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He first sees the Katsuki family on the ‘About Us’ page of Yu-topia Onsen’s website. The other tabs open in his browser at the time are:

—   Twitter / Notifications

—   [ Katsuki Yuri ] Tried to Skate Victor’s FS [ Stay Close to Me ] – YouTube

—   フィギュアスケート強化選手 | 公益財団法人 日本スケート連盟 – Skater’s Bio – Figure – Japan Skating Federation

—   hasetsu hot springs katsuki – Google Search

—   dogs allowed japanese hot springs resort? – Google Search

—   LED to FUK: Flights from St. Petersburg to Fukuoka | Expedia

—   Expedia: Confirm Your Flight

—   Fukuoka - Hasetsu, Tuesday, April 11th 2016 | Virail

—   Virail:  Payment

—   Amazon.com: Japanese For Dummies (8601404691560): Eriko Sato: Books

—   Amazon.com: Change Shipping Address

—   Shipping Policies | CedEx.com

The familiar, continual sound of metal on ice has been playing from the open YouTube tab for at least fifteen minutes now. There is no music, only the low hum of a foreign rink’s air conditioning and hushed, childish giggles from behind the camera, but Viktor can tell exactly which part of the program Yuuri Katsuki is at purely by the rhythm of the blades scraping the ice.

Partiamo insieme... Viktor hums for the fourth time as he clicks the button to allow Google to translate Yu-topia’s website to English. Ora sono pronto. He has been skating to this piece for over a year now, but this is the first time the lyrics have made him feel this way: like there’s something in his chest, something light and fluttering that won’t sit still.

The website looks like it was made in the late 2000s and not updated since. There are too many fonts. A few of the links are broken. And the picture at the top of the ‘About Us’ section features a man, a woman, and two adolescent children. Yuuri is smaller, his face rounder, with a bashful smile that makes him look nothing like the man who downed sixteen flutes of brut champagne, swung half-naked from a pole by thighs made of steel, then flung his arms around Viktor and invited him to his family’s hot springs resort.

In the picture everyone is smiling, the parents with their hands on their children’s shoulders. Meet the Katsuki Family, Google has kindly translated for him.

And oh, does Viktor want to.

…

He shows up on the doorstep of Yu-topia Katsuki with a small carry on in one hand and Makkachin’s leash wrapped around the other. Yuuri does not answer the door, for which Viktor is secretly grateful. The three flights, one train ride, and eighteen total hours of red-eye travel show clearly in his oily hair and shadowed eyes, and Viktor Nikiforov has to make a better first impression than that.

Yuuri’s mother looks exactly the same in real life as in the outdated picture on their website. She smiles like the sun the second she lays eyes on Viktor and oh, he thinks. Are they all like this?

“Welcome!” she exclaims, her accent thick but the practiced word effortless. “I am Hiroko. Come. Come.”

Makka barks and jumps up on her legs.

“Makka! Nyet!” Viktor hisses, tugging on the leash, but Hiroko just laughs, the sound like tinkling bells.

“No, no. Everything okay.” Then she reaches down to scratch Makkachin beneath her chin and Viktor melts.

“Oh. Thank you. Um, I don’t know if dogs are allowed, but I can—”

Hiroko waves a hand, beckoning him inside. “Dogs yes. Yu-topia like dogs. But no onsen. No dogs in onsen. Okay?”

“Of course. I understand. Thank you.”

Makkachin’s paws click against the wood flooring. Viktor needs to cut her nails. To the right of the entranceway is a poster of Yuuri in his hometown, surrounded by cherry blossoms and reaching to the sky. The train station had been plastered with them, too. Viktor already checked on the cab ride over—he can buy one for 1500 yen on the JSF’s website.

“You make reservation?” Hiroko asks, bent over a desk strewn with papers.

“Yes, it’s under—”

“Aha! Yes. I see here.”

It hits him, then, that she knows exactly who he is. That, or he’s the inn’s only new reservation, but the first seems more likely. He remembers Hiroko’s welcoming smile and her hand on Yuuri’s shoulder and knows exactly what kind of parents the Katsukis are: the kind who put up posters of their son in the public entrance of their business; the kind who run a small inn but pay for their son to pursue his passion in a very expensive sport; the kind who probably watch each and every one of their son’s competitions and cheer him on, even if they can’t be there in person.  

Hiroko knows who Viktor is, because everyone moderately familiar with the world of competitive figure skating knows who Viktor is. Still, she doesn’t look at him the way he would expect, as if she’s sizing up her son’s competition or questioning his motives. She just smiles at him, smiles at Makka, and says, “Come, Vicchan. You are tired. Long travel. Onsen this way.”

He follows, his heart in his throat.

…

It’s strange how easily he slots into the Katsukis’ lives—how quickly they clear a room for him, how they don’t blink an eye when a CedEx truck shows up with eighteen boxes’ worth of Viktor’s belongings, how they make food for five instead of four at every meal. Viktor has been all over the world, stayed at five star hotels and dined at Michelin-starred restaurants, but has never experienced better hospitality or greater food than at Yu-topia Katsuki. For these reasons alone, Viktor could never even consider a coaching fee.

(That night, he creates four different accounts on Yelp and leaves four different raving reviews. All of them mention the katsudon. None of them mention the drop-dead gorgeous elite figure skater that served it to him.)

(Of course, he posts a picture tagged #Ninja #HasetsuCastle #Japan on Instagram a few days later, and this brings Yu-topia more business than four thousand Yelp reviews ever could.)

He meets Toshiya that night, and though he speaks less English than his wife and far less than his son, he still claps Viktor on the back and says, “Welcome, Vicchan!” before offering him a glass of sake to match his own.

Viktor googles the suffix “chan” that night. Google tells him it’s a diminutive. He decides they must be calling him something like Vitya, and he hangs on how effortlessly and affectionately it rolls off of their tongues.

Yuuri does not call him Vicchan. Yuuri calls him Viktor and blushes violently every time Viktor calls him Yuuri.

Makkachin loves Yu-topia just as much as Viktor does, and not just because the entire Katsuki family sneaks her strips of tonkatsu under the table. See, Makka is a friendly, happy dog, but for a poodle she is also fiercely protective. She will growl at strangers in the park, sometimes. It took her years to warm fully to Lilia.

But only a few days into his stay, Viktor wakes to an empty bed and a few hours later sees her trot happily down the stairs with a bleary-eyed Yuuri at her side. Perhaps he should feel abandoned, but he only feels validated.

“He’s so beautiful, isn’t he, Makka? Yes he is. Yes he is,” Viktor coos in Russian as he pets her in her favorite spot just below her right ear.

A few days later, he notices Yuuri’s sister petting her in precisely this spot. Then a few days after that, Toshiya.

And on some mornings, Viktor wakes up to find Makkachin’s bowl already filled with food and fresh water.

One night, Viktor and Yuuri return from a long evening at Ice Castle expecting to find Makka restless for her evening walk. Instead, she is curled up in front of the TV at Mari’s side, her fur wet and smelling like her favorite shampoo.

“We went on a walk on the beach. She got dirty. We took a bath,” Mari informs them in her precise but clipped English.

“A-arigatou,” Viktor stutters. He’s not sure what else to say. Makka’s tongue lolls as Mari scratches her Favorite Spot.

That night Yuuri goes to bed early, exhausted from their long practice. Makkachin pads after him, nails clicking on the floor, tail wagging as Yuuri coos something in Japanese.

It’s nice, Viktor decides, to have others love the things you most hold dear.

…

Except: Viktor sometimes wonders if he made a mistake.

The media is saying it. Yakov is saying it, to reporters and to Viktor directly, the one time he deigned to answer the phone. Yurio said it over and over again, before he left after Onsen on Ice. Everyone but Yuuri’s loved ones seems to think him impulsive, foolish, and a play-pretend coach.

And Yuuri—well. Yuuri isn’t exactly all that encouraging, either.

Logically, Viktor knows Yuuri wants him here. Yuuri was the one who asked. Yuuri was the one who looked horrified every time Yurio screamed come back to Russia! Yuuri was the one who pulled out all the stops for Onsen on Ice, who said he wanted Viktor to stay so they could eat katsudon together.

