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Hasetsu’s summer is unforgiving.
You’d think the worst of it would be the heat, but it’s the humidity that really gets to you, settling down deep in your lungs and making every breath heavier than the previous.
Yuuri had almost forgotten exactly how it felt, having been far away from Kyushu for so long. This is the first summer back home since he’d left Detroit in early March, after all, and five years are enough to get used to cooler summers, especially when you spend most of them in an ice rink anyway.
Even nightfall doesn’t bring a respite, and Yuuri is almost naked under the light duvet he’s thrown over his bed that morning, and he still has the air-con on, whose sound is drowned out by the insistent drumming of the rain outside.
It’s late June, so the rainy season is on its tail end, but this storm is a stubborn one, and doesn’t seem inclined to stop any time soon.
Yuuri sighs, turning over to his side and tapping the home button of his phone.
03:05 AM
He should be asleep. Tomorrow, he’s supposed to wake up early, and to go for a run, then off to Ice Castle for a quick visit, to help Yuuko and Nishigori with some stocking they’re doing on the equipment.
Yeah, he’s not training, tomorrow. Mostly, because him and Victor aren’t even in the same country, right now.
You see, while obtaining a visa for Japan when you’re a world-wide famous sportsperson isn’t all that hard – even if you happen to come from Russia, which doesn’t really have that many immigration deals with Japan, or any one, really, to begin with – doing so as suddenly as Victor did does have consequences.
Namely, having to deal with a lot of paperwork, especially since he isn’t technically working in Japan (he’s not being paid: basically, he volunteered to train Yuuri), and he has to somehow explain how that is still a job to the immigration office.
To speed up the process, he’s had to fly back to St. Petersburg for a short while, just a little over four days, to finalize all documentation so he doesn’t have to deal with the hassle again for as long as possible.
Which means, he left Hasetsu three days ago, and Yuuri has been miserable since about halfway through day two.
And that is ridiculous. Because Yuuri has lived most of his life having at least one half of a continent between him and Victor, and he’d managed just fine so far.
So what gives?
Well, you see, before, it was easy.
Before, Victor was just an abstract idea of a person, a distant image of a human being that Yuuri knew, consciously, really existed, alive and breathing, somewhere in the world, but that remained, at the end of the day, just a fantasy.
Even after seeing him in person during the Grand Prix final, if only in passing, Victor remained as intangible as ever, the feelings linked with him only growing slightly bitter because of the loss associated with the circumstances of their almost-meeting.
But now?
Now, Victor isn’t living legend Victor Nikiforov, five times consecutive champion of the Grand Prix, anymore. Now, he’s just… Victor, the human being, who is very real, just like the sense of absence he leaves behind himself.
Because Victor-the-human-being does very human, very real things indeed, like talking too loudly when he’s drunk, cutting himself with the razor when he shaves, and babbling incoherently in Russian as he sleeps. Once, he even started a whole conversation with a snoring Makkachin.
Yuuri finds himself chuckling out loud at the memory of that, and as he tries to stay quiet it turns into a snort halfway through. He feels his cheeks heat up automatically at the ridiculous sound that ensues, even though nobody was around to hear it.
Makkachin, from his part, whines inquisitively in his direction from the foot of the bed, where he’s currently slouching lazily, muzzle turned towards the breath of air coming from the a/c above.
Yuuri smiles, sitting up a little to scratch him behind the ears. Makkachin, seemingly satisfied that his other human is doing just fine, goes back to snoozing almost immediately, a big yawn escaping his maw before he settles back down.
It’s pretty adorable. Yuuri snaps a picture of it with his phone.
He should send it to Victor. It’s a good shot, after all.
Yes. That’s the nice thing to do, isn’t it?
It only makes sense. And it’s not clingy or annoying. Just logical. Yes.
He selects the ‘share’ option from the Gallery menu, then taps on the Line icon, scrolling down until he reaches Victor’s contact, and selects the English keyboard after accidentally beginning to type the message with the Japanese one, resulting in an incoherent jumble of Hiragana.
Eventually, he manages to write out something intelligible.
Katsudon-Y
[ATTACHED FILE: IMG_3499]
Thought you might like a shot of Makka being cute! ^--^/ I mi
His fingers hover over the digital buttons of the keyboard for a moment.
