Fic: Triple Lutz (2)
Title: Triple Lutz
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, others mentioned
Rating: T
Summary: Fai D. Fluorite is a competitive ice hockey player, very much in love with the world on ice. A tragic accident during one game, however, forces him to drop the sport he loves, and he rapidly sinks into a semi-depression. To try and restore some of his previous passion for skating his brother and the once-champion skater Yuuko tie him up with the figure-skater Kurogane, a serious professional who sends the majority of his partners scurrying in fright, and doesn’t care for Fai’s defeatist attitude. They could be great together…but, before they admit that? Hell will freeze over first. AU
Chapter: 2/?
A/N: *drops update and then skids off*
*****
Novosibirsk, Russia, August 2009
“You want to go skating again?”
Yuui tried not to falter as his brother looked at him, seemingly genuinely perplexed, the dishes Fai had been collecting from the café out front forgotten in his hands. “Yes - what about this weekend?”
“Why?” Fai looked good in The Cat’s Eye waiter’s uniform, clean and crisp in black and white even as his blue eyes focused on Yuui with the stirrings of unnameable suspicion. Yuui, the part-owner, had established the café with money his brother had originally loaned him, designing the uniform with his twin in mind, as Fai, the other owner, had come to help around the place when he hadn’t been busy with hockey. Ever since Turin, however, Fai had worked there mostly full-time. “We went last week.”
“…We used to go every other day.”
Fai set his plates down, the crockery clattering loudly on the kitchen bench. “I’m going to be doing my gymnastics this weekend.”
“You never mentioned that.” Yuui tried to properly smile, he really did.
“I just remembered.” Fai’s smile was a much better lie. He switched it on and off at will, Yuui watching quietly from The Cat’s Eye kitchens as Fai charmed the young ladies that frequented the café, the way they giggled and swooned for his brother. “I’m sorry - maybe we could go some other time?” So basically - never.
“I’d like to,” Yuui said, but his brother only smiled his sweetly fake smile again, and swanned back out to take the order of a young couple who had just walked in.
#
Fai hadn’t lied, when he said he was going to do gymnastics at the weekend. He had lied, however, when he’d said he’d forgotten about it - really, the plan had been made up on the spot the moment Yuui had suggested they go back to the rink again; Fai really didn’t want to set foot out on the ice again so soon.
Fai changed from his casual clothes to his practice ones in the gym’s changing room, holding back a shiver at the chill in the air, his outer layer now clinging so much closer to his skin. It sometimes felt that he might as well have been born in the clothes - he and Yuui had taken gymnastics from a pretty young age, fascinated by the acrobats at a travelling circus their mother had taken them to once. Yuui had dropped the practice after a few years and taken up archery instead, but Fai had pushed on, liking the knowledge it gave him of his own body, knowing how far he could push himself. It had been handy once he’d started hockey - he was already fit, and fast, and the team coach had tried to encourage others to take up the exercise as well. Of course, he couldn’t play professional hockey anymore but -
Fai had hired a private area and it was to there he took himself, carefully doing his stretches so he wouldn’t pull a muscle later. He was shut off from the world, hearing only his own breathing, his own heartbeat, the whisper his fringe made as it fell around his face, moving with his movement. He went into his exercises on the floor mat, losing himself to what he could still do, letting his flips grow harder, harder, longer, as he pushed himself further and further. Practice had made him flexible and he flung himself through his moves without too much strain - that was, of course, right up until he was halfway through a back hand spring and, upside-down, he caught sight of someone dark watching him at the door. Surprise jolted Fai out of his peace and he forgot to push his hands down to brace himself in time, his forearms wobbling with sudden pressure as his whole weight came down and slammed his torso into the floor.
As soon as he’d got over the pain - his ribs hurt - he rolled over, pushing himself up into a seating position with his legs spread out, looking vaguely annoyed at the stranger at the door. “How long have you been there?” He should’ve seen him, should’ve seen some movement from the door’s opening, but the entrance was on his blank side, and his focus had been elsewhere. (It wasn’t only his ribs that currently stung.) “Don’t you know it’s rude to watch someone in a private session without their permission?”
“Your private session ended a good twenty minutes ago.” The stranger was tall and broad and damnably confident of himself, strong arms folded across his chest as he leaned back against the wall beside the door, red eyes intent on Fai on the floor.
