Work Text:
The only thing constant…
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A black hole was closing in on him. It had been for some time.
He had been running away from it for quite a long time, and now it came at him hungrily, to swallow him whole.
On that sunny summer day, it had almost consumed him. Almost.
He stood in front of the tombstone of his mother, reminiscing everything happened since that fateful day. Stubborn refusal to shed tears shook his body. Exhausted, he fell on the gravel in a heap of wobbly muscles and bones.
His mind ran pictures of what his life had been, to that fateful day seven years ago.
When the slippery snow had dragged their car in a deathly dance off the road, and it screeched to a halt only because it hit a tree, her head had been a mess. Her usually shiny silver strands of hair had been all over her face, sticking to her face with blood. He couldn’t have recognized his mama if he wasn’t in the same car. By the time the police cars came around, crying their siren, he had climbed out of the car with his little brother at his tow, having already given up on her.
Yet he had waited, sitting on the bench outside the operating theatre, with His brother clinging to him like a koala. He had been waiting for his papa, and he had been waiting for news from the doctor. He also had unconsciously begun to tighten his embrace over Yuri and the little boy hasn’t had the strength to protest about the tenacity.
The news came in before papa, in the form of a doctor who looked spent with a matching sentence to accompany;
“I’m sorry, we tried everything we could.”
When he had stepped out of the hospital that day, his brother still clinging to him, the Sky smiled upon him with snow. He had expected it to crumble down on him though. But the small snow petals fell down nonchalantly, mocking his melancholy. His father had already been a few good meters ahead of him. Trying to catch up to his papa, he fought against the cold that left him shivering down to his bones. He had run, carrying the weight of his brother, past the tarred roads, past the traffic lights that looked like wailing in his agony, past the modern buildings of the city until there were more trees and less buildings. He had run all the way to his home trying to catch up to papa who gave no sign of noticing them.
He hadn’t known it then, but their father had just started running away from his troubles. It was the beginning of the end of the father he knew him to be. It had marked the beginning of his hate for hospitals. It took his mama, and turned his papa to a man he didn’t know. All those high tech med equipment and praised doctors couldn’t save either of them. Even the sight made his stomach churn, made his heartbeat rise and settled an irresistible need in his guts to run away from there. He hadn’t dare step in to the hospital street after that day.
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The sweat dripped from his fore head and drenched his shirt as he came back from the agonizing memories. He loosened the buttons, but kept the shirt on. Who cared about his appearance? He didn’t. His papa wouldn’t.
But his mama would.
In fact, if she knew of the news he shared with his papa today, she would have been elated with happiness. He was resentfully sure that unlike papa, she would have treasured his victory, spoiled him with her homemade meals, shower him with pecks all over his blushed cheeks for he had aced prestigious college and landed his dream job, he was only twenty two.
Though, he would rather attribute the win more to his relentless run from the black hole that was coming after him. So he had committed to school and his brother, and did not allow himself to weep. His friends have sometimes called him ‘borderline callous,’ but he hadn’t known any other way to survive the loss. Yet the hole that was left in his heart by the loss of his mama, was so prominent it announced its presence to Viktor in the lonely nights, and threatened to swallow him whenever his mind decided to stray.
He splayed on the ground next to mama’s grave. His skin protested against the gravel on the ground that unkindly pushed his body on all the wrong places. But it didn’t feel any different than the state of his heart.
His heart was expecting change. He was a boy all grown up, wanting a lot of good things, wanting his papa to smile, wanting connection. Wanting family. But when his papa opened the liquor cabinet instead of his heart, to celebrate his victory, he felt the excitement evaporate faster that his papa’s spirit.
After all the running, he expected his papa to lend his hand to push him off the trajectory of that cursed black hole. It needed saturation, closure, so that it won’t feel hungry anymore. But his papa was only literate to a certain level when it came to fatherhood. He knew protection, loved his children and all the children in the world. But he was all but a closed book, written in a language that only his mother understood. Unable to do it himself, he was never able to teach his children the gift of opening up. And without opening up, Viktor didn’t know how to achieve closure.
Was he so naïve to expect his life to resume from fifteen back again?
Because he did feel like fifteen again, trying to grasp the complexities of the human nature yet failing at it to a greater extent. Tired of running away form that black hole, he now longed for it, wishing its gravity will tear his aching heart apart and stop the pain and unfathomable emptiness forever.
He was never going to make it.
His head turned up towards the sky that was endless and blue, empty beyond any feeling, just like him. The sun scorched the earth along with him. He closed his eyes.
Wasn’t summer supposed to bring love light and happiness?