He deletes the last three letters, and hits send.
The answer comes less than a minute later.
Vitya88
You were right!! I love it!! What a good boy!!
The whole thing is followed by a string of heart and heart-eyes emojis.
Yuuri finds himself smiling softly at that reply, because it’s so very Victor it almost feels like the other said it out loud just now, next to him. Emojis and all.
His phone vibrates again; two times, in quick succession.
It’s 3 am there though, isn’t it?
What are u doing up?
Yuuri considers deflecting the question, for a moment, but he discards the idea: he doesn’t like lying to Victor, even by omission. Besides, he’s tired, and cranky, and that has proven to make him more honest in the past.
So, he sends a simple text:
Katsuson-Y
Can’t sleep.
This time, it takes a little longer for Victor’s response to get through.
Vitya88
Sorry, was grabbing some dinner.
Want me to call? I can tell you all about my day at the passport office and bore you straight into unconsciousness. :P
Yuuri snorts softly, and he means to write that’s it’s okay, that Victor is probably tired too, and that he should get to eat his dinner in peace, but his fingers and a part of his chest that has been aching since around lunch time yesterday have a different plan, apparently.
So, he writes:
Katsudon-Y
Yes please.
Victor doesn’t reply. Instead, his screen flashes with a FaceTime notification.
Victor is not just calling him.
He’s video calling him.
And Yuuri is a complete mess! He’s been tossing and turning in his bed for the past four hours or so, which means his hair is all over the place, and the left side of his face is all red and marked with light lines from all the time it’s been pressed into his pillow.
Not to mention, he’s very much shirtless.
Something he realizes the second he presses the ‘accept call’ button out of habit.
And there he is. Victor Nikiforov. Right on his phone screen.
Maybe, one day, he’ll get used to it.
He’s sitting at a table, which Yuuri assumes is his St. Petersburg apartment’s, a few take-out boxes placed just barely into frame. And, of course, he’s absolutely, unfairly stunning, even after a day spent dealing with bureaucracy.
“Uh, Yuuri? I really can’t see you. At all. Your room is too dark.” Victor pipes up, clearly squinting at his FaceTime feed.
“Trust me, that’s for the best.” Yuuri mumbles, quietly, but Victor catches it, and proceeds to tut in disagreement.
“Yuuri.” He admonishes.
Right. They’ve talked about this. You know, self-esteem issues and all that.
They’ve talked about a lot of things, after that day at the beach.
Yuuri reluctantly stands from his bed, walks over to his desk, and turns on the little lamp next to his laptop, almost getting his fingers tangled with the headphones he’s wearing in the process.
He flops down on the chair right behind him, and doesn’t meet Victor’s eyes through the screen.
“There you are!” He hears him say, cheerfully, and it’s hard not to smile at that familiar, enthusiastic tone, so Yuuri’s lips twitch upwards just a little bit, and he turns his gaze back towards the call.
“Hey.” He murmurs in reply, setting the phone down against a stack of books, making sure it’s more or less at eye level. The last thing he needs right now is unflattering angles, really.
“Konbanwa!” Victor chirps, completely undeterred by Yuuri’s quietness, his accent bleeding into the words just so, stressing the ‘n’ a little more than necessary, in a way that Yuuri really shouldn’t find that endearing at all: he’s been practicing simple Japanese phrases for a while now, and he definitely has the greetings down to a ‘t’.
“Even if I almost should be saying ohayo by now, mh?”
Yuuri glances at the time, and groans.
“I have to be up in exactly three hours and fifteen minutes. Oh, it’s fourteen now.” He deadpans, sounding very much done with himself and his life choices.
“Too hot to sleep?” Victor asks, gesturing in the general direction of Yuuri’s naked chest, now vaguely visible thanks to the faint glow of the lamp.
Oh, right. He’s half-naked. He almost forgot about that.
Now, that’s not usually something he gets hung up about too much anymore, at this point, seeing as him and Victor have shared plenty of baths in the onsen, where they always are completely naked, but this is different. It’s a different context, it’s intimate, so intimate, and Victor is completely dressed on the other end of the line, and Yuuri feels exposed.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I’ll—” He begins, scrambling to reach any shirt he has lying around, but gets cut off almost immediately.
