Chapter Text
Victor woke up the morning after the banquet at the Sochi Grand Prix Final with a feeling of boundless elation bubbling in his chest. He was smiling before he even opened his eyes, surfacing slowly from a whirlwind of warm, pleasant dreams. Soft rays of the morning sun creeping in through the window warmed his body and with a pleased hum he burrowed deeper into the perfectly comfortable hotel sheets.
Victor was happy.
He couldn’t even remember when he’d last been anything that even remotely resembled content, and yet… one perfect, unbelievable night with the most surprising, overwhelming and sexy man he had ever met, and he was happy.
He allowed himself a few more minutes of floating pleasantly in his recollections of the night before, and by the time he rolled over and opened his eyes, his smile had blossomed into a full-fledged goofy grin.
Katsuki Yuuri.
The name tasted sweet when Victor rolled it over his tongue.
Who would have thought it was possibly to be so thoroughly swept off his feet in the span of one night?
Victor stretched languidly in the sheets, enjoying the slight soreness in his muscles that came from a night of dancing in addition to a weekend of skating, then he kicked off his blankets in a quick motion. Sitting up, he swung his legs out of bed and shook his head with a fond smile as Yuuri’s wide, lopsided grin the night before appeared in his mind’s eye.
In his peripheral vision he saw a dark smudge on his chest, and his hand came up automatically to brush it away, thinking it to be some lint or dirt. But instead of the fuzz he’d been expecting, his fingers just met smooth skin, raised ever so slightly.
Turning his head down fully now with a frown, Victor tried to get a proper look at it, but whatever it was, it was just outside his field of vision, high on his chest, just underneath his collarbone on the left side. From the small, blurry edge Victor could make out, it looked like writing.
Furrowing his brow, Victor thought back over the last night, wondering if he had somehow missed someone writing on him. Shaking his head, he pushed to his feet.
There was a mirror on the door of the wardrobe in this room, that would give him a better idea of what he was dealing with.
He padded across the room in his bare feet, the soft morning light filtering through the curtains plenty to see by, and faced himself in the mirror.
There was indeed writing on his chest, but it was not the messy black-marker scrawl he‘d expected, remembering many nights of drunken shenanigans when he was younger. No, it was a clean, regular script, bold letters with just a bit of a flourish to them, imprinted into his skin like a tattoo.
Even though the words were mirrored, Victor had no problem recognising them immediately.
He swallowed and lifted his hand to trace his fingertips along the letters that were not, he realised now, black, but a deep navy blue. He knew without trying that no amount of scrubbing would make these words disappear.
Be my coach, Victor!
The words told him with more certainty than any amount of butterflies in his stomach or distracted daydreams ever could.
He was in love.
He was in love with Katsuki Yuuri, his soulmate.
This was something every child learned about soulbonds, a part of human connection since the very beginnings of history.
A certain percentage of the population—the latest census suggested a number just over twenty percent—had soulmates, romantic partners that they were fated to be with. When you fell in love with your soulmate, the last words they had said to you would appear on your skin, etched into your body like a tattoo.
There was no way to know if you had a soulmate or who they were until this happened.
There was no guarantee that both people of a soulmate pair would feel the same way about one another—it wasn‘t very common, but on occasion the bond would remain one-sided for reasons unknown.
It was also unknown if it was possible for neither party of a soulmate pair to fall in love with each other, or for two soulmates to never even meet. Some researchers stipulated, therefore, that the percentage of people with undiscovered soulmate bonds may be significantly higher.
Other people believed that a soulmate bond was not fated from birth but was only established once the first party fell in love with someone compatible enough to be their soulmate, meaning there was no such thing as an unpresented soulmate pair.
Soulwords could present on a person’s body in all manners of shapes, colours, sizes and locations. They could be covered up, but not removed, surgically or otherwise. They could stem from any kind of communication in words--spoken, written, electronic, even sign language.
In some cultures they were a point of pride, while in others they were something deeply private and intimate.
No matter how the relationship with your soulmate developed after the presentation of the soulmark, they were always, always permanent.
Victor stared at the dark blue words impressed into his skin, and decided not to panic.
This was fine, he thought, tracing his fingertips tenderly along the ink, just in that spot where Yuuri’s breath had been hot against his skin when he’d exclaimed the very words now written there. This was okay.
He was in love with Katsuki Yuuri. He didn’t mind being in love with Katsuki Yuuri, nor did he mind being his soulmate. In fact, if it meant that he could spend more time with Yuuri, Victor would be willing to have all manner of other things permanently written on his body.
And Yuuri—well. It was probably fair to say that Yuuri was not in love with him at this point. There wasn’t much of Yuuri’s body that Victor had not seen last night, and it had been free of any hint of Soulwords, which made sense, since they had never really spoken before last night. Perhaps Yuuri had even woken up with Soulwords of his own this morning. After all, it took a few hours for them to manifest.