At least he was closer to his mama. It was a comforting thought, compared to having to return home only to listen to his father’s drunk ramble.
So he rested. After years of studies induced deprivation, the sleep claimed him blissfully, so blissfully until he didn’t know how long he slept. Furious when someone disturbed him, he annoyingly shrugged the person pulling his arm and snapped at him. “Let me be!”
“Please, get up before you get hyperthermia.”
The voice that called him was alert but kind. And it had a foreign accent.
“Please!”
Begrudgingly though he opened his eyes just a little to see, then blinked to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. For the beauty of the flowers in that summer morning, the softness of the morning dew resting on the ends of birch leaves and the kindness of his mother’s eyes, all melted in to a mix of flawless skin and deep amber eyes, stared right at him.
“Come on!” He said hurriedly, craning in to his view, sounding ready to carry him if he didn’t get up this time. Feeling warm for an entirely different reason than it being a summer noon, he stared right back at him with a slack mouth and a dumb look. He realized that it was his presence, lightly pulling him out of his deathly slumber. But the silence lasted short when he sent his arms under him and lifted him to a seated position, contrastingly strong to the gentle nature of his looks.
“Are you drunk?”
He shook his head to say ‘no’ like a drunken man. Nevertheless he was drunk, in his presence and his voice and…, he took greedy sips of everything this man was.
“Let’s go home shall we?”
It was difficult to protest the brown eyes. He got to his feet, giddily acquiring half the strength required from the beautiful man helping him up. But walking was a difficulty. It was absolute exhaustion of his mind, body and soul. He didn’t remember why he came to visit mama in the first place. Dragging his feet through the gravel, he let him stuff him in to the plush back seat of a car that had too little leg space for his long pair of legs. Like a puppet, he let him dominate his movements.
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He had dropped him at his home, safely, at the hands of his panicked brother. He had found his address in his wallet, had kindly dropped his address too, in to that same wallet – which became an eureka moment much later that night.
Now he had a new mission; a place and a man to find. With his mind solely concentrated on that task, he totally forgot the joint betrayal of his father and his liquor cupboard.
He found it easily. The place was a skating rink, inconveniently too far from his new place of work, a fact he wouldn’t dare mind at all.
Yet too embarrassed, and at a loss of how to explain why he was, how he was in the graveyard, he shamefully fought the need to actually go in. For several days he just observed the place from the outside. But the new job was demanding, and he couldn’t spare to stand there long enough to accumulate the courage.
Yuri; his brother nagged him every day.
‘You were drooling on him.’
When it didn’t work -
‘He all but carried you.’
When that too didn’t work -
‘He looked good, worth a visit.’
He decided to finally give it a try when - ‘You owe me, you almost made me take you to that damned hospital for hyperthermia,’ came from Yuri. They had been in a silent agreement to never step in that hospital again, not after it took their mother away.
So he stepped in there at an ungodly hour after office, hoping to avoid him indirectly. He could just tell Yuri that he wasn’t there. The gate guard allowed him inside with a look and then he saw him skate.
There was no music, just him and his skates, dancing on the ice like a weightless fairy drifting in the air. He watched mesmerized. His skates made music with the impacts and he watched and listened like he was composing a sonata.
Then he saw him. It took him by surprise, their eyes connected and the fairy promptly fell on the ice with an ugly thud. He couldn’t help but jump over the short wall to help. Forgetting he is on ice, he ran, obviously not making it more than two feet before he too flopped on the ice, his new and shiny office shoes weren’t skates.
Ironically, he was craning in to his view again. With the same deep amber eyes and the sunshine of a smile.
He felt the summer heat again, in the midst of an Ice rink.
The worried look in those brown eyes made him get to his feet with no help this time. All he wanted was to bring a smile to the worried face.
“I’m fine.” He blurted even before he was asked. “Are you?”
He giggled. “I’m not sure if either one of us are.”
“I’m Viktor.” He offered him his hand and he gladly took it.
“Yuuri.”
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Yuuri, had awoken something inside of him. Viktor didn’t figure it out until he waved at him and walked away after a warm tea in a nearby café.
Yes, his name was Yuuri and he was a skating instructor at the rink, Viktor had learned during that time. He helped the beginners and had once been a skater with a dream himself.
Not anymore.
That night, Viktor found himself unable to sleep not because he felt empty or because he was listening to his papa. In fact even that drunk ruble sounded like music in his ears. He went to see Yuuri after office next day too. After all, he did left the address for a reason.
He went there again.
And again.