“What are you sorry for? Yuuri, it’s okay.” Victor smiles, reassuring and sincere. Then, a little more mischievous: “I really don’t mind.”
And he winks.
Yuuri’s cheeks, of course, respond in the only logical way they can: they flame up embarrassingly bright.
It’s a good thing the lighting in the room is still crap, really.
Victor’s smile widens, delighted.
And look, it really is hot in his room, okay? And Yuuri’s closest clean shirt is probably on the other side of the bed, which is very far away, requiring him to bundle over a sleeping Makkachin to reach it, and besides, well.
It doesn’t exactly feel awful, having Victor’s eyes on him like that. They are appreciative (at least Yuuri really hopes they are), but not in an uncomfortable way.
They’re soft, and fond, and familiar, and warm, and Yuuri squirms a little on his seat, because it’s just a lot, even if it’s so little.
“What did you get for dinner?” He asks, blurting out the words, and clears his throat, signalling the end of the conversation regarding his state of undress.
Victor, bless him, doesn’t miss a beat.
“Look for yourself.” He replies, turning his phone towards the take-out containers Yuuri has spotted before. They are filled with assorted uramaki and futomaki rolls, as well as several tuna and salmon nigiri.
“I would’ve thought you’d want to take a break from Japanese food, now that you're back home.” Yuuri comments, tilting his head inquisitively.
“That’s exactly why I got cheap take-out sushi in the middle of Russia.” Victor explains, his grin wide and playful, and Yuuri laughs out loud as soon as the meaning behind his words hit him.
“And how’s that plan going for you?” Yuuri asks, barely managing a whole sentence without breaking into chuckles again.
“I haven’t tried any yet.” Victor admits. “But I expect it to taste exactly as good as it looks.”
A pause, and Yuuri doesn’t say anything to interrupt, because it’s clear that Victor isn’t done speaking.
“Yesterday, I tried a place that makes all sorts of Asian cuisine dishes. Korean, Chinese, Japanese…They make katsudon, too, but the meat was too tough, and the rice was all mushy. I bet they didn’t rinse it enough before cooking it. Your mom told me it’s very important. I didn’t understand why, because she didn’t know how to explain it in English and I couldn’t understand any of the things she was saying in Japanese, but. Yeah.”
Victor is babbling. Yuuri realizes this almost immediately, but can’t for the life of him stop him before he’s through. Because this isn’t something he’s ever seen Victor do, and he’s sort of fascinated by the whole thing.
Victor’s pouting, too, which isn’t strange in and of itself, considering exactly how dramatic he tends to be, but the way his eyes seem to become unfocused, almost sad, is.
“That sucks.” He concedes, eventually. “We’ll have some nice katsudon for dinner tomorrow.”
Victor tuts, seemingly out of the weird state of mind he’d been in just moments before, teasing light back into his eyes.
“We will not. Remember your cheat day isn’t for another week!” He announces, cheerfully, making Yuuri’s curiosity fall into annoyance.
“I hate it when you get into serious coach mode.” He mumbles, shooting Victor a sideways look. Something clicks in his mind, then, and he adds:
“Oh! Which reminds me… After the passport office, did you go see Yakov?”
Victor’s smile turns lopsided, sheepish, and he shakes his head.
“No. I don’t think he really wants to see me right now.” He admits, not going into any detail.
Yuuri’s whole face falls.
This is his fault, isn’t it? He’s the reason Victor is in Japan, after all, and while he loves that idea in theory, in practice it means that Yuuri is, effectively, cutting off Victor from his skating family back home, which might as well be his actual family, since Victor has never spoken to him about any blood relatives, at all, ever.
That thought has crossed his mind before, during the past few weeks, but now it’s taken over the forefront of his brain, like an unpleasant interference on the TV.
“I’m sorry.” He says, and he means it. “I’m sorry he’s mad at you because…” A pause, and he almost considers not saying anything, but he’s still tired, and he’s still honest.
"Because of me.”
Victor reacts immediately, his eyes going wide as he shakes his head.
