Chapter 21
It’s not uncommon for them to train in the same gym.
It’s also not uncommon for them to train on the same floor, using similar instruments.
Hinata favors the floor, the freedom and the music and the intimacy of doing a routine so many times so well that it’s hers, it’s hers, it’s hers completely. When she’s in the gym, she can feel eyes on her; watching her every leaping twist, the slight jump back on her landings.
But when she’s performing, when there’s no time left for practice only perfection, she is alone. She stands with her heels just barely kissing the edges of the floor corner, and she smiles when she’s given the signal to begin. But she doesn’t see them, not the judges or the people.
There is only this: the lights and the music and her.
The way the music makes her feel, and the sensation of flight.
When she trains, she spends more of her time on the floor. Her coach scolds her for it, at times, but lets her have her fun, too. At this, the Olympic level, there is a fine line coaches must toe with their athletes, somewhere between needing to be strict enough to keep them focused, and allowing them their fun lest they burn out.
Kurenai does well to balance Hinata on that line, and allows her frequent freedom to practice her routine on the floor. She doesn’t avoid the other instruments, though, and is even thought to be a little strange for how comfortable she is on the beam.
It’s the uneven bars that give her pause, and which Kurenai often finds her practicing on late into the night. It’s not so much the routines themselves, the twists and the handstands, so perfectly steady. It isn’t even really the looming possibility of crashing down and hitting the floor.
It’s in the breathless moments between her hands releasing the bar and reaching out blindly, hoping she’ll find them. It’s the moments that seem to take an eternity in-between each skill, that can so easily lead to failure.
Sometimes, when she throws herself spinning and twisting sky-high over the bar, risking a devastating crash right back to Earth, she thinks of a fable about a kid who flew too close to the sun, and burned.
And burned.
Hinata allows the quiet of the not-yet-filled arena to smooth over her, eyes steady as she takes a deep breath and begins to leap across the floor. She takes flight as easily as breathing, one of the most renowned tumblers alive and only nineteen, and seamlessly completes a perfect double layout. She punctuates her landing by throwing her hands in the air, practicing to make perfect, and takes her second pass just to practice one of her trickier skills.
She’s been practicing this pass since she was fourteen, and she’s the only person so far who’s been able to land it perfectly. She builds speed and even as a pass that’s packed full of skills, it flies by her in the blink of an eye. She lands it perfectly; no hop or step out of place, and a smile rises over her lips as she straightens back to her full height.
“Awesome,” someone says, and it startles Hinata enough to make her jump. She’s surrounded by people, other gymnasts practicing and preparing for the following few days and the all-around finals, but still she had gotten lost in her own mind, her own routine. She didn’t even have the music, but the movements had been enough to lull her into something of a focused trance.
She turns and heat finds her cheeks, blinking as she sees Uzumaki Naruto heading her way, eyes bright as day.
“That was freakin awesome!” He says again, shaking his head in wonder. He stops a few feet away from her and scans over her with his eyes, which only causes her body to heat even more. They’ve been training together for years, having both been in similar skill levels through the years before he suddenly left her behind and found himself on the podium. Hinata’s own cousin is on the Japanese men’s team, holding the best-recorded performance for rings, and the fourth best on the high bar.
Naruto rose to fame four years prior for a groundbreaking score on vault, and the best men’s floor exercise the world had yet to see. He took silver for the men’s all-around and has been reportedly promising gold this time around, with a revamped set of routines and a determination that seems impenetrable.
This is Hinata’s second Olympics, but she has yet to make the podium. It had been a long-shot for the both of them; he, an orphaned kid who couldn’t afford a gym membership let alone food on his table, and she a failed prodigy hidden away in the shadow of a genius with her same blood.
But Naruto and Hinata were made of stronger stuff, not willing to give in or give up. The infamous all-around champion Hatake Kakashi took Naruto under his wing early, and Hinata found a network of supporters in her friends and eventually, her cousin too. And she made it here with their encouragement and her hard work.
