The cold, hard lumps of ice against his hip are keeping the ache to a minimum, though perhaps the radiating cold itself is another kind of ache that overrides the one inside him. Regardless, it's not particularly comfortable to sit on directly, so Yuri rolls over a little, enough to keep the ice bag in place but still reach for his mostly charged phone. He'd had it turned off ever since the start of the short program, but it's better to get the worst of everything over with now -- and that includes clearing out his personal notifications and doing a quick round of his usual sites.

(Don't think about tomorrow. Not yet.)

Even as he opens up Instagram, scrolls through Twitter, skims the various forums and news round-up sites he's bookmarked, he knows that none of this is a good idea. He knows this. Reading the various comments on his Skate Canada performances, seeing how they'd been dissected in real time, had been uncomfortable enough. And that had been the English commentators, who naturally preferred their homegrown asshole to the ones who'd been challenging him for a spot on the podium. Yuri is well aware that the Russian commentators, here at home, aren't likely to be any kinder to him for his performance today; if anything, they'll actually delight in picking him apart. And whatever they say, good or bad, will set off his fans, until the forum postings and website comments sections look like someone had taken napalm to them. But seeing what they have said is better than imagining what they might have said --

Or so he thinks, until an unlucky click to a Russian skating news aggregator makes him sit straight up on the bed, gripping his phone so tightly that the case feels like it might crack in his hand, as a word emblazons itself across his brain: Figurist-uzurpator.

Usurper skater.

Yuri Plisetsky, the usurper skater.



For once, his usually colourful vocabulary completely deserts him.