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“He’s gotta like poodles,” Victor slurs after an impromptu drinking contest has wound down into a chilled conversation, four AM light just barely breaking through the blinds of Victor’s flat. “He’s gotta like poodles. That’s a deal-breaker.”
“Who does?” Chris asks with mild interest from his sprawl on the couch, glass of wine upended on the floor beside him.
“My future husband!” Victor yells because his brain to mouth functionality isn’t exactly stellar at the moment. “My future husband has to like poodles or no deal.”
“Mmm,” Chris considers. “My future husband...” He eyes the blatant waste of alcohol seeping into Victor’s floorboards. “... has to drink with me into the late hours just to make me feel better after a rough day.”
“I do that,” Victor observes.
“Yeah...” Chris sighs and hoists himself up in search of another bottle. “Yeah, you do.”
“Okay, but what if they had a foot thing?”
Yuuri promptly chokes on the water halfway down his throat. “A-a what?”
Phichit adjusts himself against the banister, managing to make it look like an effortless perch instead of the constant struggle against the laws of physics Yuuri knows it to be with skates on. “You know... Your future spouse. Would a foot fetish be a deal-breaker?”
Yuuri sips idly on his water again. “I don’t know... Depends.”
Phichit raises his brows— “On?” —then wiggles them. “If it’s Victor Nikiforov?”
Instead of denying it like Phichit assumed Yuuri would, he merely mumbles something vaguely sounding like, “Victor wouldn’t have a thing for feet.”
Oh, Phichit thinks, already mentally typing out URLs to some choice websites. Oh, the rest of this afternoon is just going to be delightful.
“Ne, ne, Victoru?” Yuuri asks, squinting up Victor as he is all but collapsed in Victor’s arms. It’s probably the vertigo from the drinks, Victor reasons, hoping to logic himself out of a future embarrassing photo he’ll have no way of explaining. “Why are you all blurry?"
“The alcohol?” Victor offers.
But Yuuri just shakes his head, looks behind himself at an awkward angle that has Victor clutching the small of the other’s back, attempting to keep him upright. “My glasses…”
Ah, yes, those too. Yuuri was wearing them earlier, Victor thinks he remembers. He glances down Yuuri’s ensemble, a chuckle escaping him as he spies the object of interest peeking out of the pocket of Yuuri’s trousers. “Here,” Victor says, retrieving them and setting them on the end of his nose.
Yuuri blinks. “Spots…”
“Hmm?” Now that Victor looks again, there are spots all over the lenses—drops of champagne, fingerprints, smudges… It’s a difficult maneuver while he still has an arm-full of Yuuri, but Victor manages to take the glasses back from Yuuri and clean them on the edge of his dress shirt.
“There,” Victor proclaims. “Good as new.”
And they are—though still balanced precariously on the edge. (Depth perception, evidently, isn’t either of their strong suits that night.)
“Ah—!” Yuuri hides his face against Victor’s chest, thinking perhaps in his drunken state that what he can’t see can’t see him.
Victor laughs, stroking the back of Yuuri’s head. “What is it?"
“You…” Yuuri pouts at him from where his face is smushed against Victor’s waistcoat. “You cleaned my glasses…”
“Yes…?”
Yuuri hides again.
“Mmm,” Victor observes, further entangling his fingers in Yuuri’s hair. “I’ll do it every day, if you want. Clean your glasses. Whenever you want.” He pulls back to look at the other. “So? Do we have a deal?”
Though he doesn’t look up again, Victor can feel Yuuri nodding against him—or perhaps just nodding off—and he decides that’s more than enough for now.
Yuuri watches distractedly as Victor inhales yet another bowl of his mother’s famous katsudon, briefly jealous before he quashes that feeling with extreme prejudice.
It’s still surreal to have Victor in his house—sleeping down the hall from Yuuri’s bed, sitting in Yuuri’s lounge, eating the food Yuuri loves—and before he realizes it, the thought goes rogue, leaving Victor quaking with laughter.
“Well, of course,” Victor says, offhand. “As your coach, it is my responsibility.”
To what? Yuuri doesn’t vocalize. Instead, he stares down at Victor’s mostly decimated bowl of katsudon. “Still, I’m glad you like it... here. My home. Being kind to my parents, complimenting their food... It wasn’t part of our deal. You don’t have to do it. But you do. I appreciate it.”
