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Yuuri likes to sleep in on summer Saturdays. His covers are cool, the air conditioning blowing gently in from the window unit, and the sunlight shines in warmly, the light forming stripes on his bare chest as the rays pass through the gaps in his blinds. He checks his alarm clock. It’s only nine am. Something woke him up, and he can’t quite remember what it was. He recalls brief flashes of a dream that quickly dissipate with the dull thunk of a bulky piece of furniture being pushed up against the other side of his wall.
Right, he recalls. New neighbors.
Yuuri groans and pushes his face back into the pillow. He hears loud voices in the next apartment down, and hopes desperately that the new people aren’t too rowdy. There are advantages to living in Manhattan, sure, but peace and privacy are not one of them. The movers (he hopes they’re the movers) yell out again, and although the sounds are muffled, there’s no way he can go back to sleep now. He groggily sits up, scratching his stomach absentmindedly, blinking the night out of his eyes.
His apartment still smells like that tikka masala he had last night. Oh well, he thinks. There are worse things than a mildly dysfunctional ventilation system. At least he doesn’t have rats. Phichit had rats, once. Probably twice, actually. Yuuri remembers that he moved out to Long Island with his boyfriend Seung Gil soon after the second time.
Yuuri eats some of the left-over tikka masala for breakfast, then brushes his teeth over the kitchen sink.
“Damn it,” he mutters to himself, glancing at the string of photographs strewn over the floor. They had been hanging over his mirror, but had somehow fallen off. He should have expected it. Cheap tape.
Yuuri goes to pick them up. This one is his favorite. A man, silver hair and smooth, pale skin, looking out to the harbor in Battery Park, hands in his coat pockets and eyes calm, yet full of longing. Yuuri remembers taking that photograph, remembers the shutter going off, remembers lowering the camera away from his face and seeing the man look back toward him, a small smile on his lips and a spark in his eyes, in a gaze that could rival that of the Mona Lisa.
Yuuri remembers walking away as fast as he could.
The picture is one that he’s proud of, a lamp post elegantly framing the left side, providing an effective distinction between the foreground and the middle ground, the sunset creating an effect of chiaroscuro that he’s quite happy with. Yet his eyes remain drawn to the man in the photograph, tall and beautiful, cheeks reflecting the evening light.
Yuuri gets dressed, and hangs his camera over his neck, holding the camera bag on his shoulder. He figures he could get some nice shots today, since he’s gotten an early start anyway.
He steps out the door and locks his apartment, then nearly runs into a man in the hallway.
“Sorry,” they say in unison, and the other man begins to laugh.
“A bit of an abrupt way to meet one’s neighbor for the first time, but since we’re here,” says the man, “my name is Victor Nikiforov. I’m in apartment three forty.”
“Yuuri Kats--” begins Yuuri, but he is met with the same blue eyes, the same gentle smile as the one in the photograph, and he stops.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” says Victor, a thin Russian accent lining the tips of his words. “What was your name again?”
Yuuri shakes himself, tries to regain his senses. “So sorry,” he says, stumbling slightly over his words. “I’m Yuuri Katsuki.”
“Yuuri? That’s a beautiful name.”
Victor Nikiforov is beautiful. Wow, thinks Yuuri. He’s undeniably, absolutely gorgeous. I like to stare at the photograph I took of you two months ago, after which I ran away from your smile, Yuuri almost says, but doesn’t.
“Are you going somewhere?” Yuuri asks instead.
“Um, yeah,” answers Victor. “All the boxes are in, so I’m just going… out.”
“Oh. I’m going out, too,” says Yuuri stiffly.
“That’s a nice camera,” notes Victor. “Nikon D500?”
“Yeah,” answers Yuuri, surprised. “You know about cameras?”
“Just a bit. I’m a manager at Best Buy. Are you a photographer?”
Yuuri hesitates, but finally answers. “Yes, I am.”
“Wow!” exclaims Victor, and there is such amazement in his voice that Yuuri starts smiling too, a blush forming over the tips of his ears and his nose.
“I was going to see if I could find anything today, actually.”
“That’s wonderful! I’ll head downstairs with you, if you don’t mind. I’m going to take a look around the neighborhood, maybe grab a pastry or something.”
“I know a place,” says Yuuri, as they head into the elevator, and Victor is close, so very close, and it feels a bit like a strange extension of time in which two realities, the one of his photographs and the one of his day to day life, have melded into one and exploded into a handsome, slightly sweaty, beautiful Victor Nikiforov.
~~
“I think I recognize you from somewhere,” says Victor as they cross the street.
“Really?” squeaks Yuuri from beside him, keeping his eyes fixated on the other side of the road.
“Your eyes are familiar. Maybe your glasses. Maybe your camera. It’s all a bit blurry. I’ve never been very good at remembering.”
Yuuri’s heart begins to race.
“I recognize you from somewhere as well,” says Yuuri softly, as they walk out of the bakery with a pair of apple turnovers, each bite of pastry dough and filling warm in their mouths. “It’s your eyes. It’s your hair.”
~~
Victor furrows his eyebrows in concentration as they walk into a nearby park, sitting down on a bench next to each other. “Stand over there,” orders Victor suddenly, and Yuuri complies, confused. “Could you… could you hold your camera up to your face? As if you were taking a picture.”
And suddenly, Yuuri knows what’s going on. It’s a mind game. He knows that Victor knows that he knows. Heart pounding, he raises the camera up.
“Now bring it back down, and look me in the eyes.”
Yuuri does this.
“You’re that man. The one in Battery Park, back in... April, I think.”
“May.”
“May. Yes. You took my picture, then left.”
“I’m so sorry about that,” murmurs Yuuri, his head hunched.
“No,” says Victor, rising from the bench to place his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders, strong yet gentle. “I’ve not stopped thinking about you. Yuuri Katsuki, you have the most beautiful, memorable eyes I have ever seen.”
“Me?” blurts Yuuri, incredulous. “My eyes are nothing, have you seen...” He stops himself.
“I’m sorry?”
“Have you seen your own?” whispers Yuuri, looking up into Victor’s gaze, swept into his eyes as if caught in a current in a river. Victor laughs, a bright, shimmering laugh, and smiles fully, his eyes creasing and his cheeks turning a pale pink.
“Yuuri Katsuki,” says Victor, slowly. “I think it’s only fair that if you have a picture of me, I have one of you.”
“You don’t have to have only one,” says Yuuri.
“Oh, no, of course not. I could take another one tomorrow.”
“Yes, you could take another tomorrow,” says Yuuri, his lips trembling as his smile grows.
“And the day after that?”
“And the day after that.”
“Perfect,” says Victor, beaming. “Because to me, Yuuri, your eyes shine as brightly as the sun.”