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i.
Shoma bows to the audience as he tries to catch his breath, elation and exhaustion coursing through his veins. He knows he’s just skated the best short program of his season, despite the pressure, despite everything that could have happened. His eyes automatically search for Stéphane by the rink side, and there he is, standing there in his red coat, waiting for Shoma.
He feels an almost painful sense of relief when he steps off the ice and into Stéphane’s waiting arms. Shoma moves in to hug him back, but he stumbles on the step forward, and instead of a regular hug, Stéphane’s face ends up in the crook of his neck. It’s strangely intimate, right in front of everyone, and Shoma can swear – or maybe it’s just his imagination? – that Stéphane just pressed a kiss against the side of his neck from behind the cover of his mask. Shoma squeezes Stéphane’s waist harder in return, then Demi-san hugs him from the other side, and he has to let go.
As he makes his way to the kiss&cry he touches the spot where the ghost of Stéphane’s kiss lingers. It feels like a promise, and he smiles to himself.
ii.
Shoma wins his first Grand Prix Final gold by a landslide, and the venue explodes with cheers and applause and the scream of fans. Shoma is teetering on the edge of post competition adrenaline drop – he’d almost collapsed on the ice after the end of his performance, and only seeing Stéphane ringside frantically signaling up, up! with his hands had stopped him from lying all the way down and staying there. He feels wrung out, as if every drop of energy has been squeezed out of him.
Stéphane is beside him, grinning, waving, blowing kisses into the camera, touching’s Shoma’s arm to show him where to look when photos are being taken. Shoma doesn’t know where Stéphane’s apparently endless energy comes from, but he’s grateful to him for deflecting part of the attention away from Shoma and onto himself when he notices that Shoma is close to the limit.
He’s also grateful to Stéphane for giving him something to focus on. Shoma’s emotions rarely show on the outside, and he can’t smile for the cameras, but he can smile at Stéphane, and that way everything works out. It’s easy to look happy when he’s looking at Stéphane.
Congratulations, and I’m so happy for you, you did it! Stéphane is saying, over and over. He can hear everything, but at the same time he can’t make out the words, can’t tell what they mean. Everything is a jumble of sounds, unfiltered and loud, coming at him from every direction. Shoma fights against the instinct to close his eyes and curl into himself, to float away in the unintelligible sea of light and cheers and praise.
A hand squeezes Shoma’s arm. It’s firm enough to verge on pain, and the pain brings him back. Stéphane is looking at him, a fleeting look of concern in his eyes. His scarf sort of matches Shoma’s costume. To bring good luck, he’d said. Shoma thinks it’s sweet, like everything else about Stéphane.
Stéphane draws him closer, bumps his head against Shoma’s. “Hang on a little bit longer, ok,” he whispers, and it’s so noisy that no one else, not even Demi-san, will hear. Shoma tries to say yes, but it comes out like a whimper. He’s so tired, and the lights feel too bright, the sounds too loud.
Out of the blue, Stéphane presses a kiss against his hair. It takes Shoma by surprise, the open tenderness of it, but it’s innocent enough that no one will think anything of it, and it’s enough to make Shoma perk up a little. He feels like it was worth winning the gold just for this moment alone, to have Stéphane being so generous and careless with his affection.
iii.
The post-competition backstage is the usual frenzy of press conferences and on-the-fly interviews and of being asked to stand here or there by people who want to take photos of him from every angle. Shoma soldiers through them as best as he can, and it’s only his experience with this sort of thing that stops him from wandering away to seek out a quiet, dark corner and hide away there. He grits his teeth and says something perfectly acceptable and polite about his win, like he’s been taught to, and he’s sure Hama-san must be proud.
He’s wanted this medal - the hole where a Grand Prix Final gold should have been has been standing out for years like a sore thumb, a reminder of his failure – but he doesn’t say that.
He’s also really wanted to win in Torino, a place that holds so many memories for Stéphane. Stéphane had talked about it the whole car ride, and while Shoma doesn’t care much for one city or the other, he wants Stéphane to feel happy. He wants the two of them to have memories they can share, and smile and laugh about. He doesn’t say that to the press either, but it’s nobody’s business but his own anyway.