But Yuuri is also the one who gives him the cold shoulder, time and time again, unilaterally rejecting all of Viktor’s advances and olive branches. Yuuri is a good student, he listens to Viktor on the ice, but off-ice he retreats to his room and stays quiet over dinner and slams doors in Viktor’s face.

Viktor, for the life of him, cannot figure out where he went wrong. And so he wonders, especially on the days where the language barrier in his new home feels insurmountable, on days when Yuuri flubs jumps and retreats into himself without a word, on days where yet another call to Yakov goes unanswered.

stop calling. he doesnt want to talk to you, Yurio texts. Viktor stops trying after that.  

Makkachin sleeps with him now, because she always could sense these kinds of things. She whines until Viktor curls up around her, then nestles back against him. On one rare night, he cries silent tears and she licks them off his face and dries him with her fur.

…

Not too long after, he finds out about Vicchan.

He has spilled some of Makka’s dry food and is searching for a broom when he comes across the shrine. The room is beautiful but mostly empty, sunlight streaming in through the sliding glass doors. There’s an unused treadmill in the corner, a couple of shelves along the back. But the shrine is the focal point, decorated with flowers and candles and a small framed pictured atop the altar. Yuuri, no older than twelve, has his arms wrapped around a dog that looks just like Viktor’s Makkachin, back when she was still a puppy. Next to the picture lies a pair of engraved dog tags.

Viktor sinks to his knees on the pillow lying before it. His joints ache in protest. Sadness creeps at the edge of Viktor’s mind.

“He was a good dog.”

Viktor whips around to find Yuuri standing in the doorway.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosey.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure you would have found out sooner or later.”

Viktor blinks. He looks between the boy in the photo and the young man walking toward him. He thinks of the Katsuki family’s easy, instant love of Makkachin, how they knew when to feed her and walk her and exactly where to pet her. “Funny coincidence, huh? That he was so much like my Makkachin?”

Yuuri sits cross-legged on the floor next to Viktor and stares at the dog tags. He won’t meet Viktor’s eyes.

“Vicchan wasn’t a coincidence,” he mumbles. There’s a strange resignation in his voice.

At first, Viktor thinks Yuuri is talking about him. But no, that doesn’t make sense. Yuuri never calls him Vicchan, and Yuuri said was and they were talking about Yuuri’s dog, not his figure skating coach.

And then Yuuri looks up at him, a soft blush across his cheeks and his eyes hesitant and vulnerable.

Viktor, slowly, starts to understand.

“Oh.”

Yuuri fidgets. He doesn’t reply.

Viktor looks back at the dog tags, recognizing the katakana engraving now—the same name that decorated all of the Onsen on Ice posters. The same name that Hiroko writes on the little post-its she sticks on top of Tupperware containers of dinner leftovers when Viktor and Yuuri stay too long at the rink.

Yuuri is waiting for him to say something, but all the air has been sucked out of Viktor’s chest. He flounders, for a moment.

“Vicchan,” Viktor whispers, and it makes sense now.

Yuuri looks both profoundly embarrassed and profoundly sad. Viktor, on the other hand, is profoundly touched.

“Vicchan was Viktor?”

“Yes.”

“When did he…?”

Yuuri dips his head. “Last December.”

“Oh. God. Nationals?” Eleventh place when he had won gold three years in a row made much more sense now.

Yuuri sighs. “No. Sochi, the night after the short program. But it explains Nationals too, I guess.”

It feels like falling out of a jump. The impact rattles Viktor and knocks the breath from his lungs. He had seen bits and pieces of the free skate. Yuuri had done well in the short so he was only skating two before Viktor, but Viktor had watched a bit on the monitors. Fall after fall after fall. The defeat in the skater’s eyes as he slid into his final pose. All of the skaters and coaches in the back room had been silent.

If it had been Makkachin, Viktor would not have had the courage to even set foot on the ice. And he would certainly have downed more than sixteen flutes of champagne if forced to attend a banquet afterwards.

“I hadn’t seen him in five years,” Yuuri whispers.

And oh, if that doesn’t hit home for Viktor, who has spent more time with his own dog in the past month than the entire year before that—his own dog, who will be thirteen soon.

Viktor doesn’t even think. He reaches out and takes Yuuri’s hand in his own, unsurprised to find it trembling. He gives it a squeeze, and looks back to the grinning boy in the picture.

“How old were you?”

“I got him for my thirteenth birthday.”

Viktor hears: he’s admired you since he was thirteen. Younger, even.

“I’m sorry.”

Viktor frowns. “For what?”

“It’s weird. I know.”

But Viktor thinks of Stéphane Lambiel and the twenty-plus magazines he’d begged Yakov to help him hunt down. He thinks of the photo spreads he’d cut up and pasted into a collage and hung on his wall. He thinks of the VHS tapes he recorded every competition on and how much better his spins got in those years.

And then he thinks of Yuuri, who makes music with his body and skates like grace embodied and he thinks, Oh. Oh.

“It’s not weird. Not at all.” He means it.

Yuuri smiles and tightens his hand around Viktor’s.

…

Then, an afternoon on the beach.

Then, I want you to stay who you are.

Then, I didn’t want you to see my shortcomings.

And everything begins to change.

…

“Yuuri told me about Vicchan. I’m sorry.”

The sun crests on the horizon. Mari holds the leash tight in her hand.

“There was nothing anyone could have done.”

Makkachin is particularly restless this morning. Viktor came downstairs early to find her bowl already filled and Mari clipping the leash to her collar. They decided to go to together.

“Yuuri says he was a good dog.”

“He was very mild-mannered.” Mari snorts, “Nothing like his namesake.”

“Hey!”

She smiles. Sadness lingers on the edges. “He was Yuuri’s dog. But Yuuri left for a long time.”

“And you took care of him?”

“Yes. As best I could.” She stares off into the distance. “Yuuri got him when he turned thirteen.”

“He wasn’t in your family picture on the website,” Viktor muses. “It must have been taken before.”

Mari snorts. “God. Is that picture really still on there?”

“I think it’s cute.”

“I still had long hair. It is not cute.”

Viktor laughs. Mari’s knuckles are white around Makkachin’s leash.

“She’s getting old,” Viktor says.

Mari hums.

“I don’t know what I’ll do.” His voice threatens to break, but doesn’t.

“Just enjoy her now.”

Viktor sighs. “Trust me. I am.”

…

Yuuri’s mother is a dangerous combination of nosey and disarmingly quiet. Viktor discovers this one night, sitting at a table in the dining room as he combs through YouTube for old competition footage. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears her cluck of disapproval from behind him.

“No. I have… for you, Vicchan. Wait.”

She opens a cabinet next to the TV and pulls out a stack of VHS tapes, setting them down on the table in front of him. Along the spines are dates going back all the way to 2005, the competition names written in Japanese on each one.

Viktor starts with the oldest. Hiroko nods her agreement, sticks it in the VHS player, and they settle down in front of the TV to watch, Viktor with a well-worn notebook perched on his knee.

He watches Yuuri, but he also watches Hiroko watch Yuuri. The pride in her eyes is something to behold. She winces alongside Viktor every time Yuuri flubs a jump, as if she herself can feel the impact.

A few times, they put in a new tape only to find a video of Viktor that had been accidentally stored in the wrong pile. They laugh together and watch the tape anyway.

And Hiroko smiles when she watches Viktor skate too, her expression fond and maybe, possibly, perhaps even a little bit proud. Viktor’s mouth goes dry. He doodles flowers in his notebook, tracing and retracing the petals as music he hasn’t heard in a decade washes over him. He cannot look at Hiroko anymore. He ought to be flattered, he thinks, but his stomach twists and burns.

“Beautiful, Vicchan,” she says as applause rings out over the speakers. A warm hand cups the side of his face and Viktor’s eyes burn, but he does not cry. I’m not your son, he thinks but does not say. He swallows, nods, and hands her the next video to play.

She leaves him when they hit 2013, something about having to prepare food for tomorrow. Viktor just manages to get through 2014 before he falls asleep, his pages of scribbled notes forgotten at his side. Tatami mats are surprisingly comfortable, he remembers thinking before he passes out completely.

