LINKDING

Summary: The summer before Viktor Nikiforov's senior debut, he met Katsuki Yuuri at a joint skating/ballet training camp. The two of them quickly became inseparable...until Viktor broke Yuuri's heart. Now, twelve years later, Yuuri is a rising Hollywood star, Viktor is contemplating retirement, and Yuri Plisetsky needs a ballet coach for his senior debut. Luckily, Lilia happens to know the perfect candidate. Based on Jane Austen's Persuasion ➤ a Viktor/Yuuri YoI fic that's retelling the story of Persuasion ➤ but, and this is key, with the genius idea of casting viktor in the role of anne, and yuuri in the role of capt wentworth ➤ and hot damn the fic takes this premise and runs with it beautifully ➤ I was kicking my feet with delight regularly as I read! ➤ excellent characterisation and fun alterations from canon ➤ 50k words

Summary: <blockquote>Clearly the AMV was always going to be about Victor's pre-canon depression - hearing the lyric 'well my heart is gold but my hands are cold' was what made me want to make this, because that is perfect for Victor and I need to steal it for a fic title some day. But it also ended up becoming about the intensity of media pressure on Victor. </blockquote>

<blockquote>In which people try and fail and try again. Keep up the good work!</blockquote> ➤ song is by garfunkel and oates

<blockquote>As chief communications officer on board the Interstellar Alliance Fleet’s Star Ship Victory, Yuuri doesn’t have to think about who he actually is on his home planet. He just has to listen to his captain, do his job, and…not fall in love with his best friend, the ship’s science officer, Victor Nikiforov. Well. Two out of three’s not bad. Then his mother calls with the worst possible news: She, the Empress of New Nihon, has arranged Yuuri’s marriage. There’s only one thing Yuuri can do: Fake a boyfriend, and fake one fast. Who better/worse to play that role than the friend he wishes was more? What can go wrong? It’s not like Yuuri can fall more in love...</blockquote>

<blockquote>AU. Before the Grand Prix Final starts in Sochi, Yuuri finds Victor's phone. He returns it--and hijinks and heavy flirtation ensue.</blockquote>

<blockquote> a longfic study in why dating someone in your highly competitive field is not, perhaps, the wisest of ideas. </blockquote>

<blockquote>In which both Victor and Yakov have to remake themselves – Victor after his first Olympic gold and Yakov after his divorce.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In a universe where same-sex pairs skating is entirely normal, things turn out a little differently for our heroes.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Yuuri moves to St Petersburg, he decides that learning to speak Russian is an important step in his relationship with Viktor. Russian may be tough, but Yuuri will be tougher. Probably.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"Anonymous asked: Okay friend, here’s a fun idea. YOI AU where everything is the same, but Viktor never cut his hair."</blockquote> ➤ that's....literally all this is, yup, and for some reason I'm here for it

<blockquote>(Canon-divergence. The Nishigori triplets never upload Yuuri's rendition of Stammi Vicino online. Yuuri buys himself time to decide whether he wants to stay on the ice or retire by joining Minami Kenjirou's team as an assistant coach. Victor never hears from the beautiful Japanese skater after Sochi. He choreographs On Love: Eros because he can’t quite let go, but it’s getting harder to push himself on the ice and the cracks are starting to show. Two lost individuals take a different route to find love and life, but they eventually get there all the same.)</blockquote> ➤ I really liked the dynamics between Yuuri and Minami and Minami's coach and wished it had continued to be a strong theme as the fic went towards its end, but the other things the fic is doing are good too

<blockquote>It all starts because Isabella asks him, point-blank, the question J.J.’s never quite had the nerve to ask himself. It’s tickled at the edge of his mind before, but he’s never let it take hold; it would only—complicate things. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” she says, and there’s a glint in her eyes he hasn’t seen often. Curiosity and pleasure and apprehension all at once, like the day she asked him out for the first time, or years later when he dropped to one knee with a ring in his pocket and his words almost failing him.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Whenever the phone rings at 4 a.m., it’s never someone calling to say you won a million dollars or an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean, or that your bronze medal has just been bumped up to silver due to some kind of scandal. 4 a.m. calls are reserved for emergencies and tragedies, so Otabek’s heart almost slams out of his chest when Yuri’s name pops up on the screen at 4:13 a.m. on a freezing January night.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"I was ready for the downslide but not for spring to well up."</blockquote>

