Work Text:
The first thing Yuri learns about Victor is that he brings that single-minded champion’s focus to everything. To training, yes, obviously – Yuri can do that jump again and do it better, fly further, drive across the ice harder – but also to silly things, inconsequential things, like getting to know Yuri’s mother.
This he does by joining her in the kitchen, and wearing an apron with frills on it, and getting flour on his nose. Yuri may be creepily watching them from the shelter of the doorway, but he’s not sure he can actually be blamed for it.
“How did you say this again?” Victor says, creasing his brow and letting his accent thicken. “O-ko-no-mo…”
Yuri’s mother’s eyes are huge and shiny. Her hands are actually clasped under her chin. If she were in a shojo manga panel, the background would be thick with sparkles and flower petals.
“Okonomiyaki, dear,” she says gently.
Victor huffs a gentle laugh at himself.
“Of course, of course!” he says, shaking his head.
“Don’t be hard on yourself!” Yuri’s mother trills. “Your Japanese has already got so much better since you arrived here!”
Victor lights up. On anyone else, all this could be offputtingly calculated and insincere – here it’s still obviously calculated, but somehow Victor manages to do calculated in a way that just leaves you pleased that he’s bothered to calculate how to please you. You can see the strings, but it doesn’t take away from the experience.
Well, to be fair, Yuri’s pretty sure his mother is so taken she can’t even see the strings.
“Yuri’s mamochka is too kind!” Victor says, his bright eyes all creased up in a smile.
Yeah, that’ll do it.
Yuri sighs with feeling. He doesn’t know why Victor is doing this, but somehow he’s pretty sure it’ll come back to bite him.
“Don’t get all high and mighty,” Mari mutters as she passes. She flicks Yuri’s elbow with her fingertip in that way she perfected over the long summers of their childhood. “Your face does that when you look at him too.”
“It – it does not! I never –“ Yuri starts, and then promptly shuts up at her smug expression. His face is hot.
“Ah-hah,” she says. “Got you.”
That doesn’t mean he has to let it go. Later, much later, after they’ve all eaten and the cooking utensils have been cleared away and everyone else has excused themselves to bed, Yuri clears his throat. Victor is half-reclined over the low table, his shoulder bared by his badly-tied robe, and Yuri hopes his cough encompasses how he feels about… This whole situation in general. The weird turn his life has taken.
Victor looks at him.
“O-ko-no-mo-yaki?” Yuri says, hoping his impression of Victor’s foreigner routine comes out stinging, as he means it to be, and not fond, which he’s afraid it is.
There’s pink high in Victor’s cheeks from the sake. For a moment he says absolutely nothing, just watches Yuri with half an indolent smile playing about his mouth. Yuri doesn’t squirm, even though he wants to. He still isn’t used to having Victor’s full focus.
“I’m getting her onside,” Victor says eventually, without even a hint of teasing. “So she will support me when I ask her for your hand.”
He grins, leaning his chin on his upturned palm.
“That Victor,” he murmurs, in an accurate but not cruel impression of Yuri’s mother, “such a nice boy.”
For a moment, Yuri’s fool heart stops completely. It takes him longer than it should to get himself back in hand, to roll his eyes because he has to, because the alternative would completely expose him.
“You’ve drunk too much,” he mutters, drawing the sake towards himself.
Victor sits up a little straighter.
“Ah hah! Yes! I suppose I have!” he says.
|
What does it say about Yuri that Victor looked at him, and calculated that the best way to please him was to make a joke about proposing?
Yuri probably shouldn’t be so hard on his mother. When Victor really gets it right, you don’t see the strings at all.
|
The next morning Yuri feels hopelessly slow and sluggish at the rink, too full of good food and the one sake he allowed himself last night. Victor, on the other hand, is chirpy and focused despite the fact he went to bed drunk as a skunk, still performing an unintelligible version of the Russian national anthem. The world is unfair.
“Neeee, Yuri,” Victor sighs. Ne is Victor’s favorite Japanese expression. He sticks it everywhere. He says it fills his sentences full of mystery and anticipation. Yuri figures he has time enough to land his triple axel before Victor feels compelled to finish his sentence, so he does so.
“I’ve been thinking about something very sad,” Victor goes on, once Yuri has landed the jump and skated back to him.
“Is that so,” Yuri says, because Victor has a little pout on his face, and between that and the particularly theatrical neeee he can’t see this ending well for him.
