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Sometimes, Yuuri gets the itch to just skate.
Not work on a routine, not perfect a jump, just skate. The need gets so that it’s right there under his skin, and it won’t go away until he scratches it.
Somewhere along the way, he gained a spare key to Ice Castle Hasetsu. So that’s where he goes. That’s where he goes the nights he awakens with sweat stifling him under his covers, his breath wanting to whisper out of his throat in the shape of the word: skate.
He’d like to say he just skates in mindless circles, like a normal person enjoying the rink during an open skate, but Yuuri’s never been able to do that. Not since he learned the beauty behind the basics, after he learned the fundamentals of dancing on the ice, marking it up and making it yours, the art of becoming one with it at the same time you’re dominating it, he could never go back, could never be so achingly simple again.
But Yuuri keeps it simple in his own way, through fluid figure-eights, and gracefully casual diagonal arcs across the entire length of the skating rink. He swoops clockwise, counterclockwise, backwards and forwards, eyes open or shut for minutes on end.
Those nights used to be alone, but, blessedly, not anymore.
Now he can roll over in bed, catch the star-spangled Hasetsu sky outside his window, and choke out, “V-Viktor, skate.” and his moonlight-colored lover will respond. Sometimes it’s a sleep-roughened “mmm”; it’s a confirmatory hum where Viktor’s vocal chords are still touched just enough by sleep to stutter the hum into a purr. Sometimes, it’s a fine-boned hand, honey-slow in its move to Yuuri’s bicep, where elegant piano fingers squeeze in acknowledgement. Sometimes, it’s those eyes, as pale blue as the ice they both love so much (the ice that brought them together), those eyes fluttering open, illumined by nothing but starlight, the tired fog in them quickly clearing as they land on Yuuri’s wide-awake face.
Yuuri’s thankful, so thankful that now, Viktor’s always there too, on the side of the rink, leaning on the waist-high border between solid earth and enchanting ice rink. Viktor watches, appreciates, respects Yuuri’s space and, although he may call out a charming quip - soft, very soft - once in awhile, it isn’t unwelcome. It isn’t an intrusion. Yuuri welcomes his loved one’s presence in a way he knows he’d likely welcome no other.
Also important is Viktor’s entire aura in this requested presence: he never seems bothered, as Yuuko did the one time Yuuri called her in the middle of the night to open the rink for him (before she gave him the key, of course). Sure, Viktor may be sleepy, but it certainly always seems like there’s no place he’d rather be.
There isn’t anywhere Yuuri would rather be, quite frankly, besides with Viktor, with his skates and the ice, with all the things he loves most. Yuuri knows from now on that even this itch will be incomplete, it will not be satisfied anymore without Viktor in the picture. He will never wake up now with just the taste of the word “skate” in his mouth, instead, his lips will inexorably form around the name “Viktor” as well.
Yuuri may be afraid that the time will come for him to wake up like that, without Viktor, a time he will have to call his love over miles and miles of distance, throat closing around the fact that “Viktor, Viktor, I have to skate, no, no, you know how it goes, I need to just skate, so why aren’t you here -” but that time is not now.
For now, Yuuri can slip through the chilled air in Ice Castle Hasetsu, and laugh at something Viktor has just called out to him, and Yuuri can be thankful.