Otherwise, it was good."

The reassurance helped Yuuri relax as they waited for the scores. Whatever they gave him wouldn't matter for anything outside of here, but it would be nice to have some kind of guideline about how the program came across.

The number that came out seemed a little high even to him, though Chris shook him and the audience cheered for it. That was above his personal best, and not by a little. Yuuri gave Chris a smile, and received a grin in return. That made two of them happy with how this program was working, then.

They were swept away to go answer more press questions afterward, and after that, he was ready to say hello to Takeshi and Minako and go back to the hotel. He wasn't prepared for Minami to re-appear, his voice loud and his words coming fast and bright, then crushed when Yuuri said he hadn't seen his program. (Had it really been a tribute to him? To his Lohengrin program, of all things? The kid needed better taste.)

"Lohengrin?" Chris asked from the side, and Minami beamed, happy that Chris (apparently) knew enough to recognize the costume. (Had Chris binged all his old programs or something? Yuuri wished that he could erase all the video evidence of that program's existence, when he was feeling especially bad about his career.)

"My favorite!" he chirped in English.

"It was a good one," Chris said, and then he gave Yuuri a glance that he didn't understand until Chris nudged him and whispered, "Say something nice to him."

"Um," said Yuuri, and then, "It's fun music to skate to." It had been, even if the program itself had been too weird and a disaster thematically. He hadn't known or cared as much about those kinds of things, back then.

Minami nodded vigorously, his smile so wide that Yuuri wondered if it hurt. Yuuri wished him good luck and subtly tugged Chris away; he didn't have any idea what to do with Minami looking at him so ecstatically.

Much later, when they had finally made it back to the hotel and received their room service, Chris said, "I had one more thing, but I didn't want to say it earlier."

"What is it?" About his program? They'd agreed to discuss it another time, not right after, since Yuuri had to focus on the free.

"So I know I was the one who said the thing about the, ah, murder face? Yes, that look, thank you. I did get the feeling it helped you, but you need to take it off when you're skating the program itself – steely determination doesn't really fit a seductive tango."

"Oh." He hadn't realized. (Was that why everyone had been so quiet?)

"And perhaps you could tone it down off the ice? You don't need a reputation for being unapproachable, and it's actually quite scary."

"Is it?" He hadn't realized that, either. Had Chris told him that before? "Anyway, I don't think I'm approachable already." When Chris tilted his head, Yuuri speared some of his vegetables and pointed out, "You only said anything to me the first time we met because I was lost and started crying and you felt sorry for me, not because you thought I was friendly."

"That's true," Chris said, humming. "Of course, it's fine if you don't want to be friends with everyone. And it's normal to seem distant at competitions, like you do. Nobody wants a distraction. But you looked like you were going to put a skate guard through the heads of those kids if they got in your way. There's a balance."

"I guess." Phichit and Chris were so naturally friendly. Victor had been a little more distant and focused, but it was true that Yuuri had seen him smiling at everyone. He'd even smiled at Yuuri for a moment when they'd come off their first practice session together. And that last interaction that Yuuri could remember having with him had been... Yuuri still didn't know what it meant.

"I'm not saying not to do it if it helps you focus. You don't need to look upset – I'm not scolding you."

"It's not that."

"Then...?"

"It's stupid," he said, and when Chris kept giving him an inquisitive look, ducked his head and poked at his food some more. "After the free program at the GPF, when we were leaving the arena, Victor saw me and asked if I wanted to take a commemorative photo together." Victor had to have known how badly he did just by his scores, even if he had been too busy warming up to see how Yuuri hadn't managed to hide his tears from the cameras. Didn't he? Or had Yuuri been that insignificant to him?

Chris winced. "He might have been trying to cheer you up. Victor is – he tries to be nice to his fellow competitors, he's smart, he's good with people, but sometimes he just says these things without thinking about it. He's said even more dumb things to me before. Maybe when we see him in Russia, I'll tease him about it and he'll apologize and—"

Yuuri dropped his fork. It clattered off the plate and onto the carpeted floor as he waved his hands in front of him. "No, no, no, please don't, really—"

"He won't mind, promise."

"It's not that big of a deal – it was only one moment. Please don't bring it up to him. Besides, I didn't even say anything back to him, so...."

"So? And it was a big enough deal that you were upset about it a moment ago."

Yuuri squirmed. He didn't know what else to say, and he was sorry he'd brought it up. "It was just embarrassing. Like he didn't recognize what had happened or who I was even though we'd just skated on the same ice. It's fine." This year he would get another chance, and maybe this time they could take a picture together, or even say something to each other past basic greetings.

"He had to have known who you are," Chris said, looking confused. He bent down to pick up Yuuri's fork, and set it to the side on the table. "I've talked to him about you before, for one. I don't think he would have forgotten that."

"You have?"

"A few times. I might have pointed you out when we were backstage at Worlds sometime. I know I showed him some pictures we took at an ice show together."

"Oh." Was it better for his idol to recognize him and then see him fail so badly, or for Victor to not recognize him at all? Yuuri wasn't sure. Maybe the first? But what he really wanted was for Victor to see him on the podium. (What he really really wanted was for Victor to be looking up—)

He brushed the thought away and got up to wash his fork so he could finish eating his dinner. When he came back, Chris was on his phone, smiling. "Looks like someone was recording," he said, holding it out. Yuuri took the phone and saw that Chris had been reading a Chirpir thread about today's program. Yuri Katsuki is bringing it this season! Check out his tango-themed SP – totally new theme for him, but he's making it work.

Yuuri had gone looking earlier. Not everyone was convinced by his new style yet. The free would probably go over better.

The pressure was still there the next day. In fact, if anything, it was heavier, weighing down on Yuuri with every glance from another coach or a reporter as he got ready. So he'd thrown out a decent SP; now he had to get through a longer program with more jumps and not fall apart, again.

"Are you you going to do all three of the quads?" Chris was asking as Yuuri pulled his skates on. "I know we talked about this, but I don't think you ever told me if you decided. It's the first competition of the season, and you don't need them here. It wouldn't hurt to ease up if that would help you."

"I don't know." It might be helpful to do one easier program, skate it clean, and prepare his mental state for China; on the other hand, that felt weak, so maybe it wouldn't help after all. But he didn't need all three quads, that was for sure, when the three boys he was competing with were so far behind him and might or might not even attempt one between all of them. He also wanted to show he was back in good condition, that he was ready for his GP events. "What do you think?"

"I'm not sure. I'm a slow starter, so I would only do the salchow if I didn't think I needed to do more. You said that it's mostly a mental thing, right? So that would help you get that much more experience landing it in competition without tiring yourself out. But it's up to you, if you would feel more comfortable using the layout you've practiced."

Helpful.

Yuuri still hadn't quite decided by the time they were allowed on the ice for the warm-up. The determined face wasn't happening today despite him trying to force it, and his first couple of jumps were wobbly before he managed to get them back on track. Maybe trying for more quads and messing them up would make him more nervous? But if he landed them, it would help, and he wouldn't feel like he was compromising.

He could feel his stomach starting to ache when he climbed off the ice. Minami was going first. He had looked so bright yesterday, but now his coach was trying to cheer him up even right as his name was called. Was he nervous, too?

Yuuri caught his eye by accident as he skated out. Yeah, he looked nervous. Yuuri wondered why for a moment – he'd done better than Yuuri at Nationals last year, he should know he could skate fine – but, well, that sort of thinking had never worked for him, either, did it?

He hesitated for a moment, then raised his hands and shouted, "Good luck!"

Minami's head whipped around. Oh no, were those tears in his eyes? But a moment later, he burst into a huge grin and practically skipped to center ice. Okay, he was fine. If he skated like that, he could probably get second place.

Yuuri ducked out of the arena. Chris gave him a smile and patted his shoulder. "That's how you do it," he said. "Those kids look up to you."

Yuuri's stomach was still tying itself into knots. He needed to get away from everyone for a few minutes, and not focus on Minami, or the other skaters, or the reporters and the cameras and the fans refreshing their social media timelines and anxiously waiting to hear how he'd done. He started to move away, then remembered what Chris had said about telling him. "I'm going to go do some stretches."

"You want company?" Yuuri shook his head. "Okay, then. Keep track of time."

He found somewhere quiet and pulled out his earbuds. Video game music played – something quiet, background music to a pretty village in a fantastical landscape, and then a song with a heavy beat to it, fit for a battle. He stretched, did a few warm-up exercises, and took a couple of deep breaths in the cool, dark room.

The alarm on his phone beeped. Yuuri turned it off, took out his earbuds, and listened to the silence for a moment.

He could do this. No. He was going to do this. Could wasn't the issue.

He didn't mean to do it, this time, but he could tell he had his determined expression on his face when he saw Chris's reaction to his return. Yuuri sailed past the reporters, the audience, a glance for Minako and a brief acknowledgment of Takeshi's thumbs-up, a cool nod for Minami as he passed him, and there was the entrance to the ice, the last kid just climbing out of the rink.

Yuuri took a few laps, did a couple of small jumps, traced a figure-eight on each foot. He felt pleasantly blank. This was good. He did well when he felt like this.

"I should have asked before," said Chris, when he came over for a last sip of water. "Do you ever have any particular rituals for getting ready to skate? Though you look fine today."

"Not really." He and Celestino had tried various things – pep talks, friendly silences. Nothing had seemed to work much better than anything else.

"Would it be weird if I hugged you, then? It's always helped me with Josef."

Yuuri's carefully pulled-on calm slipped a little, but only for a moment. "Okay," he said. Chris looked like he wanted to hug him.

It was a brief thing, Yuuri slipping his arms around his neck for a moment, Chris's hands patting his shoulders. Yuuri closed his eyes. It didn't feel weird at all. It felt like Chris saying, I'm here, now time to go and do it. He could see why Chris liked it. He liked it.

"I hope you've decided on the layout by now," Chris joked in his ear, and Yuuri realized that he had.

Three quads. He'd landed three quads before, and he was going to land three quads today.

He barely heard the crowd cheering for him, Minami screaming good luck at the top of his lungs. For a moment, everything was quiet and still, a moment that stretched on for ages – and then the music started.

This program still wasn't as refined as the other one, yet, but the movements came easily enough. Curving his arms just so, remembering to use his fingers, feeling his edge gliding underneath him as he started to skate.

Yuuri finished the opening elements just fine, but then there was the quad salchow, the jump that kept tripping him up and ruining his programs. Yuuri didn't think; he turned and moved his body in position and then he jumped, pushing off hard from the ice. It wasn't as smooth as it could have been, but he thought it was fully rotated, and the crowd yelled out to him. There. He'd made his success rate on it that much higher.

The rest of the program went as planned, though it was still empty, his body wanting to do something else with the music but his mind not knowing what. They needed to fill it in more and work on the choreography. But the jumps came, and the spins were stable, and the step sequence, at least, was in good shape already. Near the end, he rose out of an arabesque spiral to do his last quad.

It felt fine in the set-up, but something went awry, and the axis went wonky. He tried to save it when he probably should have let it pop. He managed to land it – full rotation or not, he wasn't sure, because he immediately tumbled across the ice and almost smashed into the boards head-first.

Ignoring the gasp of horror that filled the room, Yuuri pushed himself up. All that was left was a spin that ended with him reaching for the ceiling, and Yuuri rushed into it so he could finish it on time, trying to put the mistake behind him. He managed each position, came to a stop with his hand held up, and then the music was done.

Yuuri panted and took a moment to get his breath back before taking his bows. He felt steady and surprised at his own steadiness after that fall.

Fall aside, he thought it had been a pretty good performance. Why did Chris look so horrified as Yuuri approached the exit? "Are you okay?" Chris asked, reaching out for him. Yuuri let him take his shoulders, then press fingers to his cheeks and turn his head back and forth. "That was a very awkward fall. Did you hit your head? I couldn't tell."

"No? I feel fine." It hurt a little now that the adrenaline was wearing off, but not too badly. Probably a couple of new bruises at the worst. Chris's worries made more sense if it had looked like Yuuri might have given himself a concussion, though.

"Are you sure?"

"Really, I'm fine. My wrist is a little sore now, but that's all."

Chris still kept a close eye on him as they waited for the scores. "I don't know how I would be able to show myself before Josef again if my first student hurt himself at his first competition," he said, picking up Yuuri's sore wrist to rub at the joint for a moment. It would be fine; it didn't hurt enough to be a sprain or anything like that.

"You could have blamed me for not using the easier layout." Chris smiled and shook his head.

The announcement came soon: another new would-be personal best. Yuuri leaned back on his hands and felt his lips turn up. There. He'd done it. Chris put an arm around him in a hug, and he turned into the warm touch. "First place, I assume," he said.

Right – he couldn't understand the announcement. "Yes," he said. "First place." Gold, though they wouldn't have medals here.

He was oddly giddy. It was only a minor competition, but it had been so long since he'd won something. It felt great to hop on top of the podium and beam around the room. It was less great to afterwards get swarmed by his three competitors, plus a couple of the girls, asking for autographs, but he smiled through that, too, and even the interviews couldn't dampen any of his enthusiasm.

"Your programs are looking a lot better already," Takeshi observed over dinner, while Minako and Chris were happily chattering away, English with a smattering of French. Yuuri, naturally, had earned himself his first bowl of katsudon in months, and it tasted like heaven. It was hard to concentrate on what anyone was saying when he was eating something that was so delicious. "Especially the short program – you used to look like you were trying to force the role. Not any more."

"We practiced a lot," said Yuuri. "Chris has been trying to help me find inspiration." Takeshi raised an eyebrow. "No, not like that. With different kinds of dance."

"Whatever you're doing, it's working so far. The girls send their congratulations, too." He showed Yuuri their text message, which mostly consisted of emoji: crying faces, clapping hands, flowers, gold medals.

Before they parted ways for the night, they all took a photo together in front of the restaurant. Chris posted it, captioned, First student, first place, first gold! Congratulations, Yuri!!

It was a cool evening as they walked back to the hotel, now that the sun had set, and the streets were busy with people returning home or heading out somewhere. Chris, tall and blond, stood out, but this city was larger than Hasetsu and perhaps more used to foreign visitors; he didn't attract too many looks.

"Pretty good for our first competition together, I would say," Chris said as they waited at a crosswalk. "Not the smoothest event, but not too bad."

"I thought it went pretty well. I did win."

"You did." That got him a half-smile. "That's the important part. Although you didn't seem to like it when I was asking about your layout."

"No," Yuuri admitted. The light changed, and they hustled across the street. "I think I wanted you to just tell me what to do, since I couldn't decide."

"But it was your decision to make. I didn't know what to tell you, either."

"I think I might have done three even if you had just told me to do one."

Chris snorted. "I can see that. Maybe I need more confidence as a coach. Josef said you should do one, but you didn't want to do one, and I might have done one, but you needed your confidence, but if you fell, what good would that do you? We should have talked it out more earlier and come to a decision together. You need to know how you're going to skate before we get there. Last-minute changes are too risky."

"We shouldn't need to change it again, I think. Unless I get the flip down."

"You did land it right before we left – do that another hundred times and maybe Josef won't shake his head at you when you ask."

Yuuri hummed. They passed a sign for a familiar chain of electronics stores; Yuuri almost wanted to duck in and see if they had a rice cooker, but the electricity was probably different in Europe, wasn't it?

They should order one when they got back. Making rice on the stove wasn't as convenient, no matter what Chris said. Yuuri still remembered some favorite dinner recipes that could cook while they were away at the rink, working hard on his programs and Chris's return to skating. And it was nice to come home to fluffy, perfect rice, fresh and hot and ready to eat.

Once back at the hotel, email notifications on his phone reminded him of a press conference he had to attend before returning to Switzerland. A season's theme, huh? Yuuri stretched out on his bed and thought about it. 'Change'? Too vague. 'Renewal'? True, but not quite right.

'Growth', he thought would work. He was trying new things, new training methods, a new place. Chris was trying something new, too. Both of them were learning and re-learning.

It would do if he couldn't think of anything catchier. Yuuri turned over and rubbed his head against the too-soft pillow. He had ideas for his programs that he wanted to put into the next run-throughs. He wanted to be back in Switzerland already, training.

But today had been good, and recalling how he had been standing on top of the podium again made him feel fuzzy inside. One victory; now on to the next.

Chapter Text

"Ah, jet lag," Chris sighed when they both ended up making tea at three in the morning, unable to sleep any later. "And to think we have the joy of flying halfway around the world in a few weeks and doing it over again."

Yuuri was pretty good at dealing with timezone changes by now, after years of flying here and there, but it never completely went away. "We'll make it worth it," he said, stifling a yawn.

"Yes," Chris said, leaning against the back of his couch and staring at the windows. It was still dark outside; Yuuri was tempted to go for a run despite the sun not being up yet. "Who else is going to be there, again?"

"Um, let's see – Phichit's going."

"Phichit! He's always a delight."

"He is. And he's using The King and the Skater for his programs. Did you see the video from the US Classic?" It was a smaller competition, and the quality had been lower than ideal. Still, Phichit's natural charm and enthusiasm had come through loud and clear, as had cheering and the rhythmic clapping of the small crowd. "They're really good." He hadn't landed his quad, but it had been one of those performances where it hardly mattered if he fell once because of how he sprang back up without missing a beat.

"No, I haven't been keeping up. Did Victor do any Challengers this year?"

Yuuri shook his head. There was still no word on what his music might be, but that was always a secret until he stepped out onto public practice ice at a competition. "I think Georgi Popovich is going in China, too." He could be a medal contender if he was on. Yuuri had never really talked with him, but there was a reason that he was still around at his age, though, even if he'd never had Victor's success. Yakov Feltsman probably didn't hold onto students out of pity. "Do you know Guang-hong and Leo?"

"Leo... the American one? We've talked a few times. He's the one who likes music."

"Yeah, him. He and Guang-hong did summer camps with us a couple of times." Yuuri didn't know them very well, either, but they were friends with Phichit. "I don't remember who else."

Mimi came to demand attention while they were looking up the rest of Yuuri's competition, so Chris slid down to the floor to play with her as Yuuri read the names out.

Georgi and Phichit were going to be his main rivals there. Georgi always had good PCS, even though he was inconsistent; the judges tended to like his super-dramatic programs. Phichit's PCS had been on a steady uptick the past couple of years as he grew more recognized, and if he landed his quad, he could score really well.

Otherwise... Yuuri didn't think Guang-hong had landed a quad – he was still working on one last summer – and he wasn't sure that Leo had one, either, though he did have style. He'd barely heard of the rest of his competitors. Odd. Was Cao not competing this season?

"You should certainly have a shot at gold," Chris said, dangling a toy mouse on a string above Mimi for her to bat at. "Let's get to work on that free skate and see if we can't make a breakthrough on the short. If you're going in to win, you need to make a statement."

"Yeah," said Yuuri, and then a thought came, not for the first time. "Thanks," he said.

"Hm? What for?" Mimi jumped high, grabbing the mouse and almost yanking the string from his hand; Chris muttered a curse and wrapped it more firmly around his fingers.

"For coaching me and everything. It's kind of weird, since we're going to be competing with each other again soon, but you're still trying to help me so much."

Chris shrugged and came to sit next to him on the couch again, still pulling on the string as Mimi chased the toy across the carpet. "It's been a lot of fun. It's also been nice to have a distraction from this, like I said." He gestured towards his knee. Chris had stopped wearing the brace months ago, and if Yuuri had only seen him walking or jogging, he might not have been able to tell he was still recovering. "And... not to insult my dear rink mates, but none of them are real rivals for me, if we're being honest with ourselves. Not yet, at least. It's nice, to not have that intense pressure day-to-day, especially with the injury. I don't know how Georgi does it. But having you around, watching you improve, that's motivating. Victor is so far away – I don't see him landing quads in front of me every day."

Yuuri did. Not every day. He did watch Victor's videos a lot, though. He could recite the commentary from memory on a lot of them, even the ones where the commentators were Russian. Chris probably didn't do that.

"And when your knee is better...."

"I hope it's still fun," said Chris. He looked away from Mimi to give Yuuri a smile. "It's been pleasant, training with you."

It was true that Chris seemed to be getting better much faster now that he was back on the ice. Maybe it was just that his progress was so much more visible than it had been, but Yuuri thought that being able to indulge his love of skating, and trying to return his previous level, had to help a lot. Perhaps having Yuuri around did, too. Almost every day, Chris was able to do something new.