Victor looks at him warmly then, and Yuuri doesn’t understand why he’s deserves such a fond look, but he’s exceedingly grateful for it.
A silence falls over them, soft and contemplative, and Yuuri takes it in before something can come along and shatter the illusion that’s surely befallen on them.
“You didn’t bring your medals.”
It’s as astute of an observation as any—innocuous too, he’s almost positive—but hearing it aloud cuts Victor to his core.
“What use would they be to me here?” Victor says, conversational, but something awful is cloying in his throat, threatening to spill with every moment Yuuri stands there in the doorway, a hand held to the grain, the other flexing at his side.
Yuuri casts another look around the things Victor has set up as though he’s looking over it for the first time—like this time, he’s looking at what’s there versus what’s not. He makes a clean sweep before settling on Victor again, chilling the latter to the bone with the intensity of his stare.
“I don’t care, you know."
Victor blinks. “What—?”
“I don’t care whether you’ve won things—or whether you continue to keep winning things. Whatever idealized version the media paints you as... I don’t expect it. Victor is Victor. So just know that I don’t care."
It’s simple—almost rudimentarily so—and yet, Victor’s eyes traitorously well up all the same. He breathes once, then turns, facing the wall tellingly void of precious medals. “Thank you, Yuuri,” he tells him, choosing not to care either even as his voice wavers.
“Almost, Yuuri,” Victor almost compliments. “So close.”
“Close” is not and never has been good enough for Yuuri Katsuki, so he grits his teeth and digs his toe pick into the ice, huffing out, “What was wrong with it this time? I’m sure all the technical elements were there.”
Victor has his fingers on his mouth again, which is never really a good sign. “Ah, it’s… missing something.”
“Missing what?”
“You know…”
“I really don’t.”
“The… je ne sais quoi?”
“The what now?”
“You know—“ Victor stresses, and it’s clear by this point that he’s more frustrated with himself than anything. “The… That thing… in writing? In theater?”
“Sounds like…?”
“Uh… I think it’s Greek?”
“I don’t speak Greek, Victor.”
“No—no, it’s an English word… maybe? But its origins are in Greek.”
“First letter?”
“I don't remember.”
“Victor, you’ve got to give me something—”
“No, I remember now!” Victor pats against his own chest. “That, uh, thing where you’re moved! In here.”
“Your heart?”
“Yes!” He pantomimes a tear running down his cheek. “When it touches you—the audience.”
“Sympathy?”
“No.”
“Empathy?”
“Closer…”
“I don’t think I know this word.”
“No, we’re so close! Just let me—”
And that’s how Yurio finds them, Victor practically reenacting his Stammi Vicino routine as he tries to explain—“it’s the emotions, Yuuri—something about the emotions”—while Yuuri watches impassively, ironically unmoved by Victor’s by impassioned performance.
“What are you dumbasses up to?”
“Yurio—!” Victor skates to the boards, sprawling across them, and holds himself there, legs dangling far above the ice. “That thing! What’s that thing when you’re trying to evoke emotions in the audience?”
Yurio cocks his head. “Pathos?”
“Yes!” Victor lets himself drop onto the ice and points back at Yuuri. “Pathos! You need to work on pathos!”
Yuuri halts where he was doing idle figures, sighing at nothing in particular. “Well, I would do that if I knew what pathos was.”
If this deters Victor at all, he does an exceptional job disguising it. “I’ll explain then!”
Behind them, Yurio scoffs, dropping down onto the nearest bench. “Well, this I gotta see.”
A firework vaults into the air, flickering, winding, turning, twirling until it bursts with a warning crackle and then a bang, flittering down in a wave of sparkles.
Yurio is oblivious to it all, run ragged from their romp on the beach—so much so, in fact, that he fell asleep almost the instant they collectively stopped moving.
Victor can relate. He feels pleasantly worn out—a bit floaty but quite content—lying there in the sand, mind blissfully at ease for once.
Yuuri, on the other hand, has never looked more alert.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen it,” he comments when he finally notices Victor’s staring out of the corner of his eye.
“Seen what?” Victor inquires, mind lagging.
“Fireworks.” Yuuri turns back to watch the display as another goes off above their heads. “Not Hasetsu’s anyway.”
