Chapter Text
Yuuri lets himself out of Viktor's apartment as quiet as he can.
He’s not sneaking out. He’s not running away or regretting anything. Not this time, no.
He presses a kiss to Viktor’s forehead, chuckling when he clings to Yuuri like the adorable cuddle monster he is. Yuuri would complain about his octopus like tendencies but he enjoys waking up with Viktor wrapped up tight around him. Ever since they got back from the tour Yuuri has missed sharing a bed with him. No matter how many blankets he swaddles himself in he always wakes up cold, hands twitching to reach out for someone who isn’t there. Looking at him now in the deep blue shadows of pre-dawn Yuuri notices how Viktor frowns in his sleep, curling in on himself to make one half of a set of parentheses that Yuuri is supposed to complete. Yuuri resolves to come back soon. He doesn’t want Viktor to wake up alone.
He pops his sneakers on, shuffling his feet a bit so his toes fit comfortably. On his way out the door he gives Makkachin a gentle pat goodbye. He whines quietly.
“Don't worry Makka,” he whispers, pulling on his windbreaker. “I'll be back soon. I just need to think a bit.”
Yuuri uses his phone to find the most direct path from Viktor’s apartment to the nearest beach. The frigid air makes Yuuri horribly homesick for Viktor and his warm bed and his thick blankets and his soft skin.
Yuuri loves the muted colors of the city before everyone wakes up. Everything is a bit desaturated, like a vintage polaroid picture. It’s kinder on Yuuri’s frazzled mind. He finds comfort in the dim streetlights and washed out buildings.
The urban cityscape eventually gives away to the seafront.
(Yuuri thinks that could be a metaphor for something but it’s too early and he can’t be bothered to think too hard about it. He appreciates the aesthetics of the concrete crumbling away to the sugar dustings of sand and the turquoise swirl of water, though.)
The dawn breaks soft over the horizon. Yuuri has always been enamored with the beach, especially when the sunrise sits low on the water. The sun glows a pastel pink, a cheerful yellow, reflected off the water and the sand and the windows of the skyscrapers behind him. Everything is gold, gold, gold.
(It makes Yuuri feel impossibly dull in comparison.)
Yuuri exhales.
And then he starts to dance.
He must look absolutely insane to anyone watching, this kid in an oversized jacket tumbling and twisting and undulating on the beach at an ungodly hour. Yuuri doesn't care.
Yuuri has always had trouble expressing his emotions into words. He was too insecure, too anxious about saying the wrong thing. Dancing, though. Dancing, the subtle flex of muscles, the curve of his arms when he leaps through the air, that he never gets wrong. He might misplace vocabulary and fumble over syllables but Yuuri will never miss a beat.
So Yuuri pours out his mind onto the sand at six am, a lonely figure silhouetted against the waking sun.
Yuuri thinks about Viktor. He sways his hips to the push-pull rhythm of the tide. He thinks about Viktor's smile and his voice and how he smirks slow and incredibly sweet just before he uses a bad pickup line. Yuuri pulls up memories of Viktor grinning at him from across the table during breakfast. He pops his shoulders and rolls his head to the image of Viktor curled up in their Paris hotel room, watching Yuuri watching him. He thinks that poetry isn't his thing, it's Viktor’s, but the way he can dance to the exact pitch of Viktor's laugh is a form of poetry in itself. Yuuri leaves footprints in the sand and thinks about Viktor’s eyes when the water washes them away.
(The thing is:
Yuuri is going to be so bad at this. He’s going to be a bad boyfriend he knows this like he knows that he hurt Viktor before they even started dating. He knows that he’s not good at asking for things or believing people when they say they love him.
But he wants to try. For Viktor.)
It's all just so much.
The media and the pressure and the international playboy reputation that Viktor wears like a king’s cloak. The album sales . Yuuri had worked himself up to an anxious mess on at least three separate occasions, convinced that the album wouldn't sell because anyone with half a brain could see that Yuuri dances for Viktor and Viktor only and Yuuri didn’t want to face the oncoming jealous tidal wave.
And Viktor, well.