Nicolas came to the rink soon after their return, to help Yuuri with his programs again. This time, they focused on the free skate, tweaking the choreography so it suited the music better, told more of a story, filling in the gaps in the movements. It felt better when Yuuri skated it, and Josef and Chris were pleased with the improvements, too.

The quad flip was definitely not ready for competition yet, but it was slowly getting better. Yuuri was staying on his feet with it more often, though not necessarily fully rotated. Re-watching Victor's in slow motion every morning felt like it helped, if not enough. Josef had a jump technician he sometimes worked with, but not at the rink, and there was only so much they could do over the internet and only so much time before the Cup of China.

"I think you'll get it soon," Chris said one evening as they finished making dinner. Yuuri sighed as he fluffed up the rice in the nice, shiny, new rice cooker that had arrived last week. (Chris had shaken his head when Yuuri had pulled it out of the box that had become a new toy for Mimi, but after a week of constant use for both rice and other things, Yuuri thought he might be starting to see why it was useful.) "Maybe even before I get my quads back." He laughed.

"And when is that?" He had no idea what the timeline on this looked like.

"As soon as the doctors will let me," Chris said. "And Josef. And this leg. My therapist told me to do image training to make it easier, but at this point, I've been doing so much of it that I'm not sure if it's image training or daydreaming anymore." He glanced at Yuuri. "What about you?"

He shrugged and handed over the plates for Chris to serve their dinner, fresh brown rice piled to the side of each one. "I'm not very good at it."

Or he didn't think he was. Celestino had tried to talk him through image training, too. Yuuri had never been sure that he'd been doing it right – if he had enough details or too many, if he was really feeling everything the way he was meant to.

"Thank you. He said it's good for, ah. How do you say in English? The connections in the brain, that it keeps them strong. So if I can't practice my jumps on the ice yet, I might as well do it in my head if it will help."

Seeing Chris later that evening, stretched out on the couch with Mimi curled on his chest, eyes closed, made Yuuri try it more earnestly before he went to bed; he watched Victor's flip again, from several angles, then lay back and tried to envision it. The way his weight shifted on his skate, the feeling of his toe pick tapping the ice, the lift-off, how he had to bring his arms in, and of course a smooth landing at the other end. It still felt like he had a lot more hang-time in his imagination than in real life.

When he got bored of that, and wasn't asleep yet, he set his short program music to play on repeat and tried to skate it in his head, but it kept morphing into the imagined story halfway through, sometimes with him at the center, sometimes with Chris watching him from the hazy far-off surroundings, and he dropped off to those confusing images.

Several days later, Chris was filming his attempts at the quad flip, when Yuuri landed a really good one. He wasn't sure if he had all the rotations finished for a moment, but Chris's surprised face said that he probably did – and it startled him so much that he lost his balance and nearly fell after the jump. "Come here," Chris said, and they watched it again on his phone in slow-motion. "It's a little low... ah, but look, you were just over the quarter on the last one."

"It was," Yuuri said, leaning hard into Chris's shoulder so he could see better.

"Now you just need to land it fifty more times, and we can say you have it," Chris said brightly.

Naturally, the next three attempts all went so poorly that Josef told him to stop for the day. If only landing one meant that he'd suddenly obtained the jump, like a skill in a video game.

"Are you going to post the video?" Chris asked when their session was over.

"No. I want it to be secret." He didn't want anyone to be waiting with bated breath for him to land it, if he couldn't get the success rate high enough.

"Fair enough. You aren't coming after my lutz next, are you? First the spins, then the lutz...."

Yuuri shook his head as he sat down, then bent to start unlacing his skates. "Even if I could land it, it wouldn't be as good as yours. I saw that one you did in practice at Worlds 2015. You almost jumped across the whole side of the rink."

"I have heard that my giant lutz is a great part of my charm," Chris said, lowering his eyelashes and giving Yuuri a side look that had him blushing. How Chris could make innuendo out of skating terminology was beyond him, but it worked. "I've heard it's even bigger than Victor's."

Yuuri had to fold his head into his lap to keep the laughter from bursting out. "Chris!"

"What? Isn't it? Or do you need to see it yourself to believe it? Or is that his is higher and mine is longer?"

He gave up on holding in the laughter. When he caught his breath and pushed himself up again, Chris looked delighted, his smile wide and honest and showing just a hint of teeth.

~!~

Mulling around the registration area in China, Yuuri was trying to figure out where Chris had vanished to, when a familiar voice called, "Yuuri!"

Yuuri whipped around in the hallway, and it was like someone had turned the lights up.

"Phichit-kun!"

Phichit bounded over and gave him a quick hug. "Yuuri! You're looking well. I saw your new programs – they look great! The tango was an interesting choice. Did you see mine?"

"Yep. You finally used the music you wanted for so long – they're wonderful. Everything is perfect for you."

Phichit beamed. "I can't wait to beat you with them."

"We'll see," Yuuri said lightly. "How are things going in Bangkok?"

"Amazing – but I meant it when I said you have to visit. I miss having you around to motivate me. Now, when I get tired of doing jumps and stuff, I stop, and Ciao-Ciao lets me. And – oh! Chris!" Phichit rose up on tip-toe and waved over Yuuri's shoulder; he turned and saw Chris approaching. "Ooh, you really do wear the glasses now."

"Yep, it's not just for InstantPhoto. Less trouble than contacts when I'm not skating, and you don't have to worry about liquids and airlines with them," said Chris. "You seem to be doing well."

Phichit nodded, rocking his weight back and forth. "Yep. How are you? It really sucks that you got injured. I was hoping I'd get to skate against you here, and then you had you to withdraw. Are you getting your jumps back yet?"

"That's confidential," Chris said, propping his elbow on Yuuri's shoulder and leaning into it. "I'll just say that I don't plan on withdrawing from Nationals yet."

Phichit gave him a little clap, which he acknowledged with a nod and a smile. "Have the two of you eaten yet? Ciao-Ciao and I were going to go out somewhere, but I was trying to find Guang-hong to translate for us, and probably Leo will be there, too."

Yuuri tensed at the mention of Celestino. They hadn't talked since Yuuri had left him, and he could already imagine the awkwardness. Less so if there was a full table between them, but....

"Sounds lovely," Chris said first.

"I'll let him know – we were going to leave soon, we're just waiting on Guang-hong." He gave Yuuri an encouraging look that said that he'd seen Yuuri's hesitation. "I bet Ciao-Ciao would love to catch up with you – I showed him your skates from regionals, and he was happy to see you're doing better now than you were after last season. He liked what the choreographer did, too."

"Nicolas Monod, wasn't it? He does good work." That was Celestino's voice.

Yuuri turned to face him slowly, ignoring Chris and Phichit's cheerful greetings. Nerves made his stomach tense, and Celestino's countenance only helped so much. He didn't look angry or disappointed – he did look happy to see Yuuri, since he gave him a little extra smile.

Guang-hong and Leo showed up a few minutes later, after Celestino had taken a few minutes to talk with Chris about his plans for coaching in the future. "Josef is holding down the fort back home," Chris said. "I'm the one who's done the most work with Yuuri so far, anyway. It's been an interesting experience, trying it from the other side of the boards."

At dinner, Yuuri didn't end up sitting next to Celestino, which might have been a relief, except that he was directly across from him instead. At least he was next to Phichit, and he could focus on talking with him. Phichit could do friendly silences, but he also never seemed to run out of new things to say and talk about. Bangkok, Japan, Switzerland ("He didn't have a rice cooker, Phichit, I had to order one,"), training, whatever rumors and drama were happening in the strange world of figure skating social media.

Eventually, though, Phichit turned to Guang-hong, and Chris was talking with Leo, and Yuuri could only stare down at his food for so long. "Yuuri," Celestino said, and he reluctantly looked up. "How are you doing?"

What followed was a fairly normal conversation. Catching up, as Phichit had said. Even Yuuri's mind couldn't read anything more into it – disappointment in his performance in their last season together, anger that Yuuri had magically gotten better under another coach, anything like that.

Back at the hotel, he and Phichit got off the elevator before them. "Good luck to us both!" Phichit called. Yuuri waved at him, then slumped when the doors were closed.

Chris put an arm around him. "Didn't seem that bad to me?"

"It wasn't. I just... I thought it would be."

"Celestino's a professional," Chris commented as they exited at their floor. "He always seemed to like you. Even if he's not your coach any more, I don't see why he wouldn't be happy to see you bouncing back."

"I know. Even if he wasn't, he wouldn't say." He knew that. He knew that. But it was hard to believe that Celestino wouldn't be a little upset that Yuuri had failed his expectations so spectacularly last season, even if he'd been patient with trying to coax Yuuri back into a better mindset, even if he hadn't protested much when Yuuri had said he was going back home.

Chris patted his back and let go as they reached his room. "Do you need anything else to get ready? Any shots of courage?"

"I don't drink before competitions."

"Smart one, this Yuuri," Chris said. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

In the pressing silence of the hotel room, Yuuri sighed and flopped across the bed. There were texts on his phone that he slowly replied to, good-luck wishes from Yuuko and Mari and Minako. The triplets had edited a short video and posted it on their InstantPhoto page to cheer him on; it was made from short clips of him at the regional, with sparkles and text overlaid on top. Their six-year-old aesthetic tendencies showed, but it was pretty cute.

He played the most mindless game he had on his laptop until he felt tired and slipped off to sleep. In the morning, he felt good. Ready to have a light breakfast, and ready to skate.

As cheerful and friendly as Phichit was, once they hit the ice, it was all business. Yuuri ignored the cameras and phones that came out at their practice session, and the practice run-throughs went fine. Everything went smoothly the morning of the first day of competition, too.

It was in the hours between practice and the short program that he could feel his nerves start up. The familiar jump in his heart beat, the ache in his stomach, the lack of focus in his thoughts. There wasn't as much in the way of empty back corridors here, but he tried to make dp with his headphones and not talking to anyone, even Chris, ignoring his worried glances.

"Feeling okay?" he asked when Yuuri came off his warm-up. "You didn't do as many jumps as usual."

"I didn't want to get too tired." He'd been trying to focus on the feeling of his edges and calming himself. It worked, somewhat. He wasn't shaking or anything, just too conscious of the whole arena and the giant cameras everywhere.

Phichit was still on the ice and waiting for his turn to go. Guang-hong was practically vibrating as he did tiny jumps from foot to foot. Georgi, who had a longer wait ahead of him because he was in the second group, was stretching, a ton of makeup on his face. Yuuri suddenly felt subtle. Too subtle, maybe. He smoothed the front of his costume, told himself that the flashes of color would look great, and decided that he could debate some eyeliner or something later. Next time.

"Do you need something to balance on?" Chris murmured, holding out his arm. Yuuri gratefully took it, reminding himself to focus and keep his muscles ready.

He couldn't not watch Phichit skate, though. The music he was using was so familiar as to be a cliché, but Phichit was one of those skaters who could make it work anyway and bring something new to the table. The program had improved a lot already since the beginning of the season, and the big smile he had on in the kiss-and-cry as he drew hearts said it all.

It wasn't a score that Yuuri couldn't beat, but Phichit's performance had him thinking.

"Nicely done," Chris said, and then he gently pulled Yuuri away from the screens.

One of the things that Yuuri had been criticized for before was that his programs were often – introverted, inward, contemplative, whatever word the commentators and online critics decided to use that day. There were nicer ones, too, lyrical, dreamlike, but the overall conclusion had been, in Yuuri's view: nice skating, nice lines, needs work on projection.

Projection seemed so vague, though. Celestino had tried to help him with it; he'd studied Phichit's skating, because that was absolutely never an issue with him. Phichit always engaged an audience from the first smile, the first movement of his hand. Minako had given him advice about it, too. Chris had mentioned it but not really talked about it yet.

This short program definitely wasn't introverted or contemplative. He had to grab the audience for it to work, had to pull them in, keep their eyes on him the whole time instead of getting bored and reaching for their phones. Or, in Chris's words: seduce them.

Yuuri leaned into a deep arabesque, a light touch on Chris's arm for extra balance, and held it, keeping his breathing steady. Last time, he'd been focused on powering through the performance, and, as Chris had put it, murder-facing it. That wasn't going to be good enough, here; it certainly wasn't going to be good enough in Russia. Not for a win, and not for his satisfaction, and not for Chris's.

He'd already talked up showing a different side of himself at the press conference a few weeks ago. Now he was going to show that new him. A Yuuri who was confident, mature – sexy, even.

Chris eventually tapped his arm in the middle of an exercise. Time to go, then. Yuuri took one last deep breath, then struck a pose from his program, during one of the transition points in the music: fingers raking along his hair and then sliding down his throat, his other hand shifting from the curve of his waist to his hip, accentuated by the tight costume and the detailing. He wasn't entirely sure what bedroom eyes looked like, but he tried to make them, gazing at Chris. With the extra height from his skates, they were almost at the same eye level.

It got Chris to grin. "I better see fans scribbling their phone numbers on your plushies at the end," he joked as they headed out to the rink, where the last competitor was just finishing his skate.

Yuuri tried not to feel the tension in the air as he ran through his warm-up routine – quick edge exercises, a couple of jumps, everything feeling good. He came to the side of the ice to drop off his jacket, and Chris held out his arms for their hug.

He took the invitation. Chris's arms were a steady presence, and he clapped both of Yuuri's shoulders when they parted a moment later, before nodding and pushing him off to go take his starting position. The touch followed Yuuri across the ice, still faintly there as he waited for the music.

No more time for seeing stories as he skated. He had an audience to seduce.

Maybe it worked, because this audience wasn't as quiet as the one at regionals had been, and not just because there were more people out there. They clapped along as Yuuri wove through the step sequence, keeping the beat of the music and making sure he had each step done properly so he would get every point he could. They cheered when Yuuri did the pose he'd done in front of Chris minutes ago, lifting his eyes from the people in the front row up to the very top and trying to bat his eyelashes. They applauded for each jump, all landed soft and sure.

Don't you want me? he demanded in his head, his gaze drifting as he skated. The judges. Chris. The audience couldn't have him, but he tried to reach for them. Be bold, Chris had told him over and over, so Yuuri pushed.

The first time he had done this program, he'd been too timid, the moves feeling strange. They were familiar to him now, and Yuuri tried to make them seem natural – like it was nothing to cock his hip here, to tilt his head there, as if each sensual movement came to him as easily as flirting apparently came to Chris.

He wasn't a kid play-acting at seduction, trying to be Romeo or Carmen without really understanding what he was doing. He was a young man dancing for all the world to see, knowing exactly what effect he had, the meaning behind every gesture.

As soon as the song was over, his face went flaming hot. Yuuri resisted any urge to put his hands up to cover it and took his bows with a smile instead. Wow, that had been – he couldn't tell yet if he'd done it properly, but that had been different. Sexy? Maybe. He had never felt that rush when skating this program yet. It must have been a good sign.

He had to dodge a few flowers and sushi plushies, as well as the children picking them up, on his way off, though he did slow down to pick up a stuffed onigiri. A girl screamed a little higher than the rest of the crowd when he did so; maybe she had thrown it.

Chris was smiling when he handed Yuuri his skate guards, and he put an arm around Yuuri's shoulders as they went to the wait for the scores. "The jumps were great," he said as they sat down and faced the cameras.

"How did it look?"

"It still has a ways to go. But it's already better. You need to commit to it more, I think."

And there he'd thought he'd committed as much as he could. Yuuri sighed and pushed his face into the onigiri toy. They were talking too low for the microphones to pick up, but the screens above the ice must have still been showing them, because there was light murmur of laughter at the action. Chris put a hand to his spine and offered him water.

He wished he had his glasses as the screens cut to replays, but he'd left them in his bag somewhere. Chris didn't say anything about his jumps, though, so they must have been good after all. He did hum when they showed a piece of his choreography, and Yuuri wondered what it was, if that was a good hm or a bad hm.

Chris's hand slid down to his forearm when the music went silent. The first announcement was in Chinese, and even squinting, Yuuri couldn't read the scores, but Chris's hand squeezed tightly, did that mean—

"His score is one hundred and three point nine five. It is a personal best, and he is currently in first place."

Oh.

That was pretty good.

Yuuri turned his head and looked at Chris, and had half a second to read the joy radiating from his face before he was pulled into a hug. "I'm going to have a new rival when I return at this rate," Chris said in his ear with a laugh. "Think how high it will be when you hit it for real."

He opened his mouth, then closed it. With a score like that, he might stay in first place. That was new.

The shock didn't melt away even after they were out of the kiss-and-cry. Yuuri pulled his skates off and rubbed his feet for a few moments, not thinking of anything as he stretched them out. His phone was blowing up when he pulled it out of his bag – messages from his parents and everyone back home, one from Josef congratulating him on the good skate and telling him to keep it up for the free.

It was a bad habit, but he even checked social media. WOW!! read the top post on Chirpir. Clean 3A, 4S, 4T+3T – and he is a completely different skater now! No hesitation here.

"I think people liked it," he said.

"They were very loud when you finished," said Chris. "I'm pretty sure they did." He gave Yuuri an odd look. "Are you feeling okay? I thought you would be happier."

"Might still be in denial," he said. "Can I have a snack?"

Chris dug around in his bag and offered him a protein bar. He barely had time to eat it before one of the Japanese reporters found him and asked for a quick post-skate interview.

The second group went, one by one, and none of them outscored him, not even Georgi. When everyone had gone, Yuuri stared at the final standings and felt butterflies erupt in his stomach. On the one hand – wow, indeed, he was in first place, he'd scored over a hundred at an international competition for the first time in his career, wow. On the other, now he had to do that again, tomorrow. No use in being a one-hit wonder with a single amazing performance who then flopped in the free.

The first line of thought held for the press conference and through dinner. The second, as he had been dreading, took over when he was in his hotel room, trying to get to sleep. He'd turned his phone to silent, but he could still hear his parents' congratulations, could see everyone gathering around in Yuutopia tomorrow and waiting for him to pull it off again.

He didn't sleep very much, only drifting off for a couple hours near dawn before he had to wake up and get to practice. His stomach felt sloshy enough that he skipped breakfast in favor of plain water, and Chris looked concerned from the moment they stepped in the elevator. He kept giving Yuuri glances, and his eyebrows were drawn together every time Yuuri came over to him during the practice session, his hands returning again and again to Yuuri's shoulders and wrists.

The practice session was terrible. Chris didn't bother saying that when Yuuri was done changing. "Did you sleep at all?" he asked instead.

"Only a little."

"You look exhausted. We can go back and you can have a nap, if you want."

Yuuri shook his head. "I'm not going to be able to sleep," he admitted. He was in that odd state of being physically tired, while mentally he was almost too wired to think properly.

"Caffeine?"

"It'll make me jittery. Tea might be okay."

"Let's at least get some light food into you."

Chris took him outside and to a nearby little café, where Yuuri had a green tea and a small side dish that didn't impose on his stomach too much, while Chris had coffee and a real lunch. Afterward, Chris suggested that they try a walk to shake the nerves out.

It wasn't the same as walking through Champéry together, or roaming through the pretty Swiss countryside on the summer evenings, or stepping through the surf in Hasetsu as the sun sank pretty and golden on the waves. But Chris was still there, quiet, not imposing. The people around them, all busy with their own plans and own places to go, barely glanced at them. Yuuri might not have been able to understand any of the Chinese being spoken around them, but he could guess that none of them were talking about figure skating.

None of them probably even knew that a competition was happening in their city, that dozens of men and women were fighting for thousands of dollars in prize money on live television while tens of thousands of people were watching. They didn't care if Yuuri skated lights out and claimed gold, or if he had a complete meltdown and sank all the way to last place.

It was a strangely comforting thought.

He was more awake by the time they returned to the arena, and though the nerves weren't completely gone, they were bearable. The two of them were early enough to meet up with Minako for a bit. Thankfully, she didn't chat much about Yuuri's upcoming competition, knowing how he was or sensing his nerves. Instead, she enthused about the other disciplines for a while. The Japanese women seemed to be doing well. "I'll be cheering for you," she said before they had to leave, shaking her banner. "Good luck out there."

Yuuri nodded and watched her depart for the stands, before Chris herded him back towards the competition area.