But even if not—Victor was fairly certain that Yuuri was not indifferent to him. Sure, his excitement may have been exaggerated by how drunk he was, but the way he had sought out Victor over and over in the course of the night, the way they had clung to each other, dancing, the way Yuuri had hugged him before they parted ways…
There was a certainty in him, deep in his bones, a certainty like he hadn’t felt in so many years, about anything, that, given time, Katsuki Yuuri could be just as enamoured with Victor as Victor was with him.
And time they had. Yuuri had Victor’s number, and there were three months until Worlds. They could text or call or even video chat, perhaps, and they could get to know each other better, outside of the whirlwinds of intoxication and dance battles.
They could bond, tell each other of their lives, share pictures of their pets (Did Yuuri have a dog? Surely Yuuri must have a dog!), and then they’d see each other again at Worlds.
And then the season would be over and perhaps… perhaps, if Yuuri still wanted it, Victor could try his hand at coaching. He’d never really thought about coaching before, had never really considered what he would do with his life after his competitive career was over, even as the gold medals grew heavier and heavier around his neck.
But if it allowed him to be close to Katsuki Yuuri… Victor thought he could do anything, then.
Yuuri did not text him.
Victor waited with some attempt at patience for a few days, thinking about the hangover that Yuuri was sure to have and the traveling and the jetlag… but the more time passed the more desperately he wished he had been able to get Yuuri’s own number out of him in his inebriated state. Or sent himself a quick message from Yuuri’s phone as he was entering his number.
He told himself that perhaps Yuuri was just busy. He’d found out online that Yuuri was going to college, so perhaps he just had some classwork to do. Perhaps he was working hard to prepare for his Nationals.
Perhaps…
Victor tried not to let the words inked on his chest weigh too heavily on his mind as he daydreamed of dancing with Yuuri, of being held firmly in his arms.
After ten days his patience snapped, and Victor set out searching for a way to contact Yuuri.
The only twitter account Victor could find under Yuuri’s name had been created in 2012 and had no profile picture, two tweets in Japanese and was following only three other accounts.
Victor noted with some satisfaction that one of those three accounts was his own, but still he wasn’t certain if this was Yuuri’s own account at all, or just someone with the same name, or perhaps some attempt at a fan account.
Yuuri’s Instagram account was a little less sparse, sporting a good two dozen posts and a few thousand followers. The last posts was dated to two weeks before Sochi, a photo of skate-clad feet photographed from above, resting in a position that Victor recognized from countless hours spent on Youtube as the opening pose of Yuuri’s Short Program. There was a caption in English and Japanese, announcing Yuuri’s qualification for the GPF, thanking everyone for their support and asking them to root for him in Sochi.
Victor wondered if it would be too passive aggressive to like the post. He figured, in light of how the GPF had gone for Yuuri, it might even come across as snide, so he refrained. He did follow the account though, but the message request he sent remained unanswered, and no new posts or stories appeared on Yuuri’s account.
Though he spent more time than he’d readily admit to looking, he could not find any other accounts of Yuuris, nor could he get a hold of another way of contacting him. He did find out the general format of the student e-mail addresses of the college Yuuri attended, meaning he’d likely be able to email Yuuri by inserting his first and last name at the appropriate points, but he realised before he even got close to doing that that it went beyond desperate right to the far end of creepy.
Perhaps he would just have to accept that Yuuri did not want to talk to him.
It was a tough pill to swallow, but Victor comforted himself with the thought that at least he would see Yuuri again at Worlds, and he could try and figure out what had gone so spectacularly wrong then. And try to fix it.
Except Victor’s birthday rolled around, and with it came the worst birthday present ever, in the form of the results from All Japan.
Yuuri had placed eleventh. Yuuri would not be going to Worlds. Yuuri’s season was over.
And now so was Victor’s. Metaphorically speaking. Victor was incapable of not doing what was expected of him (and wasn’t that just sad for the man who had once been The Unexpected personified?), and he got another gold at Nationals and started training for the European Championships.
But he felt more drained than ever, his skates heavy as he dragged himself through his jumps week after week, his chest aching every time he skated Stammi Vicino.
He thought he could feel the ink burning under his clothes.
Victor had made sure that his Soulwords were carefully covered up before he’d gone into the onsen, made sure that not only were the words unreadable but there was not even a trace of there being any Soulwords in the first place.
He did not want to influence Yuuri in any way, put him under any kind of pressure or obligation.
If Yuuri was going to complete their bond, he was going to do it freely, from his own heart.
Not that Victor was sure it would work any other way, but still, it was better to be safe.
And if Yuuri didn’t, well…
“Yuuri! Starting today I am going to be your coach!”
Well, then Yuuri was still an incredibly talented skater who deserved a coach who could help him reach new heights.
Victor could do this.