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The rainstorm is sudden, silent, lightning flashing high above the sea. Normally Yuuri would have waited to run home until the downpour slowed, but he and Viktor had gambled and thought they could make it, on bike and foot.
The first drops could be Yuuri sweating, but before long the raindrops are undeniable and wet, sinking into his dark hair. Viktor cuts in front of him, bike bell dinging sweetly, and plucks out one of Yuuri’s headphones with a hand. “Let’s go under that overhang!”
“I can run back,” says Yuuri, rubbing at the drops on his eyelashes. “You could bike quicker without me and make it.”
“Do you know what brand my coat is, Yuuri?” Yuuri does not know, will never know or remember, but he still makes Viktor repeat it three times as he circles around him, the French flowing from his tongue. “I’d rather we hide away somewhere cozy.”
The rain is a dull, musical patter above their heads. Viktor fiddles with his bike lock, despite knowing perfectly well that the crime rate in Hasetsu is in the negative. Someone would probably take it, though only to fix the scratch running across its frame, etched deep in the paint. A Wednesday. There had been a dog, a nervous thing that darted in front of Viktor—he’d swerved with his legendary speed, smashed his front wheel into a concrete wall, tumbled out in a graceful sprawl onto the sidewalk. Viktor was fine. Yuuri had cried despite himself, fat tears rolling slowly down his hidden face, cupped in his hands. Viktor had laughed, startled, and beckoned him over.
“I’ve fallen worse,” he said, “I’ve fallen harder.”
“On the ice,” Yuuri had filled in, still jarred. So jarred that he couldn’t help himself, in brushing tiny bits of gravel from Viktor’s pants.
“I wasn’t talking about falling on my ass, Yuuri,” he hummed, ever enigmatic. “I like metaphors.”
“I know,” Yuuri chuckled, helpless. Viktor does like metaphors, incomprehensible ones. Every landing should be the ice rising up to meet your blades, you the moon and it the tide, not you hurtling in from the sky.
Yuuri always feels like he’s hurtling. Always feels like he’s falling, faster and faster, and the sweet but as of yet unaddressed kisses haven’t helped.
A rainstorm is something to escape from or run completely free in—splashing in makeshift rivers, soaked through the skin. For now, they escape. Water slides from the front of the overhang in sluicing sheets, hits the pavement in whispers. Viktor shakes his head, fringe clinging perfectly along the curve of his cheek. He smiles, a soft one, all for Yuuri. So Yuuri pushes up and takes the smile, steals it for his own lips and makes Viktor create another, a bigger one.
“We’re in front of a tea shop, you know.”
“Tea?” Viktor questions, eyes lighting up. There’s no pattern to capturing Viktor’s excitement—festivals and fireworks, predictable things, do just as well as wildflowers on the run home, a café in the rain. Yuuri loves him for that, too. Even if he doesn’t understand him quite yet.
They settle across from each other in a booth, and from his backpack Viktor pulls a small towel. It’s monogrammed with his initials, because he’s hopeless. But Yuuri can hardly complain, especially when he reaches across the table and tousles fondly at Yuuri’s hair with it, rubs the soft fabric down his cheek.
“There we are,” he says, pleased. He chucks Yuuri under the chin with one hand before he pulls away, smile from the kiss earlier still lingering on his lips.
Yuuri has known both the waitress and the owner of the café from childhood. He knows the ornate china they’re gifted, with steaming cups of black tea, has been handed down in this shop for years. Viktor presses the cup into Yuuri’s hands and takes five pictures, humming to himself, before posting it on Instagram. The notification buzzes on Yuuri’s phone, an echo. He’s gone from following Viktor Nikiforov to seeing the pictures be made, to know where Viktor is and how he’s smiling, to know that he taps out the three hearts captioning the picture with his index finger and not his thumb.
“Hmm?” Viktor says at Yuuri’s gaze. He’s moved on, intently spooning dark liquid from a container into his tea. It doesn’t matter, because he has some innate sense for when Yuuri is looking at him. Or maybe he doesn’t—just knows that Yuuri looks always, that he can’t tear his eyes away.
