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It’s not like Victor had never imagined it. Whenever Yuuri stood a little too close, or smiled in a certain way, or bent in to say something quietly in Victor’s ear, he’d let himself dream—
What it might be like to confess, to tell Yuuri how he felt. What it might be like for their relationship to transcend friendship, to be so much more than professional. What it might be like to have Yuuri press a hand (or a kiss!) to his cheek and not only accept his feelings, but reciprocate them.
(In Victor’s daydreams, Yuuri always, always, always felt the same way.)
He’d formulated countless scenarios in hundreds of different relationships, each one more romantic than the last. From Victor’s heart overflowing to the point where the words just spill out as Yuuri secures the knot of his already perfectly done tie to devastatingly dramatic declarations on 50th floor balconies overlooking the city lights as a corporate party neither of them cares about provides a romantic backdrop of classical music and the tinkling of crystal champagne glasses.
None of them had involved Victor with shower-damp, unstyled hair and dark sleep circles under his eyes. None of them had featured Victor dressed in his back-up office sweats, which are more comfy than they are aesthetically slouchy. And none of them had involved Victor stumbling through the office as he (poorly) attempts to run in an old pair of flip-flops, knocking over a trash can as he tries to get to the elevator bank as fast as possible.
And yet, here he is.
“Yuuri!”
He’d never known Yuuri could run so fast. Then again, he’d had a bit of a head start—Victor had still been reeling from the post-it note he’d found in the trash as Yuuri stared at him in a mixture of disbelief and hurt, something that ultimately read across as betrayal.
By the time Victor had realized, Yuuri was gone.
And here he’d spent so much time cursing the slow crawl of the elevators, always making him late for meetings or keeping him from getting home as soon as he’d like. In this moment, he’s never been more thankful for their complete ineptness at being a form of transportation.
The floor is a lovely white marble that Victor practically slips when he attempts to go from full-on running to a completely standstill, and he has to catch himself against the wall, emitting a loud thud that sounds far worse than it feels. Yuuri is frantically pushing the DOWN button, as if the more times he jams his fingers against it, the faster the elevator will make it’s leisurely crawl back to the 27th floor.
He looks at Victor, and then starts pressing the button more ferociously.
“Yuuri, wait, please—” Victor should not be this winded after running what couldn’t have been more than 50 yards.
Yuuri glances at him again, and looks like he regrets not taking the stairs.
And once again, Victor finds himself grateful for something he’s never had to be grateful for—that the stairwell is in a completely different part of the building.
When Yuuri doesn’t stop smashing his finger against the call button (and, in fact, picks up even more speed), Victor catches his wrist and halts the motion by force. “Don’t hurt yourself.” His airways feel painfully constricted. “The elevator is coming.”
Yuuri’s entire body tenses at the touch, and he jerks at the hold—Victor lets him go. He stumbles back a few steps, shoulders heaving with every breath he takes, hair falling in his face.
Victor can’t see his eyes.
The silence hardly lasts a few seconds, but it’s suffocating.
Victor swallows past his doubt. He throws his perfect timing and grand romantic gestures out the window (at least, for now). He breathes and lets the bravado, the smile, the mask that Yuuri always so easily sees through, drop and stay down. There is no perfect way to do this. There is nothing surefire about it.
Yuuri knows him better than anyone. Yuuri knows him not as a entrepreneurial genius, or wealthy businessman, or charismatic boss, but as Victor, who works harder than he lets anyone else see to make everything he does seem effortless. Who stresses and worries over projects because he’s built a brand on being the best, on not failing, and if he fails now what does he become?
Yuuri knows him as him, and so the only way to do this—the only way Victor can do this—is as himself.
Victor has imagined this moment a million times.
He never imagined it being so very spectacularly terrifying.
“Yuuri—”
“I quit.”
Victor does not have any kind of speech pre-prepared for this moment, but whatever off-the-cuff declaration was about to pour from his tongue dries up and evaporates instantly, replaced with a single, quiet, “What?”