Stéphane is going through his own round of interviews, but being Stéphane, he handles them with far more enthusiasm. A Japanese TV reporter asks Shoma to come over to Stéphane's side as they film his answers about the competition. Stéphane’s getting more emotional than usual, and he’s talking too fast for Shoma to understand. He catches snippets here and there, perform so well, and nervous, and lot of power, and memory from Torino, and thank you.
Stéphane is so sentimental, Shoma thinks fondly, and finally manages to crack a smile. The camera zooms in on his face, the shutters go crazy. Give the audience what they want, his manager always says. Shoma is never completely sure about what the audience wants, but with Stéphane around it’s easier to just go with the flow. Stéphane’s happiness is infectious, and Shoma’s never seen him so elated, like he’s the one who just won the first Grand Prix Final gold of his career.
Stéphane is still talking. Shoma inches closer to him, until their bodies touch. It’s a silent request, immediately answered by a hand resting on Shoma's bicep and another around his waist. But then Stéphane keeps talking, his hands clutching and releasing Shoma and then clutching him again like he can’t help himself. Shoma flushes. Stéphane’s hands are driving him crazy, in a way that’s not entirely pleasant. It’s too much all at once, and it adds up to the overload of people and noise and frenzy and emotion.
Stéphane is holding his hand now. Now you have your own moment from Torino, he says, eyes bright with unshed tears. For a second he looks at Shoma like he wants to kiss him right there and then, in front of everyone, then lifts Shoma’s hand to his lips and places a reverent kiss on it.
Both the kiss and the look on Stéphane’s face are so utterly unexpected that they knock the breath out of Shoma's lungs, startling him into a nervous laugh. Everyone around them seems to find it either funny or endearing, but Shoma is shaken to the core. He really wants to be somewhere more private now, to process what he’s feeling without having everything coming at him so fast. He pulls away from Stéphane, fakes another laugh, and wills time to go by faster.
vi.
The interviews are finally over, but there’s still time before the medal ceremony. Sota and Ilia are milling about with their respective teams, but Shoma doesn’t feel like making conversation with anyone. He’s glad when he finally gets to sneak away into an empty locker room and to close the door behind himself.
He slumps against the wall, letting himself slide down into the first bench he finds. He takes his face into his hands and breathes in and out as slowly and deeply as he can, like he’s been taught to, but it’s not enough to stop the feeling that everything is coming to him at once. He can hear his heartbeat, feel the rush of blood like a low buzzing in his ears.
The door opens, and when Shoma glances up from between his fingers, he’s not surprised to see Stéphane there. His arms are full of gifts from fans, but he takes one look at Shoma and drops them unceremoniously on the floor before locking the door. The click of the lock sliding shut resonates in the sudden quiet.
Stéphane crosses the room in two strides, goes down on one knee on the floor in front of Shoma. He’s going to get his nice pants dirty is the only thing Shoma can think of in his confusion, but Stéphane doesn’t seem to mind.
He clasps Shoma’s hands in his, and gently moves them away so he can see Shoma’s face.
“Shoma, everything okay?” He asks. His voice is quiet, concerned, soothing.
“Stéphane tease so much today,” Shoma mumbles. He tries to make it sound like a joke, but can’t.
“Oh, Shoma,” Stéphane says. His eyebrows are knitted together, and he looks worried and regretful all at once. “Today’s competition made me so emotional, I couldn’t hold back. I’m sorry it made you uncomfortable.” He brushes Shoma’s hair away from his face and presses a long, apologetic kiss to his forehead.
Shoma closes his eyes with a sigh. It’s not Stéphane’s affection that is overwhelming. Stéphane’s affection is the only thing he can never get enough of.
“Not Stéphane,” he says. “Everything else. Too much.”
“I know,” Stéphane says. “Sorry for forgetting about that too.”
