Fic: Triple Lutz (1)
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: 1/?
A/N: This is all Eli-from-Kiseki’s fault. I somehow got set up into writing this, and I’m still not even sure how. *had been talking about squirrels, sob* Apparently the plot is based loosely on the film ‘The Cutting Edge’, but I’ve never seen it, so - *sailing blind, here* Just a general disclaimer - I don’t own that film, and I don’t own CLAMP’s characters.
*Forgot to mention: I'm using the Horitsuba order for the twins again. Fai is our!Fai, Yuui is real!dead!Fai.
*****
Turin, Italy, February 2006
Fai D. Fluorite was good at what he did, and very glad he was good at it. No-one who looked at him would think a man with such a slender build could possibly be involved in the competitive world of ice hockey - but involved Fai was, quite highly too. His team were up to the Olympics and he, a defenceman, was looking forward to the games only a few hours ahead.
“Nervous?” His brother looked in on him in his hotel room, Yuui’s expression sympathetic.
Fai looked up at him from where he’d been plucking at the curtains, smiling back rather ruefully over one shoulder. “A little.” There was a lot riding on this. “Is your room alright?”
“It’s amazing - everything here is.” Yuui strolled in, joining his twin at the window to look out onto the city of Turin. “I rode up in the lift with three sporting celebrities, and we discussed pastries.”
“Mm,” Fai laughed, amused his brother could find a fellow food-enthusiast wherever he went. “You promised me a…what was it called again? A gally-something, whilst we’re in Italy.”
“A galani.” Yuui corrected. “You’ll like it.”
Fai leaned back into him, put at ease by the other’s presence. “It’s got sugar in it?”
“As I said,” Yuui smiled, nodding and wrapping an arm loosely around his sibling’s waist. “You’ll like it.” Fai’s sweet-tooth was horrendous.
Fai laughed again. “I’ll take your word for it.”
#
Yuui sat impatiently in the VIP seats, waiting for his brother’s game to start. He knew Fai was getting ready somewhere out of sight with the rest of his team, wrapping himself up in the protection that was necessary for the rather aggressive sport. Sometimes he wished Fai had chosen some other sport than ice hockey - the sport always seemed so violent, and he worried that Fai would end up hurt -, but it was the game his brother loved, smiling and laughing and ever-waving as he’d skated out onto the ice during practice, for his earlier games.
“You know someone that’ll be going out there?” The woman sitting beside Yuui spoke - the blond had been placed with the family members, close friends and significant others of the competitors in the ice hockey games, a few of the other sportsmen and women occasionally fluttering through, killing time between their own displays and competitions.
Yuui nodded, rubbing his hands together from the cold. He really should’ve worn gloves. “My brother.”
“The Russian team?” The woman was clearly looking at his fine colouring. Yuui nodded again, and the stranger smiled, red lips curving in a knowing way. “All the best to him then.”
“And you, Ms…?”
“Ichihara. Yuuko Ichihara.” Yuui blinked once, recognising the name. Wasn’t that-? “Of course,” ‘Yuuko’ confided almost immediately after, “that’s not my real name.”
“Right.” Another blink. If Yuui wasn’t wrong, Yuuko Ichihara was the name of a Japanese professional figure skating champion from a few years before - hadn’t she gone into coaching? She supervised some…hot-tempered upcoming male Russian skater and his sweet-faced partner, the news had said (not that Yuui had been focusing all that much, looking for information on his brother). Either way, she looked pretty good for her supposed age.
“I got temporarily kicked out of the hotel after my tutee finished his short program the other day,” Yuuko remarked idly, plucking out a small silver flask from one of her coat’s deep pockets and taking a drink - it smelled potently alcoholic. “He threw a lamp at my head.”
“…He lost?” The suggestion was a mild one.
“He came first.”
“Oh.” The world was insane. “Congratulations?”
“He has the free program to get through later this evening, but he’s forbidden me from watching him. He said I was distracting.” Yuuko sighed melodramatically, sprawling back in her seat, limbs all akimbo and her rather indecent dress riding up her legs. “Do I look distracting to you?”
Yuui felt what could have possibly been a mild headache coming on - talking to Yuuko felt a lot like talking to a half-drunken Fai. “I’m sure your tutee meant your being forbidden in the very best way, Ms. Ichihara. This way he can focus all his attention on his performance?”
The woman snorted. “He would’ve done that anyway - Kurogane doesn’t know how to have fun.” She pouted. “He hid all my sake - and after Watanuki-kun carried it all the way to the hotel for me too!” Another sigh. “You never gave me your name, Mr-?”