“Thank you,” she says, still slightly out of breath. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, fine,” he says, and Hinata has to laugh. Even with the biggest events of his life less than a few days away, Naruto seems completely unaffected. His hair sticks to the sweat of his forehead and the wraps around his wrists leave his skin flushed under the chalk. “What about you? I’m so freakin excited to get to see your floor!”
Hinata feels the heat in her cheeks spread to the tips of her ears and almost wishes that he wouldn’t have said that. It’s frightening enough, standing in front of an arena of thousands and cameras with nations behind them—now she’s going to have the constant reminder that the secret love of her life is going to be watching her specifically, too.
“Ah,” she says, and the breath leaves her heavily. “Thank you. I’m excited to show it.”
“An unbelievable amount of work in these routines,” Naruto says, sighing. Hinata watches the carefree shift of his expression even as he catches sight of someone from America making the high bar look far too easy. “And so many strong competitors around us.”
Hinata glances the same way and watches, while not really watching at all. She considers Naruto’s style of gymnastics, and wonders how he could ever feel threatened by anyone else, even if he hadn’t made gold yet. She doesn’t doubt the strength of his competitors; she knows exactly how incredible they are and how close the scores will be.
But Naruto performs the most dangerous and highest difficulty skills of anyone in all of the gymnastics events, and he does them effortlessly. Naruto’s floor exercise has the highest potential score value she’s ever seen, and he does the kinds of risky and complex skills that other competitors do in their first pass last.
In this, at least, she understands completely the pressure and the exultation of knowing that you’re above the rest at least in this, for she also does a full set of four incredibly difficult passes on floor.
It’s not floor she’s worried about, though, and looking over at Naruto as he watches his competitors on high bar, she knows it’s not what he’s worried about either. That’s not to say that he looks worried in the slightest—no, there’s a wicked gleam in his eyes, a flickering flame, and the challenge of strong opposition has him jittery and eager.
He turns to her with those same nefarious eyes, his smile carved into the strength of his square jaw. “They’re strong, but I’ve got a lot of tricks up my sleeves this time around, believe it.”
And she does—how can she not? She falls into the confidence of his expression and wonders again if Naruto ever feels fear, or doubt. She turns over her shoulder and watches a young girl from China sail effortlessly over the uneven bars, hands reaching and finding the bars without hesitation.
Naruto must sense her unease. His voice is low when he asks, “Are you worried?”
“No, not worried,” she whispers, turning back to gauge his expression. He studies her critically, unashamed in his watchfulness or the way he knows she knows he’s staring. She doesn’t want to say, I’m afraid, because she doesn’t want him to think she fears the event.
She fears failure.
That breathless moment of what if when her hands let go of the bar, and all she has is her own momentum and a crowd of billions holding their breath for her.
“It’s okay,” he says, before she can even find the words to explain. She glances up at him, wide-eyed and wary, and he smiles so gently it moves through her in molten waves. “It’s a lot of pressure, and it can be scary. But you can do it.”
“It’s not the fall,” she explains jaggedly, twisting her fingers together.
“I know,” Naruto replies quietly, and Hinata’s eyes leap to his immediately, doubtful. At once she sees the recognition in his eyes, however, and it stays her tongue. “Getting here, being the best? It should be enough. It is. But we’re strong, Hinata. You’re strong. And maybe we’re the best we’ve ever been, right? But you know what else?”
Hinata can barely breathe, and it’s then that she realizes her heart has been racing, and she’s actually truly a little out of breath. She lifts a hand absentmindedly over her heart, trying to soothe it, and Naruto tilts his head with open affection. He reaches out and cups her cheeks in his hands, chalky and steady and warm.
“We can be better,” he says, and it’s exactly the kind of reassurance that Hinata didn’t even know she needed. “All you have to do is breathe. You can do that, right?”