“Yes,” Victor says. “A healthy young man such as yourself shouldn’t have to resort to thinking of katsudon in order to experience eros!”
“Ah,” Yuri says, fumbling, “well –“
“As your coach, it would really be… remiss of me to ignore the fact that clearly this means nobody has ever given you the amorous attention –“
Yuri can feel himself going a strangled shade of purple. Victor revises.
“- the love and cherishment that you deserve. So it falls to me, as your coach, to give it to you!”
This has to be a trick. Those are some… impressive leaps of logic. Victor, however, seems to take Yuri’s dumbfounded silence as encouragement.
“So I took it upon myself to buy –“ he lifts up a bouquet of roses – “these.”
The roses are so deeply wine-red and perfect they look as through they’ve been painted into existence. They’re beautiful.
“But of course,” Victor goes on, with a calculating light in his eyes that says Yuri’s expression is giving everything away, “every opportunity should be taken to advance your training. Do you agree?”
“I – yes, “ Yuri says. He can’t look away from the roses. There are a full dozen. They must have been expensive, especially at this time of year.
“I’m glad you think so,” Victor says. His voice is very low now, not joking at all. Yuri’s heart pounds.
Victor lifts a single bloom from the bunch and holds it aloft.
“You’ll earn one for every quad salchow you can land today,” he says. Yuri swallows.
“But – there are twelve of them.”
“I know,” Victor says. He draws the bloom idly across his jaw and chin. “I won’t take one away if you fall, I promise.”
Yuri can feel Victor’s eyes burning into him as he turns away and begins building up speed. It’s a heady sensation. The whole thing should feel ridiculous, like a kindergarten teacher giving out stickers for good handwriting, but it doesn’t. Instead, Yuri feels hot all over, tingly with the particularly delicious, almost illicit rush of knowing he’s going to be given something he shouldn’t want, without even having to admit he wants it.
It’s a game, of course, because that’s so Victor, but at the same time there’s a heaviness to the way Victor watches Yuri from the side of the rink, holding the single rose petal-side-up against his mouth. Yuri’s lungs are so restricted he breathes in uneven huffs.
Victor is silent when he fumbles the first attempt. When he misses the second by millimeters, Victor says, “come on now, Yuri. You can be better for me.”
Yuri lands the third.
“Yes,” Victor says. “Like that. Exactly like that. So beautiful.”
Yuri lands the fourth. He doesn’t need to look to know Victor is smirking.
“Ne, ne, Yuuuuri,” he says, clearly enjoying himself, “so it’s like that, is it?”
It’s like nothing, Yuri thinks furiously, except he can’t actually say it because it’s exactly like that. The back of his neck is sweating. He feels as though it’s written on his forehead in big neon letters, KATSUKI YURI IS TOTALLY INTO EVERY WEIRD THING VICTOR NIKIFOROV DOES.
He lands the fifth attempt.
“You must really want these roses,” Victor says, in a tone that suggests he’s mostly talking to himself. “I should have bought two dozen.”
“I wouldn’t be worth that,” Yuri grits out as he pushes his body, singing with lactic build-up, into another jump.
Victor makes a hissing sound of surprise and dismay as Yuri lands it.
“That’s not what this is about,” Victor says. He’s actually got to his feet. “This isn’t about you proving your worth to me. You don’t really think that, do you?”
And that’s not what Yuri means - he just means that Victor shouldn’t waste his money on something as frivolous as two dozen roses, shouldn’t even have wasted it on one dozen, not on Yuri’s account.
“You’re worth more than two dozen,” Victor goes on, warming to his topic. “I should stuff your mattress with petals, Yuri, so you have a bed of roses to sleep on.”
This is beyond endurance.
“Please – please stop,” Yuri says miserably, his cheeks pink with embarrassment.
Victor’s mouth snaps shut and transforms into a pucker of displeasure.
“Okay,” he says grudgingly.
|
Yuri earns all twelve. Victor wraps them back up and hands them to him to carry home.
“They suit you,” Victor says, in a way that doesn’t invite a return comment.
Walking home side-by-side with Victor, a clutch of roses in his arms – it’s not lost on Yuri, what it must look like. He should carry them more unobtrusively, except there’s no unobtrusive way to carry them. He has to let people think what they’ll think.
