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“How the fuck did this even happen?” Yurio drops in a seat next to Yuuri’s hospital bed. He looks angry— scowling with his feet propped up on the mattress and his arms folded over his lap—but Viktor knows he’s secretly worried. He’d spent the last few hours keeping their friends and family updated on Yuuri’s status via text while Viktor busied himself with pacing the perimeter of the waiting room and intermittently crying.
“It was a seagull,” Viktor sighs. He combs Yuuri’s hair from his forehead, careful to avoid the iv extending from the crook of his arm.
“A seagull!?”
“An evil seagull,” Viktor confirms. “Demon possessed.”
The day had started like any other: with Viktor waking up bright and alert when their alarm chimed at six and Yuuri grabbing at his shirttail and begging for five more minutes in a snuffly, sleepy voice. Viktor complied like he always did, pulling Yuuri’s bed-warmed body to his chest and tracing soothing lines up and down his spine with his fingertips.
He had no reason to believe he’d be facing down the afternoon of the same day with his husband at his side in white-knuckled, writhing agony while the doctor informed them of the high probability that Yuuri would have to live out the rest of his life sans one testicle.
It was a beautiful and sunny summer morning. The chilly Russian spring had finally warmed up to a temperature that even Yuuri could enjoy without the barrier of a thick sweater and pants, and Yuuri and Viktor took full advantage of this upswing in weather by opening their porch doors and letting in the salty ocean breeze.
“Solnishko?” Viktor turns from his spot leaning against the railing. “You awake?” Yuuri is sprawled in a lounge chair behind him with his head back and eyes closed, a gentle smile playing on his lips as the cool breeze ruffles through his sleep-styled curls.
Yuuri peeks his eyes open and slow blinks at Viktor, eyebrows knit in a silent question. Answer enough, really. Viktor laughs, taking Yuuri’s pliant hand in his own and kissing his knuckles. “I’ll make coffee,” he says, rubbing Yuuri’s shoulder when he passes him.
It should’ve been a normal morning with Viktor luring Yuuri into the kitchen with the smell of his favorite Brazilian dark roast, coaxing Yuuri into the chair next to him with a plate of egg whites and fresh cut melon, and then pretending to be irritated when Yuuri tries to crawl into his lap—for the moment, more interested in cuddles than eating.
Instead, Viktor is interrupted mid pour by a high-pitched squeal and a loud crash, followed by the sound of frenzied rustling and half-yelled Japanese expletives.
“Yura?” Viktor sprints from the kitchen—heart in his throat—ducking just in time to avoid being bowled over by an angry, squawking tangle of talons and white feathers. “What the—” he pants, steadying himself on the coffee table as his brain works to make sense of the tumult.
“Vitya,” Yuuri’s voice calls out weak and muffled from the porch. “Did he get you?”
Viktor turns his head left, then right. “Who?”
“The seagull,” Yuuri groans from his position on the floor, trapped beneath a pile of patio furniture.
“Seagull?” Viktor asks. He trips over his own feet in his hurry to free his husband from his wicker prison.
Yuuri hums his confirmation, wincing as Viktor pulls him from the upturned furniture and back to his feet. “A demon possessed one.”
“Well, it’s in the house now,” Viktor tells him, though it’s not really necessary: the clatter of dishes splintering across their cement flooring and Makkachin’s frantic barking is evidence enough of their winged intruder.
“Great,” Yuuri runs a hand through his tangled hair. “Do we have a net?”
“A net?”
“Or I don’t know...a broom?”
“Yura—” Viktor tilts his head, watching as the bird hops off a pendant light and lands smack dab in the middle of Yuuri’s cooling breakfast —“now is not the time to be cleaning.”
Yuuri hides a laugh behind his hand.
“I know we never made good on that spring cleaning promise...”
“I can’t take it a moment longer,” Yuuri plays along, wincing when the seagull flies off the table and almost gets caught in their hanging pot rack. “Have you seen the silverware lately?”
“Completely tarnished,” Viktor yells over the loud cacophony of clanging pans.
“Horribly.” Yuuri clears his throat and pats the small of Viktor’s back. “So, anyway—“ he points at the bird, now flapping desperately against the closed kitchen window in search of an exit—“do you think we should do something about that?”
“Personally, I think it’s fine,” Viktor shrugs. “But if you’re concerned.”
“I don’t really prefer feathers in my breakfast.”
Viktor smiles and bumps Yuuri with his hip. “Let it be known that Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov is the true diva of the household,” he says, leaving Yuuri’s side to pull Makkachin away from the bird by the collar.
