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They file the divorce papers three days before his twenty-fourth birthday.
There's no particular significance to that date. It's the middle of the off-season, so J.J. is home, and Isabella is only taking a couple of summer classes at York University. She wants to get through her undergrad as quickly as possible, so she can start law school.
They take a smiling selfie afterward, and J.J. posts it with the caption, “Just Divorced!” He adds a series of emojis: happy faces and thumbs-up and crowns. Then, they go for sushi.
It's not a sad day. Well, it is, but as divorces go, this is the happiest one J.J.'s ever heard of. He and Isabella don't hate each other. There's no animosity, no bitterness, no kids to worry about. They just got together too young. The gulf between sixteen and twenty-four is an enormous one, and while J.J. and Isabella are still good friends, their relationship just wasn't strong enough to cross that divide.
“I'll miss having you at my competitions,” J.J. says, over dragon rolls and spicy tuna. He knows Isabella won't miss being there. Trailing around the world with him for years is what's put her behind in her education. She's said it herself. She could have a Master's degree by now, if not for her job as his wife.
“I'll still cheer for you, honey,” Isabella replies. “You'll always be the king to me.”
When the bill comes, Isabella grabs it. For the first time in eight years, J.J. lets her.
***
The news comes two days before J.J. turns twenty-seven.
Rupture of the Achilles tendon. The worst possible result. When he badly under-rotated a quad flip in an off-season practice and ended up in agony, they'd been hoping it was “just” Achilles tendonitis, but that hope is now gone.
“It doesn't have to mean the end of your career.” Nathalie Leroy says, as soon as the doctor makes her excuses and leaves the room. “You're still young. There's time to get over this, time to come back...”
“Mom.” J.J. can't let her go on like that, for her own sake as much as for his. “It's okay. I've had a great run.” Maybe there weren't as many international gold medals as he would have liked—first Victor Nikiforov, and then the two Yuris had bagged basically all of them—but J.J.'s career is nothing to be ashamed of. He stands with the greats of Canadian men's skating: Kurt Browning, Brian Orser, Patrick Chan. He can't ask for more than that. “You've been great coaches,” he adds. “You and Dad both. I couldn't have done it without you.”
She puts her arms around him. J.J. can tell she's crying, although when she pulls away, she smiles bravely. J.J. smiles back. That's Mom all over: courage and class. “You should take some time off,” she says. “After you've recovered from the surgery. Go on a trip somewhere.”
“Yeah.” A vacation sounds pretty amazing right about now. “Then, after that...” He's not sure what he wants to say next, so he doesn't say anything. It's always been at the back of his mind, the question of what he would do after he hung up his skates for good, but it's never been something he focused on. There's never been the time.
Now, time is something he has in spades.
“Afterward,” Nathalie says, “we'll figure something out. Together.”
Just like that, J.J. doesn't give a fuck that his career is over. He has the best family in the world, and that's something no under-rotated quad flip can ever take away.
***
The day before his twenty-ninth birthday, J.J. flies into Detroit.
It's not a typical summer vacation spot, but J.J.'s not here on holiday. He's here to meet Alyssa DiMarino, American women's champion and student of the great Celestino Cialdini, who happens to have just retired. Alyssa needs a new coach in time for the new season, and she's invited J.J. to meet her.
Normally, the skater would go to the coach, but in this situation, J.J.'s the one who needs to impress. After a year of focusing on his music and his fashion, he decided he missed the rink too much to stay away. Coaching seemed like a natural next step. With his parents' support, as always, he took on two juniors, both of whom had reasonable success. Success enough that Alyssa DiMarino is interested in seeing what J.J. can do for her. J.J. can do a lot.
“I want to work with a younger coach,” Alyssa said, over Skype while J.J. scrambled to book his plane tickets in another window. He may not have been coaching for long, but J.J. has spent his life in figure skating. He knows what an opportunity coaching someone like Alyssa DiMarino would be. “Ciao Ciao was great, but he's been coaching since the cave man days. I need a coach for this century.”
J.J. can do that. He loves this century. He was practically born in it.
When he arrives at the rink, Alyssa is on the ice. She waves to him, but doesn't come to the boards. “Take a look,” she calls, moving instead into the middle of the ice. “I'll run through what I have for this season's short program, and you can tell me what you think.”
It's a test. J.J. knows that. “Sure thing,” he calls back, casually, and leans against the boards.