Fai’s head whipped towards the clock - it was true. Immediately he pushed himself up of the ground, brushing down his legs reflexively to remove whatever dust he might’ve picked up from the mat. “Why didn’t you stop me?” People paid good money for the private areas; it wasn’t like someone to sit by and watch whilst someone else was using up their time.
“You looked like you needed it more than me.”
Fai actually flinched at that - was he really so obvious? He pasted on a smile when he saw the stranger follow the reaction, feeling it hanging heavily around his mouth and refusing to touch his eyes. He closed them instead, presenting the image of a smiling fool. “Mr. Black is terribly kind for worrying so about me.”
“‘Mr. Black’?!” The stranger looked affronted.
Fai kept smiling. “It’s not like Mr. Black gave me his name.”
“Why the hell would I?!”
“So Mr. Black didn’t have to be called ‘Mr. Black’~!” Fai laughed when the other - taller - man took an angry step forwards, the stranger’s fists dropping to clench at his sides. Fai lowered his lashes, deliberately flirtatious. “He must secretly like it.”
“You,” the stranger told him flatly, “are an idiot.”
“I’ve heard it takes one to know one, Mr. Black~.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Fai only laughed again at his companion’s temper. “Then give me your name!!”
“Why would I give my name,” the stranger demanded bluntly, “to an idiot who clearly doesn’t want it?” Fai’s laughter froze, his eyes widening slightly as he actually looked at the man beside him. The stranger turned away. “Tch. You really are an idiot, aren’t you? A pretty obvious one too.”
Fai forced another smile, but this one felt brittle, its edges digging sharply into his cheeks. No-one had confronted him like this since - “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The stranger snorted, and then suddenly whirled about, stomping for the door.
Despite himself, Fai called out after him. “Your booking -”
“As I said,” the other man ground out, one hand on the knob, “you need it more than me.” And he went out, and had the cheek to slam the door behind him.
Fai’s hands tightened into fists of their own, his nails leaving crescent-shaped curves in his palms. At least he wasn’t the one with anger issues.
Outside the room Youou Kurogane stalked off and away, scattering other gym-goers as he went, muttering under his breath about goddamned idiots.
#
“No, no, and no again.”
Youou Kurogane had been born nearly a month prematurely, startling his parents as they’d been heading back to their native Japan after a long trip, catching them just inside the Soviet Union, four years before the Union fell. He’d been brought into the world on what was now Russian soil, rushed to a hospital, placed in a unit as his mother recuperated and his father went between the ward where his wife lay and the unit with his newborn baby son.
“Youou -”
“Don’t call me that, witch.”
They’d said he was a fighter as he struggled on, his parents delighted to see him growing, naming him Youou - ‘Hawk King’. Their precious baby boy, he’d been doted upon, loved and coddled the moment they’d been able to hold him, happily taking him home to Japan.
“Then -”
“No.”
It had been his mother who’d first taken him skating, when he’d been old enough, pulling his father along with a laugh and letting them slip around the rink with her. Youou hadn’t felt like the most graceful of people at that time, slithering about and ending up on his behind more often than not, but he’d gained a liking for skating all the same, watching his mother twirl about before him, his father not as elegant, but still adequate to keep up her pace. They’d inspired him.
It was a pity they were both dead.
Yuuko put her hands on her hips, and eyed her recalcitrant tutee. “Do it or I’ll post pictures online of your plushie Googoo -”
“Ginryuu!”
“- And you cuddling it whilst you’re asleep.” Yuuko didn’t even bother to include the correction. “They’re even cuter than the ones of you and your pillow.”
Kurogane reminded himself very strongly about that point that it was terribly bad etiquette to attempt to strangle a woman. “Where do you get these photographs?” He locked his door. Every night. He checked.
“I have my sources,” his coach whispered, and tapped her nose with one finger in what was assumedly meant to signify her information was top-secret. Whatever. She looked like an idiot.
“I’m not doing it,” Kurogane told her, calling her bluff and folding his arms in utter defiance of Yuuko’s weird ways. What little she’d told him sounded insane enough, and wouldn’t be of use to him in any way.
Yuuko promptly began fiddling with her purse.
“No.” Kurogane insisted.
Yuuko rummaged around in her purse.
“No,” Kurogane said again.
Yuuko plucked out a set of photographs and began flipping through them herself, but Kurogane was determinedly Not Looking at her and her quiet chuckling was Not Affecting Him In The Slightest. It was a bluff, and he wasn’t going to fall for it.
