Title: Winning Over Time
Author: Lainx
Rating: /
Warnings: Some tame gore mentionned
Summary:
In
a distant future, brutal fights using time-jumping technics become legal. At
age 23, Victor Nikiforov, actual Planet Champion of Lapsing, has been winning for seventeen years straight and has not yet met his equal. That is, until some
well-known Katsuki Yuuri steals his title – and maybe his heart, too, if he can
bring himself to admit it.
Link to A03: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9630083
Some precisions on the “sport” played in this AU:
– Players are called “lapsers”
– The purpose is to jump through time to put an object (usually a sort of ball) in YOUR hoop (10 points). The movements through controlled time-lapses are incredibly quick.
– The different moves:
// collision (jerking the opponent back to present-time if done properly / if not, the lapser usually ends up exploding through the strata of time)
// graceful moves (1 spin = 1 point, 1 jump = 1 point, 1 spin+1jump = 5 points (so for example a triple-spin = 15 points))
– This is a commoners’ sport, cruel and dangerous and violent. The unskilled player may be jerked out of time forever or severely disembodied.
– People are doing it because:
1. It generates lots of money
2. When a talent is found, it may be exploited by unscrupulous bookmakers if the person is weak, poor, and/or if the country is a dictatorship
3. It feels like a drug for the competitors (even non-benevolent). Once you start lapsing, if you are good enough to even manage flying through time consciously, the feeling is so exhilarating you can barely think about stopping
– After a while, though, the body becomes not stable enough = either you stop before exploding through time-lapse or at least seriously injure yourself (losing a limb), or you continue and starts defusing
– Length of one match: 2 minutes
Here is the fanfiction ^^:
Nikiforov grabs the
ball. He jumps to the right, and…oh, quadruple-spin! That’s 20 points more for
Nikiforov, I believe! Ah, he ducks out of Giacometti lapse… He reappears near
the blue barrier – the blue barrier, field of Katsuki, one of the most
challenging opponent for Nikiforov, and…collision! Katsuki collided with
Nikiforov, steals the ball back, and – wow, that’s three spins and a
triple-spin, 18 points for Katsuki, he’s so close to his hoop, he lapses once
more and…yes! 10 more points for Katsuki! Nikiforov doesn’t seem hurt – he’s
laughing, haha. The ball gets back to the middle, and Chulanont is already
lapsing to it – such an exotic style of spinning, no wonder the public adores
him and – oh, god, Nikiforov! Stop those quadruple-spins already! That’s 40
points more for Nikiforov, how does he even manage… The only opponents now able
to catch up with Nikiforov are Katsuki, Giacometti and Leroy! Who will manage
to close up the 20 points at least gap between them and the ever-champion? Only
forty seconds more to go! The ball is back to the middle. Leroy collides with
Giacometti! … No one is hurt. But… KATSUKI! KATSUKI! OH GOD!!
The clamor is deafening. He doesn’t know where
he breathes anymore. Is he even in the present? Who knows. He swirls, swirls,
swirls. Jumps, jumps, jumps. He can feel Nikiforov coming for him – a gentle
collision, as always. But not this time.
Yuuri barrels out of the time fabric with an
unearthly grace, launching himself in his favorite move – triple-spins. One,
two, he catches the ball, elapses…the speed is exhilarating. He never wants to
stop.
KATSUKI PUTS THE BALL
IN HIS NET AFTER A GLORIOUS SEQUENCE OF TRIPLE-SPINS-SPIN-DOUBLE-SPIN-SPIN AND
WINS THE COMPETITION, LEADING AHEAD OF NIKIFOROV BY 3 POINTS!!! INCREDIBLE
KATSUKI YUURI! HE JUST BUSTED THE WORLD RECORD LONG-HELD BY VICTOR NIKIFOROV!!!
THE CROWD IS IN FRENZY, BOOKMAKERS EVERYWHERE ARE GOING CRAZY, THIS IS
INCREDIBLE!
More. More speed. He can do even better. The
field pulsates around him – he can feel them. Phichit, Giacometti, Leroy,
Nekola, Popovich…and Nikiforov. He knows their presences by heart, can
recognize them within an instant. Giacometti’s is the strongest, but Leroy’s is
the most aggressive – even if nothing can match the aura of Yuri Plisetsky in
terms of aggressiveness. Phichit is a familiar aura to deal with – playful, but
infinitely threatening if you don’t really watch out. Nekola and Popovich have
highly emotional, technical auras – but Nekola’s more solid than Popovich’s.
