Chapter Text
The world had looked bright, at that Grand Prix.
Yuuri hadn’t qualified - of course he hadn’t - but the inn was doing pretty well that year, so his parents took him anyway, so he could see the other skaters, but mostly so he could see Victor.
The whole world was there to see Victor, though, so that was fine.
He had won three Grand Prix in a row, and, if Yuuri were a betting man, he’d put everything he had on Victor winning his fourth.
Yuuri and his family had actually gotten pretty decent seats - they had a unobstructed view of the rink - but they were running rather late, so, when the made it to their spot, Yuuri sat, quickly, the metal seat cold against his legs.
“You’ve seen him before,” the commentator announced, “and you’ll most definitely see him again; please clap your hands for the reigning champion and the once and future king of ice skating, Victor Nikiforov!”
“Oh, did Victor draw first for the short program?” One of the triplets asked, only to be immediately shushed by the other two. “It’s starting!”
Yuuri turned to the ice to see Victor in the center, tall and imposing and eyes gently shut. His face was shadowed, his head bowed, and light reflected off the crown of his hair - he was bent in obeisance, in reverence, form lowered before the crowd.
Everyone sat, spellbound, and, before the spell could break, Victor twirled into motion. His hair billowed behind him, contrasting the black of his shimmering costume. As he leapt, the eyes of the crowd followed him, excitement building in the room. He was sinuous, lissome, sliding with a grace that he likely came out of the womb with, because Yuuri had never seen anything like the way Victor moved before. He danced, serene and completely lost in the movement, in the moment, unaware of the impact he was having on the room. And as Victor easily shattered all of his previous records, the commentator shouted, excitement propelling his voice to a roaring crescendo that matched the screams of the crowd and the torrent of emotion cascading down Yuuri’s throat. Victor spun dizzyingly fast, and stopped, hand reached towards the ceiling lights and his future, spotlit and stretching endlessly beyond what anyone could see.
Victor was magnificent, Yuuri thought, as everyone stood and screamed, their voices cacophonous and yet still quieter than the roaring in Yuuri’s ears. Victor was magnificent.
That night, Yuuri woke to white flower petals covering his chest.
-
“Oh, I recognize those!” Yuko says, eyes wide and unsuspecting of the blood dripping from the underside of the leaves.“My grandmother had some in her garden. They’re arbutuses, I think. Pretty, aren’t they?”
Yuuri smiles, gently, closing his eyes and holding the flowers tighter, so their thorns cut into his palms and blood trickles from his hands. “Yeah, they are.”
-
“Are you sure,” the physician says, her eyes distant, as if she’d had this conversation too many times and didn’t want to be here to have it again, “that you won’t reconsider?”
“I’m not having surgery.” Yuuri says, as his father gasps and his mother weeps behind him. “There’s too much that I’d have to give up.”
“I either skate until I die, or I make Victor Nikiforov fall in love with me.” he says, knowing which option was more likely.
Everyone looks at him, dismayed, but his mind is closed and his heart is wrenchingly open for all the room to see.
-
“This diagnosis isn’t so bad, you know?” his mom says over a steaming rice bowl that Yuuri hadn’t touched. “Hanahaki is uncommon, but -
“It can be cured if you just fall out of love.” Mari interrupts. The finality in her tone silences the dinner table, and Yuuri’s hackles rise with the brimming tension.
“There’s a reason I refused the surgery.” Yuuri says, eyes tracing the wooden panels on the ceiling.
The tension overflows.
-
“Yuuri,” Minako asks, “Why did you refuse the surgery?”
Yuuri stops stretching on the beam and turns to face her. “Minako,” he says, voice taut, “Who do you think made me want to skate in the first place?”
“Oh god,” she gasps, hands flying to her mouth.
“Minako, Victor is my skating.” he continues, knowing how cruel he’s being. “If I forget him, I’ll forget skating too, and I’ll have nothing at all.”
-
“The quality of the flowers changes with the quality of your love.” the rakish bachelor says, his legs gracefully akimbo as he lounges artfully on a barstool. “Sometimes the flowers are thick and lush, like a full, complete love; sometimes they’re shriveled and jealous, or dark and thorny with repressed emotion.”
“Really?” the young woman says, her resplendent eyes lined with just a hint of brown eyeliner and an expensive blue eyeshadow. She leans in closer, and the sunlight highlights her perfect skin and the golden shine of her hair. “And what about my flowers?”
“Your flowers,” purrs the handsome man, smile slipping into a smirk, “seem to be the most beautiful of all.”
