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Viktor knows three things, and three things only.
First, the florist he sells his arrangements through has a son. He thinks they’re around the same age, though he was unsure since he was often too caught up with his delivery to make time to ask. The woman who greets him, (“Call me Hiroko, dear”) was small with so much love for everyone bared on her sleeve, told him on his third visit just who he was. Viktor had been fascinated from the start, eyes lingering on the shorter man working off to the side, unbothered by the shop's visitor and his mother's gossip. Viktor thinks he’s a hard worker, since his arrangements are the best works he’s ever seen. Melodic in the movement of their colors, the sweeping gestures of the flowers seemed to reach out to his audience. Mere passersby on the streets looking on with longing and greed.
Second, he knows that the man is fond of the things he brings in. Viktor specializes in smaller arrangements, two to three flowers and never more. Hiroko always said he had a more intimate eye, a gentler display that brought the customers in and kept their business. Her daughter, Mari, had told him that her brother had always prioritized putting Viktor’s displays in the front window next to his own. A display just for Viktor, like a throne in a castle of thorns and velvet petals.
She told him, with a smirk on her lips and smoke on her breath, that her brother was selfish that way.
He didn’t understand that part.
Third, and finally, Viktor knows a part of him, loud and demanding against the back of his mind, has fallen for a man with no name. At least, one that he knows of. He tells Chris one night that it was the man’s eyes that hooked him, liquid pools of amber that caught the sunlight just so. There was a certain spark to them, a brimming fire of determination that welled beneath his irises. He had fallen in love with the timber of the man’s voice, quiet but certain everytime he spoke. It was hesitant confidence, but it was there, present and sweet to Viktor’s ears. The man’s mother had commented offhandedly to Viktor about her son’s natural fighting spirit, a secretive and mischievous glint in her eyes that gave him more questions than answers. Her passing words about her son fueled Viktor’s curiosity, forcing his conscious to give way to his heart, and for the first time in his life Viktor cracked himself open like a dusty novel off an old bookshelf for the other man to indulge himself in.
Maybe a lonelier part of him craved the way the other’s fingers would dance along the ridges of his spine.
Viktor lives alone in a small house out in the mountains just outside the city, white siding covered in tendrils of ivy and weeds. It kept the image of a lived in home, quaint and well maintained by Mother Earth and himself. It felt lived in, warm, with brown window panes and an old wooden porch that Makkachin had grown fond of in her old age. He was an aristocrat in his own home, filled with the riches of his memories and quiet breaths that kept him together. It was his personal serenity.
His cousin Yuri had visited two months ago in August, cold gaze falling hard on the roof of his home in that accusatory way he always carried himself. He had commented on the moss that crept across the shingles on the roof, had told Viktor he needed to “clean up” and left it at that because a less vocal part of him had always loved the charm Viktor’s home had. It was small, older than most with amenities to match, but it was away from the city, far out enough that they could hear themselves think, and Yuri had told him it was the best place for him to write his music.
So Viktor welcomed him with open arms.
He may have been a solitary man, but he found himself longing for the warmth of friendly laughter and encouraging words. He wanted the family feeling that comforted him when he entered Yuu-Topia. It was the way that Toshiya greeted him from the back of the store, loud and comforting because Viktor was always on time for deliveries. Hiroko manned the counter, the pure sunshine that she was favored customers more than it did floral design.
“But that’s okay,” she had said once, taking a potted crocus from Viktor’s milk crate, “I think the customers prefer to work with me anyway.”
When he was ten his mother had told him about havens, a small cutout in reality where his problems wouldn’t follow him. She had told him over breakfast, having just turned twelve, that she had always dreamed of her own personal oasis. It was a small house two hours away, with as much charm as Viktor could ever have in his life and more warmth in the red brick fireplace than anyone in the world could offer them. When he turned fifteen she had showed it to him on an impromptu road trip after she had gotten off work, having him pull on his ushanka and coat for warmth before piling them both into the old Ford they owned.
It wasn’t impressive, couldn’t have been what she had built it up to be, but he saw the potential. There was room to grow, a nice home to raise a family in or just be by himself. He wondered if they could move there one day, just his mother and him with Makka playing guard dog. Viktor had only ever wanted happiness for her, for them, and this home would give them that much.
At twenty two Viktor had been given the key to the house by his uncle, a gift from his mother that was intended for him once she had passed on. He wanted it to be a tragedy, wanted to be stricken by the loss he felt when he lost her, but he couldn’t find it within himself to mourn. He’d accepted when she got sick, worked with her to help prepare him the best in case something ever happened to her, and even without her in his life he would always have Makkachin. In the end, this house was a home. Their home, but now his, a place for him to live his life to the fullest he could. To make it into the sanctuary she never could.
The white porcelain claw foot tub in the master bath is his favorite part of the house, antique and fitting for the theme of the house. It clashed with the gaudy wallpaper he never had the heart to take down, but it completed the look the original owners had intended. It was the place he found himself hiding away, more often than not, chest high waters settling idly around his sore limbs within the confines of the tub.
