Precious Things

"When I get away from skating, two L words come to mind, Life and Love. I've been neglecting both for over twenty years." - Victor Nikiforov

Victor makes friends with depression before he knows its name, grows up with the ghost of it in his bones, gets acclimated to the chill. He's a changeling's child, a chameleon; he makes himself into all the things people want. He's acclimated to his winter life, cold and stark and glittering success.

He has everything a person could possibly want. There's no reason for discontent.

That is, there's no reason for discontent until Katsuki Yuuri tumbles into his arms in Sochi. Suddenly the lies Victor has told himself about his own happiness for years are pouring through his fingers like sand and the things he doesn't have at all are thrown in stark relief: he has a career and no life; he has a passion and no love.

Or: a retelling of those twenty years of neglect, that one night in Sochi, and why the season that gave both of those things back to Victor Nikiforov was the one he spent being Katsuki Yuuri's coach.