The two kiss, gently, then hungrily, and Yuuri’s mother quickly turns off the TV.
“That’s enough of that now!” she says. “It’s not like that nonsense exists outside of Hollywood, anyway.”
She rubs Yuuri’s head.
“Love’s not like that, you hear?” she looks into the distance, her stare reaching back a thousand years.
“Love shouldn’t make you so willing to sacrifice yourself.”
-
Skating has been getting harder. Stamina has always been Yuuri’s best attribute, but it’s hard to skate for long periods of time when your airway is blocked by flowers that won’t stop growing.
Celestino lets him take as many breaks as he needs, bringing over water bottles and an endless stream of concern.
He hasn’t said anything, though, because Yuuri has some good days, on which he barely notices the burn the thorns cause in his throat, and skating, an old refuge that he now needs more than ever, is as easy as breathing used to be. His first competition after his diagnosis coincides with a good day, as does his second, and, suddenly, Yuuri finds himself scraping into the Grand Prix final.
His tries to smile, but it seems like flowers pour out every time he opens his mouth.
-
Yuuri had fallen in love because Victor had surrendered himself to a crowd. At the last Grand Prix, Victor began his performance with a bow, kowtowing before the group of people who had made his life possible, his skating practical. He worshipped skating, and the people that gave it to him.
And, as Victor gave Yuuri his skating, Yuuri sees no reason why he shouldn’t do the same thing.
-
It happened on a Tuesday.
He had been skating - when isn’t he skating, nowadays - and he had felt that now-familiar pressure against the back of his throat and, after a moment, a thick swell of a flower makes itself known, and Yuuri stops in the middle of a spin to let out a choking cough.
“You alright, Yuuri?” Phichit yells from across the rink. “You need to sit down?”
Yuuri coughs again, and most of the first flower slips, wetly, into his hand. “I’ll just make a run to the bathroom.” he rasps. “I’ll be back in a minute. Keep practicing without me.”
He skates off the ice as quickly as he can manage, and kicks his skates off besides his bag. Hand against his mouth, he runs to the bathroom, which was close enough that he reached it before the second flower made an appearance.
As soon as he makes it to the sink, he vomits, and suddenly he can’t stop the rush of flowers from coming out that he can’t stop that isn’t slowing down and he can’t breathe-
He collapses, clawing desperately at his throat as the flowers force themselves out of his chest, more flowers than he realized his body could hold, until he’s surrounded by a haze of blues and whites and his face is red as he tries to find his breath and never let it loose.
I can’t stop this. He realizes, in an epiphany so crystal-clear it seems like he knew it all along. I can’t get rid of this.
I’m going to die.
-
His symptoms worsen. Some days, he wakes up with his head wreathed in flowers, thorns and all, with his throat so littered with lacerations that when he looks in the mirror his teeth are covered in blood, the roots stained red.
Yuuri’s fine with this, though. He knows he’s lucky to be waking up.
-
“Yuuri, you’re going to die.” Mari says, with her arms crossed and her mouth a harsh line. “Why don’t you just tell him how you feel at the Grand Prix? It’s not as if you have anything to lose.”
“I can’t tell him - he’d feel pressured to be in a relationship he shouldn’t be in.” Yuuri says, voice firm. “I can’t tell anyone that isn’t family, because I can’t risk him knowing.”
“I can’t force him to love me - that wouldn’t be fair.” He pins Mari with his stare.
“I don’t want anyone else to not have a choice.”
-
Yuuri can’t stop looking at the glass.
Skaters, from all around the world, twirl around the ice around him, practicing their routines before the short program. They are all beautiful, the competitors Yuuri would only have this one chance to compete against. Christophe is a contrast of smooth curves and hard lines, his skating much the same, and JJ coasts, eyes bright and sharper than his skates, and Victor is Victor, and therefore it hurt Yuuri to look at him for too long, so instead Yuuri stared at the glass.
He can’t stop looking at the glass, because at least then his reflection looks back.
While they warm up, they learn that Yuuri drew first for the short program, which meant that he’d be performing soon after warmup. Yuuri sighs, and pulls off to the side of the rink.
“Hey!” Someone yells from behind him. He turns, and is greeted by a sly grin that is far too close. “Good luck, alright?” Christophe winks, and he slaps Yuuri on the back as he skates past. Yuuri coughs from the jolt, and a full flower appears in his hands, far too big for him to hide.
“Yuuri?” Christophe asks, suddenly far more hesitant. He turns around, skating towards Yuuri until he stops in front of him. “Yuuri, that flower’s huge, how long have you had Hana-”
“I’ll be fine, Christophe.” Yuuri says brusquely.
