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The first time Victor almost says it, it’s mere moments after he and Yuuri have made love.
It just sort of happens—the lovemaking, not the near-declaration. As strongly as Victor felt in his conviction regarding his feelings for Yuuri, he still has the typical reservations of an elf pursuing a long-term relationship. Elves often courted for decades, centuries, even millennia before they fully committed. It was a permanent arrangement after all, a lifetime appointment; and so an elf didn’t dare take it lightly.
Certainly, Victor did not. But when he tried to picture a future without Yuuri in it, the image simply didn’t appear, didn’t exist; without him, nothing made sense. It was clear, even at this early juncture, that Yuuri was the only one for him—which led him to this exact predicament, where he is still actively inside Yuuri, looking down on him from where he’s sprawled along the lip of his parents’ thermal baths and breathless.
It just isn’t fair. The salt from the springs and perspiration alike wet Yuuri’s hair, make it appear as though he has a dewy collection of stars lining the space just above his eyes. He looks like what mortals associated with a god or goddess of bountiful harvest: well-fed, strong as an ox, and tinted a rich caramel from the rays of the sun. At this examination, Yuuri tilts his head and parts the pink petals of his mouth, breathing new life into the misty air surrounding them. “Feeling all right, Vitya?”
Yes. No. Who could say? He feels almost manic—like he’s properly shot past “happy” to the point that he’s peeked at despair and wrapped all the way back around again. “I love you,” he finally settles on, leaning forward to nuzzle at the baby-soft skin of Yuuri’s neck.
Yuuri squeaks—then giggles, at the tickling of Victor’s short hairs against the base of his throat. In response, he wraps his arms more thoroughly around Victor’s back, repeating the declaration to him into the shell of his ear.
Marry me, Victor doesn’t say. Marry me, marry me, marry me.
Honestly, it’s no small miracle that Yuuri hasn’t read that exact thought from him a hundred times. He thinks it when Yuuri wakes, when Yuuri blushingly calls him “darling,” when Yuuri knits him an afghan with little Makkachins on it—at each and every opportunity, really. His feelings are obvious—if not from his thoughts, then from his face.
It’s hardly past dawn, an hour in which a night owl like Yuuri would not dare stir. In the meantime, Victor and Mari have begun a chess match out on the veranda, to help bide their time before the first hotel patrons are set to arrive.
“So,” Mari poses, leaning down to take hold of one of her knights. He thinks she is about to point out how he’s left his king fully exposed; but instead, she queries, “When are you planning on asking him?”
“Hm?” Victor has his head propped in both hands, as he considers his strategy. “Ask who and what?”
“You know…” Mari knocks over his bishop. “Yuuri? His hand in marriage…?”
“Wha—?” Victor’s elbow juts to the side, his head falling off its perch and nearly sending the whole gameboard careening off the edge of the table. “Who told you—?”
“Ah, so you do have a plan!”
“Not yet!” Victor tries to blink away the blood he knows has rushed to his cheeks. “Where did you get that idea?”
But Mari hardly takes notice, merely placing the board back to rights and puckering her lips with a wet click. “You’re really easy to read.”
“Huh,” Victor intones. He moves another piece, without much thought. “Doesn’t bode well for my future career as possible King of Woodland.”
“Certainly not.” Mari knocks over his queen. “Checkmate.”
“Ah, my one weakness!” Victor laughs. He feels at his chest with the declaration, as though indicating to his faint heart.
Mari laughs along with him—until the bell above the inn door sounds from across the garden, drawing the two into the early morning doings of yet another work day.
It’s only when Yuuri emerges from bed moments later, endeavoring to help despite his disheveled hair, the sleep in his eyes, that Victor recalls Mari’s words, and the color comes back into his face, along with the now-familiar sentiment, a comforting reprise: Marry me, marry me, marry me.
Victor does not miss home. He does not, he does not, he does not.
So why must he constantly remind himself of the fact?
It’s the little things, really, that tend to sneak up on him: the lack of snowfall in winter, the wide open spaces devoid of trees, the palace looming in the distance that is both familiar and not. The sea is hardly more accommodating here than the forest was on Victor’s departure; it seems somehow to sense his foreign status, gathering up to avoid Victor at all costs, lest it be accused of colluding in his abdication.
