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If Mama could have given him just one piece of advice to follow to the letter, it should be this:
Find yourself a nice, beautiful Japanese boy that hails from Hasetsu, lives in an inn, skates like a dream and adores dogs.
It’s weirdly specific, Victor knows, but it’d have been sound advice, at least.
Very specifically, if he’d never met Yuuri, even if Yuuri had never walked away from him, Victor should go straight to Hasetsu and throw Yuuri over his shoulder and try to convince Yuuri to fall in love with him. However, as Victor is a bit of a lucky bastard, that is exactly what he has already managed to do. He’s not entirely sure how and when it happened, but he’s grateful.
Yuuri, who bows to strangers, bows to journalists and judges and the audience, to fans and friends alike when he gets embarrassed and escapes into his impeccable manners.
It occurs to Victor, rather belatedly, that whenever they’re in Japan, Yuuri is Katsuki-senshyu. He’s Katsuki-san and a pair of children calls him Katsuki-sama and Katsuki-sensei and Yuuri flushes, cheeks dusted a pretty pink. In Hasetsu, he’s Yuuri-kun and Yuu-chan and he’s only ever Yuuri to his family and friends. He’s never been anything but Yuuri to Victor.
“I could call you Yuuri-kun,” Victor offers and Yuuri blinks like he’s not sure why Victor is even speaking right now, like the words coming out of his mouth are all sounds and no meaning.
“Why would you?” he says, baffled.
Before Yuuri, Victor had only had a passing interest in Japan. As in, he’d been there for competitions, eaten (perfect) sushi and seen Tokyo Tower from the car. After eight months’ immersion in a small, rural Japanese town, he feels something fiercer bloom in his chest when he thinks of Japan. It’s like the town has lodged itself behind his ribcage, split him open and nestled there in the cavity, and when he hears Japanese, he feels a rush of overwhelming affection. It’s not even that he understands all of it – to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t understand everything, not with all the different dialects and trailing off and onomatopoeias, and Yuuri himself has admitted that Victor's own accent is somewhat atrocious.
But cute, Yuuri had stressed.
He doesn’t mind – in all fairness, Yuuri is doing better with learning Russian than Victor is with Japanese, and Victor will make an effort because. Well. He’s marrying Yuuri at the first chance he gets.
It doesn’t occur to Victor until one day at the rink in St. Petersburg when some Japanese journalists are doing an interview with Yuuri, that addressing Yuuri without honorifics is an intimate thing to a Japanese person.
“Katsuki-senshyu,” the journalists demur, and beside Victor, Yakov is uncharacteristically silent.
They watch in silence as Yuuri and the journalists bow to each other, clasping hands and bowing again.
“I can’t believe that boy has such bad taste that he’s marrying you,” Yakov grumbles. It’s probably mostly because Yuuri is the only one who does what Yakov says immediately without protesting first.
Victor, whose mouth has gone a bit dry at Yuuri, who has agreed to do some spins for the camera and forms a perfect Bielmann, clears his throat. “Trust me, I can’t believe it, either.”
Yakov glances at him, mouth a thinning line. “I’d say you’re batting out of your league if not for the fact that he says the same about himself. No self-esteem. You get on that.”
Victor doesn’t say, if you think it’s bad now, you should’ve seen it a year ago. The Yuuri from a year ago blushed, stammered and turned tail in horrification at the merest suggestion that Victor liked to look at him. Yuuri now gets a calculated look in his eyes eight times out of ten and demands Victor’s attention. The last two times out of ten, he blushes prettily and bows his head.
Yuuri says something in Japanese and the journalists nod.
He sounds… different in Japanese. His voice is deeper, easier to laughter, somehow he sounds more mature. Victor adores it. He made the mistake once, of telling Yuuri this and Yuuri had been taken aback, turned quiet and shy for a bit. He’s self-conscious about a lot of things, languages being one of them. He worries about his vocabulary (which he shouldn’t, because five years in Detroit has been a wonder for him), his accent (which is a hundred times better than most others with English as their second language) and whether or not he expresses himself accurately.
Victor knows he’s had more than one anxiety attack over the languages rummaging around in his brain.
All his life, Yuuri has built walls around himself, brick for brick, thicker and thicker, perfectly polite, aloof and unreachable. Victor is equal parts horrified and smug about the fact that he just had to hurl himself at them enough times for him to stick to who Yuuri is behind his defenses. Yuuri tried with words and actions and the metaphorical crowbar to pry him off out of a weird combination of self-preservation, self-sacrifice and stubbornness, until he gave up. Victor has no problem admitting he’s a leech.
“It’s part of his charm,” Victor finally says when Yuuri does a triple axel to the applause of the journalists. “You should see him do ballet.”
Yakov grunts. “I have seen him do ballet.”
Ah, Victor thinks. Lilia. “He says he’ll start up yoga, properly.”
