Chapter Text
Yuuri fought, of course he did.
He punched and he kicked and he clawed, struggled and shouted and put up as much of a fight as his overwhelming panic allowed him to.
But Viktor was stronger and faster than he was - would always be stronger and faster, something which Yuuri would come to learn, would come to accept much, much later- and after a considerable struggle that ended with the glass table shattered in the corner of the living room and the armchair upturned, Yuuri found himself straddled on the floor, watching in a rising mixture of confusion and alarm as Viktor emptied the content of the plastic zip-lock onto his open palm -that lone, red pill- before casually placing it on his tongue.
There was no time to react as Viktor crushed their lips together, a slick tongue slithering its way past his parted lips. The omega sputtered when the pill was forced onto his mouth, nails indenting crescent marks onto the other man’s forearms as Viktor pulled back.
One, large hand covered his mouth and nose, the other wrapping carefully around his throat.
Brown eyes watered and the omega thrashed as the grip around his throat slowly tightened, not enough to hurt but enough to deplete his air until he was forced to gulp down the offending pill just to stay conscious.
Yuuri heaved in gulps of air as Viktor’s hands finally retreated, black dots dancing in his vision.
“What was that?!” he lashed out as soon his head began to clear, banging his fists against the alpha’s firm chest. “What did you do?!”
The corner of Viktor’s lips tilted up. “Go on, Yuuri,” he said, not answering the questions. “Keep fighting me while you still can.”
Yuuri bared his teeth in a silent snarl, challengingly defiant even amidst the clawing panic he could barely breathe through.
Azure eyes glinted.
“That’s right,” Viktor continued lowly, hunger evidently growing as Yuuri only snapped his teeth back at him. “Prove to me exactly how right I am in choosing you.”
Yuuri shook his head vehemently, raising his fingers to his mouth, hell-bent on making himself vomit out what Viktor had forced on his system but unable to do so as larger hands gripped his wrists tightly, pinning his arms securely above his head.
Yuuri continued to fight.
He would for a very long time.
He fought Viktor’s brutal kisses with his teeth until the metallic flavour of blood had blossomed on their tongues, fought the heated touches roaming his skin until he could barely breathe with a renewed vigour he never thought himself of having.
But something was wrong and the omega found his body weakened much too soon, his mind spinning much too fast.
Viktor seemed to be completely aware of it too, if the satisfaction roiling off him in waves was anything to go by.
How long he struggled, he didn’t know but he continued to fight, kicking and thrashing all the while even if it still ended with him on his elbows and knees, his clothes carelessly torn away and the alpha draped heavily on his back.
The clothed hardness gyrating against his bare skin, thick and hot and daunting, made him jerk forward in shock, a choked cry escaping his mouth when lips began trailing slow, open-mouthed kisses down the curve of his spine. He shook his head, stopping when that made the room spiral even faster.
Wrong. Something was wrong.
“Don’t touch me!” Yuuri gritted out, a foreboding burst of heat bolting through his body. He stared at the ground beneath him, head lolling forward in sudden heaviness. “D-don’t…”
The kisses paused at the base of his spine.
“Tell me, Yuuri,” the alpha began softly, gently massaging his lower back. “How many people have you been with in the past?”
Yuuri didn’t answer, half-lost in the simmers of a frighteningly familiar inferno boiling beneath his skin.
What was this? What was this?
“Oh? You’re not going to tell me?” The corners of Viktor’s mouth inched up as he gripped one of the rounded cheeks, kneading them apart. “Shall I take a few guesses then?”
The omega’s arms collapsed beneath him.
“Perhaps only one lover from the past?” Viktor mused, gaze darkening with hunger as he eyed the exposed twitching hole.
Yuuri panted, willing his surroundings to stay still. His breath hitched, jolting when the pads of a finger began tracing his entrance teasingly, heart palpating as the touch made him realise exactly how wet he had suddenly become.
“A high-school sweetheart?” the alpha continued. “Someone you parted ways with after entering university?”
‘Shut up. Shut up and get off me. Get the fuck off me,’ was what Yuuri wanted to say, wanted to scream. His mouth stayed clamped shut, however, afraid that different kinds of sounds would escape him instead if his lips parted even just for a second.
The first finger slowly sank into him, accompanied by a low groan from Viktor behind him who stopped at the first knuckle as though to relish it all. The finger pulled out completely before sinking back in deeper, pushing and sliding against the tightness until the finger was sliding in and out over and over without much resistance at all.
