Chapter Text
The last thing Victor expected was for Yuuri Katsuki, of all people, to inspire him. Naturally he knew of Japan’s so-called ‘late bloomer’ before that video went viral. At the top level the professional figure skating world was very small, after all. They all met one another sooner or later.
So yes, he knew who Katsuki was. They’d been in the same competitions a few times even before the GPF. Yakov had pointed him out in—well, it must have been his first senior international appearance. “There’s new blood on the ice today.”
“Oh?” Victor looked over, curious. Their eyes met but the kid promptly ducked his head. “Someone interesting?”
“Yuuri Katsuki, Japanese. He’s 20.”
“Ah.” That said it all, really. “He looks younger than that. He must have worked very hard.”
“Or got lucky. Or maybe he’s an incredible talent discovered unfortunately late,” Yakov said with a shrug. “Today we’ll see which it is. How are you feeling about your quads?”
They walked off discussing his program and Victor quickly forgot about Yuuri Katsuki. He did remember the newcomer later that evening while he prepped though. Katsuki was on the ice and all the monitors were focused on his determined, youthful looking face. Though he was good, especially with his spins and step sequences, it was pretty clear he wasn’t an "incredible talent" and, as Victor watched him flub a triple axel, not even that lucky.
A hard worker then, Victor had thought. Good for him.
Victor really had been horribly short-sighted back then.
For the next three years he’d see Yuuri Katsuki’s name in the line up every now and then, and each time he would blink at it with mild surprise and slowly growing admiration. Figure skating as a sport is a race against time, and time always won. Every year you got older and older while the competition only got younger, sharper, hungrier. Generally speaking if you don’t peak by your early 20s, you don’t peak at all. Victor took not a little pride in being one of the few exceptions to the rule, but most weren’t as fortunate as him, and if you had asked him to name someone who made their international senior debut at 20 and remained not only competitive but actually relevant for more than one season, he wouldn’t have been able to give you a single one.
Except Yuuri Katsuki.
So when Victor attended Skate Canada as a VIP after winning Skate America and they happened to bump into each other just before Katsuki took to the ice for his free skate, he made a point to wish him good luck. Katsuki had seemed awkward and nervous, but later ended up scoring a personal best. Then later Victor learned he had won the silver in the NHK Trophy and consequently had made the cut for the Final.
And then there was the Final.
And then, later, the banquet.
And then, even later, the lobby. To this day Victor regrets how flippant he was. It had been a miscalculation on his part. He was still remembering the banquet the previous night and the fun they’d had; he hadn’t considered that Yuuri was obviously not thinking of the same things. His energy was so dull that he didn’t look at all like the sexy whirlwind who had practically made love to Victor on the dance floor the night before and who had made love to a dance pole. Victor wanted to apologize as soon as he realized his mistake, but by then Yuuri was already halfway across the room and to bring further attention to him would have been unspeakably cruel.
If he had stayed, Victor would have told him what he was thinking: that he hoped to dance with him again at Worlds.
When Victor didn’t see Yuuri at all for the rest of the season, he surprised himself by being genuinely disappointed. It was frankly ridiculous; he had never even had an actual, sober conversation with the man. One admittedly hot dance-off and tango did not a relationship make. Nevertheless, the disappointment was there, and it was another drop in the bucket of general dissatisfaction that Victor hadn’t noticed had filled up and up and up until it upended itself on his head while he sat at the post-Worlds press conference, with all the world watching, and he suddenly realized he was completely and utterly bored out of his mind.
He tried to shake it off by choreographing his program for the next season, by needling Yuri to work on his expression and not just his jumps, by annoying the hell out of Yakov, by having a fling with the latest prima ballerina from the St. Petersburg Ballet. The usual things. But nothing worked.
Until that video went viral.
Looks like you have a fan! Lololol, Mila had tweeted him, with the video linked next to the laughing-crying face emoji.
The first time Victor saw that video it took his breath away.
Yuuri was wearing sweatpants, was clearly out of shape, wasn’t even skating to music and yet Victor had never seen that program, his program, performed with such heartrending beauty.
Seeing it was like having color put back into his world.
Yuuri had elevated his choreography to something that Victor himself had not able to achieve. He created music with his body alone.
Then he realized that no one, no one else in the whole world, could see what he was seeing in Yuuri’s performance. They were so busy laughing and making fun of him and dismissing him out of hand that they were all blind to it. No one could see it. No one understood. No one had understood, not even Victor, not until now.
Yuuri Katsuki was not an incredible talent discovered unfortunately late.
Yuuri Katsuki was an incredible talent who was never discovered at all.
The thought left him reeling, but though a hazy determination was already taking shape inside his mind, grown from a seed sown months before by Yuuri himself, Victor had to be sure that he was right. He played the video a few more times, divorced himself from the giddiness of what this could mean—for him, for Yuuri, for the whole sport—and watched it with objective eyes, the eyes of a coach. But he wasn’t wrong. Somehow Yuuri Katsuki really had made it all the way to the Grand Prix Final without having tapped into a portion of his true potential.
Amazing.
Victor realized he had to move fast: if he wanted Yuuri ready and competitive for the season he had to go now. So he went on social media, announced he was sitting out the next season to coach Yuuri, took his dog to the vet to get him cleared for international travel, and hired people to start packing up his house. Somewhere in there Yakov screamed himself hoarse—which if anybody had asked Victor would have said made the whole decision worth it, haha—the entire professional skating world believed he was joking, and Yuuri Katsuki invaded his fantasies. Again.
Victor actually had almost taken Yuuri to bed the night of the banquet. In the end, he’d decided against it because Yuuri really was just that drunk, so Victor had very regretfully and very responsibly surrendered him to his coach at the end of the night without so much as a kiss. That didn’t mean, however, that Victor did not have a lot of fun afterward imagining what could have been. But by the time Worlds had come around, the memory of the GPF banquet was just that, a memory, and he had mostly forgotten how… impressive Yuuri had been. But this, now, was a different Yuuri that he imagined as he fucked his fist in the shower before he left for his flight to Japan, picturing all the while that it was Yuuri’s mouth he was thrusting into. Yuuri would look just like he did in the video, Victor decided, his face a study in wistful devotion and yearning as his tongue fluttered around Victor’s cock. He would be clumsy and sweet and Victor would press his thumbs against pink lips stretched wide, would murmur soft words of praise, would watch Yuuri take in more of his length. Yuuri would look up right then and those expressive eyes would be pleading, imploring Victor to show just how much Yuuri pleased him and Victor would do it, would come right there inside his mouth and he’d feel Yuuri’s tongue working, trying to swallow it all down—
Victor grunted as he shot all over the tile, pressing his forehead against the cool surface as he waited for the aftershocks to subside. This was, of course, probably a bit inappropriate. However, he had also just come harder from a simple fantasy than he ever did with Irina the prima ballerina and Victor had accepted a long time ago that he was, at heart, an impulsive hedonist. So it turned out that he was going to Japan not just to take Yuuri Katsuki as his student, but also to take him as his lover. He’d finally get to know just how strong those thighs of his would grip his waist during sex.
Victor felt more excited now than he did when he stood center rink at the World Championships, gold medal in hand.
He wondered how long it would take to get Yuuri in his bed. A week? A day?
He couldn’t wait to find out.