Actions

Work Header

Compromises

Summary:

Their relationship was one of compromises, Yuuri thought, usually in Victor's favour. Not that Yuuri minded - in all likelihood, he would probably set himself on fire if Victor complained about being cold. But there was one thing Yuuri point blank refused to compromise on; he would not step foot within a 100 metre radius of an ice rink.

AU in which Yuuri quit skating as a teenager, Victor isn't amazing at communication, and Yurio thinks they are both idiots.

Notes:

  • Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Restricted Work] by (Log in to access.)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

Yuuri was shy. Victor got that. He understood it. Hell, if anything he enjoyed it. Maybe it was selfish of him to like something that made Yuuri’s life a daily struggle – the way it was only Victor who could make him calm in crowded places, the way he could trace the soft sigh of Yuuri’s collar bone or make his fingertips tiptoe up and down the knobs of his partner’s spine until he came together again, how it was Victor and Victor alone who could make Yuuri believe he was worth anything – but Victor had never claimed to be perfect (well, maybe he had, but still). Being one of the stars amongst the small constellation of people who could get Yuuri out of his shell gave Victor some kind of kick. Yuuri was the sort of person to cross over to the other side of the road for the express purpose of not having to walk past another human being. And that was okay. Victor got it. It was one of the many grains of sand that melted down to make the glass swan of Yuuri Katsuki. Victor thought himself very patient, kind, caring in regards to Yuuri and his anxiety. On the occasions where Yuuri would turn deep pools of brown up to him, fringed with tears, muttering frantically about being sorry, about not being good enough, Victor would touch a finger to the younger man’s chapped lips, made stripy from being constantly gnawed at, and tell him that it was okay. That he got it. And he did. 

But he didn’t get why Yuuri would never watch him skate. Sure, he’d watch the Russian on the television or on YouTube – but he’d never physically watch him; not in practice, not at small local competitions and not at big international ones. He would travel to competitions with Victor, but then just not show at the rink. Okay, Victor had told himself at first, the rink can get pretty busy, he just doesn’t like crowded places. So he had arranged for Yuuri to come after hours to watch him dress rehearse a routine. And, suddenly, Yuuri had unchangeable life-or-death plans with Phichit, who lived in an apartment a couple of floors down from theirs and was, among other things, one of Victor’s rink mates. This had been the first in a long line of unsuccessful get-Yuuri-to-the-rink schemes.

Victor saw himself as understanding when it came to Yuuri. Attentive, even. He’d never given so much time and energy and attention to any one person – unless, of course, you wanted to get poetic about it and personify the ice. But he couldn’t understand Yuuri’s apparent repulsion to the thing that made Victor Nikiforov the Victor Nikiforov. Not only couldn’t he understand it, but it hurt too. Like, hurt hurt. It hurt like the first time Victor had fallen at a competition; it made him feel small, insignificant, like the inside of his chest was inflating too much for his ribs to contain it, then compressing to be nothing but a shrivelled up cherry stone, not good enough not good enough notgoodenough. It hurt in seismic ways. And what hurt him even more was that he just didn’t understand it. He was supposed to understand Yuuri, his fiancé, in ways that nobody else could. Yuuri was his, but when it came to this, he wasn’t.

 

 


 

 

Their relationship was one of compromises, Yuuri thought and often found himself thinking.

They’d met at a bar in Chicago, Illinois. Yuuri had gone – or, rather, been dragged – there on The Holiday of a Lifetime with his sister. Victor had been there for Skate America. 

Unable to sleep, Yuuri had gone down to the hotel bar, but looking under twenty-one and having left his ID in the hotel room, he had been refused service. So there he was, moping in a corner booth by the door, breathing in the smell of an overnight frost and cigarettes, weighing up the pros and cons of starting smoking (pro: it was meant to be good for anxiety, con: he remembered a health ed class in high school where the teacher had told him every cigarette smoked would take five minutes off of his life), when Victor had dropped down opposite him with a cocktail glass in each hand and an apocalyptic beam lighting up his face. All it had taken was a wink and Yuuri had been under the older man’s spell; it was like being trapped in Perspex, wrapped in water, and it was wonderful.

The next morning, however, he had not been feeling quite so wonderful and in fact felt as well as one could expect to feel after downing eight Long Island Iced Teas in rapid succession. As soon as his eyes had creaked open he’d been rushing to the toilet to vomit, not taking the time to clock that the hotel room he was in was not the one he had been sharing with his sister but was bigger, had a double bed instead of twins, and a view of the city that could inspire an artist to do great things.

Later Victor would say that it was the open, kicked-puppy gaze Yuuri had thrown him as he looked up from the toilet that had gotten him smitten. Yuuri wasn’t sure how he should feel about that, but instead focussed on the fact that Victor was smitten with him in the first place, for which he was very grateful. He was, after all, the Victor Nikiforov. 