“Or maybe you’ve had two lovers you left behind, Yuuri,” Viktor said, voice huskier now. “Two completely different people. Both who you fell in love with for completely different reasons.”
Hot. It was too hot.
A second digit entered him, both curling up slightly and Yuuri’s eyes clenched shut, unable to bite down the sharp gasp when the fingers pressed against that place that made unwanted sparks of pleasure -Why? Why was there pleasure? How? How could this possibly feel anything remotely close to good?- jolt up and down his spine.
Viktor caught the shell of his ear with his teeth, nipping teasingly as his hand continued its ministration.
“Oh? Did I get it right, then? Two lovers from the past?”
Yuuri pawed weakly at the alpha’s wrist, internally pleading for his arms and his legs to co-operate, for his body to propel itself out of this, what he had ultimately concluded could only be, heat.
It had to be a heat, it had to be.
His body only burned like this, only produced this much slick and only felt this weak, during a heat.
Yuuri didn’t understand.
How? How could he be in heat this soon, this fast? He’d only been off his suppressants today, hadn’t even entered the beginnings of a pre-heat yet. How could Viktor even-
Yuuri’s nails dug into his palms at the realisation.
Of course. That pill.
That fucking pill.
“No? Not two?” Viktor continued at the silence, completely unbothered by the internal war Yuuri was currently having against his body. “You’ve had a third lover then? Someone from work, perhaps? A beloved third to add to the list.”
Three fingers slid into him and Yuuri bit his lip hard enough to bleed in response to the overwhelming stretch, heat pooling in his core at the foreign intrusion. It was too much too soon.
Slick continued to leak out of him, enough for Viktor’s hand to be soaked with it as he continued to fuck the omega loose with his fingers.
“Or have you broken more hearts than that, Yuuri?”
Yuuri arched his back with a soundless cry when the thrusts sped-up, wanting to claw back at the alpha with his nails to make it all stop, stop, stop-
“Did you let all of them take you like this? Were they all alphas too?” Viktor pressed on like these people in Yuuri’s past actually existed.
The omega’s nails dug into the carpet beneath him, feeling so terribly fragile at his current incapacity to even lift himself off the ground.
“Tell me, Yuuri,” Viktor said against his ear. “How many people do I have to fuck out of your memories?
At the daunting press of a fourth finger, Yuuri couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“N-none,” he finally gasped out, “I’ve n-never been with a-anyone like that,” Yuuri admitted breathlessly, the truth of his words swirling in his eyes as he peered behind him at the alpha who had immediately become as still as a statue at his words. “Never,” he added as though what he had just confessed could make the molten heat flowing in his veins dissipate, could make the hypersensitivity of skin melt away like it had never been there in the first place. “So, s-stop,” Yuuri gritted out, not quite pleading, not yet. “Stop.”
His revelation did seem to put the alpha off in some way or another if the way Viktor’s fingers slowly slid out, the alpha’s expression blank and unreadable, was any indication.
Yuuri blinked down hazily, relief surging through him when the weight of the body above him disappeared too. He took a few seconds to catch his breath before attempting to pull himself up with shaking arms, wanting to put as much distance between him and the other man, shivering body still teetering dangerously close to the edges of an uncontrolled heat.
Hair-raising terror ran down his back when Viktor growled at the movement, low and guttural, feral even.
The omega let out a small cry as he was shoved back down on the ground.
One of Viktor’s hand gripped his hair tightly when he began to squirm once more, pushing his face hard against the carpeted floor as the other busied itself with undoing the alpha’s trousers.
The pulsing length that brushed against his lower back, hot and hard and leaking copious amounts of pre-come where it touched his skin, made his efforts to break free double up and Yuuri continued to wriggle, scratching and banging his fists at whatever he could reach of Viktor from this position.
The deep rumble of a growl that vibrated from Viktor’s chest was all the warning he got before there was a set of teeth biting down at the back of his neck.
Yuuri sagged back down, drugged instincts blindly bidding him to succumb.
‘I can’t.’ He fought back desperately. ‘I can’t, I can’t-’
Viktor nudged the thick swollen head of his aching cock in the slick flesh between the plush cheeks of his ass, teeth digging into Yuuri’s skin harder at the omega’s strangled “No! No, no-” and wasting no more time for any sort of preparation before roughly pushing in.