“He’s more diligent than you, start taking lessons from him,” is what Yakov says to that and then he leaves just as Yuuri bows his farewell to the journalists.
“Have you seen his thighs?” Victor calls after him, louder than needed, and laughs when Yakov says something decidedly not polite back. Yuuri has stiffened, ramrod straight back facing Victor, and Victor holds back a sigh. There’s still a lot of miscalculation going on for him, because he’s not always entirely sure how much Yuuri understands at any given time – and that’s more to do with Yuuri downplaying himself than Victor’s attention span.
On the way home, Victor says, “Would Mari think I was weird if I called her onee-san?”
Yuuri side-eyes him pretty hard. “She’d think you were weird if you didn’t. She’d probably take offense, too, just because she can.”
Victor laughs and curls his arm tighter around Yuuri’s, tugs him closer. Marrying Yuuri is all gain. Family. “Would I be Katsuki Victor, then?”
Yuuri has a wide variety of looks and this one is the he’s lost all his marbles now-look. It’s a very good look on him even if it doesn’t flatter Victor much. He doesn’t even need to ask, he’s so expressive in the language Yuuri and Victor speaks best.
“I love Japanese,” is what he says by the way of no explanation at all. He knows it. “And you look amazing in black.”
Ah, there’s the he’s lost it and I’m saddled with him-look. That’s an unfairly good look on him, too.
At home, Yuuri briefly speaks to Phichit, smatterings of Thai, Japanese and English (and Victor realizes with something he doesn’t dare name bubbling in his chest, that sometimes some Russian inflections sneak in, too) and Victor is floored all over again just how much Yuuri can do if he sets his mind to it, and how little he’s aware of it.
It’s a blessing and a curse, because he’s not sure the world would survive a Yuuri that is aware of just how wonderful he is.
“French,” Victor mutters into his neck, later, while mouthing kisses at the heated skin. His hand finds Yuuri’s, curls their fingers together.
“What about – oh – French?” Yuuri asks, breath short and cheeks flushed lovely as he presses back into Victor’s touch.
Victor needs a moment to remember what his line of thought was. He deserves a medal for being able to think at all while in bed with Katsuki Yuuri. “Language of love,” he pants, finds Yuuri’s mouth and loses track of his thought process again.
Yuuri, boneless and sated and the right kind of sweaty, drapes himself over Victor and breathes deeply. “About French?”
“Hm,” Victor says. He had a point, he knows he did, but it’s sort of hazy right now. He feels like he’s drifting. Drifting in a sea of Yuuri. It’s a nice thought. The sea, like Yuuri, deep and endless and so much more than it appears to be. Yuuri pokes him.
“Vitya,” he says, his consonants rounded more Japanese than Russian but all the dearer for it. No one has ever said his name like that, like it means something more than Victor the Skater. “French?”
Oh, right. Thoughts: located. “I think you’d sound lovely in French.”
“Merci,” Yuuri says and then yawns. They have so many friends all over the world.
“Charming,” Victor says into Yuuri’s next yawn and he should probably try to be sarcastic about it, but he’s helpless to Yuuri. “You should learn French. It’s not like you’d need to learn a new alphabet for it.”
Yuuri blinks, long and languid, and somehow manages to feel like he doubles his weight. It’s not like Victor minds it, he likes the weight of him, the firm press of his body against his own. “You don’t think I have enough languages going around already?”
Before listening to Yuuri talking to Phichit over Skype, longer talks and more private talks than ones at competitions, Victor hadn’t realized that Yuuri knew quite a bit of Thai. Phichit sometimes replies in Japanese. Victor is so happy Phichit is in Yuuri’s life.
Japanese has three alphabets, true, and he’s learning Cyrillic all for Victor, so perhaps he shouldn’t ask Yuuri to learn one more language even if he already knows the letters of it.
“I could ask Chris,” Yuuri muses in a tone that suggests he knows very well how Victor will like that: not at all.
“You will not,” Victor says. “Forget French.”
The first month after Yuuri arrived in Pulkovo Airport, jetlagged and hiding beneath a beanie and a face mask and so achingly beloved that Victor had thought he’d never want to look away, Victor learned a lot about Yuuri and, by extension, himself. For one, he’s utterly powerless to the fact that Yuuri knows how to cook. Yuuri has learned a lot from his mother, apparently, both the heavier meals and their dietary requirements. Victor is reasonably sure that he’s never eaten so well before in his entire life.
The second thing he learned about himself is this:
He loves living with Yuuri. He knows that technically, all the time he spent in Japan could be classified as living with Yuuri, too, but this is different, special, because it’s just them. Sometimes he catches Yuuri looking at the ring on his finger like he can’t believe it, and Victor knows how he feels, because he looks at Yuuri sometimes and can’t believe it either.
