Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was darkness, and then there was… light.

Or rather, something Yuuri would later learn to call light. At the time, he could understand nothing of it - except that it was all, suddenly, very different. For the first time, he heard; he felt; he didn’t quite see, but he came close.

He opened his mouth, and - as newborn babies do - he screamed.

The midwife smiled down at him, and wrapped him up tight in blankets. A tiny woman, she had held a hundred thousand children in her arms; Yuuri felt about the same as most of them.

“Good healthy lungs,” she said. “He’s going to be strong.”

His mother, Hiroko, was propped up in bed, still wet with sweat and other things, her eyes glazed over. “Good,” she murmured. “Good.” She made a vague attempt to cover herself more completely with her loose maternity dress, feeling the cold. “I want to hold him…” She held out her short, chubby arms, and though her hands trembled with tiredness, the midwife knew better than to keep the baby from her.

For the first time, Yuuri was held by his mother. His bawls quietened to cries, which softened to snuffles.

He blinked.

“Yuuri,” said his mother, voice thin with exhaustion, reaching with a finger and delicately touching his perfect, tiny nose. He blinked solemnly, not focused on her, but definitely aware. A lock of her damp hair fell forward, and he waved at it with a loose little fist. She smiled. “My little... Katsuki Yuuri.”

“Shall I...?” said the midwife, approaching the bed with a brush in her hand, the tip loaded with dark black ink. It didn’t have to be a brush, these days - but mothers tended to like the traditions.

“Oh,” Hiroko said, and instinctively pulled Yuuri closer to her chest. The midwife made a soothing noise, and lowered the brush. It was always hard, this moment: when the baby was so newly born, mothers didn’t want to share - didn’t want to already think about someone else, far across the world, having a connection with their little one. In this moment, theirs was the only connection that mattered. The midwife saw the familiar glow of maternal fierceness light up in those glassy, tired eyes.

“It’s for later,” she said, putting a wrinkled hand on Hiroko’s shoulder. The fabric of the maternity dress under her fingers was soaked through; around them, the dimly-lit room smelled like blood and new life. She needed to get moving, get everything cleaned up. “Not for now. Yuuri, you said his name was?”

“Yes. My first son.”

“He will want to find his soulmate,” the midwife said, well-known words, practised tone. Normally it was only new mothers who reacted this way - after all, Yuuri’s older sibling must have been marked - but perhaps it had been done, before, when Hiroko was sleeping, or washing herself after the birth. “He will thank you for this, one day. And you will thank yourself, when you see him grown and settled and happy with the one that he loves. You cannot be his world forever. Only for now.”

Mother and child sat still and quiet for a moment, and then - slowly - Yuuri was proffered up to the midwife’s ministrations. In quick, small, neat movements, the midwife extracted his arm from the swaddling, and drew on it a number: latitude and longitude. And under it, a few words.

My name is Katsuki Yuuri. I have been born. You are my soulmate!

English, of course - every midwife had to know a little English, for the marking.

Finishing her work, the midwife stepped back from the bed. She began to pack away her things, and tottered over to the sliding door. She pushed it open, and revealed a gaggle of people - workers at the hot springs and guests alike, and family, too.

“A boy,” she said. “Healthy and safe.”

There was clapping and cheering, and the sounds of joy and relief that were the midwife’s constant backdrop, the song that played her through her life. She smiled to hear them.

“Go,” she ordered one of the taller young girls. “Fresh sheets and clean water. They will both need washing.”

“Is he -” said a man, stepping forward. The midwife held up a pacifying hand.

“He has been marked,” she said. The man - the father, perhaps, though the midwife couldn’t be sure - nodded, relieved.

“Any response?”

“None so soon. His soulmate may not even be alive yet.” She smiled. “Patience.”

Water, fresh clothes, and bed linens, and tiny diced-up pieces of tempting food were hustled in through the door, and there was a little whirl of helping female hands to raise Hiroko from her bed, undress her, wash her, and dry her down, all under the midwife’s careful supervision. Meanwhile, Yuuri was grizzling a little, swaddled messily in his blanket, in the care of a very short, stout, reliable-looking girl.

“And she will need to eat,” the midwife was saying, barely paying attention to her own words, already thinking about the next visit she had to make. “Even if she says she does not want food, make sure she has some warm milk or some bread, or something sweet. She will need to be healthy to feed her baby. When he starts to suckle -”

“Oh!” the girl holding Yuuri said suddenly, the cry sharp enough to draw the room’s attention. “Oh! Mama! Look!”

She waddled as fast as her sturdy legs would take her over to the bed, and held Yuuri up to his mother. There, on his chubby little arm, was the midwife’s handwriting - and, right beneath it, was a series of wobbly letters that made no sense to anyone.

Привет катсуки!! Вы любите собак?

Beneath it, in a different colour - bright red - there was a slightly misshapen, but very definitely intended, big happy heart. As Hiroko watched, the heart was slowly filled in with strokes of pink, the colour running childishly outside the lines. She stared at the message for a long moment - the onlooking cluster of girls and women held their breath - and then she smiled.

Even if she did not understand it, the heart was enough for her to know. Her little Yuuri had a good soulmate waiting for him, out there in the world.

The midwife, meanwhile, left the house with the sounds of celebration ringing in her ears. She always liked seeing the soulmate reply - it gave everyone in the house so much hope. Herself included, she thought, pulling her worn coat tighter around her. Her own arms were still blank as they had been since the day she was born. Not everyone was lucky enough to have a soulmate who replied.

Far away - thousands of miles away, in a city of spires and snow, of domes and art and palaces, of tragedy and romance and skating on the Neva - a little boy with bright blue eyes was looking down at the funny markings on his arm, his pink felt-tip marker still in his hand.

“No, Vitya,” said a warm, exasperated voice. “I said to put it in English! английский, виктор!”

“Oh!” said Viktor, and used the pink pen to scribble out what he’d written, and tried again. He stuck his tongue out, concentrating.

Hэllo Katsuki, he wrote. That was a funny first name. Maybe Viktor would call them Katya instead. He paused, trying to remember the English for what he’d written before. His au pair had told him just a few minutes ago, but he’d forgotten and written it in Russian. It was something like…

Ah! He had it.

Do like you dogs? he wrote, just as his own poodle puppy bounced into the room. He surveyed his handiwork happily. He and his soulmate would be best friends in no time.

Chapter Text

Twenty-four years later

Yuuri sat in his room, with his socked feet curled back around the legs of his desk chair.

His room was quiet; even the clock ticking on the desk beside him announced six in the evening in a subdued little voice that didn’t disturb his concentration. He had his eyes fixed firmly on his work, hunched over it, shoulders rounded.

Behind him, Yuuri’s bedroom was a mess. His bed covers were ruffled, his pillow was on the floor; one teetering stack of books leant ingratiatingly into another, like a drunken man seeking support. The light was soft and yellow, except for at the desk where Yuuri was sitting, where a bright white lamp illuminated the focus of Yuuri’s attention: a scrap of paper, no wider than the width of his thumb and no longer than the length of his index finger. Brush in hand, tongue between his teeth, Yuuri squinted through his glasses and applied a light dab of pink paint to a tiny, detailed blossom tree.

He'd been working at it for an hour or so, now, correcting the shapes of the petals with light touches. He sighed, and stretched - and pushed up the sleeve of his sweater. Idly, he began to paint on his wrist - out of nothing grew an immaculate, intricate little blossom tree, just like the one on his paper. He needed to get back to work on one of his bigger pieces - a commission - but couldn't quite summon up the motivation. He carried on painting on his own arm for a while longer.

The paint palette beside him - a plate from the kitchen, which Yuuri had commandeered as his own - was a mess of pinks and whites, looking like a dish of melted candy floss, or a spilled strawberry milkshake. A clear jar of pinkish painty water rested beside it; it had once held peanut butter. The label was only half soaked off.

After a minute of careful painting, Yuuri sat back, and considered his work for a moment in silence. Beside him, the clock ticked. Outside, a light breeze blew. Yuuri tapped the wooden end of the brush against his lip, considering.

BAM.

“Yuuri!”

“Wha-” Yuuri almost spiked himself in the eye with his brush as a whirlwind entered his room, calling his name and slamming the door back against the wall.

“Yuuri, Yuuri, your mother says dinner is ready!” The whirlwind slowed enough to resolve itself into the shape of a woman, who was wearing overalls and a big smile.

“Y-Yuuko?” Yuuri hurriedly pulled down the sleeve of his sweater.

“In the flesh. I didn’t disturb you, did I?” Yuuko stood in the centre of his room, looking too colourful and too loud to be permitted. Even the clock’s tick seemed to have become reproving, but Yuuko didn’t appear to notice.

“Uh - no, no…” Yuuri began to hastily push away his painting supplies, reaching for a blank piece of paper to cover up his latest piece of commissioned work, half-unfinished. “Um… uhm -”

But it was too late. Yuuko was leaning over his shoulder, pushing aside the detritus to reveal it.

“Oh, Yuuri, ” she sighed. “It’s beautiful .”

Her weight on his shoulder was heavy and unselfconscious. She sounded genuinely impressed, and despite himself, Yuuri felt a little kick in his chest - pride, he recognised, and shoved the feeling away. Everyone knew what followed pride.

“It’s just a stupid thing,” he said, shrugging Yuuko away carefully whilst trying to make it look careless. She took a step back, and Yuuri turned in his chair to face her. “It doesn’t matter.”

There was a brief, strange moment of silence, as Yuuko adjusted to his bad conversational skills.

“Yeah… and how much will you be paid for it?” she said, in a tone that suggested she thought she was being canny. She folded her arms and tilted her head at him.

Yuuri shrugged. The amount that people paid him for his services wasn’t relevant, from what he could see. In a world where people would pay good money to go camping, or have their bikini lines waxed, he'd decided the value of anything couldn’t be trusted very much at all.

“Mmm. That’s what I thought,” Yuuko said, as though she’d won the point. Yuuri didn’t argue with her; he just dipped his head and pressed his knees together. Yuuko stepped away from him, moving over to where one of Yuuri’s little drawings was lying on the floor - another picture of Hasetsu’s blossom trees, smaller than a thousand yen note folded in half. Yuuri eyed it narrowly. He’d meant to throw it away. Yuuko, though, bent down and picked it up with a kind of semi-reverence that made Yuuri cringe. “You have such skill! Only…”

Yuuri felt it - the familiar ice-cold grip in his chest. Just hearing the dip in Yuuko’s tone was enough to make his pulse beat faster. Don’t , he wanted to say desperately, don’t criticise me. I won’t get it out of my head for months…

“Only I never understand why you always draw so small!” she said, beaming. She was crouched on the floor, holding the picture in careful fingers. “All your pictures are tiny! You know, people would pay much more for a big drawing from you.”

Yuuri let out a sigh.

“It’s just what I do,” he said. “It’s what I know. I don’t think I could do anything else.”

Yuuko rolled her eyes, and straightened up; she walked over to Yuuri, and placed the picture carefully on the edge of his desk.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure it would be very difficult for you,” she said, and Yuuri found himself actually impressed by the subtlety of her irony. It was light enough that he could choose to ignore it - so he did, shifting awkwardly in his chair.

“Shouldn’t you be at the studio?” he said, reaching for his paintbrush again to give his hands something to do. “Isn’t there anyone who wants to paint?”

“Minako finished teaching all her classes for today. We’ve all come for dinner!” Yuuko announced, and Yuuri groaned. “Come on, Yuuri, don’t pretend you don’t enjoy our company. And the food is your favourite!”

“Oh - katsudon?” Yuuri said, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. If there was one thing that it was worth braving the decidedly helpful company of his extended friends and family for, it was a big, delicious pork cutlet bowl…

“Oh,” said Yuuko, looking a little deflated. “I thought your favourite was tenpura.” She shrugged. “It’ll still be delicious! Come on, Yuuri, put a smile on that face. You spend too much time looking worried.”

Yuuri managed a small smile for her, and she beamed at him.

“I’ll be there in a second,” he told her weakly, and she wagged a finger at him.

“Don’t keep us all waiting!” she said, and in a rush - as quickly as she’d arrived - she was gone.

Yuuri took in a deep breath, and slowly let it go.

I never understand why you draw so small! All your pictures are tiny …

He closed his eyes tight, and shook Yuuko’s voice away. When he opened his eyes, his fists were clenched, and his heart was beating too hard.

He reached for his brush, and before he could overthink it, he quickly painted onto his inside left wrist - beneath the blossom tree - a single word:

Viktor?

Even when he wrote, it came out tiny, Yuuri thought suddenly. That was what came of growing up not wanting anyone to see his writing, or his painting, or just about anything he ever did - in case people caught sight of it, and told him that he was bad at it. The solution he’d come up with was perfect: make everything smaller, too small to see, too small to be noticed. Too small to judge.

Yuuri!

The letters flowered onto the soft skin of his inner forearm, smooth and natural as a tattoo, as though they’d been there for years. They were in red, the lines thin and a little scratchy. For a few moments, Yuuri just stared at them, smiling to himself.

After a second, he reached for his jar of painty water, dipped two fingers into it, and quickly washed away Viktor’s name and the blossom tree.

Biro pens aren’t meant for skin, he painted out, going as fast as he could. You are going to make another one stop working.

He waited; after a few seconds, Yuuri watched the red letters fading off his skin, patchily and inexpertly. He could picture Viktor’s thumb rubbing away at the biro.

It was the first thing I could find. Are you well, Yuuri?

Yuuri swallowed hard. He washed away the last sentence he’d written, and hovered the brush over his arm.

No, he wanted to write. No, I’m not. Everyone asks why I draw the way I do. Why I don’t do it bigger and better and different. Everyone wants me to be someone I can’t be. I just can’t be that amazing artist like they want me to be. All I can do is sit here in my room and paint tiny pictures that no one can really see…

“Yuuuuuuuuuuri! Come on!” came Minako’s voice, wafting through the house along with the scent of food cooking. “We’re waiting!”

Yuuri sighed.

да. I’m fine, he painted quickly. I just wanted to see if you were there.

I always am, came Viktor’s response. Silly Yuuri.

That made Yuuri smile, of course. Viktor was good at that - making Yuuri smile, even when he was feeling down. Just having him there made a difference.

He sloshed some water over his arm, and began painting again.

Do you think I should paint bigger pictures? he asked, a couple of the words running into each other with the water still on his skin. Viktor’s letters started to appear before he’d even finished writing the question.

I think you should do what makes you happy, the letters spelled out, still a little scratchy in the red biro pen. Yuuri ran his thumb over them, and closed his eyes for a second. He breathed. When he opened his eyes, there was a new message there instead. Your trees are beautiful.  Don’t listen to whoever is being mean.

Yuuri’s smile widened.

Not mean, he wrote. I’m fine. Talk later.

The heart that appeared on his arm was swooping and elegant, and Yuuri pulled his sleeve down to hide it as he headed to dinner - but he could feel it, the whole time, as he ate his food and fended off questions from his mother and Minako and Yuuko.

It made him smile.

Chapter Text

The thing about being a painter, Yuuri thought, was that everything had to come from inside him. He couldn’t just turn up to a desk and do paperwork for eight hours - or, at least, not the kind of paperwork that most people did - and then go home. He had to dredge up his living from inside himself. The art had to come, or else he wouldn’t get paid.

It gave a slightly mercenary twist to his creative faucet, Yuuri had to admit. And the flow of water occasionally trickled rather than gushed.

Not like Viktor - who was, of course, a never-ending stream of inspiration and originality. Every art piece he made was glorious. Every sweep of his brush was delicate; every theme was nuanced and layered. Yuuri knew it.

Well, perhaps ‘knew’ was a strong word, given that he’d never technically seen one of Viktor’s finished art pieces on canvas, but Yuuri absolutely believed it. Occasionally, Viktor had drawn for Yuuri alone; drawn all over his arms, over his own chest, so that the colours and swirling lines would show up on Yuuri’s body, too. They were beautiful, utterly beautiful, so different from Yuuri’s tight and tiny style. Bold colours, swooping strokes; every shadow and shade was surprising, and yet it always came together into something that made complete sense.

Yuuri ached to be like him.

He lazed on his bed after another long day of painting, his wrist a little cramped and his head pulsing with the concentration he put into each piece. Lying on his back, he held his hands up straight in front of him, stretching his palms up to the ceiling. Viktor probably didn’t get tired muscles after drawing, Yuuri thought. He probably finished each art piece loose and limber and flushed with life, as though he’d just done an amazing workout, not eked ink painstakingly onto canvas.

Yuuri blinked sleepily. He wondered if Viktor ever doubted his own art style. Maybe Yuuri wasn’t the only one who occasionally - fine, often - thought that he didn’t really belong in the art world.

He snorted at himself and rolled over onto his side. Of course Viktor belonged in the art world - just from seeing Viktor’s art on his own skin, that much was obvious. Viktor had incredible talent. And Yuuri… well, if he was dispassionate about it, he could see that he had fair use of colour; he had decent brush skills, a passable eye for ratio and angles and construction of a piece. But there was no flair, no surprise… nothing like Viktor’s level of inspiration. No real emotion behind it, just flat copying of what was in front of him. The landscapes were just landscapes, and who really cared about looking at those? A tree was a tree no matter where it was planted. People could go out and look at the ones in their own backyards, no one needed to look at Yuuri’s art. He had nothing to say; he brought nothing of his own to the art, because he had nothing at all that was worth bringing.

Yuuri huffed out a breath. His thoughts often twisted around on him like this, sinking sharp teeth into his own mind - like an ouroboros, the snake that went in a circle, fangs buried in its own tail. He reached blindly down beside his bed, knocking over an empty water glass and rustling over a few scrappy pages of sketches, before feeling his fingers close on an ink pen - one of the fancy ones, custom-built for writing on skin, with ink that rubbed away easily. It had been an expensive gift from his mother, last year.

Viktor?

Yuuri swallowed hard. Every time he wrote to Viktor, he caught himself imagining eyes rolling and long sighs. He tried not to write more often than once a week.

Yuuri!

But the response was always so warm that Yuuri felt his worries melt away, despite himself. He smiled, and raised his pen, rubbing away the ink of Viktor’s name from the skin of his arm with the heel of his right hand.

Just thinking of you, he wrote, because it was true. There was a pause, and then Yuuri’s name - written in thicker, felt-tip lines this time - slowly got rubbed away.

I’m in a life drawing class, Viktor responded. Yuuri felt a little wash of worry lap over his chest, and tried to push it away. He wasn’t interrupting - Viktor didn’t have to reply, he was just choosing to. Yuuri could picture him now, sat behind an easel, gracing a canvas with his gorgeous art.

Are you learning a lot? Yuuri wrote back, watching his arm idly for the answer. Sometimes he would spend his time cleaning his room or painting some more or sketching on rough paper when he talked to Viktor, to fill in the time between messages, but tonight he felt exhausted. He lay still, his arm raised in front of his face.

I’m learning how pretty I am, Viktor wrote back, the words unfurling over Yuuri’s skin with flourishes, written slowly enough that it made a little tingle go up Yuuri’s spine. I’m the model.

Yuuri’s mouth went a little dry; he couldn’t help it. He looked up at the picture of Viktor that he had tacked onto his bedroom wall: Viktor had sent it to him in a letter, once, and it had been strange to see Viktor’s familiar handwriting covering paper instead of his own arms. Now, suddenly, Yuuri was looking into those bright blue eyes and imagining the skin underneath them to be quite bare - naked shoulders, naked chest, naked stomach…

Oh, he wrote back, trying to blink the thoughts out of his mind. I didn’t realise you were into… Yuuri paused. He’d started the sentence without thinking where it was going to end. Exhibitionism? Full-frontal nudity with strangers? Before he could figure out what to say, Viktor was already writing back.

It’s fun! Everyone says I look nice.

I’ll bet, thought Yuuri to himself, eyes flitting back to the picture of Viktor on his wall. On the shiny paper, worn a little around the edges, Viktor had a cool smile on his face. He was looking just to the right of the camera, his eyes strong and challenging. Even when he was frozen, caught in a moment, he was magnetic.

Although, wrote Viktor, when Yuuri took a moment to respond, it is cold. The robe they gave me to wear is very thin.

Yuuri breathed out. Somehow, the image of Viktor being naked - so exposed, so vulnerable - in front of people that Yuuri didn’t even know, it bothered him. Partly in a good way, he had to admit to himself, but mostly in an uncomfortable way. Knowing that Viktor had a robe on, as small a detail as it was, made the whole thing much better, and much funnier.

I thought you would be naked, Yuuri wrote, knowing it would make Viktor smile.

Yuuri! There are children present!

Grinning, Yuuri quickly smudged away the ink of his previous message and wrote back.

That’s for the best. At least in my mind you have clothes on now.

Reading it back over, Yuuri realised that the message sounded kind of flirtatious. He frowned at it, but didn’t rub it away; he wasn’t sure where that had come from.

Oh, Yuuri... I wish I knew what you looked like.

Yuuri’s smile froze.

