Yuuri either did exceptionally well or exceptionally bad. He had none of an élite skater’s calculating edge—that pragmatic voice reminding him to pull his best moves until the final, to compromise a long-shot road to gold for a sure path to bronze. Had he known restraint, Celestino could have turned him into a medallist, but he never would have worn gold.
When he was younger, Yuri had appreciated the daring of his name-sharer. What was the point of the sport if you were always pulling back for fear of reprisal? He already had enough headaches compromising all the wasted expectations of a normal life for what he was given. All or nothing, he would think in competition, launching himself into a jump too advanced for his age set. Yuri knew, for all Yakov's statements to the contrary, that his daring was what enraptured Yakov and those federation officials, was what compelled them to give him access to resources far above his family's means.
For all his protestations of being Yuuri’s coach, Viktor also found his guilelessness endearing. The next photo was of Viktor tugging Yuuri up to the first place podium. The one after that was the two of them kissing. Standing a tier below them, JJ had his arms stubbornly crossed into the “JJ-style” pose, but his expression was harried. Just for that expression, Yuri kept the news article of the medal ceremony open.
In These Quiet Spaces by dasedandconfuzed. 10,998 words (WIP), rated E. Yuri Plisetsky vs Puberty; the fic. A wonderfully and thoughtfully constructed fic of where thing might go post series one, it balances all these amazing elements of dealing with the way growing up often feels like a betrayal from your own body, the way that every emotion feels heightened and dramatized. There’s also a very nice (and wonderfully savage) shout out to real life figure skating at the 2016 GPF in Marseilles.