“Now, please...?” Shoma asks, and it comes out like a sob. He knows there’s no time, that he’ll have to go out and get on the podium and try his best to smile and fool around with the other medalists under harsh lights and sounds that make him want to crawl out of his skin, but he wants a moment of quiet. He wants to enjoy his gold medal on his own terms.
“Anything you need,” Stéphane says in a soft voice. He pulls himself up and sits on the bench, cups Shoma’s face in his hands. His touch is cool on Shoma’s feverish skin, like a splash of water in the summer heat, and it’s enough to ground Shoma a little bit more. He sighs and presses harder against Stéphane’s palms, burying his face into the cradle of those large, kind hands. If it were any other time, he’d wish for those hands to be roaming all over his body, but right now it feels good to just close his eyes and find some respite from the too-bright lights and the mess of the locker room.
“Tighter. Please,” he begs. He knows he doesn’t need to explain, and that’s a relief in and of itself. Stéphane’s hands immediately slide down to his shoulders to envelop him in a hug. Shoma blindly grasps the lapel of his coat and tries to pull it around himself, then wraps his arms around Stéphane’s waist, in the warm space between coat and sweater.
That’s as close as they can physically be, and Shoma’s brain finally finds something to focus on that doesn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin. Stéphane’s comforting warmth. The scent of his cologne, never too overwhelming, and under it the smell of Stéphane’s own skin, so familiar by now that Shoma could recognize it with his eyes closed.
Shoma wriggles closer, climbs half up onto Stéphane’s lap so he can bury his face into the crook of Stéphane’s neck and feel the scrape of stubble against his cheek. It’s not a very appropriate position, and normally Stéphane would object, but now he just moves his hand further down, under the back of Shoma’s thigh, to support him.
Stéphane has an uncanny ability to understand what Shoma needs, and right now it’s closeness and comfort and silence.
It happens to Shoma sometimes, during competitions, and some times are worse than others. Shoma remembers their first Japanese national competition together. Shoma had been a complete mess at that time, even if most people would’ve never been able to tell from the outside. He had to face Yuzuru for the first time as the defending national champion, all the while both his professional and private life were being discussed and torn apart in an onslaught of speculations and criticism.
Stéphane had found him huddled in a corner of the locker room before the short program, had coaxed him up without a word of reproach, and held him tight until Shoma had stopped shaking. And then Shoma had gone out and had the skate of his life, and the rest was history.
Every time interviewers ask Shoma about how he gets into the right mindset to skate, what he was thinking before-during-after a competition, if he was nervous, he never really knows how to reply. He says he can’t remember or that he wasn’t really nervous or that he just tried to do his best.
What he really wants to say instead, is this. Stéphane holding him tight so that Shoma can find his balance once again. Stéphane pressing soft comforting kisses to his hair. Stéphane cradling Shoma’s head against his neck so that Shoma can shut the rest of the world out and move forward at his own pace.
Stéphane whispering you did so well, I’m so proud of you, you make me so happy in his ear over and over again.
v.
Shoma feels, more than seeing, Stéphane turning his wrist upward so he can take a look at his watch.
“It’s time,” Stéphane says quietly, and Shoma doesn’t really want to move, but at least now he feels like he can breathe again, that he can go out there and be what people expect him to be. He reluctantly disentangles himself from Stéphane, shivering when he pulls away from his warmth.
“Thank you,” he says. He looks up to meet Stéphane’s eyes, hesitates for a second, then presses his lips to Stéphane’s. It’s the only kiss he hasn’t gotten today, and Shoma knows what he wants well enough that he’s not shy about claiming it by himself. Stéphane doesn’t kiss back, but his hand rests for a moment on Shoma’s cheek before gently pulling away.
“It’s time”, he says again, almost regretfully, inches away from Shoma’s lips.
Shoma nods. “Maybe later,” he says, half playful and half like a challenge. Stéphane huffs out a laugh.
“Maybe I’ll make you sit down and watch all my competition programs, later,” he replies, and pulls himself and Shoma up from the bench.
Shoma walks out into the light and the noise, this time with a smile on his face.