Yuuri rolls his eyes—an admission of guilt on his tongue—when the seagull makes a sudden lunge for Viktor and Makkachin. Yuuri rushes to intervene. He throws his body between his family and the deranged fowl, slipping across the kitchen floor in his socked feet and falling into something of a painful split.
The ruckus is enough to send the bird flying back towards the open patio doors, so Yuuri scrambles up and sprints after it— squawking and waving his arms around until the seagull gets the message and wings it back outside.
It’s all very heroic, at least up until the point where Yuuri’s adrenaline rush wanes and he’s left with a tight, bone-chilling ache in his crotchal region.
“You did it!” Viktor cheers, running out on the porch to watch the seagull flying up the shore. “Good job, honey!” He turns to high five Yuuri, only to find him slumped in a patio chair—rubbing his palms up and down the length of his thighs— his face pale and drawn in an obvious expression of pain.
Viktor startles and kneels at Yuuri’s side, hesitantly hovering his fingertips over his knee. “What hurts?”
Yuuri shakes his head back and forth. “No, sorry—” he straightens, exhaling a shaky breath through his mouth—“I-I’m okay. It’s fine.” At least, he thinks it is. The initial pain had felt like being kicked in the dick by a soccer cleat wearing Megaloman, but it was gradually mellowing out to something less intestine twisting.
“Yura,” Viktor warns, his voice tilting up into an audible question mark.
“It’s passing, I think I just—” Yuuri shrugs—“pulled my groin or something.”
Viktor nods. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. “Patio parkour can do that,” he teases. Yuuri huffs out a short laugh and smiles, and Viktor feels the remaining nervous tension melt away from his shoulders at the sight of it. “But let’s take the day off, just to be sure.”
Yuuri doesn’t argue, which sends another short pang of fear through Viktor’s chest. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks, slipping his shoulder under Yuuri’s arm and helping him hobble over to the couch.
“Yeah,” Yuuri grunts as he’s lowered into the cushions. “Just...sore.” He leans back and looks up at Viktor, doing his best to hide his discomfort behind what he hopes is a convincing smile. “Maybe ice would help?”
Viktor softens, leaning down to kiss Yuuri on the temple. “Of course, solnishko,” he says, moving further down to kiss Yuuri on the lips. “Anything for my brave vanquisher of seagulls.”
Four ice packs, a three-hour nap, and two doses of aspirin later finds Yuuri sitting back on the couch—spread eagle and stiff-limbed—sweat beading in his hairline and trailing down the back of his neck. Every tiny movement sends sharp pain rocketing from his testicles into his stomach and down his thighs—curling sharp and tight in his toes.
“We should go to urgent care,” Viktor frets, handing Yuuri another ice pack.
The ice isn’t helping, but Yuuri takes it anyway, resting it over the same dampened spot on his crotch. Viktor had already given him the saddest handjob of his life half an hour ago—hopeful that Yuuri’s pain was just a random bad case of blue balls and not the severe groin pull they had previously theorized. Unsurprisingly, despite Viktor’s masterful technique, his ministrations do little to help. After a whole eight minutes of Yuuri trying and failing to generate anything resembling arousal in his aching groin, he’d had to beg Viktor to stop when the pain grew so intense he almost threw up in his lap.
They’re running out of home remedies and Yuuri is running out of stamina. His balls feel like two giant bruises getting grape stomped by an elephant. It’s the most miserable Yuuri ever remembers feeling and modesty be damned: he’s starting to think it’s not a good idea to fuck around with his testicles.
“Okay,” Yuuri finally relents, tears in his eyes. “Let’s go.”
+
“Deep breaths,” Viktor coaches Yuuri from the backseat of the taxi. He has one hand gripped in Yuuri’s and the other holding a bag of ice over Yuuri’s groin. “In through your nose and out through your mouth.”
“I’m n-not giving birth,” Yuuri manages through gritted teeth, though he can’t imagine that childbirth could be much more painful than what feels like a troupe of miniature tap dancers practicing wings over his balls with razors affixed to their shoes.
When they finally arrive at the urgent care—after innumerable jarring bumps that have Yuuri clinging to Viktor’s arm and pleading for mercy from the god’s of testicular health—the agony of walking has escalated to such a staggering degree that Yuuri loses the battle with his stomach and vomits on himself at check-in.
Viktor feels awful for him, but he can’t help but be distantly thankful for it when a nurse comes out almost immediately to usher them away to a room. Yuuri is taken back in a wheelchair (despite Viktor’s insistence that he could carry him) and is instructed to trade out his soiled sweats for an open-backed paper gown.
“Tell my parents I love them.” Yuuri gasps, delirious from pain as Viktor helps him change. “Mari can finally turn my room into the hair studio she’s always wanted.”