Yuuri’s eyes are still hidden by his hair.
“As of today, I submit my official resignation as your personal assistant.”
Victor’s never heard Yuuri’s voice so, so flat before.
“I don’t—”
“I can’t work for you anymore.” Yuuri’s voice gets thicker, and Victor is so hyperaware of every inch of him that he can see his heavy swallow. Unfortunately, it means he’s not paying attention to the elevator and isn’t aware how close it is until the telltale ding echoes around them and the door slide opens. “I’m sorry.”
Yuuri dashes into the elevator, but this time, Victor’s anticipating it. He’s only a second behind him, quickly slamming his hands against the buttons—20, 12, 8, 6, 5, 4, 2. The door closes behind them and now Yuuri is staring at him, eyes wide and shining with unshed tears.
“Generally,” Victor begins, hand still splayed over the floor buttons, “when you give notice, you work through your last two weeks.”
“I’m sorry.” Yuuri presses a hand over his glasses, obscuring his eyes again. “I’m sorry, I—I shouldn’t have—” he works his jaw, like he’s not sure where to start apologizing or what, exactly, he’s apologizing for. “It’s not—it’s silly. I was stupid, and I didn’t—I couldn’t.” Both hands come up to Yuuri’s face, fingers clenching in frustration over his forehead. “I’m sorry.”
Victor wants to pull Yuuri’s hands away from his face, but he doesn’t. He keeps himself between Yuuri and the elevator doors as they slow to a stop at the 20th floor.
“Did you mean it?” Victor asks, looking up at the paneled elevator ceiling and then back at Yuuri. “What you wrote?”
Yuuri’s hand retract from his eyes, sliding down his face until his palms are obscuring the lower half of his face and his fingertips are pushing against the bottom of his glasses. When he speaks, it’s an immensely muffled, “What?”
“The post-it note I found. What you wrote.” Victor doesn’t know what to do with his hands when the only thing he really wants to use them for is to pull Yuuri closer. “Did you mean it?”
This time, Yuuri’s fingers drop to tremble at his lips.
“Victor...”
The elevator walls are mirrored, and in every direction, Victor can see himself—see his awful hair, and his ugly sweatpants, and every flaw he’s ever seen in the mirror. But he also sees Yuuri, and if Victor keeps playing this too close to the chest, there’s a good chance he’ll lose him.
“Because I’m kind of in love with you, too,” he says, closing his eyes and smiling. “Not even kind of. I’m pretty sure I’m completely in love with you, actually.” His smile tightens. “I thought it was obvious, I thought—I thought I was obvious, and that you just... Weren’t interested.” He pushes a hand through his wet hair, pushing it away, and Yuuri is staring at him, hands clenched against his chest and lips parted. “And if you aren’t, if that wasn’t real...” Victor’s eyes soften as he closes the distance between them. “That’s okay. That’s okay. I would never hold that against you.” Even if it would hurt. Even if it would break him. But losing Yuuri completely would be far more agonizing than the slow, painful process of getting over him.
The elevator doors slide open on the twelfth floor
“But.” Victor raises his hand, tentatively cupping the curve of Yuuri’s cheek and wiping at a still-damp tear track with his thumb. “If you were interested, you should know that I am also very, very, very interested,” Victor says, voice quieting to a murmur as he speaks. He’s not sure if his heart in his throat or his feet, and he can’t remember the last time he took a breath, and then Yuuri smiles and it’s like his entire body slides back into equilibrium.
“I used to think you were so good with words,” Yuuri hums, leaning into Victor’s hand, and his mouth is dry when he swallows.
“Come now, Yuuri. You’ve known me long enough to know that wasn’t true in the slightest.”
Yuuri’s smile widens, and he turns his face into Victor’s hand slightly as if trying to hide it, pushing the frame of his glasses into the meat of Victor’s palm, and Victor shifts those last few inches forward, endeared to capacity and so, so, so in love.