And then…there is Nikiforov’s aura. The brightest of them all, the purest, the
one he has always sought and fought against.
He wants to collide with him again. He wants to
fight with him again.
More, more, more! It’s never enough, it can never be enough, and he can already feel
himself slipping in the fabric of time again, and…
TRANSFER THROUGH TIME: ALL PROCESS STOP.
The voice echoes through the arena, supplanting
the cheers and the whooping. The equipment Yuuri bears brutally stops sticking
to his skin and his feet are liberated from the blades anchoring him to the
short-present time. He falls to the ground, covered in sweat and panting
harshly.
It’s never agreeable to come back to the
present. Gliding through time and touching the aura of your opponents is so
adrenaline-charged – most of them never want to stop at the end of the match.
Hence the security system at the end of it, forcing the entrants to give up
their time jumping equipment.
A dark-skinned hand appears before his eyes,
and he gratefully grasps it. Phichit is crying – of course he is, Yuuri just
won the Planet Championship of Lapse, against its long-term winner. Three
points are not much – but in this world, three points mean at least years of a
full belly and warm home to spend their nights into.
“Yuuri.”
The voice is soft, and a bit amused. Victor Nikiforov
is here, considering him with a wide grin on his handsome face. Phichit
tactfully heads away to congratulate the other competitors, not without winking
at Yuuri, whose focus is abruptly fixated on his greatest opponent.
“That was an impressive spin-sequence,” Victor
comments, a finger on his thin lips. “I never imagined someone could win
without any quadruple-spins.”
“You mean, “win over you”, right,” Yuuri
deadpans.
His body is still tickling in every direction.
He aches to be back in motion.
“Is that not rather “win me over”, though,
Yuuri?” Victor teases.
Confronted with Yuuri unimpressed look at his
bad flirting, the former champion laughs heartily. They’ve been challenging
each other for years; he finds out he can’t really feel sad or angry his title
has been stolen from him. He is mostly amused, and slightly still reeling of
the beauty that has been Katsuki Yuuri in the arena.
“Come on, let’s go to the stabilization room,”
Yuuri mumbles, edging away swiftly.
Victor breaks into a tiny run behind him,
grabbing his hand and swinging it between them like a child. How Victor can
still be this enthusiastic after such an intense fight is beyond Yuuri (what he
doesn’t know is that, unlike him, Victor will most-likely fall asleep in the
stabilization room, then grouch for all rest of the day because of his
artificially-induced responsiveness to journalists).
“Oh, my Yuuri, won’t you wait for me!” Victor
falsely cries, still swinging their hands together.
“Idiot,” the Japanese lapser says.
He still sends a fond smile his way, though. He
doesn’t want to take back his hand – not now, not ever.
They seem to be
working together, this is a style of lapsing we’ve never seen in the arena,
now, have we? Oh, look at this, Nikiforov just threw him in a collision with
Chulanont, and it does work! Are they even competing against each other or is
it just about having fun to them? Betcha the bookmakers won’t like that, oh no
they won’t! What lovely spin-sequences it allows, though, look at these gorgeous
triple-spins, it’s obvious Katsuki and Nikiforov utterly dominate their
opponents, their scores are over the top!
Yuuri had never lapsed like this. Before, he
always sought collisions with other lapsers, especially Victor, because he was good at them; enter the aura-sphere, push
them in the present, steal the ball, and fly.
But now, Victor invites him in. He pulls him
within his sphere and they share the same time for the briefest moment. The
speed is even better, the sensations are even stronger. It’s almost like making
love through the fabric of time – for the first time, Yuuri understand how
someone like Chris can take actual
pleasure from lapsing.
He disentangles himself from Phichit easily,
sending a cocky grin his way, and sets himself for a triple-spin sequence. He
is close to lapsing through time when an aura suddenly appears before him. It’s
the red, furious and elegant lapsing of Yuri Plisetsky, who has recently taken
an extreme interest in him – as a rival, mostly. Yuuri knew he was going to try
blocking him, and had extensively studied his collision methods. He technically
knows how to avoid his trajectory. He technically knows how to reverse the
collision to his advantage. He practiced it.
That’s why he doesn’t expect to be thrown out
of focus, his legs horribly bending under him. His blades shake, and the
irreparable happens: one of them rises in the air.
Immediately, Yuuri loses his grip on the
short-present time. His breath is caught, and fear courses through him at a
lightning speed. He desperately tries to grab the fabric of time back, to just stop moving, already, but the haste with
which he had been moving is unforgivable – with a sharp cry of agony, he gets
sucked in the short fissure he used to jump through time not a second ago, and
disappears from the arena.