The nerves got better, worse, better, and then worse again as they waited for the ice resurfacing to finish, then for the first group to go. Yuuri bobbled several jumps in the warm-up and almost fell out of a spin. Chris's lips were pursed when he came off the ice.

He tugged Yuuri away from his competitors and from the screens. It wasn't completely quiet, but it was more isolated. "You can get the murder face on now," he said.

Yuuri's face felt stiff, but he tried. The way Chris winced suggested that it looked terrible, so he dropped it and reached for his earbuds. Maybe after a couple of songs, then.

They blocked out most of the sound, but they couldn't block everything, like the loud cheers that erupted from the direction of the ice after... how many minutes had it been? Yuuri pulled them out and frowned down the hallway. "Who went just now?"

"Phichit, so you should be getting ready to go."

"Do you know what the current standings are?"

"I do," Chris said. "Will it really help you to know them?"

Yuuri frowned further and considered the question. Probably not. He hoped that Phichit had done well (the screaming and applause suggested he had). He hoped, in the way that all athletes secretly hoped, that he hadn't done so well that Yuuri couldn't beat him. Well, he did have his quads.

"No," he said.

"Then we should focus on things that will. You still look so nervous." He put his hands on Yuuri's shoulders, looked him very seriously straight in the eye, and said, "I think you need to breathe with me."

Yuuri blinked at him once, twice, feeling his face twist with his confusion. "What?"

"Slowly, in and out. In," and he took an exaggerated deep breath. "Out. Slowly, calmly. You can match me if that's easier."

"Chris – what?"

Chris's tone was the very model of sincerity. "The best way to counter a panic attack is deep breathing, but if you can't do that, we can start with counting to ten. One, two... sorry, how does it go in Japanese?"

That was when Yuuri realized what he was doing. "Chris," he said again, this time laughing, which bled the tension from his muscles. "Stop, stop. Chris, that's terrible."

"You're not breathing," Chris said in that syrupy voice. His lips cracked into a smile, and his voice went back to normal. "It worked, didn't it?"

"I thought you were serious for a moment," Yuuri said between gasps for breath. "You could make a side living as a self-help guide with a voice like that."

"I don't think I could stand it for very long. You should have seen your face."

"You really seemed like you meant it! Phichit tried that on me, once. He saw me panicking at our second competition together and tried what the first thing he found on the internet said."

"Didn't work?"

"Well, it did. Because we had an argument about it and it distracted me." It wasn't the most comfortable memory, and the reminder of it made him shift from foot to foot. "I know he was just trying to help me, and that it wasn't fun to watch me have a meltdown in competition. It was just so condescending."

"Intruding," Chris said, and Yuuri nodded. "I thought it might startle you out of your nerves if I acted pitying enough. I'm guessing he figured it out."

Yuuri nodded again. Phichit was a good friend. He hadn't bugged Yuuri about his bad season last year, or about his break with Celestino, except to sigh about how lonely and bored he was going to be without him. When Yuuri had acted weird at competitions, wound up by his stage fright, Phichit had learned to either give him room and go do his own thing, or tried to divert his thoughts by talking about other things. "Do we need to get going?"

"Yep. Come on."

On the ice, Yuuri didn't look up at the screens showing the standings as the last score was announced and his name was called. The muscles along his spine were tense, and so was his stomach, but it could have been worse.

Chris opened his arms for another hug – looked like that was becoming a thing now – and Yuuri took a moment to lean into him and try to take on what he was offering. Then he forced a smile on his face as he skated away.

The lack of sleep didn't make him feel tired, but it itched behind his eyes as he closed them and waited for the music to start. At least the program was slow and soft to start with, before his first jumping pass.

It was supposed to be a combo. The landing on his quad was so shaky, though, that he couldn't hope to put the second jump on. He told himself to concentrate. The crowd was clapping for him anyway, trying to carry him onward, and the music was still going.

He didn't feel comfortable putting the combination on the quad salchow, either. He quickly ran over the layout of the program as he held a spin. There was no need to panic. It was one mistake so far. Victor had won after landing crappy combos and popping jumps. So had Chris. So had he.

Minako's banner was visible when he turned gracefully out of the spin; he couldn't read it, but the colors were distinct, and she was still holding it open. He remembered a few words of advice she'd given as he continued skating. Keep his fingers alive. Back straight. Deep in the arabesque spiral that started the choreographic sequence, to make it look pretty even without extraordinary flexibility.

He came out of the spiral into an Ina Bauer, into a spread eagle, into his axel, each transition matched well to the music in a way that was natural and relaxing. The axel never failed him, and it didn't fail him today, either. Yuuri felt a burst of confidence sparking in his chest when he landed it with ease.

The next jump didn't go so well, but at least he managed to get a second jump squeezed in so he wasn't leaving the extra points behind. There, now he could stop thinking about it so much. He just had to finish out the program.

It was a relief to throw himself into the step sequence and let himself dance to the most energetic and hopeful part of the music, feeling his skates cutting into the ice. The program was almost over, except for one last quad, which Yuuri turned into like he always did—

He went into it too quickly, throwing his axis off. He wasn't sure he had all the rotations in, and he stumbled several steps across the ice while trying not to fall. Instinct had him getting back up to speed as soon as he had steadied himself enough, so he could finish the last moments of the program, but internally, he cringed at the glaring mistake. Again on the last quad, too.

Even so, there were a dozen Japanese flag waving at him when he was done. Not a standing ovation, but it would do. (In Russia, he wanted there to be one. In Russia, he would skate it better.) At least he hadn't fallen or been forced to leave a jump out.

Chris didn't comment on how shaky the program had been when he helped Yuuri off the ice and into his jacket. "The step sequence was very good," he said.

"The jumps weren't."

"Your axels were."

"The rest of them weren't."

"We can criticize later," said Chris, making him sit down in the kiss-and-cry. "You don't need a lecture right now."

He gave him a bottle of juice instead. Suddenly, Yuuri was ravenous, and the juice only helped a little. He squinted at the replay shots as he gulped it down and tried not to mentally recount every element he might get points off from. The axels being good wouldn't make up for everything else.

The silence before they announced the score seemed to last forever; when he heard it, Yuuri's first thought was that it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and his second was that oh, he'd made the podium, though not in first – was that Phichit who had been ahead of him? He must have skated with everything he had.

Second place wasn't first, though.

"Not bad," Chris said, tugging him closer. "Look, you weren't that far off from first. No, don't get that look, we can figure out what made the difference later when we go over everything with Josef. Congratulations on your silver medal."

Yuuri swallowed his disappointment about not winning. Chris was right. He'd been close, and at least it was second place, and not third, or off the podium altogether. That would do well for his chances of making the final.

It was busy backstage, but one voice cut clearly through the rest.

"Yuuri!" Phichit called. There were tears glimmering in his eyes, and he looked as though he hadn't stopped smiling since he skated.

"Congratulations," Yuuri said. "I could hear the crowd applauding over my music – you must have been great out there."

"Congratulations!" Phichit exclaimed with a laugh. "So were you." He looped an arm around Yuuri's shoulders while digging through his pocket for his phone. "Where's our third place man? I need a million pictures to commemorate this! Here it is – smile!"

Yuuri smiled, as commanded, and held his fingers up in v signs. Phichit took a moment to angle and frame the shot just right, then took five pictures in quick succession.

"Let's meet again in Barcelona," said Yuuri, once Phichit had lowered his phone. Phichit's grin widened, impossibly.

Even standing on the second place level of the podium, Yuuri felt light. He still wished he'd won – that he hadn't messed up his jumps – but next time he could still do better, and he'd shown that he had made the right decision, going to Chris and Nicolas and Josef. Celestino had taken him further than the coach Yuuri had trained with before him, and maybe it would have been fine to stay with him. But Yuuri thought he had needed the change, and here was the proof that it was working.

(Now if only he could get the salchow just that much more consistent, or land the flip, or get his damn brain under control....)

"Yuuri!" called out a group of teenage fans on the victory lap, and Yuuri slowed down. Be nice, Chris had said. Approachable. They had their phones out. He could do a few selfies or photos.

They looked as starry-eyed as Minami had. One of them leaned over the barrier to hand him a card when they were done taking their pictures and shouting their congratulations.

"That's cute," Chris said when he showed it to him later. The maker of the card had written a short message, and then drawn him in his two new costumes, chibi-style. There was a small Chris waving from one side, too. "No phone number?"

"Chris," Yuuri groaned.

"We've got to get you back in the studio, then. Maybe try sprucing up your look a bit. We don't quite need to get to the point where they're throwing underwear, but—"

"Chris."

~!~

When they eventually landed back in Switzerland and collapsed in Chris's apartment, there was no katsudon. But they ordered in a dinner that was good, if not as delicious as Mom's katsudon or Dad's cooking, and ate it slumped on the couch watching a movie.

Yuuri blinked awake during the credits to find himself leaning on Chris's shoulder. Chris was murmuring to Mimi, those endless French endearments he liked to give her, and didn't seem to mind Yuuri being asleep on him.

It was a comfortable shoulder, not bony, lots of muscle, and the angle was perfect, not hurting Yuuri's neck. He would get up in a minute, he told himself. One minute turned into several, as Chris sat there and pet Mimi and let Yuuri stay where he was. His eyes slipped closed again. Their flight had been long. It was cozy right here.

There was a light touch on his forehead, brushing the hair from his eyes, and then Chris very gently pulled his glasses off. Yuuri heard the click of them being folded, and he thought he heard a few more words. He didn't hear anything after that.

When he awoke in the morning, he was still on the couch, though now leaning on the back, half covered with a blanket. Mimi had claimed another corner of the blanket to curl up on, and Chris was in the kitchen, quietly opening and closing cupboards. The room smelled like coffee and fresh bread.

Yuuri propped his chin on the back of the couch and took it in for a moment, not thinking of anything in particular. It was like the whole apartment itself was wrapped in a blanket, soft and warm and comfortable.

"Good morning," he called out.

"Good morning," Chris said in return, poking his head out. Between the dim lighting and his bad eyes, it was blurry, but Yuuri could still see the soft smile that Chris wore.

Chapter Text

Nicolas returned again for more choreographic touch-up to Yuuri's programs as well as for one of the other skaters, and also to do programs for Chris.

Chris's condition had improved to the point where he was authorized to do jumps – no quads, not yet, but it seemed to Yuuri that he would be getting there soon as this rate. His other skills were as strong as they'd ever been, with the same old sureness to his steps and spins. All of that working out and physical therapy and everything must have worked.

The free program was a Chris specialty – club music, probably lots of mesh and illusion cut-outs for his costume, energetic choreography, and a pause in one corner of the rink to blow a kiss to whichever lucky audience members sat there. Lots of sultry looks, and near the middle, he ran his hands very deliberately down his lower back and hips. It was difficult for Yuuri's gaze not to land directly where Chris was trying to point it.

If it had been anyone else, it would have been really weird. But it was Chris, and Chris was... Chris was never afraid to be his own person, and he made it look natural and normal.

The short, though, was a surprise. Soft, gentle classical music that gradually grew bolder and dramatic toward the end, though it never lost its lightness. In the hands of the wrong choreographer, it could have produced a program that was very pretty in the moment and utterly forgettable the second the music stopped. It was the kind of music Chris might have skated to a decade ago, before he'd grown and found his quads and discovered a new image.

But the program was much more complex than one that younger Chris could ever have carried off, and the difference in maturity in his skating was striking. He was faster, smoother, with more meaning and thought to his movements, more steadiness in how he held himself on the ice.

"Wow," Yuuri said after the first time he watched Chris skate it.

"It's different," Nicolas said. "I didn't expect him to ask for something like this."

"But it really suits him."

"It does! Did you see his expression? He likes it."

Chris told him later, "I think Nicolas thought I'd suddenly adopted Victor's love of surprises when I sent him the song."

"You've done a couple of gala programs like it. It's not like you've totally left behind that kind of skating."

"But it's not like anything I've put in competition for years. I thought it would be nice to show another side of myself again, that I'm not just Mr. Sex on Skates. And besides, it reminded me of you."

"Me?" Yuuri's heart jumped, and he paused in pulling his skates off. "And that made you want to choose it?"

"Why shouldn't it? I like you, and I think you've been blooming very nicely as we've worked together."

He said like so easily, casually, as though it didn't mean that much. English was a bolder language than Japanese. "The program's not like me, though."

"No. I don't have the background in ballet to make something like that work, and anyway, I didn't tell Nicolas why I chose the music." He leaned in closer. "A little secret for the two of us, hm?"

"Oh." Chris was suddenly very close. They were pressed together from knee to shoulder, and Chris's face was just far enough for Yuuri's eyes to focus on him. "I... really liked it. It's not like what you did back then even if the music is kind of similar – it has direction. Purpose. It's not just there to be pretty and take up three minutes."

"I'm glad," said Chris. "I really like it, too." And then he reached down to finish unlacing his own skates, not moving away. Yuuri didn't, either, and he took more care than he needed to when he dried his blades off, though his heart beat hard and loud in his chest the whole time.

It beat that hard again the next day, too, when he landed multiple quad flips in practice and Chris pulled him in for a hug. "It might be ready to add by Nationals," Yuuri said, his skin buzzing with elation. He wanted to go out and land ten more, but Josef wouldn't have let him. Too many jumps were a recipe for fractures.

"Suddenly, I'm very happy that the lutz has the higher value," said Chris. "I'm going to have to be chasing both you and Victor off that podium at Worlds, aren't I? Where's this Yuuri been the whole time?"

Yuuri laughed. "I don't know, either." Chris wasn't being nice to him – he really might have a chance at a Worlds medal if he kept this up. And oh, he wanted one so badly. "I feel like I could take gold there."

Chris didn't tell him that he was dreaming too much, or remind him that Victor had been totally undefeated for five seasons and had an advantage both technically and in terms of performance scores, or even point out that he was almost certainly going to be at Worlds, and Yuuri had yet to ever place over him.

He squeezed him tighter, instead, like Yuuri really, truly could do it, and Yuuri hugged him back.

That certainty stayed with him up until they landed in Russia and were in the competition hotel. Yuuri's competitors here were going to be tougher – there was JJ, who had won bronze at the GPF last year and gold at Four Continents, though he'd missed the podium at Worlds. He'd placed first at Skate Canada this year and there was a lot of buzz around him; new little Yuri Plisetsky, who had been silver behind him, wasn't here, but only because Victor was. Michele could be a threat when he had an on day, too.

The others, Yuuri could probably score over, barring disaster, but he could feel his confidence evaporating when he and Chris paused near the elevators to debate where to go for dinner. He was far from guaranteed a medal here, or a ticket to the GPF.

He felt even less confident when a very familiar voice exclaimed Chris's name. Chris lit up as he looked over his shoulder. "Victor! There you are!" He took a few steps and drew Victor into a hug when he came over to them. "You know, even if I'm not competing, I just couldn't stay away from your skating," he said as they pulled away from each other.

"I wish you were competing," complained Victor. "It's going to be so boring at the final – what's a season without Chris?"

"I'll be back before you know it. Besides, I brought you someone to skate against in my place – see?" He took a half-step back and gestured toward Yuuri, who instantly straightened. That was a weird sentiment, to think that he could possibly replace Chris in the competition line-up – but not a bad one, to have Chris easily slotting him in there.

Victor just looked at him for a moment, and then to Yuuri's consternation, broke into a bright smile. "Yuuri, right? I remember you – the dancer!"

Oh, right, oh, crap, Victor could remember their dance together after all. Yuuri had put his clothes back on by then, right? He hadn't made a total fool of himself if Victor was smiling at him like that, not laughing at him, right? Right?

(He was never drinking around anyone else ever again.)

"Hi," he said, and then he wanted to die a little more, if that was possible. Could he not think of anything cooler to say?

And then Victor took a couple of steps towards him, away from Chris. He looked just like Yuuri remembered from last year, in person – his hair was slightly out of place without the help of editing software, and his smile wasn't quite symmetrical, but his eyes really were that blue. "I saw your programs – they're a lot better than what you had last year. You used Chris's choreographer, right? He knew how to use your talents. You're a very musical skater."

Yuuri opened his mouth and almost had to close it again. Was he dreaming? Was Victor Nikiforov, god of the skating world, actually praising him, the guy who had crashed into last place at last year's GPF and had passed beneath everyone's notice otherwise? "Thank you," he said. "Chris helped a lot, too."

"I could tell," Victor said, turning back to Chris. "You couldn't let the sport live without at least one sexy program, could you?"

Chris shook his head. "And let the fans down? How could I, Victor?"

He ended up inviting Victor to dinner with them – or more like, demanded that Victor help them find a good place to eat. So a few minutes later, they were walking down a street in Moscow with Victor, Chris chatting with him and Yuuri wondering how this was happening in his life. (He had to tell Yuuko. She was going to die of jealousy.)

Victor took them to a restaurant that he'd apparently grown fond of after enough years of competing in Moscow, though he told Chris – or told them – that they had to come visit in St. Petersburg sometime. "I brought Makkachin, though – you should come see her."

Yuuri perked up at that. "I'll bring Yuuri, too," Chris said. "He loves dogs."

"Poodles are my favorite," said Yuuri. There was a deep pang in his chest at the thought of his own poodle, but he didn't have to blink back any tears, at least.

"The more visitors, the better – she'll love the attention."

The food was a bit out of Yuuri's normal price range, but it was worth it to be able to eat with Chris and Victor. They carried on most of the conversation, but Yuuri surprised himself at how easily he managed to speak up at points. Of course he'd daydreamed of getting to eat dinner with Victor and saying all kinds of interesting things, when he was younger, but he'd been aware that he wasn't actually that cool of a person in real life.

He even managed to surprise Victor – Victor, of all people – when it came time to order. Victor told the waiter what he wanted, then asked them what their orders were; he translated for Chris, but Yuuri knew enough Russian to just tell the waiter himself. He took a sip of water, and when he looked up, both Chris and Victor were staring at him.

"That was pretty good," said Victor.

"I didn't know you knew Russian," said Chris. "When did this happen?"

He shrugged. "I picked up a bit here and there over years. Took a class when I was at university. I'm not fluent or anything." He and Yuuko had both studied Cyrillic together – they'd written Victor's full name an embarrassing number of times – and learning basic skating vocabulary had been easy. Yuuri probably couldn't manage more than the order he'd just made, unless he was trying to comment on someone's program.

"He's been in Switzerland, what, three or four months now, and yet I still can't get him to pronounce the street names correctly," Chris said mournfully. "The old man who runs the bakery counter thinks the way he mangles our orders is cute."

"I learned too many hard languages already," Yuuri said. "I don't have room in my head for how you're supposed to pronounce everything in French."

"It has to be easier than those kanji," Chris sighed.

"It's more beautiful than English," said Victor. "Of course, Russian is even more beautiful, so you should finish learning that, first."

After dinner, they all went back to Victor's room for a few minutes to say hello to Makkachin. She enjoyed the company, first jumping up on Chris, and then coming to Yuuri for attention. It made Yuuri's chest ache, to see her so energetic and healthy-looking, when Vicchan was.... But she was cute, and her curls had the same soft touch to them that Vicchan's had had. It was so soothing to pet them, to stroke her back and rub her around the ears while she leaned into his hand.

They had to leave eventually, though. Out in the hallway, Yuuri took a big breath and let it out slowly. "Feeling okay?" Chris asked.

"Yeah." Makkachin had been adorable enough to take his mind off of things for a while, but now the prospect of the competition was hitting him again.

Everything was going to be fine. Chris was here to support him, and so was Josef, and he was going to get to skate on the same ice as Victor again. In the same group, even – truly, the same ice.

They even had practice sessions together – the only other skater Yuuri knew on them was Seung-gil, and that was 'knew' in the sense of 'had gotten drunk together one time'. Yuuri willed himself not to be distracted as he performed his program and then as Victor performed his. "See, I told you about the murder face," Chris said to Josef at one point, when he came to the boards. "Yuuri, it's perfect like that. Not any stronger, okay?"

Before the short program, Josef took him to the side. "How are your nerves doing?" he asked. They'd talked about this, once, after watching Yuuri's free skate in China. Yuuri didn't usually struggle to rotate his jumps, but the ones in China had been tight, and he'd lost points from it. Josef had wanted him to talk to someone about it; Yuuri didn't really see the point.