Alyssa's a captivating skater. There's no doubt about that. He wouldn't have been able to look away in any case. Even in practice, her jumps are clean, her edges flawless. Her choreography is fascinating, too. A lot of it is lyrical, ballet-like, but every now and then, she throws in a move that's much more aggressive, unexpected.
“It's awesome,” J.J. says, when Alyssa finishes. She comes over and steps off the ice, sliding her skate guards onto her blades and sitting down on a bench. J.J. joins her. “Who's your choreographer?”
“That is me.”
It's been two years since J.J. last saw Yuri Plisetsky in person. He hasn't changed much. His hair is long, past his shoulders, and there's a stud in his eyebrow. The scowl is the same. “I didn't know you were doing choreography,” J.J. tells him. Yuri shrugs. “Well, it's good.”
Yuri wouldn't likely be happy to hear it, but J.J.'s always liked him. Yuri's a brilliant skater, and J.J. admires that, of course. Even more than talent, J.J. admires his dedication, what he puts himself through to reach the place he's at. J.J.'s parents always offered a healthy dose of love and support to go along with their hard-ass coaching. Feltsman and Baranovskaya probably care about Yuri, but J.J. can't picture them as the warm and huggy type. Yuri seems like the kind of person who could be greatly affected by a hug.
J.J. would have been happy to offer it, if he wasn't so averse to the idea of getting his eyes clawed out.
“You're not coming back to skating.” Yuri barks. It's a statement, not a question, but J.J. answers anyway.
“I ruptured my Achilles tendon.”
“You can recover from that.”
“Not at my age. Anyway,” J.J. turns the full volume of his famous smile on Alyssa DiMarino. “My passion is coaching now.”
Yuri snorts, but he leaves and J.J. gets down to the business of grovelling. That is, after all, why he's here.
He gets the job. Not officially, but Alyssa seems impressed with what he says, and promises to let him know within the next twenty-four hours, before he leaves Detroit. And J.J. has a good feeling about it. His good feelings have always been reliable in the past. Well, mostly.
As J.J. waits for his Uber, Plisetsky appears again. “You are not with your wife now.”
J.J. blinks. “Uh, no. We split up years ago.” He dimly remembers the two of them, Yuri and Isabella, going at it once in an elevator somewhere in...France? Spain? Something about fans? “I think she's in a pretty serious relationship, but, hey, if you want me to pass on your number...”
“No!” Yuri's eyes flash and his lip curls. Just like that, J.J. remembers why it was always so much fun to tease him.
“Have you retired?” J.J. asks. He expects another outburst, but instead, Yuri stares at the ground.
“Maybe soon.”
“Are you injured?”
He doesn't get an answer to that one. There's no reason for J.J. to care, really. There's never been any reason for him to care about Yuri. Yuri's never been anything but a complete asshole to him, but still, J.J. finds himself once again wanting to offer that hug.
“Feel like a drink?” J.J. asks, on impulse. “It's my birthday tomorrow.”
“In Russia, it is very bad luck to celebrate a birthday early.”
“Really? Why?”
“It is risky. If you celebrate before the day, you may die before it arrives.”
“Oh.” J.J. considers this. “Well, in that case, wouldn't it be better to have fun while you still can?”
The Uber pulls up. As J.J. opens the door, he glances back at Yuri. “If you change your mind, I'm at the Sheraton,” he says. “Room 412.” As the car drives away, Yuri bids him farewell with his two middle fingers.
Hours later, J.J. jerks awake to the sound of heavy banging on his hotel room door. Blearily, he looks at the bedside clock, which informs him it's after two in the morning.
Detroit has improved a lot over the last few years, and this is a good hotel in a good neighbourhood. Still, just in case, J.J. unplugs and picks up a heavy lamp on his way to the door. Peering through the peephole, he sees Yuri, and flings the door open.
“What the fuck is that?” Yuri stares at the lamp. Then his gaze slides to J.J. himself, shirtless in low-slung pyjama bottoms. He swallows obviously, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. Well well, J.J. thinks, tossing the lamp onto the bed.
“What are you doing here, princess?”
“It is my knee,” Yuri blurts, and, of many possible answers, that's not one J.J. would have anticipated. “No one know this. No one. Just Yakov and the doctor.”
“You're hurt?”
“Maybe I can do one more season, but I never be as good as I was.”
“Shit. I know how you feel, babe.” He does. To a painful degree. So J.J. does the only thing he can: he hugs Yuri.
At first, Yuri stands stiff, his arms rigid at his sides. J.J. was right. Clearly, this is not a man who's been hugged a lot. But he doesn't push J.J. away, so J.J. persists, holding fast until Yuri relaxes, slightly, and rests his hand on J.J.'s shoulder. It feels like as big a victory as J.J. ever won on the ice.