In the same second, all the lapsers are stopped
in their course, their equipment fall to the ground, and an eerie silence fills
the stadium. Even the announcers are silent.
The familiar music begins, prompting people to
rise to their feet, while the lapsers dumbly get on their knees. The waiting
begins.
Disappearance of Katsuki Yuuri, current Planet
Champion. No detection. Chances of survival: 10%.
The first sobs start. Disappearances are
frequent – after all, playing with time is
risky – but rarely does the Planet Champion themselves disappear. What’s more
is that Katsuki Yuuri, all shyness and modesty, has been a very likeable Champion.
The lapsers are in sickened shock. Phichit’s
hands are scrambling on the floor, like he’s trying to go through it or to
anchor himself. Yuri Plisetsky’s eyes are wild, his breath comes in tiny puffs
of panic, as he stares incredulously at the point where Katsuki Yuuri slipped
through time.
And Victor… Victor’s face is contorted in
pain.
It had happened to him time and time again.
Friends, enemies, acquaintances…either they were willingly lapsing or brought
to the arena by ravenous bookmakers, they ended up fading away. One misstep is
enough to never see the light of present ever again. He had sworn, again and
again, that he would never let himself come close to a mediocre lapser. All his
“friends”, now, were among the very best.
Never had he thought he would let himself have
a lover. Never had he thought that said brilliant lover, who proved to be even
better than him, would fall during the fight as well.
A distinct screeching is bouncing through the
stadium. The cameras, ever so rotten, focus on Victor’s heavy cries. The
audience ratings are going crazy as the news spread around. Christophe stumbles
until he is close enough to his friend to embrace him. All the lapsers feel
like they’ve been punched in the guts. Throughout the last years, the
blossoming and adorable relationship between Victor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri
had been a glimmer of hope and optimism in the dull and cruel world of lapsing.
The couple had even started to play with the idea of marriage.
“Ask for it,” the deep baritone suggests in
Victor’s ear. “Everyone will understand it.”
But Victor is too shaken, is in too much pain,
he can’t bring himself to open his mouth. He desperately clutch at Christophe’s
suit, frantically trying not to fall apart.
“I request the permission to conduct detection
manually.”
Yuri Plisetski’s voice soars over the
surrounding noises, loud, clear, and terrified. His hands are fisted so tightly
his knuckles are white and his arms are trembling.
“No!” “Yurachka, no!” “Yuri, don’t be stupid!”
The protests are unending. From fans, mostly,
but also from some lapsers, who somewhat consider young lapser Yuri as a little
brother. And you don’t usually let little brothers voluntary jumping through
time in order to search for the tiniest glimpse of a lost man.
Permission granted.
Immediately, Yuri’s gear begins glimmering,
indicating it has been reactivated. Sporting a grim and solemn face, the young
boy adjusts his parameters.
Suddenly Victor looks up, shaking his head at
him in denegation. Don’t do it. I don’t
want to lose you as well.
“I fucked up, Victor. I have to try.” Yuri
comments with a watery frown.
And then
he tenses, and then he jumps, and then he disappears.
The space between times is suffocating. There
is a reason you don’t actually stay long in it during competitions. The green
and black pulsing and rubbery fabric can be teared for a second – but as soon
as you tread through the opening, it closes back behind you, protecting events
and lives.
Yuri can’t give up yet. He can faintly feel
Yuuri’s aura – always the most beautiful one in the arena, if he has any says
in it. He had spent years following this aura, trying to learn all the
magnificent and sharp ways of it. He is clutching at straws, but he needs to,
he needs to find him, or it will never be okay anymore. Victor will never smile again. He will have to
resign from competition – how could he continue to collide with other lapsers,
if each one of them would, obviously, think of the disappearance he caused each
time it would happen?
He tears and tears, works against the time
restraint, clasping his gear. His hands, armed with the time tearing blades,
brusquely hit something very hard, and he yells at the sting. He lifts up his
head sharply, and his breath catches.
He is currently facing a sort of cocoon. The
surface is not smooth, and Yuri is hardly able to see through the material
composing it. He tries to tear it again, more softly this time, and watches in
amazement as the dent he leaves in the surface quickly resorb in another bump.
This is an example of time being distorted – he
knows, he can feel it. As he lays his bare hand on the hardened fabric, a soft
hit answers him.