"They're okay." He felt like more of a dark horse here, with Victor and JJ expected to lead the field, Yuuri being the surprise who had suddenly come into his own this season. People would be wondering if the transformation was complete, or if he was still on Michele's level, or Seung-gil's. After China, and the additional work they'd put in, and the support from Josef, he knew he had a good chance of proving himself, as long as he didn't think about it too much.

Josef nodded and let him go get warmed up. Chris stuck closer by, helping Yuuri out here and there, and he gave him another hug when it was finally his turn to skate, one of the last to go.

"It's time to skate like a seduction," he murmured in Yuuri's ear, his hands pressing against Yuuri's upper back, his voice low and rough around the edges. "Tease the judges until they're begging to give you PCS. Give the audience such a show that even Seung-gil would be fighting to get near you. Who do you want to dance your tango with you? Who's worthy of it, of your attention, of seeing you like that? I know you can do it."

Yuuri looked Chris straight in the eye when he drew back and nodded. He could do this. Russia was enchanted with Victor, but he would make them enchanted with him, too.

Yuuri skated out, looking at the audience waving their flags, at the judges staring at him over their table, at Josef waiting for him to pull off another good program. At Chris, who was clapping along with the rest of the crowd.

Who did he want to do a tango with? That much should have been obvious, he thought. He and Chris didn't always find time together in the studio, since they did have different schedules, but they had done more tangos since that one time in Minako's studio, and Chris still critiqued his pole dancing abilities sometimes, too. Or Yuuri would watch him dance, studying the way his body bent and moved, or they would just fool around together until they were exhausted or had laughed themselves silly.

Dancing with Chris was a lot of fun. Yuuri thought of it when the music started and he started to dance by himself on the ice, half closing his eyes, drawing his hands away from his sides to do a little gesture as he turned and started to get into the swing of the music. Chris would have wanted to see him dance like this – he would have gotten that look in his eyes that Yuuri was finding that he liked to see, the one that made his heart beat faster and made him draw his shoulders back.

Hell, even his new spin kind of felt sexy when he sank into it. Probably as sexy as a spin was ever going to get, which wasn't much, but there it was. Yuuri could feel every eye in the arena on him as he rose up, finished it, and took off again, building up speed for his jumps.

Could Chris see that newfound feeling? Could he see it in the way that Yuuri glided across the arena, his edges carving into the ice with ease? Could he see how Yuuri enjoyed himself when he ran his fingers though his hair and several people in the audience whooped?

Surely the judges had to see how hard he was trying to make the skating look effortless when he did a high, clean axel out of a spread eagle and immediately went into more perfectly timed steps, meant to be elegant and yet alluring.

Yuuri didn't have any winks or blown kisses in his program, like Chris might have. He didn't need them, and they would have been too blatant, anyway, and broken the character of the program. Chris's eyes were always on him in the studio because of the way he moved – he'd said as much – and Yuuri knew he was moving like that now, as he got further absorbed in the music. The rhythm of the song was in every step, in the way his knees bent and straightened.

The quad salchow wasn't perfect, but it was landed well enough that Yuuri simply rode the glide for a moment before swinging around. As he skated back across the ice, he could almost feel Chris reaching for him, Chris's hand sliding into his own, Chris's eyes gazing into his as they waited for the dance to start.

But Yuuri had to finish this one, first, and here was the combination, quad, triple, exploding into the air as the music hit its most lively point. Almost there, almost there – Yuuri still had a few more moves to complete, bringing the song and the program to a proper close.

When Yuuri slid into his ending pose, he felt dizzy. No. Heady? He'd done it. He'd accomplished the goal of the program. That was how he was meant to skate, sure and powerful. Just let the judges give him a bad score for that.

As he skated off the ice, he didn't have to ask how it had gone. The screaming crowd had been a clue. So was the way that Chris was gaping at him. Yuuri handed him a bouquet of flowers to hold while he got his guards on, and then he took it back. Josef was beaming, and Yuuri took it in for a moment before heading to the kiss-and-cry, Chris close behind.

"That," said Chris, once they were sitting down, and he closed his mouth for a moment to shake his head. "Yuuri, that was the best you've skated this program ever. Possibly the best you've ever skated period."

Yuuri certainly couldn't remember feeling quite this high and confident after any of his other short programs. There were ones that had gone well; more often there were ones that had been disappointing. Or there were days when he had made up for a bad short in the free skate, when he felt like people were writing him off, and where his better stamina had given him an edge, and it had been satisfying to make a comeback.

"I was really in the music," he said. "It was so easy to skate."

"I could tell," said Chris. He was still giving Yuuri that look, that wowed one. Maybe this was why Victor loved to surprise everyone so much, because Yuuri felt quite pleased at having put it on him.

Yuuri could hardly breathe, and even as the minutes passed, his heart didn't slow down all the way. He couldn't wait for the scores. Did the judges always take so long?

The scores did finally come: another new huge personal best. Behind Victor, but by surprisingly few points. Yuuri found himself both elated and annoyed at the same time. Chris hugged him close, close enough to feel his grin, and didn't let go until after they had left the arena.

"You wanted to score better than Victor," Chris surmised in the halfway afterward, chuckling. "It's happened! I have a couple of little gold medals over him. If you'd been a bit more consistent up until now, or if he'd had a mistake, maybe... well, I know which program it is that won my heart. That was beautiful, Yuuri."

"Very well done," Josef said. "And to think I wondered if it would ever suit you a couple of months ago."

"I knew you had that inside of you," Chris said. His eyes were bright with his smile. Yuuri grinned back. After skating that program, he wasn't sure if he was ever going to feel shy or nervous again.

The new breeze of confidence lasted through the press conference, where Yuuri got to sit next to Victor and answer questions about his new approach to skating, and it lasted through dinner, where Chris teasingly tried to tempt him with a glass of champagne, and it lasted through the night, with Yuuri falling asleep easily.

In the morning, he hopped out of bed as soon as his alarm sounded, ready to get going. Yuuri could feel himself starting to get more jittery by the time they reached the rink, though he tried to hold onto the good feelings.

But the restlessness grew, as it did, it bothered him more and more – it wasn't the usual anxiety creeping up on him, not yet. It was thinking about the scores, and the podium that could be, and his layout versus those of his competitors, and all of that, and wondering how he could make it more certain that he would be standing with a medal around his neck at the end of the day.

Which was why, standing backstage with Josef and Chris, shifting from foot to foot to fold his legs in half and get his blood flowing as they waited for the practice session to be called, he said, "I want to put the flip in."

Chris frowned at him. That only made him feel more sure about the idea, wanting to show that doubt wrong. "Your success rate on it even in practice still isn't that high."

"It's a big risk," said Josef. "It's up to you in the end, but you'd get more points if you did an excellent toe loop than a poor flip. Unless you want to add it as a fourth? You've never practiced that, have you?"

"I tried four quads once last year." But his salchow had been too shaky for it to be worth it. "I'd do it instead of the quad toe loop at the end."

"At the end? Even for you, isn't that a bit much? I don't think it's worth it," Josef said. "Even with Victor being Victor and JJ's GOEs being what they are. What's with this sudden urge?"

Chris's frown had shifted into something more serious. Maybe he could understand all the nameless thoughts in Yuuri's head – the desire to prove himself, to show off, to do whatever he could to win.

"I can land it," Yuuri insisted.

Josef frowned further. "I can't make you not try it," he said. His tone and the way his arms were crossed clearly said not to do it. Chris, though, didn't try to persuade him again; he simply kept giving him that look. Yuuri thought he understood.

It turned out that with all his energy when he'd left the hotel, he'd forgotten his gloves. Every time he came to the boards in practice, Chris kept folding his hands over Yuuri's, warming them up again. (They were still frozen stiff by the end, though, despite the exercise. The arena was cold today.)

Time passed quickly at first, or so it seemed to Yuuri, distracted by thoughts of his layout and mental rehearsals that didn't feel real enough. He was second-to-last to skate, behind Victor and before JJ, so there was a long time to wait, and the first group seemed to be taking forever.

After their warm-up, Yuuri jogged to try and keep his focus off of the time, impatient. He wanted to skate already. His body was ready for it, and so was his mind. Whenever he checked the clock, only two or three minutes had passed, and eventually he gave into temptation in the middle of a stretch and started to check the current results on his phone. He'd seen that Emil had landed all his quads, and Michele had done well, but he hadn't caught the scores for either of them.

While the page was still loading, Chris crouched next to him and took the phone from his hand. Yuuri's head whipped up. "Chris?"

"You don't need to work yourself up," said Chris.

Before Yuuri could demand it back, however, Josef in turn snatched the phone from Chris's hand. "He's not a child," he chided. "He can make his own choices." As he handed the phone back over, however, he added, "I hope you'll make the correct choices, though. He was right. Don't work yourself up."

When Josef wandered off, Chris winced and said, "Sorry. I just remembered how you've gotten before. I don't want you worrying about the scores."

Yuuri swallowed and clicked his phone on. Clicked his phone off. Clicked his phone on. He could see, over Chris's shoulder, Seung-gil tumbling to the ice in a replay. He clicked his phone off. Chris's intention hadn't been wrong. "You're right. It's a bad habit. Like reading all the awful things people say on social media."

"We all do that sometimes. Last Worlds, Victor and I got bored and drunk and started trying to find the worst comments about ourselves."

Yuuri gave a little laugh (even Victor?) and shifted into a different position so he could firmly put his phone in his bag. When he looked up again, Seung-gil was walking past with his coach, tears dripping down his cheeks, and he hastily glanced away. He and Seung-gil weren't friends, but they'd shared quiet corners sometimes at the same competitions, and he was the only star skater that Korea had right now. With the Olympics there coming up next season, he had to be under a ton of pressure to prepare for it.

But if Seung-gil was leaving, that meant that Victor was skating, and it was time for them to get out there.

Victor had just landed one of his beautiful jumps when they emerged. Watching him in person from the side of the rink might not have had all the close-ups that cameras provided, but Yuuri couldn't bring himself to look up above the ice to enjoy them. Victor was swift as he skated back and forth, filling the arena, using that famous charisma of his to reach out to the audience in a way that seemed to Yuuri like magic.

The flower boys and girls had to work hard when he was done, sweeping up armfuls of plushies and flowers to dump into a pile for him off the ice. Victor himself took a bundle of roses and waved graciously as he left the ice to another roar of applause. He looked so sure of himself, so steady, almost like a god after all, and it was so distracting that Chris had to push on his back to remind him that it was his turn to get on.

Yuuri was still dodging the flowers as he took his first few strokes. Nobody was paying him any attention yet, but his stomach flipped over a few times anyway. How did Chris do this all the time? Go out there and wipe clean the image that Victor had drawn with his blades in order to make his own mark?

He brought his jacket over to Chris, though he still felt cold and tense as he took it off. "The scores, please," the announcer said, and Yuuri's heart rate doubled. In the silence that followed, Chris reached out and put his hands over Yuuri's ears. Yuuri could have brushed them off, but he let them stay; Chris was telling him again not to worry about the numbers too much. Maybe it was for the better. Yuuri already knew the difference in base points between his layout and Victor's, and the difference in their usual PCS.

A few moments later, the hands dropped off of his ears and around his neck. Chris gave him a longer hug than usual, and his hands slid slowly down Yuuri's arms when he started to release him. They shared a long look, and then Chris gave him a little smile, his eyes crinkling with it behind his glasses. "Okay, now go beat that."

He didn't say anything else. He didn't have to. Yuuri could read the faith in his face and in the way he gripped his arms. Faith that Yuuri would do well, that he would do whichever jump he thought he could pull off better.

All that work to get him here, last year and this year. Yuuri was going to make it worth it and reach the final. Fuzzy Japanese flags fluttered around the arena, and he could distantly hear calls to him in Russian and in Japanese that all blurred together.

He felt vaguely sick when he started to skate, but also like he was floating, the ice too soft to feel beneath his skates for the first moments, as he swayed with the gentle opening of the song. His body knew what to do, though, and the first set of jumps came almost easily. He flowed out of the combination, his skates ready to take him back across the ice.

He tried not to think too much. Not about the points he could add up in his head on the fly, not about how he looked. He had to focus on smoothness, on quality, on doing his first spin just right, but the nervousness still fought his limbs until about the point that the violins came in to the music.

There was a jump timed then, and when he landed it, he was on the right side of the ice to see Josef clapping for him, and Chris with his hands clasped above the boards, and even Victor, standing there and watching him.

The sight made Yuuri breathe easier for a moment. Or maybe it was the music that did something to his heart, soothing it and telling him that everything was okay, that his story was one with a hopeful ending.

There must have been applause from the audience, but Yuuri didn't hear it. All he could hear was the song and the occasional wispy, crunchy sound of his blades digging into the ice when the music was quiet enough. He could barely see anything, either, his energy all going into his feet, his limbs. Long legs, pointed toes, rounded elbows. Every lesson that had been drilled into his head in hours of ballet class.

Everything was going well until one scratchy landing on a jump – crap – no, it was fine, he could live with a poor execution score on a single jump. He had to keep moving, keeping up with the music, his movements being drawn along by it. He couldn't stop now. That wasn't what the song was about.

The step sequence had always been his favorite part of the program, and Yuuri threw himself into it as hard as he could. It was difficult, but he could do difficult steps just fine, level four, good GOE, something that would make the commentators say beautiful work here from Katsuki. He passed the judges' table as he skated it, coming close and then curving away, and he put every effort into making it look as smooth as the music felt, showing them his capabilities, hoping they would reward him for it.

In the run-up to his last jump, he almost faltered, almost let himself do the toe loop after all despite his plans. No, he felt okay. Tired, now that he was at the end of the program, but he could ignore the exhaustion in his legs – he made himself turn and forced the set-up into the flip, so that his body didn't have any other choice but to do it. He launched himself into the air the same way he had done dozens of times in the past months of working on the jump.

His balance was off when he touched the ice. I'm not falling, Yuuri thought – falling was points he couldn't afford, falling could be a medal lost, falling was not happening today. His muscles screamed in protest when he tried to stay upright as his weight rocked away from where it needed to be, but he held on to the messy landing and wrenched his hand away from the ice before it could touch down. It had been close, that had been bad, but it was not a fall.

A young woman sitting nearby shrieked at the top of her lungs. Yuuri burst into a smile. Victor definitely had it right about surprises.

The last spin was a little shaky, maybe because his legs were so tired, but he pushed through it, and then it was over. Yuuri watched his hand shake as it reached for the ceiling. Everything felt very distant except his exhaustion and the way his lungs were gasping for air.

After a moment, his vision went blurry; he lowered his hand to wipe a couple of tears out of his eyes. He wasn't sure where they had come from.

There wasn't much room for thought as he bowed to the judges, then as he absently picked up a sushi plushie and skated slowly off the ice. JJ hopped on it before he made it to the entrance. Beyond him, Victor and Chris were bent toward each other. Victor seemed to be saying something, though he cut himself off when Yuuri was just getting close enough to hear.

Josef was the one holding his skate guards, but Chris was the one who reached him first. Yuuri didn't know if he put his arms out or if Chris pulled him off the ice – either way, they were hugging, all the remaining energy in Yuuri's legs seemingly gone. He thought he was going to collapse for a second.

"It wasn't perfect," he said into Chris's neck.

"I don't care," Chris said. "It was wonderful." He pulled away. There was a little wateriness to his eyes, too. "Come on, let's get you sitting before your legs give out."

Chris supported him as he got his guards on, then as they made their way to the kiss-and-cry. He pulled a few tissues out of his box and gratefully accepted a small bottle of juice from Josef. Chris draped his jacket over his shoulders and draped an arm over his jacket.

"You landed it," Josef said. He was smiling. Good. Yuuri knew he had chosen right, even if it hadn't made any difference to his points.

"I hope someone was recording Victor's face when he realized what it was. He had the best shocked expression." Chris opened his mouth wide and put his hands to his face; there was scattered laughter from the crowd above. "Before that, he was asking me about working with you, things like that, but after, it was – that was a quad flip? Chris, why were you holding out on me about him?"

Yuuri laughed, although it hurt to do so, his core muscles still sore. His cheeks hurt, too, from smiling, especially after his score slotted him into a firm second place. Josef patted him on the back, looking very proud; Chris hugged him yet again, the space of his arms warm and his touch grounding.

And then JJ went and pulled ahead of him while he was talking to Morooka backstage, still trying to catch the last of his breath and hoping the tremble in his legs wasn't too obvious. Yuuri made a face when Chris told him and belatedly hoped nobody had been pointing a camera his way. "He must have skated well," he said, and Chris nodded, one corner of his mouth pulled down.

On some level, it couldn't be helped. JJ did have four quads, and though his programs weren't to Yuuri's taste, the judges clearly liked him. So did the crowd that kept screaming his name, though even his fans weren't able to match the level of volume that Victor generated simply by smiling and opening his arms to the audience.

Yuuri still felt cheated, though. By himself for not skating the program clean, by the judges, by the universe at large. At least he was still on the podium, he told himself. At least he was still going to the GPF. With Victor, and Phichit, and the other Yuri, and... JJ. He couldn't remember who the last skater who had qualified was.

The attention he garnered at the press conference was a novel experience. Yuuri fought to look serious and composed and to not fidget with his water bottle. Yes, he was happy to have landed the quad flip on his first attempt at it competition. Yes, he'd been working hard on it for a year now and was planning on practicing it more to make it more successful. Yes, adding it had been a very measured decision on the part of himself and his coaching team. Yes, he'd been inspired to try it by Victor's.

Even if he was on the bottom step of the podium at the award ceremony, at least he was standing next to Victor. At least he got to shake his hand and share a smile with him and crowd in for photos with him. At least he got to skate side-by-side with Victor for a minute during the victory lap, with their different flags draped over their shoulders as they waved back at all the shouting fans. It was everything he had wanted from his career for so long, or close enough.

The only good thing about getting off the ice at the end was finding Chris in one of the back halls, though Yuuri had thought he had returned to the hotel with Josef. Yuuri wrapped his arms around him before Chris could say anything, too happy for words. Chris embraced him in turn, rubbing his thumb along Yuuri's shoulder.

"Good work," Chris murmured.

"Thanks," said Yuuri. He took a deep breath, a bit lightheaded from everything that had happened today.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just really happy."

Chris's touch didn't leave when Yuuri let go and took a half step away, his hands sliding along Yuuri's jacket. "I can tell," he said. "It looks cute on you. Ready to go back?"

Yuuri nodded, and he followed Chris out of the building, into the sharp, chill air, his medal warm and heavy where he'd tucked it under his shirt.

Chapter Text

After the award ceremony, Yuuri was too excited to sit still in his hotel room, and for once reading social media while he fidgeted on his bed pretty much only had him grinning:

YURI KATSUKI JUST TRIED A 4F WHAT IS HAPPENING

what did josef and chris do to him I love it this is wonderful please don't stop

Yuri Katsuki just performed a QUAD FLIP – completely unexpected and out of nowhere, and at the end of his program!!! He almost fell, but it was fully rotated. VERY exciting development for him! Whatever Josef Karpisek is putting in the water must be working!

First the new combo then the new programs then a new quad – I am so so proud of Yuri, especially after his last season! I'm so happy it's all finally paying off for him!

I thought Yuri was going to die when he went out looking so nervous (who can blame him, he went after Victor in freaking Russia). Instead he lived so hard I think he might have reincarnated.

Lol I'll get so much hate for this but I'm saying it now: YURI WAS ROBBED. Like no bad feelings towards Vitya and JJ but what are those PCS and GOEs and why isn't Yuri getting them.

I wanted Yuri and Victor to tie for gold after watching this... I thought this season was going to be so boring cause I don't really get JJ and Chris is out and judges hate Otabek, but wow. He's a totally new skater. I love it.

Yuri's been training a quad flip since when oh only a year without telling anyone or mentioning it in a single interview ever alksddak he really is taking inspiration from Vitya in terms of slaying us all

Two weeks until the Grand Prix Final. Yuuri clutched his phone to his chest and let himself dream about what might await him there.

A couple of texts from Chris invited him over to his room, where they ordered room service and sat cross-legged on the beds. They'd made it to the ladies' competition for a little bit earlier in the day, to cheer on the lone Swiss woman and the Japanese ladies and everyone else, and now they put on the pairs and ice dance in the background as they talked.