There will be a part of himself he will lose, Yuuri knew, as the thick head of Viktor’s cock began to breach him - the overwhelming pressure agonisingly persistent, steady and unyielding as Viktor made a place for himself inside him like the right had been his all along- a part of him that he would never be able to take back and as he lurched forward in a last helpless attempt to get away, Yuuri drifted into his own, dark little world, all that he had worked for in his life to prove himself to others, to prove himself to his own reflection becoming lost to him when he was wrenched back into the searing length that filled him completely in one brutal thrust.
His head bowed down, forehead touching the floor as Viktor’s arms - strong arms. Stronger than him. Always stronger, would always be stronger- wound itself around his waist, preventing him from slumping forward.
There were no teasing words or tender kisses from Viktor now.
Only the brutal slaps of skin-on-skin, only the sting of sharp teeth on his neck as Viktor fucked him for the first time, hard and rough with not even a second to adjust, like how an alpha would fuck an omega in those embarrassingly offensive fantasies others seemed to have – on his elbows and knees, ass up and face pressed on the floor, teeth set at the nape of his neck to hold him in place.
Unshed tears burned Yuuri’s eyes at the sound of Viktor’s grunts behind him, any semblance of that impeccable control the alpha seemed to always have all but shattered as he pounded into Yuuri in rough, vicious thrusts that forced Yuuri to feel every scorching inch that split him again and again, opening him so intimately wide that there was no way he would ever be able to pretend that this was all a horrendous nightmare.
On and on and on it went, like Viktor couldn’t stop the violent pistoning of his hips even if he had wanted to.
Yuuri kept his mouth pressed tightly shut with all his might, only small, hitched noises slipping passed his lips, refusing to beg amidst the suffocating cocktail of pheromones that would have choked the fight out of him if his mind hadn’t been half-immersed in his self-made void.
Only when the head of Viktor’s cock hit that place inside of him, causing his own neglected cock to twitch, dripping and hanging heavy between his thighs without his permission and painstakingly hard with this induced heat, did a quiet sob escape Yuuri’s throat.
The near-violent thrusts immediately paused at the sound, slowing hesitantly before coming to a stop altogether.
The weight on his back and the teeth on his neck disappeared, the quiet sounds of Yuuri’s sniffing mixing with the harsh pants from the other man as Viktor slowly pulled out of him, leaving him clenching at nothing. Yuuri opened his eyes weakly, staring emptily at the small droplet-stains on the carpet from the tears he realised he hadn’t managed to contain.
A warm hand slowly ran down the curve of his spine soothingly as the alpha coaxed him to turn until he was lying flat on his back, the other man placing himself between his trembling legs. Viktor leaned down once more, close enough that Yuuri could see the differing shades of blue shards which highlighted his azure eyes - eyes that, though still heavily dilated, was becoming more and more focused by the second.
The alpha’s hands caressed Yuuri’s thighs and his hips, gaze flitting over the forming finger-shaped bruises and the red crescent marks on Yuuri’s waist from where his nails had dug too deep, lightly tracing them with a jarringly gentle touch that was too far of a cry from his aggression only minutes ago.
A soft and tender kiss was placed on Yuuri’s forehead and then his mouth.
Yuuri mewled into the kiss as Viktor slowly slid back into him.
He gasped brokenly against the alpha’s lips as the thick cock began to fuck into him once more, much slower this time and much, much more careful as though Viktor hadn’t already rutted into him, hadn’t already fucked him raw without restraint, only moments ago.
Yuuri couldn’t decide which of the two treatment he had already been exposed to was worse.
“Shh,” Viktor murmured against his lips in-between gentle, almost apologetic kisses. “Shh, love. Relax now. You’ve done well,” he continued soothingly, coherent once more like all he needed to do was rut into Yuuri with abandon for a while just to placate those primal urges that had been gnawing at him for too long. “I’ll take care of you.” The angle of the slow thrusts changed slightly and Yuuri whined quietly, walls involuntarily tightening around the wide girth steadily impaling him. Viktor moaned in response, rocking forward once more and eliciting the same reaction. “Beautiful…”
Viktor continued to drive into him maddeningly slow, intimately deep, hitting that same spot that made bright white dots dance behind Yuuri’s eyelids with acute precision.
This was worse, the omega finally decided.
This was definitely worst because the raw ache- that mixture of pain and pleasure that had blended into something Yuuri couldn’t understand- which had accompanied Viktor’s vicious pounding from before was absent now. This was worse because he had time to feel every scorching inch filling him again and again now, worse because he could feel how Viktor’s cock reached so impossibly deep inside him in a way that Yuuri knew was going to haunt him until his last hours alive.