Yuuri doesn’t like doing the laundry, he hogs the blankets during the night, somehow manages to lose one sock every week and tries to deal with his anxiety on his own. Victor can burn salad, doesn’t mind doing the laundry, is terrible at not hogging all the counter space in the bathroom and has terrible trouble trying to help Yuuri deal with his anxiety.
Out of breath and hyperventilating; shaking and crying, eyes wide and skin flushed; Victor burns with him. He can only stay and watch, only touch him when he’s given the go ahead.
Above everything else, Yuuri fears being seen as weak. He could never be anything else than strong to Victor.
They’re quite the pair.
Victor has spent the better part of a year coaxing Yuuri to bloom; prodding, poking, gentle nudges, kind words – sometimes, stupid, callous words, less than gentle poking, mistakes and missteps and waiting, so much waiting – waiting for Yuuri to cautiously step out of his comfort zone, to open up, to decide to trust that taking chances are worth the risk of getting hurt.
Victor will be so careful with him, for the rest of his life, for as long as Yuuri will allow it, and to be quite honest, even if Yuuri one day doesn’t want it, Victor is certain he won’t stop even then. He doesn’t know how, or even where to begin.
Yuuri once said, cocooned in the darkness of their bedroom and voices dulled by their blanketed cave, with his voice resilient and always brave in the dark, that as long as Victor was meeting him, Yuuri would step towards him. It’s possibly the most romantic thing Victor has ever heard.
On the ice, Yuuri is always beautiful. Victor is biased, yes, but he only needs eyes to see this; on ice, Yuuri is dangerous, deceptively fragile. On ice, he’s the sweetest thing, smiles freer and the most honest they get. Although – Victor is realizing; he gets to see the most honest Yuuri, the most genuine and sweet one, his smiles falling loose like he can’t help it. More and more often, just the two of them, Yuuri chopping vegetables and sifting through bouillon, looking somehow even more Japanese, more foreign in Victor’s Russian kitchen. He’s slender, long and lean, resting more on the left leg than the other, and he’s utterly breathtaking.
“You’re staring,” Yuuri says, eyes downcast but the curve of his mouth turned up.
“Well, I can’t possibly be expected to not look at you when you look this good,” Victor reasons.
Yuuri blinks. “I’m chopping spring onions.”
The bend of his wrist is lovely, the way he lifts a cup (lies, it’s a bucket of coffee, most often) to his mouth is lovely. “Exactly,” he says. “Mama always said to find a man that could cook for me.”
Yuuri rolls his eyes and Victor would despair that even that is a good look on Yuuri, except for the fact that Victor is the one that gets to look at it. Every day.
“No, but think about it,” Victor says, warming to the subject, he can talk about Yuuri forever, “you’re perfect.”
A slice of spring onion hits the side of his face. “You’re perfect when you’re not being mean,” he amends and can’t wipe the smile off his face when Yuuri grins. He makes a long arm for him, and Yuuri obediently walks closer and yelps when Victor yanks at his wrist until he’s settled awkwardly across Victor’s thighs.
“You’re ridiculous,” is what Yuuri eventually says when he has moved to sit more comfortably for them both, his arms a loose, easy loop around Victor’s neck.
“I can’t help it that you do particularly attractive things all the time,” Victor protests and lays a hand to Yuuri’s neck. “Like now.”
Yuuri huffs. “I’m not doing anything!”
“You’re breathing!”
Yuuri laughs. He presses his mouth to the side of Victor’s head, the breath tickling through Victor’s hair, and he squeezes Victor closer. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Marry me,” Victor breathes, delighted. It hits him all over again at random points in time, knocks him right sideways, like his view of the world is finally aligning with reality.
“Well, I am, aren’t I?” Yuuri says, shrugging, but his words are laced with wonder and he sounds like joy should. Breathless pleasure. “I suppose that’s what I meant when I put that ring on you.”
Victor gasps. “You suppose?”
Yuuri lifts one shoulder; Victor doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s doing another of his what can you do?-faces. Yuuri will never admit to it, but he’s terribly smug that he was the one that got the rings first. “You’re lucky I’m in love with you,” Victor concludes and narrows his eyes at him.
Yuuri looks a little bit like Victor feels. Bowled over, knocked flat over. Like he can’t believe it.
“Aren’t we a pair?” Victor asks and uses his grip of Yuuri’s neck to bring his mouth down to meet his own.
A hand through his hair – a laugh against his mouth. “You have spring onion in your hair.”
He looks wonderful, laughing and happy and free. It’s a good thing he’s had ample opportunities to study the vast varieties of Yuuri’s looks, because it means that he can employ some of his own. He tries to communicate his own disbelief and hopefully convey with his eyebrows how much he thinks Yuuri is being mean.
Yuuri only laughs.
Victor wouldn’t have it any other way.
*