The last competitor at the final was someone named Otabek Altin from Kazakhstan. "Rise of the little countries," Chris said with a chuckle. "He was bronze at Worlds last year, remember? Interesting style. Very dramatic. We didn't talk much, but he seemed nice enough. Someone let him at the music during the banquet, and I have to say, he had much better taste than whoever had planned the playlist."

Yuuri nodded absently, on his phone again. There were a lot of nice comments about him this time, though he knew that they were just words on a screen, something anyone could post with hardly a thought. "I really surprised everyone with that flip," he said.

"You sure did. What are they saying?" This time he only took Yuuri's phone when it was offered. "Look how happy you've made all of them – this stuff is dangerous, but the good fans out there make it worth it if you're careful." Yuuri nodded; there had been a few less-than-happy comments, but he'd scrolled past them this time around.

And there were more than a few people speculating on his and Chris's relationship, but that wasn't new. It hadn't been new since the summer. Honestly, it hadn't been new for years, because people had also wondered if Chris was sleeping with Victor because of their rivalry, or his choreographer when they posted pictures together from vacations, or with Georgi when they did each other's make-up for a gala that one time, or with pretty much anyone he had ever slung an arm around. Some people just couldn't distinguish a persona from reality. Yuuri had learned well enough to mute those people, at least.

"My parents said that they're going to throw a party with everyone back home for the final." Like last year. Yuuri tried to turn that thought off. "And Minako-sensei is coming with my sister. She's threatening to bring a present for you, too."

"I would be honored," Chris said.

"And then she's coming along to Nationals with us. Or, ah." Was Chris coming to Japanese Nationals? It was only a week after Swiss Nationals, this year. And Chris was going to be playing catch-up to try and get back into shape for Euros, and then Worlds. "You're going to be too busy, aren't you?"

"We'll see. As a competitor, I shouldn't, but I wouldn't want you to feel abandoned by me as a coach, either."

Yuuri frowned at him. "It's fine. Coach Josef and Minako-sensei will be there with me. You need to train."

"I do, I do," Chris said. He smiled at something on Yuuri's phone. "Look at this step sequence of yours! We've created a monster out of you." He didn't seem daunted by the thought of competing against that monster. Maybe it was just his usual confidence, but it put a flutter of worry in Yuuri.

"Are your programs going to be ready by Nationals?"

"They're going to be watered down a bit from my usual standard," Chris said. He nudged into Yuuri's side to show him the little video of his step sequence. (It did look very good. Yuuri hadn't realized he had been making that expression, soft and focused, his gaze staring through the walls of the arena. It fit the music.) "No quads, I think, but I don't mind easing into things, and it's not much of a competition, with all respect to my younger countrymen. Everything as the doctors say for this stupid knee."

"It's doing okay?"

"Stop worrying so much about me, Yuuri." Chris pulled him into a sideways hug. "I'm trying to be proud of you tonight! Let's celebrate. You can drink now, yes? There's only the exhibition left."

They still had to wait a few more minutes for their food. Yuuri let Chris pour him a glass of wine and tried to smile over it as they ate and watched the pairs. (Yuuri was very, very glad that he didn't have a partner he had to skate with. He would have let them down so much last season. And a meltdown with falls hurt, but at least he wasn't risking anyone else getting hurt because of him, too.)

He wasn't distracting Chris from his comeback, was he? Chris was clearly still planning on it if he was talking about Nationals, but... he'd barely started practicing his programs, and yet here he was supporting Yuuri in Russia, and probably he'd want to come with him to the final, too. His mental practice methods couldn't be that effective. He'd disappeared for a few hours here and there to hit the gym – maybe he was hitting up local freestyle sessions, too, Yuuri didn't know – but was that going to be enough?

He liked Chris. He didn't deserve to lose out on the last season or two of his career helping Yuuri finally achieve his dreams.

The line of thought niggled at him throughout the evening even as they ate their food (delicious) and drank more of the wine (passable) and ooh and ahhed over the ice dancers (amazing skating skills, less terrifying lifts than pairs – if he'd had to skate with someone else, he might have gone for that). The next day he was too busy to think much about Chris for most of the day, as they ran through their gala programs and then got ready to perform for real.

Yuuri had picked one of the game music pieces in the end, one that was powerful and striking but not so epic it would swallow him whole. He'd done the initial choreography by himself, just playing around, and then Nicolas had helped him with it the weekend before they left for China. It was pure fun to skate to, and the music still conjured up the memories of staying up late to play just one more battle before guiltily slinking off to bed a few hours before he had to be at the rink.

The group numbers at the end of exhibitions were always silly. Yuuri was clapping along with everyone else as the pairs showed off, when a touch on his elbow made him jump out of his skin. Victor had suddenly appeared next to him. Victor was touching his elbow and trying to get his attention. Victor was smiling brighter than the lights above. At Yuuri. He was talking to Yuuri.

"Let's do our flips!"

Yuuri could barely hear him over the music. And oh how he wanted to accept the offer, but could he land it? How much of an idiot would he feel if—

Victor must have seen the moment of hesitation, because he wrapped his hand around Yuuri's wrist. "Axel-loop!" he said, tugging him out as the pairs started to break apart and return to the main group.

"Okay!" That he could definitely do.

Their timing might have been a little off, but the jumps went perfectly – triple axel, triple loop, and Yuuri couldn't help but laugh as he caught back up to Victor and they left room for more skaters to pull stunts. This was amazing. This was so close to perfect. If only he'd won higher than bronze, or maybe if Chris was here to pull them into something ridiculous, it would have been, but it was still great.

He even got to stand next to Victor as they took their final bows – JJ tried to get in next to him, but Victor pointedly turned and linked hands with Yuuri and Emil before he reached them, so JJ had to settle for lining up on Yuuri's other side instead. The crowd was neither as thick nor as energetic as it had been at other points during the competition, but they still clapped plenty loud, and they seemed satisfied.

Chris was supposed to go with him to the banquet that night. When he didn't show up, Yuuri first fiddled with his tie, then with his phone. Chris didn't answer his text messages, either.

Yuuri gave him a minute, tugging on the sleeves of his suit. After China, Chris had taken him to buy a new one. His old one didn't fit well enough for Chris's demands, apparently. Yuuri hadn't been happy to spend that much money when he had a perfectly good suit, but Chris hadn't backed down even after a couple of arguments.

This suit did look better, even to his unfashionable eyes. Yuuri couldn't have said what the difference was. Maybe it cut closer to his waist, or settled properly on his shoulders. Chris had seemed very pleased to see Yuuri wear it for the first time, and Yuuri had been aware of how Chris's eyes had slipped down past Yuuri's waist as he complimented the fit.

There was still no answer.

Yuuri slipped out into the hallway and down a few doors to Chris's room. He knocked, conscious of how loud the noise was in the hallway, conscious of the ice dance couple that smiled at him on their way to the elevators. Chris didn't answer that, either.

He dug out his wallet. They'd traded their spare key cards at Chris's suggestion as a just-in-case measure. It worked; the door unlocked.

It wasn't too surprising to see Chris in the room, blinking at him from the couch; it was more startling to see Victor sitting next to him, not looking towards the door. "Sorry, I didn't hear you knock," said Chris, starting to rise.

Yuuri waved one hand at him through the cracked door. They seemed like they'd been talking; the atmosphere in the room was heavy. Victor was still looking away from him, gazing toward the window. "No, sorry – it's fine, I'll just go ahead. Sorry."

He ducked out again, before Chris could protest or anything, feeling hot in his cheeks, wondering what he had just stepped into. He went and found Josef instead, who hadn't left yet, either.

Chris texted him back, finally, while they waited for the elevator. We might be a while.

Sorry if I interrupted something. It seemed important. I didn't mean to intrude.

It's okay. It wasn't much of an interruption. We were talking in French, so you wouldn't have heard any secrets either way :) Have fun, we'll join you soon.

It wasn't that much fun for the first few minutes, where he avoided the champagne table (he absolutely did not need a repeat of the last time he'd been at a banquet in Russia) and talked stiltedly to a few important people.

But then a couple of the Japanese women noticed him and came to say hello, and then Sara Crispino asked him to dance with her and Emil Nekola – her brother joined in, too, scowling the whole time for some reason.

Yuuri ducked out after a couple of songs and ran into Seung-gil, who was looking at his champagne like Yuuri had looked at his champagne in Sochi. Unlike Celestino, however, his coach had noticed, and a twinge of sympathy lead Yuuri to interrupt her tirade with a request to take a picture together and asking about Seung-gil's dog.

Chris and Victor did show up before too long. Victor almost seemed back to his previous cheer, but there was still something a little off about his expression. Whatever they had been talking about must have been serious.

He'd enjoyed dancing with Yuuri last time, hadn't he? And Yuuri wasn't drunk now, and maybe that medal had given him the right confidence boost, because he went over and asked Victor if he wanted to dance. Victor's face lit up, and he dragged him back out onto the dance floor with the other skaters.

"Chris said the two of you dance a lot," he said. Oh, had he? "Are you going to do another tango?"

Yuuri sent a pointed look toward the speakers, which were playing some Russian pop song that had been popular five years ago. He could still sing along with some of the lyrics, though he didn't understand most of the words. It was not in any way tango music.

So they did something else instead, Victor happily following Yuuri's lead. It was nice. It was more than nice. Yuuri had always enjoyed a good dance, and Victor did well at following him. And this time he would actually get to remember the way that Victor stumbled slightly on a change in direction, or how his smile really did look like a heart when a faster song came on and they picked up the pace.

Eventually, Yuuri needed something to drink, and either Victor did, too, or he sensed Yuuri's thirst. He went for the water, but only a moment later, Chris had appeared at his side, offering a glass of the champagne. "Want me to restrain you if you start drinking too many stars?" he asked.

"Please." He never wanted to experience that humiliation ever again. At least nobody but Chris or Victor had brought it up to his face, yet.

The bubbles did feel bright and fuzzy against his tongue, and he snagged another glass to drink while he and Chris stood and talked a little, and his legs took a rest from the dancing. When the music changed to a song he liked right around the point where he could just feel the alcohol, he grabbed Chris's hand. "Let's dance," he said.

Chris craned his neck in an exaggerated movement. "Don't see any poles, alas."

They didn't need a pole. They didn't need tango music, either. Yuuri pulled him in, and soon they were both laughing and spinning, the upbeat music filling Yuuri's ears. It lifted his mood, and so did the infectious grin Chris was giving him. He felt lightheaded as he tugged Chris further into the dance floor, like the room was swirling around him, although he wasn't that tipsy.

Dancing with Chris was familiar, after all the times they had done so in studios, in front of mirrors, or even occasionally in his living room when the right song came on. There were no mirrors to distract them here, no Mimi getting under their feet as she tried to join in the game she thought they were playing. Just the music, and Chris, finally taking his hand like Yuuri had imagined two days ago, even lacing their fingers together for a few songs.

Yuuri's face was very hot. He wasn't sure if it was all the activity and the warm room, or the way that Chris pressed close to him when the crowd grew thicker.

It seemed like hours later when the music faded and the crowd disbanded with it, though not without some grumbling. Yuuri hadn't noticed he was tired until they stopped dancing. Too much energy, adrenaline. It had been too much fun to care.

Chris put an arm around his waist to help lead him away. A quick check of their phones revealed that Josef had gone to bed ahead of them, and there wasn't much reason left to stay, with the other skaters dispersing. He couldn't see Victor, or his coach. JJ was still there, but Yuuri already knew that he was annoying from that summer he'd spent with Celestino before transferring away to a new coach. The Crispinos were arguing in a corner, with Emil trying to get in-between them. Nobody else he knew was still around. Time to leave.

Yuuri felt more sober by the time they reached their floor, and the heat of his body wasn't quite sufficient to keep the chill from his skin. The high from the dancing had worn off by then, too, and he asked to go with Chris when he entered his room. The thoughts from last night were suddenly bothering him again, now that he had time to think.

"Something wrong?" Chris asked. He sighed as he sat heavily on his bed and pushed each shoe off with the other foot. "I thought it was quite the nice day, myself."

"I really enjoyed dancing with you," said Yuuri. His hands itched for something to do, so he twisted them together. "That part was a lot of fun."

"Was there a part that wasn't?"

"Not exactly," Yuuri hedged. Nothing bad had happened. That was true. He'd come in on something like a whim, but he didn't know what to say about what was worrying him. What he had the right to say.

"Then...?"

"Are you coming to the final with me? Or staying in Switzerland to train?"

"I'm coming with you, of course," Chris said, like it was nothing, barely even glancing up from where he was shoving his shoes to the side. "Don't worry."

"I'm not," Yuuri said. "You should stay in Switzerland."

Chris did look at him then, smiling. "It's fine," he said. "I should do what I can to help you do well there, after you've worked so hard to reach it again."

Yuuri couldn't stand Chris's continued blitheness. "Are you taking your comeback seriously?" he blurted out. Chris's eyes went wide. "Not like – I mean – you shouldn't come with me to the final. Josef can take care of me and you need to get ready. And you've barely had a chance to start practicing, and you still can't jump quads, and... I know it was a bad injury and you won't talk seriously about any plans after Nationals even though they have to send you to Euros and Worlds if you can show up without falling over. Not that I'm your coach, but – I thought you were trying to return as soon as possible and you're not acting like it." He took a deep breath. Chris stared; he said, quietly, deflating, "That's all."

Chris was frowning, sharper than Yuuri had seen it before, and there was an angry tilt to his eyebrows. "You have a funny way of saying you're worried about me," he said. Yuuri didn't like the deliberateness in his tone; it sounded unnatural. "Of course I'm taking it seriously. Why wouldn't I be? Really, Yuuri, I'm insulted."

"You're here to cheer me on instead of working on your programs at home," Yuuri countered, trying to keep his voice from raising too much – the hotel didn't have the thickest of walls. "You're praising me for landing a quad flip, you act so proud when I do well – what good does it do for you to make me a better skater when we could be competing again in a couple of months and you're the one making a comeback with an injury? It doesn't make any sense. That's not how a competitor acts. You can be nice, but nobody tries to make their rivals better." His fingers twitched, looking for something to do, but he didn't know what to do with them that wouldn't look too defensive or angry.

Chris opened his mouth, and then he shut it with a click and pressed his hands to his face. Yuuri could practically hear him counting to ten. "Yuuri, can you please come sit here?" He sounded more natural, and more stressed. Yuuri tentatively sat next to him on the very edge of the bed.

It was very quiet. Yuuri could only hear the heater and the soft sound of Chris rubbing at his face with one hand. He wished he hadn't said anything, and then he wished he'd waited to get back home and tried to persuade Chris not to come with him before the final in a less obvious way.

Eventually, Chris said, "I know you've seen how much I enjoy skating again. You don't actually believe I'm not taking this seriously, are you?"

"Not really." Maybe that had been the wrong way to say it. "Sorry."

Chris took a breath and let his hands drop away from his face. "I'm not talking that much about what happens after Nationals because I'm trying to take it one step at a time. That's always how I approach skating. One GP, then the next, and only then the final. Trying to peak at the right time. It's weird this year, because of the injury, but because of it, I'm trying not to rush in. That's it, okay? If you're worried, you can ask."

"You don't like talking about it."

"No." He paused. "It's not fun or comfortable to talk about. I spent a lot of the summer being very frustrated by it – I mean it when I say that coaching you was a godsend as a distraction. I felt more useful trying to get you to spin better than doing the hours of exercises and worrying that my poor knee was going to fall apart. So don't feel like I'm being entirely selfless, either."

Yuuri nodded slowly. "And coaching me now?"

"It's fun, for one. Still motivating. And...." He let out a sigh. "Don't tell anyone this, please – I've spent so long going to competitions and only thinking of beating Victor when I was on the ice. Then going home and enjoying practice with my young rink mates who struggle with a triple axel at best and have no quads. JJ was the only one close to catching us at the last GPF, but he's young and not a consistent threat yet. But seeing you skate... it's not just Victor. There's you. And JJ is getting more consistent. For me, though, mostly there's you, practicing so hard every day you make the rest of us feel like slackers, landing your new quad. Watching of all you skate, I wondered if I even would have been on that podium."

"Of course you would have," Yuuri protested. Chris cracked a little bit of smile and finally, it felt like, looked at him again.

"You like being challenged and feel offended when you think people are giving up on you," he said. "So do I. That podium was my challenge, and seeing you all skate from the side gave me some perspective. Lucky me, I didn't have to wait until all the new young things started to overtake me to realize it. I might not have much time left to skate, but I want to stay on my game until I'm finished."

"Then you shouldn't come to the final," said Yuuri.

"Sorry, I thought I got to decide that?" Yuuri winced, but Chris just poked him in the shoulder. "If you're an adult who can make bad decisions if he wants to, then so am I. And I don't think going with you to the final is a bad decision. I'd be half-hearted if I took you to two GP events and then left you for the final."

"I wouldn't feel abandoned."

"But I would feel bad. If I was still too injured to compete and there wasn't any question about it, you'd want me to be there, wouldn't you?"

Having Chris around did help. The encouragement, the silent support when he was getting ready, the hugs. Even when it didn't work, it was nice that Chris was trying. And Yuuri liked his company. "Yes, but...."

"So I'll go with you. And then we'll see where I am after Nationals, and Josef can go with you to Japan – you're right, I shouldn't be flying off before Euros if I'll be in shape to compete there – and we can meet again on the ice at Worlds, I hope."

"We will."

"There's we go." He nudged into Yuuri's shoulder. "So no more trying to make decisions for each other, yes? No more worrying about my career. Believe me, Josef and my doctors and myself are working very hard, though I'm flattered."

"You deserve it," Yuuri said. "If it had been me, I might have quit. But you've always skated so well, and there's nobody else who skates like you."

Chris put on a real smile. "If it had been you, I wouldn't want you to retire, either. You work just as hard as the rest of us. I think you would deserve a chance to fight your way back. And come on, you would take it." Yuuri shrugged; Chris nudged him again, then harder, and harder, until they were leaning over at an absurd angle and Yuuri was suppressing laughter. "Yuuri," Chris whined, drawing the sound out, until Yuuri gave up.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Okay, I wouldn't have retired like that."

Thankfully, Chris let up. He stood and fetched the wine that they hadn't finished yesterday; it was red and on the sweet side, pleasant in Yuuri's mouth when he took a sip. He wasn't really even tipsy anymore, not after all the dancing they'd done. A glass or two wouldn't hurt.

Chris relaxed against the headboard with his own glass. "Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, now that we've gotten that argument out of the way? Or can we simply enjoy the wine?"

"Uh, yes. There was." He still wasn't sure that it was a good idea, but tonight had made him feel like he was dying of curiosity whenever he remembered: "The banquet last year. You never showed me the pictures."

"You never asked. I didn't think you wanted to see."

"I didn't."

"Ah," said Chris, and he dug around in his pocket before pulling out his phone. "I don't know if they're still on here or on my computer now. I might have had to clear them off. Ah... no, here they are."

Yuuri's hands were perfectly steady when he took the phone. There were a lot of pictures in the album.

The first one wasn't too bad. He didn't even look drunk, except that Yuuri wore that expression a lot less often when he was sober. He had all of his clothes on and everything. The other Yuri was there, short and blond and growling with all his teeth showing.

Some of the photos were slightly blurred. Yuuri imagined that Chris had been laughing when he took those ones. It wasn't hard to understand, given the contrast between his expressions and Yuri's.

Him dancing with Yuri was okay; actually, it looked like fun. The kid deserved to lose the dance-off, or whatever it had been, Chris filling him on a detail here or there as he leafed through the pictures. Yuuri had almost a decade of experience on him, and getting yelled at in a bathroom and being told to retire by someone who hadn't even gone to seniors yet seemed ridiculous in the aftermath. (Yuuri made a mental note to check their season's best scores before they went to Barcelona. He'd seen Yuri's programs, and he knew they were great, but he couldn't recall the scores.)

The ones of him and Victor were next, out of order. "Victor sent me the ones of us later, so they're in a different album," Chris said, peering over his shoulder.

Victor had a big smile on in the first few photos, and then he looked more contented. Thankfully, Yuuri was mostly dressed in these as he lead and dipped Victor. No wonder Victor had remembered this, wanted to dance together again. They looked like they were enjoying themselves, a lot. Yuuri wished he could remember; at least he had the memories from tonight.

Then he clicked over to the other album. The first picture was just of him, missing his trousers for reasons he couldn't even guess at. That wasn't as bad as it could have been, maybe, Yuuri tried to tell himself, until the next one had him showing off his flexibility. Then Chris appeared, less clothed, but somehow it looked natural on him.