He wakes in the dead of night to Makka’s cold nose against his cheek. The dining room is abandoned, the lights out, but there is a pillow beneath his head and a blanket tucked into his sides. Warmth spreads through him from head to toe and, though he knows he’ll regret his laziness in the morning when his joints ache like an old man’s, he pulls his puppy close, laces his fingers through her fur, and sinks back into sleep.

…

Viktor is a disgrace of a Russian. He hates borscht. He gets cold very easily, despite spending most of his time in rooms with floors of ice.

And, worst of all, he is a total lightweight.

Yuuri’s father, it turns out, can drink him under the table. So can Yuuri, if Viktor recalls the Sochi banquet correctly. But for a few glorious, self-deluded minutes, Viktor thinks it a good idea to match Katsuki Toshiya shot for shot—after all, what better way is there to celebrate the announcement of Yuuri’s Grand Prix assignments?

They have a significant language barrier, Toshiya and Viktor, but luckily, drinking songs are universal.

“Sake ga nomeru, sake ga nomeru, sake ga nomeruzo!” they both chant, Viktor not even caring how horrid his accent sounds when he’s slurring his words.  The room starts spinning after three. After five, Viktor taps out. Toshiya laughs boisterously, claps him on the back, and drinks some more.

Viktor returns the favor by teaching Toshiya three of the many Russian songs he knows, and soon they are both singing a barely-recognizable rendition of “Oiy moroz moroz”. It’s Yakov’s favorite, Viktor recalls.

Viktor isn’t sure when he lost his shirt. He isn’t sure when Toshiya lost his shirt, either. He’s quite hot, though, and Yuuri’s skin is refreshingly cold.

“Mmm that’s nice,” Viktor mutters, placing Yuuri’s palm against his forehead.

“You’re hot, Viktor.”

Viktor grins and throws himself on top of his pupil. “Aw, Yuuri! You really think so?”

Yuuri groans. Toshiya starts singing again. Viktor joins in.

It’s Yuuri that takes Viktor back to his room, of course. Viktor is still sans shirt, though Yuuri remains tragically fully-clothed. Yuuri’s supportive hands on Viktor’s biceps keep distracting him so much that Viktor nearly runs into his own doorframe.

“Isn’t this a fun role-reversal,” he giggles as he clings to Yuuri like an octopus. He hopes Yuuri thinks he’s as cute as Yuuri himself had been, all those months ago. Though Viktor has a feeling he might just be annoying.

“I try not to make a habit of getting drunk and stripping,” Yuuri mumbles as he pries Viktor off of him and into the bed.

Viktor laughs hysterically. And then laughs some more as Yuuri tries to help get him out of his pants.

“Mmm, Yuuri, buy me dinner first,” he slurs.

Yuuri looks a little horrified. Viktor will regret (what he remembers of) this in the morning, but for now he thinks it’s hilarious.

“Go to sleep, Viktor,” Yuuri urges, trying to get him under the covers. Viktor won’t let go of his hand.

“Only if you sleep with me.”

“Huh?”

Viktor realizes he had spoken in Russian. In English this time, he says, “Stay, Yuuuuri.”

Yuuri quirks an eyebrow. “Will that make you settle down?”

Viktor nods vigorously.

“Okay. But you have to keep your hands to yourself.”

In his alcohol-addled state, he thinks this triumph feels just as good as winning gold at the Olympics. Yuuri is better than a medal. He’s softer. Warmer. Sweeter.

“I like it here,” Viktor murmurs, on the edge of sleep. Yuuri lies on the other side of Makkachin but Viktor can still feel his presence.

“I’m glad,” Yuuri whispers. Then, after a moment, “I like having you here.”

Oh, yes. Definitely better than the Olympics.

…

“Vicchan,” Hiroko hums over breakfast one morning, “Hair.”

Viktor flicks his bangs from his eyes. “Hair?”

Hiroko scrunches her brow, thinks very hard, but ultimately turns to Yuuri and rattles off something that Viktor, even after three months and fifteen chapters of Japanese for Dummies, has no hope of understanding.

Yuuri snickers. “She wants to cut your hair.”

“Yes. Cut.” She nods. “Too long.”

Considering Viktor is only a few weeks away from being able to tuck his bangs behind his ear, he is all for this. But, “You, Hiroko-san?”

“She’s cut our hair for years,” Yuuri confirms around a mouth full of rice. “Don’t worry, she will do a good job.”

And Yuuri’s hair has always looked neat, as far as Viktor can remember, so that’s how he ends up straddling the lid of the toilet in the Katsukis’ bathroom, a towel draped over his shoulders and Hiroko’s fingers running through his damp hair.

Viktor has only ever had his hair done by professionals in skinny jeans that charge 3000 rubles an hour and use salon-grade conditioner. He’s nervous up until she makes the first cut—she does not hesitate, just trims away with fluid movements and hums a melody under her breath that Viktor does not recognize.

“Why cut?”

Unsure of her question, he replies, “Gomen, wakarimasen?” He turns his head slightly to look at her, but she just forces it back with a humph.

“Hair, Vicchan. Long, before. Long-er . Why cut?”

“Oh.” Viktor blinks. Of all the questions she could have asked, he did not see that coming. “I suppose I just wanted a change.” And it’s the truth, basically. The programs he wanted to skate in seniors wouldn’t work if everyone still saw him as the ethereal wunderkind of his juniors career. The hair had to go.

The public’s reaction had been as mixed as his own. Reporters probed into it for months. Fans sent him devastated messages. Calvin Klein reached out for a modeling gig. Viktor adored the change one moment and sobbed in front of his mirror the next, wondering if he’d made a mistake. He got used to it eventually.

“Hmm.”

A question materializes on Viktor’s tongue and he knows he shouldn’t ask, but once he begins to wonder it’s hard to stop.

“What did Yuuri think? When he saw?”

Hiroko continues to snip away at his hair. “I do not know. First, maybe sad? But after, no. Just want… want-ed , um… pictures. New pictures for wall.” She laughs cheerfully. “Onegaishimasu, Okaasan, onegaishimasu…”

Viktor laughs along with her, his heart in his throat. Of course. Of course.

When she finishes, she takes his hand and guides him to the mirror, removing the towel from his shoulders and brushing extra bits of silver hair off his shoulders. “Okay?”

3000 rubles for a salon cut was a rip-off, Viktor realizes. He’d never left feeling as good as he does now, and Hiroko did this for free on top of a toilet with scissors that are maybe older than he is. He beams. “Arigatou gozaimasu!"

She pats his shoulder and places the scissors back in the drawer. “You are welcome, Vicchan.”

…

Viktor regrets his standing offer to help around the inn the moment Toshiya first takes him up on it. The language barrier is thick and tall and none of the instruments in Toshiya’s toolbox familiar. Viktor ends up being about as useful as Makkachin would have been, and at least she would have provided some moral support. Viktor just stands next to Yuuri’s father in the drained onsen and hands over the wrong tool four separate times before Toshiya decides to grab it himself. There are only five tools to choose from.

But Toshiya is a Katsuki, which means he is more gracious and patient than Viktor deserves. He ends up fixing the plumbing eventually, and when they climb out of the onsen Toshiya claps Viktor on the back with a jovial arigatou as if Viktor had done the whole thing himself.

…

Still, Viktor has never felt the language barrier more keenly than he does the night after Yuuri’s block championship, lost in the stream of Yuuri’s words but surrounded by people who understand their every nuance. Yuuri’s family, the Nishigoris, and Minako all stare at the television, their eyes growing wider as Yuuri talks and talks and talks.

Viktor knows what Yuuri’s theme is, what the kanji on Yuuri’s whiteboard must say. On my love, Yuuri had declared to him, him before anyone else, but now the entire nation of Japan knows more about that love than Viktor does which is just. Unacceptable.

“I think you should ask Yuuri,” Yuuko says when Viktor begs for a translation. “I don’t think I could do it justice.”

So he does. Yuuri returns the next morning and they jog together to the rink. As Yuuri laces up his skates, Viktor plops down next to him on the bench and says:

“It’s unfair that the whole of Japan gets to know what your theme is while your coach remains so cruelly in the dark. Don’t you think?”

A predictable blush paints Yuuri’s cheeks. Sometimes Viktor teases him just to see it.