For so long - for years and years, since before Yuuri could really remember - Viktor had been gently asking him whether they could finally see each other’s faces, yet. It would have been so easy; there was Skype, there was Facetime… Viktor even had an Instagram account that it would have been so simple to find and scroll through.

And yet, somehow, Yuuri could never quite bring himself to do it. Eventually Viktor had sent Yuuri the snap of himself in a letter, since you refuse to join any kind of social media, Yuuri, very inconvenient! But that hadn’t slowed Viktor’s curiosity to see Yuuri’s face. Every time Viktor had asked, Yuuri had always come back with I don’t have a camera, or I’ll get a better phone soon and maybe then I’ll take a selfie, or oh, the lighting is always so bad in my room, you can hardly see me…

Yuuri rolled upright, dropping his pen and staring around his room. He didn’t use his phone much, but it had to be somewhere - ah, there it was, on the floor. Yuuri considered standing up to get it, and then chose to lean out of bed instead, bracing his weight on his arms. The phone was farther away than he’d thought; only his shins still rested on the bed as he stretched for it -

Got it! Yuuri grabbed the phone, tried to slide back onto his bed, and promptly lost his balance and collapsed onto the floor.

“Ouch!”

“Yuuri? Everything OK in there? Did the paint fumes finally get you?” Yuuri heard his sister call, her voice getting closer.

“Urgh… I’m fine, Mari,” Yuuri called back from his heap on the floor, rolling over onto his back. He heard Mari’s footsteps retreat again.

Raising his phone up in front of his face, Yuuri turned it on, and then realised that everything was blurry; his glasses had fallen off. He patted the ground around his head irritably, picked them up, and pushed them back onto his face.

His phone made a cheerful welcoming noise when he turned it on. Yuuri felt as though perhaps the noise had been intended for smart-suited businesspeople to hear on their way to an important meeting, not for a boy in his mid-twenties to hear on his bedroom floor after having fallen off his bed; the notion didn’t hugely improve his mood.

Flipping to the camera app, Yuuri had a view of his own wooden ceiling on the screen for a moment before he switched to front-facing. The screen froze for half a second - the phone was unused to this kind of activity, since Yuuri mostly used it to text his mother when he went out - and then he was looking at his own face.

He looked washed out, with bags under his eyes and his hair a floppy mess. At this angle, he also had a double chin.

Yuuri sighed. Every time he thought he might have the courage to show Viktor what he looked like, it only took a few moments looking at his own face to lose his nerve. It wasn’t that he thought he was ugly, he wasn’t being melodramatic - he just knew for sure that he was no more than average-looking. And Viktor… Yuuri sighed, and looked back at the photo on the wall. Viktor’s smile could have been cut with a diamond, it was so perfect and precise. His cheekbones, his flawless skin, his ice blue eyes… Viktor looked untouchable.

Looking back at his phone screen, Yuuri thought that he himself, on the other hand, looked the opposite of untouchable. He looked like he’d been touched all over. With a mop.

Touched all over... with a mop? he questioned himself immediately. What on Earth does that mean? He snorted to himself, and blinked away the thought. The point was, he couldn’t take a picture of himself and send it to Viktor. He couldn’t destroy Viktor’s idea of him - because it would change everything, forever. Someone as handsome as Viktor had to be imagining that his soulmate would be some kind of god in human form, and Yuuri didn’t want to be able to sense the shift, the disappointment, in Viktor’s words, when Yuuri proved to be barely scraping normal. Yuuri didn’t doubt that he and Viktor were matched on the inside - soulmates were soulmates, and that was that - but on the outside, in art, in life, Viktor was everything Yuuri wanted but could never be. Beautiful, talented, confident.

Sitting up and crawling his way back onto his bed, Yuuri caught sight of some more words that had appeared on his arm, as he’d moped on the floor.

Are you still there?

Yuuri chewed his lip. It would be easy to pretend he’d fallen asleep; the time difference between them made it plausible. But he didn’t want to have to pretend. And he was getting tired of hiding things.

I’m sorry, he wrote. I’m not ready for you to see my face. I know it doesn’t make sense...

Yuuri increasingly frantic scribbling was interrupted by a smooth flow of words from Viktor, using up the space on his forearm and running over onto his palm.

It’s OK, Yuuri. We do this at your pace. It’s most important to me that you are happy!

Yuuri felt the anxious chip of coldness in his chest ease under the warmth of Viktor’s words, and he smiled.

Thank you... he wrote. спаси́бо, Viktor.

I hope one day - oh… they are asking me to please sit still. I am talking to you too much. I think I must stop talking and focus on being beautiful for a little while.

Yuuri snorted and rolled his eyes. That will be so, so difficult for you, I’m sure, he thought to himself - and then wrote it on his arm, not giving himself time to second-guess it.

Of course not talking to you will be difficult. It always is, Viktor wrote back, and Yuuri could feel his cheeks reddening, happiness flooding him and an irrepressible smile on his face. He didn’t say anything more - but after a few minutes, he pulled out his phone, turned on the camera again, and picked up his pen.

Watching himself in the front-facing camera, he drew a tiny poodle on his own cheek, imagining it appearing on Viktor’s face - perhaps as he arched his back elegantly or held out a long-fingered, pale hand to the ceiling in a dramatic pose. Yuuri grinned to himself, and wondered how long it would be before Viktor noticed it. His fingertips were tingling with his own daring. He felt bold, and exciting, and fun - for once, he felt like someone who was a little bit fun.

Forty-five minutes later, in big, indignant letters, a single word showed up on his arm:

Yuuri!

*

Weeks passed in Hasetsu in the way they had done for years: quietly slipping past, easing the trees’ stark winter poses back to the springtime visions that Yuuri spent his time recreating on canvas. He watched the blossom-laden boughs hum and sigh in the breeze, strewing their light confetti over everyone, celebrating something that Yuuri didn’t quite understand - wasn’t quite part of. Nature had its own parties, Yuuri thought, and he was just a fly on the wall for them, an interloper with a brush set and an eye for detail.

He spoke to Viktor more often, these days. He wasn’t entirely sure what had changed, that evening when Viktor had reminded Yuuri that they could move at his pace, and Yuuri had drawn a silly picture on his cheek. But something - somehow - was different. Yuuri felt bolder.

Not hugely bolder. It was a sliding scale and Yuuri still placed himself firmly at the lower end of it. Bold enough to download Skype onto his phone, for example; not bold enough to ever ask for Viktor’s Skype name, or to mention to anyone else in the entire world that he’d done it.

But he had done it. Somewhere inside himself, he was coming to terms with the fact that one day, he wanted to show Viktor what he looked like. He wanted a deeper relationship with him than words on skin. He wanted to know Viktor not only by the colour of his eyes on paper, but by his face as it moved; by his expressions, his turns of spoken phrase, his specific tone of voice when he was telling a joke and when he was sad and when he was overjoyed… more than anything, Yuuri wanted to hear the sound of Viktor’s voice when he was completely and utterly happy.

He imagined it would sound beautiful, in the same way that icicles falling is beautiful. Rare, and incredible, and absolutely lethal if he stood too close. Yuuri knew, in a way, that soulmates were supposed to be crazy about each other, but it felt very predictable - and surely Viktor wouldn’t like that so much. The only chance Yuuri really stood of surprising him was by not falling head-over-heels.

If only Viktor weren’t so perfect all the time.

One sunny afternoon, Yuuri decided to get out of his own head and go for a walk; he’d already done his morning run, but painting and painting inside his own room did start to make him feel hemmed and sewn in like a neat quilt’s edge, if he didn’t take the time to change his scenery every now and again. He tucked his ink pen into the pocket of his jacket, plugged his headphones into his ears, and began to wander towards the beach.

Viktor probably wouldn’t be awake, Yuuri thought. It was too early to message him and expect a reply.

Even still, when he arrived at the edge of the sands and perched himself on the wall overlooking the shoreline, he drew his pen out of his pocket. He paused, wondering what to write. Thinking of you wouldn’t cut it twice in a row; miss you felt wrong to say, somehow, when they hadn’t ever met - even though it was completely true.

It’s sunny here, Yuuri eventually settled on writing. He squinted up at the low, pale spring sun, and then turned his attention down to the sea. The waves were washing over the sands, keeping the grains rolling over, smoothing out the footprints, leaving the beach flat and fresh. Yuuri wondered if Viktor would like the sea. On the one hand, it made everything new with every rise and fall of the tide - but on the other hand, it always rose and fell the same. It was always original, but never creative. For Viktor, who prized innovation in his own work and complained constantly when he thought he was being unoriginal, Yuuri wasn’t sure where that would quite fit in.

Maybe he would like it just for the way the sun glanced off the wavetops, and the way it made the air taste old and sharp and strange, and the sound of it - sweet and soughing, a purr that could grow to a roar.

Maybe he would like it just because Yuuri did.

The scent of brine was strong in Yuuri’s nose; he was suddenly tempted to pull off his t-shirt and go running down the beach to swim in the cool waters. In his ears, classical music played - violin, a piece he knew but didn’t remember the name to. He stood up, and began walking away from the beach.

He’d swim another day. He’d walked far enough; he wanted to go home.

Chapter Text

Are you nervous?

Yes, Yuuri wrote back, chewing his lip. He cleared his throat a couple of times, and swallowed hard. He pulled up his Skype app, and checked for the hundredth time that he remembered how to make a voice call rather than a video call. It was just voices, Yuuri told himself. Just voices. No faces. Yuuri’s voice wasn’t exactly deep, masculine, and attractive, but it wasn’t a bad voice. He couldn’t spoil Viktor’s image of him too much with it.

You don’t need to be nervous, Viktor wrote back. Yuuri snorted. Of course Viktor wouldn’t understand.

But... I am too! the next letters spelled out, and then a little smiling face was drawn beneath them. Yuuri blinked at it in slight disbelief for a moment. In all their years of knowing each other - since the day of Yuuri’s birth - he’d never known Viktor be nervous. He was unfailingly confident in himself.

You don’t have to be nervous, Yuuri wrote back. It’s just me.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he meant the last sentence; it had come into his mind as something reassuring, along the lines of we know each other well, we trust each other, it’s just me - but he realised that it had come out more self-deprecating than anything. He frowned.

Bold, he thought to himself. Be bold.

I’m going to call you, he typed out on Skype, and felt his heart catch when he saw Viktor Nikiforov is typing… in response. He chewed on his lip, waiting with his fists clenched, before Viktor's message flashed up onto the screen.

Viktor Nikiforov: I am ready! I have Makkachin with me who wants to say hello.

Yuuri’s mouth was dry. He shifted on his desk chair, and swallowed hard. His laptop was perched atop a pile of four books, raising it to be on a level with his eyeline; he wasn’t going to show his face on purpose, that was for certain, but he hadn’t been able to help imagining what would happen if he accidentally turned on his camera, and Viktor’s first glimpse of his face was badly-lit and double-chinned from below. If the worst should happen, Yuuri was at least prepared. He’d pushed his hair back, too.

He was still wearing his painting sweater, though - the ratty old one with the long sleeves that covered his hands when he didn’t roll them up. He drew the line at dressing nicely, when he wasn’t even going to be on camera. He wasn’t.

He hovered his mouse over the telephone icon, swirling it anxiously. His leg was bouncing up and down under his desk, nerves forcing him to move. He cleared his throat again.

Am I supposed to be calling or you? Viktor wrote on Yuuri’s arm. Yuuri set his jaw, and in response, he hit the telephone icon.

Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba… the call connected; Yuuri’s heart was in his throat. A little jingle started playing...

The call was picked up absurdly fast. There was a moment of static, of silence, on the other end of the line. Yuuri slid his glasses off his nose, letting the world fade into fuzziness, so that he could concentrate better on listening.

“Viktor?” Yuuri said, the quiet unlocking his voice. The word came out hushed and a little thin, and Yuuri cringed -

“Yuuri!”

It hit him like a train, harder than Yuuri ever could have expected. His mind froze; he felt winded. All he could think was, it’s nothing like his picture. The voice was nothing like the picture of Viktor that Yuuri had on his wall. It wasn’t hard and challenging and demanding. It was - it was -

It was so excited... Yuuri didn’t think he’d ever heard someone fit so much excitement into a single word. It was making his heart sing and making his fingertips tingle and his leg wasn’t bouncing anymore - and he could barely even feel his lower body, and he noticed he was smiling from ear to ear, and his cheeks felt as though they were reddening, his heart was thudding painfully in his chest - it was too much, it was altogether too much. Yuuri covered his face with his hands, long sleeves flopped over to cover his palms.

“Yuuri… can you hear me? Did I forget to - did the microphone work?”

“Yes - yes!” Yuuri said, speaking through his hands. “I can hear you - I’m here!”

There was a the sound of an intake of breath on the end of the line.

“What?” Yuuri asked, peering between his fingers. “Are you alright?”

“Your voice,” Viktor said, and then didn’t say anything more - as though that said it all. Without a doubt, Yuuri understood completely.

“I know,” he said.

“Say a sentence?” Viktor said, and he said it as a question - but in the tone of someone whose questions always managed to find the right answers. Yuuri opened his mouth, and had no idea what to say.

“I have no idea what to say,” he tried, and Viktor laughed, and that was it. In that moment, irrevocably, with Viktor laughing at his joke that hadn’t even been funny, Yuuri knew that he was on the path to falling stupidly in love, and he wouldn’t be able to tread any other path - not acquaintance, not too-cool-for-love soulmate, not with Viktor. The laugh felt like - like pouring up a glass to exactly full, like bookshelves sorted by colour; it felt satisfying. Wordlessly, intensely, helplessly satisfying.

“I don’t know what to say either,” Viktor replied. “I’m nervous. Do I sound how you thought I would?”

“No,” Yuuri answered quickly - a little too quickly.

“Oh,” Viktor said, and Yuuri heard the note of worry in his voice. “Do I sound… much more alluring than you could have possibly prepared for?” He was rolling his r’s intensely, dropping his voice a few notes deeper, and Yuuri couldn’t help but snort a little chuckle.

After Viktor’s elegant laugh, it sounded ridiculous.

“Боже мой,” said Viktor, and he’d written the phrase enough times on Yuuri’s arm for him to understand. My God. “That was adorable. Do it again?”

And out of pure surprise at Viktor’s response, Yuuri did - the little laugh out his mouth nervously before he’d even decided to make it. He clapped his hand to his lips.

“Ha!” Viktor said. “Yuuri, your laugh!”

“Oh my - stop! Ugh, you’re making me self-conscious. Talk about something else,” Yuuri said, his hands back over his eyes, the pleased blush on his cheeks reaching critical heat. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling as though he could explode with happiness.

“Well… you, on the other hand, sound exactly like I thought you would,” Viktor said. Even with the crackliness of a long-distance call, Yuuri could hear the richness in his voice, the quiet power. His first impression had been one of complete - complete dorkishness, he had to admit, but now he began to hear a little of the Viktor that he’d expected.

“Oh - I do?”

“Yes. You sound a little shy and very wonderful.”

“Viktor… ” Yuuri groaned, pulling his sweater up over his face to hide in it.

“Too much? I’m sorry! I’m overexcited. But it’s true! I am hearing your voice for the first time and it sounds just right!”

Yuuri muttered something garbled through his sweater, and even he wasn’t certain of the words. Ridiculous was in there somewhere, and help was, too.

“What? The line is a little bad…”

Yuuri pulled his head out of his sweater.

“I said,” he replied, “thank you.” He had so much more to say - so many words on his tongue, about how Viktor’s voice was making him feel, about the headiness of it… and questions, too, lots of questions. He didn’t know how to phrase any of them; he kept his mouth shut. There was a kind of rough, snuffling noise, and then Viktor was laughing.

"Makkachin - Makkachin, do you want to say hello to Yuuri, too?!"

"Hello, Makkachin," Yuuri said, wondering how ridiculous it was to be shy when greeting a dog.

“Oh, he's wagging his tail. He likes you!" Viktor's voice betrayed the beam he had to be wearing on his face. "I’m so happy to hear your voice, Yuuri. Starting today, I want to hear it every day!”

“Every day?!”

“Yes. Of course. How would you feel about recording some sound clips for me to listen to?”

“Oh, God. What would you like?” Yuuri said, fighting back another laugh.

“Hmmm. I think you should say, ‘Hello, my name is Katsuki Yuuri, and my soulmate is called Viktor Nikiforov.’”

There was something in the way that the sentence was said that made Yuuri pause. In a rush, it washed over him; beneath the giddy fun and the blushes, there was the simple fact that he was currently talking to his soulmate. The one and only soulmate he would ever have.

The only one he’d ever want, Yuuri thought.

“Well then,” he replied, “you should say, ‘Hello, my name is Viktor Nikiforov, and my soulmate is called Katsuki Yuuri.’”

The way that they belonged with each other - the rightness of this moment, the purity of it - struck Yuuri all over again.

There was a little silence on the end of the line, thoughtful and heavy with meaning.

“Okay, we get it,” said another voice, suddenly, crackly and quiet over the line as though its owner was sitting far away from where Viktor was. “You’re soulmates. Well done. Least original thing ever. Now could you try shutting up?! ”

Yuuri blinked, shocked.

“Yuri!” Viktor said, his voice different, as though he’d turned around to shout it - and this time, he said the name differently. Not harshly; still happily, even - but with a little touch of distance there, or a different kind of closeness. It took Yuuri aback.

“What?!” Yuuri said. “That’s not me - it’s -”

“No, no, Yuuri, I was talking to Yuri,” Viktor said. “My art student. He is supposed to be in the other room practising with chalk. I suppose our conversation was just too interesting for him to ignore, hmm?”

“Interesting? You’re as interesting as a morgue when you talk to your special soulmate,” said the voice of this newcomer. It sounded terse and angry. Yuuri picked up a pencil on his desk, and began to fidget with it, turning it over in his hands. “Actually, less. Dead people would be more fun! You’re supposed to be teaching me today.”

“I am teaching you,” Viktor said. “You need to practise more with your chalks before we can progress further.” The fact that he sounded unperturbed by this other Yuri’s rudeness kept Yuuri himself a little calmer. The little world that they’d had to themselves for a moment, just two voices in the dark, had been chiselled open, cracked. Yuuri felt strangely raw. He’d thought they were unheard.

“Umm… should I…?” he said, confused. He picked up his glasses and pushed them back onto his nose.

“No, no, Yuuri -”

“Who are you, anyway?” demanded the angry voice, suddenly much closer, as though this other Yuri had pushed himself closer to the microphone. “What do you do? Why isn’t the camera on? Do you have a little pig nose that you don’t want Viktor to see?”

“Yuri,” Viktor said, and though he still sounded completely calm, Yuuri felt everything go a little still at the light brush of anger in his voice. “Get off me.”

There was a sharp noise of Russian annoyance, and then a more comprehensive stream of Russian words from Yuri that sounded further away, delivered too fast for Yuuri to be able to pick out any meaning.

“He’s an artist,” Viktor said calmly, in response. Yuuri shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“Where are his exhibitions?” Yuri demanded. “I want to see. Is he better than me?” He had switched back to English. He didn’t sound happy about it.

“Probably not,” Yuuri said self-deprecatingly, hoping to diffuse the situation. “I’m not exhibited anywhere.” He heard a quiet snort of derision, and felt himself shrivel. His hands were fists. He had a pain in his chest, anxiety building. Had that been Viktor, or Yuri?

“Don’t laugh, Yuri,” Viktor said, and that made things slightly better - but only slightly.

“Well, if he’s that bad, why doesn’t he just quit?” Yuri said, his voice getting louder again. “Why don’t you just quit, pig-nose? That way the real artists can actually get on with it, and Viktor won’t have to waste his time talking with his stupid soulmate! I bet you can’t do chalks. I bet you draw like a pig. How do you hold the brush between your little hooves?”

“Yuri - хватит! That’s enough!”

Yuuri’s eyes had been widening, hurt, as the insults rained down - and then, suddenly, almost inexplicably, he found the tension in his body melting away. His expression eased.

“Maybe you should just leave all of us alone here and go back to drawing stick figures in Japan!” Yuri said, shouting properly now.

“Did you not hear me? Достаточно!”

He’s completely underestimating me, Yuuri thought to himself, the idea as unexpected as it was novel. He’d never once felt as though anyone had done that. The pressure to be exceptional was constant. This little Russian boy, on the other hand, expected him to be absolutely terrible.

“Did anyone ever tell you that poster paints are just for kids? Time to leave off - mmmph -”

Yuuri was fairly certain that Viktor had just either put his hand over Yuri’s mouth, or thrown some kind of cushion at him, or something.

He knew that he should be feeling hurt by what Yuri had said, but in fact - against the odds, Yuuri thought - he wasn’t. Yuuri was confident that, if nothing else, he could at least hold a brush. He could at least draw more than a stick man. At the least, he shouldn’t quit.

“Yuuri?” Viktor said. “Ignore him…”

“I can draw with chalks. Maybe better than you can,” Yuuri said calmly, and heard a little indrawn breath on the other side - he recognised it as Viktor’s, this time, and enjoyed the feeling of having surprised him.

“Yuuri -”

“Do you think so?” sneered Yuri. “You think you’re better than me? Why don’t you prove it, then, piggy?”