“No, seriously, with a flower that size, you’re in no shape to perform -”
“Chris!” Yuuri shouts. The other skaters turn towards them, and Yuuri quickly lowers his voice. “I’ve been fine for this long. Let it rest.”
Chris clearly makes to say something else, but Yuuri ignores him, skating to the edge of the rink. He hops out, quickly sitting on the bench and pulling out his phone for his earbuds, which he sticks in as a nonverbal challenge.
Everyone leaves him alone for a while - enough time for him to try to regain his bearings, and rebalance after Chris knocked him off his feet.
The end of one of his shoelaces is ragged, he realizes. The aglet dangles, about to fall off his shoelace entirely, and the thread underneath it is threadbare and sagging.
He fiddles it with it halfheartedly in an attempt to fix it. The aglet is obstinate, though, and fights him as he tries to bend it back into shape-
“Yuuri, you’re gonna do great out there.” Chris says.
Yuuri startles, his skates clacking against the floor as his lifts his feet. He pulls his earbuds out and says, “Chris, I told you, I don’t need any of your conce-"
“I know,” Chris says, suddenly desperate, and he moves from where he’s standing in front of Yuuri to kneel, gripping Yuuri’s shoulders tight. “But all the same, I think you’ll do well. Just don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”
Chris looks down at his skates, hiding his face for a second, and then looks up again, eyes wider than they’d been before and all the more pleading. “Please?”
His eyes look like the leaves outside of Hatsetsu in the summer, Yuuri realizes. They catch the light in the same way, reflecting it and taking it as their own.
“Chris -” Yuuri says, before his heart lodges in his throat. “Thank you.”
Yuuri tries to say something else - tries to put his gratitude into words - but his throat seizes, and what he thought was his heart turned out to be a flower, perfectly formed and suddenly in Yuuri’s lap, along with the blood dribbling from his mouth.
“Yuuri.” Chris says, voice almost as gentle as it was sad, “How long has this been going on?”
Yuuri wipes the blood from his face, smearing it as he does so. “A year.”
Chris’s mouth twists into something between a smile and a grimace. “You can’t have long, then.”
“My doctor says I should expect about a month.” Yuuri replies, and coughs up some more blood.
Chris pauses, like his thoughts are clogged in his throat, and, without warning, grabs the flower from Yuuri’s lap and spins it in his hands. “Your flowers are gorgeous, though.”
Yuuri lets out a rough chuckle, wincing as it irritates the scabs in his throat. “I’m not sure how much that matters, in the end.”
Chris looks at Yuuri intently, and Yuuri shifts in his seat under the scrutiny, but holds Chris’s gaze.
Chris breaks away first, looking instead at the blood staining Yuuri’s hands. “This will probably be your last competition, so skate like you’ve never skated before, alright? Give me and Victor a challenge on the podium.”
Yuuri’s heart trembles a little at the mention of Victor, but he smiles weakly. “Okay.”
“And Yuuri?” Chris adds. “Give whoever you’re skating for a show, alright?”
Yuuri looks away, but his eyes mist over all the same. “I will,” he says, voice cracking.
“And take this back,” Chris says, forcing the flower into Yuuri’s hands. “You’re going to need it.”
Yuuri looks up, desolate, but the announcer interrupts with a notice about the short program before he can find where he put his words.
“That’s your cue, right?” Chris says, standing up from where he’d knelt.
Yuuri watches as he goes, and feels a sense of loss so keenly in his chest that words come pouring out, unbidden. “It’s Victor, Chris.”
“I know.” Chris says, and walks away.
Yuuri sits for a moment, trying to figure out how to gather his emotions, which fly around him akimbo. He folds in on himself, and looks at his knees and the blood staining his costume.
This is my last performance, is it? he thinks, and he looks around the rink until his eyes reach Victor, who sits alone, hand on his cheek and eyes on the surface of the ice.
Victor, don’t look away.
He stands, resolute, and walks onto the ice.
“And Katsuki Yuuri takes the ice! This is his first time as a Grand Prix finalist, and he’ll be - wait, is that blood-”
Yuuri ignores the rest, eyes hardening as he finds Victor again. Victor meets his eyes, this time, and he looks startled, his hand tracing something on his cheek.
Yuuri checks his reflection in the glass, and he sees that he still has blood on his face from where he wiped it earlier.
He looks at Victor again, and feels his face morph into something raw, his eyes showing the world the truth he’s been hiding.
