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In that thin, slippery piece of time before they leave for Russia, Yuuri is different.
Viktor would worry that Yuuri thinks him angry after their disagreement in Barcelona, but Yuuri is intimate with every emotion of Viktor’s—knows his hand whether it’s shown or clutched to his chest. The change is something else.
Something new. A little tender.
He hesitates at the threshold of Viktor’s room, again, which reminds Viktor of the summer that seems a lifetime away. Viktor hardly notices at first, brushing him in, kissing his cheek. Maybe it’s all the boxes, these things of Viktor’s preparing for the move—his steps are careful. Measured.
He ducks his head, a little, when their eyes meet unexpectedly. He shifts like a shadow during sunset, melting into Viktor’s space during those routine times when he knows he’s welcome. When they make love he alternates between desperation and worship. Crying out and brimming quiet.
Yet with all that hesitance comes determined beauty. He’s brilliant on the ice, in conversation, a fire lit in his eyes. Some dream has awoken in him, restless, and he hasn’t told Viktor yet.
He’s always supposed to tell, now.
Please, Viktor thinks, please, Yuuri.
Where it all began to come together is where it spools out, too.
Awaking from a doze is usually warm, cozy, and Viktor never bothers to summon enough consciousness to do much more than roll over, arms searching, and—
Yuuri’s not there.
Viktor sits up, rubs his face in his hands. He tugs at his jinbei tie—yes, Viktor knows how to use one. He’d understood the first time. Sometimes he still pretends not to know, and Yuuri pretends with him.
The clock reads a mere 11pm; he must have fallen asleep waiting for Yuuri to come to bed. He pads across the onsen’s cool floors, sleepily swerves around the corner leading to the main room.
“Mama?”
“Vicchan!” Comes Hiroko’s warm reply. That warmth doesn’t dissipate, even when Viktor gives her a small, distracted smile and glances around the otherwise empty room.
Nothing. He sweeps a hand through his fringe. “Is he at the studio? I’ll get my coat.”
“He hasn’t left, dear.”
Twenty years of knowing every inch of his muscles, and he still doesn’t understand why his shoulders begin to tense. Yuuri is probably sprawled out in the baths, relaxing—never mind that he always goes there with Viktor, now. Yuuri is probably curled up somewhere, DS propped on his knees, absorbed relentlessly in some game.
He can do that in bed, Viktor thinks wistfully, deciding to check the baths first. He doesn’t make it.
Yuuri’s door is closed, lights off. Something so small and insignificant shouldn’t be so jarring, but it—Yuuri doesn’t go to bed alone. Much less in his own bed. What is Viktor for?
Maybe Yuuri is sick. Confused. Fallen asleep with his DS fallen in the crook of his neck, glasses askew, desperately needing Viktor to rearrange him.
Viktor reaches for the doorknob, then rethinks it. Knocks, instead.
“Yuuri?”
There’s squeaking, and a frantic, light pattering of steps. The door swings open.
“Viktor,” Yuuri says plainly. He’s in his sleep clothes, bed-rumpled, shifting from foot to foot.
“Did I… wake you?”
The noise that comes from Yuuri can only be described as pained. “No.”
“So you weren’t sleeping,” Viktor says, raising his arms to the height of Yuuri’s shoulders and falling forward. With a breathy, startled laugh, Yuuri catches him. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Yuuri says, and Viktor watches the back of his neck go pink, from where his chin is curled into Yuuri’s shoulderblade. He kisses the flush, feeling the green jinbei bunch away from his back as Yuuri’s hands fist in the fabric.
“And here I thought you were cheating on me,” he whispers, teasingly, into the knob at the base of his neck. Yuuri shivers a little.
“Can’t sleep without you now?” Yuuri tries to ask, but it comes out as a confession instead.
“Can’t sleep without you,” Viktor confirms, and sadly returns to holding up his own weight, standing. He squeezes Yuuri’s shoulders, tilts his head invitingly. “Come to bed?”
With a wayward glance back to his own rumpled, tiny bed, Yuuri nods.
Viktor thought they were past hesitation. Past walking anywhere without holding hands; miles past Yuuri standing at Viktor’s door, biting his lip.
“Is something wrong with my room?” Viktor asks, blunt as ever, even though he’s not being blunt enough: is something wrong with us?
The speed at which Yuuri whips his head to face Viktor is overwhelming. “What? No! No no. I—it’s fine. Everything is fine.”
It’s not, but Viktor is tired, and Yuuri needs to sleep, and past the mountains of cardboard boxes barely visible in the darkness, Viktor’s bed looks peaceful and welcoming. Makkachin is asleep at the foot of it, whuffling. Viktor ushers Yuuri forwards, settles him in, folds around him.
“You forgot to call big spoon,” Yuuri murmurs after a moment.
“I’m already asleep,” Viktor says into the thick and soft mass of Yuuri’s hair. “Too late.”
There’s silence for a long while, enough for Viktor to doze off in again, before Yuuri quietly says, “do I, though?”