“Hush, love.” Viktor coaxes Yuuri’s face into his shoulder and pets his hair, not bothering to tie up the sash in the back. The move is in no way a tactic to hide his tears from his husband, but if a few slip out unnoticed, it’s probably not a bad thing. Yuuri is distressed enough as it is—gripped by the twin torments of fear and serious injury to his...well, twins. Viktor doesn’t intend to add to his situation by breaking down into a blubbering mess, even if every inch of his being is trembling in anticipation of it.
Viktor thinks back to the time he had busted his knee during practice half a year ago. Yuuri had taken immediate charge: helping Viktor off the ice, calling for a taxi with remarkable calm despite his anxiety for all things phone related, and speaking to the doctor in Russian so precise that Viktor had teared up for a moment from pride rather than pain.
He’d noticed it then but had forgotten through the haze of painkillers and cuddles, but now it occurs to him again as he struggles to keep himself together in the face of his husband’s torment: how everyone including himself underestimates just how truly strong Yuuri is.
The doctor arrives reasonably quickly after the nurse takes Yuuri’s temperature and blood pressure. He pulls up Yuuri’s robes without any kind of fanfare, and while Yuuri doesn’t dare look down, he does see Viktor gasp and cup his hands over his mouth.
The doctor says something about attempting manual detorsion, Yuuri isn’t clear on the details because what follows is the doctor reaching down to touch his tender testicles and an agony so intense, his vision flares for a moment into white nothingness and he fears he might pass out.
“I’m transferring you to the ER.” The doctor says, typing something into his laptop while Yuuri lies back on the examining table, desperately trying to blink himself back to reality. “It looks like testicular torsion, but he’ll need an x-ray to confirm.” He stops typing and looks to Viktor. “Did you drive here?”
Viktor shakes his head—words having momentarily left him at the shock of his poor husband’s red, swollen ball.
“I’ll call for an ambulance then.” The doctor returns to typing.
“N-no. Vitya,” Yuuri chokes, reaching a hand out for Viktor. “No ambulances.”
Viktor opens his mouth and knits his eyebrows, looking to the doctor for help, then back at Yuuri. “Love,” he says gently, cupping his hand to the side of Yuuri’s face, “I don’t really think—”
“If blood flow is not restored to the affected site, it could result in orchiectomy.”
Viktor and Yuuri stare blankly at the doctor, eyebrows raised to their hairlines in matching expressions of confusion.
“They’ll have to remove the testicle.”
“Yura,” Viktor turns back to Yuuri, eyes wide and desperate.
“Call Yakov,” Yuuri pleads. He knows it’s ridiculous, but the pain and the panic and the less-than-positive attention is pulling his nerves wire tight, and he really, really doesn’t want to add to the stampede of stimuli by being loaded on a gurney and paraded through crowds of people—sirens blaring—all for a wounded nutsack. “If he doesn’t answer, I’ll take the ambulance.”
Viktor looks like he wants to argue, but time is of the essence, so he pulls out his phone and hits the speed dial. Yakov answers on the third ring, something he probably regrets when Viktor starts ranting at high speed in his ear—only managing to clearly convey the words “bird-glar”, “urgent care,” and “broken balls” before breaking down in tears.
Fortunately, Yakov has been his coach long enough to decipher the game of dramatic Mad Libs that is Viktor-ese. Or maybe his expert translation skills have more to do with Yuuri taking the phone and telling him, “they’ll have to amputate my testicle if I don’t get to the hospital immediately, please come pick us up.”
When Yakov pulls up to the building, Viktor is already outside, sitting on the curb with Yuuri in his lap—clad in nothing but a hospital gown and a jacket. Viktor stands when he spots the car—cradling Yuuri in his arms—and taps his knee on the door. “Out,” he demands when Yurio wrenches the door open with a scowl, “Yuuri needs front.”
“Fine,” Yurio climbs out, for once relinquishing the seat without argument. “Don’t get your testes in a twist.”
Viktor lowers Yuuri into the newly empty seat and pushes it as far back as it will go, and Yuuri winces hard and shudders. “Why’s Yurio here?” He asks, trying to concentrate on anything other than the invisible, venom-soaked nail bat hitting home run after home run with his gonads. He’s pretty sure Yakov would eventually forgive him for vomiting in his car, but he’d rather not test that theory if he doesn’t have to.
Yurio leans over the middle console and snaps a picture of Yuuri—pale-faced and sweaty— holding a makeshift sandwich bag of ice over his crotch. “Documentation.”
Yuuri starts to protest, but Viktor beats him to the punch—jumping in the back seat and holding his hand in front of the lens. “Take another picture and the phone gets a meet and greet with the asphalt,” he warns.
