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It isn’t unusual for Viktor to wake up in the middle of the night. When he was younger, the culprit was a persistent, encroaching sense of inescapable futility and isolation. Now, five years into marriage, the reason is husband-shaped and considerably cuter.
Viktor doesn’t know what time it is when he’s dragged from a dream about a sexy, familiar-looking bespectacled poodle rancher, just that it’s dark and his almost abnormally reliant internal clock is telling him it’s nowhere near morning. He pats around for Yuuri to persuade him into spooning him back to sleep, then, when his hand finds only cold mattress, sits up and grabs his phone off the nightstand.
He checks the time and scans the room, for the first time noticing the sliver of light leaking from beneath the bathroom door. On the risk of being overly paranoid when Yuuri is just trying to use the room for its intended purpose, Viktor moves from the bed—crossing his arms over his bare chest more from nerves than an effort to preserve the insulated warmth of the duvet.
“Honey,” he knocks on the door, touches the doorknob in anticipation. “Everything okay?”
Viktor hears a squeaky, wet scramble and the murmur of whispered talking. For a brief moment, he entertains the notion that Yuuri is giving himself a motivational speech in the bath—odd but certainly not the most compromising position he’s found Yuuri in—but then his voice is louder, muffled from the barrier between them. “You can come in,” Yuuri says, and Viktor wastes no time in pushing the door open, venturing into the dense cloud of muggy heat.
He’d expected to find Yuuri bowed over the toilet or maybe curled in the corner of the room—his head resting on his knees, nails clenched in his calves. Instead, Yuuri is shirtless, kneeled against the tub with Makkachin’s paws on either shoulder, carefully combing his fingers through her curly coat.
“She knocked over a candle,” Yuuri explains, pressing a kiss to Makkachin’s snout when she starts whimpering. “I thought about shaving the wax out, but…” he grimaces.
Viktor stumbles forward and drops to his knees next to Yuuri. “How long have you been in here?”
“Uh,” Yuuri turns his eyes to the ceiling to think, fingers continuing their work of carefully extricating the red wax from Makkachin’s golden curls. “What time is it now?”
“2:30?”
“About two hours then,” Yuuri says, matter of fact, wiping sweat from his forehead with his shoulder. “Your bedhead is amazing.”
Viktor starts to run his fingers through his hair to fix it, then changes his mind and scratches under Makkachin’s ear instead. “You should’ve woken me up.”
Yuuri makes a dismissive noise in the back of his throat, glances up at Viktor with a wink and a gentle smile. “I had it handled,” he says, depositing a new clump of wax on the rim of the tub with the fur-laden goopy evidence of his past two hours. He doesn’t mention the fact that the circles under Viktor’s eyes have become indistinguishable from bruises for how purple they’ve grown since taking on another new student a few weeks ago.
Viktor knows he’s been looking tired lately—his updated concealer routine is evidence enough—but Yuuri has yet to mention it. Instead, wordlessly going about making dinner without being asked, doing the dishes when it’s Viktor’s turn, coaxing Viktor into taking naps in his lap on movie night.
It’s kind of incredible Viktor thinks not for the first time—not for the thousandth—how good and right it feels to be the recipient of such selfless love. He knows that’s the source of Yuuri’s actions because he has it, too, clenched around his heart, squeezing hard when Makkachin shakes—pelting them both with rogue water droplets—and Yuuri only laughs, pats her neck to calm her down again.
Viktor touches Yuuri’s knee. “Can I kiss you?” He asks, the words slipping from his tongue so quickly and easily that even he’s surprised by them.
Yuuri tilts his head. “Do you even have to—”
The question is lost in Viktor’s mouth and a startled laugh.
It’s not the best kiss they’ve ever had. It’s late and they’re damp with the smell of wet fur and intermingled morning breath that Viktor swears he doesn’t have.
The kiss is messy but so are they, and Viktor knows—yelling and stumbling into Yuuri as they chase Makkachin around with the hair dryer—that they wouldn’t have it any other way.