He really had very good pole dancing skills, as Yuuri had been able to observe the past couple of months. They were shown off here as well. Excellent form and strength. Yuuri paused on a picture of him doing a move he didn't recognize, trying to figure out how he hadn't fallen on his head, then moved on.

Then they were dancing together. Yuuri lost his shirt, except for his tie (what?). Him dipping Chris. Him balancing on Chris with a dull look on his face, which turned into a silly grin in the next photo. Him with Chris laying on top of him in a pose that looked dangerous enough to perform sober, given how Chris was barely balanced with a foot hooked under Yuuri's shin.

He tried not to look at the cringing officials in the background, or the blurry forms of a couple of the women skaters eagerly taking pictures with bright smiles. At least someone thought it was good fun.

The drunk him seemed to think it was good fun, too. Yuuri scrolled back to the one of him dipping Chris and studied their expressions.

"You can see why I remembered it so well," Chris said, his voice raising at the end, almost making it a question.

They'd danced together so many times before, but not like this. Not with their bodies intertwined on the same pole, Chris trusting that a drunk Yuuri wouldn't drop him. (Granted, he had to have been drunk, too, if not to the same extent.) Not with so much contact between them, so much bare skin touching skin.

Yuuri stared at the photo some more, not sure if he could put a word to the feeling it inspired in him. Something warm, something that kept imagining what it must have felt like to hold Chris, to support him, wondering if he'd been sweating, what all of those muscles on display felt like, glad he hadn't dropped him.

"Yeah," he finally said. "The sexy tango suggestion makes a lot more sense if you know about this."

"I didn't want to see this Yuuri just once," Chris said, a careful lightness to his voice, and Yuuri's face heated in response. "I knew it had to be hiding in you somewhere, and then I had – well, I don't want to call it an opportunity," he said with a grimace, rubbing at his knee.

"I'm really glad you offered," Yuuri said quickly. "Even if it was because of an injury."

"You do seem to want me to come back."

"I've admired you and your skating for years," Yuuri said, shrugging. His face was still hot. He hoped it wasn't all red; maybe he could blame it on the alcohol, although it didn't make him flush as badly as it did with his dad.

"I'd still like to hear more about what part you admire," said Chris, his voice lowering to that teasing register. "You never told me which program was your favorite."

Okay, it was definitely not the alcohol making his cheeks burn; it was the way Chris was looking at him, his long eyelashes lowered, his body tilted towards Yuuri.

"I," he started to say, but his voice came out all squeaky. He coughed to clear it, had a sip of the wine, and tried again. "The short program from, I think it was, from the 2013 season. The techno one."

Chris's flirtatious attitude paused for a moment. "That one?"

"It was really different – not just for you, but you don't see a lot of people skating to that kind of electronic music, right? But you made it work well, and it was an interesting program that fit the music. Especially with how you did it at Euros. You just looked like you owned the ice, even though Victor had skated right before you, and the spins were amazing, and the quad lutz wasn't as big as the one in your free, but you made it look so easy. And the way your body moved when you skated. Everything about it was unique. I rewatched it a lot."

There had simply been something fascinating about his movements – smooth and graceful, hitting the loud beats of the music without seeming jerky. It didn't have as much of his usual overt sexiness, but it did have the vibe of someone dancing in a club, attracting the eyes of everyone there, inviting attention. He'd... sure caught Yuuri's.

"Yuuri," Chris said, a slow smile spreading across his face, "that might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me."

"It isn't."

"The nicest thing about my skating, perhaps."

"I'm sure your fans have said nicer."

"I'm trying to compliment you," he laughed. "But really, thank you."

His expression had softened to something fond. It was a very good look on him. Yuuri met his gaze and felt himself return the look.

They talked in quieter words, after that, while finishing the wine. At some point, he ended up with his head on Chris's shoulder, blinking sleepily at the other wall as they conversed, until Chris's words started to blur together and his brain couldn't keep up.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" His room seemed impossibly far away. And he didn't think he wanted to leave Chris quite yet. Not now. There was something between them that he didn't want to try and put a name on.

"Of course," Chris said, and there was a touch on his hair, combing the strands down. It felt nice, and then Chris tapped his glasses. Right. Yuuri reached up to take them off. "It's pretty late."

Yuuri stifled a yawn at the words and nodded against Chris's shoulder. Their flight wasn't until the afternoon, at least, so they could sleep it off.

He took the bed that Chris hadn't been sleeping in. At some point in the morning, he woke up, and just enough light sneaked in through the curtains that he could see Chris, snuggled under the covers in his own bed. Even without reaching for his glasses, Yuuri knew how he looked when he was relaxed in sleep, since he'd taken a few naps on the couch back in Switzerland. How the few fine lines on his face smoothed, his eyelashes resting against his cheek, his mouth slightly parted. He seemed to be sleeping well.

Yuuri looked for a few minutes, thinking vaguely of moving, before sleep took him over for a few more hours.

Chapter Text

"Hm," said Chris, less than a minute after they'd stepped through the door into his apartment. "No, no, this won't do at all. Can't believe I didn't think of it last time."

"Huh?"

But Chris had already disappeared, leaving his luggage behind. Yuuri blinked a couple of times, then bent to pick up Mimi, who was butting against his legs. She started to purr before he'd straightened up again. Her fur needed a lot of daily combing, but she was very soft, and it was nice to hold her after coming back from the airport.

Chris returned a couple minutes later with something small held in his hand. "It's not the most elegant solution, but we can come up with a better one later," he said. Yuuri watched, still confused, as he fiddled with his medal rack, attaching a small hook to the side of it. "There. Yuuri, where's your medal?"

"Oh, um, it's in the red one."

Chris dug his medal out for him and carefully slipped the strap of it over the new hook. His hands hovered for a moment as he let go, but it stayed in place. "You can put the silver on too, later," he said. "And I hope in a couple of weeks, we'll have another to add."

"I hope it's gold," said Yuuri, and they shared a smile.

He didn't just hope, of course. They both set hard to work again start the next day. Yuuri would have done quad flips for hours if Josef and his body would have let him, but he had to settle for doing as many as he could and scrutinizing video of himself.

Chris was allowed to do more difficult things, now, though still no quads, and he was working on his programs in earnest. When they had practice together, occasionally he would ask Yuuri his opinion on something. There was no problem when it was about his more lyrical short, but the free....

His more sexed-up programs had made Yuuri blush to see up close before, and the fact that Chris was in practice clothes didn't change that fact. It was still distracting, especially when Chris added more seductive flourishes, emphasizing more of his good parts. (Chris had a lot of very good parts.) Or the times when he came right up to him to blow his choreographed kiss.

Yuuri still wasn't immune after the first five times; rather, he thought the program was getting steadily more alluring as Chris got used to the movements.

At home, they usually didn't have much more energy in the evenings than was required to make dinner and sit around in the same room together, playing on their electronics or playing with Mimi, or maybe stretching and simply relaxing. It was comfortable, though. Chris didn't ignore him, and he also didn't fill the silences with endless chatter.

Yuuri found himself thinking one night, doing a stretch against the wall and looking at the medal rack, that this whole time, he'd had the vague goal of having one last good season and then retiring. He was old enough that nobody would question it. Surely nobody would miss him that much. He had a degree from a decent university, plenty of international experience, and he could speak two languages, not counting the little Russian he knew. There were real jobs out there that he could do, that would pay a lot more than skating did.

But with Chris's presence, his two medals from this season hanging there next to Chris's dozens, the things of his he could see sitting in the room just as easily as Chris's own belongings – he didn't want this to be over in a few months.

He eased out of the stretch and settled his back against the wall, letting out a long sigh. Chris looked up from his spot on the couch where he was petting Mimi. "Something wrong?"

"I want to skate next season," Yuuri told him.

Chris gave him a bemused smile. "I wasn't aware you were debating it," he said. "But I'm glad to hear that. It would be a shame if your comeback only lasted one season, and besides, someone has to be Japan's medal hope at the Olympics."

Yuuri was not going to think too hard about the Olympics yet. "I can keep staying here, right?"

Chris's smile slipped away, then came back. "I don't recall setting a time limit on that," he said. He lifted his spare hand, the one not rubbing Mimi's neck, and held it out; Yuuri came over and took it, letting Chris pull him down to the couch and sling an arm around him. "I think we've been getting along pretty well, haven't we?"

"You're a good roommate." Maybe even a better one than Phichit, if only because Phichit, while kind and eager to learn, had been young and spoiled by his family. "And it's really nice here." Yuuri still couldn't pronounce the name of anything properly, but the town was lovely, if small, and the view from the windows was good to look at when they were having tea or coffee in the mornings.

Yuuri liked it. The paths he took on his runs, the dance studio, the rink with all the other facilities, the shops Chris took him to. The apartment. The company.

Chris squeezed him. Yuuri tucked his head closer to Chris, taking in the scent of his cologne. Something earthy and spicy in a way he couldn't quite place. He reached over Chris's lap, and their fingers brushed as they pet Mimi together.

A few days before they were meant to leave for the GPF, they stopped to pick up groceries on the way back from dance practice. It was well past dark by the time they stepped out on the street again, but Champéry was pretty at night, too, and while it was cold, there was no reason to hurry home.

Not until the snow started to fall when they were halfway back, going from a few drifting flakes to a thick falling cloud in the space of a couple minutes. The wind picked up at the same time, and their pleasant nighttime shopping trip turned into something much chillier. They picked up their pace by mutual silent agreement.

Yuuri could barely see by the time they got back and the wind chased them inside, the snowflakes having turned to water on his glasses. Chris was rubbing at his eyes, too, and laughing about the snow. "It'll be worth it when it's all pretty in the morning."

"Maybe if it had started after we were home." Yuuri's coat was soaked, and his numb fingers struggled with the first couple of toggles.

"Here, let me." Chris helped him out of it and threw it over one of the coat pegs, unwound his scarf for him while Yuuri dried his glasses – then there were freezing-cold fingers on his waist, under his shirt.

"Chris!" Yuuri shrieked, trying to wriggle away, but Chris followed him, laughing again. "Cold! Cold! Chris, come on!"

"Aren't you going to help warm them up?" Chris teased, backing him into the wall as Yuuri tried again to get away from his glacial touch. The fingers only crept further up his torso, spreading the chill they gave off.

Yuuri gave up on escape and pulled at his wrists instead. He squirmed as Chris's touch moved a little too high. "Geez! Don't you at least have to kiss someone before touching them like that?"

Chris burst into laughter and, thankfully, removed his hands in favor of leaning into Yuuri instead as his sides shook. Yuuri smiled at him, feeling silly, and waited for him to catch his breath; the rest of Chris was not so cold, so it was okay for him to keep standing that close.

Chris put their foreheads together as he took a few last deep breaths. "Does that mean if I kiss you, you'll help warm me up?"

"No," said Yuuri, which made Chris grin wider. "That's what hot drinks and blankets are for." And dinner; the rice cooker started to chime in the kitchen, playing a cheerful short tune to let them know it was finished.

"Oh, that's too bad."

Chris still smelled faintly of that earthy-spicy scent, and cold like the snow, and still a little bit like the sweat they'd washed off earlier after a long day of work. Yuuri studied his face as best as he could, given that he was so close that Yuuri's eyes were crossing.

Even Yuuri could tell this was the perfect opportunity, but while Chris didn't move away, the smile slowly relaxing off his face, he didn't go ahead and kiss him, either. Not until Yuuri reached up and touched him, curling his fingers around Chris's jaw, brushing his cheeks with his thumbs.

Their mouths met. Chris's lips were cold, but not too much, not unpleasant, and they warmed as they held the kiss for long moments.

Chris eased away from it, though he didn't go very far. "I wasn't sure if you were still joking," he said.

Yuuri shrugged. It had been a joke, but that didn't mean it couldn't be serious, too. He moved his hands into Chris's hair and pulled him back those last few centimeters for another kiss.

Yes. This was what he wanted. What he'd been wanting, since... he wasn't sure. Yuuri tilted his head into the kiss and dug his fingers harder into Chris's curls, which were damp from the snow. Not as soft as Mimi's fur, but he liked how they moved when he touched them.

They broke apart for a moment simply to breathe, then kissed again, and again. Yuuri had kissed people before, but not for a while, and he'd forgotten the way it made his lips tingle, put a sensation like electricity in his cheeks, down his back. He opened his mouth when Chris did, and the electric feeling tingled harder when Chris's tongue pushed slowly into his mouth and met his own.

(The scrape of Chris's stubble wasn't pleasant, but he could put up with it for the kisses. Wow, Chris was an amazing kisser. Of course he was. Yuuri was very glad to experience it.)

Fingers up his shirt or not, they were both quite a bit warmer when they took another breather. Yuuri's stomach was doing flips, in a good way.

"Not to ruin the atmosphere," Chris murmured, "but I feel it's always good to communicate with people, so just to make sure we're on the same page—"

"I like you," Yuuri interrupted. "A lot."

"I like you a lot, too." Chris kissed his cheek, then his temple. "I know I have, ah, a reputation, but I am being serious."

Yuuri frowned and loped his arms around Chris's neck. "I know. You can be serious. I've seen it. You said I have a reputation about not being approachable, but you're kissing me right now."

"Just making sure. Like I said, it's good to know where we both stand." He nuzzled his nose against Yuuri's cheek and kissed him again.

Not everyone would have gotten to slide a hand all the way down Yuuri's back and grope his ass during their first kisses, but it was Chris. Yuuri didn't mind. From him, it was probably a compliment.

Yuuri wasn't entirely sure how to act when they finally agreed that they should stop and go make dinner. Should they be holding hands, or something? Should they be sneaking kisses as they passed each other pans and food? Was it enough that looking at Chris kept making him flush and smile, and that Chris kept smiling back for no other reason?

They did sit closer together as they ate dinner and as they wound down until bedtime. Chris kissed him again for a good-night, and said, "You're always welcome in my bedroom, when you want to be there."

"Okay," said Yuuri, and then he went to his own room and laid under the covers, staring at the dark ceiling with his hands pressed to his face.

His heart wouldn't stop skipping. So he and Chris were dating now, or he was pretty sure they were, and it was on the one hand a natural extension of everything that had happened so far – the tangos, the pole dances, the time they had spent stretching together, moving in to his apartment with his cat and his kitchen and going to his rink, the touches, the flirting that Yuuri hadn't minded. On the other hand: they were dating now.

Part of him wanted to keep it a secret and not tell anyone, but another part wanted to text Phichit, or Yuuko, or to log in to his rarely-used social media and post a giant announcement next to all his sponsorship posts. Christophe Giacometti is mine now, although he wouldn't really say it like that.

The next morning, he came into the kitchen to find Chris leaning against the counter, playing with his phone while coffee brewed. "Good morning," Chris said, looking up, his voice warmer than usual.

"Good morning." Then he leaned up a little on his toes and kissed him good-morning. Immediately after, he pressed his face into Chris's shoulder. It wasn't that he was embarrassed, but... he'd been up a while thinking about him. About them.

Chris chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you want some of it?"

"Yes, please," he muttered into Chris's shirt. He raised his arms to hug him; Chris hugged him back. They stood like that for a few minutes, quiet, until the coffee was finished. It was nice, to hold someone and be held and not think for a bit.

Despite his lack of sleep, Yuuri was feeling more awake by the time they made it to the rink. They weren't holding hands or anything, but there was definitely something different about the air as they skated. And this time, when Chris practiced his free skate and blew him a kiss, Yuuri pretended to catch it. Chris almost seemed to be laughing as he skated back out, and Josef was shaking his head with a grin at their antics when Yuuri glanced over.

Rostelecom seemed to have been something of a breakthrough, because with the GPF looming on the horizon, Yuuri was landing his quad flip more consistently. He and Josef had re-done his layouts for more difficulty, too, adding the flip as a fourth quad to his free skate. Yuuri was pulling it off cleanly enough in practice that he could definitely medal with it, as long as he kept his head in order.

"I think we might have just upgraded your short program with the power of love," Chris joked after the next ice session where Yuuri had practiced it.

"I thought the point of the program was to seduce you."

"Weeeeell.... I wouldn't say it had nothing to do with it...." Yuuri gently kicked him with one guard-covered skate. "You are a very good dancer, Yuuri. And you have one of the best asses in the business." Yuuri kicked him again, less gently.

Chris kissed him in apology when the locker room was empty.

It was both terrifying and fascinating to finally understand how, exactly, he liked Chris, and to put it into practice. Yuri found himself kissing Chris in a half-dozen different ways – when they had just gotten back and his lips were cold, when he was sitting down and Yuuri had the height advantage, softer ones while tucked into his side with Mimi purring on their laps.

All of them were a little different, though his favorites were the electrifying ones they had while making out – Chris's hand in his hair, on his waist, the warmth of Chris's body through his clothes, how it felt to grip the muscle of both shoulders, the way Chris wriggled when Yuuri tried putting his own fingers up Chris's shirt.

They had a really nice one the night before they left, long and heated, Yuuri slowly pushing Chris down against the couch. He was disappointed when Chris eventually pulled away, citing the hour and their trip tomorrow, though maybe there was also some relief for his rapidly beating heart.

It was the shortest flight they'd had so far, barely more than an hour. That was good for them, not having to adjust to the time halfway around the world again. Yuuri played a game on his phone for a while. When he got bored, he put it away, then slowly slipped his hand into Chris's seat and picked up his free hand. Chris glanced away from his book, crooked up the corner of his mouth, and turned his palm over to lace their fingers together.

Chapter Text

Dressed only in a small swimsuit, sandals, and a bath robe, Chris dragged him along to the rooftop pool despite the cold temperatures. Yuuri brought his jacket. Staring at the city lights sparkling out in the night, he didn't notice Chris doing a double take until he almost bumped into him. "Hi," called Victor, already swimming, or rather, floating at the side of the pool.

"Victor! Of course only a Russian would be the other one crazy enough to go swimming in this weather."

"It's Barcelona," said Victor. "I thought it would be warmer even in December." There was a hint of mournfulness to his voice.

"I suppose it probably is compared to St. Petersburg. Too bad. I was going to entertain Yuuri by going skinny-dipping."

"You were what?" In public? Was he crazy?

Chris laughed, the sound deep. Yuuri could see Victor hiding a smile in the curve of his arm, and then his eyes drifted from Chris to their hands, which were still interlocked, and stayed there for a long few moments. Yuuri wondered if he knew. He thought that there were some places where adult friends might hold hands like this, but he didn't think Russia was one of them.

"There's nothing stopping you," Victor said, once his eyes had moved back to Chris's face. "I won't mind."

"I don't think I could subject poor Yuuri to that. His heart's not ready for it yet," Chris said. He set down the champagne he'd brought and started to shrug off the robe he was wearing. Yuuri felt quite warm in his much more covering clothes, and he felt no desire to change that fact, but he did take Chris's robe and fold it for him.

Chris and Victor splashed at each other for a few minutes, while Yuuri watched. It was still a little strange to see Victor like this, goofing off with his friend, extremities turning pink in the chill. Chris was right, though – he really was human. He coughed when he inhaled some water, and his wet hair fell in his eyes a couple of times.

"With you out, there's nobody else here near my age," Victor complained when they took a break, rejoining Yuuri near the side of the pool. "I'm so old, Chris. Soon you and everyone else are going to have to bury me."

"You're not old," Yuuri said. Well, he was in skater terms. But he didn't seem any older than he had five years ago. All those skincare company sponsorships, maybe, or perhaps he was just blessed with good genes. He'd won whatever lottery there had to be when it came to skating talent, what was one more? "Actually, if you're still skating so well at twenty-seven, that just means you're really healthy. Like Georgi." Even if he hadn't made the GPF this or last season, or the last Worlds podium, he was still a very good skater, and last year he'd still earned his way to Euros and Worlds alongside Victor, above the rest of the Russian field.

Victor chuckled. "Or lucky. But it's Yakov you have to thank for that. All of that yelling at us."

"I bet the Swiss federation is begging him for his secrets so they can keep me going for another few years, until one of our juniors shows enough talent to replace me," Chris said.