“Yuui Fluorite.” Yuui pitied whoever ‘Watanuki’ was. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Then pray point out your brother to me when he comes on, if you please, Mr. Fluorite.” It sounded almost like a command. “I would’ve liked to have tried to guess which one he was myself by his looks, but the helmets they wear in this game make it awfully hard.”
Yuui smiled. “I’d be glad to.”
They made further small talk as they waited for the game to start, Yuuko draining her flask and tucking it away out of sight once more the moment the two teams came on, the noise of the packed stadium trebling and trebling again at the prospect of the sport to come. Yuui obligingly pointed out his brother as soon as Fai came on; both he and Yuuko following the figure through the game, watching Fai weave through the packed bodies on the ice.
“He’s good,” the woman remarked halfway through the game, seeing Fai deflect the puck from the half of the rink he was defending, sending into careening over to a teammate on the other side.
“He is,” Yuui agreed, pleased. “Fai loves skating - he has done ever since we were small. Ice hockey just seemed natural for him.”
“Oh, he -” Yuuko halted mid-sentence, gaze suddenly sharpening on the rink, and Yuui twisted about just in time to see his brother trip, fall, someone from the other team going down with him in a tangle of limbs and sticks and sharp, sharp blades, a clatter that echoed through and over the crowds, followed by the shrill shriek of the referee’s whistle.
The other player got up almost straight away afterwards, a little shaky, grabbing at his stick. Fai, on the other hand, didn’t - and there was red suddenly pooling on the ice.
“Fai -” Yuui felt glued to his seat, frozen, the medics rushing out onto the rink when the referee frantically beckoned them, Fai unmoving, sprawled out. They hurried to him, slipping on the rink’s surface, around Fai and blocking him from his brother’s view -“FAI!!”
Tokyo, Japan, July 2009
“She’s the third one you’ve rejected this month.” Yuuko sighed as she watched her tutee’s latest attempt at a skating partner stomped out of the room with the rink, not even bothering to take off her skates. She slammed the door behind her - sayonara, attempt number twenty-three. “Really Kurogane, I didn’t raise you to have such terrible manners.”
“You didn’t raise me at all!!” Kurogane drew to an irate halt before his coach, all but stamping his blade on the ice in (what Yuuko saw as) his petulance.
“Whaaat?” Yuuko feigned being scandalised. “After I gave you such tender loving care -”
“You call drinking me out of my home ‘tender loving care’?!”
“- Nursed you through your sicknesses -”
“You made me sick more often than not.”
“ - Fed you -”
“You made the flaily kid cook.”
“- Clothed you -”
“I bought my clothes myself.”
“ - Tucked you up in bed at night -”
“You did what.”
“It’s true~!” Yuuko clapped her hands, eyes sparkling. “Kurogane is terribly cute when he cuddles his pillow.”
Kurogane glared at her. “I do not cuddle my pillow.”
“You do, you do!” His coach began rifling around in her purse, withdrawing some rather dog-eared photographs and presenting them with a dazzling smile. All of them were candid shots of Kurogane asleep, and in nigh all of them the skater was, indeed, cuddling his pillow.
Kurogane immediately made a grab for them.
“Ah, ah, ah~!” Yuuko pulled them out of reach, waggling one finger at the man chidingly.
“Give me those.” Kurogane did not want to know why his coach carried around pictures of him in her purse. Really, he didn’t. Just as long as those photos were little more than multicoloured confetti, post-haste.
“Kurogane’s been a bad boy, just recently.” Yuuko held the pictures just out of reach. “You’ve been sulking terribly ever since Turin.”
“Like hell I have, witch.” He was a grown man. Grown men didn’t sulk.
“So you took a fall on the ice; it’s no reason to be eternally angry at Tomoyo-chan -”
“I’m not angry at Tomoyo!”
“But,” Yuuko said, tucking away the photographs, “you are angry. If not at Tomoyo-chan then - at who? Yourself? She didn’t quit professional skating because of you, Kurogane.”
Kurogane scowled, and glanced aside. “It’s none of your damn business.”
“It is currently very much my business, Kurogane, when you keep scaring all your partners away.” Yuuko had returned to her chiding tones. “There are only so many Russian skaters of a high enough quality around to partner you and still have you both considered a viable entry for the Olympics - must I remind you that the event is next year?”
“No.” The reply was growled out.
“Then,” said Yuuko, and smacked her tutee upside the head with her handbag, “learn to play nice!”