“You can do anything,” Viktor replies, ever faithful, squeezing his eyes shut and tangling their legs together more. “But what, exactly, are you talking about?”
“Do I help you sleep?”
“Not so much right now,” Viktor sighs pleasantly, “but yes. Always, Yuuri.”
When Viktor wakes up, Yuuri is already gone again.
Viktor is only patient in extremely specific ways, but when they’re refining Yuuri’s programs at the rink that day, he can’t help it.
The problem is that Yuuri—Yuuri is just saying yes, coach. He’s staring to Viktor for instructions. He’s not secretly practicing jumps and movements when Axel, Lutz, and Loop come up and distract Viktor with their antics.
Yuuri’s being an excellent, obedient student, and if there’s one trait Yuuri and Viktor have in common, it’s that neither of them are that. So Viktor makes a decision.
“What if,” Viktor says experimentally, “you don’t do the Ina Bauer? I’m not feeling it. The crowd isn’t feeling it.”
Yuuri should be looking at him like Viktor’s just fallen headfirst over the boards and smacked himself down on the ice. It’s a terrible idea. The Ina Bauer is devastatingly beautiful and they both know it. Viktor can see his teeth gritting, that glint in his eyes, and when Yuuri goes through the section again, he fully expects two Ina Bauers.
There’s none.
“Yuuri,” Viktor says, “have I given you the impression that I’ll truly punish you if you don’t do what I say?”
There’s a hint of a smile sitting at the corner of his lover’s mouth, but something makes it melt away into somberness. “I’m trying to be the best student for you.”
“Sometimes,” Viktor says, “the best students disagree with their coaches.”
There’s just a deep, unsteady breath in, Yuuri’s eyes squeezing shut.
“Okay,” he whispers. “But how will I—“ he cuts himself off with a hum.
Yes? Viktor prompts, wordlessly, gesturing gently. But Yuuri doesn’t move closer, the rink silent and still.
“You’ll know how,” Viktor hazards a guess, “by trusting yourself. By being the man you’ve become in the last few months. By trusting me to listen to you and respect you.” Below the boards, hidden, Viktor rubs at his ring. “You trust me to do that, don’t you?”
“I trust you,” is Yuuri’s instant response, and Viktor is so flooded with relief that he doesn’t hear what’s absent.
Viktor has spent a lifetime switching between personas and roles, but this is among the few times he enjoys it.
Coach Viktor—who, because Yuuri asked him to be, is very similar to Viktor himself when they’re alone at the rink but is slightly less handsy—melts into Viktor-At-Home. Viktor-At-Home indulges himself. Even if Viktor has to get back on the eating and exercise plan for sculpting an Olympian, Viktor can still splurge in one thing.
“I don’t think,” Yuuri says, eyes sparkling, “that I’m speeding up the packing process.”
“It’s mostly packed already,” Viktor explains calmly from where he’s a limpet on Yuuri’s arm. “Before, when this room was full of boxes and I was trying to seduce you, you wouldn’t let me. Now I’m compensating.”
“This isn’t you being beguiling,” Yuuri retorts with a slow smile. “You just want to cuddle.”
“And suddenly,” Viktor teases, clinging tighter, “you’re the expert in when I’m seducing you? If I recall, you didn’t notice for months the first time. What makes you so confident in what I want now?”
Yuuri’s smile vanishes. Viktor means it as a joke—Viktor means a lot of things as jokes—but somehow it’s fallen flat.
“Yuuri,” he apologizes, already awkward, “Yuuri, I don’t mean it. Of course you responded that way at the beginning. But things are different now, darling. The way I behaved in April was…” he pauses, searching for a word that holds the appropriate level of drama. He doesn’t find one before Yuuri physically disengages. Tucks himself in—stepping back with his shoulders hunching, his hands clasping his elbows—a rigid line.
“I can’t do this.”
The words are hardly something Viktor can process. He and Yuuri have already been through—so much. This is—this is like a first place skate followed by a fall on the simple journey to the boards. What could Yuuri… Looking at the boxes surrounding then, Viktor calculates. Finally, he latches onto a theory, grasping. It has to be. It can’t be anything heartbreaking.
“I don’t want to be separated while I travel ahead, either.” He reaches out one hand for Yuuri’s trembling shoulder. “I can change your ticket. Help you pack quickly—“ he brightens “—and we can fly together, so on the plane I’ll try your Pokemon game like you’ve been suggesting, sweetheart, it’ll be—”
“Viktor,” Yuuri gasps, and bursts into tears.
Viktor’s learned. Even when foolish words, panicked ones, are crashing around in his throat, he doesn’t open his mouth to let them free. His arms ache to hold Yuuri, but he’s not sure of that either. So Viktor waits.
The sobbing slows, Yuuri holding in air with a solemn fierceness as he carefully, painstakingly, looks Viktor in the eye.
“Breathe,” Viktor reminds him, and forces himself not to follow that with anything else.
“I’m going to sit,” Yuuri exhales. Viktor follows suit, mimics the way Yuuri settles back on his heels on the bed cover, legs tucked beneath him. “I need to tell you something. Something about me.” The best subject. Viktor’s favorite. “A long time ago, I asked you to be Viktor.”