“You know my theme.”

“Yes, but love can be many things,” Viktor reminds him. His knees protest as he slides to the ground, taking the laces from Yuuri. “Here, let me.”

“You don’t…” have to, Yuuri doesn’t quite protest. He leans back on his palms, looking down at Viktor in a way that makes Viktor’s throat go dry.

He focuses on Yuuri’s skates, tugging the laces as tight as they will go. He threads them, then tugs again. Threads again.

“Agape is love. Eros is love. Philia, storge… You’re going to have to be more specific with your theme, Yuuri.”

Yuuri quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t think it has a Greek name.”

“No? How would you describe it, then? It’s important that I know, Yuuri. As your coach. For your skating.”

The laces have reached the top of the boot. He taps Yuuri’s knee, and Yuuri dutifully extends his other skate. Viktor begins again, tugging, threading, tugging.

When he glances up, he finds Yuuri’s mouth pulled into a small, knowing smile. “As my coach, huh?”

Viktor gulps. He’s not sure which lace to thread next. Left, right? Under, over?

“Yes. As your coach.”

Yuuri sighs. “I don’t remember what I said, to be honest. I got… well. A bit carried away.”

I like when you get carried away, Viktor doesn’t say.

“I suppose you can find the whole thing online by now.”

Viktor nods. “Translated, too.”

Yuuri’s eyes go wide with alarm. “Did you—?”

“No. But I’m positive someone in your army of fans has done it already.”

“Then why didn’t you look?”

Viktor shrugs. He finishes the second skate and sits back on his heels. “Why ask the internet when I can ask you?”

“Oh.”

“If you don’t w—”

“I never realized how much love surrounded me until I met you. That’s what I said.”

The words are like a sucker-punch to Viktor’s gut. The good kind. For a moment, he forgets to breathe.

“Oh.”

Viktor had heard his own name peppered throughout Yuuri’s speech along with the name of his theme— Vikutoru, this, ai-desu that. But Viktor is Yuuri’s coach and naturally he would be mentioned in a speech about Yuuri’s skating. Viktor had hoped, but never dared to believe.

Yet Yuuri looks down at him with that shy smile and until I met you reverberates throughout the locker room.

“I also said…” Yuuri continues in barely more than a whisper, “that I don’t want to let this go.”

If Viktor were not already on his knees, they would have likely buckled beneath him. “I don’t either,” he breathes. He wants to say something better, something smarter, but this is all he has. He hopes it’s enough.

A visible shiver travels down Yuuri’s limbs. He stands and offers a hand to help Viktor from the floor. Viktor takes it immediately, uses the leverage to pry his geriatric joints from the ground, and mourns the loss when Yuuri’s hand pulls away far too soon.

What he doesn’t know is this: only a few hours later, once their practice has concluded, Yuuri will suggest they take the scenic route home. They will walk along the beach, skate bags draped over their shoulders and the salty ocean air in their lungs. The sun will set in the horizon. And quietly, carefully, Yuuri’s hand will slip back into Viktor’s and stay there the whole way home.

Then that night, Viktor will lie awake for hours hearing: I never realized how much love surrounded me until I met you.

And it will startle Viktor to realize that, for him, with Yuuri, it’s exactly the opposite.

…

“This one’s yours.”

Yuuri’s voice reaches Viktor’s ears over the hum of the train that surrounds them. Viktor insisted on letting Yuuri have the window seat, though not with entirely selfless motivations; this way, he can make it look like he’s watching the scenery speed by outside when he’s really tracing and retracing the point of Yuuri’s nose, the curve of his lips, the slope of his chin.

But now he’s been caught staring. Yuuri clears his throat and Viktor blinks, jerking his gaze from Yuuri’s expectant expression to the small brown bag held between them. On the outside is written:  ♡ ヴィクトル ♡

Viktor traces the letters with his fingertip and tests the syllables on his tongue. Vi-ku-to-ru. He lingers on the hearts.

“What does this say?” Viktor asks, pointing to a smaller line of words below his name, stuck within parentheses.

Yuuri smirks. “No wasabi.”

“Ah.”

The train ride to Fukuoka is not long, but Hiroko insisted on packing them lunch regardless. A day of travel stretches before them, and Viktor already cannot wait to crawl under the covers at their hotel room in Beijing. Maybe he can even convince Yuuri to push their beds together. That would be nice.

He pulls the bento box from the paper bag and sets it on his lap. Then, with careful, precise fingers, he folds the bag into fourths and places it in his wallet. He brings the first bite of onigiri to smiling lips.

When the train pulls into the station, they start to gather their belongings. “I can take your trash,” Yuuri offers, holding out a hand that contains his own brown bag, all crumpled up.  

Viktor blinks. “Oh.”

Yuuri follows Viktor’s gaze as it darts down to the wallet sitting on Viktor’s lap, a bit of brown paper sticking out of the top.

“Oh,” Yuuri echoes, then laughs. “You were going to keep it?”

Viktor laughs too, but it aches in his chest. “It is silly, isn’t it?” he says around the lump in his throat. His fingers move to fish out the delicately folded paper. His lips crack around his smile.

When he looks up, Yuuri isn’t laughing anymore. A sadness Viktor could never have anticipated weighs heavy at the brown of Yuuri’s eyes and twists Viktor’s stomach into knots. Yuuri reaches out a hand to still Viktor’s where they play at his wallet and the sadness melts to something softer.

“No, no, it’s—keep it. She would love that you did.”

The back of his tongue tastes like Hiroko’s onigiri. Salmon and seaweed. Viktor isn’t sure what he planned to do with a used brown paper bag, dotted with oil stains and crumpled already around the edges—he only knows that he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He closes his eyes and lets his mind retrace Hiroko’s little hearts and the foreign letters of his name. He’s finding that he vastly prefers the four syllables to two.

Yuuri sleeps on Viktor’s shoulder the entire flight to Beijing. Viktor doesn’t mind travelling, he realizes, when it’s like this.

…

They return from Beijing with a silver medal, some lessons learned, and the taste of each other’s lips on their tongues. “Tadaima!” they call out when they step through the front door, and the Katsukis welcome them home with “Okaeri!” and bowls of steaming katsudon that Yuuri insists he doesn’t deserve but eats anyway. Makkachin curls up on Viktor’s lap and refuses to move, even as he gets flecks of rice and panko in her fur.

After dinner they cart their luggage upstairs, their feet dragging like zombies as they make their way down the hallway. Yuuri continues to his room without looking back, and Viktor’s heart sinks. He stops at his own door. Slides it open, places his bags by the door, and collapses onto the bed without preamble.

Only second later, the floorboards squeak behind him. He prepares for Makkachin’s weight as she jumps up on the bed, but it doesn’t come. She’s being awfully quiet, he thinks, and raises his head to look.

Instead he finds Yuuri in the doorway, pillow in his arms. He bites his lip. “Do you want…?”

“Yes," Viktor replies, exhaustion forgotten as he sits straight up in bed. “Yes. Please. Yes. Which side do you want? It doesn’t matter to me. Makkachin usually sleeps over on the left, but I’m sure she won’t mind.” He’s rambling. He doesn’t care. Yuuri accepts him with a nervous smile and pads across the room.

“Is this okay?” Viktor asks. They lay on their sides facing one another, only inches between them.

“Yes. Yes,” Yuuri whispers, his breath hot on Viktor’s nose. They shiver.

And then they kiss—quietly, tentatively, for what must be the tenth time since the end of Yuuri’s free skate nearly two days ago now. Tonight, their kisses taste like katsudon. Like victory. It buzzes in Viktor’s veins.

In the morning, they wake up with their bodies intertwined.  

…

The Katsuki family knows, of course. Yuuri and Viktor’s first kiss was broadcast on international television, so really the whole world knows (which is mostly Viktor’s fault, but he’ll never be able to regret it, especially since he catches Yuuri grinning and re-watching the end of his free skate on YouTube at two a.m. when he thought Viktor was asleep). Other things have changed, too—Yuuri and Viktor sit closer at the dinner table, and hold hands sometimes, and Yuuri very clearly hasn’t slept in his own bed in weeks.