Kurogane stiffened his resolve, and held firm.
Yuuko held up a picture of a sparkly silver dragon plushie with big eyes. Tomoyo had bought it. “I’m trying to think of a title for my post. ‘Skaters extraordinaire, Kurogane and Gurgle’ -”
“Ginryuu.”
“ - sounds quite fetching, don’t you?” Again, Yuuko ignored him. “It’s not as catchy as one might wish for, but I feel it gets the point across adequately enough.”
Kurogane twitched. Strangling, maiming or otherwise slaughtering a female was against his principles. Generally. Unless they were trying to kill him. Could he get away with claiming he was acting in self-defence of his sanity? “This is blackmail.”
Yuuko beamed. “I prefer to think of it as an incentive to co-operative companionship.”
“It’s blackmail.” Yuuko fluttered his lashes at him, and Kurogane snorted and looked away. “Witch.”
She only smiled knowingly. “So you’ll come to meet him, Kurogane?”
It wasn’t as if the damn woman had given him much of a choice. Kurogane grumbled under his breath but nodded assent sharply, once, mentally removing himself from the squeal his coach let out and reminding himself he wouldn’t hit a member of the fairer sex. (But then, there was nothing fair about Yuuko. The woman was an atrocious cheat.)
#
“Yuuko-san, this is a bad idea.”
Yuuko flapped her hand, leaning back in the plastic seat around the ice rink and putting her heeled feet up on the chair in front. Thankfully she was wearing trousers that day; else the action would have probably flashed anyone looking at them with a glorious view of the woman’s underwear. “Watanuki-kun, you’re such a pessimist. Think positively!”
Kimihiro Watanuki, seventeen years of age and very much used to the ways and wiles of Yuuko Ichihara, his parents’ distant relative on some side of the family or other no-one had ever quite specified to say and his current caretaker of the moment (his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend’s family usually opened up their doors to him, but when Yuuko called you answered, or your sanity was forfeit), eyed the woman beside him with a deep distrust, completely ignoring the figures on the rink before them. “I’m positive this is a bad idea.”
Yuuko turned a lazy red gaze on him, downing about half of the flask she held in her hand. By the smell of it, she’d spiked the hot chocolate he’d given her. “Are you certain of that, Watanuki?” When the youth didn’t answer she only smiled, cat-like, and stretched out a little more firmly in her seat. “Be a dear and check to see Kurogane hasn’t drowned himself down the toilet, would you, Watanuki?” They’d been waiting for him to come out for about ten minutes. “He’s been in there an awfully long time.”
Obligingly - and with distinct relief at being away from the mad woman -, Watanuki went off. About two minutes later he was back, and Yuuko raised one eyebrow in inquiry. “He says he’s not coming.”
“Whaaaaaaa’? We can’t have that!” Yuuko pouted, swinging her legs around and down until her feet were flat on the floor again and pushing herself up into a standing position, one finger pointing dramatically towards the ceiling. “To the toilets!”
Watanuki gaped, and tried to ignore the people around them that had turned to stare. “Yuuko-san -”
It was far too late. Yuuko had already clacked off in her heels, all but slamming open the door to the men’s toilets and striding inside like it was a perfectly everyday occurrence. “Kurogane, yoo hoo~!”
A few of the men that were inside automatically baulked at the sound of a woman’s voice, Kurogane, who had been leaning against a far wall, narrowing his eyes at his approaching coach.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?! This is the men’s toilets!”
“Is it?” Yuuko feigned surprise, glancing around herself (and completely ignoring all the men quickly shying out of the door), tapping one painted finger off of her chin in thought. “I guess the terrible taste in décor should have given it away.” She took up a spot beside the urinals, leaning on a divider with very little care for the man directly behind her hurriedly trying to finish his business and stuff his equipment back into his pants. “Don’t worry dear,” she spoke over her shoulder, the man’s ‘urk’ clearly audible at having her undivided attention, “I’ve seen smaller.” He was out the door in about three seconds flat.
Kurogane growled. “Witch -”
“Now, now, Kurogane,” Yuuko chided, waving one finger at him in reproof, “that’s no way to speak to a lady.”
He glared back at her. “I’m not speaking to a lady.”
The door to the room was tentatively pushed open, and Watanuki poked his head inside. “Yuuko-san? Kurogane-san?”