“You can take me, can’t you, Yuuri?” Viktor whispered to him heatedly, voice breaking through the steady sound of wet squelches resounding so obscenely in both their ears.
Yuuri’s hands tightened on the carpet beneath him, not understanding what the alpha was referring to. He was already being forced to take all of Viktor, wasn’t he?
But then the alpha slowed down once more, pulling out until only the head of his cock was keeping Yuuri stretched open before carefully pressing back in, stopping until the swollen base of his length was pressed right against Yuuri’s already stretched rim, until Yuuri could feel the foreboding swell of his forming knot.
Yuuri’s heart leapt to his throat, hands flying up to grip at Viktor’s broad shoulders, abruptly torn out of his fogged haze.
“I c-can’t take that,” he gasped out in a fresh bout of panic. “I c-,” he cut off with a hitch, nails sinking into Viktor’s shoulders when the alpha continued to press forward through the resistance, forcing the half-formed knot inside him. Yuuri hissed at the burn, rim clinging tightly to the half-formed knot before giving way when the alpha pulled out once more.
“You will,” Viktor said, a dark promise in his words as he guided Yuuri’s thighs around his waist.
Viktor started an erratic pace once more, grunting against the omega’s neck where he began to leave a spectral of bruises with his lips and tongue, not letting the expanding knot sink into Yuuri again just yet.
It felt more intimate, this position. More invasive and more disconcerting because Viktor was holding him so, so close.
Yes, this was definitely worse.
Yuuri closed his eyes, still unwilling to accept the molten heat flooding his veins like wildfire.
He began to repeat a silent mantra to himself, telling himself that this would all be over soon - that it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t fight back nearly as much as he wanted to, that there was little he could do about being cheated into entering a heat he should be spending alone but that it was going to be okay because Viktor was going to finish with him soon and this scarring nightmare would rapidly come to an end.
It didn’t end.
Not when Viktor’s knot finally slipped inside Yuuri with a guttural snarl, catching after a particularly brutal thrust that tied them together for the first time as the alpha spilled hot, thick come inside of Yuuri in a flood of wet heat that would be the first of many that night.
Not even when Viktor had coaxed Yuuri to spill into his fist with heated strokes to the omega’s own cock and not when Yuuri finally ended up begging for the first time rather than demanding since they began, head twisted to the side and Viktor’s teeth pressed dauntingly against the juncture of his neck exactly in that place where a claiming mark would be. ‘Not that. A-anything but that. No. Don’t- don’t do this to me. Viktor, please. Please, please-’
The sharp stings of the crimson trails Yuuri’s nails had ripped into Viktor’s back didn’t stop the alpha from sinking his teeth into his neck in a triumphant claim and Yuuri’s hiccupped cries didn’t prevent the mating bond from snapping into place.
And even then, it didn’t end.
Somewhere in the night, long after Viktor had carried him to bed, Yuuri had wounded up crying quietly on the other man’s shoulders, shaking arms wrapped tightly around the alpha’s neck as he shuddered out a quiet, pleading ‘no more. Please, no more’, completely drained with how much Viktor had explored, had worshipped, every inch of him with his hands and his mouth and his cock.
Viktor’s response had been to slip his knot inside the omega once again, locking them together for the umpteenth time with a soft kiss only a tender lover should be allowed to give, his whisper of ‘just a little more’ foretelling an unspoken promise that he sealed with a brush of his lips on the gleaming indents of his teeth on Yuuri’s neck.
Viktor held Yuuri throughout the fires of this heat he had induced and Yuuri had every reason to believe Viktor had all the intention to continue holding him and fucking him through the flames of all the ones that followed after.
He wasn’t wrong.
Russia was not kind.
The biting cold was too harsh, harsher than even Japan’s own snow-covered winters and Yuuri spent many hours curled up on himself by the bedroom window, the thick, warm blanket a mess on the floor despite how many times Viktor had wrapped it around his shoulders.
Everything here was still too disorienting, too frightening.
Yuuri hated being afraid.
It had only been a few weeks since he was dragged here, shouting and flailing all the while even in that 12-hour flight in what must have been Viktor’s private jet. Only a few weeks and Yuuri already envisioned himself going insane in this place.
No one here dared to look at him for more than a few fleeting seconds, not even the driver of that black car that had driven them to the Detroit airport and not any of those people in that blocked-off part of the airport itself who handled their journey here to Russia, all of who had clearly worked under Viktor’s command.