Novosibirsk, Russia, August 2009
Yuui stood in the centre of the rink and watched as his brother circled it, once, twice, three times, faster and faster, actions as smooth as they’d ever been, his face shadowed by his golden hair. Fai didn’t smile when he skated anymore - Turin three years before had stolen that from him, and replaced it with a thin scar beside his left eye. The mark was barely noticeable to anyone looking at him, but it was painfully obvious to Fai himself, the visible sign of what he’d lost.
“Fai…” Yuui watched a little helplessly as his twin made another loop of the rink, not looking at him. He’d thought to make Fai feel a little better by taking him to the ice rink in the times when it was quiet, but pulling on the skates had only seemed to have made Fai drawn even more into himself.
In Turin…Fai had lost the peripheral vision in his left eye in Turin, knocked out cold by a blow with the ice and someone else’s blade dragging sharply across his cheek and temple. He could still see out of the eye - the doctors had called it a miracle and said Fai should’ve been thankful to retain his sight -, but it made little difference to the hockey-player in the long run. Without his peripheral vision the game - his life - suddenly became so much harder, and he had been forced to retire from the Olympic team. The fact he could still skate so very beautifully was like a slap to the face.
“Fai,” Yuui skated closer to his brother, trying to draw the other out of his reverie, “do you want to go now?”
“I’m fine, Yuui.”
“Fai -” Yuui cut himself off when he felt something buzzing against his thigh, his phone vibrating in his pocket. He went to the side of the rink to answer it, leaving Fai to do his circuits, frowning at the screen’s declaration of ‘unknown number’. “…Hello?”
“Mr. Yuui Fluorite?” The voice on the other end seemed vaguely familiar.
“Speaking.”
“My name is Ms. Yuuko Ichihara - I don’t suppose you remember me?” She was rather a hard woman to forget, not that the events of that day weren’t already imprinted firmly in Yuui’s mind. “I’d like very much to meet and talk with you - would that be possible, do you think?”
Moscow, Russia, August 2009
“Did you know,” Yuuko calmly enquired, as she poured out some rather civilised cups of tea in the café they were in (Yuui was vaguely surprised at the location, he’d somehow thought the woman before him would’ve preferred meeting in a bar), “how remarkably easy it is to find personal information on the internet these days? Names. Addresses. Phone numbers, to name a few examples.”
Yuui took the cup she offered him. “Is that how you found mine?”
“No.” Then why had she mentioned the internet? “A few of my contacts gave me the information to get in touch with you. Your brother might have dropped out of the skating world, but the bonds he made once still linger.” Yuui winced at the reminder of the thought that was currently plaguing him. “My condolences for what happened, by the way. Your brother really was a promising hockey player.”
“…I’m just glad he didn’t lose his eye.” The confession was a guilty one, blurted out to the strange woman with the knowing red gaze. Yuui hadn’t even admitted that to his brother.
“Does he still skate?” Yuuko wasn’t looking at him as she drank her tea, picking at one of the cakes she’d ordered to go with her drink. “Your twin, I mean.”
“How did you know-?”
Yuuko bit into her dessert, clearly enjoying it. “Contacts, Mr. Fluorite.”
Ms. Ichihara was making Yuui feel more than a little paranoid. “Fai still skates. He doesn’t enjoy it the way he used to -” he looks like he hates himself every time he steps on the ice, “but he still skates.”
“A lack of motivation, do you think?”
“A lack…of feeling.” Fai was smooth and professional, but mechanical.
“What would you say,” Yuuko ventured, chin on her threaded hands, “if I said I could think of a way to try and reinvigorate your brother? To give him back some passion for the world on-ice.”
“Then I’d say, Ms. Ichihara, that you would be a worker of miracles.” Skating was dead to Fai.
“Would you let me try?” Yuuko persisted.
“I wouldn’t try to stop you.” Yuui had forgotten his tea. He loved his brother. If something might help Fai -
“Would I be able to come and observe him skating before saying anything definite?” The woman had to be a professional stalker. Or a P.I. But probably a stalker.
“Alright.” Yuui gave her the address of the rink he went to with his brother from time-to-time, writing it down and watching as she folded it and tucked it away on her person.
“I’ll call you to arrange a meeting again,” Yuuko said, and finished her own tea, rising to her feet. (The tea and cakes had already been paid for.)
“I’ll wait on your call,” Yuui replied, mostly to himself, and watched as Yuuko Ichihara breezed out of the café door. His initial impression of her had been right - she was a weird woman.