Victor walks closely enough that their arms occasionally brush. It’s quiet and companionable. When a small girl and her father walk by, walking a dog so tiny it’s really a dandelion puff on a leash, Victor stops to pet it. When Yuri bends down too, it sniffs the roses and barks.
“It might rain soon,” says Victor, looking up into the sky. “Do you think?”
Yuri doesn’t really know how this goes. He never dated in high school, so he missed all that stuff – confession letters in lockers, heartfelt and clumsy homemade bentos, walking the long way home together. There was always training, and more training, and Yuri was awkward anyway, and girls were so – so overwhelming. And he hadn’t known he was allowed boys, back then. And then, by college he just felt too far behind to start at all.
He wishes Victor would take his arm. That’s how this would go, he thinks, if this were really happening.
“I think so,” Yuri says, and then, just like that, the sky opens. Yuri feels the first few drops land on the tip of his nose.
Victor produces an umbrella from nowhere. It’s one of those automatic models that just whooshes straight up when you push the button.
“Don’t let your roses get wet,” Victor chides gently. He reaches out and puts his hand into the crook of Yuri’s elbow, pulling him close and angling the umbrella so it covers both of them.
Yuri swallows against his dry throat.
“Victor,” he says, “this – it looks kind of like – people might – “
“Yuri,” Victor says, amused, “do you really think I do things without first considering what they look like?”
Well. Probably not.
“Ah,” Victor says, stopping them outside the door of the nearest store, “we’re here.”
Yuri looks up. There are two flower shops in town – one is attached to an all-night gas station and sells slightly sad, droopy bouquets wrapped in cellophane for men who’ve forgotten their wives’ birthdays, and the other… Is this one. The name is French, and Yuri can’t even pronounce it.
“Come on,” Victor says, and steers Yuri politely but firmly through the door. A bell announces their arrival.
The smell hits him first – not the usual soft, delicate, powdery floral he imagines when he thinks of flower smells, but rich and lush, earthy. An immaculate assistant in a snow-white apron approaches them.
“Why are we –“ Yuri manages in an undertone, before the assistant glances at the two of them and clearly makes a full (and incorrect, obviously) assumption about what’s going on here.
“Good afternoon, and what would the gentleman like today?” she asks Yuri with a fulsome smile.
“Uh – I –“ Yuri says, looking helplessly to Victor.
“He’ll have his pick of roses,” Victor says. He pulls out a black credit card and hands it to the assistant, whose smile gets impossibly wider.
“Of course, sir,” she says, and – and winks. Yuri’s life is spiralling out of control.
There isn’t much to do but go with it. Yuri follows the assistant to the bank of roses near the back of the store and picks out white and pink ones – he means for six of each, but Victor makes the girl wrap up fifteen of both, so now he has forty-two roses and he should probably feel faintly ridiculous, but he doesn’t. Secretly he feels sort of thrilled at being treated like one of Victor’s girlfriends. It’s just a game, so he doesn’t have to think too hard about it.
Victor comes and winds his arm around Yuri’s waist while the assistant charges the card. Yuri tells himself he can’t be blamed for leaning in a tiny bit.
Back outside, in the real world, it’s still raining. Victor arranges them both under his umbrella, and they start for home.
“I’m going to book us a table for dinner tonight,” Victor says, while the rain runs in rivulets along the umbrella, and pours off the ends of the spokes. Yuri stops dead. Victor doesn’t even stumble.
“What?” Yuri says. “Why? Don't you think you’ve already done enough as my coach to make up for the lack of, of eros in my life until now?”
Victor winces.
“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” he says. ‘Abashed’ is a weird look on Victor. “When I said that at the rink - I thought you… Would need more convincing. More time to get used to the idea. But then I saw your face with the flowers and I just couldn’t -”
“What idea?” Yuri asks. He tries to say it firmly, even a little suspiciously, because he’s sure this isn’t what it sounds like, and he doesn’t want to embarrass himself.
“Of being with me,” Victor says. “Of us being together.”
Yuri’s seen moments like this in the movies. If this were a movie, he’d drop the flowers, maybe, and lift his chin and wait. Instead he just stands, staring, uncertain if the moment is stable enough for him to disturb it by moving.The movies don't communicate the way the world seems to tilt with impossibility at this exact moment - the idea that someone like that could love someone like you.
Victor raises Yuri’s chin with a fingertip. After a second, he drops the umbrella.