The Russian language was too difficult to understand, even more difficult to learn. Yuuri’s mouth wasn’t used to formulating such sounds, eyes not used to such a foreign alphabet.
He wasn’t used to anything here.
But he still tried.
In those rare moments Viktor left him alone in that bedroom, Yuuri still tried. He had to. Because if there was any chance of him getting away, he had to try.
He refused to thank the alpha for the resources he had begun to provide, refused to touch those English-Russian and Japanese-Russian books in Viktor’s presence and refused to respond in anything but English when Viktor had begun to speak to him in simple, easy Russian that he actually managed to understand.
In the beginning, Yuuri believed, with the fiercest conviction he could possibly convey, that he would be able to escape this arctic hell he had been forced in.
“There’s people still looking for you,” Yuri said to him during one of his routine visits.
Yuuri paused, glancing away from view of the sunset he had been watching from the window - how many sunrise and sunsets had it been? He stopped counting after the 173rd one. Too many. There had been too many – to look at the teenager stood by the doorway.
“They won’t find you.”
Yuuri stared at his own grey picture on the pages of the newspaper Yuri had thrown on the floor in-front of him. He didn’t respond, turning back to the window.
The teenager studied him for a little longer before releasing a small sigh, understanding the familiar blankness in the omega’s eyes. “You tried running away again, didn’t you?”
Yuuri leaned his cheek on his knees.
The amount of times he had tried to escape was as countless as the number of sunsets he had watched.
More often than not, the consequence was a trail of bloody bodies left behind in the wake of Viktor’s ire, sometimes so horribly mutilated it made Yuuri vomit where he stood.
He never really got that far when he ran way. Viktor’s authority reigned so incomprehensibly vast, Yuuri was quick to realise, reaching places that it most definitely shouldn’t and the furthest the omega had got to was Moscow where, much to his disbelief, it had been the Moscow City Police who had ended up handing him back to Viktor’s grasp.
Still, there had been countless people, strangers that hadn’t owed him a damn thing, who had tried to help along the way, kind people who tried to understand Yuuri’s broken Russian and the magnitude of his situation.
None of those people were alive anymore and each one of them chiselled the omega down little by little, leaving something horribly empty in his chest that he didn’t know if anyone, himself included, would be able to heal.
“Who ended up dead this time, huh?”
Yuuri hugged his knees closer to his chest, still feeling the phantom spray of warm, warm blood on his cheeks and still hearing the ringing gunshots reverberating in his eardrums that, no matter how deafeningly loud it had been, couldn’t drown out the innocent stranger’s screams.
Nauseating guilt churned in his stomach and Yuuri shook his head, unable to provide an answer.
He didn’t even know that person’s name, could barely even remember their face.
Back when Yuuri had still been new here in Viktor’s home, when his denial of this life was still burningly bitter, Yuri had kept his distance, silently observing Yuuri from afar just like everyone else did. But Yuri, under Viktor’s ever-watchful eye, had approached him soon enough. Too soon, really, because just like with everyone else that had the audacity to look at his direction just a second too long, the omega had lashed out, lips curled in a snarl as he bit out a low warning of ‘don’t come near me.’
His volatile hostility had been visibly shocking if the wide green eyes and the parted lips was anything to go by but Yuri’s surprise hadn’t lasted too long and Yuuri could still remember the long, hard stare the blonde had given him before he had tilted his head towards Viktor in a slight nod, sending a flicker of approval in Yuuri’s way as though he understood now why Yuuri was here in Saint Petersburg - why Viktor had chosen him.
It had been like that with Yakov too, the first night Yuuri spent in Viktor’s mansion of a home. Yuuri never took the time to dwell on it.
There were many things he’d learned here in Russia since then, his growing knowledge for the Russian culture and language being some of the things he would have been proud of if circumstances had been different.
He’d learned to let his guard down just a little bit around this younger boy who sneaked him katsudon pirozhkis, who translated the Russian newspaper for him with exaggerated exasperation when he couldn’t grasp his head around the jumbles of Cyrillic on the grey paper. It was a little unexpected, really, how he and Yuri seemed to have developed this unspoken and unexplainable understanding of one another over time but it was there nonetheless.
In Yuuri’s time here, he’d also learned Viktor’s love for him was true - warped and dark and dangerous. But true.
From the doorway, Yuri sighed again. “When are you going to learn, Katsudon?”
This wasn’t the first time Yuuri had run away, far from it. It won’t be the last - they all knew that.