It was that first meeting, he supposed, that had been the first compromise. Yuuri couldn’t buy alcohol so Victor had compromised by buying it for him, which had resulted in sex which, Yuuri thought, was sort of a compromise in return for the overpriced cocktails. It was a good kind of compromise.

That should have been that.

Yuuri and Victor should have simply been one of the many one night stands witnessed by the hotel walls – a happy mistake, neither the worse off for it but perhaps a little bit better. But Yuuri had told Victor where he and his sister were going next on their so-called Holiday of a Lifetime; they’d come from New York, New York, and were now heading to Las Vegas, Nevada, before stopping off at Los Angeles, California, and then flying home. Somehow, Victor had tracked them down in Los Angeles. Yuuri wasn’t sure if he should have been flattered, terrified or impressed when Victor showed up at their hotel (Victor would later tell him that it was the nineteenth hotel he'd stormed into demanding the room number of one Yuuri Katsuki), and had compromised by being all three. The four days they’d spent in LA together were among the best memories that Yuuri had. At the end of each day he’d stayed up all night, writing it all down, frightened that he might forget the most perfect moments of his life. It had, after all, been The Holiday of a Lifetime.

It had been a whirlwind romance – but there is no grand hierarchy of love. A couple who have been together for fifty years can hold the same adoration for one another as two people who’ve shared a certain kind of look across a room over a split second. Three weeks after their chance meeting, Victor had paid for Yuuri to fly to him in St Petersburg, Russia, for a long weekend. A long weekend that had turned into a week, then a fortnight, then a month, until, finally, Victor had asked Yuuri to stay as a permanent fixture. Something about his bed being too cold without someone else in it and, besides, Makkachin would pine if Yuuri left. This had bought about the first major compromise in their relationship. Yuuri did not, in fact, want to move to Russia. He liked it in Japan. Japan was home; he understood everything there, had people who loved him there, felt somewhat less anxious walking the friendly streets of Hasetsu than he did diving into the thick stream of perpetual sightseers that flooded St Petersburg. He didn’t want to uproot himself and go through the fresh terror of trying to make new friends. But it was fight or flight. Stay in Russia and keep Victor, or go home and lose him. So he’d compromised; he’d bought himself a book of basic Russian phrases and had his belongings FedExed to Victor’s apartment. He had compromised by living in Russia in return for what he felt for sure was the Love of His Life. Another compromise had landed as a result of this resettlement; English was the only language they shared fluency in, and so that was the main language of Victor’s – and now Yuuri’s – apartment, with bits of Russian thrown in from Yuuri (to show he cared about Victor) and bits of Japanese thrown in from Victor (to show he cared about Yuuri). Makkachin was a multilingual dog and seemed to understand her masters no matter what language they spoke in.

The rest of the compromises had been comparably small, but each felt like a huge mountain for Yuuri – mountains that Victor could stride over as though they were anthills. Parties, for instance. Victor liked a good party, was a veritable social butterfly – a peacock butterfly, Yuuri would think – and Yuuri did not. But he would get dressed up anyway and let Victor show him off, and usually doused himself in champagne to help dull the sharp knife of anxiety that wedged itself between each vertebra and twisted, only Victor’s strong, steady arm around his waist stopping him from crumpling to the floor.

But he was happy to compromise for Victor. Hell, he’d prop up a ladder against the moon and climb up into the heavens to collect a particular star for Victor if the Russian asked. If, for some reason, Victor decided that he needed a second heart, Yuuri would have gladly torn out his own as some kind of paganistic offering. 

He would compromise on anything for Victor, would do anything for him. But he would not go near an ice rink. Not ever. Not again.

Notes:

So, that's the prologue done! There a couple of things I want to comment on, just because I can rabbit on about anything, and also because this is an AU and I want to make sure that we're all on a similar page.

1. Yuuri's anxiety is somewhat worse in this than it is in the actual show. Not a whole lot, but still. Why? Well, my reasoning for this is that skating is a release for Yuuri. Without it (plus the reason that he quit skating which will be revealed in later chapters, but if you want a hint think Nancy and Tonya) his anxiety spiralled and spilled over.

2. In this world, Phichit went to St Petersburg instead of Detroit. Why? Because this story is set in St Petersburg, and I wanted Phichit to be in it.

3. If you spot any errors in general, please feel free to point them out. It would be super helpful!

4. I'm not sure when exactly this is set. If we're going by when Yuuri met Victor at Skate America, then this is either 2016 or 2014 (the last two times that Skate America was held in Chicago). But I'm going to say either it is 2014, but with Yurio still aged 15 or 2016 but with Yuuri and Victor as a couple of years younger than they are in the series. Why? Because this is an alternate universe so I can mess with their ages, and also it kind of feels right.

 

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed it :)