Bendy on Ice (WIP)
Yuri was laying his chest on the mat spread on the floor, his hips above his head, his feet in front of his face. Holding the ankles in his hands, struggling to lift his head and get it as close as possible to his own butt.
"Hold it. Breathe out..." Baranovskaya was standing over him like a master over a slave, staring the beautiful blond boy right in his sweating face. She squinted her eyes. "Further!"
"Ugh! What!? How much further, now?" Yuri hissed like a snake, feeling more tired and pissed than ever today. He generally liked his own flexibility, no doubt, it was the easiest way in the world to impress others and immediately gain almost anyone's respect. The feeling of superiority was just too sweet! He never skipped his stretches. But today this former Prima ballerina of the Soviet Russian ballet acted like she was going to put him in the wheel chair with a broken back with her insane demands! "Are you trying to fold me in half, old hag!? I don't plan to work in a circus, damn it!"
"Maybe you should in your spare time! Because by the end of this weekend your backbends must be as sharp as possible," she walked to the sofa and sat on it, crossing her legs like a boss. "This time you're not going to run away from backbends, Plisetsky. We're going to spend all day on them if needed. You should know, I have no other goals until Monday. And neither do you."
"What a waste of time," Yuri sighed as deeply as the little air in his stretched chest allowed. "I don't even need such a deep backbend in skating in the first place!" Even though deep inside he cherished the idea of amazing all his friends with the ability to fold in half backwards.
She chuckled, looking away at the window, knowing the boy's feelings way too well. "You know, Yuri, my own ballet teacher used to say. To be the king on the stage, you have to be a slave in the backstage." She looked straight into his eyes. "You probably think that ballet is something simple? Some leaps, some splits in the air, a couple of easy stretches? Not at all. Many of the ballet dancers can do extreme oversplits and fold their spines in half backwards, even though you'll never see them do anything like that on the stage. To make the performance truly fluent, you have to go twice as far while training. I could stretch so far that I could easily work in the circus. So what? I never showed it on stage even a single time, only a few people knew what I could truly do. Most of my fans had no idea about my true potential, but that never stopped me from stretching on a daily basis. I was a show-off just like you, Plisetsky, but I suppressed my pride. I'd stretch as far as I possibly could in the backstage, but on the stage I'd just relax and be naturally soft and fluent. That's what made me the Prima of the Bolshoi theatre. And that's what's going to make you the skating champion."
"Keep wasting time to tell me all that! But if you feel like stretching me, personally I'd prefer to work on my splits instead! Maybe backbending was useful for your ballet career, but skating is all about the splits! Even if you're the coach, you've gotta hear your student out sometimes as sometimes they know better what they need!"
"Your splits are already decent enough. Your final pose in 'Agape' though..." she hmpf'ed. "It's not fluent enough. The way you're holding that final position... Instead of showing your soft elegance, it almost looks like your back is going to break. Your spine is too stiff for such a gentle ending. That routine is for the real pros!"
"What!?" Yuri leaned on his elbows, lifting his chest so high in utmost anger that his back folded completely in half without him even realizing it yet. "What do you mean stiff!?" he barked through his closed teeth. "I'm a damn skater, not some circus boy!"
He quickly lost his breath in his overstretched chest and gasped for air. Baranovskaya circled around her pupil, looking at the boy's butt firmly pressed against his own upper back.
"Now, now. Most excellent," she stretched the corners of her lips. "You know, anger is your true key to success, Yuri." She kept walking around, admiring her pupil's final accomplishment. "Now, hold it like this for five minutes and don't you dare to release while I'm taking pictures," she took her cellphone out of her pocket and started tapping the screen. "Your online fans on are going to love this."
"Whatever." Yuri couldn't make up his mind about what pissed him more, the fact that his spine was aching from being pushed so far or the fact that his teacher was so happy about it that it could only mean he is now going to have to do this A LOT from now on. Only one thing was for sure, the next five minutes were going to be boring as hell. "Hey. Can I at least have my own cellphone?"
"Sure, why not," Baranovskaya reached to take it out of Plisetsky's jacket laying on the sofa and handed the device to him. "Going to take a bendy selfie?"
Yuri only burned her with his stare, grabbed the cell and went to check his messages to distract himself from this painful boredom. As much as he wasn't into all these backbends and contortionism in general, if this could make the ending of his 'Agape' perfect... whatever. Anything would do.
Yuri Plisetsky is from Yuri on ICE anime :3