Hinata takes a deep breath without even thinking about it, and Naruto’s lips curl in a receptive smile. “I can,” she says, and she makes it a statement, steel-backed and firm. She is not the little girl stuck in the shadows of greatness anymore, she thinks. She stands out on her own and the lights find her.
Around them, the employees call for the arena to be emptied; practice is over, the gym is closed, and tomorrow is close enough to touch. The lights begin to flicker on the outskirts, preparing to be shut down.
Naruto cups her face in his hands and she watches the tender flash of his oceanic eyes, calming tides rushing against the shifting of her shores. Everything stills; everything quiets.
“Just breathe,” he says, so softly, the arena lights flickering out around them. “And fly.”
✧
Sometimes in gymnastics you find that when you’re on, you’re on.
For the women’s all-around finals, Hinata is on. She does exceptionally on the beam, and holds steady enough to score well on the vault.
Now, she stands on the floor and she turns to the judges with her gentle smile, eyes catching every figment of light in the arena and holding. She settles neatly into the corner of the floor, and she holds utterly still as the air around her quiets, and silences. There are a few precious seconds before her music starts, and she takes them to drown the entire world out of her focus. The faces in the stands and those she knows to be behind the cameras, the lights that glare down at her golden and true, the roar of the crowd when someone does something especially incredible—it all falls away.
She breathes and she holds herself so completely still, and in that moment she has never felt so free; her heart is her only companion and somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks about a pair of eyes so like the ocean, deeper than indigo but somehow glistening like sunlight through the surface.
Everything is quiet for one, two, three beats of nothing but freedom, and then her music begins. She falls easily into her routine, dancing so light on her toes she nearly glides over the surface, a siren of movement. She tucks herself into the corner of the mat and takes a deep breath, preparing for a heavily loaded first pass that she executes perfectly, sticking the landing. She doesn’t know if the crowd applauds, or what the changes on the judges’ faces might be. She continues to move, to dance, to breathe; she lines herself up diagonally for another tricky pass and only has a slight hop after it’s landing.
She drops low to perform a steady Wolf Turn, no sign of nerves or quakes in her body. When she bounces back up to her full height and tucks herself back into the corner of the mat, her focus constricts and her whole world becomes entirely about this third pass. She takes a deep breath and thinks, just like in practice, and she moves.
She starts with a roundoff, moves quickly into a one-and-a-half stepout followed by another roundoff with a connected back handspring before finishing it off with a tricky arabian double front that she connects to a single, final layout. And she sticks it. The smile that breaks out across her face shatters every ounce of her contained joy; she can’t help but to express it, not with the music and the exultation of nailing something so incredibly difficult after practicing it for so long.
She feels lighter, the reward of true joy, and it makes her final and extremely difficult pass feel easy. She’s nearly buoyant as she executes it, her body sailing through the air in bounds and leaps and twists, sticking her final landing without even a quiver. She doesn’t even remember the last of her dancing or the moment the music stops and the crowd returns as a presence in her focus anymore; all she remembers is the specific rhythm of her heart racing in her chest and her own voice saying, I have done well.
Her coach echoes the sentiment the moment she’s on the sidelines again, time seeming to race by her. Her teammates are further echoes, and somewhere in the stands it’s like she can feel Naruto watching her.
Her carefree joy does not last long; she has just completed the best floor performance she’s ever had in her life, and all of her euphoria because of it melts away the moment she’s standing in front of the uneven bars.
It’s her final event and her turn comes around quicker than she could ever prepare for—but she has prepared for this, for years, for her entire life.
She stands underneath them and she bows her head for just a moment, trying to regain her confidence and her certainty. Her heart races a new and different beat, with less freedom for joy and much more room for fear, a jagged and jaded fluctuation. She swallows, and then she takes a moment to glance up into the crowds.
There’s no way for her to know where he is, or to find him. The lights are so bright it’s difficult to make out any faces, let alone distinct features. But she can feel him—she knows this level of focus, has felt it on her before while she practiced in the gym an innumerable amount of times, all leading up to this day.