“Yuuri is very good,” Yuuri heard Viktor say, and he was stating it as a fact, sounding cautionary to Yuri’s arrogance. “He has drawn for me before a few times.”

“And you think I’m not good?” Yuri demanded in return - but Yuuri barely heard him. To hear Viktor speak of him like that - of his art like that - without pretension or guile, simply saying that Yuuri had talent, that someone should be wary of challenging him… he felt it like a spark. The words were flickers of fire that caught in Yuuri’s chest, set his heart aflame. Bold, he thought. He felt bold. He felt like he had something to prove.

“I didn’t say that… Yuri, I wanted to -”

“Maybe you’re good,” Yuuri said aloud, carefully casual, yet loud enough to cut through their argument. “But maybe you’re just... not as good as me.” He could barely believe his own daring, but it had the intended effect: Yuri made some appropriately indignant sounds, and Viktor laughed again. The fire in Yuuri’s chest glowed at the sound.

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Yuri said, sounding disdainful on the line. Yuuri narrowed his eyes. There was no way he was going to be baited into sending a photo of any of his art to someone who would obviously tear it apart. He hadn’t gone so long avoiding all social media and critical opinion only to be stupid enough to expose himself in front of someone so competitive and negative.

“Well, if there’s an argument here... then maybe you should show each other, and we’ll see what you think of each other’s art,” Viktor said, and Yuuri almost fell off his chair.

“I don’t care what he thinks of my art,” Yuri said. “I want to know whether you think mine is better. He should send you his best work, and I’ll show you mine again… or we could both create something new. And you can say whose is best, because it will be mine.”

Viktor’s laugh came again, but this time Yuuri heard it with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“Yuuri, what do you think of that? How about a challenge? An art-off? I think it would be easiest to use me as a canvas. That way no one has to send pictures.”

“I am not drawing on you,” Yuri said, sounding repulsed, at the same time as Yuuri unfroze and began to make a stuttered attempt at speaking.

“What - I - Viktor, you know I don’t -”

“See, Viktor? The little piggy gets scared as soon as he might have to put his art where his mouth is,” Yuri said, and Yuuri clenched his fingers to his palms.

“I’m not scared - I just don’t show people my art,” Yuuri said tightly. “Only the people who have commissioned it see it. That’s how it works.”

“I was wrong,” Yuri said. “You’re not a pig. You’re a little трус. A chicken.” Yuuri folded his arms, staring at his laptop screen; he watched the ‘ongoing call’ Skype page, the call time rising, with Viktor’s icon at the top - a picture of Makkachin. He felt as though his mind was whirring, but it was spooling out a blank - he was fairly frantically thinking of nothing, anxiety rising. He could think of nothing to say.

“I don’t show anyone but the commissioner,” he said eventually, a little less coolly, but still firmly.

“Then I commission you,” Yuri said.

“I reject the commission.”

“Then I commission you,” said Viktor’s voice, and Yuuri froze.

“Viktor…” he said, weighting his voice, trying to make Viktor understand that he couldn’t do this - couldn’t show them his painting, not like this, not under these conditions. He couldn’t offer himself up to their criticism - like a chicken, he thought, trussed and tied and waiting for the killing blow to land.

“Yuri. Give us a moment?”

“Me?”

“No - no, Plisetsky. You know, it’s too confusing with there being two of you.” His voice changed, as though he had turned his head. “I’m calling you Yurio from now on, OK?”

Yuuri heard the sound of Yuri wailing angrily, fading into the distance as he let them be.

He let out a breath.

The call had lasted just over fifteen minutes so far, and Yuuri was exhausted. Part of him wanted to hang up.

“Yuuri…”

“Viktor, you know that I don’t do things like this.”

“I know, Yuuri. But you also don’t do things like call me on Skype and let me hear your beautiful voice, do you?”

Yuuri opened his mouth to respond angrily, and then shut it again, frustrated by the fact that he was blushing.

“And you don’t do things like draw art for me to see, but remember the time when you drew the trees at Hasetsu? The blossoms? And the time you drew a poodle on my cheek?”

“Viktor, that was a dog… ”

“It was a very well-proportioned dog,” Viktor said solemnly. Yuuri flopped his head down, so that his forehead rested on his hand.

“You’ve never been watching before,” he mumbled.

There was silence.

“Yuuri… I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not happy to do,” Viktor said, and Yuuri could hear the deliberation in his words. He realised, in a little flash of sudden empathy, that Viktor had no idea how to handle what Yuuri was feeling; had no clue whether to laugh it off, or encourage him, or let him have his own way and drop the whole subject.

Viktor’s uncertainty gave Yuuri just a little of his confidence back. At least he wasn’t the only one who felt lost.

“You don’t?”

“No, I just thought it could be... fun? A way for you to get to know Yuri a little better too! I promise he does have some redeeming qualities about him. He just keeps them very well hidden.” Yuuri laughed, and Viktor sounded happier when he spoke again. “If you don’t want to do it, Yuuri, just say so! It’s only if you’ll enjoy the challenge.”

If Yuuri was honest with himself, he knew he absolutely would not enjoy the challenge. The simple fact was, he would far prefer to go back to doing what they’d been doing before - building up their own little world in their voices, speaking only to each other, not involving anyone else in their relationship. Viktor had always been someone uniquely Yuuri’s, a voice on his arm and his arm alone.

But... if Yuuri wanted Viktor to become a part of his life in a bigger way, Yuuri realised, he was going to have to accept that Viktor was more than just words on his arm. Viktor was also a person, with friends and likes and dislikes and wants and needs. Viktor was just, perhaps, a little better at keeping all those things locked away than most people were, seeing as Yuuri had never really seen them before, in all their years of knowing each other. He’d always given the impression of being too perfect to be true, but Yuuri didn’t just want the perfect, sharp-eyed Viktor from his photograph; he wanted the Viktor who laughed, who got excited, who got a little angry when Yuuri was insulted. The Viktor who was real.

And to get that, Yuuri would have to make some changes.

He swallowed hard.

“Well...” he said. He looked over at the art on his desk, at the art on his floor, strewn around like scrap paper. He blinked, feeling a little bleak. “Um… OK. But I don’t know what I would paint.”

“Yuuri!” Viktor’s voice was so excited all over again that Yuuri couldn’t help the smile that rose to his face, even despite his nervousness. “Do you mean it? You’ll do it? I will get to see you paint on me?”

Yuuri shook his head, and then straightened his back, and nodded instead.

“Yes,” he said. It came out determined, and Yuuri found himself heartened by his own voice.

“Can you do it now?”

Yuuri checked the time. He’d deliberately left his schedule open for the whole evening, and it was only twenty past six; he had no commissioned art to complete, nothing to distract him.

“Um,” he said. “Let me go and eat dinner first. Then I’ll be ready.”

“I’ll go and tell Yurio,” Viktor said, sounding as though he was smiling. “Yuuri, this will be so much fun!”

*

And  - if he was truthful - Yuuri did start having fun with it. Just a very little, though, he thought. He wasn’t exactly going to start planning to do this sort of thing weekly. But there was a little fizz of satisfaction that he felt when Mari caught him dragging a full-length mirror to his room from a guest bedroom at the springs, and she tilted her head at him, looking casually confused.

“Has all the time locked up in that room finally made you lose it?” she asked, watching him heft the heavy glass in its wooden frame. She had her cigarette packet in one hand, headed outside to smoke, but she tucked it back into her pocket and helped him lift the mirror. She grunted at the weight of it.

“No,” Yuuri said, pulling as Mari pushed, muscles straining. The mirror scraped along the floor, the noise enough to set teeth on edge. “Actually, it’s for some art that I’m going to do.”

Mari eyed him curiously, and then grimaced as the mirror landed awkwardly on her toe as they manoeuvred round a corner.

“Art… with a mirror?” she said dubiously. “You’re going to try something different?”

“Is that hard to believe?”

“Well… you have been doing exactly the same style of art since you left the womb…” Mari said, and Yuuri deliberately pulled the mirror a little faster, making her almost drop her side. “But, hey, if you want to paint something other than those trees, I’m all for it.”

There was an edge of something new in her voice - a slight respect, or a different kind of respect, Yuuri thought, that he hadn’t heard there before.

It made him happy. He liked defying expectations. He realised, with a little bit of sudden clarity, that by sequestering himself so completely, by limiting himself in his art, he’d managed to create an incredibly low bar to hurdle in order to surprise people. He just had to do anything else, and they’d be confused by his originality.

He wasn’t sure if Viktor would be so easily impressed as his family and friends, but it was a good thought to fall back on when Yuuri started to feel himself getting wound up about the competitive element of what he was about to do. There was a body of people behind him who would be amazed no matter how good or bad the art that he ended up producing; he’d exceed expectations just by painting anything other than blossom trees.

Tiny, beautiful blossom trees. Yuuri realised that he had no idea what he was going to paint, if he didn’t paint those.

He’d figure something out, he thought to himself, rather desperately. The mirror finally arrived in his room, and Yuuri thanked his sister as she left.

“Mama, did you hear?” he heard Mari call as she walked away down the corridor. “Yuuri’s not going to paint trees anymore.”

“What?” he heard Hiroko reply. “How will he make a living? Is he going to become a librarian?”

Yuuri pulled a confused face at no one in particular.

“Librarian?” Mari said, echoing Yuuri’s thoughts exactly. “No, he’s going to paint something new.”

“The day has finally come,” Yuuri heard Hiroko say solemnly, as he slid his door shut. Yuuri shook his head and leaned his back up against his door for a moment, sliding down it to sit.

The mirror sat in the middle of the floor, dark and a little magical, doubling the contents of Yuuri’s room and making the space look twice as big. Part of Yuuri’s face was just visible, angled strangely and striped by shadow; Yuuri stared at the part that he could see for a moment, arrested by his own reflection - his hair was still pushed back, and he looked a little fierce, a little sharp, a little dangerous.

A little more like Viktor in that photo, Yuuri thought, turning his gaze up towards it. It was in shadow.

He checked his arm, but it was still blank. He’d only been gone for about an hour since hanging up the Skype call; the first thirty-nine minutes had been spent lying on his bed having a mild crisis, and the remaining twenty-one had been spent grabbing some food from the kitchen, readying his materials, attempting to plan what he was going to paint, and locating the mirror that he would need to see himself painting; he was surely going to be expected to paint something bigger than just the size of a postage stamp on Viktor’s arm, so he had to prepare himself.

Maybe he should just paint trees. Play to his strengths, keep it safe. Do what he knew worked. Hadn’t Yuuko told him that the way he painted trees was beautiful? Hadn’t he been commissioned hundreds of times to paint the blossom trees?

Yuuri looked back at his own reflection, glaring at him from the other side of the glass, cheekbones looking sharper, mouth looking tighter set, eyes looking deep and dark and complex. That didn’t look, Yuuri thought to himself, like someone who would play it safe. Maybe tonight, he would take a break from being the Yuuri who would be afraid to try something new. Maybe tonight, he would be the Yuuri in the mirror - the one who wanted to try new things, who believed he could do them; who believed he could paint better than this other Yuri, and win Viktor’s admiration with his skills.

He nodded to himself, and his reflection nodded back. Just for tonight, Yuuri thought. You can go back to being scared tomorrow.

He stood up, unfolding himself elegantly from the floor, and flicked on the lights. When he turned back to the mirror, he saw that the low, intimate glow brought out an attractive tone in his skin, and kissed each of his eyes with a golden shine. He smiled at his reflection.

It couldn’t last - he wouldn’t want it to - but being this other Yuuri tonight was fun. He put his hands on his hips. Suddenly, even the drape of his painty sweater looked flattering. He rolled his shoulders, and then shed it - the sweater and the t-shirt underneath, too. He wasn’t muscular beneath - his torso was smooth and untoned - but he looked lithe in the lamplight. Seeing himself like this… it was exciting, almost as exciting as talking to Viktor for the first time, and the two were somehow related in Yuuri’s mind; he heard Viktor’s voice again, saying,

Yuuri is very good.

He closed his eyes, to remember the sound of it better.

Yuuri is very good.

The cadence of it, honest and unprompted.

Yuuri is very good.

The way that it made him feel as though he had ignited from the inside, holding a light and heat inside him that was too intense to understand…

Yuuri opened his eyes. He knew what he was going to paint.

Chapter Text

“You don’t really expect me to paint on your body,” Yurio said, sounding revolted.

“I just showered!” said Viktor, sounding wounded, in a played-up kind of way.

“I’d rather paint on a dead fish,” Yurio pronounced, unmoved.

Yuuri smiled, and adjusted his laptop slightly, so that it was closer to the edge of his desk. He wanted the microphone to be able to pick up his voice, even as he stood in front of the mirror to do his work.

“Yuuri has to use his body as a canvas, or we won’t be able to see his work,” Viktor said patiently.

“Just because the piggy won’t get Instagram like every other human being on the planet -”

“ And, ” Viktor interrupted firmly, “you have to use me as a canvas because we couldn’t have a real competition if you were painting on different media, could we?”

Yuuri continued to ready himself. He’d washed off his paint palette and was ready to squeeze out his paints - he had no body paint, but he had stacks and stacks of watercolour tubes from years of hoarding his art supplies, and it was finally time to put them to use. The air in his room was warm thanks to the heater he’d brought in, and he felt no chill - even though he still went topless - as he selected his first colour.

“‘Real’?” Yuuri heard Yurio mimic, sounding derisive. “How is any of this competition ‘real’? It’s just you and me and the piggy in Japan! No one will even know when I win. And there isn’t a prize, either.”

“A prize?” Viktor sounded rather taken with the idea, Yuuri thought - and, sure enough, a moment later he asked, “Well, then, I think we can figure out a prize. Yurio, what would you like, if you win?”

There wasn’t even the slightest hesitation.

“I want you to call me Yuri again,” he said, whipcrack fast. “I want you to call him Yurio, not me.” Yuuri paused briefly in his work squeezing out paints. He understood the symbolism of the request; Yurio wanted to be the Yuri in Viktor’s life, the one who was called by his given name and didn’t have to be changed - the most important one.

The idea of his own soulmate calling Yuuri by a silly made-up word, just because Viktor taught some punk kid with the same given name as him - it made Yuuri narrow his eyes.

Not happening.

“Well, if that’s all,” Viktor said, and he sounded lighthearted; Yuuri wondered if he didn’t see the significance of the demand, or if he chose not to see it. “And Yuuri?”

Yuuri straightened. He turned slightly, to look at himself in the mirror again - to remind himself of who he was, tonight.

“I… I want… another Skype call with you,” he said, slightly hushed, as though Yurio would somehow be unable to hear him ask if he said it softly, almost shamefacedly. “When it’s just us. I want you to use the camera, but not me. I want to see you.”

“You know, they call that voyeurism,” Yurio interjected, and Viktor sighed.

“You shouldn’t know that word,” he said. “I worry about what they’re teaching you in school sometimes.” Yuuri smiled despite himself, and turned back to his paints, making sure he had everything he’d need.

“I learned it from the life drawing class,” Yurio informed him, in a tone that Yuuri thought was somewhat proud. “Someone said that drawing you even when you were wearing clothes felt like voyeurism. So I looked it up.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should rethink your participation in that class. It’s having a bad influence,” Viktor said ruefully. Yuuri finished his preparations completely, and stood himself in front of the mirror, paintbrush in one hand and palette in the other.

“So,” he said aloud, interrupting Viktor and Yurio’s conversation. “I get the front, Yurio gets the back?”

He smiled to hear the sound of a hiss on the line - Yurio, protesting his name. And it will stay yours.

“Yes,” Viktor said, “perfect. Yuri - Yurio, fetch your paints.”

Yuuri heard the sounds of Yurio stamping away; they were becoming familiar to him - the sound of heavy footsteps and the occasional crash. There was silence on the line for a moment, as Yuuri and Viktor readjusted to having the line to themselves for a few seconds. Yuuri cleared his throat, and shifted in front of the mirror.

“I should wear a blindfold,” Viktor said suddenly. “Otherwise I will be able to watch yours being created. It wouldn’t be fair on you.”

“On me?”

“Yurio would have the element of surprise.” Yuuri nodded slowly. Viktor always had liked surprises. And yet…

“I don’t want you to wear one,” he said. “I want you to watch me paint on you.”

There was a slight pause.

“I think Yurio would call that ‘voyeurism’,” said Viktor, and he sounded caught halfway between a laugh and something more complicated - something that sent a shiver up Yuuri’s back.

“Call it what you like,” Yuuri said, and met his own gaze in the mirror, half-naked, skin glowing, eyes alight - imagining to himself that he was looking at Viktor. “But when I’m painting… just don’t take your eyes off me.”

“Yuuri…”

“I’m ready,” announced Yurio’s voice, and there was the sound of him stamping back over to Viktor. “Are we going to paint, or not?”

“Yuuri, are you ready?”

His brushes were clean; he had fresh water, fresh paint, and an idea in his head that was burning hot. Yuuri’s eyes sharpened with concentration.

“Let’s paint,” he said.

“On your marks, then, competitors!” Viktor said, half-laughing, and Yuuri closed his eyes to hear it. Viktor’s laugh was like magic. “You can paint on me for… let’s say… two hours. After that, I’ll get hungry. Yurio, did you bring -”

“Yes, the pirozhki are in my bag,” Yurio said, sounding bored. “They’re for later. Come on, let’s start!”

“Three,” said Viktor, “two, one… begin!”

Yuuri dipped his paintbrush into the vermillion paint that he’d squeezed out onto the centre of the palette in his hand, swirled it to gather a thick coating, and then raised it to his chest. He bit his lip. He repressed the urge to reach for a pen to draw guidelines, to reach for a smaller paintbrush, to fall down onto his bed and paint nothing at all. Bold, he thought to himself. Be bold. No tiny drawings, not now. Big, swooping lines, just like Viktor.

He swirled the paint onto his skin, watching himself in the mirror, in a smooth, curved line that began right over his heart.

On Skype, he heard Viktor draw in a slight breath, and smiled in satisfaction. He reloaded his brush with paint, and did the same thing again.

“The paint is cold,” Viktor said, and Yuuri was confused for a moment - until he remembered that Yurio was painting on Viktor too, and it would be appearing on his own back even as he worked. He repressed the urge to spin around and look at it in the mirror. If he began distracting himself and focusing on what Yurio was doing, he’d only get wound up.

The urge to turn was definitely there, though.

He focused instead on what he was doing, adding some darker red to the vermillion in his palette and applying it to his chest. It did feel cool on his skin, wet and thick; he’d have to be careful not to apply too much at once, or else gravity would send it running down his chest before it dried.

He painted another few strokes. In his mind, he saw Viktor looking down at his chest, watching the lines appear; Yuuri felt a shiver go through him, goosebumps rise on his skin, at the thought of Viktor watching him paint like this... on his body, on their bodies. They were so far away from each other - there was so much still between them - but in this moment, Yuuri felt almost as though they were one skin, one person. He concentrated, switching between watching himself in the mirror and looking down at his chest as he applied more red paint.

He smiled to himself, and drew a little red heart, and then quickly brushed over it. On Skype, Viktor sighed.

“Stop that,” Yurio said. “You made me smudge! Save your dreamy sighing for when you’re writing on your arms, like you normally do.”

“Yurio!” Viktor said, and Yuuri looked up into his own eyes in the mirror, blinking at himself in disbelief.

“Viktor… you…?!” he said, not even having the confidence to put it into words - did Viktor really go around wistfully sighing when they talked?

“He sighs like a damsel in a tower,” Yurio confirmed. “It’s pathetic.” He seemed to think that he was being mean - certainly the triumphant tone in his voice implied that he thought he was pulling one over on them - but Yuuri only felt the furious heat in his chest burn hotter, the source of his inspiration catching alight to twice the size it had been before.

“Well,” Viktor said, sounding embarrassed, “it’s hard! Having a soulmate and… and being so far from them.”

“Sure,” Yurio said. “It must be so hard.” There was something in his voice that put an end to the conversation. Yuuri wondered whether Yurio didn’t have a soulmate who was responding, perhaps - it did happen, and it made things incredibly difficult.

Yuuri began mixing his next colour thoughtfully.

It’s hard! Having a soulmate and… and being so far away from them.

The words flew round in Yuuri’s head. For the first time, he felt himself connect emotionally with what Viktor must have been through, all these years: knowing that Yuuri was out there, knowing that they belonged together, that they would make each other impossibly happy - and knowing that, for some reason, Yuuri didn’t want to meet him, didn’t even want to show his face.

It must have hurt, realised Yuuri. It must have hurt a great deal. If his own soulmate had behaved like that… had not trusted him, not wanted to share things with him… he would have been lost, adrift. He might have found it too hard to stay in contact, caught in a limbo of want and can’t. And yet Viktor had always been happy to hear from him. He had never pushed Yuuri, never asked for more than Yuuri could give.

Even though you must want so much more, Yuuri thought, you always meet me where I am.