So yes, the Katsuki family knows, but no one says a word, not even Hiroko who walks in on them kissing over a pile of dirty dishes instead of doing their chores. It baffles Viktor a bit—how they act as if nothing has changed when, for Viktor, the entire world has shifted.

In the end, Mari is the first to acknowledge it. Sitting at her side in the waiting room of the animal hospital, he is not expecting it at all.

“We should talk. About you and my brother.”

They have been sitting in silence for what feels like an hour, which was better than the hour before that Mari spent apologizing. Viktor would hear nothing of it, of course, and tried to wave it off—Makkachin should know better—but then he remembered Vicchan, only a year ago, and the guilt weighing in her eyes made more sense.

Luckily, Makkachin will be fine. They are only waiting for the doctor to let them take her home.

“Ah. Yes. We should.” Viktor nods, his gaze fixed on a wooden sculpture of a shiba inu on the receptionist’s desk.

“I hope you do not treat this lightly.”

Ah, Viktor thinks. He should have known this was coming. What do they call it in movies? The hammer talk? Oh, shovel. Shovel talk. This will be Viktor’s first. How delightful!

“I promise I will be good to him.” Viktor meets her eyes, hoping she sees the truth in them.

But Mari just laughs and waves a hand. “Of course you will. I know that. You’re Viktor.”

Viktor blinks. “Oh.”

“I know you’ll be good to him. But my brother, he can be… What is the word?” She taps her lips. “Oh! Dumb.”

Viktor makes a noise of protest in the back of his throat.

“Maybe not dumb. But bad at communicating. Bad at seeing.” She chuckles. “Even with his glasses.”

None of this is making any sense to Viktor. Perhaps it’s the language barrier. Perhaps it’s because he’s just travelled the length of a continent and hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“Viktor, he might hurt you. You might hurt him. But you will not give up, okay? If he tries to push away, you pull him back.”

“Oh.”

(Viktor still doesn’t quite understand. If this were a movie, Mari would have threatened by now to Tonya Harding his kneecaps if Viktor hurt her little brother. Or something. And instead…)

Mari leans back against the wall with a huff and smirks. “And if my idiot brother does hurt you, you call me, okay? Immediately. I will straighten him out.”

Something blooms in Viktor’s chest, something warm and light that unfurls slowly, gently, only to wrap tightly back around his heart. His mouth hangs open in a little ‘o’ as he flounders for a response.

“Mari, I…”

Just then, the door opens and the veterinarian emerges, a folder in one hand and Makkachin’s cage in the other. Viktor jumps off of the bench. Makka whines.

“Shh, Makka, it’s okay,” he coos in his native tongue as he drops to his knees in front of her. He opens the cage and welcomes her into his arms; she smells like antiseptic but her fur is as soft as ever. She buries her head in his chest and whines again. Viktor wants to cry. “I’m here. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

They sign some papers, thank the doctor, and leave, heaving sighs of relief the second the fresh night air hits their lungs.

“Arigatou, Mari-san,” he says as they load Makkachin into the back seat of the car, hoping she knows how deeply he means it.

She laughs, pats his shoulder, and says, “Viktor. Call me neechan.”

That warmth still has Viktor’s heart in a vice grip and it squeezes.

“Mari-neechan,” he corrects, voice trembling and tripping over the unfamiliar syllables.

Mari laughs again as they shut the back seat and get in the front. Mari starts the car. Over the rumble of the engine, he hears her grumble, “God, I need a smoke.”

He laughs, too.

…

Only in Yuuri’s arms does Viktor finally relax.

It’s a little pathetic, Viktor can admit, that they’ve spent the past nine months at each other’s sides and can’t even handle one day apart. Granted, it has been a stressful day, with Makkachin’s life and Yuuri’s future in the Grand Prix on the line, and terrible jet lag to boot.

But Makkachin has a clean bill of health. Yuuri qualified for the final by virtue of his previous silver and the skin of his teeth. Yakov picked up the phone after the free skate for the first time since May and, after accepting Viktor’s thank you’s, gave gruff advice on how to help Katsuki improve his programs—an implicit, begrudging approval.

All of this, yet Viktor lay awake the night before tossing and turning despite his desperate need for sleep. His eyes burned with exhaustion but he could not settle in a bed so empty.

So no, it’s not until the airport that the relief finally hits, slamming into him with the force of Yuuri’s body and seeping from his skin down into his bones. Every frayed nerve goes quiet and calm as he feels Yuuri’s breath on his ear and a voice like music saying please take care of me. The static in his head, previously so loud he hadn’t even known it was there, gets softer and softer until all he can hear is Yuuri, those beautiful words, over and over again. The collar of Viktor’s coat crumples in Yuuri’s fists; Yuuri’s body is warm in his arms and Viktor’s secure in Yuuri’s.

Viktor takes a breath so deep that it touches every starved corner of his lungs. He breathes Yuuri in, holds him there, breathes out.

Makkachin yips at their feet. Yuuri pulls back with a grin, his eyes filled with inexplicable tears.

And oh, Viktor thinks. Does he feel this too?

Toshiya is waiting for them in the cell phone lot and comes as soon as they call. They spend the hour drive tucked against each other in the backseat, Viktor’s fingers skating figure eights along Yuuri’s forearm.

“I missed you,” Yuuri whispers just as Hasetsu Castle appears in the distance. He is soft and warm and sleepy and Viktor commits every detail to memory.

“I missed you too,” he sighs, though Yuuri will never know just how much. “I’m so proud of you.”

A shiver courses through Yuuri’s body and his eyelids flutter. Then, slowly, he turns his head and graces Viktor’s shoulder with a long, quiet, closed-mouth kiss. “I know,” he mutters into Viktor’s shirt, his bangs falling in his eyes. “Thank you.”

It’s late by the time they return to Yu-topia, the dining room abandoned and the kotatsu gone cold. They trudge up the stairs together, Yuuri’s suitcase thunking carelessly behind them, and Viktor stops at the entrance to his room but Yuuri does not, continuing on to his own door.

“Oh.” Viktor’s stomach drops. His shoulders slump. Yuuri turns and stares with bleary, blinking eyes; understanding dawns in them slowly.  

“Oh. Sorry. Habit, I—” he clears his throat, drops his suitcase at the entrance to his room, and moves to walk toward Viktor. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“You can sleep in your own room if you want, Yuuri. You probably miss it.”

“My room is lonely.”

“Oh– okay.” Viktor swallows. “I could join you. If you want.”

“But my bed is small.”

“I don’t mind if you don’t.”

A delicate smile graces Yuuri’s lips and holds Viktor’s heart in a vice grip. Yuuri reaches out, his fingers intertwining with Viktor’s and he walks backward toward his room, pulling Viktor as he goes without ever breaking their gaze. With anyone else, Viktor would have found this thrillingly, tantalizingly suggestive, but with Yuuri it’s— different. It’s always different.

They fall asleep almost the second their bodies hit the mattress, Viktor half on top of Yuuri and their legs intertwined. The slow and steady lullaby of Yuuri’s heartbeat is the last thing he remembers until morning.

…

Yuuri’s walls were not always bare. Viktor knows this intellectually, the same way he knows that Yakov once had a full head of hair, or that he was born in a city named Leningrad. He knows, but he can never picture it, and so it never quite sinks in as the truth—

Until the morning after Yuuri returns from Rostelecom.

Viktor wakes up first, like always. Alarm or no alarm, five a.m. or noon, Viktor will open his eyes to find Yuuri sleeping like the dead beside him. He never minds. Yuuri looks like an angel in his sleep, unfairly so, and Viktor is not too ashamed to stare. That morning, Viktor awakens with his head pillowed on Yuuri’s chest and his arm draped over Yuuri’s waist, the duvet lying at their ankles where they had kicked it off in the middle of the night. It’s no mystery as to why—Yuuri’s body is warmth, like Viktor’s own personal radiator. Viktor presses the back of his hand to Yuuri’s forehead but thankfully finds no fever.

Outside the window the sun hangs high in the sky, but between post-skate exhaustion and recent jet lag Viktor does not expect Yuuri to awaken for a few more hours.  There’s a Makkachin-sized indent at the foot of the bed, and Viktor knows Mari must be taking care of her. Downstairs he can hear the hustle and bustle of the inn, but it’s muted and far away from the quiet peace of Yuuri’s bed.

