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I wanna fly through the blue
Lake on the bottom with you
Getting lost in the waves
Let the world slip away
When nobody can find us
*
“I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be out here,” Yuuri warns, keeping his voice low even though there’s no one around. At least, no one they can see. Then again, it’s dark, so—
“Yuuri,” Victor wheedles, flashing a grin over his shoulder. “I know we’re not supposed to be out here.”
“Is this why you became a counselor?” Yuuri keeps his eyes down, focusing more on the rock-laden path that they’re attempting to navigate in near-darkness than the way Victor’s t-shirt shifts across his back as he walks. As much as he’s traveled this same path over the years, he knows how… Distracting Victor can be. It would be just Yuuri’s luck to forget himself and then sprain his ankle stumbling over a rock.
Not only would it be horrendously embarrassing, but they would absolutely get caught.
"To break rules?" He continues. To get me in trouble.
“Would it surprise you if I said I did?” Victor doesn’t sound the least bit nervous about getting caught as he leads them further and further from the main camp, down the familiar slopes that lead to the lakeshore.
Yuuri seriously considers it for a moment, thinking of the way Victor smiles when he leads his campers in a spirit event or rallies their energy for a canoe race.
“I wouldn’t say it would surprise me,” Yuuri muses softly, glancing up at the way the waning moon highlights the edge of Victor’s pale face. Yuuri has no idea how he manages to maintain his complexion through six weeks of camping. “I just probably wouldn’t believe you.”
Victor is silent, and before Yuuri can backpedal (because he clearly said something wrong), they clear the last of the brush and the path opens up onto the dock and the shoreline. Right at the start of the dock is a series of signs, prohibiting diving, warning against swimming without supervision, and absolutely forbidding entering the lake at night.
Yuuri swallows dryly.
“V-Victor—”
“Come on.” Victor’s voice is more hushed now that they’re out in the open, and he gives an insistent tug where he’s still holding onto Yuuri by the wrist. Yuuri expects them to head straight to the end of the dock, but Victor veers them off-path and into the sand instead, leading him along the shoreline. Yuuri supposes that’s what he gets, trying to expect anything of Victor.
The water laps quietly against the pebble-strewn sand, gentle as ever, and the moon casts an almost perfect reflection in the lake’s undisturbed surface. It’s beautiful in an understated sort of way, and Yuuri trusts Victor to guide him as he takes it all in, finding some small comfort in the sight even as he heads towards certain doom (or, well, rule breaking, but the two aren't exactly mutually exclusive in his mind).
At some undetermined marker, Victor stops, and when he turns to look at Yuuri, the smile on his face is far too excited and boyish for a 21-year-old.
“Ready?” He asks, eyes large and eager, and Yuuri pulls his wrist free, laughing nervously.
“Uh.” Yuuri doesn’t break rules. He started coming to Camp Rosewood when he was seven, and he’d never broken the rules as a camper, and he’s certainly never broken a rule as a counselor. Victor wasn’t exactly the best influence when they were campers together, but now… Yuuri bites his lip. He’s never let things get this far.
“It’s okay if you change your mind,” Victor promises, his smile softening around the edges and making Yuuri’s heart flutter in his chest. There. That. When Victor had snuck into his cabin earlier that night and gently woken him and asked, voice low and conspiratorial, if Yuuri wanted to go on an adventure with him, Yuuri’s heart had tried to fly straight out of his chest and Yuuri had had no choice but to follow after it.
He’ll be 20 this year, and Victor still has the capability to make him feel like they’re children again.
Yuuri takes a deep breath.
“If this gets us kicked out, I’m selling you out,” he mutters, removing his glasses, and Victor gasps quietly, pressing a hand to his chest.
“Yuuri.” He tsks. “But don’t worry, we won’t—they love both of us too much to kick us out.” Yuuri’s face pinches in doubt. “What? They do! You are the model camper-turned-counselor, all the directors think you’re a god among Camp Rosewood, and you’re constantly requested as a counselor. As for me—” Victor pauses, and smiles at him, his face thrown into harsh shadows by the light of the moon. “Well, why do you think I brought you along?”