Viktor is a riptide of a human being.
He’s so overwhelming, so much of a presence and Yuuri can’t help but be swept up, out to sea, smiling even as he’s pulled farther and farther away from the gentle comfort zone of the shallows. Yuuri doesn’t care to look back towards the shore and maybe that’s a fatal mistake for some.
(But not him. Yuuri knows how to swim.)
Viktor matches him step for step. He makes up for what Yuuri lacks, holds up Yuuri when all he wants to do is bring himself down. Yuuri had a full blown panic attack in front of him and instead of trying to find a way to fix him Viktor held his hand and asked how he could be better for Yuuri.
Yuuri abandons the sensual sway of modern dance and slips back into his old ballet training. Something gentler, less frantic.
Viktor makes Yuuri want to be like that.
Less frantic.
So Yuuri pirouettes and adiagos and he even drops in a grand jeté but the sand is absolute shit for the kind of precise footwork that Minako had drilled into him. Yuuri stops eventually and switches into something entirely new, a style that isn’t modern and isn’t classic. It’s entirely Yuuri.
He can hear the music, one of Viktor’s songs of course, the fourth track on the album. The one that Viktor had played for him after one of their very first practice sessions. The one full of slow turns and unbearably earnest lyrics and the most saccharine melody that Yuuri’s ever heard. The one that– as Viktor had confessed last night– was about him. Regular old Yuuri Katsuki.
(Viktor had played it for him with the living room lights off and the LA lights twinkling behind him and the promise of a future together nestled in between them.
He sang his lyrics, the lyrics for Yuuri, directly into Yuuri’s soul. Viktor gave and gave and gave until Yuuri had to kiss him to shut him up because Viktor, with his smooth low voice and his poems in the form of love songs, is so sweet that it makes Yuuri’s heart ache.)
He was willing to wait for Yuuri to get his shit together even though they both know that Yuuri will never have his shit together. Viktor was willing to wait until the Universe imploded in on itself.
Yuuri doesn't deserve him.
Yuuri ends this train of thought kneeling in the sand, his track pants soaked through with seawater and his hair thick with salt and sand. Other people are starting to wake up and take their morning jogs. The peaceful exclusivity of the beach is broken but it's okay. Yuuri sorted out everything he needed to.
So maybe it is selfish to keep Viktor like this. Maybe he doesn't deserve the kind of soul-searing love that Viktor seems to feel for him. Maybe the noble thing to do would be to back off.
Or maybe Yuuri's brain is playing tricks on him again.
It doesn't matter, Yuuri decides. This is as much Viktor's choice as it is his and Viktor had made it very clear that he’ll stay if Yuuri will have him, and isn't that a thought? If Yuuri would have him.
Yuuri checks the time on his way back to Viktor’s apartment. He winces. It’s later than he thought it was. That's what he gets for waltzing with a body of water instead of staying in bed to snuggle with his boyfriend. He rushes to get back, afraid that if Viktor wakes up to a Yuuri-less bed he'll assume the worst.
“Makka,” Yuuri calls softly as he lets himself in. He toes off his shoes and listens to the click of Makkachin’s nails on the floor. “Makka, I’m home.”
Makkachin woofs quietly and nudges him in the direction of the bedroom. What a matchmaker. Yuuri smiles fondly and strips out of his clothes, slipping on a pair of Viktor's sweats instead.
“Mm, Yuuri?”
Yuuri slides into bed behind Viktor, curling along his back while Makkachin burrows himself against Viktor’s chest. A Viktor sandwich.
They make a lovey family.
“Go back to sleep, Vitya,” Yuuri whispers as he presses a light kiss to the back of Viktor's neck. He's only had a boyfriend for about five hours but he's already adjusting surprisingly well to this kind of casual intimacy. It's a testament to just how good they are together.
“Where’d you go?” Viktor slurs sleepily. “Missed you.”
Yuuri blushes. He watches from out the window as Los Angeles wakes up to the same pastel sunrise Yuuri had poured his heart out to this morning.
“I'm here now,” he says. “I'm not going anywhere.”