Viktor soaks in Yuuri’s presence and lets his eyes wander, exploring this room that had previously been off-limits. There is only so much he can see from the bed: a stack of paper on the desk, a globe on the shelf, a keyboard propped up in the corner. Mostly, though, his eyes scan the empty walls, counting the leftover pieces of scotch tape still stuck to the paneling. They always appear in groups of four, he notices, rectangular constellations of all different sizes. Between that, Yuuri’s well known hero-worship of Viktor as a child, and Hiroko’s mention of her son’s “pictures for walls”, it does not take a genius to put the pieces together.

And Viktor can picture it, suddenly—some of the many pictures his publicist had emailed him to approve for official merchandise peppering Yuuri’s walls, the first thing the young skater saw when he woke up in the morning and the last when he went to sleep. Viktor does not remember what most of the posters looked like, but the need to find out tugs insistently at his stomach. He’s not sure what to do with it.

Yuuri wakes up slowly and Viktor, snug in his arms, studies the process from up close. Viktor feels Yuuri begin to stir long before his eyes open and even that happens slowly, his eyelids heavy and sticky with sleep. His sleepy pools of brown take in Viktor spread across his chest and a lazy smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.  

“Mmm,” he groans, nestling his head further into his pillow. His hand tightens at the small of Viktor’s back, pulling him closer.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

“Nnngh.”

Viktor laughs and reaches up, brushing back a strand of dark hair from where it had stuck to the corner of Yuuri’s eye.

“Time ‘sit?”

“No clue,” Viktor answers cheerfully. “Makkachin got bored and abandoned us, though, so probably late.”

Yuuri heaves a sigh and moves to sit up. “Mmm. Need to get to the rink…”

“Rest day,” Viktor counters, pushing Yuuri’s shoulders back down onto the mattress. “Your coach insists.”

“Did you watch my free skate? Need to practice…”

“Tomorrow.”

“The flip—”

“Can wait.”

Yuuri huffs, but the exasperation in his expression is all for show. He taps Viktor twice on the nose with the tip of his pointer finger. “You are stubborn.”

“So are you.”

“But I’m tired. So I will let you win this time.”

“Good. I’m far too warm and comfortable to move.”

“Me too.”

Downstairs, some customers are shouting at a football match. They can hear the distant clanking of dishes. It must be past lunchtime. Viktor settles back down, slotting himself in the space between Yuuri’s arm and his side. Yuuri’s pulse-point is only inches from Viktor’s lips. He swallows.

“Yuuri?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you take down your posters?”

A sharp intake of breath nearly makes Viktor jump. “Oh. You… You know about those?”

Viktor laughs—he can’t help it. “Well, I suspected. You just confirmed it.”

“ Kuso,” Yuuri hisses, then buries his flaming face in the top of Viktor’s head. Voice muffled, he replies, “I think it’s obvious why I had to hide them.”

“Hide?” Viktor’s heart leaps and he jumps from Yuuri’s arms, sitting upright so quickly he gives himself a head-rush. “You still have them?”

Yuuri’s mouth hangs open like a fish, his cheeks bright pink from sleep and embarrassment, and he looks lonely lying there without Viktor in his arms. “Of course I still have them! I could never throw them away.”

Those words plant something warm and pleasant in Viktor’s chest and he wants to nourish it and let it grow.

“Can I see them?”

Yuuri’s expression is two parts horrified, one part mortified. “You really want to?”

“Yes,” Viktor insists, knowing Yuuri will not say no.

And he’s right. It’s just like when Yuuri steps out on the ice at a competition, that switch that flips in his eyes and brings determination in to suffocate his doubt. Yuuri stands, walks over to the cardboard boxes at the foot of his bed, and pulls out a roll of papers wrapped in a rubber band. Viktor stands too, and together they lay the posters out on the bed, fighting back the curling edges as they go. And to top it all off, Yuuri pulls out a framed picture that must have sat on the desk or one of the shelves.

All in all, there are seventeen photos of Viktor. In some he has long hair, in others short; in some he is skating, in others posing off the ice; in some he is smiling, in others staring sultrily at the camera. In all of them he looks flawless, just the right angle and just the right lighting and a bit of airbrushing over his pores. Most of the posters are large, but a few look like they’ve been cut carefully from magazines and one like it’s been downloaded and printed from the internet.

“This one is my favorite,” Yuuri says, his fingers playing at the corner of the oldest poster there. The colors are fading and a couple of the edges ripped, but the picture is still clear: Viktor, sixteen years old with his straggly hair down to the middle of his back, his arms wrapped around Makkachin’s neck. Both the boy and the puppy look stunningly happy, and Viktor remembers that he was.

“This picture was why I got Vicchan, you know,” Yuuri admits. “I saw it in a magazine. The article was pretty generic, but there was this one line that said something like on his rest days, Viktor likes reading books and going to the park with his poodle, Makkachin. I read it over and over, just that one line.”

That thing in Viktor’s chest grows, sprouting and blooming and unfurling into the cavity beneath his ribs.

“That was my first photo shoot. I only agreed because they let me do it with Makka.” He chuckles. “I wanted to keep that rule as I got older, but of course she’s not allowed on the ice. And she can be disruptive to the equipment. And distracting for everyone.”

Yuuri snorts. “I’m sure ESPN would have loved that.” The second the words leave his mouth, his face turns another shade brighter of red.

The only photo shoot Viktor has done for ESPN was the 2013 Body Issue.

“Yuuri,” Viktor practically purrs, a grin spreading from ear to ear. “You liked that one?”

“It was…” Yuuri swallows. “Memorable.”

Viktor reaches forward, tapping the underside of Yuuri’s chin. “I’m surprised you didn’t get the cover photo in poster form for your wall.”

“Phichit tried. I kept taking it down.”

“Hmm. I’m offended, Yuuri. It was not good enough for you?”

Yuuri just blinks. Stares. Then breaks away toward his desk, opening the bottom drawer and rifling around until he pulls out four separate magazines.

Or rather—the same magazine, four times over. Viktor does not have to see the cover to know exactly which it is. He lays them out one by one on top of his pillow.

“Yuuko. My mother. Phichit. And this one I bought myself.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Viktor remembers sitting in front of a screen next to his publicist, three professional photographers and an executive from ESPN, scrutinizing hundreds of photos and wanting to crawl out of his skin. They eventually chose this one, which was his favorite as well—Viktor Nikiforov stretched back in an off-ice ina bauer, looking to the sky, every inch of his pale skin glistening and his toned ass fully visible. It is a beautiful photo, Viktor can admit, and well earned. He did so many squats.

He reaches out and picks up one of the magazines, running his thumb over the glossy cover. Whatever warmth Yuuri has planted in Viktor’s chest continues to grow, stretching and extending and wrapping like vines around his heart and his ribs and it’s getting to be too much, suddenly. Too hot. Too tight. Burning.

They stand side by side, looking down at the posters spread across the mattress. Twenty-one Viktors (seventeen posters, four magazines) stare back at them, smiling or winking or quirking a perfect, mysterious eyebrow. The real Viktor, the three-dimensional living breathing walking talking Viktor, closes his eyes and shivers, his skin prickling all over his body. He can feel each and every one of his jagged edges and he wonders desperately what it will take to sand them down. He wonders if it will hurt; how long it will take; how long Yuuri will be willing to wait for Viktor to become as smooth and suave and touchable as the man in the posters.

Viktor’s chest is too tight. His ribs ache. His lungs won’t inflate all the way. At his side, Yuuri shifts his weight, thumbs at his pant leg, looks everywhere but at Viktor.

“Yuuri,” Viktor begins, a smile stretching his lips. “I know that I can sometimes be… a lot. Up close.”

Yuuri turns to face him then, his expression contorted in concern. Something squeezes Viktor’s heart and it begins to race. This was not supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to upset Yuuri, he was trying to apologize—

“Who told you that?”

Yuuri’s question sounds like an accusation. Viktor tries to take a deep breath and fails. No one has told him that, never in so many words, but that’s entirely beside the point.

The point is that no one has ever come as close as Yuuri and Viktor knows why. Even Yakov is close only by necessity, and he yells constantly, keeps Viktor at an arm’s length, and loves him only reluctantly.