"Maybe he would sell it for your spinning secrets. Or, no, for some of the chocolate and a month a year in a beautiful, remote cabin far away from us. We'd miss him so much by the time he came back!" He sighed. "Really, there is no secret to it. Just paying attention to all that injury-prevention stuff and making us follow it as much as he can. Yakov is a good coach," he said, tipping his head back. Chris patted him on the shoulder; Yuuri had the feeling he was missing something. Maybe something from that conversation they'd had in Russia that Yuuri had accidentally stumbled on, or an older connection. He suddenly felt like the third wheel, which was odd, considering.

The feeling passed in a moment, when Victor sneezed. Chris gently shoved him, and Victor shoved back, and then they were asking Yuuri to take silly photos for them. He duly clicked dozens of shots on Chris's phone, of them playing in the water, or posing at the poolside, or clinking their glasses of champagne together. Chris invited him into a few, pushing him into the middle between them. Yuuri wasn't as good with the selfie camera as Phichit was; Victor took the phone from him and Yuuri made a v with each hand as Victor re-framed the shot.

The two of them eventually got too cold to stick around any longer, and Yuuri had to endure whining from both of them as they returned to Chris's room, where they dried off and he made coffee. He could practically hear the remains of whatever pedestal he'd imagined Victor on crumbling. At least Victor was duly grateful when Yuuri passed them both steaming cups to warm their hands on.

Yuuri eventually excused himself to go to bed when it was clear that he had nothing to contribute to the current topic of conversation. Instead of sleeping, though, he snuggled under his blankets and scrolled though InstantPhoto. Chris and Victor had already uploaded the pictures they'd taken half an hour ago. Phichit seemed to be on a tour of all the nice photogenic tourism spots, and Yuuri lingered over a couple of them. He looked like he was doing well.

Yuri Plisetsky had posted a very stilted message that sounded like his coach had written it for him, and then there were photos of him scowling while surrounded by girls near his age who looked like they were dying of joy. Must have done a fan meet, then. He definitely didn't look like he had enjoyed it.

JJ had announced his engagement to his girlfriend. Wasn't he kind of young for that? He was younger than Yuuri by several years. Nobody he'd known near JJ's age in America had been married yet, and he doubted Canada was much different.

Maybe he was just that confident of how much he loved his girlfriend. JJ always acted sure of himself, and the two people in the picture were brimming with confidence as they showed off their matching engagement rings. Yuuri stared at the photo for a long while before scrolling down.

"I hope we didn't freeze you out," Chris said the next morning at breakfast.

Yuuri, poking at his eggs, shook his head. "No, it's fine. You don't get to see each other very often. We live together."

"That's true," he said, and his hand found Yuuri's under the table in order to squeeze it.

The practices were tense; as with last year, the air of the final was a bit different as they all warmed up. Even Phichit didn't have his usual cheer, while Yakov Feltsman looked sterner than ever as he herded both of his students around. Yuri didn't seem to have grown that much since last year, still tinier than all of them, thin as a rail. Or lithe. He was graceful enough for lithe, and flexible enough for it, too.

Josef had debated with him about whether they should add the flip to his short program. Yuuri had pushed for it, and in the end, Josef had said again that it was up to him. "You seem more motivated when you're challenging yourself," he had observed. "We just have to make sure you can hold it together if it doesn't work out. One mistake is only one mistake." They'd tried to work on that, too, though competition and practice were two completely different things.

He kept falling on it during practice, even during his run-through of his short program. Yuuri tried not to take it as a sign, and finished the run-through like it hadn't happened. Josef told him it wasn't bad.

Chris put his hands on Yuuri's arms and leaned in over the boards to give him some suggestions. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but even the simple contact held a new meaning now. One that was distracting him from Chris's words, since part of him wanted to melt against Chris.

No. He had to concentrate. He was here to win, like everyone else, not here on a honeymoon. He forced that part of his brain to shut up for a few minutes. They could go sightseeing later, and his heart could go all mushy then if it wanted to.

Yuuri drew lucky number one for the short program order. Again. "At least you won't have to keep warm," said Josef, when he saw Yuuri staring at his number.

"Yuuri hates going first," Chris informed him.

"Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something," Yuuri said, putting his face in his hands. Chris reached over to pat his back.

"If it's trying to tell you anything, it's that you're number one," he said, and he cracked a smile at his own bad joke when Yuuri looked at him. "At least you can get it over with quickly?"

Yuuri just sighed and settled into his seat, waiting for the draw to end.

When they were free, he and Chris did go out to see some of the city. Pretty buildings, historical churches, a nice restaurant for dinner where they sat close together and didn't talk about the competition. It was a good distraction.

The next day, Chris pulled him aside right before they were all about to go on. "For luck," he said, and kissed him. Yuuri's knees buckled a little. He felt ridiculous, but Chris was really good at kissing and this new aspect to their relationship was really, really nice. "I wasn't sure if you wanted me to do it in front of everyone. You were kind of giving mixed signals the other day with Victor. Are we keeping it a little quiet for now?"

"It's really new," said Yuuri. And he hadn't grown up seeing a lot of public affection – he'd only seen his parents kissing once or twice when they were both drunk – but Chris was from somewhere where that was normal, and they were in Europe right now, and he didn't know yet what he might be comfortable with.

"That's true. You want me all for yourself, hm? Probably don't want the journalists all over you about it, either."

"I didn't even think about that. It would give them something new to write about – usually all the fluff material is about what game I'm playing or how hard I'm working or clips of me doing ballet."

Chris huffed against his temple and pressed his lips there one last time. "Okay, let's get going."

Everyone had their game faces on. Yuuri put his on, too; murder face, he heard Chris calling it again, and the urge to smile a little almost ruined the effect.

When the warm-up was over, everyone else crowded to the exit of the rink, while Yuuri did one last lap and headed back to Josef and Chris for a sip of water and a tissue. Josef was giving him more last-minute encouragement than normal. Maybe he was worried that Yuuri hated going first that much?

He felt oddly okay, despite how high the stakes were. It was one thing to get GP assignments, and another to actually make the final with people like Victor and JJ, and for the second time, too. And the person his program was meant for was right here, waiting for Yuuri to draw him in again. Yuuri crushed down the flutter of his nerves and told himself that he belonged here.

Yuuri had been thinking about something for a whole minute now, and he let himself do it without thinking much more: he pushed his forehead against Chris's, resting his hands on Chris's cheeks, and leaned in so close that their mouths were almost brushing. It wasn't actually a kiss, but it was close. Good enough to get his intentions across, and it felt like they were breathing the same air for a moment.

"Keep your eyes on me," he murmured.

"Wouldn't dream of doing otherwise," Chris murmured back. As he skated off, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Chris reaching up to touch his cheek. Josef was giving him a side look and smiling.

The roar of the crowd faded as Yuuri circled in on his starting spot. That had been embarrassing, but he'd liked it, too, the brief moment of control, making a statement.

When the music started, he didn't have to think about his movements at all. He twisted around, starting to generate momentum, catching eyes – he looked in Chris's direction, and though he was blurry, he was there, and he would know exactly who Yuuri had in mind as he tilted his head and shifted his weight, stretching his limbs to show them off, before he started in on the step sequence proper.

That went perfectly, like he was simply dancing as he concentrated on doing every step properly and at the right tempo. The transition into his first spin was smooth, too, though he didn't quite get the first few revolutions under control, making his blade jitter across the ice a few centimeters.

He forced himself to get it right, and there, now he was centered again. Everything had to happen perfectly here. He couldn't beat Victor with anything less than that.

Besides – hadn't Chris put in all that time with him, working on spins? Just last week, they'd spent the end of their time on the ice doing them side by side for fun. Chris's were still better, but he would want to see Yuuri doing them properly.

So Yuuri pushed himself on the next one, and who knew if it was actually sexy by any normal standard, any standard that wasn't Chris, but he sure felt like it as he pushed at his hair coming out of the turns. He let the touch linger, didn't rush to pull his hand away. Chris didn't rush when he showed himself off, and that was what he was meant to do here. Yuuri still didn't see much when he looked at his reflection, but Chris liked him, liked how he looked, liked the shape of his body, and Yuuri slid a hand down his hip and thought about how Chris would have touched it.

Now the spread eagle on a long note, now his triple axel, familiar and there for him. It wasn't easy, in reality, but he knew it looked it, the same way that Minako could still do sequences that would have left Yuuri breathless like it was nothing. Or how Chris could climb a pole and seemingly forget gravity and friction.

Yuuri wondered if Chris was the type to jump along with a student, like some coaches were, if he was nervously bobbing along as Yuuri set up his combination. Or, heck, everyone joked about Chris getting turned on by skating; maybe Yuuri was seducing him for real. He kind of wanted to ask later, but there was no more time to wonder – there, he'd gotten the salchow down well enough to add the second jump, and it was hard but he did it.

More steps across the ice, almost done, sliding his hands against his body, feeling the texture of his costume. It wasn't one of Chris's blatant invitations, but it didn't have to be. Chris knew what he meant loud and clear.

There was just one more jump, his quad flip. Yuuri was sure that he could do it; he looked at the audience as he passed them on the way to the other side of the rink. He couldn't take in much, but he knew he had their attention.

Yuuri turned again, ready for the jump. But he forced the flip a little too much, lost his balance on the landing, couldn't save it this time, a hand down on the ice – damn, he'd wanted to skate this cleanly. Yuuri tried to push the frustration back for the last moments of the program. He wasn't sure if he was successful in not showing it – the emotion hit him hard as he took his last pose.

When it was over, he didn't want to spend a lot of time on his bows and had to count as he held each one, trying to look more confident than he was. He hurried to the exit, waving at Phichit as he got on but on the inside, beating himself up about the flip – maybe he should have listened to Josef and left the program layout as it was, though he couldn't beat Victor with the old one. He wasn't going to beat Victor with that performance, either—

"Come here," Chris said, his voice breathy, and he hugged Yuuri close. "There we go! That's what that program is meant to look like."

"I messed up the flip."

"You'll have it soon enough. The important thing is that it didn't detract from the program. It was only a hand down!"

If he said so.

Chris didn't let go of him while they sat in the kiss-and-cry. Yuuri kind of wished he'd thought to pick up one of the plushies so he could hug it or distract himself with it. Josef had brought his glasses, and he took a long minute to polish them with his jacket in order to have something to do.

Despite the disappointing end to his skate, however, the judges apparently agreed with Chris – another new personal record for Yuuri, even with the mistake. He took a deep breath. Next time he could do better. He just... had to do all of that and also land the flip properly. Next time. He didn't have time to worry about that yet. The score was up, and it was done.

Thanks to a quick interview backstage – Morooka was far more excited than Yuuri was at the moment – he missed Phichit's performance. He and Chris managed to make that of Yuri Plisetsky, however.

It wasn't hard to tell that Victor had choreographed it for him, but it wasn't exactly like any of Victor's programs. Yuri put a kind of gritted-teeth determination into it despite the soft, lovely music, and his jumps were wild and high and all landed, and with his quads in the back half of his program, too, despite his skinny appearance.

He had a lot to work on, but for his age? He was amazing. Yuuri hadn't been landing quads at fifteen. He'd been less flaily, with all those years of ballet lessons, but he hadn't had the jumps. This kid was going to be a huge threat in a couple of years – he was shaping up to be one already.

His other coach whisked him off afterward so Yakov could stand there for Victor. Even Victor glanced up curiously when the score was announced, though his expression didn't change much. Close to Yuuri's, but behind it. Yuuri slowly let out a breath. He saw Phichit's score when it flashed on the screens; it seemed kind of low given how he'd done earlier in the season, even with his lower technical difficulty. Hopefully he'd at least gotten good PCS.

Victor was going to go ahead of him, of course. And he did it in his usual spectacular fashion, too. That was the thing about Victor – watching him was like being transported to somewhere else for a few minutes at a time. Everything about him was amazing. He wasn't just a jumper, or just a performer, and he brought a maturity that young Yuri lacked, that simple comfort and trust in his blades, skating skills developed over more than two decades of his life.

Watching him skate was a pleasure, and Yuuri happily clapped at the end, joining in the roaring crowd.

"Hm," Chris went. Yuuri turned to him, wondering if he had missed something, but he gave a little shake of his head.

Even knowing it would happen, something sank in Yuuri's heart when he saw Victor's score take first, his name now in second. It wasn't that big of a point difference, and everything would depend on the free, but Victor had the advantage there, too.

Two skaters left. Yuuri didn't really know Otabek – he hadn't watched much of Worlds last year, not even the bronze medalist, and it seemed like he'd kind of come out of nowhere there. His music was interesting and different, and there was a unique style in his program, though he skated it with a completely unexpressive face. He still got a personal best, too, coming in above Phichit.

Last was JJ, who was the only one to receive anywhere near the huge welcome that Victor had gotten. The arena was suddenly blanketed in Canadian flags.

JJ looked as confident as Victor had. Maybe even more so. The music only reinforced the impression, and JJ glided across the ice like he was alone and unconcerned. He seemed ready to take third, or even second over Yuuri, until he popped his first jump into a single. Things didn't improve from there.

It wasn't hard to tell what was happening – the same thing that had happened to Yuuri last year, crumbling under pressure, the best and brightest of a nation struggling to keep up with the expectations heaped on him. Yuuri reached over for Chris's hand and started to strangle it as they watched JJ trying to keep the program going. To his credit, he fought for it, to the very last moment.

The arena was silent in the first seconds after his score was announced. The look on his face suggested he wasn't used to the number he had just received; Chris, on the other hand, muttered, "Unbelievable," quiet enough that only Yuuri could possibly have heard. Yuuri was trying to figure out how he'd gotten that score, too. He hadn't fallen, but... well, either way, that left himself in second place.

Second. Yuuri held Chris's hand tighter.

Later, after all the PR was out of the way and they'd eaten, they sorted through the gifts from the day in Yuuri's hotel room. Flowers and flowers, all kinds of plushies in the form of Japanese food, poodles – one plushie in particular stood out for being a surprisingly detailed bowl of katsudon. Who on Earth made katsudon plushies?

There was a note attached to it with a loop of string. "What's it say?" Chris asked when he turned it over to read it.

"It's from Minako-sensei and my sister. Telling me to fight hard."

"Aw, that's sweet."

They poked through the rest, commenting on the cuter or weirder gifts, and at Chris's suggestion, arranged them all nicely on one bed to take a photo. The katsudon took a place of honor near the front; he was definitely keeping that one. Chris uploaded it for him, along with a thanks to all the fans.

"With this mess on your bed, do you want to come sleep in my room?" he asked.

Yuuri glanced at the other bed, which was perfectly free.

"We can just sleep, if you'd like."

"Okay," said Yuuri.

Chris meant it. His bed was very warm, and Yuuri snuggled closer when Chris reached out for him. Very warm. They stared at each other for a moment, before letting out some light laughter at the same time.

One of Chris's hands kept rubbing up and down his back. It was nice. It couldn't distract him from all of his thoughts, though. The free program, the points his elements would be worth versus Victor's, versus JJ's, versus Yuri's. JJ might rally in the free. Yuri had been having a great season so far for a new senior. The short hadn't placed the top three that far apart from each other, and anything could happen with a fall or two.

He had to do well. He had to perform at his utmost for a solid chance at a medal. For himself, for Japan, for everyone watching at home, for Chris and Josef—

"You think a lot," Chris murmured, poking him in the nose. Yuuri blinked at him. "It's not a bad thing, until it gets in the way."

"Don't you think about everything before a competition?"

"I used to. Learned to turn it off at some point. Usually I watch something, listen to music, that sort of thing. Let everything that happens happen so I'm relaxed the next day, so to say. If that doesn't work for you, maybe I need to help." He gave him a teasing look, and the hand on Yuuri's back ventured lower – slowly enough that Yuuri could have pulled away if he cared more about sleeping.

He didn't. "You never told me what you really think about my program."

Chris's eyes closed, and he pulled Yuuri closer. "God, Yuuri. We really have made you into a monster. I wanted to dip you down and kiss you when you came off the ice, never mind all the people and professionalism."

"You're not kissing me now."

A second later, Chris was.

Chapter Text

"How are you feeling?" asked Josef when they had lunch before the free program.

"Okay." He'd landed the flip a couple of times in practice, so objectively, he should have felt prepared. He'd been distracted by his thoughts most of the day, though.

"Not too nervous?"

Yuuri shrugged and picked through his food with his fork. He knew he had to eat it, but he didn't feel particularly hungry.

"Not overthinking things, are you?" Chris asked, touching his knee with his own.

"No." He took a bite; it didn't stimulate his appetite, but it was tasty. "Could we talk about something else?"

Chris and Josef shared a look and then obliged him by switching to other topics.

Yuuri was still stuck on the fact that Chris was here, when he should have been working on himself. It made more sense now that they were together, but Chris had made that decision before they'd kissed – although he must have already grown fond of Yuuri by then. He'd certainly been flirting. He'd been flirting since the summer. Yuuri wondered how serious it had been the whole time, if it had started out as Chris being Chris, open to something happening or not, and when it had become... this. Even though Yuuri was plain and kind of selfish and not the most extroverted person.

(Chris had chosen him, though. Chris, who could have had anyone. The thought still made Yuuri's heart flutter.)

But even if Chris was making a stupid decision to come with him instead of training, Yuuri couldn't give him back that time to get ready for Nationals and Euros, so he had to make it up to him some other way. Make all of their time together, the effort Chris had put into training him worth it. There was only one way he could think of to do that.

He'd been motivated by Victor so many times. When he knew he had to push himself, when he was feeling down about how a competition had gone, when he'd had an off practice – reminding himself of Victor's level and how he wanted so badly to be there had helped. Videos of Victor had helped him pick himself up time and again.

Maybe he could do the same for Chris? Not just in practice, but for real?

All he had to do was nail his free skate. If he medaled, it would prove to everyone that Chris had done good work, that Yuuri's shift in training base had been the right thing to do, that he'd truly earned that title of 'Japan's Ace'.

'All he had to do', like it was that easy. He couldn't let his nerves get the better of him. Not now. Not this time. If he skated well, he would medal. He could get second place, maybe even....

Yuuri stuffed the next bite of food into his mouth. Chris looked relieved to see him eating with more enthusiasm.

At the arena, Yuuri would be the fifth to go. He felt compelled to watch the rest of the skaters, starting with JJ, though he could feel Josef's eyes on him when he looked toward the screen.

JJ was clearly still feeling whatever it was that had messed him up yesterday; he even missed the first cue of his music and had to catch back up to it. The first half of his program was sloppy, but the second half was stronger as he seemed to pick up support from the crowd. Yuuri had to admire that kind of recovery ability. Even with all his mistakes, JJ hadn't given up. He'd stood up and kept fighting until the end. It took a lot to keep going like that instead of giving in.

Phichit's program, on the other hand, had to be the entertainment of the night; though it wasn't perfect, Phichit didn't need to be perfect to put a smile on anyone's face. Yuuri held his breath as he went into his quad, then bounced on the balls of his feet when he landed it. "He was working on that for so long," Yuuri said.

"Good for him – this is the first season he's landed them, right?"

Yuuri nodded. Phichit's attempts last season had never come out right. He'd always managed to put an optimistic spin on it, anyway – there was a next time, he'd gotten closer than before, things like that. Failure never seemed to discourage him for more than a few minutes.

His PCS score seemed low to Yuuri. Sure, Phichit had work to do on some things, like his skating skills, but if that wasn't a well-choreographed and well-performed program, Yuuri didn't know what was. Phichit just sparkled with charisma and joy every time he stepped on the ice. That should have gone above JJ, in his view.

Yuri was next, and Yuuri started to tense up as he skated, anxious about how well Yuri might do. This program was difficult, almost as hard as Yuuri's program, and Yuri attacked the fiery classical music. Sloppy, almost frantic at some points, smoother and lovely when the music had a slower section and he managed to contain himself. It was balletic, very Russian in style, and as Yuri landed jump after jump, rough but high, arms up, throwing himself into every element—

The gasp was audible when he couldn't hold on to one of those landings and slammed into the ice. Yuuri winced. It was meant to be a combination, too, and since he'd put all of his combinations at the end of the program, he couldn't make up on that missed second jump in points because there was nowhere else he could put it.

Yuri was up again in a moment, though, his legs working hard to get him up to speed again. He made the next jumps, but fell again on the last one. The audience clapped loud enough to be heard backstage, trying to help him as he finished.