“It's my actual birthday,” J.J. reminds him, pulling away just far enough to look Yuri in the face. He scrunches up his nose, even more adorably. “So, it's okay to celebrate now, right?”
“I guess.”
“Give me ten minutes to change, and we'll hit the town.”
J.J. doesn't know what this is, or where it might go, but it's the best birthday present he's had since he got that Nintendo Wii when he was ten years old.
***
On J.J.'s thirty-first birthday, he gets married for the second time.
He wouldn't have chosen that date necessarily, but with Russia finally joining nearly every other country in the world in legalizing same-sex marriage, there's been a run on weddings. The officiant doesn't have another day free for a month, and Yuri's concerned his grandfather might not last that long.
“He wants to see me married in our own country before he dies,” Yuri said, so J.J. agreed. When it comes to Yuri, he finds he can't do anything else.
J.J. wears a pair of casual slacks and a button-down shirt designed by his clothing line. Yuri wears a white tuxedo, leopard print running shoes, a short, gauzy veil over his newly short hair, and walks with a bouquet in one hand and his cat on a diamond-studded leash in the other. He looks completely eccentric, and absolutely divine. The jewelled stud in his right eyebrow twinkles with a red ruby, J.J.'s birthstone, although J.J. didn't realize that until Yuri told him.
“It's supposed to be fucking romantic, you asshole.”
“Sorry, babe. I guess I'm just not that subtle.” He made up for it by unsubtly fucking Yuri on the kitchen table in their apartment before they left for the wedding. From Yuri's satisfied groaning, J.J. guesses that was romantic enough.
J.J.'s first wedding was a full-on extravaganza, with a lengthy church ceremony, including Mass, and a ballroom reception for over three hundred people. This one is quieter. July in St. Petersburg means “white nights”, so although it's an evening wedding at the Alexander Garden, the sun is still up. A handful of guests—Yuri's grandfather, J.J.'s parents, Otabek Altin, Alyssa DiMarino, Nikiforov and Katsuki and their three young kids, Lilia Baranovskaya and Yakov Feltsman grimacing like they both just swallowed massive lemons—look on while J.J. and Yuri say their vows. When the officiant pronounces them married, J.J. can't help himself. He takes Yuri in his arms and dips him, kissing him deeply and continuously until Yuri's grandfather bangs his cane against his wheelchair and says, “All right, all right. There are rooms, yes?” in English and J.J. pulls back.
He winks at Yuri. “How's that for romantic, babe?”
“Fuck you.” But Yuri grins, his expression a little dazed.
“Later, husband.”
The grin just gets bigger.
Russian tradition is apparently for the marrying couple to make their own wedding feast but, as Yuri said, “Fuck that.” Instead, they have chicken tabaka and caviar and fish pie at one of St. Petersburg's finest restaurants. J.J. reads aloud some texts from their friends who couldn't make it, including Isabella, who's tied up with a big murder trial.
Nikiforov makes a drunken, rambling speech in which he vaguely threatens J.J.'s life should he do anything to hurt Yuri. Yuri's grandfather makes a concise, frighteningly sober speech in which he explicitly promises the same. Then, just as J.J. is seriously considering the possibility of taking Yuri on the run, the waiters roll out the kournik.
J.J.'s been well informed about this. Known as the “king of pies”—which Yuri pointed out gleefully, even though J.J. hasn't really used the “King J.J.” persona since he stopped skating—it's massive and intricate and, apparently, a “traditional symbol of procreation.”
“Well, it's got its work cut out with us, then,” J.J. said, when Yuri explained. They've talked about kids. Yuri is about as interested as Isabella was, which is not at all, but this time he said:
“You never know what might happen in the future.” J.J. supposes that's true. Just look at where he is now.
The kournik has a thick candle jammed in the middle, with a bright yellow flame. The other guests join in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday”, in various accents and at various tempos.
Yuri doesn't sing along, but he leans close to plant a kiss on J.J.'s cheek. His veil scratches J.J.'s neck, and beneath the table, the carefully concealed cat, Viper, settles on J.J.'s feet. “Желаю, чтобы все Ваши мечты сбылись.”
J.J.'s been working on his Russian. Since moving part-time to St. Petersburg, Rosetta Stone and Google Translate have been his best friends. Apart, of course, from Yuri.
“They already have, babe,” he replies and blows out the candle. “And I can't wait to see what happens next.”