“Does this have to do with the posters? I knew I shouldn’t have showed you—”

“No,” Viktor interrupts, and it comes out like a squeak. “No. I wanted to see. After all these years… They’ve been so important to you. He’s been so important to you.”

The warm weight of Yuuri’s hand slips into Viktor’s. “You’ve been important to me.”

Viktor barks a laugh. It comes out sounding harsher than he expected and for a moment Yuuri looks hurt, which is just par for the course.

“I am not him, Yuuri.”

The confession rings through the silent room, echoes in Viktor’s ears, and he cannot take it back. He will not. He has never given voice to this truth before, not even in the quiet of his own head, but now that it’s out he wants to repeat it over and over again.

“I am not him.”

Yuuri just blinks up at him. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

And, and, oh.

Oh.

“Viktor. Did you really think that I looked up to you all these years because you were pretty?”

Yuuri’s voice is tender but his question kicks Viktor square in the chest like a steel-toed boot, knocking the wind out of him and dislodging the strangling vines of fear that had wrapped themselves around Viktor’s ribs and heart.

Viktor reels from the blow. His jaw clamps tight and he doesn’t quite believe it. “What else was there to see?”

“Viktor, sit— sit down.” With one hand, he tugs Viktor gently toward the bed; with the other, he makes room on the mattress by shoving his prized posters out of the way. One rips at the corner. Yuuri doesn’t bat an eye.

The mattress dips beneath them. They face one another, their knees knocking together, hands joined between them. Viktor has never seen such determination in Yuuri’s eyes, not even before a skate.

“Look. Viktor. I was a… big fan, okay? And I’m probably going to out myself by sounding slightly stalker-ish when I tell you all of this, but you need to hear it. So bear with me.”

“O-okay.”

“You were never just posters to me, Viktor. Never. The posters were reminders of everything else, everything I saw in your skating and your interviews and the way other skaters talked about you. I mean the— the most obvious thing was Makkachin. Do you remember back when you had your knee injury, you did that interview where the lady kept trying to ask you about how your recovery was going? And you were— you were obviously struggling at the time but you just kept talking about how Makka was getting you through it, how she sat with you while you did your PT exercises. You said you were sad that you couldn’t compete that season but that you were happy to be spending so much time with your dog and the lady kept trying to get the interview back on track, but you kept making it about Makkachin again. And that’s when you first told the story of how you found her freezing under a dumpster on your way home from the rink and I just… I watched that interview so many times.”

Viktor’s ears are ringing. Yuuri’s words batter against him like wave after wave after wave and eventually he stops fighting them and surrenders, letting them wash over him.

“Or that time in your last junior Worlds, when you had that really bad collision in the six minute warm up with another skater and you stayed with him until the medics came, and you followed him off the ice and waited in the back and refused to skate until you were sure he was okay. You almost missed your own short program.”

“The collision was my fault,” Viktor replies, voice hoarse. “I was being careless. Cocky.”

“Everyone gets careless sometimes.” Yuuri waves it off with his hand. “And what about the NHK Trophy in 2011— or was it 2012? You know, when that little girl managed to get past security and came up to you and gave you that poodle keychain? You kept it on the zipper of your skate bag for years, and you gave her a hug and helped her find her mom. The cameras caught it all.”

“I…”

“Or that time that you flew to Moscow without telling Yakov the weekend before Euros because Make-a-Wish called you about a little boy that just wanted to see you skate in person?”

Viktor sighs. “Everyone said that was just a publicity stunt.”

“No, staging a date with the Prince of Monaco's son is a publicity stunt. This was something different.”

A laugh bubbles unbidden from Viktor’s chest, light and airy.

“And that one time your rink-mate—Ivan, maybe? I don’t remember, your main competition at the time, he tore his ACL really badly and had to retire, and the reporters kept trying to get you to say you were happy about it. But you never did. You never were, you looked so genuinely sad every time they mentioned it.”

“How could I have been happy?” Viktor wonders, his eyes wide. He shudders. “I was there. His fall was horrific.”

The smile on Yuuri’s face is impossibly fond. One hand wraps tightly around Viktor’s but the other reaches out and presses flush up against the side of Viktor’s neck. Yuuri’s thumb runs up and down the length of Viktor’s jaw, coaxing it to relax.

“Look. You have been at the top of the figure skating world for years. You’ve won everything five seasons in a row. That much success and people start looking for reasons to hate you. So don’t you think it’s telling that I’ve never once heard another skater say anything truly bad about you?”

Viktor can’t wrap his mind around what Yuuri is saying. “I… I don’t…”

“Viktor,” Yuuri sings. “Weren’t you the one who told me that you cannot control your own image? I know you think that the world only knows you as an aloof bachelor that smiles wide for the camera. I know that, but I can’t imagine that many people actually bought it. You’re ambitious, controlled, intelligent, easily excited, and so, so kind when it comes to the things that matter. That’s the Viktor Nikiforov I’ve looked up to since I was a kid. That’s the Viktor I see in these posters and the one I've gotten to know since you came to Hasetsu. And that’s…” Yuuri bites his lip, looks Viktor dead in the eyes, and says, “…that’s the Viktor I love. You. Okay?”

God, what—what is Viktor supposed to say to that?

Sitting there on Yuuri’s bed, his head held in Yuuri’s palm and Yuuri’s words echoing through his ears, Viktor feels utterly transparent, as if his skin were made of parchment and his swelling, throbbing heart on display for all to see. It’s good though, somehow, because he feels seen—not just as the man he is now, but every iteration of himself, every Viktor Nikiforov that existed from now back to the moment he stepped into the spotlight as a teenager. The fifteen year old child, the twenty year old boy, the twenty five year old man, the Viktor he is now and every version in between—in that moment they are all understood and loved in a way Viktor never could have imagined.

How wonderful it is, to know that before Viktor came to live in the unused banquet room down the hall, he lived on Yuuri’s walls, in Yuuri’s home, in Yuuri’s heart. How lovely, that a puppy with his name slept in Yuuri’s bed at night, loved every one of the Katsukis and was loved fiercely in return.

And how strangely beautiful it is to know that even back when he felt so alone—back when he cried in the mirror over his shorn hair—back when he felt his inspiration slipping through his fingertips and wondered who would look twice once it left him forever… Even back then, he was loved by a boy in Japan who would one day become his pupil, his best friend, his lover, his Yuuri.

It feels more like home than anything he has ever known.

“Thank you, Yuuri,” he whispers, the weight of his gratitude lingering on his tongue.

Yuuri leans forward, closing the space between them, and kisses Viktor until the weight disappears and he feels lightheaded enough to float away. In Yuuri’s arms, he stays grounded.

“You have nothing to thank me for.”

They kiss again and again and again.

…

They return at the end of the December with one Grand Prix silver, two National golds, and two engagement rings to match. “Tadaima!” they call out as they step through the entranceway of Yu-topia Katsuki, Viktor’s arm settled around Yuuri’s waist.

“Okaeri!” Toshiya calls back. He emerges from the kitchen the with a bowl in one hand, a towel in the other, and a welcoming smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Mou sugu bangohan desu. Katsudon desu.”

Viktor recognizes the words dinner, soon, and of course, katsudon. He beams.

“Arigatou, Toshiya-san!”

Makkachin comes bounding down the hall the second she hears Viktor’s voice, barking the whole way. Viktor and Yuuri crouch down immediately to meet her and she covers their faces in slobber, nearly knocking them over in the process. Viktor knows he shouldn’t let her do this, but after two unplanned weeks away he doesn’t have the heart to do anything but hold her tight.

They go straight upstairs to begin packing. Yuuri had insisted that Viktor did not need to fly all the way back to Hasetsu just to help Yuuri pack up his things, but Viktor felt quite the opposite.

“But you’re already in Russia!” Yuuri objected. “You’ll just have to turn around and fly back, that makes no sense.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor sighed, his phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder as he searched his ticket for his new gate number. “Yekaterinburg is almost closer to Hasetsu than it is St. Petersburg.”

“That sounds like an exaggeration.”

“My point still stands. You’re not packing up all of my things. That’s not fair.”