“Hey, Yurio…”
And Yuri could cry, because before him Katsuki
Yuuri appears, suit slightly battered and lifeless, and definitely stuck in a
time distortion.
They look at each other, sadly beaming. The
greenish darkness surrounding them is soft in its rubbery quality…almost warm.
They have been in there for a long time, standing in the fabric of future.
“I’m waiting for you, you know. One, two, three
years, more, it does not matter to me.” the dark-haired man says.
His fiancé answers with a grin tainted with aching.
He is not so worried about it either – he knows that even time is not able to
separate them.
“It’s just…so strange. Being here, stuck in a
still-point of future, waiting for you to age and come back to me, all while
being able to watch you’re already aged-up version trying to live without me…
It barely feels like I’m living at all.”
“Now, don’t say that”, the other man
interjects. “You are, my dear, very much alive to me.”
The dark-haired man, graciously spinning on
himself, giggles. It’s so easy to tease his lover – even on such a grave
subject. He never expected to reach that level of familiarity with him – and
still here they were, relationship strong as ever, able to joke and laugh at
the face of their misfortune.
“I’m not sure what to call me. I stopped aging.
I stopped needing to eat or drink.”
“It doesn’t mean that you’re dead, solnishka.”
He sighs, extending his hand towards him. Four
years is a long time to wait until he can touch his lover again. Especially
since his body will slowly become less stable and thus less liable to jump
through time. When you have already spent seventeen years lapsing in
competitions at 23, you can’t expect to go on for much longer until your body
gives up (such an elegant term for the actual process of exploding at the
molecular level).
“It just means you’re stuck”, he continues.
“And I’ll come to you. Old and wrinkly, but still.”
Yuuri guffaws before him. Oh, how he longs to
just…hug him and kiss him already.
“Don’t worry, I’ll still love you.”
“You will, won’t you, Yuuri?” Victor echoes
with mischief.
“Baka”, his lover mumbles back teasingly.
They stare at each other for a while, before
brusquely coming close to the surface of the time cocoon simultaneously,
desperately pressing themselves as close to the other as possible.
“I miss you, Yuuri, I miss you so much,” Victor
breathes. “Everyday life is nothing
but a chore without you. I can’t believe… I just can’t accept I’ll only be able to see you every two months, for four years, and how…how will I…”
“Shh, shh, Vitya, shh…” Yuuri coos, his heart
painfully squeezing in his chest. “Don’t cry, don’t cry…”
“I love you, Yuuri-chan…”
“I know, Vitya, I love you too… Don’t cry,
love, don’t cry…”
The red light is already shining around
Victor’s shaking shoulders. Time is up; he is called back into the present.
“No, no, Yuuri, my Yuuri…”
“Take care of you, Vitya! I’ll wait for you!”
Yuuri calls as he watches his lover’s silhouette evaporate. “I love you!”
The words however only address the green night.
When turning 24, Victor Nikiforov spends his
birthday crying on his own, unable to withstand the loneliness.
When turning 25, Victor Nikiforov is dragged to
a birthday party by his best friend who retired a year after him, eats lovingly
baked piroshkies and drinks so much he ends up [sleeping in his chair].
When turning 26, Victor Nikiforov adopts an
extremely big puddle which bright eyes and happy barks makes him laugh truly
for the first time in years.
And when turning 27, Victor Nikiforov is able
to slip in the time fabric to spend a few precious minutes with his fiancé.
“Can you believe, Yuuri… In little less than a
month, time will release you.” Victor beams, one hand casually laid on the
bumpy surface of the globe he came to know so well.
“I can’t wait,” Yuuri answers in Russian.
During his four years in the still-point, he
actually learnt quite a lot. In order to prevent him from going crazy, Victor
and their friends had sponsored the installment of a vocally operated teaching
station (that had been slightly modified to allow other activities). Yuuri had
thus taken the time to thoroughly learn the language of his fiancé, but also
the one of his best friend and the one of his fiancé’s best friend (which he
knows Victor also speaks).
Still using the same language, Yuuri goes on:
“I want to meet Makkachin.”
“It’s not even me, it’s the dog, isn’t it?”
Victor jokes.
“Shut up…”
“You don’t mind that.”
Yuuri sticks his tongue at him.
“No, I don’t. I don’t think I can ever tire of
hearing your voice, honestly. I never want to go on without it again.”
“Yuuri…”
“Ah, I’m getting a bit extreme, aren’t I,”
Yuuri stammers, slightly blushing.