Viktor flinches. “Have I not…”
Yuuri wildly shakes his head. “No, no! This isn’t about you. Just—maybe that was unfair. Hypocritical. I feel like the man who—who kissed you first when we got back to the hotel in China, who proposed in Barcelona, who broke a world record and gifted it to you… That’s not Yuuri.”
How could it not be, Viktor wants to ask, but Yuuri gives him a pleading, stubborn look and goes on.
“After Barcelona I thought it would end, and you’d never find out. Now,” he shudders, “you’re still here.”
I always will be.
“I didn’t mean to pretend, but—what could I do?” His lashes are wet with tears. “You were going to go away no matter what I did, I knew that, and it was… freeing. I could be foolish or embarrass myself or tease you. By the end it was easy to take risks, because the worst I could do was lose a month or two, and there was so much to gain.”
“Yuuri,” Viktor breathes.
Yuuri cups his hands over his mouth, sucks in air. “Now you’re here, and I need to keep you. I’ll die if I—if I push you away, if I mess this up.”
All they’ve done is love frantically, desperately, deeply. With their careers on the line. With precious few friends on their side. They’re engaged, and it would be generous to claim they’ve known each other for a year. Hell, Viktor would marry him tomorrow. What’s worse, he’s practically voiced that sentiment aloud. So has Yuuri.
Yuuri thinks he’s been behaving like a madman, and Viktor can’t help but agree. They’ve both been. Viktor had viewed the whole thing as starting the first stage of his life and love. Yuuri had viewed it as some kind of temporary euphoria, at least until Barcelona, until he put his arms around Viktor and said please.
Please. I’m so scared to take from people, but I want to take from you. I want everything you have. I want to return it tenfold.
“Maybe those things weren’t Yuuri,” Viktor says, “but they are now.”
Yuuri goes still. “I told you. They’re—they’re not. They can’t be. Don’t you think I know what I was like, before you?”
“I didn’t know what I was like before you.” Viktor takes his love’s hands. “Besides. With you, I’m new. You told me to be Viktor, and I’ve… become him. Let him live. Let him change. Some of those changes aren’t even,” he can’t help but laugh, “aren’t even classified as good or bad. I’ve become more carefree in some things, more spontaneous, more selfish, and so, so much more desperate in how I feel about you. Change doesn’t always have to be for the better or worse, darling. It can just be change. But in your heart, the part that stays—you’ll always be Yuuri. My Yuuri. I met you, the ever-changing you, and I’ve loved you ever since.”
Someday they’ll be in that mundane, quiet slice of life, where the days will bleed into each other. They’ll profess their love with gestures that may not be quite as grand as a gold medal. They’ll lose skating. But never each other.
Yuuri takes his hand, and Viktor knows it means I love you too.
“I will mess up,” he admits softly, longingly.
“I will too,” Viktor agrees. “But there’s no time limit on us now.”
“No limits.”
Yuuri’s calm now, in the aftermath, sleepy eyes and hesitant smile. It gives Viktor the courage to press for one more thing.
“You’ve held back on me, Yuuri. You have a dream that you’ve kept to yourself.”
He burns red in the soft white lights of Viktor’s room. “Yes. I—I was thinking. About our anniversary.”
Viktor squeezes his hands. “Which one?” Yuuri tips forward on his knees, buries his face into the space beneath Viktor’s collarbone.
“We have too many,” he agrees, muffled but amused. “But I meant when you came to Hasetsu. This season will be over. Before Barcelona, when I thought you’d be gone, I’d hoped…” he squirms beneath Viktor’s chin. “I’d hoped you would come back to see me. It was foolish,” he adds quickly. “But I hoped.”
Viktor chuckles, is sure to explain. “I wouldn’t return in April, darling. I wouldn’t have made it one week in Russia, with you still in Japan.”
He feels more than hears Yuuri’s sigh, the hot breath sifting through his jinbei.
“Every summer,” Viktor decides. The tears are gone and now is the time, to let the hopes and wild favors clogging up his chest cavity and threatening to spill from his lips, now is when to set them free. “We’ll spend time here? At home?”
Yuuri pulls back, brown eyes warm. Because he’s Yuuri, Viktor’s heart, in this moment he knows what Viktor needs.
“Every summer,” Yuuri agrees. “All the summers to come. We’ll be here together.”
The years to come.
“I’m always welcome?” Viktor asks. Viktor wants him to say it. If Yuuri says it, if he says it again and again, maybe they’ll both begin to believe it. “Even if I drink all your father’s sake? And dance on the table in front of all the customers?”
“You’re describing me,” Yuuri corrects, and pushes Viktor back onto the bed, props up over him. “But yes. We’re—we’re always welcome with each other, Viktor.”
On the ice, and in Japan, and in bed. In all the little things.
“Come here,” Viktor begs, wrapping legs around his waist.
“I am here,” Yuuri soothes them both, “we’re here together.”