He began painting again, still deep in thought. Whilst he was barely paying attention, the colours flowed from his brush. Reds and darker oranges and blacks spilled out over his skin, sourced at his heart and winding in fiery, looping lines over his shoulder, over his chest, up the side of his neck. He began to switch into a lighter palette, golds and softer peaches, a dash of electric blue to bring out some highlights.

“The concentration is intense,” Viktor remarked. Yuuri could sense his slight boredom, and remembered how Viktor had been told off for moving too much in his life drawing class. Admittedly, that had been partly his fault - but the fact remained that perhaps Viktor was not the best at staying still for a long time.

“Tell me about where you are,” Yuuri said, half-distracted, leaning close to the mirror to paint at his throat. “So I can imagine it.”

“Where I am? It’s my house,” Viktor said.

“Don’t shrug, ” Yurio said, sounding annoyed.

“Oops. Well, we’re in my studio, right now. There are floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s big, there’s a wooden floor. There are some of my canvases stacked against the walls.” Yuuri listened, reshaping his mental picture as Viktor spoke, setting him in context. “It’s warm because the sun is coming through the windows. Soon the sun will pass overhead and it will become cooler. That’s when the lighting in here is excellent. There are skylights that I had made specially.”

“You’re rich,” Yuuri said - not surprised, of course. Viktor’s skill in art could only lead to riches.

“I don’t have to worry about money,” Viktor said.

“He’s loaded, ” said Yurio, and Yuuri laughed.

“Where are you standing?” he asked, wanting to hear Viktor talk more. The sound of his voice was soothing, deep and lyrical.

“In the middle of the room,” Viktor said. “I have my phone in my hand, that’s how we’re talking.” Yuuri blinked, and adjusted his mental picture again. He’d assumed Viktor was also using a laptop. “I have a mirror in here for when I want to do self-portraits. I’m standing in front of that so I can watch you work.” His tone had a flick of significance on that last sentence, telling Yuuri quietly that he was doing as he’d been asked - he was watching, not taking his eyes off Yuuri as he painted. “Yurio is standing behind me. He is on a chair.”

“He’s short?!” Yuuri said, and Yurio gave a grunt of disapproval.

“I’m low to the ground,” he snapped. “So you won’t see me coming when I arrive in Japan to kick your ass, piggy.”

“Yurio is only fifteen,” Viktor said. “He has a lot of growing to do.”

Yuuri raised an eyebrow.

“Fifteen?” he said. “I’m in competition with a tiny fifteen-year-old kid?” Viktor laughed.

“He is five foot and four inches of determination!” he said. “And he has been exhibited in the Academy of Fine Arts. You shouldn’t worry about having too easy a job today.”

Yuuri swallowed. The Russian Academy of Fine Arts? No wonder Yurio had sneered at him when he’d said that he hadn’t been exhibited anywhere. He had to look like a bug on a windscreen compared to that kind of talent. He felt his mood, so secure up until this point, take a sudden and dangerous downward swerve.

Yurio wasn’t just Viktor’s student, he was some kind of prodigy. Exhibited at the Academy of Arts at only fifteen? And Yuuri had been feeling confident about competing against him? He didn’t even stand a chance…

No. Wait.

Yuuri is very good.

The words came back, Viktor’s voice warm and comforting. Yuuri loved that he could pull out that memory - that it was a part of him now, his soulmate’s voice inside him, calming him. He took a steadying breath...

And went back to painting. This wasn’t even about winning, really. This was about him and Viktor doing something together - about sharing their time, and coming closer to sharing a space.

“So,” he said out loud, to distract himself and make sure that his thoughts didn’t slip back into thinking about the Academy. “How tall does that make you, Viktor? Over six foot?”

“Yes,” said Viktor.

“ No, ” said Yurio.

“I am!” said Viktor indignantly.

“You’ve shrunk,” Yurio said. “It happens when you get older.”

“Yurio,” Viktor said, “I am going to push you off your chair, you little -”

“Fine, fine,” Yurio interrupted. “You haven’t shrunk! You just have always been five foot eleven.”

Yuuri was smiling, listening to their exchange. He was beginning to hear the warmth in their arguing - more so from Viktor, of course, but there was, very occasionally, an edge to Yurio’s tone that suggested he didn’t truly despise Viktor as much as he initially seemed to.

“I’m just five foot eight,” he said aloud. “If that helps.”

“Tiny piggy!” Yurio crowed.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Yuuri said, amused. He put his tongue between his teeth, swooping a line of orange down his bicep. He hadn’t planned to take the painting down his left arm, but it looked unbalanced to have it covering his chest and neck, and not extending down to his hand as well.

“Whatever. I’m going to be six foot three when I’m older,” Yurio said decisively. Yuuri reflected that if, right now, he had to pick the person in the world who seemed most likely to be able to make themselves taller by sheer determination, it would be Yurio.

He wanted to ask Viktor another question, wanted to hear him talk even more, but wasn’t sure what to choose. He wanted to know more about what Viktor looked like, right now, but thought that ‘what are you wearing’ might be slightly too suggestive a question. He found himself blushing, just thinking about asking it - particularly as Viktor was almost definitely topless, right now, bare-chested, wearing only Yuuri’s art across his chest -

He cleared his throat, frowned, and focused on the technicalities of painting very hard for a little while.

“How much longer do we have?” he asked, after several minutes of peaceful static on the Skype call.

“Oh! I was lost in thought, watching you,” Viktor said. “There is an hour left.”

Yuuri blinked at himself in the mirror, thinking hard. The painting that he’d done looked… it looked good, Yuuri thought, but not great. There was something missing. He put his head on one side, trying to figure out what was the matter. Was it the boldness of the lines? The swirling power of the colours, was it too much? But no, Yuuri thought. That was exactly what he’d set out to capture in the first place - something that Viktor himself could have created.

Ah, Yuuri thought, and then - oh.

That was what was wrong with the painting. It was something that Viktor Nikiforov might have created, and not something that Katsuki Yuuri might have created.

He wasn’t going to win this competition by handing Viktor an imitation of his own art style. Yuuri had to bring something of his own to the work… something completely his.

He stood frozen in front of the mirror. Pretending to be someone else had got him this far - being the confident, stronger version of himself that he’d dreamed up, it had worked perfectly. But if this art was going to truly be a gift from himself to Viktor, then it had to come from him, from Yuuri as a whole, not just a part of himself that he’d fantasised into being.

In short, Yuuri thought - in practicality - he had to start painting like himself. He had to start painting small .

He walked over to his desk, and put down his paintbrush. He’d deliberately selected a wide one at first, which hindered him from even trying to paint in tiny lines, like he usually would; but now, he needed fine detail, he needed his smaller brushes. He picked one of them up, and headed back to the mirror.

He felt nervous - scared, even. Painting up until this point had felt like playing a part, but this… this was just him, in front of a mirror, with his soulmate and an artistic prodigy watching, waiting to judge him. Waiting to tell him that he wasn’t good at art; he couldn’t paint; he should stop. Waiting to tell him that painting tiny things, overworking the details, made him a terrible artist. He felt suddenly stupid, standing there half-naked, his hair still pushed back, as though he could look cool.

“Yuuri?” Viktor’s voice winded him almost as entirely as it had the first time he’d heard it, because this time it was quiet and soft. “You stopped painting. Is that your breathing?”

Yuuri realised that his microphone was picking up the way his breath was coming a little too fast, as his anxiety notched higher. He swallowed and took a deliberately deep inhale, and let it go.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

“You don’t sound…” Viktor said. Yuuri heard it again: Viktor’s awkwardness, his uncertainty. “Do you want me to, um…”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri said again, trying to sound more firm, but it only came out a little petulant. He closed his eyes. “I’m fine…”

“Yurio,” Viktor said, and Yuuri realised that the little Russian prodigy had been uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps Viktor had had his hand pressed over his mouth. “I’m hungry already. Can you fetch me the pirozhki?”

“But I am doing the most difficult -”

“фи! Now . тотчас, Yuri.”

With a muttered curse, Yurio clattered away. There was a brief silence.

“Yuuri… what can I do?”

“Nothing,” Yuuri said. His cheeks were burning. He felt humiliated; he wished Yurio hadn’t been sent away.

“What is it? Everything was fine… are you nervous again about painting in front of me? I can look away.”

“No, it’s... “ Yuuri swallowed. He could suddenly feel emotions building, tears rising into his eyes, tears of frustration more than sadness. Painting as himself should be so simple. And yet here he was, panicking. “Why did you really want me to do this? I know you said it was because you want to spend time together, and you want me to get to know the other Yuri… Yurio. But that can’t be all. What do you want to happen? Who do you want to win? What does this even mean to you?”

“Yuuri…” Viktor said. He sighed. “You’re reading a lot into this.”

“Am I wrong to do that?”

“... I wish I was there. I could just hold you, or...”

“What? No! I don’t want you to hold me,” Yuuri said. It wasn’t entirely true, he would later reflect, but at the time, it was all he could say. “I want you to answer me!”

“And say what?”

“Say…” Yuuri shook his head. He didn’t know what he needed to hear, only that not understanding Viktor was, right now, unbearable. He needed Viktor to say something, anything, that really meant something; words by which Yuuri could know him, could feel safe, could understand. He didn’t know how to express any of that. “I want to know - do you really think I’m good? Before this started, before I painted on you today… when you only knew my art from when I painted the trees on you. Did you think I was good?”

Viktor took another breath, and let it go slowly.

“I’m not good at talking about this sort of thing,” he said. “I don’t know what you want to hear. I will just be honest. I did think you were good before today, Yuuri. Of course I did. Very good. And I did want to spend time with you and Yurio. But mostly I wanted you to do this because I knew that you could do it. And I wanted you to prove that to yourself.”

Yuuri blinked, and a single tear fell down his cheek. He wiped at it slowly.

“You did?”

“Yes. That’s the truth, all of it, that’s why I wanted this.” Viktor paused, and then went on. “For years, I’ve known you as you created art with no idea of how good you are. When Yurio wanted to compete… you are a match for him, Yuuri, and I wanted you to - to know that about yourself.”

Yuuri sniffed, and blinked hard. No more tears.

“I’m… um, I’m ready to carry on,” he said. “I’m alright now.” He was relieved that this time, his voice came out sounding certain. A little more certain even than he felt, perhaps, but all he wanted now was for things to go back to how they had been before, quiet and creative.

“Yurio! Did you get the…”

“No,” said Yurio’s voice, shouting from a distance. “I know you only sent me out here so you could talk with your precious piggy soulmate alone. You’re not having pirozhki until the end of the competition.”

“Well then,” Viktor said, “I suppose I am not subtle.”

Yuuri smiled. He readied his smaller paintbrush as he heard Yurio reenter Viktor’s studio.

This wasn’t going to be easy, he thought, but it wasn’t supposed to be. The first time he painted in front of someone, the first time he offered himself up for judgement like this, it was always going to be difficult. But Viktor thought that he could do it - Viktor had enough certainty in him that Yuuri almost believed he could do it, too.

Almost.

It was enough for him to be able to load up his brush, and begin.

The hour melted away, mostly in silence, with occasional interjections from Viktor about how hungry he was, or how Makkachin, his poodle, had just walked into the room, or how Yurio should stop pushing at his shoulders. Yuuri lost himself utterly in what he was doing; if, before, he had focused on feeling and behaving like the version of himself who would paint in wild, swooping, sparking lines, now he lost all conscious intent, lost all self-awareness. He was his brush, he was his eyes, he was the fire inside his heart, and he was nothing more; as they always did when he painted like himself - painted small and detailed - his worries and fears and sense of hesitant self ebbed away almost entirely. He felt more like a catalyst for the act of creation than the creator himself; he felt as though the paint knew where it should go, and only used his hand as a means of getting there. The flames he felt within him burned through his chest, down his arm, his fingers - into the brush, through the paint, and back around to the surface of his skin, a circular act, a vindication and acknowledgement, a love confession to his own young and kindling love story.

He finished the last stroke, gold dripping off his brush onto the tip of his finger, as Viktor said,

“It’s time… stop painting, both of you!”

Yuuri put his brush down, feeling dizzy and exhilarated. He surveyed himself in the mirror, and knew that - even if Viktor didn’t like it, even if Yurio sneered at it - what he’d created was something he could only have done with Viktor’s help. Something unlike anything he’d done before. Something he was proud of.

The fire that he’d painted swirled out from his chest, with darkness at its centre, where the flames had burned through from his heart. Rich reds, layered on thickly, competed near the centre, and flowered out across his torso; the flames wisped to oranges and golds as they travelled up his neck, tiny painted sparks flying over one cheek. His arm was twisted down with a pair of twin tongues of fire, blue and purple and silver flowing through the vibrant hot colours, and at the very tip of one finger, the two flames met and dripped a solitary spark of gold.

And in amongst the flames - not noticeable at first, almost camouflaged - in tones just one shade different from the background of fire they were painted on, or in lightest gold - were thousands of tiny characters, writing in Japanese. Yuuri knew he could have chosen to write in English - the language he shared with Viktor - but instead he’d chosen Japanese, putting himself into the painting with no barrier, not even one of language. The phrase that he’d chosen wrapped around each curl of flame, words dancing in the fire.

君が僕のハートに火をつけたんだ, read the Japanese characters. Yuuri traced his eyes over his creation, from his cheek to the tip of his finger. It was only when he looked closely that even he could tell that the sparks he’d painted in gold were characters, too, tiny, all parts of the same phrase.

“I’m done,” Yurio said, and his voice snapped Yuuri back to reality. “Look at mine first! Judge it first. You’ll like it!”

“Alright,” Yuuri heard Viktor say, and heard the sound of Viktor turning, so that he could see his own back. Yuuri turned with him, allowing himself to look at the work that Yurio had been working on for the past two hours.

He drew in a breath. Unfurling across his and Viktor’s backs were a pair of wings: bright white, flecked through with greens and blues and oranges - but the colours were used so masterfully that they made the wings themselves appear iridescent, three-dimensional, ready to unfold. The feathers were soft - softer than anything Yuuri could have expected Yurio to ever produce, their barbs downy at the tips, smooth and rounded - and yet their formation was stark and ordered, not one out of place. Almost military in their perfection, Yuuri looked on the wings of an angelic warrior, cold and mild and powerful. They were stunning; they were the most beautiful pair of wings that he had ever seen.

“Wow,” he said quietly, out loud. “Yurio, these are -”

“Чёрт,” said Yurio.

“Um… what?”

“He swore,” explained Viktor. “He is looking at your art for the first time.” Yuuri was surprised to hear that Yurio, also, had avoided worrying about what his competitor was up to by steering clear of sneaking a peek. Particularly as Viktor had been standing in front of a mirror, and it would have been especially easy for Yurio to simply look over his shoulder and take a glance. The boy had to have incredible discipline - though Yuuri could have divined that from the rigid beauty of his art, alone.

“Why haven’t you been exhibited anywhere?” Yurio said, and then belied the sudden softness of his voice with an angrily added, “Moron. ”

“Yurio…” Viktor said.

“да. I get it. That’s still my name and I’m keeping it. I’m going to go and eat all the pirozhki,” Yurio said, and his voice gradually faded; he was walking away. “You’re not getting any. ”

There was the sound of a door slamming.

“But… you didn’t say who won,” Yuuri said in a small voice.

Viktor coughed.

“I don’t think I had to,” he said.

“But - the wings, they’re -”

“Flawless,” Viktor agreed. “And yours, it is not. The colour balance is imperfect.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said. He felt instantly frozen, gutted by the criticism. Had he misunderstood? Had Yurio won after all?

“And it is also the piece of art that has moved me the most,” Viktor said, “in my entire life.”

There was a long pause.

Yuuri, struck speechless, said nothing. His heart was hammering, and he was trying to process what Viktor meant.

“To watch this fire come alight from within me… to watch how I feel be painted onto my body, as though you had divined it - and by the person who has always ignited the spark… this has been an experience like nothing I have ever known. You could not have given me anything that meant more than this, because now… I know you understand.”

“I only painted what I felt,” Yuuri blurted out, his cheeks bright red. “That’s all.”

“The characters… the Japanese, what does it mean?” Viktor said. Yuuri could imagine him looking down at the kanji, smooth as tattoos on his body, running his fingers over the thousands of tiny lines.

“You… you set my heart on fire,” Yuuri said, muttering, almost shamefaced. In the act of creation, the phrase had seemed obvious, perfectly connected to the narrative in his mind, making complete sense - but actually saying it to Viktor made his breath come short.

“Oh, Yuuri. You know how to make my knees go weak, hmm?”

Yuuri half-laughed, and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

“Haha… well,” he said, “well…”

“So, I think it’s time for you to claim your reward. Unless you need to sleep?”

“No! No,” Yuuri said, pushing away the tiredness behind his eyes. He checked his clock; it was twenty to ten, which was a lot earlier than he usually stayed up, but the stress of the competition had drained him. Even still, he wasn’t ready to let Viktor go. “No, I’m fine! I just need to…” He looked down at himself - covered in paint, which was starting to dry and crack a little on his chest.

“Don’t wash it off yet,” Viktor begged, as though he could see Yuuri considering a shower. “Let me keep it for a little while.”

Yuuri smiled, half in disbelief. He could never have expected Viktor to like his work so much. It hadn’t quite sunk in, yet, that he’d done it. He’d finished the work. And he’d won the competition.

“I’ll put on a sweater,” he said. He couldn’t leave the heater running forever. He switched it off quickly and grabbed his paint-stained sweater, pulling it on as carefully as he could so that he wouldn’t brush off any of the dried paint, or smudge any of it that was still drying. He sat down at his desk chair, recentring his laptop and leaning forwards so that he could rest his chin on his forearms on top of the desk.

“I’m here,” he said, his voice coming out low. Viktor made a happy humming sound.

“What was it that you wanted again? Ah, yes,” he said, and then - suddenly enough to be shocking, to make Yuuri sit up in his chair - Viktor’s face was on his screen, looking directly into the camera with a bold, hot stare. His silver hair was falling over his face; his lips were curved into a confident smile. Swirling up his neck, gold brushstrokes gracing his cheeks, was the act of Yuuri’s creation.

Just in shot, the tops of Viktor’s strong, bare shoulders were visible.

Yuuri swallowed hard.

“Do you see me?” Viktor said, and winked. Yuuri was deeply and intensely glad that Viktor couldn’t see the way that he was blushing.

“Yes,” he said, and the fact that his voice came out abnormally high was an absolute dead giveaway for the fact that he was blushing. He cursed himself, as Viktor laughed - and Yuuri forgot to be embarrassed, because hearing that laugh at the same time as seeing it coming from Viktor’s laughing mouth was something else.

“So… what did you want me to do?” Viktor said, with a flirtatious edge to his voice. “Did you have something in mind? Something that might… excite me?”

Yuuri blinked very hard. He took his glasses off, and then put them back on again.

“Uhh…” he said. “Paint?”

Viktor’s expression was briefly taken aback, but then his eyes lit up.

“You want me to paint? On you, or…?”

“No, just on canvas is fine, and only if you want to, it’s just, I know I’ve seen you paint before but it would be different to see it… in person,” Yuuri said, babbling a little to cover his embarrassment. Viktor had probably been expecting him to ask for - for a striptease, or something, and as much as parts of Yuuri very much approved of that idea, there was a large part of him that didn’t want anything like that to happen between them before Yuuri had at least had the courage to show Viktor his face.

“I understand!” Viktor said, his eyes sparkling. He didn’t seem to have been surprised for long by the request; he was already pulling what looked like an easel around to a new position, and picking up a blank canvas to rest on it. “I understand - you and I, we learn each other through painting, yes?”

“ Yes ,” Yuuri said, and breathed out. Viktor understood. Once again, you don’t ask for too much. You meet me where I am. On the screen, Viktor’s hair fell briefly across his face, soft-looking and silver, when he bent down to pick up his brushes. In his heart, Yuuri felt a surge of heat that was almost painful.

Oh, God, he thought. I love you.

It was a terrifying thought, one that felt big enough to split him in two. Yuuri kept his eyes on Viktor, the blue of his eyes, the curve of his mouth, to hold himself together.

“I’ll put you over here,” Viktor said, stepping across the room. He lowered his phone - for a wild moment, Yuuri thought he really was getting a striptease - and then Viktor stepped back, and it became apparent that he’d propped his phone up against something, with a perfect view of the easel that he’d moved into position. “There! Now you can see me.” He stretched out his arms; in the sunlight that was still coming through those big windows Viktor had described, the flames on his chest stood out beautifully. He turned his back, and the wings were a perfect, feathered, symmetrical concertina. He was mesmerising.

He put a hand on his hip, and looked around at the camera enticingly.

“How do I look?” he said, and shifted his weight slightly so that his hips swayed. Yuuri wished he could look away long enough to roll his eyes.

“Good,” he managed. “Nice… studio.”

“It’s fantastic!” Viktor said, turning away towards his easel. “But I have been here a long time. I’m running out of ideas for things to paint. I’ll have to move, soon, I think.”

“You could come to Hasetsu,” Yuuri blurted out, and then bit his lip. Viktor turned back around slowly, without so much physical self-consciousness - his body relaxed into less taut, more casually graceful lines, in his surprise.