“I was just thinking,” Yuuri mumbles. “Probably… too much thinking?”
“Probably,” Viktor says easily, and puts the phone and spoon down.
“It’ll be a change of scene.” The steam from the tea is fogging up his glasses. He doesn’t wipe them—doesn’t want to see clearly, right now. “When you go back to Russia.”
“Hmm,” Viktor voices again. “Not too different. Sea. Seagulls. Katsuki Yuuri. Skating, although it’ll be for the Rostelecom Cup.”
Yuuri takes a deep breath. The air smells of cherry, the dark warmth of oolong. “I meant after the Grand Prix.”
The resulting sigh is a pinched off, musical thing—a wrong note. “Has anyone told you,” Viktor says, “to live in this moment?” Yuuri just grimaces at him. Always. Every day. Don’t worry, Yuuri, it won’t be that bad like last time. Don’t fret, Yuuri, you can’t predict what the future holds... It never works. But Viktor just blinks back, blue eyes intent. “I’m not telling you not to think about the future, or the past. I’m telling you it doesn’t work like that. Do you think,” at this he twists the teacup in his hands, “that you are a part of my life that begins and ends?”
It’s a yes or no question. To answer it with a yes or a no would be wrong.
“Sometimes,” Yuuri says, instead. “Sometimes, I feel that way.”
When Viktor is on the ice, in the early mornings, or demonstrates a sequence—Yuuri knows he can’t be kept. That being Yuuri’s coach is a piece of time Viktor can’t rediscover, a kind of jump he’ll master before moving on to the next, the better.
“Before we met.” Viktor stops, swallows, seems to have to summon something up. Yuuri is starting to wonder if it’s courage—if speaking to Yuuri is courage on both their parts. “I was waiting for you. In the times you’re gone, you’ll still be close to me. My time before, my time now, my future—you’re there.”
Yuuri carved out a part inside himself when he was young, a groove for Viktor Nikiforov to slip into. Now that he knows him, he knows there is no fitting Viktor anywhere, no part of Yuuri that can contain him. All of Yuuri has to come out, and meet Viktor between them.
“I was waiting for you too,” Yuuri whispers. He regrets it immediately—there’s kisses and burning hands slipping lower, and then there’s admitting you need someone. But Viktor has been the one to say it first, to initiate, and Yuuri can soothe himself with this, can be bolder. “No. That’s not… no.”
“No?” Viktor rumbles, voice low. He leans onto the table, tightens his grip on Yuuri’s hand by a fraction.
“No,” Yuuri repeats, and ducks his head. “I—I was chasing you. I couldn’t wait. And now… I want it to last.” I want you to live on inside me. Forever. Maybe, if he was lucky, a piece of him would live on in Viktor, too.
Regret. Yuuri should regret this. But the way he’s looking at Yuuri now, Yuuri feels he could say anything, do anything, and Viktor would still smile at him this way.
Yuuri had always thought that Viktor Nikiforov’s love would be something glamorous, unavoidable, a shimmering rink with a thousand voices in the stands. Something seamlessly practiced, something that sounds like music. Maybe it is. Maybe, someday, their love will be something shown on screens in every home. That’s something Yuuri can’t deny he desires. Viktor’s love is all of that, and something else, too.
Sometimes love is quiet. Love is the soft brush of Viktor’s thumb against his palm, the careful tilt of his head as he smiles. The calming clatter of a teacup, china ringing against itself, as Viktor pushes it his way.
“Want to try?”
Yuuri will try anything with him. Little steps—so he starts with the oolong tea. Smirks across the table.
“Strawberry jam?” Yuuri questions, and Viktor pouts, just the tiniest bit, before reclaiming his cup.
“I like it,” he says, and the climbing steam sways with the breath that carries his words.
“You use tea as an excuse to drink jam.”
“I don—“ Yuuri reaches across, presses Viktor’s own hand to his lips, still clasped gently with his own.
