The Beauty and the Poet (And Other Short Stories)

Let the Great Do the Talking

Yuki had been six when he'd first started gymnastics.

It had started as a simple enough interest; he liked flipping. The rush of relinquishing the earth's pull was fun, where he became his own center of gravity, for however brief a rush it was.

His parents liked that it kept him and his sister out of their hair for a few hours a day. The fact that he was good at it had been an unexpected bonus, though he likely would not have continued with it when things began to focus more on competition if it hadn't been for that one kid.

Athan—as he has boasted on multiple occasions—has been doing gymnastics since he was three, making him practically a veteran by child standards. Yuki had managed to go a blissful six months without interacting with him before Athan strong armed his way into Yuki's personal bubble. Everyone knows he's on the track to the Olympics if only someone with a larger influence than their small town could get him out into the world; you have to be very good to be on his level, and Yuki is good. That's likely what had caught Athan's eye in the first place—unfortunate, as he was and still is extremely irritating.

"Athan" is the kind of name a parent would choose for their child because they wanted them to be "special", or "unique", thus dooming their child to a lifetime of correcting the spelling. And Athan Andrew Michaels is the very embodiment of this sort of parentage.

***

Normally, a competition of this level wouldn't cause all that much excitement. The only readily available gym in Yuki's hometown is that of their local high school's, and the town barely has enough people to scrape up a full boys' gymnastics team, much less draw in an audience for any events. The sole coach has always guided his teams through the motions of competitions regardless, even when the majority of the time they only have themselves to compete against, and apparently his efforts are finally being rewarded.

The rumors about the scout due to appear for this particular event have been swirling the campus for weeks. Athan in particular has not stopped bringing it up at every opportunity, ever since their coach first mentioned the possibility, and Yuki hopes the man regrets it as much as Yuki does. At the bare minimum, it means this competition has higher stakes—though any stakes are higher than what they've had before, really—and higher stakes mean larger consequences for a loss, and if Athan is insufferable when he's just generally existing, he's absolutely intolerable whenever he wins.

They're down to the last event of the day, the floor. Athan has always had the body advantage for the rings—the bastard—while Yuki's better suited for the balance beam, and the end results of those competitions had reflected as much. They're about evenly matched in skill for the bars, which is unfortunate, as that leaves the floor as their usual tiebreaker. Except they tend to be frustratingly matched in that area too: where Athan can get the height in his jumps, Yuki tends to have the speed, and so the style points they rack up more often than not even each other out. If there was a way to combine their two performances together, they would likely make for the kind of visual spectacular that would reap in the higher scores from the judges.

As it is, they're left to compete against each other instead. And as it is, Athan managed to snag a victory for the bars this morning. If he takes the floor, he takes the day, and Yuki is not about to stand by idly and see that travesty come to pass.

He watches one of the freshmen—Yuki never bothered to learn his name—fumble the landing of his front handspring on the floor, hopping an extra step and a half before he lifts his arms up. There's the usual polite smattering of applause from the audience and the kid beams like he actually accomplished something. The coach gives him a consolidating pat on the shoulder as Yuki watches from where he's set himself up a ways away from the rest of the boys on the team. Athan is set to go up next, and then Yuki after that. He sees the kid's grin fade a little at the sight of his follow-up act, and he takes a grim sense of satisfaction that he's not the only one whose mood depletes at the sight of him.