“Do you… mean that?” he said.

“We have a hot spring! They’re not… you know, things have been tight recently, but the baths are very nice and the rooms are… spacious,” Yuuri said. “And there’s a castle, and lots of…”

“Trees?” Viktor said, raising an eyebrow with a little canny smile. “Blossom ones, perhaps?”

Yuuri smiled. “Um - one or two of them,” he said. “Yes.”

“Well,” Viktor said, “I always thought Makkachin might like to try a nice Japanese steamed bun. Maybe… one day… we can see?”

Yuuri realised how outlandish and fantastic the idea must sound to Viktor - of uprooting himself and going to stay with his soulmate, whose face he hadn’t even seen, in a far-off country. An intangible, improbable notion. But to Yuuri… he could already almost see Viktor here, stretched out on his bed, perhaps, wearing a light robe, his silver hair falling elegantly forward as he bent to get into the pool…

“Yes,” he said, lost in beautiful dreams. “You should come.”

Viktor smiled at the camera for a long moment, and then seemed to remember that he was supposed to be painting, and turned back around to face his easel.

“So, then,” he said. “Let’s see. What shall I paint…”

He began to work, dipping his brush into the colours on his palette and laying them thickly over the canvas. So intense, Yuuri thought. So practised…

He leaned forward, and rested his head on his forearms once more, sideways, so that he could still watch. Viktor had his back completely facing Yuuri, lost in his own world of creativity. He hadn’t spoken in ten minutes or more.

Quietly, without saying a word, Yuuri turned on his own laptop camera.

His heart was hammering. If Viktor turned around now, he would see Yuuri’s face - his round face, wearing spectacles, lit up in a strange blue by the laptop screen.

Viktor did not turn around, and eventually Yuuri’s breathing settled back to normal - and then grew deeper, and more rhythmic. His head became heavier on his arms, sinking lower. His eyes fell closed. His last thought was that Viktor painted just like Yuuri had known he would, with controlled intensity: with the sense of a mighty river being released a drop at a time.

If Yuuri had been awake an hour later, he would have heard Viktor’s little “hmm!” of satisfaction as he finished his painting - and then his soft gasp as, turning around, he saw on his phone that Yuuri’s camera was turned on.

If Yuuri had been awake, he would have seen the expression on Viktor’s face when he saw Yuuri for the first time - only barely half his face, it was true, most of it cut out at the bottom of the screen, and all of it heavily shadowed - but still, Viktor cradled his phone like it was made of diamonds, and pressed a hand to his mouth, his eyes shining.

If Yuuri had been awake, he would have seen how long Viktor kept the call going, only watching Yuuri’s face, soft in sleep; he would have seen how he shook, how he trembled, at the weight of this trust - the trust Yuuri had in him, now, to turn on the camera and to fall asleep.

But Yuuri was not awake. And so the only part of it that he would remember, vaguely, in a dreamy haze, was the sound of Viktor murmuring in Russian to him - спокойной ночи, спящая красавица, я тебя люблю - before he hung up the call, finally.

In his dreams, Viktor’s voice was a river - and Yuuri opened his arms, and fell in.

Chapter Text

Yuuri awoke softly, muzzily, to the sight of a dark computer screen across the room, and the gentle sensation of strain in his neck - it didn’t hurt, exactly, but he was more aware of the muscles there than usual. He sighed languidly, and rolled over. He vaguely remembered half-waking in the night, heavy head on his arms making his fingers numb, and rolling himself, sleepy and relaxed, over to his bed.

There was sunlight smiling in through his windows - lemony, washed-clean morning sunlight that made everything mild and surreal. Yuuri blinked once, twice - fell asleep again for a little while, and then surfaced back to wakefulness. He dipped in and out of sleep like a swimmer in a silver river, completely at ease. His dreams were hazy and pastel; in one of them, he was in St Petersburg. In another, Viktor was beside him in his bed.

Yuuri awoke from that one wearing a smile.

He hadn’t had a morning like this since - in fact, he couldn’t even remember one, now that he thought about it. When he lifted up his hand to stare at it idly and myopically, the sunlight kissed the spaces between his blurred fingers. He blinked slowly, unhurriedly. He felt calm, and as though everything was as it should be - the light, the softness of his vision without his glasses, even the two slim fingers of slight pain that pressed against the back of his neck, reminders of how he’d slept for part of the night.

His chest itched. Yuuri reached under his t-shirt to scratch without thinking, and touched thick, cracked paint. He drew his hand away at once, as though he’d touched something sacred by accident - and then slowly drew up the hem of his t-shirt to look.

His painting was still there - a little chipped and smeared in places, but alive yet and singing with colour. Yuuri ran the tips of his fingers over the crest of a bold painted flame, admiring it for a moment, before flopping back down to lie flat on his bed.

And it is also the piece of art that has moved me the most in my entire life.

Viktor’s voice filled up Yuuri’s mind. The memory of it was strong and brighter than the fire on his chest. Staring idly at the fuzzy ceiling above him, Yuuri slowly ran through what had happened yesterday - from the Skype call, to the competition with Yurio, to - to turning on his own camera, and then falling asleep.

Yuuri wondered if Viktor had seen his face, or if he’d been sleeping out of shot. He wondered if Viktor had liked what he’d seen, if he’d seen anything. He felt a pleasurable twist in his stomach. Later would come the nerves, the uncertainty, the sharper edges. For now, held safe in the cupped hand of a mild morning, Yuuri allowed himself the luxury of optimistic uncertainty. Maybe Viktor had seen him. Maybe he had liked what he’d seen. Maybe, in the future, they could Skype again - this time, with Yuuri having his camera turned on, too. While he was awake.

It would be another big step, of course - but it would be worth it, to see the way Viktor lit up.

Yuuri lost himself in a daydream about painting together over Skype, talking and laughing as they stood at their easels… and then his eyes were falling closed, and the daydream was becoming yet another dream. He had his paintbrush in his hand, and in front of him was Viktor; he reached out and swept a stripe of blue across his cheek, and Viktor laughed, and he was pulling Yuuri close to him -

SLAM.

“YUURI!”

Yuuri sat bolt upright. For a few hazy seconds, he snatched fruitlessly for his glasses.

“He’s still sleeping,” said another familiar voice, and then his glasses were being pushed into his hand. Yuuri blinked and put them on, squinting - more out of protest against wakefulness than against the light, because his room was a gentle, afternoon gold.

“Yuuri!” Yuuko said, hands on her hips. She had a few stray hairs curled around her flushed face, escaping from her ponytail. “You’re not even awake yet? Haven’t you heard all the commotion outside?!”

“Commotion?” Yuuri said, rubbing his hand through his hair sleepily, rumpling it up a little more. He glanced over at the clock on the far side of his room. “You…  what?”

“Commotion is a good word for it,” said the other figure in the room - Minako, tall and graceful in a dark dress. Yuuri noticed her makeup, a little heavier than she usually wore it, and there was the scent of hairspray about her.

“But… uh, what?” He yawned.

“Yuuri, wake up,” Yuuko insisted. Yuuri shook his head, and blinked hard.

“Uh, Minako... isn’t it the middle of the day?” he asked, stifling another yawn. “Don’t you have classes? Yuuko, doesn’t anyone want to use the art studio?”

“Oh, Yuuri, don’t be ridiculous - how could I focus on teaching today?” Minako demanded. She had a high colour in her cheeks that wasn’t all thanks to her makeup, Yuuri noticed now, and there was a distinct aura of barely-contained enthusiasm that radiated out of her.

“Today?”

“Yes, today.”

“Yesterday?”

“No - yes, today, Yuuri!”

“Is it… your birthday?” Yuuri hazarded. Yuuko rolled her eyes.

“Stop playing coy, Yuuri. Why didn’t you tell us last night that you had decided to finally do it? Or was it a spontaneous thing? It’s beautiful, by the way!”

“Beautiful… beautiful… what?” Yuuri said, pushing back his covers and swinging his legs out of bed. The air in his room felt pleasantly cool after the heat of his blankets; he pressed the soles of his feet against the wooden floor, feeling the grain, the familiar pattern of knots. “What do you mean?”

“I mean - ” Yuuko said, at the same time as Minako gave a little gasp.

“You’re still wearing it!” she said, pointing at the side of Yuuri’s neck.

“Wearing - what?” Yuuri said, clapping his hand to the place where she was pointing. Under his palm, he could feel the crinkled whorl of dried paint. “Oh - this?”

“You set my heart on fire, ” Minako and Yuuko said, simultaneously.

Yuuri stared at them.

It wasn’t… possible, that they should know that name. Not unless -

“Is it - on my cheek?” he said. “The characters?” Minako frowned.

“What? Is what on your cheek?”

“He means the paint,” Yuuko said, nudging Minako in the side. “Remember, Viktor had it here.” She ran a finger up her neck and past her jawline.

But - how could she know where Viktor had the paint?

For Yuuri, everything went very quiet, very quickly.

Without warning, all he could hear properly was a kind of thick, muffling, increasing buzz of panic in his ears, drowning out the sound of Minako talking and Yuuko nodding and clapping with excitement. There was the noise of his heartbeat underneath, hard and hollow and gathering speed; the sound of his breathing, which had to be in a race with his heart, struggling to match it for sudden pace; and the sound of the buzz, the buzz, louder and louder. Minako stepped forward to pull at the neck of Yuuri’s t-shirt, expose the paint a little more -

“Don’t touch me!” Yuuri said, and then realised how sharply it had come out when she snapped her hand back, palms raised in surrender.

“Hey… Yuuri…?”

He tried to soften his tone, heartbeat still throbbing in his chest. “How - how did you two know about this?”

Minako’s eyes went wide; she understood before Yuuko, who shook her head, ponytail bouncing, and said,

“Well, if you get your soulmate to post it on his Instagram, Yuuri, what do you expect?!”

Yuuri realised his hands were fisted in his bedsheet, the knuckles white. The feeling was flooding away from his fingertips; he was going numb all over, his vision blurring.

“Yuuri - Yuuri - breathe!” said Minako, replacing a tentative hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “Come on, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing…”

“He shared it,” Yuuri said. “He - he shared it?”

“Oh,” Yuuko said, the penny dropping at last. “Oh, Yuuri - he didn’t ask?”

Silently, Minako held out her phone. Yuuri stared at it for a moment, motionless; at this angle, sunlight fell on the screen, and he couldn’t see what it displayed - and for a second, two seconds, three, he couldn’t bear to bring himself to look. If he didn’t look, if he couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t really there…

Minako sighed, and held the screen right in front of his face.

The screen showed a picture of Viktor - still, unmoving, beautiful as a young god. He was looking off to one side of the camera, the angle highlighting his sharp jawline; his silver hair was sweeping over one eye, and he wore a smile that was cool and challenging. He looked like the Viktor in the picture on Yuuri’s wall - except this time, he was leaning back against a pure white backdrop, one arm curved up above his head. Twisting up it were the tongues of orange and red shot through with silver that Yuuri had painted - the ones that, smudged and cracked, were still on Yuuri’s arm right now.

Yuuri stared at the picture for several long, long moments.

He didn’t know if he was angrier that Viktor had shared his painting - or that the Viktor in the picture looked so distant, so remote. It was as though he’d taken Yuuri’s art and run, stealing it away and disappearing back into his world of cold smiles and staring off-camera.

Look at me, Yuuri thought, his hands shaking. Look at me.

Viktor, of course, did not.

“Yuuri…” Minako said cautiously. Her voice was jarring; Yuuri had almost forgotten that there was anyone in the room with him, even though it was Minako’s slim hand that held the phone in front of his face. “This could be a good thing. The art is stunning. Everyone is very excited about it -”

“Everyone?” Yuuri said. He blinked up at Minako, who tilted her head, looking as though she was trying to tone down her pervasive excitement out of respect for his obvious distress.

“Everyone!” Yuuko burst out from across the room. “There are so many people at the springs, Yuuri! There’s more guests than your parents can fit in, and the press are here, and if you’ll maybe come to the art studio or just mention it in an interview, I just know I’ll make enough to pay off the bills for this month! Though maybe that would look tacky… actually, don’t mention it, I’ll just mingle with them and tell them myself, maybe...”

She came and sat next to him on the bed, and wrapped an arm around him.

“Come on, Yuuri, cheer up! Everyone is so looking forward to meeting you! I said that we’d come get you…”

“I want to be alone,” Yuuri said. He blinked into the sudden silence, and then looked at Minako and Yuuko each in turn. “I mean it, I - I need to shower. I need to think. Please, I’ll find you both later…”

“Yuuri,” Yuuko said, sounding as though she was trying to be patient, “the press are waiting to interview you right now. ”

“Plus, the painting still being on you - they’ll love that!” Minako said excitedly. She clasped her hands together, looking down at Yuuri and Yuuko sitting on the bed. “It’ll be great! You could get a picture -”

“No,” Yuuri said stubbornly. He looked down at his knees, fists clenched in his lap. The picture of Viktor burned like a brand-mark in his mind.

“Yuuri…”

“No. ” He was being stupid, and he knew it - but the last thing he wanted to do was go outside and face the questions of whatever reporters Viktor had so graciously donated to his door. No doubt Yuuri would be expected to look delicately off-camera at all times, and only smile in the most lazily attractive and distant manner, and have eyes that seemed to know everything and promise nothing…

No doubt they’d be incredibly disappointed to find Yuuri to be nothing more exciting than a messy-haired, short-sighted boy who didn’t know how to work a camera angle to save his life. Who knew next to nothing, and tried to promise almost everything.

No doubt Viktor would see the photos, and be disappointed, too.

“Come on,” Minako said impatiently, beckoning to Yuuko. She flicked her hair back over her shoulder, and then pulled it forwards again, and fluffed it up with one hand. “We’d better go and tell them that Yuuri is being reclusive and artistic. They’ll love the mystery of it. We can spin this.”

Yuuko sighed. She chafed Yuuri’s arm a few times, which Yuuri knew she wanted to be a reassuring gesture. He managed a weak smile for her.

“Don’t take it too hard, Yuuri,” she said. “I’m sure he meant well.”

Yuuri shrugged.

“I’m just going to go shower,” he said, his voice sounding strange and unconnected to him. “I’ll be fine.”

They left, Yuuko giving him a little friendly, concerned wave as she left. Yuuri sat on his bed for a long while after they left, making sure that he wouldn’t run into them in the corridor when he eventually made his way to the shower.

Viktor had posted the art. He’d posted Yuuri’s art, online. The thing that Yuuri had avoided so deliberately and carefully for all these years had happened, in the space of a night, while he slept. He was open to a thousand comments and snide remarks and bad reviews. He turned to his window, and peered out of one corner. Just visible, at an angle, was a single person making their way past, with a large camera around their neck.

Yuuri shuddered. He was still wearing his pyjamas, but he felt naked and tiny - as exposed as an ant under a magnifying glass, with the sun focused right on his helpless little body. He wanted to curl up and never move again, to crawl under a rock and die.

Yuuri’s journey from his bed to the shower wasn’t one that he remembered making; he seemed to drift out of his own mind for a little while, his body going through the motions of walking, undressing, turning on the water - and he came back to himself as a shockingly cold deluge pounded over his shoulders.

With a little yelp of distress, he turned the temperature up, and tried to relax as the edge was taken off the water’s chill. Tried to breathe.

So. Viktor had shared Yuuri’s art online. And he must have stated Yuuri’s name, maybe even his location, for there to be people outside the hot springs wanting to come in and ask questions.

The sound of the water was like white noise; it splattered hard over Yuuri’s skin, filling up his senses, distracting from the sick ache growing inside. He turned to face the stream, letting it soak over his chest. The hardened paint began to soften and snap off in places.

Viktor must have known how this would make Yuuri feel. He had to know. They’d been writing to each other for so long; he must have known what a huge step it was for Yuuri to take, talking to Viktor for the first time and even switching on the camera at one point. He must have done this out of - out of some kind of mischief, wanting to tease Yuuri - show the art world his efforts and poke fun. Or maybe it was just that finally, Viktor’s pathetic soulmate had given him something to show for the years of putting up with nearly nothing. Something worth showing to his followers, even if the colour balance was imperfect. Yuuri wondered how many comments it had, criticising everything that was wrong with it.

Yuuri gave a little angry noise, and pushed his hands through the thick paint left on his chest. He tore at it with his fingertips, swirling it messily across his chest, destroying it - and watching it wash away down the drain, the water brown and ugly around his feet. Exactly, Yuuri thought, when he looked down at it, a murky flood. The way that he sympathised with it was obscure and ineffable, but undeniable - something to do with good things, and what they inevitably became.

His chest was bare once more, clean skin still being hammered by the unrelenting, emotionless flow of the shower water. Yuuri dipped his head into it, letting his hair get soaked through; he reached up and pushed his hands through it, trying to pay attention to his breathing. Trying to slow it, to relax.

But Viktor wouldn’t share the photo. He cared about Yuuri. He’d cared for so long. It wasn’t like him at all to snap, and do something selfishly hurtful, knowing that he’d hurt Yuuri with it. It was nothing like the actions of the person Yuuri had come to know over the years, the person Yuuri liked, respected - trusted, in so many more ways than he knew how to trust anyone else. Viktor was kind. Viktor was caring. Viktor took the time to listen, and he always did his best to let Yuuri be himself. Sharing that art was not the action of the person Yuuri knew.

And yet Viktor had done it.

Yuuri felt a cold clutch in his chest. If the Viktor he knew would never do something like this - and yet Viktor had done it - had Yuuri ever really known Viktor at all?

The thought felt like glass, stuck inside Yuuri’s chest - as though his heart had crystallised and shattered, digging into his lungs and his ribs, numbing his fingers and dizzying his brain as the blood flow slowed. Painful, jagged, impossible to ignore. He wanted to push it away, but to push it would only twist it further into himself; Yuuri reached out and turned up the temperature of the shower, letting it get so hot that it almost scalded. If Viktor was the kind of person to be so selfish, then who was the person Yuuri thought he knew? Was he a fantasy?

Had Yuuri dreamed up the Viktor he’d wanted for a soulmate - the Viktor who would take it slow and easy with him? Yuuri closed his eyes and called the Viktor he knew into his mind - the Viktor who laughed freely, who called him by his name as though it was a spell, who met his eyes on camera, who sounded excited and caring and thoughtful over Skype. The Viktor who had been with him throughout all these years, words on his arm, always caring and gentle. Was that Viktor all in his mind?

Yuuri braced his hands up against the walls of the shower.

And - what now?

If that Viktor was a - a figment of his own imagination, no more, then Yuuri didn’t want to know. He only got one soulmate, and he wanted to be able to believe that Viktor was the person he wanted; the person who wouldn’t let him down. The person who truly cared about him, and who wouldn’t forget that when Instagram followers clamoured. And that meant -

Yuuri clenched his fists. Part of him wanted to talk to Viktor about what he’d done - though wanted was probably too strong a word for it. He knew, as objectively as he could know anything, that talking to Viktor about it would be a wise thing to do. He’d find out for certain whether Viktor had just been thoughtless, or actively hurtful, or - or maybe had his Instagram hacked by someone, maybe Yurio, who had posted the photo without his permission…

Reaching for the shampoo, Yuuri rolled his eyes at himself. Viktor had posed for the photo, hadn’t he? It hadn’t been a candid, it had clearly been taken with a view to sharing it. There was no way Yuuri could let himself explain the whole thing away like that.

Or - he could, but only if he never spoke to Viktor about it. Only if he never brought the subject up, refused to read or listen to whatever Viktor said about it, and gave himself no possible way to hear a contradiction to his fantasy.

Yuuri massaged the shampoo into rich, creamy bubbles. It could work, he thought. He tried to solidify his own version of events in his head.

Viktor asks Yurio to take a picture of him with my art on his chest. He poses for it because he wants to save it, wants to remember the art. Yurio takes the picture with Viktor’s phone. He remembers that I haven’t been exhibited anywhere. He figures out that I’m probably shy. He’s jealous over me winning the competition. He quickly posts the photo on Viktor’s Instagram. And then… Viktor falls asleep, and doesn’t notice the notifications… or he has notifications turned off because he’s so popular. And he doesn’t notice. And if I told him, he’d delete the picture immediately.

But I can’t tell him, because then if he did mean to post the picture, I’ll know.

More than anything, in that moment, Yuuri desperately did not want to know.

He got out of the shower and began to towel himself dry. He could hide it well enough, couldn’t he? Could deflect and dodge his way out of talking about it? Could hide from the reporters until this whole thing blew over, and he could forget it ever happened?

It couldn’t be that hard.

He wandered back to his bedroom, lost in thought, and sat down on the edge of his bed, towel wrapped around his waist. If he just didn’t write to Viktor or speak to him for a few days, he was sure that his feelings would blow over. He’d go quiet for a little while - just enough time to get his head straight - and then they’d just go right back to normal.

It was the perfect plan.

Except -

You showered! said a message in bright, elegant writing, unfurling on his arm.

Yuuri looked down at it, chewing on his lower lip.