“Yuuri, no. Oh, no, don’t say that. That’s not it at all. Have you been thinking that this whole time?” He asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve been making Yakov mad since I was fifteen years old, trust me. This is nothing. He just needs some time to cool down. It will be okay.
And Victor smiles, open-mouthed and sincere.
“Besides, I’m sure that as soon as I’ll introduce you to him he’ll understand.” He adds, as if that’s the most natural statement in the world, and that it hasn’t just hit Yuuri straight on, making his heart drop and shoot back up like a yo-yo.
“I’m really not that interesting.” He points out, to no avail.
“I beg to differ.” Victor counters, and his eyes turn softer, as he glances behind Yuuri, at the window over his bed, where the sky is probably starting to light up just the slightest bit. “What time is it now?” He asks.
“It’s four fifteen.” Yuuri replies, after glancing at the phone’s clock for possibly the millionth time, tonight.
“You should try and get some sleep. I wouldn’t want Yuuko to accuse me of keeping you up while I should try to make you fall asleep instead.” He says, and Yuuri shrugs.
“I haven’t managed to fall asleep so far. I might as well just stay up, at this point.”
Victor bristles, at that.
“Nonsense. You need to rest. It’s not going to be nearly enough to keep you up all day, and you’ll have to take a nap in the afternoon, but at least you’ll catch some shut-eye. We don’t want you to fall asleep half an hour before your alarm and miss it.” He comments, raising a knowing eyebrow.
Yuuri coughs, very conspicuously.
Yeah, he doesn’t particularly want to pull another ‘Aeroflot’. Night owl as he is, mornings aren’t exactly his forte.
“Fine.” He relents, huffing in mostly staged annoyance. Victor hums approvingly, and shoos Yuuri off the chair with a flick of his wrist.
“Go get comfy. I’ll tell you all about my exciting day in the magical world of international employment paperwork.” He instructs, and Yuuri can’t help the small giggle-snort that slips away from his lips, although he has tried to keep it quiet, like before.
“Cute.” Victor comments, and Yuuri hides his face against the pillow while he wiggles his way back under the duvet, phone resting against the wall so that he can still see Victor as he speaks.
“I’m waiting for your story.” Yuuri reminds him, and Victor nods seriously, then clears his throat.
“Yes, of course! Well, it all started at eight in the morning, today. I had an appointment with this lady at the passport office, her name is Natalia and she is such a nit-picker, right? So I—”
Yuuri falls asleep ten minutes later, because Victor’s voice in his ears sounds like a warm afternoon in Fukuoka, when he used to visit his grandparents for hanami parties in the spring, the pretty pink cherry blossom petals swirling around him, round and round…
Victor cuts himself mid-sentence when he realizes that, and quietly watches Yuuri breathing softly six hours ahead of him, the early morning light beginning to draw long shadows across the bridge of his nose.
Then, he rolls over to the left, knocking the phone on its back when he tugs it by the still attached headphones cord. Victor laughs, trying to keep quiet, least he wakes Yuuri up from his slumber.
But Yuuri only stirs (not that Victor can telll, seeing as now he is only treated to a view of Yuuri’s wooden bedroom ceiling at the moment), mumbling something in his sleep.
“Viktoru… koishii¹…”
Victor doesn’t understand the second word at all, but he does catch his name, the slight raise of the last, hard, consonant into the gentler sound of a vocal making his chest ache, wishing he could jump on a plane to Kyushu in five minutes, instead of more than twelve hours.
“Do zavtra², Yuuri. ” He says, eventually, and ends the call.
His phone chirps cheerfully with the conclusion of the call, and he puts it down, looking dejectedly at his sad, take-out dinner.
He hears a sound, then, coming from outside his window, the sky still bright with the colours of early sunset despite the relatively late hour, just in time to catch a glimpse of a seagull, gliding its way towards the Baltic Sea.
He’d wondered how many kilometres there are between St. Petersburg and Hasetsu, the first time he’d looked up Katsuki Yuuri on the web after the banquet, and Google Maps had told him it was around seven thousand, eight hundred and forty-two.
At the time, it seemed like a lot.
Victor smiles, losing track of the seagull as it blurs into the line of the horizon.
He knows better, now.
Yuuri isn’t too far away.
Not really.
Not at all.
---