“If only you knew how much I want to kiss you
right now…”
Yuuri has no idea why each of their
conversations dissolve into sweet nothings until Victor is dragged back in the
present, but he won’t complain.
The remaining month compared to the last years
should have appeared rather short. And still, the contrary happens; Victor
drives everyone around him literally crazy and Yuuri wallows in impatience in
his temporal jail. It seems like their whole beings can feel they are soon to
be reunited – as if their atoms, in remembrance of the days they spent
intertwining their auras, yearned to mix together once again.
The specialists of time-calculations were able
to pinpoint the day of Yuuri’s liberation, but the hour. So in the early
morning, the arena begins to fill with all kind of people – long fans of
Katsuki Yuuri, onlookers, some journalists… A perimeter of security has been
drawn around the place Yuuri is supposed to reappear in, just to be safe.
Around the red line sit the lapsers. It is not the first time someone makes it
out of time distortion – but the phenomena is still so rare, so undreamt of,
that even new lapsers who have never met the former champion came to witness
it.
The forefront, though, is reserved for Yuuri’s
family and friends, and, of course, fiancé. Said fiancé is slowly breaking
apart, shaking in anticipation. The atmosphere is febrile – the miraculous man
could appear at any moment. Phichit, still a competitor at 24 years old,
despite the trauma his best friend loss caused, stands straight, his eyes
twinkling. Christophe is glancing at Victor, an easy smile on lips, while
hugging his dark-haired boyfriend. Katsuki Hiroko is tightly embraced by her
husband and her close-friend, Yuuri’s old mentor, Minako-sensei. Yuri has a
hand on Yuuri’s sister’s back, his other one tightly grasped in the hand of his
best friend, Otabek Altin. He can’t wait to introduce Yuuri to him – he talked
about him each time he visited Yuuri and he knew the man was curious.
Victor is on the edge, barely restraining
himself from running around the arena in agony. He bounces on his feet
impatiently, scratch the head of his dog, bounces a bit more, shakes his arms,
sits, stands, bounces again… He can’t wait, he can’t wait, he can’t…
Slowly, a wave of uneasiness attacks the
spectators. The air seems to mold, troubled. The ground of the arena flashes,
vanishing for a second, making a few people scream.
A loud crack bursts through the air,
frightening and dreadful, before a hideous flash of green distort present time.
Several shrieks of terror arise from the bystanders, while the lapsers, all
used to the revolting form of the fabric of time, eagerly search for a trace of
life among the chaos.
Suddenly, with a gracious movement, Katsuki
Yuuri emerges from the mess, still dressed in his old blue and transparent
glimmering suit, blades on his feet, and the biggest smile ever on his
face.
And then the time flows again. Both lovers
waste no time in running to each other.
“Victor! Victor, you are here! Victor!” Yuuri
shouts, his whole body leaning towards his love.
He does not stop gliding on the smooth ground
when he meets Victor, but it is no concern, because Victor is here, because
Victor is all but throwing himself at him while crying of joy.
Victor kisses him hard. So hard they topple on
the ground, arms and legs tangled, desperately clutching at each other. He can
faintly hear the giggles and the gasps of their friends and family, but his
only thought is “So warm, so warm, so
good, oh god, so GOOD!” and he does not
plan to stop any soon.
After a few minutes of kissing and rediscovering
the feeling of their bodies touching, barks and whines interrupt them. With a
laugh, they separate just enough to allow a big brown poodle to sniff at
Yuuri’s hair and clothes, before deciding to lick his entire face in
excitation.
“Makkachin, noooo,” Yuuri falsely complains,
heavily petting his new child. “Noooo!”
Victor is peppering kisses on his neck, his
clavicles, his body shaking with happiness. This is univocally the best day of
his life.
As if Makkachin had given them permission,
other people start arriving on them, losing their inhibitions. It is Yuri
frantically yelling “Fuck fuck FUCK!”, it is Phichit helping him to his feet
and hugging his back (Victor still refuses to let him go), it is his family
touching him, making sure he is unscathed and real, it is the roar of the
crowd.
Looks like Katsuki
Yuuri is alive and well!! Our 2XXX Planet Champion is still ever-so graceful,
did you see that entrance – or, well, departure? Will he fight for his title
back?
KATSUKI YUURI, LADIES,
GENTLEMEN AND SUCH. THE MIRACULOUS CHAMPION!!!
As he watches all his loved ones gathered
around him and hears the expressions of joy of the crowd and announcers, he
knows.
It is love.
Plume de Lynx 