Those shards of glass in his chest from earlier decided to make themselves felt again; worry pain, anxious and impossible to ignore. His perfect plan didn’t factor in that Viktor would, of course, be writing to him as usual, expecting a reply. Yuuri couldn’t ignore him without making him concerned - and part of him wanted Viktor to be concerned, wanted him to fret and ache because he’d shared that art…

But the other part of him, the part that had a plan, knew that that road inevitably led to a confrontation. Viktor would know that something was wrong, and Yuuri would have to explain his silence, and the truth - whatever it was - would come out. And Yuuri probably wouldn’t like it very much.

Yurio posted the photo, he reminded himself. Viktor didn’t. He’s still normal Viktor. Everything is fine.

He picked up a pen on his desk, and wrote back.

Morning, he said. Too clipped, perhaps. How are you, he added.

I’m well, though I’m missing those flames on my chest already. You’ll have to paint some more, sometime. The words blossomed over Yuuri’s skin; he watched them appear, standing silent and still.

What, said a small, angry voice in Yuuri’s head, so you can share it and get even more Instagram comments? He took a deep breath, and tried to drown out the voice. Yurio shared the photo.

He was still trying to think of a reply when Viktor’s message was rubbed away, and another began to be written out.

I can’t wait to see your face again.

Yuuri clenched his fist. So, Viktor had seen his face, last night. He felt wrong and raw, like an overexposed photo. He wished he could go back in time and turn the camera off before he fell asleep. He looked back at Viktor’s message, trying to figure out how to reply.

No time soon, said the angry voice inside his head, a little louder. Yuuri almost wrote it, and then pulled himself back. No confrontation. Yurio posted the photo.

On his arm, another message was appearing.

You seem quiet. Did you… check online yet?

As Yuuri watched the words paint onto his skin, he felt his heart start to beat hard and fast, his blood beginning to burn. By the time Viktor reached the final word, Yuuri’s clenched fist was white-knuckled.

And then, a big smiley face was drawn at the end of the question, and Yuuri snapped.

He marched over to his laptop, turned it on, and navigated to Skype with his hands shaking. He hadn’t been so angry, so furiously angry, since before he could remember. His laptop, struggling to cope with his instant demands, briefly showed a revolving blue circle that promised a crash - Yuuri glared at it in silent rage, and it seemed to get the message, pulling up his Skype conversation with Viktor. Before he could think twice, Yuuri hit Call - and turned his camera on.

The cute noise of Skype’s dial tone was not exciting, this time, only aggravating. Yuuri narrowed his eyes - and only then realised that they were wet, full of unshed tears. For a second, he considered hanging up the call; then, he closed his lids, and allowed a pair of tears to slide down his cheeks.

Viktor picked up. Yuuri opened his eyes.

“Yuuri?” Viktor said, sounding excited and happy. “So soon! I didn’t think -”

He came to a sudden stop when he saw Yuuri’s face.

“Yuuri…?” he said, cautious now. “Yuuri, is -?”

“Yes,” Yuuri snapped. “Yes. This is my face. You wanted to see it, didn’t you? So look at it! This is me, Viktor!” The tears were flowing faster, now; Yuuri could see on his screen that his cheeks were reddening and his hair was still a damp mess. He looked terrible. Viktor, on the other hand, looked like polished perfection, as always.

“Yuuri, I don’t…”

“I’m sorry you don’t like what you see,” Yuuri interrupted. “I tried to tell you. I tried for years and years to hide this from you. Your soulmate isn’t amazingly beautiful. Your soulmate isn’t someone worth showing off. It’s just me. I’m just me. I look like this, Viktor! I look like this. I wear glasses because I don’t see well. I don’t exercise enough. I don’t use social media. I don’t share my art -”

He cut himself off, tears streaming down his face. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, trying to stop his lip from trembling. On the screen, Viktor had wide eyes, looking lost.

“This… is about how I shared your art?” Viktor said, in a hesitant, hazarding tone of voice.

I shared your art.

“So… it was you? Not Yurio?” Yuuri said.

“Yurio?” Viktor said, looking startled.

“Nothing,” Yuuri snapped. “Just a hope I had.”

Viktor opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. For a moment, they only stared at each other; Yuuri, tearful and damp-haired and bare-chested, looking nude and vulnerable in the camera - and Viktor, dry and sharp and confused, and so, so beautiful.

“Yuuri…” he said eventually. “If I did the wrong thing, by sharing…”

“I have never shared any of my art on social media,” Yuuri said, whipcrack hard. “You knew that. You knew how I feel about it -”

“But you showed me your face!” Viktor said. “You - I thought you’d moved on from feeling shy -”

“What? You think it’s as easy as that? I fall asleep on camera once, and suddenly I don’t ever worry again what people think about me?”

Viktor lifted his shoulders helplessly.

“Yuuri… it’s not as though people were ever going to be mean, I just didn’t think...”

“You thought you’d get yourself some more Instagram followers for the sake of the drama?” Yuuri said. “I get it. Here’s the art my soulmate did. Look at how hard he tried. He’ll get there one day. I’m sure the art world went crazy for it, the great artist Viktor Nikiforov and his little kindergarten-level protege. How much are they laughing at me? How many people have followed you out of pity for having such a terrible soulmate?”

“Yuuri,” Viktor said. He sounded perfectly calm, though his expression was grim. “Have you even read any of the comments on the post?”

Yuuri’s mouth fell open.

“How could I?” he said. “How could I read their comments? You know that I’ve lived for twenty-four years without posting online, because I didn’t want to read the comments? I don’t want to hear everyone tearing apart my imperfect colour balance!”

“You should read them,” Viktor said. “Yuuri, I’ll send you the link, just read the comments - they’re not -”

“I’m not going to read them,” Yuuri snapped. Viktor fell silent; he looked more pensive than distressed, still, as though Yuuri were presenting him with a puzzle to figure out - as though he were a particularly stubborn bit of canvas that wouldn’t take the paint correctly.

“But if you only did…” Viktor began again.

“But - it’s not - it’s not just about that,” Yuuri said. “I’m upset that people have been allowed to see my work, so many people seeing all the places I went wrong. It makes me feel like there’s a spotlight on me. Like - like everyone's looking and I can't escape. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that you did this.”

This time, Viktor went very quiet.

“I trusted you,” Yuuri said, his voice so suffused with emotion that he found it hard to push out the words. “I painted for you. I showed you what I looked like, I invited you to my home. And you - you did that.”

Viktor’s face, now, was lined in a different way - as though he was finally feeling something in real time, instead of reacting calmly, like an actor giving a performance. As though Yuuri’s sadness had, at last, truly touched his heart in a way he couldn’t help but show.

“I thought…” Viktor said. “Yuuri, I never thought you’d mind. I was just… so proud of the art that you’d made. And since it was on me, and it was my face that I was posting - I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“You told people where I live! You told them who I am!” Yuuri said. “Apparently there are reporters outside the springs -”

“Well, yes, I did… Yuuri, I can take it down -”

“It’s fine,” Yuuri said furiously. “It’s too late, anyway. It doesn’t matter. I thought that we understood each other. I was just wrong, that’s all.”

On the screen, Viktor’s eyes were wide.

“Yuuri… tell me what I can do to make this right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do the wrong thing.”

Yuuri blinked hard, and drew in a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

He was being irrational, and he knew it. No one else would feel so infuriated by the simple sharing of some art online. Other people might be annoyed, yes - but they wouldn’t be doubting the very essence of the person they thought they knew over it. He’d overthought this whole thing - and whilst he was convinced he was right, and couldn’t see a flaw in his thought path, he knew there had to be one. He had to be wrong about this. Viktor was calm and rational and fair, and Yuuri was - objectively, and subjectively - a mess.

Viktor had to be right. And Yuuri had to be overreacting.

But that didn’t make it hurt any less. The glass shards of his heart shifted inside him; Yuuri swore he could almost hear their jagged icicle-clear tinkling as they brushed against each other when he moved.

“Yuuri? Tell me. What are you thinking? What can I do?”

Yuuri sniffed.

“There’s nothing,” he said, after a pause. “There’s nothing for you to do. There’s nothing you should have to do.” He wiped his nose. “It’s not your fault… I feel this way.” He nodded, convincing himself as he went along. “My feelings are my own responsibility. I’m sorry for shouting.”

“Yuuri, don’t apologise. I just didn’t think. I should have realised you would feel this way.” Viktor hesitated. “But...now that it’s done… maybe it’s not such a bad thing?”

There was a long, nervous pause. Yuuri stared slightly to the left of the camera, trying to marshal his thoughts together, come up with something to say.

“After all, you took a big step yesterday, and you seemed happy about it. You seemed relaxed when you fell asleep in front of the camera. So… maybe this is just another big step?”

“Mmmm,” Yuuri managed. Glass wasn’t made to be carried in a person’s chest, he reflected. It kept finding new ways to cut in deeper.

“So… are we… alright?” Viktor said, eventually, sounding hesitant.

Yuuri blinked at him.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I don’t know. I don’t - I don’t know! I just - I feel…” He tried to find the words to explain the jagged pain in him, the fear and exposure he felt burning the back of his neck when he remembered about the reporters - the sense of loss he felt over the Viktor whom he’d trusted to never hurt him like this. The Viktor in front of him, on the screen, waited without speaking. “My feelings are my responsibility,” Yuuri said again, to steady himself. “It’s not your problem that I feel this way, but I can’t - I can’t just stop feeling it, either, so I think… we just need to take some time.”

“You’re - you want to…?”

Break up?

The words hung in the air, unspoken; had they ever been together enough for this to be breaking up? Yuuri wasn’t sure, and by the looks of it, neither was Viktor.

“I want time,” Yuuri said, his voice coming out thin as he pushed back a sudden new wave of tears. “I just need some time. I’m sorry.”

“But - Yuuri - this doesn’t have to be as bad as…”

Viktor trailed off. Yuuri looked at him - Viktor Nikiforov, standing at a loss in his St Petersburg studio with the wide window behind him, his blue eyes big and his lips parted in consternation.

“It’s complicated,” Yuuri managed.

“You’re still angry?”

“... it’s complicated.” Yes. At you. At myself. At everything.

“Then explain it to me.”

“I… can’t, Viktor. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t feel ashamed or shy about something like this. You wouldn’t understand why it’s important. It would never make sense to you.”

Viktor didn’t say anything for a while, though his eyes flicked over the screen; he was thinking.

“How much time will you need?” he said, eventually.

Yuuri shrugged, a little helplessly. How much time does it take to put a glass heart back together? How would he even start?

“Time,” was all he could say.

Viktor pushed a hand through his hair, and it fell forward, and - despite himself, despite his pain - Yuuri felt that warm clutch of love that had come to him first the night before. Had it really only been one night since then?

“I’ll miss you,” Viktor said, in a low voice. “I’ll miss your voice. I’ll miss your face.”

Yuuri checked at the bottom of his screen; he looked puffy and teary and ridiculous. He managed a small, choked laugh.

“You won’t miss this mess,” he said. “Not for long.”

“For long,” Viktor said, solemn as a promise. “For a long time. You’re my soulmate, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shook his head.

“What does that even mean?” he said. “If I’m like I am and you’re like you are, how could we ever be soulmates?”

“Why?” Viktor looked confused. “Because I let you down?”

Yuuri pressed his hands to his face.

“Because I’m… not like you, Viktor,” Yuuri said. “And now everyone knows it.”

He hung up the Skype call before Viktor had the chance to reply, and smeared the tears off his cheeks, and went to his desk, and began to paint.

Incredibly, incredibly small.

Chapter Text

Yuuri’s phone was like a siren song, playing to him as he painted.

It lay on his bed behind him - a flat little slab of metal and plastic on the ruffled sheet. Yuuri couldn’t even see it, hadn’t even turned round in his chair once to stare at it contemplatively. Well, not more than once, anyway. And yet still, it called to him - a little urge that he could feel in his fingertips, a wordless little push in his brain.

The simple fact was, it would be so easy to search Viktor’s name, find his Instagram, and read all the comments on that picture he’d shared. And see what Viktor had written as the description. And look again at that face Viktor was making in the photo - had it been teasing, or reckless, or malicious, or - what? Yuuri couldn’t recall the picture perfectly in his mind, now; the version he called up had Viktor looking exaggeratedly uncaring, supremely aloof. In Yuuri’s mind, the Viktor in the picture turned to look at him for a moment, and winked coldly.

Did you think you knew me? he said.

Yuuri shuddered, and pushed away the image.

He kept painting. He’d only hurt himself more by looking at the photo again - and he didn’t feel as though he could cope with a lot more hurt, at the moment. His chest ached. His eyes burned. His head pounded.

He set down his paintbrush for a moment. He wanted to lie down, but he wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep - and the idea of doing nothing at all except lie and stare at the wall, and think about all the things that were spiralling around in his mind… it made him clench his fists so hard that he left moon-prints on his palms.

He looked down at the red marks, feeling stupid, feeling small. He was sitting at his little old desk with his feet tucked back behind the legs of his chair, same old plant pots and notepads and pens and crumpled papers strewn over his desk. Everything was just as it had always been. It should have been comforting.

Yuuri stared around at it all, disconnected from it. The things he owned, the things that held meaning for him, they seemed - gutted, somehow, all the importance faded out of them, so that they were just things. Just a pen that he’d taken to school with him on his first day. Just a notepad his father had given him. Just a paintbrush from the set he’d saved up to buy for weeks. Just things, just… shapes, textures, when he pressed his fingertips to them. There was no deeper meaning, no emotions that came with the memories, no familiar nostalgia or sense of belonging.

He was an outsider, suddenly, in his own room. And here he was - painting? Painting in the way he always had? He felt strange, and foolish, for still trying to exist as the same person he’d been before this. He felt panic starting to rise up inside him. If he couldn’t be himself as he had been - who could he be?

And in his chest, still, there was that ache. That pain, the burning. Yuuri rubbed the heel of his hand over his ribs absently, trying to ease it - but it made no difference. Now that his heart had caught alight, it would burn - and if Yuuri couldn’t be with Viktor, couldn’t even like him, then it would burn hot, and hard, and cruel.

Yuuri pressed his lips together, and tried not to cry. He’d already cried enough, today. And yet - hurting, with not even the familiarity of his room to comfort him, he felt a sense of wilder hopelessness; it was like stepping out onto an open field, with no trees or shelter in any direction. Maybe if he just found a way to turn his feelings off, to shut the whole thing down completely, then he could stop being so ridiculous and dramatic about all this; maybe he wouldn’t have to be upset with Viktor, and everything could go back to normal, if he could only find a way to silence his head and his chest -

Blip!

A cheery notification sounded - first from his phone, and then from his laptop.

Startled out of his thought process, Yuuri bit his lip. It was the Skype messaging noise, which meant that it could be Viktor. He had a few other people on there - his family, a handful of friends - but it was most likely to be Viktor.

Blip! Blip! Blip!

Yuuri frowned. He didn’t know Viktor’s messaging style well but it didn't feel like him to send so many messages in quick succession; if he really needed Yuuri’s attention, he’d always just written on their arms - but when he checked, Yuuri found the skin on both his arms was clear. He sat still for a long moment.

It was tempting to stay at his desk, to continue to let his mind float like a white feather down deep into the darkness, and forget everything around him. It was tempting, and yet - behind him, his phone was playing its siren song again. Yuuri frowned and tried to get a grip on his own feelings, for a moment. If he let himself sink down into sadness now, if he gave into the urge to succumb to numbness, he had no idea how he would ever get himself out. And his phone - his phone was making him feel curious, making him feel something that wasn’t anger or sadness or embarrassment.

Yuuri decided he would take that.

He allowed curiosity to get the better of him; he stood, walked over to his phone, and unlocked it. At the top of the screen was a Skype notification; he opened it -

Hamster Boy: Yuuri!!

Hamster Boy: I just saw the post on Viktor Nikiforov’s Instagram!

Hamster Boy: You’re finally sharing your art??

Hamster Boy: Why didn’t you tell me?!

Yuuri let out a long, slow breath. He blinked down at Phichit’s messages, chewing his lip. If anyone would understand the way that he felt, it would be Phichit - not because they had shyness or anxiety in common, but just because Phichit had known him for so long. They’d gone to an art college together, graduated together - and though Yuuri’s tendency to isolation meant they hadn’t spoken in a long while, he felt a little glow of reassuring warmth at the sight of messages from his closest friend.

He began to type.

Katsuki Yuuri : I didn’t exactly plan it…

Hamster Boy: oh!! so it’s like a spontaneous thing?

Katsuki Yuuri : more like… not my decision!

There was a brief pause. Yuuri bit his lip.

Hamster Boy: wait so Viktor posted it without asking?

Yuuri sat down on the bed, rubbed a hand over his face, and then replied.

Katsuki Yuuri : something like that

Hamster Boy: wow…

Hamster Boy: I mean

Hamster Boy: I understand why he would

Hamster Boy: it’s amazing and he looks so good in it

Hamster Boy: but I bet you’re upset

Yuuri frowned, rereading Phichit’s messages a few times over, just to make sure that he’d understood correctly.

Katsuki Yuuri : you… think it’s good?

Hamster Boy: that he posted it?? no way, he should’ve asked

Katsuki Yuuri : no no I meant the art. you think the art is good?

Hamster Boy: obviously??

Yuuri pulled a face.

Katsuki Yuuri : you’re a good friend haha

Hamster Boy: what are you talking about? ?

Hamster Boy: I’d tell my worst enemy that was good painting

Hamster Boy: it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen you paint Yuuri

Hamster Boy: it’s emotive?? when I saw it I was like... omg

Hamster Boy: :o :o :o

Yuuri realised he was clutching his phone incredibly hard, and slackened his grip. Phichit was still typing, but Yuuri interrupted him.

Katsuki Yuuri : the colour balance is off though

Hamster Boy: who said that?!

Hamster Boy: I bet they’re just trying to make you feel bad

Katsuki Yuuri : Viktor

Hamster Boy: …

Hamster Boy: well

Hamster Boy: isn’t he just behaving fantastically well at the moment

Hamster Boy: “hey your art has a bad colour balance”

Hamster Boy: “also I’m going to share it online like I know you hate”

Hamster Boy: like

Hamster Boy: don’t get me wrong

Hamster Boy: I love his art and I’m sure he’s a great guy

Hamster Boy: but what is he on??

Yuuri smiled to himself as Phichit’s indignant messages rolled in. He lay down on his bed, front-first, propped up on his elbows. The numb little bubble he’d been living in seemed to ease, to relax; the taut muscles of his neck lessened their strain. Somehow, hearing someone else say that Viktor hadn’t been perfect, recently, made it so much easier to type out,

Katsuki Yuuri : it’s complicated. he thought I would be okay with it.

Katsuki Yuuri : it’s not his fault I overthink things way more than any normal person could expect...

Katsuki Yuuri : I got pretty angry at him earlier. and then I told him I needed some space.

Hamster Boy: you tell him! sounds like he needs to hear it

Hamster Boy: you’ll make up though right?

Yuuri hesitated, not knowing what to say. If he was honest with himself, the pain that he was still feeling - the anger he held inside him - didn’t feel like something that would abate quickly or easily. And yet, when he tried to imagine the entire span of the rest of his life without Viktor in it - when he tried to picture Viktor existing in the world, but with his life completely separate from Yuuri’s - the thought made him shudder. Of the two, that seemed by far the more impossible, the more unendurable.

Hamster Boy: you’re soulmates

Hamster Boy: that has to count for something?

Katsuki Yuuri : yeah

Katsuki Yuuri : I guess I just thought that soulmates wouldn’t do something like this to each other.

Katsuki Yuuri : like, they’d just know that it would hurt. and they wouldn’t do it

Hamster Boy: I don’t know…

Hamster Boy: I mean like,,

Hamster Boy: being soulmates doesn’t mean you can read each other’s minds

Yuuri let out a sharp sigh.

Katsuki Yuuri : then what does it mean? what’s the point?

Hamster Boy: I don’t know Yuuri…

Hamster Boy: but I’ve always thought maybe

Hamster Boy: maybe it just means that like

Hamster Boy: when you do get it wrong… you don’t give up

Hamster Boy: you try to make it right

Hamster Boy: and when you’re the one who was hurt

Hamster Boy: you don’t give up either?

Hamster Boy: you try to forgive it

Hamster Boy: unless it’s like,, unforgivable?

Hamster Boy: I don’t know where that line is lol

Hamster Boy: I guess it depends on each person

Hamster Boy: like, what you can forgive?

Yuuri watched the words appearing on the screen, a slim column as Phichit typed out short phrases and hit send quickly, letting his thoughts flow. Yuuri tried typing out a response, and then deleted it, and tried again.

Katsuki Yuuri : yes… I understand what you mean

Katsuki Yuuri : and I don’t think what he did is unforgivable for me

Katsuki Yuuri : objectively, it wasn’t even that bad.

Katsuki Yuuri : it’s not always so easy to forgive though

Katsuki Yuuri : like how do you do it?

Katsuki Yuuri : what do you physically do

Katsuki Yuuri : I wish I didn’t feel angry anymore but I still do and I can’t help it

Hamster Boy: I’m sorry :( I don’t know Yuuri

Hamster Boy: maybe time

Hamster Boy: ?

