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Viktor is climbing the stairs to his apartment—giddy from another grocery store trip spent audibly deliberating whether his husband would prefer granny smith apples or honeycrisp and showing off his and Yuuri’s Britney and Justin circa 2001 matching denim ensemble couple’s Halloween costumes to the cashiers— when his phone rings.
“I have good news and bad news,” Yuuri’s voice echoes through the earpiece—soft and oddly out of breath.
Viktor wonders if Yuuri’s finally decided to listen to his pleas and experiment with phone sex. He starts taking the stairs two at a time. “Okay?” He prompts, distantly hoping the good news is that he’s horny and the bad news is that he doesn’t have any handsome husbands around to share the good news with.
“The good news is I fixed the blender,” Yuuri says. Viktor is only mildly disappointed. It’s not phone sex, but it’s been a struggle to start the day without his favorite fruit smoothies, and, as Yuuri had pointed out before Viktor left for the store, the mornings were hard enough without both of them being cranky toast stealers. He digs in his pocket for his keys. “The bad news is—” Yuuri starts as Viktor swings the door open.
“You’re bleeding?” Viktor drops the grocery bags on the floor. A rogue honeycrisp apple rolls across the hardwood and Yuuri catches it under his foot, looks up at Viktor with a self-deprecating smile.
“Yeah, that.”
Yuuri is disconcertingly calm for someone with blood smeared over his shirt, vivid blooms of carmine dampening a previously-white kitchen towel held protectively against his chest. “And I might’ve thrown up in the sink.”
“You—?” Viktor trips over his own feet in his rush to reach Yuuri’s side. He guides a pale, unblinking Yuuri to a kitchen stool and starts to unwrap the injury before changing his mind, shaking his head as if to fling the mental image from his brain. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” Yuuri probably means to say, but Viktor has already scooped him up for a dramatic exit and the words sound more like “mm frrn” from his face pressed against Viktor’s chest.
Turns out, to the surprise of only one person who is definitely not Viktor, Yuuri is not fine. Seven stitches worth of not fine.
Viktor tries to open the car door for Yuuri when they get home from the hospital, then tries to insist upon carrying Yuuri up the stairs when Yuuri so rudely opens the door for himself. “I can walk,” Yuuri says, climbing the stairs with his good hand grazing the wall for balance.
“Seven stitches,” Viktor reminds, trailing at Yuuri’s heels like a nervous puppy. It’s been the only rebuttal slipping off his tongue since finally witnessing the terror that lay behind the now-ruined towel at the hospital.
“On my hand.” Yuuri leans against the wall, waiting for Viktor to let them into the apartment.
Viktor does so quickly, before Yuuri can change his mind and do something crazy like touch the doorknob and find out Viktor had forgotten to lock the apartment in his previous panic. There’s melted ice cream in the entryway and Viktor spins around to warn Yuuri about it but he’s already halfway across the room, heading towards the bathroom.
“Angel—” Viktor hops around what was supposed to be part one of his and Yuuri’s after dinner treat—“where you headed?”
Yuuri sits on the closed toilet and works on pulling his shirt over his head with one hand. “Just wanted to take a quick shower,” he says, barely managing to hold back a grimace when the hem of his sleeve catches his bandage. Viktor kneels in front of him and rolls the sleeve off the rest of the way. “I smell like a hospital.”
Viktor nuzzles his nose into the intersection of Yuuri’s neck and shoulder and inhales loudly. “You smell amazing, as always,” he declares when he pulls away, “but a shower’s probably not a bad idea.”
Yuuri flits his eyes to the side with a crooked smile and takes Viktor’s hand when he offers it, then laughs when he stands and Viktor immediately takes his spot on the toilet. “You’re staying?” He asks, wiggling out of his pants.
“I have to make sure you don’t pass out.”
Yuuri’s pants puddle at his feet and his shoulders wilt with a gentle smile. “Vitya,” he says, clearly and intentionally because he knows Viktor loves it, “I’m not going to pass out.”
“But I might,” Viktor points out, “so we should stay together. Just in case.”
Yuuri leans down to kiss the crown of Viktor’s head. “Fine.”
“No, you are.” Viktor stands, unbuttoning his top. He climbs in the shower stall after Yuuri, and Yuuri shakes his head but doesn’t argue it.
He gave Viktor his hand years ago, after all. It’s nothing he isn’t used to.