“Watanuki-kun,” the female among them pouted melodramatically, “Kurogane is calling me names.” She said it like it was something new. “I’m going to need more of my special hot chocolate to ease the pain.”
Watanuki shook his head. “You already drank it all.”
“But Watanuki-kun-!”
“I can’t get anymore when we’re in an ice rink!”
“Then you shall have to make three times as much when we get home~!”
“That’s not fair!!”
Kurogane snorted, and looked aside. “Life rarely is, kid.” Yuuko took that opportunity to lock her hands around one of his arms, and start dragging him towards the door. “Bitch, what d’you think you’re-?!”
“The future calls, Kurogane!” His coach only laughed at him.
Kurogane dug in his heels. “No.” If it hadn’t meant losing his defence, he would’ve stamped his foot as well.
“One word - Ginpoo.”
“It’s Ginryuu, dammit!!”
“Ne, Watanuki, don’t you think Tomoyo-chan would love to know about our manly Kurogane hiding in the toilets~?”
“I was not hiding.” Yuuko raised an amused eyebrow at her tutee, and he scowled at her. “I don’t need to tell you what I was doing - it’s private.”
Yuuko turned back to Watanuki. “Kurogane was sulking.”
“I was not sulking!!” Kurogane put too much effort into yelling and too little attention into his position in the floor, Yuuko pulling him along a lot easier as she baited him. “Let go of me, you twisted bat.”
“Very well.” Yuuko did so - she’d already pulled Kurogane to the edge of the rink, anyway, ignoring all the stares passers-by were giving them. She pointed out two people skating on the ice, watching as one of them stopped to wave at her when he saw her, waving back. “Those are the Fluorite twins, Kurogane.”
“Who-?” Kurogane followed the line of her gaze - and then froze. “No.” He recognised that blond hair, even as the one who’d waved to Yuuko began moving over to someone identical to him, pulling on that person’s arm. “You want me to-? No. No way in hell.”
“That one’s Yuui,” Yuuko said helpfully, pointing to the first brother, “and that one’s Fai.” The second. “Fai’s the one I was talking about.”
Kurogane shook his head - an abrupt denial. “No.”
Yuuko fluttered her lashes at him, even as the twins started making their way over the ice, Yuui pulling Fai. “He’s a good skater.”
Kurogane didn’t care, and offered the first excuse that came to mind. “He’s male.”
“Very quick on his feet.”
“He’s male.”
“He’s light - he’d be good for lifts.”
“Witch,” Kurogane interrupted Yuuko’s song of praise, scowling, “he’s male.”
“Yes,” Yuuko beamed back, “but don’t you think he’d look pretty in a skirt?”
Kurogane glared.
#
Fai didn’t quite know how his brother had managed it, but he was back on the ice, Yuui a constant presence at his side, laughing, joking, smiling and outright refusing to let his twin sink too deeply into his own thoughts. Yuui could be quite effective at badgering people when he chose - Fai supposed he was just lucky his twin was usually the quieter, more demure of the two of them. (Dealing with someone exactly like himself in terms of psyche and emotion would have killed him.) Yuui was different in the ways that mattered, in the ways Fai loved him for.
Yuui laid a hand on his arm as they were skating, welcoming, warm. “Fai, there are some people I want you to meet here.”
“Oh?” Fai smiled back, consenting to be pulled past the other skaters on the rink, his attention on his brother. “Who?” This reeked of a plan of some sort, especially as Yuui had been so insistent that they went skating that particular day, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer in any of its smiling-faced, subtle forms. (Yuui was the same in all the ways that mattered as well, though Fai didn’t like admitting that as much.)
Yuui only smiled again - they were both doing a lot of that - and gestured to a small group of three people waiting purposefully at the rink’s edge, a teenage boy, a tall, dark-haired woman and - oh, hell no.
Fai attempted to dig his blades into the ice. “Yuui -”
“Hm?” His twin looked inquiring.
Fai had a bad feeling - the red eyes glaring at him from over six metres away didn’t help much. “Whatever you’re planning - no.” It was the growling, observant stranger from the gym.
Yuui kept pulling him along. “What makes you think I’m planning something?” Fai looked at him. Yuui looked back at him, eyes softening in a way he knew Fai was susceptible to. “Just hear us out, Fai - please?”
“Yuui…” Yuui kept looking at him. Fai sighed, but gave in. “Alright.”
Yuui brightened; Fai tacked a smile on, and the two finished making their way over to the edge of the rink.
This was going to hurt.