Until it became a habit of him to catch up with Yuuri after hours. He too stayed late waiting for him and they took dinner together. He taught him skating. Viktor fell on ice uncontrollably, probably the worst student Yuuri ever had, in Viktor’s judgement. But nothing compared to how he felt when Yuuri skated to him and helped him up every time, with worry laced in those impossibly deep amber eyes.
Worry for ‘him’.
He loved that attention. Viktor fell on ice until his butt went purple.
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Before long, Yuuri had aroused every dormant feeling Viktor had.
Before that summer ended, Viktor kissed his hand passionately, under the artificial lights in the rink when Yuuri held his arm to help him stand up after a fall. Yuuri stood frozen, but a subtle smile parted his lips. Viktor kissed them gently once he balanced himself on the skates. When Yuuri too kissed back, Viktor felt life scour through his veins, like he was giving him the gift of life. That day Viktor took Yuuri for a visit to the graveyard, not a good place for a first date but still, that’s where they met – and Viktor wanted to tell mama that he had found love.
Viktor started believing that he didn’t deserve the cacophony of life, for he had done nothing wrong to this world. He deserved the best, and the best was his Yuuri; blessedly unaware of his power over Viktor, unawaken, all sunshine and graceful. Yuuri held within him enough love to fill that black hall, once and for all.
Before winter, Viktor found himself on his knees, having bought cheap wedding rings with the entirety of his first real salary. He thought nothing compared to how he felt when he slipped the ring through Yuuri’s slender finger as a church choir sang behind them. It was the unmistakable feeling that everything is gonna be fine.
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He wasn’t wrong, because it is the same intuitive feeling he felt as he sat in front of the operating theatre for the second time in his life, the funny feeling that told him something good was going to happen although he was sitting in front of the same operation theater. Despite the fact that their son decided to wrap his cord around his neck, he knew the little guy will find his way around it somehow.
His sunny expression had startled papa and Yuri who were sitting beside him. But Yuuri held his hand reassuringly, and smiled sunshine upon him. As first time fathers, they were expected to be nervous as a social standard. Especially when their son didn’t sit right inside the womb of the surrogate mother. The surgery was too complicated, they weren’t invited inside. But Viktor knew everything will be alright. Not that he himself knew why. He just felt the sun shining upon him, just like the summer he met Yuuri, when he said ‘yes’, when they stood in front of the altar and kissed.
When the sliding doors opened and a doctor came out in theater garb, the nostalgia from his mother’s death suddenly wrapped him in a suffocative fold. Viktor shot up and took a good load of air in to his lungs. No matter how sunny he felt, Viktor knew that it was the moment the last bit of sanity he clung on to will either be snatched from him or be kept with him.
Viktor felt lightheaded just watching the doctor walk towards him. But his father’s sober hand found his, while Yuuri clung on to the other. Viktor curled his hand in his calloused palm of his papa and the clammy soft padded hand of Yuuri, instantly feeling the reassurance pumping in to him through his father’s quiet ways. The doctor sighed, like he was relieved himself yet leaving Viktor to wonder.
“The mother and boy are fine.”
With no prior warnings at all, Viktor’s dam broke. All the restrains he had put in place because he had to be strong for Yuuri vanished. He turned on his heel abandoning them, while papa shouted his name. But his walk only quickened, until it turned in to a stride that broke in to a full on run after he escaped the limits of the hospital premises.
His foot thumped on the pavement, his torso grinded its muscles powering his run and his coat threatened to slow him down in the wind.
“I’m a father!” He shouted at the top of his lungs to no one.
When Viktor finally stopped to breathe, he was on his knees. His hands rested on his thighs and he was shaking to get oxygen in to his lungs.
“It’s a boy.” He said to his mama, quietly this time.
Smiling at the tiny buds of flowers trying to bloom, he walked back to the hospital, to the welcoming arms of his love, holding another bundle of love. Yuuri didn’t give him the questioning look his papa gave him, for he knew.
“Did you tell her?” Yuuri asked. “That she is a grandma now?”
Viktor smiled, he always knew him so well.
Out of the window the garden gave birth to flowers, to trees and a stage to the birds who sang. The spring had come.
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Smiles and cries, scares and surprises; their son dragged them all through them mercilessly.
Viktor hated hospital a little less since his arrival.
Yuri selfishly named the little bundle of love ‘Yuri’, as the tiny hands wrapped his fingers around Yuri’s thumb and refused to let go. Now that there were confusingly three Yuri’s in their household, so despite the staged protests, Viktor named his brother ‘Yurio’.
Before they knew, the tiny body grew in to a boy, and the mumbles turned in to curious questions about everything around him. His papa opened the liquor cupboard less and less for he had the grandpa duty to fulfil now. Viktor enviously questioned why? Why he couldn’t do it when they were still kids. His papa only smiled silently, gave him one of his very rare hugs and said, “Thank you.”