<blockquote>Tears pooled in Yuuri’s eyes as he rested his forehead on his tightly clasped hands. It was the dead of night, and he was bone tired from rehearsals and performances, but still he couldn’t sleep. His body began to shake and his fingers tightened their grip as he tried to control the sobs that came in quiet gasps. He bit his lower lip to stem the flow of tears, silently praying that no one else could hear him in that tiny apartment. Yuuri is desperate to finish his final year in Juilliard, and is offered an unconventional solution to all his problems.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Victor takes figure skating seriously, takes Yuri Katsuki seriously as a competitor, and really doesn't see that banquet coming.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ensemble Yuri On Ice AMV "So level up, and love again"</blockquote>

<blockquote>"I know we only really met yesterday, and this may be skipping ahead a lot," says Victor, "but would it be all right if we told people we're dating?"</blockquote> ➤ wip through part 14, last updated in 2018

<blockquote>It's maddening to find out how much more he has to learn about Yuri -- but at the same time, Victor is glad of it too.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yuuri wakes up in Victor’s room the night after the Sochi Grand Prix Final banquet. Did they sleep together? No. Instead, last night, Drunk Yuuri taunted Victor that he hadn’t earned the right to get in his pants…and spelled out exactly what Victor would have to do to get there. Now, Victor intends to do everything on that list… ~ “The conversation,” Victor says, “went something like this. You said I wasn’t getting in your pants that easily.” Victor says this in a normal tone of voice. Anyone could hear him. Yuuri looks around, but if anyone is paying attention, they’re pretending not to. “Naturally, I asked what I would have to do to get in your pants.” “Ah.” Yuuri blushes. “How embarrassing. What do you mean, naturally? Why would you ask that?” Victor tilts his head. “Because I want to get in your pants. I thought that much was obvious by now.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Plagued by his poor performance at the GPF, Yuuri’s disastrous free at Japanese Nationals ends not just in eleventh-place, but deals him with a lasting injury, resulting in him retiring before the events of the show. He becomes a commentator, determined to move on from his uneventful skating career. Yet, a series of chance meetings with a smitten Viktor and his own yearning for the ice keeps drawing him back to competitive figure skating. In which everything's different, but it all ends the same anyway.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yuri tucks his face into his outflung arm. "I haven't done anything with anyone." Since it's Otabek, he doesn't have to explain. He can just look at the way the grass bends under his arm, trace his eyes down the blades into the shadow of his body. "You didn't tell me how it doesn't work. I want to know." Otabek sighs. "It doesn't fit." As if Yuri could resist that challenge.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Do you still paint your nails at all?” Yuuri asks. “Yeah,” Victor says—and it’s a moment before he realizes this is a lie. He still intends to paint his nails. He still thinks of himself as the sort of person who paints his nails. But he hasn’t actually done it in years.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yuuri's husband is possibly not as oblivious as he seems, because he grins and asks, "Have you never looked up Yuuri?" "There's a porn actress with the same name who went into politics," says Nate, "so she's most of the results, and some stuff about figure skating." "Some stuff about figure skating," Victor says ruefully to Yuuri.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Have you ever accidentally committed fic? There are lots of Yuri-is-adopted stories on the AO3, mostly with Victor and/or Yuuri as the adoptive parents. Seeing those stories, I found myself thinking of real Russian orphanages and international adoptions from Russia. And almost before I could stop myself, this fic happened. It's rather dark, in its way, so be warned.</blockquote>

<blockquote>At the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri misses the podium by fractions of a point. Embroiled in a skating controversy, he tells himself he'll prove his worth in the World Championships, but there's a long time in between. Or: Vicchan lives.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yuri Plisetsky will never step out of Victor's shadow. Not if Victor has anything to do with it. Or, the epic Nikiforov-Plisetsky rivalry in the run-up to the 2018 Olympic Games.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yuuri, given to periodic bouts of paranoia, would often wonder if Viktor is, in fact, a Russian drug lord on the loose, seeking refuge in a nondescript town in America. This would explain a manner of things: his evasiveness whenever probed about his job; the way he’d unpredictably throw out incisive, thoughtful commentary about the morning news over breakfast; his expensive tastes in shirts, watches, and wallets alike; why he’d want to stay here with Yuuri, of all places, when the contents his wardrobe alone could probably afford him a year-long stay at any condominium of his choice in the trendiest part of town. And then he goes on to discover that Viktor actually has a premium account on club penguin, and that his five penguins are named Peanut Wigglebutt, Luke skyhopper, Zing Zing, Otto Von Longdong, and Mooshoo Vegetable, and beats the idea to death in his head.</blockquote>