A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 6

Content note: This chapter gets pretty dark. If you would like an overview of trigger warnings before reading or a non-graphic summary so you can catch up for the next section, please let me know.

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Yuri's muscles burned with the force of the impact. He'd landed the quad flip – barely – but it was sloppy, one hand skimming the ice. It needed to be better by the end of the off-season. It needed to be perfect.

He couldn't shake the nagging fear that his career had already peaked, leaving him struggling to do anything more than stay relevant. After all, where could he go from here? He'd broken a world record at fifteen and taken gold during his senior debut; first at the Grand Prix Final, and again in Worlds. Next year, the Olympics, where he broke his own record in the short program before climbing to the top of the podium.

They called him a hero.

Otabek had chuckled at that – no. He wasn't going to think about Otabek now, not about his laugh, or thumbs up he'd given Yuri when that particular headline broke. He pushed through the step sequence, scoring the ice with vicious strokes. His right leg ached, the burn of old injuries protesting the strain and fatigue.

The ice screeched under his skates. He'd lose points for that in a competition.

When he was seventeen, stumbling along on limbs that were suddenly longer and unable to move right, he took bronze in the European Championships. Nothing else. But it had been okay, even on the sidelines, as he watched his friend cross the ice with gold hanging from his neck.

Yuri loved skating at night, after everyone else had gone home for the day. There was no one to get in his way or shout at him to control his free leg. Even his pathetic quad flip didn't break his concentration. He was eighteen, and even though he could feel his joints straining against the stretches Lilia put him through each morning. His body was his, and for now, so was the ice.

This year, the world was going to watch him win gold.

The music had stopped sometime in the past few minutes. Yuri hadn't noticed. It wasn't the song for his routine, just whatever pounding rhythm kept him on the ice after his knees turned to jelly. He unlocked his phone and cued up another youtube playlist at random – he'd leave in a little bit, so it didn't really matter what he was listening to.

That was another good thing about the empty rink. No one gave him shit about his music. After Yakov had slipped him the key two years ago, muttering something about extra practice, Yuri had almost cried. He'd left a plate of cookies outside the old man's door several weeks later. No note, of course. He wasn't a sap.

Technically, of course, the conditions had been that he was only allowed to work on footwork unless someone else was in the building. Nothing over a double. No high difficulty spins. And definitely no quads. But what Yakov didn't know wouldn't hurt Yuri.

He should get something else for Yakov soon. Maybe after he won the Grand Prix this year.

The speakers crackled. A babble of voices filled the room, fighting to be heard over muted applause.

"Congratulations on your recent victory!"

"Thank you."

"Tell me, after several years of skating in the senior division, do you feel that you have lived up to your moniker of 'The Hero of Kazakh-'"

Yuri yanked the aux cord from his phone.

Maybe silence was better tonight, after all.

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