But the time that passed between his attempts were already growing too long and Yuuri feared of the day he will tell a stranger, ‘Please. I need help. I’m running away from home.’
The omega continued to watch the pastel-coloured sky of sunset with haunted, glazed eyes.
‘…Soon enough,’ he thought to himself faintly.
Yes.
He’d learn soon enough.
They all knew that too.
Viktor was good to him, was always good to him. He didn’t tell Yuuri how to dress or how to act. He didn’t tell Yuuri how to think or what to say. Viktor provided for him all the lavish materialistic things he possibly could, expensive and luxuriously branded, anything he thought that would appease to Yuuri in some way or another.
Viktor also held Yuuri like a lover would, touched him in ways that only a lover should.
Sometimes, Yuuri wished the alpha would hurt him.
Sometimes he wished Viktor would sink his blades into his skin, would point the ends of his guns to his head and let him bleed on the ground like those unnamed people in the past who had unknowingly signed their own death when they chose to listen to Yuuri’s appeal for help.
But Viktor never did any of those things to him and Viktor never will.
Viktor loved him and all he had done and would ever do was grip Yuuri hard enough to bruise as a means to restrain and sink his teeth into Yuuri’s skin as a way to claim.
In the very beginning, Yuuri spent a lot of time thinking about how he hated it all - from the way Viktor’s hand stroked his back all the way to how the alpha combed his fingers gently through his hair on those nights Yuuri cried and cried until he couldn’t breathe, kissing Yuuri’s forehead, his cheeks, his lips, his neck, everywhere-
These days, the omega found himself spending more time reminding his reflection to keep hating it all, that he had to keep hating it all.
These days, he spent more time wishing to feel the same loathing he had felt in the past where all it used to take was a growl in Viktor’s voice, a growl in his alpha’s voice -Enough, Yuuri. You’re hurting yourself. I said enough- to make him freeze in his tracks, to make his eyes fall to the ground in involuntary submission when he used to break and smash whatever he could put his hands on in his desperate need to be heard during his early days here -I just want to go home! Why can’t you understand that?! Let me go home!-
Viktor had always listened to Yuuri’s demands to be released from this prison he had been ensnared in without fail, had listened to the way each one almost always morphed into watery pleas for his family with soft, understanding eyes like he actually cared about what Yuuri was saying to him - Please Viktor…. I just want to go home -
Yuuri didn’t think Viktor would ever be capable of truly understanding him in that sense because if he was, Yuuri would have been allowed to leave Russia long, long ago.
“Your family is well,” Yakov told him one winter evening - another one of the too-many winter evenings he’d spent here. He’d been here for far, far too long - voice as rough and words as heavily accented as always but tone soft in a way that he only ever seemed to use when talking to Yuuri.
Yuuri didn’t have the time to dwell on the overwhelming panic suddenly bubbling in his chest at the elder man’s words before Yakov put his hand up in a silent gesture for the omega to wait for him to finish.
“Viktor sent Yuri to Kyushu to sort some agreements out with the Yakuza there. He just got back,” Yakov continued. “It was a… big assignment for Yuri. His first, real one. He did good.”
Yuuri didn’t say anything, imagining the pride the young alpha must be feeling in being able to prove himself capable to his older cousin like that.
“He managed to visit your family there - nothing to do with business from here, just as a customer. Viktor’s been making sure your family’s inn is never on the brink of closing – he had been since you… arrived here. The Nishigori Ice Rink and the Okukawa Studio too. They’ll all be fine,” Yakov said. “Your family is being taken care of, even if they don’t know it,” he added as if it was something Yuuri should be grateful for.
The omega didn’t respond, thoughts flying back to his family’s struggles in the recent years before he had vanished -More than 3 years now. He’d been gone for more than 3 years. Has he really been gone for that long? Were they still looking for him?- due to the dwindling tourism in Hasetsu and how it had been such a stretch for them to even send him to Detroit for his studies when he was younger.
Yuuri swallowed hard, shivering at the fleeting voice at the back of his mind that suspiciously sounded like his own telling him ‘then he’s right. You should be grateful.’
“…They held a memorial for you a few months ago,” Yakov said quietly.
That night, Yuuri curled up beside Viktor to his own accord.
He used to detest this – the way all it used to take were these strong, familiar arms, this same damning scent to calm his erratic breathing and quell his tears away, utterly despised how it had been the unwanted murmurs of sweet nothings from the man who took his life away that had lulled him to sleep.
But that night Viktor didn’t have to tug Yuuri into his arm like he always did, didn’t have to force a kiss of goodnight on the omega’s lips.