And this moment.
She can feel the heat of his gaze, somewhere out in the sea of strangers.
And it warms her.
She looks forward, back at the bars in front of her, and she smiles.
“Just breathe,” she says to herself, uncaring of the cameras aimed in her direction. “Just breathe.”
She signals that she’s ready to begin, and Kurenai’s hands lift her from the waist up to the bar. She gets her grip steady and immediately begins her routine, her heart settling back into something of a drum line of focus, not one beat out of place. She feels herself arcing through the air and it makes her feel powerful, untouchable.
Every one of her skills ends in a perfect handstand, and she makes certain of it. She flies from one bar to the other, and her heart quickens in her chest when her hands find purchase.
The noise of the crowd and the other gymnasts and every breath of possibility in the air silences, and all she can hear is the twisting of her hands on the bars, and Naruto’s voice, warm and confident.
Just breathe, it says, and fly.
She builds momentum and prepares for her first critical skill, her heart suddenly thundering, her entire bodying heating with increased blood flow.
For only a moment, in the under arching swing leading up to her first Tkatchev she fears the heat and thinks of Icarus and she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe—
But the heat under her skin isn’t the sun, and she is not going to fail.
Just breathe, the voice says, and it’s warm, too. A sun inside her mind, a sun inside her heart—
She smiles, and her body soars straight up into the air, her legs coming up without a single bend, her ankles and her feet poised and pointed, and her hands reach out and catch the bar without a chance of letting go. It’s the first of several difficult skills, but the fear she’d felt for them washes away as she builds momentum and breathes and finds the bar and flies.
She builds speed for her last skill before she can dismount, a Geinger that means she’s going to have to throw herself into the air and twist her entire body around midair to face the opposite direction, before catching the bar one last time.
She feels the weight of her body tearing through the air, making a space for her where before there’d been none, and there is no fear in her. She uses every last bit of strength and drive that she has in her and throws herself towards the lights, losing sight of anything but the white-hot glare of them overhead. Time seems to slow around her, the only sound in the room her heart like a cascade of wings as her body twists and twists, and she’s flying towards the sun.
The heat doesn’t scare her, anymore.
She steadies in the air and she can see the bar in front of her, so close, so close—her hands reach, no bend in her elbows, and the world around her is white light, white light—
The fingertips of failure reach for her and burn away against the heat of her skin, and the power of her determination.
Her fingers like talons like certainty wrap perfectly around the bar, a symphony of ten finger-thick beats, all clasping in sync.
✧
Naruto’s floor routine is his last event for the men’s all-around finals, and he steals the breath of every person in the room before he even completes his first pass.
He is flickering fire over a rushing sea, his every movement smooth enough to sear to a crisp. Hinata watches him, flames on the horizon, at once as bright and golden as the lights overhead as he is the depthless surface of the ocean, shifting in shades of cyan under sunlight.
The entirety of the arena focuses in on his performance, drawn to him, moths to his flame. There isn’t a single aspect of Naruto or his routine that is anything but extraordinary; the difficulty of his passes, the impeccable height he somehow manages to reach even with such a thickly muscled body, and the effortless way he soars through the air in perfect arcs.
He sticks his every landing, and he breaks his own record.
16.000.
For the life of her, Hinata cannot feel disappointed with the silver she has tucked so carefully away in her hotel room.
All of the lights had always found her cousin, and left her wide-eyed and hopeful in the shadows behind him. But now she is the second best all-around Olympic female gymnast in the entire world. And she earned it.
What is there to be disappointed about?
Hinata didn’t get gold.
But when she looks on at Naruto—biting the edge of his first place medal, the lights bending to intersect over his head, getting caught like halos made of stars in the flicker of his joy as he looks through the crowds and finds her—
She thinks that she has something far, far more incredible
And it shines brighter than gold.
✧
(There is more time yet for them to grow; silver and gold, silver and gold.)
(Together.)