Yuuri sighed. Time. Yes, of course, time. He’d asked for time already. It didn’t feel as though it was going to help hugely.

Katsuki Yuuri : yes, that will probably work!

There was no point wrapping Phichit up in the same vicious cycle of sadness that Yuuri had managed to lock himself into. He wrote the cheerful response, meaning it not as a deception, but as a kindness. Thank you for letting me talk to you, he meant by it. Thank you for being here for me. I won’t repay you by making it feel impossible to help.

Hamster Boy: probably… I hope so

Hamster Boy: I have to go :( :( :( I’m sorry, I have a class

Hamster Boy:  but let me know if there’s something I can do Yuuri

Hamster Boy: I don’t want you to feel too sad!

Hamster Boy: let’s Skype soon

Hamster Boy: I can show you my new hamster

Yuuri smiled.

Katsuki Yuuri : you live up to your nickname ;)

Hamster Boy: is your Skype nickname still Hamster Boy for me?? ?

Hamster Boy: om g Yuuri please it’s been years

Hamster Boy: release me

Katsuki Yuuri : only when you change mine!!

Hamster Boy: no

Hamster Boy: you’re Wild Night Boy forever

Katsuki Yuuri : it makes it sound like we hooked up...

Hamster Boy: but the night was wild Yuuri!

Hamster Boy: we watched six Disney movies in a row!

Yuuri smacked a hand to his forehead, grinning properly, now.

Hamster Boy: tell me you’ve had a wilder night and I’ll change it

Katsuki Yuuri : tell me you’re going to stop buying hamsters, and I’ll change yours

Hamster Boy: NEVER

Hamster Boy: I’m late!! I’ve got to run!

Katsuki Yuuri : go go go go go

Katsuki Yuuri : thanks Phichit, you’re the best

Hamster Boy: take care Yuuri! talk sooooooooon x

Yuuri scrolled up their conversation and read it through again - once, twice, and a guilty third time. The first couple of times, he focused completely on what Phichit had said, and took heart from it. The third time, he concentrated on his own half of the conversation and cringed a couple of times at how awkward he sounded.

He snapped his phone off, and dropped it onto his pillow, and stood up.

Its blank screen stared up at him. The siren song played again, soft and enticing.

Phichit hadn’t hated his work… hadn’t even noticed that the colour balance wasn’t right. And Phichit was very much a part of the art world - an up-and-coming, internationally-exhibited artist. If Phichit wasn’t ashamed to say that he liked it, if he wasn’t commiserating with Yuuri but rather complimenting him…

Yuuri blinked and shook his head. He began to pace, drawing regular lines across the floor with a repetitive path. Phichit was his friend. Of course he’d be kind, even if the art was terrible. Surely the Instagram post had to have thousands of negative comments, tearing it apart.

If he read them, Yuuri knew, he’d get that feeling - the feeling of overexposure. The initial numbness, followed by the nausea, followed by the complete lack of motivation to paint or create or do anything at all, if he was honest, for several days - even weeks - after. If he read them, he’d lose the fragile confidence and pride in his work that he’d managed to build up, after years of steady commissions.

But if the comments were good…

Yuuri’s fingers itched.

The phone sat innocently on his bed.

Yuuri made a noise of frustration, and got up, and walked over to it, and turned it on. He opened the search bar and hovered his fingers over the keyboard for a second, and then - with another angry little noise - he quickly started to type.

Viktor Nikiforov Instagram

The first result was the right one; the second and third ones, Yuuri saw, looked more like fan-pages. He snorted to himself. Of course, Viktor had fan-pages.

He clicked on the top link, and found himself - for the first time - on Viktor’s Instagram. His heart was thudding painfully in his chest.

The most recent picture wasn’t the one he was looking for; it was a picture of a window, softly lit and brushed over with raindrops. Beyond, the lights of a city were visible, blurred by the water; there was a definite melancholy feel to it. Yuuri scrolled down slightly to read the description.

v-nikiforov: raindrops fall alone, but on windows they run together. we can only hope that the dark flight down ends up bringing us closer. #nikiforov #art #realism

Yuuri blinked, and squinted again at the picture. He tapped on it, and it zoomed larger; now, he could see the brushstrokes. It wasn’t a photograph; it was a painting - an incredibly skilful and beautiful painting. Yuuri stared at it for several seconds, his eyes wide. It had been posted only a few hours ago - Viktor must have started painting it not long after the end of their Skype call. It was small, and simple, but intricately detailed; even for an artist like Viktor, it must have taken a while to paint.

Yuuri found he couldn’t take his eyes off it. There was something about the painting that spoke to him; maybe it was the obvious sadness of the piece, the fact that Viktor wasn’t painting rainbows and butterflies - the fact that he, too, seemed to be suffering for their argument. Scrolling down, Yuuri saw that the comments were almost uniformly ones of praise, and many of them were even personally addressed to Viktor, hoping that he was alright.

It was touching, Yuuri thought. Touching, and frightening. These people seemed to care about Viktor so much - and here was Yuuri, his supposed soulmate, who probably didn’t even know Viktor as well as these people did through his paintings.

He swiped his screen, and there it was - the picture that had frozen Yuuri’s heart, turned it to ice-cold glass and shattered it. Viktor’s face didn’t look teasing in it, Yuuri saw now - nor did he look malicious. In fact, he only looked relaxed, and happy; truly happy, but looking off-camera, as though not sharing his happiness with his followers. As though saving it for someone or something else.

Yuuri bit his lip, and then scrolled down. Immediately, the most recent comments caught his eye:

theREALvikfan: omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nikforovsgirl: this is the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen

picture-of-viktor: holy…

never-left: красивая!!!

blue-eyes-silver-hair: omg UR SOULMATE is a genius?????? how did he make u even prettier

Yuuri stared at them, feeling a heat rising in his cheeks. It had to be a coincidence; the rest of the comments had to be negative ones. Yuuri was tempted to scroll all the way through them first, but he focused for a moment long enough to read Viktor’s description of the picture:

v-nikiforov: I had a beautiful experience. My soulmate painted this onto us both. We feel love burning inside us… he understands me perfectly. One day, I am going to visit his family’s hot springs in #hasetsu and paint with him. Yuuri, 君が僕のハートに火をつけたんだ. #katsukiyuuri #love #art #soulmates #yousetmyheartonfire

Yuuri read it, over and over again. He could feel his eyes filling up with tears again, and blinked them away furiously. He could sense, now, what Viktor had meant when he’d shared the photo - he’d not been teasing, not been testing Yuuri, only been proud and happy and wanting to share.

And Yuuri had been so angry with him.

He scrolled down a little way through the comments. They were all so bright and effervescent and full of praise; Yuuri could feel his heart melting, even despite himself. These people were so kind - no wonder Viktor enjoyed sharing things with them. He’d only been proud .

But - he had been thoughtless, Yuuri couldn’t help adding, as he set his phone down and rolled over onto his back, to think. So the comments were good, at least some of them - but Viktor couldn’t have known that they would be. He'd opened Yuuri’s world up to the kind of criticism and rejection that could crush him, and the fact that the bullet seemed to have been dodged didn’t change the fact that Yuuri had been pushed in front of the gun. Viktor had been harsh, just entirely without meaning to.

But how thoughtful did Yuuri have the right to expect Viktor to be?

Yuuri stared at the ceiling. There hadn’t been any desire to cause hurt in Viktor’s actions, which made it better - but it didn’t completely alleviate the worry pain in his head, in his chest. He wrapped himself up under the covers, and took off his glasses. If Viktor could deal out blows like that - ones that devastated on one end, and passed unnoticed on the other - if he could do it so casually, without even meaning to... if Yuuri’s little sensitivities were so omnipresent that Viktor could run into one within the first twenty-four hours of more trust being shown between them...

Could their relationship ever work?

They were soulmates, Yuuri thought, remembering his conversation with Phichit. That had to count for something. But what did being soulmates even mean - that they'd suited each other from birth? That there was some cosmic certainty that they could make each other happy?

Wrong, thought Yuuri, pain burning in his chest. He wished he'd read more soulmate philosophy; maybe then, he'd have better tools and words and concepts to understand this. As it was, he was lost.

Yuuri pressed his palms to his eyes, blocking out the world. Outside, there were reporters who wanted to know who he was. Inside, there were family and friends who wanted answers. Somewhere in the world, there was Viktor, painting pictures of raindrops and hoping they would run together.

In inside Yuuri’s head, there were a hundred different voices, all telling him a hundred different things.

It’ll never work. You’re no good for him. You’re the only soulmate he has. You can’t just expect him to let go, even if it is the best thing for him. You have to do better. You can never do better than this. The hurt will last forever. You have no right to be hurt. You’re selfish. You’re wrong. You’re ridiculous, and everyone will find out -

Yuuri couldn’t listen to their bickering any longer. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and held his own mind submerged until it drifted into sleep.

Chapter Text

Yuuri woke up to the sound of his phone, which was buzzing furiously next to his pillow; he tried to shut it off a few times, tried to remain in the cosy, comforting dark of his sleep - but it persisted. He groaned, and levered himself up off the mattress, disoriented. How long had he slept for? Outside, the world looked gloomy.

He fumbled for his glasses and found them in the dark, pushing them onto his face and grabbing his phone.

“What?” he asked it angrily, as he unlocked it.

And then -

“What?” he asked it, alarmed, when he saw the surplus of notifications. He opened Phichit’s first, on Skype.

Hamster Boy: Yuuri… what has Viktor done???

Hamster Boy: please tell me I’m really seeing this and it isn’t a dream

Hamster Boy: if it’s a dream, I’m really worried about what’s going on in my subconscious,,

Hamster Boy: YUURI HE’S IN THE BOX ARE YOU SEEING THIS

Yuuri read through the messages, still half-caught in the cobwebby clutches of a too-long sleep, his eyes only half open. The first one had been sent just under an hour ago; the most recent, only a few minutes before. Pulling down his notifications bar, Yuuri could see that all his other messages were along similar lines - from Yuuko, from Minako, even from some of the other students he’d met at art college with Phichit, all asking if he’d seen what Viktor had done.

Yuuri gulped.

Earlier on, Viktor had been sad - but now, Yuuri supposed, he was angry. He’d realised how ridiculous Yuuri was being, how Yuuri had no right to be upset, and he’d done something to show his anger - something to do with boxes, Yuuri thought confusedly, remembering Phichit’s last message. He blinked hard at his phone screen for a long moment, and then hesitantly searched Google for Viktor Nikiforov.

Immediately, the top results blared out a news story from several different sources - all with different headlines, but all focusing on the same thing. Yuuri had to read the first headline over three times before he understood it, and another several times more before he could begin to even slightly believe it.

Internationally Renowned Artist Viktor Nikiforov Goes NAKED in New Exhibition at the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts

Yuuri stared at the words, waiting for them to fade - for himself to wake up, and for this to have been some kind of bizarre dream. Viktor had decided to vent his anger - by getting naked at the Academy of Fine Arts?

There was a thudding outside Yuuri’s room, and suddenly - not for the first time, recently - the door burst open. Standing in the door, her hands on her hips, was Mari.

“You’re awake!” she said.

“I need a lock on my door,” Yuuri said weakly.

“What you need,” she said, “is to come and watch the television. It’s on the main news channel. He’s literally broadcasting himself worldwide, Yuuri.”

“If he’s angry, he could have just talked to me…” Yuuri said, a little limply; Mari gave him a strange look, and then shook her head, and beckoned.

“You have to see it,” she said. “Come on, Yuuri, up.” She held out her hand, demanding. There was a pose about her that Yuuri recognised; a tilt of her head, a placement of hand on hip, that brooked no argument. Yuuri groaned and rolled out of bed, feeling the chill without the warmth of the covers. Together, Mari leading the way, they padded through to the main living space -

Where a huge crowd was gathered, chattering excitedly. Yuuri stared around at them all for a minute, not recognising many of the faces, before noticing that the television on one side was tuned in to a news channel - and on the screen, blown up wide, was the picture of Viktor with flames on his chest.

“Nikiforov has been a prominent member of the popular art scene for several years, famously selling off one of his best-loved pieces - Distance - only a few months ago, and donating the proceeds to charity. Most recently, he’s been turning his fans head over heels for his own soulmate - the camera-shy ‘Katsuki Yuuri’, as he was tagged on Instagram, who painted a stunning flame design on Nikiforov’s body.” The television screen switched back to a view of a reporter standing outside a building, her hair dusted with snow. “Now, the artist has made one of his boldest moves to date. In an unprecedented show of daring, he’s opted to put himself into his latest art exhibit - apparently a spur-of-the-moment stroke of genius, inspired by Nikiforov’s recent interactions with his similarly-talented soulmate. Let’s go live to Chris, who’s about to go inside the exhibit…”

The screen flashed dark for a second, and then a man’s face replaced the woman’s; he was inside a sumptuously-decorated hall, and looked dressed for the occasion in a sleek suit jacket. He smiled charmingly for the camera.

“Thanks, Sara. Hi everyone, Chris Giacometti here, reporting live from inside the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. Let me tell you, it’s been quite a ride today. As a longtime supporter and friend of Viktor Nikiforov, it’s been really something to watch it unravel! Let me tell you what we know.” He looked down at a card in his hands, and then flicked his gaze back up to the camera. Yuuri, his heart in his throat, waited - tucked away at the back of the room, noticed by no one. “Earlier today, the curator of the Academy has revealed that he was approached by Viktor, who asked for a special favour - the loan of an exhibition room for his sole use, for one night only! Mmmmm.” Chris wiggled his eyebrows. “Viktor has done great things for the Academy, sending his finest protege’s work to them and frequently putting his own work on display there, revitalising the Academy’s exhibitions and bringing the place back into mainstream popular consciousness in a big way. It’s no wonder he’s allowed to do pretty much whatever he wants, here. Even still… tonight, there are going to be some who ask, has he gone too far with this?” Chris tipped the camera a wink. “Not by my standards, but I’ll let you judge for yourselves. Let’s go inside.”

On the screen, Chris turned away from the camera and started to walk. He was stopped briefly by a tall, imposing, bald man in a dark suit, who murmured,

“Sirs, are you over eighteen years of age?”

“We are,” Chris said, looking immensely flattered to be asked. When he was waved through, he beckoned to his cameraman, and together they walked into the exhibition room.

Yuuri realised he was biting his nails, and tucked his hands behind his back.

At first, the view on the screen was too blurry with motion to get a good view of what was happening; Chris and his cameraman seemed to be manoeuvring through the crowd, trying to get to the front.

“Excuse me, sorry, we’re here on behalf of - oh, yes, I’ll sign it -”

“Chris!” hissed the cameraman, and Chris came back into view, hastily pushing a signed portrait of himself back into the hands of an eager-looking young man beside him. In the exhibition room, there seemed to be a general low mutter; Yuuri almost stamped his foot with impatience, waiting for the exhibit itself to come into view -

And then, suddenly, the camera snapped to the right angle - and Yuuri saw it.

A glass box, completely see-through, resting up on top of a white platform, looming over the dark mass of the crowd. Stark, angular, elegant - and inside it, sitting with one side facing the camera, knees up and arms clasped around them, was Viktor.

He was wearing a blindfold. His face was smooth; he was unmoving.

And he was completely naked.

Yuuri’s mouth dropped open.

“The exhibit,” whispered Chris, speaking close to the microphone so as not to disturb the general hush in the room, “is simply named Sorry. In Nikiforov’s own words, from his statement on the piece: ‘I want to understand what it is to be exposed, and unsafe. I live in confidence, a privilege that makes me act carelessly. I wish to explore the other side, so that I learn what it means to feel exposed, and next time, I think twice. I am sorry.’ We can only guess as to whom Nikiforov is apologising, but there are unconfirmed reports speculating that the intended recipient of the apology is Katsuki Yuuri, Nikiforov’s soulmate, whose art Nikiforov posted on his Instagram yesterday.”

“So, Yuuri…?” Mari said, her eyebrows raised.

“Yuuri?” said a woman sitting close by, her head whipping around. Her hands were immediately reaching for her neighbour, patting him on the arm. “Katsuki Yuuri?” She sounded American; her neighbour stood up, hefting a large camera with him. Reporters, Yuuri realised. These unfamiliar faces were all reporters.

“Uhh…” he said uneasily. His eyes flicked back to the television. Viktor was sitting completely still, in his box. People were snapping photos of him.

“Do you have a statement you’d like to make? Is Viktor doing this for you? What did he do to you? Do you forgive him?” she fired the questions out quickly, looking hopeful. Yuuri, though, could barely focus on her; his mind was all on Viktor, Viktor Nikiforov, sitting alone in a glass box, wearing a blindfold and saying Sorry.

Yuuri began to back away; the woman got up off her seat, and a few other reporters turned their heads. Yuuri caught Mari’s eye, and she stood up.

“That’s not my brother,” she said. “Yuuri’s still in his room. I was just asking about him. This is my cousin... um - Katsudon. We call him that. He’s… he likes… pork.”

Yuuri repressed the urge to slap his palm to his forehead, and instead nodded solemnly, as though this wasn’t news to him. The reporters seemed to subside; the woman who had first noticed him eyed him over a little longer, but Yuuri looked back at her blankly, and eventually she turned away.

With a nod to Mari, Yuuri turned and walked back to his bedroom.

He grabbed for his phone as soon as he’d slammed the door closed behind him, and pulled up the link to the article on Viktor’s exhibition on the official Academy page; sure enough, as he’d hoped, there was a link to a live feed. Yuuri clicked it - and as he waited for it to load, he began to pull off his clothes.

If you can do that, Yuuri though fiercely, if you can bare yourself to all those people, then - in a different way - so can I. And by choice, this time.

Bare and shivering, he took a deep breath. The mirror was still in his room, pushed to one side, but he could see himself in it. Viktor was out there, right now, naked in front of the people who could judge him, tear him down; and right here, in his room, Yuuri was naked in front of the person who always judged him most harshly, most unremittingly. Viktor had to court criticism; Yuuri was his own gushing spring.

Even though he was scared - even though he was shy, and anxious - there was a fire in his blood that pushed him through it. Yuuri snatched up a brush, and he began to paint.

He started at his ankles.

Red paint, orange, yellow, wild streaks of blue and silver. On his phone, the live feed didn’t register it immediately - there had to be a slight lag. Yuuri kept going, splashing paint carelessly in his absolute focus on speed; the wide brush swooped and swirled over his bare skin, and he closed his eyes, and imagined the designs forming on Viktor’s legs, too - curving up his calves, his thighs -

On the live feed, there was a sudden clamour - a flurry of gasping that sounded like a breeze through Yuuri’s phone speakers. He looked over at the screen, and saw that - at last - the feed had caught up. Viktor, sitting in his box, had wild colours blossoming over his pale skin; he was catching on fire from the feet upwards, silver smoke unfurling over his hips, flames licking his shoulders. Cameras were snapping at an even faster rate, now - capturing Yuuri’s art on camera, on hundreds of cameras, pictures that would be in newspapers, in print and online, far beyond his scope to control…

Yuuri took a deep breath, and kept painting. On his chest, in sloppy strokes - without finesse, only feeling - he painted in a dark heart, wreathed in oranges and golds.

He wound the flames up his neck, let the tips kiss his jaw. On his cheek, he drew in those characters that Vikor would recognise - 君が僕のハートに火をつけたんだ - and below them, three words in their shared language.

Talk to me.

He finished, breathing hard, and took a moment to meet his own gaze in the mirror. It was done. By choice, he'd shared of himself. He looked a little wild, a little savage, his hair tousled and his eyes shining.

He threw down his brush, and grabbed for his phone.

On the screen, which had to be over a minute behind live, Viktor was turning his head at the loud sounds the crowd was making; the camera zoomed in, and Yuuri saw Viktor’s expression of hesitation, his indecision - before he reached up, and lifted his blindfold.

The look on his face when he saw himself - when he saw the flames tattooed in paint on his skin once more, messier and bolder than before - stopped Yuuri’s heart for a second. The first shock, followed by the pure joy, made Yuuri’s stomach do flips. The way he stretched out an arm - leaned sideways, to admire the length of his elegant legs - the movement of his body gave Yuuri the powerful, almost unbearable need to hold him; to be with Viktor, to be near enough to wrap his arms around him and keep him close, close, close.

“Talk to me,” people were beginning to call. Yuuri could see a couple of them pointing to their cheeks, in the crowd. Their shouts were overlapping and confused, and Viktor didn’t seem to be able to understand them - but then he pressed his hand to his cheek. “It’s saying - on your - talk to me!”

“Talk to me?” he said, his voice incredibly faint on the livestream, the glass box muffling it. “It says ‘talk to me’?”

“Yes!” came the unanimous call back.

Viktor nodded solemnly. He looked thoughtfully at the crowd, and then at the top of the box, and then at the floor - and then at himself.

“Actually,” he said, “I got in here when no one was looking. And even though I’ve shown a lot tonight, there are some things I’m saving for marriage…” The crowd laughed; Yuuri, clutching his phone, snorted and buried his face in one hand.