That night, for the first time without having to be coerced, Yuuri pressed his lips against the underside of Viktor’s jaw in his own not-quite kiss, the images of his family -still mourning and still so sad but also alive and healthy- playing behind his eyelids like living ghosts.
Viktor’s people respected Yuuri, they had to.
They guarded him like he had been born as one of their own all along and they accommodated to whatever it was Yuuri needed, even more so on those rare, rare occasions Viktor wasn’t home.
In the past, Yuuri’s attempts to escape always had to be carefully formulated, meticulously planned to evade and hide from Viktor’s people who had quickly learned to watch him like hawks. Those large iron gates at the front of the mansion had always been a problem simply because Viktor always had people stationed there to keep watch under the guise of security guards for the home of a CEO.
Now, Yuuri stood before these very same iron gates - gates that were, suspiciously enough, unlocked and wide open in silent invitation.
Yuuri never went outside these gates alone.
A quick glance around confirmed that there really was no one else out here but him and Yuuri peered back at the open gates, feeling that same old pull in his veins tugging at him to run, run, run.
‘Go on,’ he urged himself. ‘Run away again. Go on.’
Yuuri stared at the open gates for a very long time.
He thought of where he could possibly go this time around, of what he could do differently so that this attempt didn’t end the same way it always did, faltering when the images of those countless bodies of the strangers that had tried to help him in the past – people that only had their bones as remnants at this point in time- flickered in his mind instead.
Fear crept up his neck, too cold and too familiar when he thought about how those bodies could very well end up being Phichit or Celestino or anyone else that weren’t strangers to him if he treaded on the wrong track.
‘… He’ll find me.’
Of course, Viktor will. Especially now because Yuuri had learned to lay unmoving in Viktor’s bed -their bed- in not-quite compliance but not-quite resistance, had already learned to forget how to fight back against Viktor’s kisses and Viktor’s heated touches– all of which have become as familiar, all as reassuring, as Viktor’s voice and Viktor’s face in his dreams.
Yuuri took a deep breath, inhaling the fresh, outside air.
The open gates stared back at him - goading him, taunting him.
But Yuuri wouldn’t dare, not anymore.
He thought himself too broken now, too entangled with this life and in the off-chance that there were still people back in Detroit and Japan looking for him, Yuuri thought them too late and Viktor too dangerous.
‘He’ll always find me.’
He hung his head, taking a step back as he turned away from the open gates, making his way back to what had become familiar, to what had become safe.
From a window two floors above, blue eyes that glinted with satisfaction continued to watch Yuuri’s every move.
‘Always.’
END
Mari always preferred the winter season.
Winter had always been beautiful in Japan. The dancing snowflakes and the pure, white snow was always mesmerising, the lanterns in the streets and the warm winter lights that wrapped around the branches of bare trees never failing to amaze both foreigners and locals alike, herself included.
It wasn’t winter in Japan, not yet.
It was November 29 today and Mari didn’t think she could stomach being in Japan right now, not when the leaves of the trees back home still had their burning colours of red and amber.
Yuuri used to love autumn.
Mari bit her lip, willing the building tears to go away.
13 years since Yuuri disappeared without a single trace and the memory of him still brought that same unbearable stabbing ache in her chest like the news of it had only been broken to her hours ago.
She didn’t think the hurt would ever fade.
And so every autumn season in Japan, Mari would flee to another part of the world where she didn’t have to see her parents crying over a portrait of Yuuri in that small, private shrine of their home, travelling to another country where she could escape the heart-wrenching sight of fallen leaves back in the onsen.
Her parents understood.
This year, Mari chose Russia - Saint Petersburg to be exact where the ground was already frosted with ice and the sky thick with the near-permanent grey clouds of winter.
‘Happy birthday, otouto.’
Mari continued to trek through the park she was currently roaming, the steady crunch crunch crunch of her footsteps against the frosted grass keeping her company. She exhaled deeply, pausing to stare at the way her breath fogged like the puff of smoke she routinely breathed out.
Mari didn’t smoke nearly as often as she used to.
Yuuri had always scolded her about her smoking habits and it had been something she never really took into heart until Yuuri had… until Yuuri didn’t come back to them.
Lost in her own melancholic thoughts, the female alpha failed to hear the sudden pat pat pat behind her, not noticing the small, energetic form bulleting in her direction until it had collided with her side
Mari blinked, staring down at the young child peering up at her with bright blue eyes.