Yuuri had to turn away when Yuri burst into tears. Poor kid. He'd probably pushed himself so hard with that jump layout, even though he didn't have stamina like Yuuri's or Victor's yet. The Russian articles Yuuri read always painted him as the next Victor, and interviewers kept asking other coaches and skaters to compare the two, though most of them had replies far more tactful than the questions. And he was the one who saw Victor day in and day out, skated next to him for hours every day.

He'd collected himself by the time he made it to the kiss-and-cry, his coaches trying to reassure him. It seemed to work better than it ever had for Yuuri, and he did smile a little when his score came up. Despite the mistakes, it was high, going into first place. He wasn't out of the running yet.

Yuuri took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then turned away from the screens. Chris picked up on it and gestured down one hall, taking him to one that was mostly empty. Yuuri stretched his arms out, his back, his legs, and took in another breath of the cold air.

"Ready?" asked Chris.

Yuuri closed his eyes again and imagined himself in that determined mindset. The one that would be unapproachable. Untouchable. The one that said, I am here to win. When he opened them again, Chris gave him an approving nod.

It made him feel strong. He sailed through the backstage area, Chris at his heels, and then Josef, too. Past the photographers, the journalists.

Victor was flowing through the movements of his program backstage, and Yuuri didn't let himself be intimidated: Victor was not a god, Victor was human, and Yuuri could compete with him. He was going to compete with him, and he wasn't going down easily.

Victor glanced his way, then turned his whole head. And then he stepped out of Yuuri's way. Yuuri had never felt so powerful before.

Otabek was just coming off the ice. Yuuri took his time taking off one guard, then the other, and took off for a first couple of laps. The ice was just as he liked it, and his blades did everything he told them to.

When he returned to the side of the rink, Chris took his jacket off for him. Yuuri reached out for their hug as soon as he had set it down. "I hope you're doing okay under there," Chris murmured. "You do know that I'll be there for you even if you don't medal?"

Yuuri drew back and gave him a look. Chris's lip quirked up in response to his frown.

"Okay, I guess you don't want to hear that."

Yuuri shook his head slightly. He leaned in close and whispered, low enough that Josef wouldn't hear, "Don't you want me to win? Even over Victor?"

"Hm, well," Chris whispered back, stretching out the sounds. "As hard as I've been trying to snatch one of Victor's crowns, I wouldn't mind too much if I had to take it from your head."

Yuuri grinned at him. Chris squeezed his hands, and Yuuri skated away, doing a couple of small jumps while he waited for Otabek's scores to come out and for his name to be called.

Time to make it happen. He could feel all the eyes on him as he shifted into his starting position – most of all, there was Chris's gaze, watching him, waiting for Yuuri to show him what he could do.

He breathed in, and the music started. He breathed out, and began to dance, no nerves at all. No murder face, either. He didn't need it. Just his own determination, carrying him across the ice, through his first jumps, clean and easy. If this music was his skating life, this was him struggling through the beginning of his career, having good days and bad days, so many setbacks but also breakthroughs. Landing his first triple axel, his first quads. Winning Nationals. Earning his way to the GPF. Supported in the background but always feeling alone.

And then his comeback – Chris pushing him into something new, the two of them learning together. Chris's first steps back on the ice. The flirting. The walks on the long summer evenings, the different dances, Chris correcting his form on the pole, cooking dinner and playing with Mimi. Yuuri could feel all of those days coming together as he went into one of his spins and the world blurred around him, and it carried him as he came out of it and hit another jump, perfect.

The music got quieter, contemplative, and Yuuri lowered himself into an arabesque, the ice quiet under his blade. Arguments, mistakes – but they'd made it through them. Ina Bauer, stretching his arms to his fingertips, like Minako would have told him to do. Spread eagle, with a deep lean and straight spine. He was so calm.

It was like his body weighed nothing when he launched himself up into his axel.

The song picked up again, hopeful, bright, and maybe this was Yuuri falling into – yes, love. That was it, wasn't it? The comfortable way he could sit with Chris, how Chris put sparks on his skin when they kissed, how Yuuri didn't want to leave him and Switzerland and go quietly retire in Hasetsu. And he didn't want Chris to quietly leave to become a coach, either.

Yuuri wanted to skate with him. He wanted to finally win over Chris, like he had never done in his career, not just over Victor. He wanted to see Chris skate his ridiculous programs and come off the ice with his arms full of roses and a smile that went through his whole body.

His skates ran easily on the ice as he moved through the step sequence. Chris might have had the spins, but this was where Yuuri could shine. He'd spent so many hours just skating at the Ice Castle, doing figures and edge exercises long past the time anyone else would have gotten bored with them. Even Yuuko, when she was younger, hadn't been able to stand keeping them up as long as him.

Yuuri showed off every hour of that work in his feet, all that time in the studio in his arms and back and hands. He knew, at the end of it, that it had been perfect. Even Victor wouldn't be able to match that step sequence.

One jump left, now, the one that mattered most. Josef had argued with him about putting the flip at the end, but Yuuri needed it there. It only made sense in the story of the program to put it there, where he was finally accomplishing what he'd been chasing for so long. Skating on the same ice as Victor. Practicing half the day with Chris. Making everyone at home scream with joy as he finally made it. Feeling, finally, like a success.

He wasn't tired at all. Yuuri turned, hit the ice with his toe pick, pushed, spun, landed – landed, cleanly.

Yuuri wanted to stop right there to cheer for himself like the crowd was cheering for him, but the story wasn't finished – one last spin, trying to make it one that Chris would be satisfied with, sinking low to the ice before reaching for the ceiling at the end of it.

Not really for the ceiling, but for something beyond it. The future. His future, and Chris's, one where skating always felt this natural and fun.

The music was over. The applause took a moment to filter into his hearing, but when it did—

He'd done it. He'd landed everything, including his newest quad. Yuuri jumped into the air, both hands stretched high, and let the pure rush of excitement come out in his voice as he whooped.

Yuuri couldn't stop smiling as he bowed. He wanted to see Chris's face!

But before he could make it off the ice, he distinctly heard a voice he recognized calling out his name: "Yuuri! Yuuri! Yuuri!"

Minako was waving frantically at him from next to the arena. Yuuri shifted course and glided over to her, curious. Another present? She leaned over the edge of the arena, holding out a rose crown.

Blue roses, like Victor's. Yuuri found he couldn't breathe for a moment.

He let her put it on his head and beamed back up at her. "Thank you, Minako-sensei!"

"Hold on!" She pulled another one out of nowhere and thrust it into his hands. "For Chris!"

This one was a bright, beautiful red. It would suit him perfectly. None for Josef, apparently; he seemed amused anyway when Yuuri skated back over and plunked the crown on Chris's head before clambering off the ice. "You match!" he said.

"I see you've stolen Victor's crown for real," Chris joked, reaching up to touch his own. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sparkling.

Yuuri couldn't sit still in the kiss-and-cry, and he couldn't stop grinning, either. He and Chris posed together, playing with their crowns. At one point, Chris nudged him and told him to say something nice for the cameras. "Hi to everyone in Hasetsu," he said, waving at the cameras with both hands; Chris made heart hands over Yuuri's head, which made him laugh.

It was hard to not keep laughing. Everything seemed to be hitting him at once, and bubbled up as giddiness. This was how skating should be. How Yuuri had always wanted it to be.

The fact that he went into first wasn't a surprise, but Chris shook him anyway when the scores came up. Another new record for himself, and so close to Victor's record. It didn't feel real. Yuuri laughed again.

Now it was just Victor's turn. The objective part of Yuuri said that Victor was going to win. And he adored Victor, he didn't want him to do badly, but he also wanted to win so, so much. It was so close that his chest hurt at the prospect.

Yuuri said a few words to Morooka backstage, but put off any longer interview. There was no way he was missing Victor's program.

They made it up into the stands just in time for the opening notes of Victor's music. They plunked into the nearest seats, Yuuri panting, Chris taking his hand as they sat down.

Victor moved as gorgeously as ever, embodying the forlorn notes of the song. He seemed still even as he glided quickly across the ice, nothing about him either rushed or hesitant as he started in on the jumps – quad lutz, quad flip, a triple axel as solid as Yuuri's.

Yuuri tamped down the odd, discordant disappointment. Victor was amazing. This was nothing new... but that gold medal had seemed so close a moment ago, and so far away now. He craved it more than he'd craved almost any other medal in his career.

Halfway through the program, after more of Victor's usual lovely choreography and spins, he set up his quad salchow. But something went wrong with the take-off, and on the landing Victor stumbled, and then Victor fell.

The combined gasp probably could be heard in the street outside. Even Victor looked startled. Yuuri couldn't remember the last time Victor had fallen on that jump in competition; unlike Yuuri's, it had been solid for him for years.

He pushed himself up. Yuuri swallowed past the tension in his throat, rekindled hope for himself warring with a tiny internal cheer warring with his inner Victor fan trying to cheer him on again.

Victor struggled again with his next combo – Yuuri wasn't sure all the rotations were there – but hit his stride for the end of the program. The performance quality was there, the way he moved, the expression on his face, the delicacy and strength of the choreography. Everything was back to perfection. Yuuri could hardly process what he was seeing.

He didn't know how to feel when it was over. Victor kind of looked like he didn't know, either, the smile slipping off his face for a few moments when he met his coach. Yakov Feltsman didn't look happy, but the way he put a hand on Victor's back for a few seconds suggested concern, too.

Yuuri took a deep breath. Chris's fingers squeezed his. There was nothing left to do but wait, and wait, and wait.

Victor got better PCS than him, although there wasn't nearly the same gap anymore, and he had a lead from the short, but the fall – but his base points were ridiculously high, too – and the points from the GOEs on everything would be—

"The scores, please."

Yuuri's heart went into overdrive. Chris made a weird squeaking noise, and he realized that he was gripping his hand so tight it was like he was trying to break Chris's fingers. He relaxed his hand, but couldn't seem to force an apology past his vocal cords.

It was very close to the same score as they'd given Yuuri. Victor went into first. Yuuri felt elated – then disappointed – then happy again – and Chris hugged him, which made everything even more confusing.

"You did so well," Chris told him.

Yuuri pushed up enough to press their foreheads together and grinned at him. Then Phichit was tapping his shoulder to congratulate him, and they had to race off for the medal ceremony.

He went to take the flower crown off before he got back on the ice, but Chris forced it on his head again. "It's cute," he said.

"It won't match them."

"Who cares? It looks nice, and Victor's worn one without his competitors having them before."

Victor had also been standing in the middle as the winner, Yuuri wanted to point out, but Chris hastily shoved him towards an impatient official, and there was no more time for protests.

During the ceremony, Yuri shook his hand but didn't smile; his face looked more like a grimace when Victor hugged him. When Victor shook Yuuri's hand, he made a distinct glance up at Yuuri's crown and smiled.

They posed for the pictures, took their flowers, smiled for more pictures. When they all hopped up onto the top podium for yet another round of photographs, Yuuri leaned over and told Yuri in Russian, "You fought really hard today."

Yuri gaped at him. Victor chuckled. "Smile, Yura," he said.

"Since when does he – ugh." Yuri plastered on a smile for the photographers and another round of bright lights went off.

Skating the victory lap with them, Yuuri never wanted to get off the ice ever again.

Alas, the night wasn't yet over. There was the press conference, questions and questions – Victor praised Yuri's hard work, always the good sport, and then he praised Yuuri, which was still surreal. Afterward, Yuuri couldn't remember anything he himself had said.

It was only later that Yuuri got a moment to ask Chris, "How do you think Worlds will be?"

"A battle," Chris said. "I'll be happy to be in the thick of it. I wonder if my doctors would object to me using a more difficult layout at Nationals."

"I thought you were a slow starter?"

"I'd say not competing for half the season is a slow start. I'm ready to get a move on if my knee is ready to move."

Josef, who had just found them again, put a hand on Chris's shoulder. "That's the spirit. I'm sure you'll be stronger than ever when your leg is fully healed."

"I'll have to get stronger, too," said Yuuri. "When you're landing your quads again, maybe I'll have to change my layout again to keep up."

"You will not, you monster."

"I'll have to do something anyway to beat Victor!"

"Skate like that again, only make sure you turn that death glare on the judges first. That's all you need to do."

Josef shook his head. "Come on, let's get going. We'll figure out what to do with both of you later."

Yuuri wrapped his hand in Chris's as they hit the cool night air outside. He didn't think he was going to sleep at all tonight, and he still felt like he was gliding, rather than walking.

~!~

The next day was a whirlwind. Victor pulled him out at the gala again, and this time Yuuri was the one to suggest side-by-side quad flips. Victor's was still better than his, but Yuuri landed it. The huge amount of makeup on Yuri's eyes intensified his glare when he grabbed Yuuri's hand at the end, along with Otabek's, to take their final bows.

When he had any spare time to think, Yuuri was already trying to figure out what else he could do to try and make a win at Worlds more possible. The sooner he started preparing, the better. Probably no big changes before Nationals, but Four Continents was a couple of months after that, and he intended to make use of every one of those days. (Yuuri had always been competitive, he'd always hated being less than first, but he couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd last felt such a strong itch to succeed.)

The banquet was a nice break from all of that. While Chris chatted up some French pairs skaters he knew, Yuuri spotted Phichit taking selfies with other skaters and went over to him. Phichit looked like he'd been grinning all night; he ushered Yuuri into the frame with him and snapped several photos of the two of them.

"I saw your programs," Yuuri said. "You did really well. Your quad's come a long way."

"Yeah! I'm so happy I landed it. Even if...." Phichit's smiled dimmed slightly, and Yuuri suddenly remembered that he'd come in last place.

At least Yuuri had fallen there with cascading mistakes. Phichit had only made a couple of smaller errors, and he'd still ended up behind JJ and even Otabek, despite how much the audience loved him. It had to suck to be in last place despite doing his best and doing it pretty well.

At least you made it here hadn't worked for Yuuri last year, so he didn't try it on Phichit. "I bet you'll medal at Four Continents if you skate like that again."

"Race you for first," Phichit said, his smile back on. "The change of scenery worked out well for both of us, didn't it? But you still need to come to Bangkok this summer! I might have a project."

"A project?"

"I'll let you know if it works out. Chris can come, too." Phichit rose up on his toes and waved at someone over Yuuri's shoulders. "Ciao Ciao! Come take pictures!"

Before Yuuri could edge away, Celestino was there, and Phichit shoved Yuuri so that they were on either side of him. Yuuri obliged the demand for a few more photos. "Yuuri," Celestino said, when Phichit was satisfied. "Congratulations! That was how I always wanted to see you skate."

"Thanks," said Yuuri. The old twist of worry that he'd disappointed Celestino came up again. "Sorry I couldn't make it happen last year."

"It's fine – you don't need to apologize for anything. You improved a lot while we were working together, and who knows what would have happened if you'd stayed with us. Maybe the same change, or maybe you needed something else."

"Yeah." Maybe Phichit or Celestino would have found the magic bullet. Yuuri wouldn't have found it on his own, that was all he knew. "Good luck at Four Continents and Worlds."

Celestino nodded and ducked away to go talk to someone else. A new song came on over the sound system, one that was deeply familiar to Yuuri after hearing it a million times last year. "Phichit, wasn't this one of your favorite songs?"

Phichit glanced up from his phone, then brightened. "Yep! Want to hit the dance floor?"

They joined the small crowd of other skaters already dancing and shook out some moves for a couple of songs. Yuuri ducked away to get a glass of champagne – maybe two, he had a reason to celebrate – and was feeling just a little blurry around the edges when Victor came to ask him for a dance, again.

Of course he couldn't turn down Victor. Yuuri lead him around the dance floor for a bit, and then his rink mate Mila brought more glasses of champagne for everyone. Yuri showed up out of nowhere to down one of the glasses in a big gulp and challenge Yuuri to a dance-off.

Right, they'd done that last year, hadn't they? Yuuri wasn't even that tipsy this time; there was no way he was going to lose the second round. Victor clapped along to the music – Yuuri was pretty sure he was cheering him on, even if they had the same name – and Mila kept giggling as she recorded the dance battle on her phone.

Yuri tried his best, but he just couldn't out-do Yuuri, and it was clear in a few minutes that he knew it, too. He made such a funny face when he grudgingly declared an end to it, all teeth and growls. Yuuri thought he was going to enjoy competing with him.

Thirsty from all the dancing, Yuuri went back to the champagne table and met Chris and Josef there. "Not having too much?" Chris asked.

"I'm celebrating. A bit is okay." Yuuri eyed the flute in his hand. "Stop me if I start getting too drunk, I guess."

They talked for a while, with each other and the officials and sponsors and journalists, and the occasional other skater. At some point, Yuuri picked up yet another flute of champagne, and Josef put a hand on his arm. "Is this too much?"

Just one more is fine, a little voice in his head said. One more would make things more fun.

The voice spoke in distinct dialect from his home town. It sounded an awful lot like his dad. Yuuri gave the glass a long look, but made himself put it down, since Josef was watching. It was true that he didn't need to have another blackout where he made a fool of himself.

As a distraction, he dragged Chris back to the dancers. "It's really too bad there's no pole at this one, either," Chris said, holding a hand up high to twirl Yuuri around.

"ISU probably made a rule about it. After last year."

"Alas! I was hoping we could get up to something interesting again."

Yuuri could think of something interesting. He shook his hand out of Chris's grip, then grabbed him. He'd done stuff like this before, though not for a long while, and it only took a second for Chris to catch on and grasp his shoulders.

With Chris being taller and heavier than him, Yuuri didn't manage to get him very far above the ground, but it was certainly a lift.

Chris was laughing. "Yuuri! Let me try."

He set Chris down and did a little hop to help out when Chris tried lifting him. His arms weren't quite at the right angle to support Yuuri properly, so he was only off the floor by a few centimeters.

It didn't help that Chris kept laughing, too.

They stayed until the end of the banquet, and both crashed in Chris's room. Yuuri woke up with his head tucked against Chris's neck and stayed there for a while, playing around on his phone. He had texts from back home that he'd been ignoring, and there was a new update out for one of his favorite games.

Eventually, he got bored, and the sun was well up, streaming in golden around the edges of the curtains. Yuuri propped himself up on his elbow and kissed Chris until he woke up and put his hand in Yuuri's hair.

"Good morning," said Yuuri.

"Good morning," Chris replied, his words sleepy and quiet.

"Let's get up," Yuuri said. "You promised to take me sightseeing more before our flight."

"I did, didn't I?" Chris yawned and ran a hand through his curls, then tugged Yuuri down for another kiss. And another, and another, until Yuuri had to put a stop to it if they were ever going to have breakfast.

Breakfast, sightseeing, an early afternoon flight, then back home to train. Swiss Nationals first – Yuuri could go cheer Chris on for that, it wasn't too far – and then his own. "Oh," he said, halfway through doing up his coat. "We'll miss Christmas."

"That's too bad, but my family and I will live," Chris said. He'd left his coat unbuttoned and merely shoved his hands in his pockets. Show-off. "The competition is more important. You don't really celebrate Christmas in Japan, right?"

"We do, but it's different than in the West. It's for going on dates." Chris raised his eyebrows. "And you buy cakes."

"We can have cake," Chris said, opening the door for him. "Even if we miss our first Christmas date. Isn't there a saying – distance makes the heart grow fonder? We can have a tearful reunion when you come back, and I'm sure you'll win Nationals, so let's make up for the date with katsudon."

It was nice to hear Chris not saying if you win. That faith buoyed Yuuri's mood further. "Is there someplace that serves it?"

"There must be somewhere near us. If not – do you know how to make it?"

Yuuri shook his head. It was his mom's recipe. Even Dad, who did most of the cooking, never made katsudon when it was for Yuuri's wins.

He liked the idea of it, though. Muddling through the recipe together, chasing Mimi away when she came meowing at their ankles for scraps of the delicious meat, eating it side-by-side – Chris was going to win his Nationals, too, so he would earn it as well.

Yuuri couldn't wait.

Outside, it was a chilly morning, the sun still low in the sky. Yuuri took in a lungful of the cool air, and it was refreshing.

"Not a far walk to the place I picked out," Chris said.

"Okay," said Yuuri. Wait, no, he wanted something more. He took one hand out of his pocket, looped it around Chris's arm so they were linked together, and dug it back into his pocket. There. "Which way?"

Chris beamed at him, everything about him bright, and arm-in-arm, they walked down the sunny street.