Makkachin takes her place at the door to the bathroom, standing guard with the knowledge nothing is out there anyways. He likes the quiet, appreciates the time alone he gets to think and the way the walls seem to absorb every fond memory he has. His family had told him to take the time to grieve, that they’d come by and take care of the house while he worked through everything on his own, but he declined. His mother told him he was strong, an impenetrable fortress standing tall against the negativity of the world. It was a comforting thought to know that, even without her in his life, he’d always be that warrior in her eyes.
He took up floristry out of his own volition to make beautiful creations for other people to treasure, using the attic of the home as a workspace for his personal business. He never had any intentions of opening up a shop, never wanted to do more than creating simple pieces with the flower his mother loved the most; the crocus, a flower of happiness, yellow like her favorite color and soft petals just like the way her lips felt against his forehead.
Perhaps he managed to impart some of that warmth in his creations, because no one ever asked him for anything else.
Viktor has a Wednesday delivery slated for two PM, just under twelve hours away and he’s shy by two arrangements as is. There’s a desperate tremble in his hands as he works, careful and calculating with the wires that hold the flowers together in their clay pots he bought from local vendors. It was a group effort, his floristry, keeping local businesses together by creating quiet, moving pieces in the attic of his home with clay pots he bought to accentuate the mood. It kept the word out, encouraged patrons to reach out to the other store owners and delve deeper into the world of locally owned businesses. It was something he modeled after his mother, a hardworking woman right up until she had passed, who never went a day without supporting the friends she was surrounded by.
Yuu-Topia was exactly the kind of business and support his mother would have loved him to have. Mari managed the store’s finances, at least that’s what she told him when she had taken over doing the inventory for his deliveries for the day. Hiroko was out with her brother, something about orientation day at his college that she had wanted to attend. Viktor had leaned against the counter then, interest piqued and clear in his eyes. “What is he going to school for?”
“I don’t know, Viktor, why don’t you ask him?”
He hadn’t gotten that far yet.
He had let himself sit alone at his dining room table, a meal for one waiting for him on the kitchen counter, thoughts traveling off into a reality where this was a home for them. He tells himself that he can see it, waking up to charcoal hair sticking up in odd directions and the smell of breakfast cooking from downstairs. He can visualize the way the other would own their shared space, take charge of every crack, corner, and hole and make it something more. Something worth living for.
Viktor pined, hard, a hand settled on his gut because he wasn’t used to feeling butterflies in his twenty seven years alive. When Mila had come over in March she said he was silly, falling for a man he didn’t know the name of, but he countered with a lilt in his voice, soft and airy like the affection driving his thoughts, “But Mila, you haven’t seen his smile.”
And he feels like he was the only person who ever had. The only person who could see the true beauty of the Katsuki son, a man of mystery and shyness. He was a part-timer, after all, on there on various weekdays and most weekends putting together designs of his own. They didn’t see each other often, had said ‘hellos’ and ‘heys’ in passing only three or four times, but Viktor loved the way a dusting of cherry red branched across the bridge of the other’s nose whenever he walked in.
There was also a matching one on his own face overshadowed by a heart-shaped smile and the best wave he could manage with an armful of flowers, but the other never seemed to mind, always reciprocated and went about his work quietly. It never branched out farther than that, never dared tiptoe past this level of professionalism they kept between them, but Viktor was a greedy man with selfish intentions of his own. If he could ever get at least a name, that’d be fine for him.
What he doesn’t expect after his Wednesday delivery is to find the object of his affections standing by his truck, gray pea coat unbuttoned and opened to the biting chill that the fall breeze brought on. It was an open invitation, a showing of vulnerability Viktor never had before, and the only thing that he could think was how the blue of his sweater was the most fitting color the other had ever worn.
Viktor offered a tender, shy smile, and reached under the burlap cover over the bed of his truck and pulled out a single flower on its own, perfectly cut at the stem because Viktor had always carried around a solitary extra for a moment like this. A part of him was quick to acknowledge that the other had inspired the growth of another flower in his personal garden, a desperate, personal plea for something in the stalemate they kept each other in. But here, outside Yuu-Topia in their coats and familiar smiles, they let each other in.
“You’ve come here enough that I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce ourselves,” his beating heart said, shy gaze focused on the white flower in Viktor’s hand. He opened up first, tentative and unsure, but he was met with an encouraging warmth from a florist with a well of affection for him, and that alone seemed to drive them both.
“I’m Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki.”
A white jonquil was handed over for him, a request unspoken but understood between them. A desire for returned affection. A simple language, flowers were, but they spoke louder and with more determination than either party had mustered thus far, so Yuuri took it with that gentle smile that melted Viktor’s resolve and a glint of hope in his eyes.
“I’m Viktor Nikiforov, and I’d really, really love to take you out for coffee.”