If this is my last chance -
I’ll show the world what you mean to me.
“And the performance begins! Katsuki’s going for a triple axel as his first jump - wait, he’s changed it to a quadruple!”
-
Yuuri loves Victor.
Well, of course he does. Victor had made him what he was; he’s so entrenched in Yuuri’s heart and mind that Yuuri keeps finding bits and pieces of him in places that he wouldn’t think to look.
Victor’s made a home in the base of his spine, in the dips of his ankles, and in the back of his throat, with the spit-soaked flowers that he can’t hold back.
But Yuuri doesn’t know Victor. He hasn’t been privy to Victor’s personal moments - he’s missed celebrations and pink birthday candles and fireworks singing towards the sky; lonely nights where Victor’s heart was held captive by the distant stars, who were mean and cold and refused to let him loose; he’s missed countless long silences and empty in-betweens and everything else. He’s missed Victor’s life.
But he doesn’t want to keep missing it, he realizes as he leaps in the air. He wants, desperately, to be a part of the world he’s dreamt of for so long, and now, when he looks at Victor, he can’t help but feel an audacious sort of hope.
And he hopes, and hopes, and hopes, and he finishes his final spin and collapses, and the world screams all at once.
-
Yuuri can’t stop panicking.
He’s breathing too fast, too hard, trying to stop his body from shaking as he’s wracked with coughs, convulsing as the flowers spill out on the ice, each larger than the last.
“Yuuri,” someone says, “you’ve got to calm down, you’re going to choke -”
Yuuri lifts his head, but the world is too blurry - everything’s made up of vague, distorted shapes, indistinct and blending with the overpowering blue of the ice. A flower swells out, and his head falls again, cracking back against the ground.
“Yuuri.” someone says, and there’s a pair of eyes in front of his face, flecked with green and gold and explosively powerful, like the center of a supernova as it dies. “Someone’s here to see you.”
Yuuri raises his head one last time, and, suddenly, green is replaced with blue, of a riverbank with tears swelling over the edge.
“Yuuri,” Victor says, and the flowers stop.
“Victor,” Yuuri gasps, and suddenly the world is vividly clear, Victor’s face a revelation made of a worried mouth and a pink nose and grieving eyes that he’d recognize at the end of the world.
“Yuuri,” Victor says, voice filled with emotions genuine but rusty, as if he hadn’t had a chance to feel them for too long. “Who are your flowers for?”
Yuuri almost wants to laugh, but he’s crying too hard for that to be feasible. “They’re yours. They always were.”
Victor’s eyes erupt, his face twisting into something so pained as to be unrecognizable. His face is a riot in the streets, a screaming crowd and chanting choir, heralding the end of the world.
“When did you fall in love with me, Yuuri?” Victor half yells, the rest of his voice muffled by his tears.
Yuuri spits blood, which explodes into a constellation on the ice, and lifts his head, meeting Victor’s eyes. “At the last Grand Prix. When you bowed to the crowd as you broke the world record.”
“Yuuri, that wasn’t enough,” Victor stutters, his eyes incandescent and his tears getting in the way of his words. “Don’t die for - don’t die for -”
Yuuri’s chest convulses, but he looks at Victor and can’t find himself regretting anything.
“I found you whole, after a long and terrible silence.” Yuuri murmurs. “There’s nothing for me to regret.”
-
Victor can’t think straight, looking at a dream sprawled out on a bed of flowers.
Yuuri, after a performance so bright Victor couldn’t shake off the afterimages, spiraled, reduced from a man from the highest point in his life to one from the brink of death in an instant. He had run over, but he couldn’t catch someone who was already falling. He had intended to stay in the back, to watch, observe, but Chris had pushed him to the front, and Yuuri spoke, and he didn’t know how he could breathe with the intensity of feeling this much.
“I’m sorry for telling you like this,” Yuuri murmurs, stroking Victor’s cheek. “You deserved better.”
“It’s - it’s alright, Yuuri,” Victor says, spellbound by the tragedy in front of him, the one holding his face like he was something precious. Victor wants his eyes to follow the movement of Yuuri’s hand, but finds that he isn’t willing to leave Yuuri’s eyes behind. They’re dark, and clouded from the blood loss and pain, but there’s something unbearably keen hidden behind the haze. Yuuri’s eyes are poignant, powerful - searchlights, Victor realizes - and now, even though Victor had spent all of his life that mattered showing the world bits and pieces of himself, he finds himself trembling before the weight of what those eyes demand of him.
Love me, those eyes command.
Okay, Victor thinks. Okay.