“You do,” he insists, delight curling into the words. Viktor flips their hands slowly, presses a kiss to Yuuri’s knuckles. He watches Yuuri the whole time, as though he’s going to pull away—as though he ever could.
“I do,” he admits softly. When their hands return to the dark wood of the table, he doesn’t let go. Just stares across the space between them, something thoughtful lost in the clear blue of his gaze.
Yuuri doesn’t speak for a few moments, as though that will preserve it, will let the moment become permanent, a frame in a storybook.
“You know,” Viktor says finally, eyes far away. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Held hands in a Japanese tea shop?”
“That’s a metaphor I’ve never heard for it,” Viktor replies, incomprehensibly. “But yes, Yuuri.”
Yuuri shifts, clears his throat gently. “I’m sure anyone would hold your hand in a Japanese tea shop,” he says, “if you just asked. Skaters. Presidents. ISU officials.” Viktor snorts, in a way that is somehow still becoming, and squeezes his hand. “Celebrities.”
Viktor leans forward, the curve of his smile soft. Achingly, Yuuri’s fingers imagine what it’d be like to trace it.
“You think I want to romance celebrities?” Romance…
“Well, you’re a celebrity,” Yuuri feebly tries to explain.
“Exactly. Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Viktor counters, smirk growing. “The one romancing a celebrity is you. At least until you admit that you’re famous, too.”
Yuuri feels the breath catch low in his throat, buoying up his heart.
“Is that what we’re doing,” he says, finally. The fame discussion he ignores altogether; stores away for another time, after careful analysis. “Romancing?”
Viktor blinks at him, drums his free fingers against the table once. The rain is a steady hum in the background. Yuuri has to know; has to be sure.
“Everything you do is romancing, Yuuri.” His voice is quiet, Viktor’s smile brittle, even as it teases. Yuuri hasn’t seen a smile like that since the first few weeks in Hasetsu. “But. I assumed that’s what the hand holding and the kissing was for, yes. Unless you had other ideas?”
“Ah, no,” Yuuri dismisses quickly. He looks down, but can’t resist darting his eyes back up again. “No, romancing is what I—want.”
The brittle smile shatters, revealing Viktor beaming at him. Under the table, his long legs come to tangle with Yuuri’s, matching his fingers. One heartbeat. Two. The feeling is like when alcohol floods into his brain all at once, a heady kick.
“Me too,” he says plainly. Viktor is a man of poetry, and in the past few weeks Yuuri has heard it all—spontaneous, raw prose about Yuuri’s dark eyes and newly-born legends about how certain spins came to be. “You’re the one, and I want you.”
Yuuri just wants all of his words memorialized, even these, simple as they are.
Untangling their legs and hands, Viktor slides from the seat. Yuuri fears the moment is going to disappear, dissipate into the air like the steam from their tea, warmth never to be seen again.
He squishes into the booth beside Yuuri, instead, hand coming to land on Yuuri’s knee. A butterfly kiss of a touch. Is this okay?
Yuuri pulls Viktor’s jam-filled tea to their side of the table, and sets his head on the broad shoulder. The motion has his glasses askew, so Viktor wordlessly nudges them into place, pale fingers on the navy blue frames, blurry in the corner of Yuuri’s eye.
“Sorry,” Viktor murmurs. “I like to consider myself a romantic.”
“I know that now,” says Yuuri.
China clinks softly in the background, dull but musical. Across the tea shop, the waitress and owner murmur in smooth, quiet Japanese. There they are. Here they are, sharing the same petrichor air, the same aged wooden booth. Despite all of the odds. Despite the past, and future, and anything in between.
“When the rain lets up,” Viktor says with a soft sigh, “we can go home.”
“Okay,” Yuuri agrees.
I have you now, he thinks. Viktor shifts beneath his cheek, nestles lips against Yuuri’s hair. I have you here with me.
Please let it last.
When they wander out into the wet sunshine, clouds drifting lazy and low over the sea, Yuuri lets a part of himself believe that it will.