“Is it okay if I kiss you now?”
Victor could wait. He’s waited this long, and he would continue waiting however long he had to—but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t enjoy kissing Yuuri now. He would have enjoyed it months ago. But he’s an adult, and having Yuuri as his PA has been nothing but a practice in patience (in a completely unprofessional way).
Yuuri huffs a breath, a little warm gust against Victor’s skin, and when he looks up at Victor, Victor knows it was worth it. Every single second.
They share their first kiss on the 8th floor of the office building, with the elevator doors wide open to an array of empty cubicles. It is not grand, it is not romantic, but they kiss all the way to the 2nd floor and Victor finds he doesn’t mind.
*
Two days later, as Victor is replying to an email, Yuuri walks over to him. He has managed to maintain their professional relationship perfectly, while Victor is... Struggling a bit.
Victor looks up at him, perfectly content and wonderfully happy that he gets to see Yuuri every day. That he gets to work with his boyfriend, and how lucky can one guy be?
He must be smiling, because Yuuri cocks his head, amused, and starts to lean in. Victor’s eyebrow’s shoot up, because Yuuri had been very clear about kissing at the office, considering it was apparently very important even though technically Victor is everyone’s boss and he could fire anyone who gave them a hard time.
(Yuuri had reminded him, in his reasonable way, that Victor could not, in fact, fire anyone he wanted to. They had an HR department for a reason, and besides, Yuuri doesn’t want anyone to lose their job on his account.)
Victor’s eyes flutter shut as Yuuri gets closer, but instead of a kiss, he feels something tacky pressed to his lips, and when his eyes pop open, Yuuri is standing up again.
There’s a post-it note stuck to his mouth.
“Aw, is it a love note? You’re so—”
I still quit
“Yuuri!”
Another post-it note is quickly stuck over his mouth, and Victor pouts, plucking it off.
it’s unethical for me to continue working for you
“Yuuri, this is my company, nobody—mmph.”
Two post it notes this time, one stuck to his upper lip and one to his chin.
I don’t want people to talk about us badly
I don’t want people to talk about YOU badly
Victor’s face softens, and he looks at Yuuri and sighs. He could fight it, if he really wanted to, but Yuuri is horrendously stubborn. In the end, he’ll still get what he wants.
And Victor wants to give him what he wants.
“Well then...” Victor grabs a pen from his desk, turns one of the post-its over, and scribbles on the back. He holds it up.
will you move in with me?
“What?!” Yuuri nearly screeches, breaking his silence, and then slaps his hands over his mouth. “You want me to move in with you? We’ve only been dating for two days!”
“Oh, my Yuuri.” Victor reaches for his hand and this, at least, Yuuri allows. “I think most people would agree we’ve been together for far longer than that.”
Yuuri ducks his head bashfully, eyes focused on where Victor is gently holding onto his fingers, teeth biting into his smile.
“I’ll let you think about it, but I am serious, okay?” Victor leans down a bit to meet Yuuri’s eyeline, and Yuuri nods. “And we’ll start trying to find me a new PA tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Yuuri breathes with relief, and Victor feels a twinge of guilt that Yuuri had any reservations at all about having this conversation with him. Victor is pretty sure that if Yuuri quit and vowed to join the Peace Corp, Victor would dump his title and responsibilities into Chris’s hands and follow after him.
“You could have just talked to me, you know,” Victor reminds him, gently. He always, always wants Yuuri to feel like he can talk to him about anything. “You didn’t have to use post-it notes.”
“Oh, I know.” Yuuri’s mouth tips up, turning playful and making Victor’s heart do funny things inside his ribcage. “But I know how much you like my post-it notes.” He picks up his tablet where he left it on Victor’s desk and starts tapping away at it, ever the Most Wonderful PA Victor Could Ask For. “Did you really keep every one I ever gave you?” He asks without looking up.
“Yuuri.”