“Ah.” Victor props himself up, a teasing smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “Are Hasetsu’s better?”
“Yes,” Yuuri answers, automatic. “Much, much better. I—“ He clears his throat, looks not at the fireworks or Victor but at the ground—at the land itself. “I haven’t… I didn’t visit… when I was at school. I couldn’t—well, maybe I could have, but—“
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t."
There’s silence save for the intermittent pops and crackles that bookend the night. A child squeals in delight—far off in the distance but coming.
“I’d like to come back,” Yuuri says up to those lights, “more often. Maybe… Maybe every year is unrealistic, but—“
“Yes.” Victor pins him with a stare. “Yes, we should come back as often as possible.”
“Oh.” He’s soft—made softer by the lurid colors that splash across his face and the stars in his eyes. “Oh… Okay.”
Hesitant fingers meet Victor’s, questioning, barely there—but enough—and Victor intertwines them around his own in precious answer.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Victor bites out, pitch pinched sharp at the edges like he hadn’t been prepared to say anything at all—least of all, that—and as cold as the ice pack he holds to Yuuri’s still throbbing head.
Yuuri winces back a little in reaction to Victor pressing down on it harder with the force of his words—involuntarily, Yuuri thinks, hopes—and laughs in an attempt to ease the tension. “Or what, Victor?”
Victor falls quiet. He resumes treating Yuuri’s prize for taking a header into the boards as though he expects Yuuri to forget all about it.
(He doesn’t.)
“Or I might cry,” Victor definitely doesn’t whisper, mangled and rasping and so, so vulnerable.
Gently, Yuuri pushes the ice pack away—to Victor’s whine of protest—and uncurls Victor’s fingers from around it. Liberated, he places that same hand—cold still but warming as the seconds tick by—on his forehead, Victor’s touch fanning over it like he wishes to shield him away. “See? It’s okay now.”
“Yeah.” Victor sounds choked. “Yeah, okay.”
Yuuri sighs. “I’ll be more careful.”
“See that you do.”
Yuuri huffs, managing to make it sound fond. “Yes, coach.”
“I have anxiety.”
It’s spoken with little fanfare, quietly delivered with a bit of an echoey quality granted to it in the stairwell up from the carpark, but at the same time, made exceedingly, artificially casual through Yuuri’s tone—the same one he uses to tell Victor there’s a piece of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth.
Victor continues to look forward, his proprietary hand on Yuuri’s shoulder clamping down just a touch tighter. “I know, Yuuri.”
Yuuri just shakes his head. “No, you don’t get it. I have anxiety.”
Victor’s answer is the same—the same pitch, the same cadence: “I know, Yuuri.”
“No, you don’t—“
“I do,” Victor says, adamant, though his voice doesn’t take on a single note of arrogance. “I’ve been made aware. But I don’t—“ He swallows. “I don’t have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.”
“Clearly,” Yuuri snorts.
Considering all Victor’s put him through, he considers this more than within Yuuri’s right. “I can do better though. I can learn.”
Yuuri looks at him then, weary. “You… want to?”
“Want to what?"
“Learn… to live with this.” Learn to live with me.
“Yes.”
They stop on the last stair, alone for the moment, neither of them making a move to open the final door.
Then Yuuri reaches for it. “You won’t regret it?” he says, wavering even as light floods from the other side.
Victor assists, pushing it and them all the way forward. “I won't. I can’t. Not when there is nothing for me to regret.”
“S-stop. Stop…”
It’s hardly a protest—infinitesimal, really, and drowned all but completely in the sensations of Victor’s mouth on his pulse and Victor’s hands on his hips and Victor backing him up to a wall and Victor pressing into his frame and Victor breathing in his air and Victor, Victor, Victor—and yet, the very same Victor stops immediately upon detecting that borderline hysterical note in Yuuri’s tone that’s thick and ripe with would-be panic, dribbling, even then, over the edge in warning like viscous whiskey gone sour.
“What is it, Yuuri?” Victor asks, letting his movements crawl to a standstill.