“Viktor…”

“Besides, I… I want to say goodbye.”

Yuuri could not argue with that. So, nearly a full day later, Viktor met Yuuri’s train from Osaka at the Fukuoka station and together they boarded another heading to Hasetsu. Viktor had to spend the entirety of his birthday in airport food courts and tiny airplane seats, but it was well worth it.

They spend the next few hours going through Viktor’s belongings, sorting everything into ‘take’, ‘leave’, and ‘trash’ piles. The trash pile is very small. The take pile is not.

“Oh my god,” Yuuri groans as he places the bamboo stick strung with colorful streamers that they made for Tanabata last July in the keep pile at Viktor’s request. “My fiancé is a hoarder.”

“I couldn’t throw it away!”

“And these?” Yuuri brandishes a whole stack of programs from Onsen on Ice. Viktor agrees to throw them out only if at least three copies end up in the keep pile.

When they open the closet Yuuri squeaks. “I still can’t believe you had all of your costumes shipped here.”

Ah, yes. Viktor had forgotten about those. At least they were still packed tightly in their boxes.

By the time Hiroko arrives to announce that dinner is ready, Viktor’s room looks like a bomb exploded. Full boxes are stacked out in the hallway, empty boxes waiting in the closet, and half-full boxes lain out across the bed. His belongings are strewn in piles across the floor and Hiroko takes in the scene with widened eyes.

“Okaeri, Yuuri, Vicchan,” she welcomes, that soft-Katsuki-smile on her face. It twists Viktor’s stomach into knots and he searches her expression for even a hint of sadness or resentment. After all of the kindness this family has shown Viktor, after they opened their arms and lives to him and his dog and his eighteen boxes of belongings, here he is leaving and taking their son with him. Viktor would resent himself, if he were Hiroko.

But Hiroko is better than Viktor and there is nothing but affection in her eyes. “Dinner now. Okay?”

They abandon their packing almost instantly, following Hiroko down the hallway and flight of stairs toward the dining room. Yuuri’s hand slips in Viktor’s, their fingers intertwining, and the cool gold of Yuuri’s ring is soothing against Viktor’s skin.

A delicious smell hits Viktor’s nostrils as they step into the dining room, and he freezes.

“Happy birthday, Vikutoru!"

Toshiya, Mari, Minako, Yuuko, Takeshi, and the triplets stand around a table covered in bowls of katsudon, broad smiles lighting their faces. The triplets hold a homemade banner that echoes their words in wobbly, crayon-scribbled English. There’s a drawing of a figure skate in one corner and of a poodle with a gold medal in the other.

“Oh.”

“We are officially extending your birthday!” Minako announces.

Viktor turns to his fiancé, eyes alight. “Did you…?”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Yuuri promises.

“Wow.”

They all sit down together to a chorus of “ittadakimasu!”  Viktor laughs as Yuuri attempts to use chopsticks with his left hand—his right is busy holding Viktor’s under the table.  

“So, you two,” Minako begins, “when is the wedding?”

Yuuri flushes red. Viktor grins.

“When I win gold,” Yuuri says at the same time as Viktor replies, “As soon as possible!”

“Next spring then, in Hasetsu. After Worlds,” Mari announces, and Yuuri chokes on a sip of water. “We can have the reception at the inn. All of your friends can stay here. And you will be with family.”

“M-Mari-neechan,” Yuuri stutters, “we’ll have to—”

“That’s perfect!” Viktor exclaims. “I mean, as long as it’s what Yuuri wants.”

Yuuri looks up at him, eyes wide. “I mean, yes, but are you sure you’re okay with…?”

“It’s perfect,” Viktor emphasizes.

“Okay. Next spring it is.”

After dinner—some of the best katsudon Viktor has ever had, he swears—Toshiya brings out a cake with twenty-eight candles burning brightly on top and everyone sings "otanjyoubi omedeto, Vicchan” at the top of their lungs. It takes him two tries to blow out all the candles. Yuuri swipes a bit of icing and dots it onto Viktor’s nose, making the triplets laugh hysterically—and then moments later groan in disgust as Yuuri kisses it off of him.

“Happy birthday, Viktor,” Yuuri whispers in his ear. “I have a special present for you later.”

“Oh,” Viktor breathes, heat flooding to his cheeks. “What kind of present?”

Yuuri smirks, his eyes like the beginning of Eros and Viktor is so, so weak. “You’ll just have to wait and find out.”

The cake is light and fluffy and covered in fresh strawberries. Viktor adores every bite because competition diet be damned, it’s his birthday, the first one in a while that he’s really felt like celebrating.

They drink sake late into the night and Viktor controls himself better this time. He wants to remember every detail of this, of Mari and Minako’s favorite stories from the GPF and Toshiya’s boisterous, hysterical laughter and the adorable anecdotes about Yuuri that always come out when family and friends get together like this. Yuuri drinks too, if only just a bit, and leans against Viktor with a tiny, happy smile like it’s the only place he wants to be.

Outside, winter is falling, but the dining room of Yu-topia Katsuki radiates warmth. Tomorrow starts a new adventure—back to St. Petersburg, back to his old apartment and old rink and old coach, but this time with Yuuri at his side. Viktor can’t picture it, not quite, but he wants it, oh does he want it.

He’s just not sure he’s ready to give this up.

…

“Won’t you miss it?” Viktor asks the next day as they slide the final box into the hallway. His room is empty, the furniture the only indication that Viktor had ever made this place his home.

“Yes,” Yuuri admits. His arms snake around Viktor’s waist and he rests his head against Viktor’s shoulder. “But I was away for a long time before, and I’m excited for something new.”

“St. Petersburg will be cold.”

“It’s cold here.”

Viktor chuckles. “Not like Russia.”

“Maybe not. But I lived in Detroit. We had the lake effect. I can handle it.”

“St. Petersburg will be…” Viktor tries again, but he thinks: busy, fast-paced, crowded, lonely, and none of that is quite what he wants to say.

“It will be an adjustment. For both of us, I think.” He reaches up and presses a kiss to Viktor’s cheek. “But I’m excited, Viktor.”

Something flutters in Viktor’s chest and he knows that, beneath the sadness at leaving Hasetsu, he is actually excited too.

The entire family helps move Viktor’s (and Yuuri’s, but mostly Viktor’s) boxes out front when the CedEx truck arrives. When they finish, Yuuri and Viktor are left only with their carry ons, Makkachin, and the bento boxes Hiroko has packed them for their trip.

“Wait! I almost forgot!” Mari exclaims. “Before you go, we need to do something.”

“Mari-neechan, we’ll miss our flight…”

“Oh please, you have lots of time. Viktor told me months ago that the picture on our website is from 2004. This must change.”

Yuuri blinks. He sets down his suitcase. “Oh. Really? Okay. Where do you want to take it?”

“Here, at the entrance,” Mari directs, and behind her Hiroko and Toshiya nod their agreement. They stand where Mari tells them to and Yuuri shuffles into place in front of his father.

“Where is your phone, Mari-neechan?” Viktor asks.

“Why?”

“So I can take the photo, of course.”

Silence falls. They’re all looking at Viktor like he sprouted a second head. Mari snorts a laugh.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I will go get a guest to take it. There’s a spot right next to Yuuri.”

And indeed, when Viktor looks back he finds Yuuri with his arm extended, ready to welcome Viktor beside him. Viktor’s chest swells with warmth.

“Oh. I— Oh.”

Walking forward and taking his place at Yuuri’s side is the easiest thing Viktor has ever done.

“Makka-chan!” Hiroko calls, and the dog trots forward, wagging her tail the whole way. “Good. Sit. Here. Good.” Makkachin plops down right in front of them all, her tongue lolling.

“Good girl,” Viktor coaches, his heart in his throat. Yuuri’s fingers thread through Viktor’s own.

Mari returns with a guest, hands him her phone, and takes her place in front of her mother. They smile brightly for the camera—Hiroko and Toshiya and Mari and Yuuri and Viktor and Makkachin.

Shortly afterward, Mari will email the picture to all of them. Viktor will spend the train ride Googling prices for having photos professionally printed and framed.

And on Yu-topia’s website, the picture will be posted for the world to see with the caption: Meet the Katsuki Family.