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No.
The answer was no.
"But Victor, it's our sport‐"
"Exactly, it's
our
sport! Not his! I don't want to force him into skating just because his dad's are famous figure skaters!"
It had come up one lazy, happy weekend - just a few after their little son, Lev, had taken his first teetering steps - Yuuri and Victor happily letting their son practice wobbly walking between them across the sitting room, when Yuuri had casually laughed-
“ He’ll be in skates in no time!”
Victor hadn’t laughed.
In fact, his face had abruptly fallen, mouth thinning into a flat line. It wasn’t often that Yuuri saw his husband so serious.
And then later, he’d found out why.
"We're not forcing him ,” Yuuri tried to emphasise. “I just want to see if he likes it-"
"That's how it starts, Yuuri!” Victor threw his hands up in the air, only just keeping his volume down enough not to wake Lev from his nap in the nursery. “And then once you see he's good at it, you take him again, and again, and again, and suddenly he's fifteen and has never so much as tried another sport because we got carried away. I know - I lived it!"
Yuuri hadn’t known the full background to Victor’s introduction to skating until after their marriage. He’d lapped up what the interviews had told him before then, that Victor had taken to skating like a duck to water, that it had been near impossible for his parents to get him off the ice, that they’d worked so hard to make his dream come true…
It was only a few months after their honeymoon that Yuuri learned that - actually - Victor had never wanted to be a figure skater to begin with.
He’d simply enjoyed skating.
And had been good at it.
So they’d taken him back, and back, and back, and back. Then they’d gotten him a coach, and taken him back, and back, and back. Then he was out of school. Then he moved to a bigger rink and left his friends behind. Then there was nothing but skating and nobody had ever batted an eyelid because Victor had been good at it.
By the time Victor’s parents had died in a train accident, Victor was too far down the rabbit hole and too high on the pedestal of history to do anything else.
Yuuri understood his husband’s concerns … but he didn’t share them.
“But we won’t be like that!” he tried to insist. “We know we don’t want him doing anything competitively until he asks to, but sport is good for him-”
“It doesn’t have to be skating!”
Yuuri knew there were expectations that their kid would be a figure skating icon with two dads legendary in the sport, but he really didn’t care about passing on the legacy as such. As with all things he loved, he just wanted to share them with the people he loved…
But he knew that for Victor it was more than that. It had been pushed onto him and he didn’t want to push it on his son.
The look in Victor’s eyes told Yuuri that he wasn’t going to win this one.
Yuuri folded his arms across his chest, sighing in begrudging defeat. "Well what would you prefer?”
Their son had to get into something at some point. It was healthy. It was inevitable. Sport and exercise was all part of a good upbringing regardless of if Lev took it as a career or not. It would keep him healthy, fine tune motor skills and coordination, teach social skills… he had to do something.
And as parents, it was their job to start him on the right track.
Victor just rolled his eyes at the question though.
Yuuri wasn’t having that. “Soccer?”
Victor shot Yuuri a sharp look.
“Do you want our son to be a hooligan?”
“Rugby?”
“He’ll have broken both his legs by the time he’s finished elementary school.”
“Tennis?”
Victor’s face wrinkled. “It’s all corrupt, the organisations.”
“Golf?”
“I thought this was about teaching him people skills?”
“Ice hockey?”
“I don’t want my son to be a thug.”
“Gymnastics?”
“Do you know how brutal that is? It would be cruel to start him so early.”
“Athletics?”
“It’s so competitive, he’d never get anywhere…”
“Basketball?”
“Look at us, Yuuri. He’s hardly going to be reaching the top shelf, nevermind a hoop.”
“Boxing?”
“And ruin his lovely bone structure?”
“Volleyball?”
“Life isn’t an anime, Yuuri…”
“Okay, what about chess?”
“I thought you wanted a sport?”
“You’re really making this difficult, Vitya…”
Victor shrugged his shoulders pointedly. “It’s a difficult decision.”
Yuuri could feel the ridiculous smile starting to prick at his lips. “So…” he chuckled. “You want a sport that’s non contact, not hugely popular, involves teammates - but the right kind of people for teammates, active, but not too challenging, and run by a perfectly ethical organisational body that is perfect and fair in every way?”
Victor contemplated for barely a moment.
“Pretty much.”
Yuuri hung his head, slapping a hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing too hard. “Um…”
He shook his head, mind running blank for a perfect solution. Simply put, there wasn’t one. Still, he was starting to enjoy this conversation too much to stop.
He clutched at straws. “Baby ballet?”
Victor’s mouth shot open, ready to thunder the idea down… but then he paused. His head cocked to the side. “Actually…”
“It’s got other kids, active, but not too active…”
“Good toes, naughty toes…”
Yuuri nodded along, grinning. “Little jumps and picking up plastic flowers, fine motor skills, working with others, but non contact…”
“Plus, it’s private,” Victor pointed out. “You have to buy a ticket to watch, so no snooping paparazzi…”
“Plus, he’d look adorable in baby booties.”
Victor beamed. “He would!”
Yuuri chuckled, saddling up to his husband and planting a loving peck on his cheek. Victor caught him, arms wrapped adoringly around his waist. “I think that settles it.”
Yuuri could already see it now. Their son prancing in a little leotard around the sitting room, practising his feet positions while leaning against the kitchen counter, frolicking happily through his first recital while Yuuri and Victor fiddled with the record button on their phones to immortalise it forever…
… and then a wail cut through the quiet apartment, shattering the vision.
Victor sighed, arms unwillingly falling away from around Yuuri. “Guess that’s the end of that discussion.”
“Yep,” Yuuri sighed too, matching Victor’s. “Is it your turn or mine?”
“Mine.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“That makes a first.”
A cushion launched across the sitting room, Victor batting it away with a chuckle. He caught Yuuri’s eye across the room, sharing a smirk.
Everything would work out.