The crowd began to disperse, laughing and chattering. Viktor pointed to the livestream camera, smiling.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten!” he said. “Turn it off!”

The last thing Yuuri saw was Viktor’s smiling, hopeful face, before the screen went dark.

*

“Hello?”

Yuuri swallowed hard, not sure whether he wanted to smile or cry or hide. Viktor’s voice was as rich and gentle as ever, with a slight note of caution.

“That was - really something, Viktor,” Yuuri said, and there was a sudden rush of static on the other end, as though Viktor had let out a long breath.

“Yuuri.”

“Yes?”

Another sigh. Yuuri, alone in his darkened room, was leaning up against the side of his bookshelves with the phone against his ear - an unusual position for him to stand in, seeing the familiar from a different angle.

“Nothing - nothing, really. It’s only good to hear your voice, that’s all. I was worried…”

We’d never talk again.

The words hung in the air. Yuuri cleared his throat.

“I need to tell you...” He faltered. What should he say? Was it right to apologise? What did Viktor want to hear?

Yuuri closed his eyes. What Viktor probably wanted to hear was how Yuuri really felt. He examined his feelings as best he could, trying to find words to twist them into - trying to say something absolutely true.

“Yuuri?” Viktor said. “Is - are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Yuuri said. “Viktor, I need to say… I need to say thank you .” The words rushed up from his chest like a line of fire. He found as he spoke them that he meant them with every part of himself.

“Thank you?” Viktor said, sounding taken aback. “But, Yuuri - I -”

“I know,” Yuuri cut in, before Viktor could go back over what had happened. “But I never expected you to go to those lengths, just to say sorry. I never thought you would do that. And because you did, I feel -” Yuuri swallowed. “I was so angry, and I was so hurt,” he said, trying not to feel stupid as he said it. There was a vulnerability to the confession that made him feel young and small, and foolish. He pressed on. “And I didn’t want to be - but I couldn’t let it go. And you didn’t have to help, it wasn’t your responsibility, because they were my feelings and my problem, but you - you did. And so I’m saying thank you, because you made it - you made it so much easier. You just…” Yuuri pushed a hand through his hair. The horrible pain of earlier, the fear and the anxiousness that had been burning a hole through him, were gone. His voice, when he spoke again, came out a little rough and clipped with restraint. “You made it stop hurting. You didn’t have to. So… thank you.”

“Oh, Yuuri…” Viktor’s voice was a galaxy with a thousand strata of stars, each one a different emotion - relief, sadness, happiness, hope, confusion. Yuuri swallowed hard. “You don’t need to thank me. This was my problem. I was the one who was stupid, posting that photo, assuming that everything would be fine. I’m… I can be like that, Yuuri,” Viktor said, with a rueful little laugh. “I know it. I’m learning that I can be selfish, I can not think things through enough. I never meant to hurt you, but I did it anyway. It was my responsibility to make it easier for you to forgive me.”

“But -”

“I made it my responsibility.”

Yuuri paused, at that. Maybe there was something in it, he thought. Maybe the responsibility wasn’t automatically on Viktor, on anyone who upset him - but maybe some people would take on the responsibility anyway.

“And I needed to learn. This wasn’t only about apologising to you, Yuuri, but about making sure I would not make the same mistake twice. I couldn’t understand why you were so angry with me. At first, I was confused… I felt guilty, yes, but I also felt almost angry with you for being so angry with me. I didn’t think it was so important! But then, I was thinking about it. I was thinking that posting pictures online, talking with people, showing everyone my work… it is all in my comfort zone. For you, it isn’t. So I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone, something that would make me feel… exposed, like I exposed you.”

Yuuri let out a little nervous laugh.

“So… your first thought was getting into a box, naked, in the Academy of Fine Arts?” he said.

“Oh, no.”

“No?”

“No. My first thought was to be outside the Academy of Fine Arts, by the Neva. But then Yurio reminded me that there are underaged people living in the city, and also - with the cold…” He trailed off.

“The cold?”

“Things shrink in the cold, Yuuri.”

It took Yuuri a moment to get it - and then the penny dropped, and he started to laugh.

“It’s important!” Viktor said, sounding wounded. “If anyone had seen - or taken a picture! I wouldn’t have been able to explain, either, through the glass! I would forever have been known as the Russian artist with the small -”

“Paintbrush,” Yuuri interrupted, which set them both off, laughing together in little undignified snorts. It took them a few moments to calm down, after the hilarity had worn off a little; Yuuri tried to settle himself, and relax.

“I learned,” Viktor said eventually, his voice still tinged with the warmth of their laughter. “In that box. I learned. I was… scared, Yuuri. I couldn’t tell what people were saying or thinking, if they were laughing at me outside the glass, if I was some kind of joke. Or if no one even cared, if I was being completely ignored. Or if people were taking pictures, if they could see me - intimately - and if they were posting pictures of it online, and where those would go. It was all running through my head, making me feel… powerless, I suppose. I was scared - I was angry at myself, even, for having got into the box, for not having thought it through, for having put myself in that kind of danger. And that was when I realised that I understood exactly why you were angry with me. I made you powerless, Yuuri… didn’t I? I should never have done it.”

Yuuri didn't know what to say; he opened his mouth, trying to find the words, but nothing came out. After a few moments, Viktor spoke again - he sounded a little self-conscious, but with an underlying sincerity that twisted in Yuuri’s chest.

“From the bottom of my heart, without anger or confusion or resentment towards you, I apologise,” Viktor said. “I am so, so sorry for what I did. I know why it hurt. I will try everything I can not to do it again.”

Yuuri only realised that he had tears running down his cheeks when one of them dripped off his chin, down onto the clenched fist in his lap. The fingers of his other hand were tight around his phone.

“So… do you - are you -” Viktor said, sounding more tense, his voice tighter. “Are we… ?”

“We’re fine, Viktor,” Yuuri said. “We’re OK.”

“Oh, Yuuri. ” The relief in his voice made Yuuri’s heart ache. The feeling that had swept over him during their Skype call, when Viktor’s hair had fallen over his eyes - oh, God, I love him - the feeling was back, and this time it was deeper, and more complicated, and truer. He sat down on his bed, his eyes out of focus, lost in thought.

It had cost Viktor - had cost him time, had cost him difficulty, to get them through this. And part of it had been his own doing, posting that photo; and yet part of it, Yuuri had to shoulder - the part where his feelings ran deep and hard and overwhelming, and he didn’t know how to release them, or make them any better. Viktor had to know that this - that Yuuri - wasn’t going to be able to change, not quickly. That little wrongs would always hurt him more, make his worries spiral, make his chest burn cold. Viktor had to know that this wasn’t a one-time dip in their road; this was the terrain their road ran through. And Yuuri was willing to work, to work hard, to steer their course to kinder ways and softer passes, but it would take time. It will cost, he needed to say. It will cost both of us to be close.

“Viktor…” he began.

“Mmm. I’m here. What is it?”

Yuuri let out a slow breath.

“It’s… I…” He shook his head, not knowing how to explain himself. “You know, liking someone isn’t simple for a person like me,” he said. “I overthink... I worry. The small things, sometimes they mean a lot to me and I can’t even explain it. And I’m trying to get better about it… I know that I’m not always right to think the worst and to feel so - so strongly. But I just…” Yuuri shook his head. “It doesn’t come easy. And I’m worried that that means I’m not good for you. That we don’t fit. Because if we want to be - close - then it’s going to take work, from both of us, and - and I don’t know if that’s fair. I don’t know if we should try.”

There was a pause.

“Do you want to try?” Viktor said. Yuuri almost laughed. I’m not the one who needs to answer that question, he thought. Of course I want to try.

“Yes,” he said. “I want - I want to be close.”

Viktor sighed, a little burst of static. Yuuri found that his heart was beating hard again, like a great bell swinging inside his chest, back and forth, rippling through him. This was it, he knew. This was the moment - the one that mattered. The one that Yuuri would look back on for strength in the hard times, one day, or the one that Yuuri would look back on and think - I should have known it would never work.

“Viktor?” he said.

“I’m here. I’m just thinking…” Viktor sounded calm and collected, and that was enough to still the shuddering tolls just a little. “You see… for me, Yuuri, liking is simple. It is so easy, it rises up inside me and flowers. And I get angry, sometimes, yes - but I forgive without difficulty.”

Yuuri swallowed.

“I wish…” he began.

“No, no. No wishing to be different.” Viktor swallowed. “I think - this is what will make us work, Yuuri. Because you are who you are. Whether you want to or not, you hold onto things, you keep it all close - the good and the bad. And me, I let things go… I don’t hold onto anything, much. I let it pass through my fingers naturally, I don’t make efforts. In honesty, I don’t have to, most of the time. Things - people - they stay close to me without me having to work for it, they move with me. I’ve never really had to try, except for with one person. I don’t completely know how - or I wouldn’t, without you.”

“Viktor…”

“You taught me how to hold on, Yuuri. Down all these years without seeing your face, and now especially in these past couple of days. You’ve taught me how to hold onto something, even when I have to really try to make it work, even when it means feeling guilty or having to make amends - when would be easier to drop it all and run. You’ve taught me something invaluable.”

“I - I have?”

“Yes. You are so, so good for me, Yuuri. I have to tell you this… it's all I’ve been thinking about. You… you make me better in ways I never even thought I could be, and - and that’s why I think we can do this. I want to do this because - because I care for you, a great deal.” Viktor cleared his throat, as if momentarily embarrassed by his own candour. “But I think we truly can do it because I am ready to learn. I am ready to be a better man, Yuuri… I am ready to be the soulmate you need.”

Yuuri let out the breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“Maybe that’s what being soulmates really means,” he said softly. “Not being perfect for each other all the time, but just - being ready for the same things.”

“You also are ready to learn?”

“I want nothing more,” Yuuri said honestly, “than to learn how to let go of bad things that I feel - all the anger, and the fear. The way they fill me up, sometimes. I want to learn that, for myself and for you.”

Yuuri could sense Viktor hesitating, and then plunging in.

“If you want - only if you want - I can show you how.”

“You know how?” Yuuri said, the words spilling out unbidden. “You could teach me that?” His mind was immediately back in the hours after he saw the photo Viktor had posted on Instagram - the desperate desire he’d had to not be angry, to not care, not feel angry or betrayed. The constant pressure in the back of his head, in his chest, that he couldn’t relieve - the physicality of his feelings, undeniable and painful.

“I know how,” Viktor said softly. “I think. I can show you.”

“Is it easy?”

“No. You have to want to.”

Yuuri closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he blinked his eyes open again, his room looked soft and cosily gloomy - familiar and warm. He let out a sigh.

“Viktor… I appreciate your advice. But I do want -”

“No, Yuuri. You have to truly want to. With anger, for example. You have to want to let go of your anger. Why do you think it released, when I apologised? Because you felt the situation had been righted, yes? Because it served no more purpose. You no longer needed your anger to show me the wrongness of my actions, to bring down justice. You wanted to let go of it, and away it went. Well - if you want to stop being angry without an apology or without anything being made right, you have to find a way to truly want to let go of the anger on your own. A reason to… to drop your grip, which you believe in enough to make it work. Something more important to you than justice. And for some people, I think, it is easier than for others.”

Yuuri frowned down at his knees, thinking intensely. Was there truth in what Viktor was saying? He honestly wasn’t sure - he needed time to think about it, time to understand it better, roll it around in his head. Viktor’s perspective was always going to be different, given the fact that he wasn’t naturally an anxious or troubled person - but there was a sincerity to his voice, a depth of understanding, that made Yuuri want to try it his way.

“It is not easy to unlock that within yourself,” Viktor said, quietly. “But once you have, it is always an open door.”

Yuuri let out a little huff of a laugh.

“You've really thought this through, haven't you?” he said. When Viktor spoke again, Yuuri could hear the smile in his voice.

“I was in the box for quite a long time, you know. There wasn't much else to do except think.”

“I want to learn,” Yuuri said. “For anger, for anxiousness… I don’t know if I can. But I want to try.” He could feel tears coming back to his eyes; just the simple statement, admitting his desire to try to get better, rocked him to his centre more completely than he could have anticipated. “I want to learn to let go. It’s important for things to be set right, but - the right way to go about it isn’t always with so much pain, over things that are so small. I want to get help - from you, and maybe from - maybe I need to talk to someone about it. A professional. I want to be better , Viktor.”

“You will be, dousha. And so will I.” The softness of Viktor’s voice, the tenderness, gave Yuuri the brief sensation of walls crumbling - of something, inevitably, falling. He had never thought, before, that falling for someone could feel so literal - and yet here he was, pitching forward in his own body - leaning out, leaning over, ready to fall.

Ready. They were ready for the same things.

“Only - don’t learn the lesson too well, alright?” Viktor said. “Promise me! I wouldn’t want you to know how to let go of - everything, you know.”

“Everything?”

“Well, I…” There was a little shuffle on the end of the line, as though Viktor had shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t want to teach you how to let go of me, Yuuri.”

Yuuri shook his head.

“Viktor,” he said, “No.”

“No?”

“No. You were right, you know. What you said before. I’ve held onto so many things, so tightly, for so long.” He smiled into the phone, and he could hear the upward curve of it in his voice when he spoke again. “But out of all the things I’ve held onto, you are the best. You’re the first thing I’ve ever wanted to hold onto. And I’m not letting go of you.” He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes, and then he said - in a voice made of nerves, made of fire - three more words, just three.

And Viktor went quiet. And then he said, softer and more reverent than Yuuri had ever heard him,

“Oh, Yuuri. ”

Chapter Text

Six Months Later

Yuuri stood at the airport, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He’d drunk a coffee earlier, and he wasn’t sure how much of the hand-shaking and fast-breathing he could blame on the caffeine, and how much was just sheer anticipation.

He tried to breathe out slowly.

If this were to go badly…

He shook his head. It wouldn’t go badly. He had everything under control; he was in the right place, waiting for the right plane, looking for the right person. Everything was perfect.

No, not perfect - ready.  Everything was ready.

He looked back up at the Arrivals board. The plane had landed an hour ago, and he was still here waiting at the barrier - staring keenly at everyone who walked out through Customs, searching for a glimpse of silver hair or blue eyes.

An hour. That was a long time. What if he’d got the date wrong? What if Viktor hadn’t been allowed into the country? What if -

Yuuri let out another slow, long breath. He shook his head. He was here, in the right place, on the right day. He had a bed made up in preparation, waiting for someone to sleep in it. He had his family at home, excited beyond reckoning to finally meet his soulmate. His mother was going to cook katsudon.

Everything was ready.

Yuuri stood at the barrier, chewing on his lip. He adjusted his glasses - once, twice - and again, and then tucked his hand down by his side - and then raised it again, and pushed back the sleeve, to see if anything had been written on his arm.

It was blank.

What if Viktor had never taken off? What if he was still in Russia - sitting in his studio in St Petersburg, painting with Yurio? What if -

Yuuri took a breath, and decided to think about something else. With an effort, he pulled his thoughts away, and pushed them towards his favourite mind-road to tread - imagining what it would be like to meet Viktor for the first time.

A big group of people all entered the Arrivals lounge at once, and Yuuri took a moment to glance over them - but he could make out no sign of Viktor. He tried to relax.

He would be tall, Yuuri knew - tall, and solid, and real. He would pull Yuuri into a hug; for the first time, they would find their bodies pressed together. For the first time, they’d be able to feel the warmth of each other, the physical closeness. Just imagining it, after all these months of Skype, after so long looking, and wondering - it made Yuuri’s head spin. He was going to learn Viktor in whole new ways: the sound of his voice, unfiltered by speakers; the way he slept - curled up, or stretched out? The way he looked when he walked, and ate, and read a book - the way he looked when he danced -

And they were going to paint together, of course. Viktor had already made him promise that they could paint together on the same canvas, create something shared. Yuuri’s imagination could barely stretch to how that would feel, his own paintbrush working along with Viktor’s, bringing something from nothing.

He let out a slow breath, his hands clenched - with happiness, this time, with anticipation. He glanced at his arm again - and his heart skipped when he saw a message. A single word -

Ready?

Yuuri swallowed. In his pocket, he reached for his pen - the ever-present pen.

Ready.

The two words looked good on his arm.

There was still no sign of Viktor coming out of the doors to Arrivals; Yuuri turned, letting his eyes glance over the airport lounge, not resting on any one place in particular - looking for one thing, and one thing only. There was a woman soothing her baby, and a little dog sniffing at the floor, and a man in a long, brown coat - there, in the distance, a man with silver hair -

Yuuri’s mouth fell open. He started to run.

Viktor was standing in the middle of the hall; he must have made it out through Customs while Yuuri was lost in thought, and now he was standing next to a luggage trolley, looking lost. Yuuri kept running, dodging out of people’s paths, half-leaping over the little dog; he was almost there when Viktor turned, and Yuuri saw his face in real life for the first time, right in front of him -

With Yuuri heading straight towards him, Viktor did the only thing he could do. He held out his arms, and with the brightest smile Yuuri had ever seen on his face, he said simply,

“Yuuri! ”

Chapter Text

Phichit, sitting in a coffeeshop in Boston, pulled his phone out of his pocket and flicked idly through his various social media. Someone had tweeted him, wanting him to come to Canada for an exhibition; he made a mental note to message them directly, later.

He wasn’t too keen, but the more goodwill he won in going to other people’s exhibitions, the more likely it was that people would be willing to come to Thailand, one day, and be in his exhibition - the one he was hoping to hold.

He took a sip of his coffee, and opened his calendar. The dates looked free. He would almost certainly be going. And if he was going to be flying anyway, he could even go via Japan, perhaps - not exactly the most direct route, but he’d take any excuse to finally go and see Yuuri at his home.

He opened up his Instagram, and began to scroll down his feed. Chris Giacometti had posted a picture of himself, naked from the waist up, wearing sunglasses and drinking a cocktail on a beach. The first tag was #gaininginspiration. Phichit snorted, and double-tapped it. Chris was marrying the life of artist and sometime-journalist with his usual relaxed attitude.

He scrolled down again, past a few pictures of cute hamsters and landscapes, and then paused. He smiled down at his screen; the photo he was looking at was from Viktor Nikiforov’s Instagram. In it, Viktor was beaming at the camera, his smile brilliant and genuine. Behind him, blossom trees - ones that Phichit recognised, had heard about a thousand times from Yuuri - were in full, bursting colour, just as beautiful as Yuuri had promised. The description was simple - In #Hasetsu for the first time! I think I might stay for a while.

Phichit could guess who had taken the photo, just from the brightness in Viktor’s eyes looking into the camera. He left a quick comment - so cute!! I want to be there!! - and then liked it, too, for good measure.

He scrolled on - and then came to a dead stop. He frowned at the username on his screen, and then at the picture beneath. He couldn’t marry the image - a selfie taken by a young, blonde boy with a slight smile on his face - with his memory of Yuri Plisetsky, Viktor’s little Russian protege with the bad attitude. He scrolled down to read the description; it read only got a message this morning. Phichit shook his head and scrolled back up, not understanding. In the picture, Yuri was holding up his arm to the camera, smiling over it - a small smile, but his eyes were shining. His skin was so pale, Phichit thought. And a few words were written on that arm; a short sentence.

So… are you going to be friends with me, or not?

Phichit stared at it for several more seconds, before something clicked, and he remembered. The Plisetsky kid had never had a message from his soulmate - there had been some gossip about it. Now, it seemed, the speculating could stop.

Phichit grinned, and double-tapped the photo. It already had several thousand likes.

The coffeeshop would be closing, soon; Phichit knew he should let his phone charge in peace before making the journey home - he was at 36% - but he refreshed his Instagram feed all the same. There were always new posts; he followed enough people to always have something to see. Mostly hamsters, he had to admit, but he wasn’t complaining; he was just aware that he would never hear the end of it, if Yuuri ever found out.

And speaking of Yuuri…

Phichit drew in a breath.

There, almost at the top of his feed, was another photo from Viktor - a picture that Phichit recognised, almost. In it, Viktor was standing with his back to the wall, one arm raised above his head, looking off-camera; and on his bare chest, his naked shoulders, his pale cheek, was a painting. A painting of fire, red and orange and silver and blue, with golden sparks - Japanese characters - swirling out of the tongues of flame. He was, once again, licked over by Yuuri’s paint, by the bold and beautiful colours.

Except this time - opposite him, meeting his eyes, holding a mirrored pose - was Yuuri himself.

He had his hair pushed back; on his own chest, up his own neck, on his own cheek, was the same design - the colour thicker on his skin, real paint layered onto him. The look between Yuuri and Viktor - it was so intense, so intimate, that Phichit felt almost as though he were intruding; he felt as though the art, as beautiful as it was, was not meant for him. None of this was for him, the viewer. It was all about them, about the two artists, the two creators. They were a world of their own, glimpsed but not owned, not understood, by anyone but themselves.

And on their cheeks were those same words - truer now, Phichit guessed, than they had ever been. The heat between them was unrivalled; the meaning of the characters couldn’t be more fitting.

You set my heart on fire.