“I…” He doesn’t know. The sensation of Victor’s mouth against his still thrums pleasantly on his lips even hours later, sweet and luring, and he knows he loves Victor—has loved Victor since the moment he laid eyes on him years ago, gleaming bright with equal parts beauty and promise—but now here, alone, it’s not enough, somehow. Or rather, it's too much. Too soon. Too much or not enough something. Not right. Not time. Not now. Not here. Not—
Victor searches his face for something undefined, intent and seemingly relieved at what he either does or doesn’t find. He rests his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, both jumping a little in reaction to each other, Yuuri first, Victor following.
“Yuuri,” Victor says, voice scraped raw, “you can tell me to stop. That’s okay. I can wait. As long as you need… I can wait. And—and you can breathe, Yuuri. Please breathe for me.”
He does—in one awful gasp like he was being held underwater. It’s as though he was only allowed precious air through the permission of another—through the permission of Victor.
And he got it.
“You…” Not for the first time that day, Yuuri feels the threat of tears swimming at the edge of his vision. “You don’t mind?”
“I don’t,” Victor says and stares into Yuuri’s eyes with the force of it. “I love everything you give me. I love everything you don’t. Even if it’s forever… Forever isn’t a long time to wait if it’s with you."
Yuuri doesn’t fall into Victor’s arms as much as he crumples into them, pressing his already wet face into Victor’s shoulder. “I-I’m not broken?”
Victor inhales sharply. His fingers thread into Yuuri’s hair, grasping the strands, reverent. “No—no, love, you’re not broken. Who told you that?”
Yuuri just shakes his head, throat caught, failing as he always does to communicate the obvious.
But Victor understands. Eventually, Victor always understands.
They fall asleep together that night above the sheets, Victor petting reassurances into Yuuri’s hair as streaks of neon from outside the hotel room paint crudely over their skin, staining them in garish colors alongside the natural starlight.
All the while, Victor holds Yuuri tight, vaguely fearful he’s crushing him but more so fearful what will happen if he dares let go.
So he doesn’t.
“He’s all right then?”
Victor exhales heavily from across the ocean. “Yes, the vet says he’s fine. He just needs to rest, that’s all.” Yuuri can practically see Victor dragging a hand down his face. He tries to avoid doing that—it’s bad for his complexion, he says—but Yuuri knows. “Ah, but enough about me. You made it to the Final. Aren’t you excited?”
Yuuri’s quiet. He feels the aftermath of his free skate down to his bones, but it’ll have to wait.
“Hey,” he says, soft, “do you remember that time when you got a magazine to dedicate a whole article to Makkachin?”
There’s the smallest, most delicate gasp across the line. “Yes. In… 2005?”
“2006 actually,” Yuuri corrects. “You were eighteen. You still had hair like a goddess then.”
Victor chuckles, low and smoldering. “How could I forget?”
“They wanted to interview you on your first Grand Prix Final win,” Yuuri recalls, adjusting atop the unmade bed, “but you barely talked about anything other than Makkachin. In the end, they just decided to roll with it and gave Makkachin his own photoshoot.”
“Was I in it?”
“Nope.”
Victor laughs again, sounding infinitely lighter. “Sounds like me.”
“You were in the first picture though—on the title page.” Yuuri curls up tighter against the headboard. “I still have it… the title page and the spread. They’re laminated in a box in my closet.”
There’s shuffling then as though Victor is crossing the room in a hurry. “Oh? Does that mean I can find it if I look?”
“Mmm,” Yuuri hums. “Why don’t you find out?”
Yuuri wakes sometime around noon on his birthday, only vaguely aware that he’s a person. Jetlag has slammed into him from the right, and post-competition fatigue, from the left.
He’d consider the day a loss if his family would only let him.
There’s katsudon, of course—a whole table of it. Yuuri nearly cries as he takes his first bite, though decidedly not from happiness.
It feels undeserved.
“Yuuri,” Victor says after the meal, and he’s using his coach voice, “may I talk to you?”
It’s not really a question.
He pushes himself up from the kotatsu, promising his parents to return shortly as he follows Victor to the banquet hall.
Even as the shouji slides shut, Victor is already pushing Yuuri to sit down on the bed, motioning a “wait here” to him as he stalks over to his luggage.
Yuuri tilts his head, curious, but does as directed.
Whatever Victor was hunting for, he finds, taking a knee before Yuuri. “I didn’t get a chance,” he starts.
