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Contrary to popular belief, Yuuri is comfortable expressing his love for Viktor. He does it with the squeeze of his hand intertwined with Viktor’s, his easy compliance when Viktor insists on applying ridiculously-priced lip balm to his lips in public, his half-lidded eyes and the swing of his hips when he performs Eros in front of a crowd of spectators for an audience of one.
It’s the words that are difficult, bunching up on his tongue and clogging his throat when they aren’t bundled in safe layers of skating euphemisms and metaphor.
Yuuri waits awkwardly just outside the security gate at the airport following the Grand Prix Final, finally relenting the Louis Vuitton Keepall he’s been clutching like a lifeline since departing Yutopia with Viktor that morning. He doesn’t want Viktor to go. He feels homesick in a way he’s never really experienced—not in Detroit, not in any of his travels—and they haven’t even parted ways yet.
Viktor has Russian Nationals so they don’t have a choice, but it doesn’t stop Yuuri’s heart from beating insistently against his throat, knotting his thoughts with regret.
“I’ll miss you,” Yuuri admits, eyes pointed somewhere in the vicinity of Viktor’s clavicle. His mouth is desert dry and the words come out sticky, wrenched from his teeth and his tonsils and echoing back in an increasingly mortifying loop in his ears— goopy and clumsy and barely comprehensible.
Viktor knits his eyebrows. “Tissue?” He asks, digging around in his backpack for the travel pack he’d tucked into the front pocket.
Yuuri takes one and doesn’t correct him. He’ll probably need it on the train ride back, anyway.
A couple weeks later Yuuri sits at his desk with his knees under his chin, laughing as Viktor recounts the antics of the Russian skating team over Facetime—something about Mila running a campaign to perform a role-reversed pair skate with Yurio and Yurio threatening to unblock her exes’ numbers from her phone in retaliation.
“I can’t wait till you get here—” Viktor leans so close to the camera that Yuuri swears he could count each individual eyelash. “Makkachin misses you so much, you know? She asks me every morning, ‘where’s my—’” Viktor pauses, leans back in his chair with a finger to his lips. “Hey, Yuuri, I’ve been thinking…”
Yuuri nods to spur him on, language falling from his brain and crackling like dry tinder at his feet, licking his ankles with icy heat.
“Do you think it’d be okay to call you my boyfriend?” He asks, eyes lined with something other than his usual perfect confidence. “Or does that sound too immature? Partner, maybe?”
Yuuri wants to say that Viktor could call him his “boo” like Phichit used to back in Detroit for all he cares. That it’s the composition of their relationship and not the specific label that matters to him. He wants to say it, but the words are caught behind a mosaic of emotions too complex to name, threatening ugly tears of joy and disbelief over actual verbal communication.
“I think I—” Yuuri swallows hard, tries to unstick his thoughts from the roof of his mouth. “I’d like that very much.”
Viktor shifts in his seat, a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Of course I’ll keep in touch,” he says, the muscles in his neck straining. “I suppose we can discuss it when you get here.”
Yuuri thinks to correct Viktor. He wants to discuss it now, but now turns out to be a few weeks away when he is already moved into Viktor’s flat and fully integrated into his daily life—Yuuri’s toothbrush joining Viktor’s next to the sink, his grocery store shampoo ruining the aesthetic of Viktor’s carefully curated bath products.
They’re at the grocery store after practice one evening, Viktor’s arms around Yuuri’s waist, his chin resting on Yuuri’s shoulder because holding hands takes up too much room in the aisle, they reason. Yuuri reaches for the yellow mustard and Viktor stops him with a touch to the wrist. “I thought you prefer spicy?”
“But you like the yellow,” Yuuri argues.
Viktor pinches Yuuri’s side, takes the spicy mustard off the shelf and drops it in the cart.
“I love you,” Yuuri says, the words slipping so easily from his tongue that even he’s surprised by them.
Viktor separates from Yuuri with a laugh, moves to the head of the grocery cart to steer them to a new section. “What about olive juice?”
“No,” Yuuri spins around—an embarrassingly dramatic gesture in retrospect—and grabs the front of the cart with both hands, anchoring them in the moment. “I said I love you,” he says, clearly, finally.
Viktor’s cheeks are pink, even under the desaturating florescent lights of the store. “If I knew you liked spicy mustard that much I would’ve filled the cabinets before you came,” Viktor rolls the cart forward, hugs Yuuri around the waist with his free arm and presses a kiss to the side of his head. “We could brush our teeth with spicy mustard,” Viktor continues, “wash our hands with it—”
“Okay, nevermind,” Yuuri groans into his hands. “Forget I said anything.”
“Sweetheart—” Viktor pats his hip, leaning so close that his nose grazes the shell of Yuuri’s ear—“I love you with every inch of my heart, and I’d sooner use spicy mustard as coffee creamer than do that.”