She studied the head of silver locks for several seconds before her gaze dropped to the ground, frowning upon finding a gift-wrapped box laying innocently amongst the grass that the little boy appeared to have dropped in their small collision. She picked it up carefully, brushing off the flakes of ice that had clung to the wrapping before offering it back to the boy.
Her Russian was far too limited for any type of conversation and Mari found herself hesitantly reverting to English in the off-chance that the cherub-faced child might recognise some words or at least understand her gestures.
The silver-haired child shot an uncertain look at the box, fiddling with his fingers in a way that made her chest tight with how reminiscent it was of how Yuuri used to act when he was nervous.
The boy glanced back up at her with big, blue eyes.
“Mama says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
Mari blinked rapidly, taken back by the English response.
It was quite impressive really, considering the boy was clearly of Russian descent. And so young too, maybe 6 years old at most. Judging from how he was dressed, Mari wouldn’t be surprised if the kid came from a rather wealthy family.
She smiled softly, regaining her composure. “That’s… very good,” she said. “Your Mama’s right.”
The child tilted his head to the side, studying her face for a long, few seconds before his expression suddenly broke into a delighted, heart-shaped grin. He grabbed the box from her grasp, hugging it closely to his chest.
“ ’s a present!” he beamed up at her, smiling so sweetly with the innocence only a child could have, leaving Mari a little startled and wondering what it was that could have made the kid suddenly open up and be so trusting. “For my Mama’s birthday!”
That twinge in her chest made itself known again and Mari stomped it away, smiling sadly down at the boy whose adoration and overflowing love for his mother shone as bright as his smile.
“Happy birthday to your mother, then.”
A larger shadow fell upon them suddenly and Mari glanced behind her, not fully turning to face the new comer but enough that she had a good view of the new arrival.
“I hope he’s not bothering you, ma’am,” the man said, tone kind and the use of English telling her that he had been guarding the interaction long enough to know that Mari didn’t speak an ounce of Russian.
She shook her head ‘no’ at who, if the blue eyes and silver hair were any indication, could have only been the boy’s father.
She was proven correct at the bubbly greeting of “Papa!” from the child who immediately ran into the man’s awaiting arms. She watched as the man scooped the boy up effortlessly, holding him tightly in his arms as he brushed back identical silver strands from the boy’s face with a fond smile.
The child giggled. “Papa, look, look!” he pointed in her direction. “She has Mama’s eyes!”
Mari’s lips twitched up, brushing off the comment off-handedly. Maybe the kid’s mother was also of Asian descent and shared the shape of her eyes.
Confusion filled her, however, when the man considered her face a second too long. She shifted uncomfortably at the flicker of intensity that flashed in his eyes which disappeared as soon as it came.
He glanced back at his son in his arms again.
“Let’s not keep your mama waiting by the ice-rink, okay? He gets worried when you’re out of his sight for too long,” he said, pressing his lips against the side of the boy’s head before setting him back down to the ground.
Ah, that’s right.
Mari read that the large pond in this park was transformed into an outdoor ice-rink during winter.
Yuuri would have liked it here, she thought distantly. Her younger brother never did outgrow that ice-skating hobby of his and Mari would have gladly visited this outdoor ice-rink with him if Yuuri was here to ask.
She watched the boy nod up at his father with an “uhuh,” his face scrunched adorably as he asked, “Papa, d’you think Mama’s gonna like these?” raising that nicely wrapped box in indication.
The warm smile returned on the man’s face. “I’m sure he’d be very happy with those new skates you chose for him,” he said, patting the head of silver locks. “Now, off you go.”
The boy nodded happily again, waving a cheery farewell at her before bouncing away.
Mari returned the wave, a peculiar fondness warming her chest at the sight of the child.
Her eyes flickered back up to the man, eyeing the smile that dwindled to something closer to polite when he turned back to her.
“Have a nice day, ma’am.”
He began walking away without waiting for a response, following his son protectively who skipped a few steps ahead, still clutching that neatly-wrapped box that presumably contained those skates they had been talking about.
“…you too,” Mari said back quietly seconds too late, staring at the pastel-coloured wrapping paper that, from this distance, looked like was littered with a pattern of dango and scattered Sakura petals.
Mari shook her head.
She began walking in the opposite direction to return to the hotel, knowing her hours here in Saint Petersburg were almost over. She had a flight to Vladivostok to catch in a few hours and then a ferry back to Japan to board from there.
There would be no time to visit that outdoor ice-rink.