It’s rare for Viktor to assert himself in an obviously aggressive way. It makes Yuuri’s heart skip a beat, even through the haze of his misery.
Yurio rolls his eyes and kicks back in his seat. “So,” he says, scrolling through his pictures, “are they seriously gonna have to remove your nut?”
+
They seriously have to remove his nut.
Yuuri’s finding it hard to care, doped up as he is, but Viktor seems quite distressed— holding Yuuri’s open palm against his cheek and nuzzling his face into it while muttering frantic apologies in Russian, English and Japanese.
Yuuri wants to tell him it’s okay—that it’s not his fault—but his tongue is heavy in his mouth and he’s fairly certain his limbs are melting into the bed. He tries to smile instead, but that just makes Viktor start blubbering about how Yuuri is so beautiful, so brave, so strong.
Yuuri hates seeing Viktor this upset, but he does enjoy the dizzy feeling of affection crashing over him in waves. He doesn’t get much time to appreciate it because soon the nurses are prepping him for surgery and Viktor is being ushered out to the waiting room. Yuuri watches the door until Viktor’s out of sight and continues to stare at the empty space he once occupied even as the nurses countdown from ten and Yuuri slips off into dark, painless unconsciousness.
When Yuuri wakes again, it takes a few long minutes to orient himself: it’s dark, his mouth is dry, his head feels a little floaty, and his body feels pleasantly numb—altogether not entirely dissimilar to a lot of Sunday mornings waking up after a house party in Detroit, which is where Yuuri assumes he must be at first.
There’s a face nuzzled against his cheek—it’s a pleasant feeling even if accompanied by the faint smell of coffee breath and the abrasive touch of stubble that is too thick to belong to Phichit. It’s the familiar weight of fingers combing through his hair that makes memory return in a tumble: his heroic attempt to rescue Viktor and Makkachin from their crazed winged intruder, the resultant apocalyptic groin pain, a lot of jostling and nausea and prodding at his genitals, and then here—now: the hospital, presumably post-surgery and sans one ball.
“Hi sleepyhead,” Viktor, he now realizes, says. “You with me this time?”
Yuuri tries to look at him but has a little trouble focusing. “This time?” The words come out raspy. He blinks hard, searching his mind for any scrap of a memory. He’d had a dream of waking up after surgery to find an angel at his bedside—pale-skinned and breathtakingly handsome with glittering silver hair and a soothing, kind voice. Yuuri thinks he might have cried at the sight of him, he’d definitely asked if his lost ball would go to heaven. It hadn’t felt like reality—everything had been too soft and bright around the edges— but now, Yuuri isn’t so sure.
“It’s okay, solnishko,” Viktor reassures him, helping a glass of water to his lips. Yuuri is too overwhelmed by the refreshing feeling of liquid on his dry throat to notice the pale pink flush dusting Viktor’s cheekbones. “You don’t need to remember.”
The drink clears Yuuri’s head a little. He realizes for the first time that Yurio is asleep in the chair beside him, and that—while he’s as beautiful as ever—Viktor looks possibly the most frazzled Yuuri has ever seen him: his hair is stringy and half matted to his forehead, his clothes are rumpled, and his eyes are bloodshot from recent tears. “Are you okay?” Yuuri asks. He tries to reach for Viktor’s hand but overshoots and bumps his knuckles against the safety rail.
Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand instead and squeezes it, covering his mouth with his free hand when his breath hitches with incoming tears. Yuuri knows it’s wrong, but he can’t help but think Viktor looks beautiful when he cries.
“I should be asking you that,” Viktor says when he’s pulled himself together again.
Maybe it’s the haze of painkillers, but Yuuri can’t understand why. So he lost a testicle? It’s not like he and Viktor were ever going to naturally conceive, anyway. He would trade both of his nuts if it meant keeping his family safe. He supposes that’s what it means to love someone: to prioritize their safety and comfort over your own. It’s a way better feeling than his balls ever provided.
“I’m okay.” Yuuri wishes he could reach up to wipe away Viktor’s tears, but the thought of sitting up is a dizzying one, so he just smiles up at him reassuringly. “But we might have to postpone spring cleaning a little longer.”
Viktor huffs a wet laugh. “I should’ve known. This was all just a scheme to get out of your chores.”
“Nuts,” Yuuri’s laugh is lost when Viktor leans down to kiss him. It’s soft and chaste, not overflowing with lust but safe and warm and familiar: like home. Yuuri stares up at Viktor when they part, eyes soft and reverent as he nearly chokes on a shaky inhale. “You got me.”