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Yuuri loved him. He had always loved him. That love just kept growing and changing as he did. Even when he was a scared boy who didn’t understand why he didn’t want to talk about the pretty girls the way the other boys did. But he would have loved to talk about the new teacher and how he got a cold sweat anytime he looked at him. Or how he was waking up more mornings than not from a dream that centered around a platinum-haired, blue eyed Russian, with a rather unsightly mess in his shorts. He wasn’t like the other kids and he hated it. No one was like him at school and if they were they weren’t talking, but neither was he. Yuuko seemed to get it and never asked him any questions he couldn’t answer. She always supported him.
Everything he’s ever done in his life has been to get just a little closer to him. He wanted to stand on the same ice as him. He wanted to look into those sparkling blue eyes and breath the same air as him. He didn’t know how he’d do it, since he was starting so late. But he’d get there, he’d skate with Victor Nikiforov. He had no idea what he’d do after that. Victor wasn’t like him. He wasn’t ‘messed up’ like the others said he was. Just cause he didn’t want to jump his best friend in a closet at some party.
It wasn’t until he moved to America and met others like him that he finally realized in a very shocking moment that he was not in fact ‘messed up’ he was just gay. The boy had kissed him in the quad before his Bio-Chem class. He had blue eyes and light blonde hair. It wasn’t as light as Victor’s, but he was nice to Yuuri and he made him smile while they studied late. He had jumped when the lips pressed to his and didn’t know what to do. James had pulled back and asked if he had read the situation wrong. Yuuri just smiled and told him no, but he had never done that before. He did a lot of things with James over the next few years. But even his college boyfriend knew that Yuuri couldn’t love him. He already loved someone.
Phichit told him he was obsessed. But still saved every photo and Video he found online for Yuuri. He didn’t have much room to talk. He had more posters of Christophe Giacometti on his wall than Yuuri did of Victor. They were both wrecks and it’s what made them such good friends. They would feed each other’s passions no matter what it was.
Phichit was there after he had finally met him. The man he’d been dreaming of since he was 12 years old, the man who had thought he was just another fan. He had skated on the same ice as HIM and he didn’t even see Yuuri. He wanted to die. He had laid in his bed and cried for days. Phichit would hold him and tell him he could spread a nasty rumor about him on the internet. Herpes? Crabs? Male Patten Baldness? Just name it. Yuuri had begged him to not do anything reckless and went back to wallowing in his misery.
Then he watched him skate at the European Championships and knew he couldn’t give up something he had worked for all these years for. He wanted to feel the love he felt for both Victor and the ice again. So, he watched his skate over and over until he had it right, until he had been as good a Victor. But he had to go home. He had to be back were his love started again, so he could move on from Victor and look forward to the ice and it’s unrelenting love.
But all his well laid plans went to shit the moment a naked Victor Nikiforov was standing in front of him and declaring he was going to be Yuuri’s coach. He was lost. Victor wanted him and he had no idea why. But he was staring into his eyes and he was suddenly more scared than he’d ever been. What if he let Victor down? He was a no body that choked at the Grand Prix Final last year. But Victor was relentless and he kept getting very close to him and he’d do things James would do… was Victor fucking Nikiforov hitting on him!?
Then he had told him he’d meet him half way and had promptly kissed him. Yes… Victor was hitting on him. Everything moved so fast after that. All he had to do was smile at Victor and he’d pull him close and kiss him. Yuuri would melt each and every time like it was that first kiss on the beach as the sun set. They were in their own little bubble that no one else was able to come in.
The first time they had had sex had been something Yuuri would never forget. Victor had pulled him into his room as he had walked pass to his own room. Victor’s eyes had sparkled and the moon had shown off his hair like it was meant to be there all along. Yuuri let himself be pulled to the bed and kissed until his lips burned and swelled. He didn’t care how he sounded as Victor pushed into him, he didn’t care if his parents, or Mari heard them. He was looking into those blue eyes as his entire world imploded in on a few perfect moments. He didn’t even notice the tears in his eyes until Victor kissed his cheeks and rolled him on his side. He told him he loved him and Yuuri cried more cause he had to be lying.
But he wasn’t. Victor told him every morning how much he loved him and how much he needed him to know. Victor thought he was beautiful, him… a no body that choked at the Grand Prix. But he would hold him when it all because too much. When that mean voice in the back of his head would tell him he wasn’t worth what Victor had given up for him. That one-day Victor would wise up and walk out of his life and he’d be a no body again.
But he didn’t. He was there every day and was there to stop the darkness from taking over. Even after the Gran Prix Finale when Yuuri was sure this was it. Because if he wasn’t coaching him, he didn’t have to pretend to love him anymore. But Victor had cried and cried, he had told him that he would give it all up for Yuuri to have him close him. It was then that Yuuri finally realized that all the feelings Yuuri had been feeling for years, Victor had felt them all in one year and there was no going back now. He loved him.
Victor had lifted him up and made him a Silver Medalist and so close to being a Gold Medalist. But Yurio had deserved that Medal and he was truly happy for him. He had Victor, he didn’t need that Medal anymore to tell him he was worth Victor’s love. He had saw something in Yuuri, something that even Yuuri could never see.
But here he was, in a hakama, the same one his father had worn the day he married his mother. Victor’s had been made special and had blue accents throughout it. He had cried himself a mess when Yuuri went to find him before the ceremony. He had told him he looked breath taking and asked why he had never seen him in one of these. Yuuri had just stared at his future husband in awe. He looked like a hero from the cartoons he used to watch as a child. He was Yuuri’s Hero. This ceremony was small, with just the most important people in his life around them. His mother and Minako had been crying on and off for 2 days. Victor had been rather happy to find out that they would be drinking sake as part of the ceremony and pointed out he fell in love with Yuuri as a result of drinking and it only seemed fitting. Yuuri begged him to not repeat that in front of anyone.
The next morning, they stood in the far garden of his parents Inn. A much larger gathering around them. Victor was in front of him in his impeccable white suit that fit him perfectly. Yuuri had blushed and told him his suit made him look like a knight in shining armor, his knight. Yuuri was in a suit handpicked by Victor that matched those blue eyes perfectly. This had all been Phichit and Chris’ doing and it showed. The two new love birds beamed from their sides of the aisle as they exchanged their vows and kissed again.
He loved him. He had always loved him. He was Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov. They laid on a beach and looked out at the ocean in front of him. He had the rest of his life with this man that made life worth living again. He was so happy and he didn’t understand how he thought he might know what love is without being close to him.