“Victor!” Yuuri hisses, unable to keep the laugh out of his voice, feeling immensely flattered at the same time that he wants to refute every single one of Victor's claims. Especially considering that he’s pretty sure Victor is the most requested counselor, and that the directors love him because he has more energy than all the campers combined. Sometimes it seems like he's the only one who can truly keep up with them.
Victor winks at him. “Let’s go.” He toes out of his shoes and leaves them on the shoreline with the towels he was smart enough to remember bringing—Yuuri had been so incoherent and half asleep that Victor practically had to guide him through locating his swim trunks. It’s a miracle that none of his campers woke up, and—oh god, this is so irresponsible of them? What if one of his campers wakes up and needs something and he’s not—
No, no, it’s okay. That’s why he has a CIT. Phichit will have things under control, and his campers are pretty low maintenance. This is fine. He can do this one thing. It won’t kill him.
(He knows there are campfire stories about a monster that lives at the bottom of the lake, but those are just stories—right?)
“Last one in the water has to wash out the canoes at the end of the week!” Victor goads, stripping out of his shirt and throwing it behind him as he runs into the water.
“Victor!” Yuuri calls after him (he always tries to get out of canoe duty), and then immediately slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide, and Victor’s laughter rings too loud over the water. “Victor,” he hisses, leaving his own shoes and shirt on the shore as he heads into the water. It’s not frigid, but it’s far from warm. Still, in the humid, summer air, it feels refreshing and nice, although Yuuri is only half paying attention as he wades into it. “Be quiet!” He hushes, glancing around nervously. “Someone’s going to hear you.”
When he looks back though, Victor is gone, leaving just ripples in the water where he had been moments before.
“…Victor?”
There is no lake monster, he tells himself. You are 20, and you are too old to believe in lake mons—something just touched my leg.
Yuuri knows it’s coming a second before it happens, but that doesn’t stop the yelp that escapes him as Victor (not a monster) grabs him by the ankle and pulls him under. It’s only a second, but then he’s breaking the surface and gasping, turning to stare at Victor in shock and indignation.
“Yuuri, be quiet,” Victor scolds, mockingly. “Someone’s going to hear you.” He grins, and Yuuri stares at him, feeling particularly gobsmacked. And even though they are both entirely wet and its effect is ultimately dulled, Yuuri splashes him—which still manages to draw the spluttered look of surprise on Victor’s face he was hoping for.
Of course, it also starts a full-on splash war, and Yuuri does his best to keep his shrieks and laughter down to a hush, every other splash sent in Victor’s direction embellished with a, “Victor, Victor, shut up!”
It culminates with Victor bodily picking him up and throwing them both into the water, and when they come up, gasping from how much they’ve laughed and how much energy they’ve exerted in messing around, they’re finally quiet, smiles pressed into each other’s bare shoulders as they catch their breath. Yuuri’s heart is a hammer in his chest, and he really, really hopes that Victor can’t feel it.
“Yuuri…” He pulls back, meeting Yuuri’s eyes and looking surprisingly serious. The water has pushed his hair back out of his face, the moon reflecting off the water making it look even more like starlight than usual, his normally bright eyes dark in the nighttime.
Yuuri is rather certain he’s in love with him.
“Thanks for coming with me.” He reaches up with both hands, and pushes at Yuuri’s wet hair, brushing it back and… Sculpting it into a mohawk. They both start laughing again, the strange tension of the moment shattering like the stillness of the lake before Yuuri can think too long or too hard about what just happened. He loses his footing and they end up collapsing against one another, which ultimately sends them both back underwater.
They’re both beyond exhausted when the trumpet sounds in the morning, having finally been dry enough to sneak back into their respective cabins not long before gone. But the smile that Victor sends him as he lines his campers up outside his cabin only a few hours later says that he doesn't regret it—and Yuuri finds that he doesn't, either.
Maybe, just maybe, breaking the rules sometimes isn’t so bad.