Viktor understood it then, little Yuuri had filled up the black hole his papa was running from, just like Yuuri’s love did to his.
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The spring turned to summer, the leaves fell on autumn and celebrations came on winter. Until one autumn day, Viktor found himself again in front of the familiar operation theatre. Yuri, the teen one, clung to him. This time no one else was around to accompany him to his nostalgic encounter. Papa had quietly gone with mama, and Yuri was busy with his own family.
They brought his bed out of the swinging doors. Viktor and little Yuri stared with their hearts beating on their hands. But he was already up and he smiled. It was a little hiccup on their journey. Although Yuuri may not skate like he used to do, he had him for life. The doctor smiles lightly and the nurses gave their blessings.
Yuuri lay on the recovery bed as Viktor took his hand with so much affection that his entire being shook with the intensity of his own feelings. The tears he couldn’t stop. Relieved, for he didn’t know the end of his love for the man who saved him from that hungry black hole. He gently stroked his jet black hair, and took his hand until he fell asleep. Teen Yuri watched them from behind, leaving his papa and dada to connect. When Viktor turned around, he caught his son’s eyes fixed on their connected hands, and he felt euphoric. He was learning ‘love’ from his parents. He felt won, he wasn’t making the same mistakes as his father, at least not the same ones.
When he finally took Yuuri home, Viktor saw the birch trees in autumn colors. The leaves made piles on the ground. They were preparing to retire. But all Viktor saw was the carpet of yellows, browns and red leaves woven on the road to welcome Yuuri. In Viktor’s mind, they were beautiful. It’s just how he saw things ever since he met Yuuri.
Their lives won’t be the same again, but their love was still the same. The birch changed from barren to green to yellow to barren again. Nothing escaped the gauntlet of nature. It was like a rich girl in a shopping spree, there was no end to its spending; the age, the youth, the earth.
He had even less hate for hospitals after that, it had ‘saved’ his Yuuri.
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The last time Viktor sat on the hospital bench, he didn’t feel terrible at all, even though it had allowed the course of nature to claim him.
He sat on that bench as usual, but longing to touch Yuuri and his son.
They sat on the bench next to him and teen Yuri held Yuuri close. Viktor ached to wipe his tears. He feared that the droplets will somehow take away with them the endless deep amber in his eyes that used to feed him with love and life. It wasn’t like he could absorb them anymore, but still… he was the sole reason for those tears. He wanted to stop them from falling at all.
But he couldn’t, for nature’s spending habits had claimed his materialistic existence. When the all too familiar scene of a sad and overworked doctor coming out of the swinging doors played in front of him, Viktor sighed, disappointed. It was too cliché, boring even. But he didn’t have the luxury to be the critique of nature any more. Yuuri had begun to cry even harder now as his hand ran along the edges of the white linen that covered the lifeless body brought out from the theater. He stood helpless beside them and tried to wrap them in his arms. The feeling of his hands free falling through the bodies of his loved ones was not pleasant even for a dead man. He drew his hands back, he wasn’t even materialistic now.
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Strangely so, he could still feel them.
Their tears, he felt. Their heart broken weeps, he felt indeed. The need, the exclusion, the love and the pain; he felt them all. But he also felt the pull towards a new beginning. Through the hospital window, Viktor observed that the garden had begun to show itself through the melted snow. The winter had officially ended, and the spring loomed over the horizon.
Spring always came up after winter.
They say that nothing is permanent, but Viktor realized, even when he had failed to recognize, there had been one thing constant.
Love.
The gentle and caring love of his mama, the quiet love of his father that he failed to see. Yuuri and Yurio reminded him of the sunshine that lightened up his life, their son the flowers and leafy greens that sprouted in the spring.
Viktor concentrated all his love deep within him for his son and husband and placed a soft peck on Yuuri’s cheek, then on junior Yuri’s. Yuuri still smelled the same; sandal and earth. He stopped instantly to touch his aged cheeks and Yuuri looked around.
Viktor knew, that he had been felt, and it made him content in a way he didn’t know he could.
Maybe in a world where nothing stayed the same, somehow love was constant, present in different forms in everything that was born and died. If he look around close enough, he could have seen, even in the gate guard who allowed him passage to the ice rink in after hours when he sought after Yuuri’s love as a young gentleman.
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Yuuri was wondering, his hand still lingering on his cheek. His curiosity had finally stopped the tears.
Viktor started walking away, to the spring sun that loomed over the horizon. Waiting for a new beginning.