Yuuri waits, but Victor, evidently, is in no rush to fill in the gap. “To what?”
He brings his hand forward, revealing a single, vivid red rose, dusted at the edges with silver and gold. “To congratulate you on your performance, of course, and your qualification. You did well, Yuuri.”
Yuuri really does cry then, the rose suffering the worst of it, liquid pearling atop the petals. “But I—“
“Shh,” Victor hushes, thumbing at the tear trails. “You did well.”
And for a moment, Yuuri dares to think that it might be the truth.
“Did you delete the photos?”
Victor tries with everything he has to keep his smile internal. “No, Yuuri.”
“Won’t you?”
“No, Yuuri.”
“Why won’t you?”
“Because I like the photos, Yuuri."
“Well, I don’t.”
“That’s too bad, Yuuri.”
“Ugh.”
Yuuri turns from him, frowning down at the Barcelonan street, cobblestoned and lightly frosted from a recent snowfall.
Victor lets him, not willing to budge on this particular issue. It may have been intrinsic pettiness that led him to the decision, but it’s genuine affection for the photos themselves that keeps him firm.
“Why?” It’s almost too quiet for Victor to pick up, but he does, only just.
Victor finds the other’s hand. “Because I fell in love with the man in those photos.”
Yuuri has that look on his face like he thinks Victor has lost his mind—which, fair enough; if the entire skating federation can think it, so can Yuuri—but it’s also almost but not quite an expression that could easily burst into laughter at any moment.
In the end, he shakes his head. “You’re an idiot.”
Victor merely lifts his other hand, ring glinting from where Yuuri placed it. “An idiot you’re going to marry.”
“Yeah…” Yuuri breathes, the last vestiges of ice melting off him. “Yeah, that too.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—“
“I know.”
This time it’s Victor that has his back to the door, Yuuri’s kisses being pressed to his neck. They’re sweet and heady—not to mention endless—as Yuuri rains down love on Victor so thoroughly that nothing else can be felt, the less than pleasant memories of the night before already fading into nothing more than a dull throb.
And Victor would be perfectly content to drown, but then Yuuri reaches for his belt—
Victor grasps his wrist. “No, Yuuri.”
Yuuri struggles, though he can’t quite pull out of it. “Just—just let me—Victor, just—“
“I said no."
“I’ve already—I’ve already messed up so many things. Let me—let me do this for you. I love you, so—“
“You do—” And Victor knows it to be true. “—and I love you, which is why I won’t let you do this. I’ll wait until you’re ready—even if it’s never. I told you that, didn’t I? Didn’t you believe me?”
“Yes, but—“
“I haven’t changed my mind. Don’t force yourself for me. Don’t insult me like that.”
Yuuri’s lip trembles. “Then… what can I do… to make it up to you?”
Still gripping his wrist, Victor brings Yuuri’s hand to his chest. “Just stay here. Just love me. Just stay by my side and never leave.”
Yuuri breathes once. “But I’ve—“
“And I’ve forgiven you.”
“And I—“
“And that’s okay with me.”
“And—“
“And I love you too.”
And it’s enough.
It’s Christmas in St. Petersburg.
A cold snap dropped a fresh coat of snow over the city the night before, left to gleam and glitter in the breaking daylight. Victor’s apartment is snowed in—and Victor himself would be snowed in too, if he was only there to realize it.
Lucky for him, he’s waking to Yuuri’s butterfly kisses in Hasetsu.
“What’s that for, love?” he asks, his accent thick from sleep.
“It’s your birthday,” Yuuri answers simply.
“And it’s Christmas,” Victor lilts in the same tone.
Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Your birthday is more important.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure about that.”
“Well, I am.” Yuuri positions himself above Victor, partially obscuring the morning light. “Let me convince you…?"
Victor goes rigid. “Yuuri, you don’t have to—“
“You’re right; I don’t.” He bites his lower lip even as something akin to purpose glistens in his eyes. “But… I want to.”
The conviction, the drive—it’s all there, Victor can clearly see, as he stares up at his one and only. “Okay, Yuuri.”
It continues snowing somewhere else.
“Your life for mine,” Victor proposes before the alter. “It’s a trade. Do you accept?”
Yuuri’s shaking hands slip Victor’s ring onto his finger. “I do.”