Here, the sun is brighter; the moon, fuller. Even the birds sing different songs.
Surprisingly, one of the hardest cultural differences he has had to adjust to is the food. Yuuri’s mother’s cooking is sublime, of course; yet, the ingredients available in Sealand are so stark in contrast to that of Woodland’s offerings that he finds he often loses his enthusiasm in the middle of a meal, preferring to lean into conversation rather than clean his plate of the proffered rice and fish.
What he mostly wants is bread. And lots of it. Bread with honey, with jam, with sugar and cinnamon and raisins rolled into the dough, oil and vinegar dippings, runny eggs and drippy cheese. He dreams about it, sometimes, both awake and asleep. But bread flour is rare this far south. It’s prized—and an expense that Victor could easily undertake, had he still the power of the Woodland throne behind him. But as it is, Victor is an elf without a country, leaning only on the kindness of his partner’s parents to put a roof over his head. He couldn’t ask for more. He wouldn’t.
Which is why he’s struck positively mute upon entering his and Yuuri’s room one evening, only to find a spread of genuine Woodland delicacies before him in the low candlelight.
Victor drops his smock, from where he was aiming to hang it up after the dining hall rush. “What’s all this?”
Yuuri teeters on his toes, beside the lain table, with a beatific grin. “I’ve been trading town gossip for extra payment on the side.” His eyes flicker red at this, two rubies in the dark. “I… sensed you were missing a few things. Is it to your standards?”
Victor stalks across the room, to survey the offerings. It’s all the treats Victor had been craving, right down to the costly syrups and spices. “I’m not a particularly skilled baker,” Yuuri prefaces, even as an embarrassingly long growl emerges from Victor’s stomach, “but I tried my best. So sit, won’t you?”
Victor does—and reaches for a piece of bread on the descent, with an inviting pad of butter that instantly melts into the palate. Elves don’t need sustenance to survive; Victor has told himself so many times over, to cushion the blow of not having access to his local favorites. Still, the fluffy white substance feels life-giving in the mouth, as though having a direct line to the soul that bypasses the stomach entirely.
Each piece after is consumed with the same reverence, many bits shared between them even as Yuuri protests. The struggle is worth it to see Yuuri’s eyes aglow, nodding vigorously at each and every new flavor as it generously slathers the tongue.
Marry me, Victor thinks, when Yuuri’s lips press up against his fingertips, kissing there as he samples the latest flavor, marry me, marry me.
The denizens of Sealand do not take to Victor with the same amount of vigor demonstrated by Yuuri and his family—at least, not initially.
The oldest amongst them, whom have traveled the continent over, immediately recognize him for his worst qualities: a disgraced prince of Woodland, an upstart ice talent, a potential liability. Hardly more than a child, spurning his own land and relying on the charity of theirs. He doesn’t mean to merely visit; and that fact could very well spell trouble if a conflict was ever to erupt between elves.
The children, however, find prejudice elsewhere—chiefly, in his hair, which is white like an old man’s, but also, cut grotesquely short like a child’s. He’s a composition of contradictions: elven, when you would expect wizened; lithe, where you would expect resolute; painted in cool jewel tones instead of warm, earthy ones. His coloring was rare enough in Woodland; in Sealand, it marks him as nearly a different species entirely.
Yuuri was used to such things: the whisperings, the skitterings, the sideways looks. He’s been a mind talent since all of the ripe age of five; he knew suspicion well and how to handle it. Victor, however, wilts like a flower. He’s not meant for a life of quiet humility, even scorn; he’s meant to be adored. Yuuri can love him enough to fill in the place of ten people, but even so… He deserves better.
He cannot change who Victor is, fundamentally. He is a wayward prince. He does make people nervous with his sheer talent, with his parentage, nationality, and problems he poses for a future Sealand.
But his hair? That’s something Yuuri can work with.
Yuuri goes down to the beach, where the flora runs wild. He knows Victor loves a rose; but Sealand is hardly the climate for those. Here, orchids are the native beauty. Their colors are dependent on weather, on soil quality, but there is another, more determinant way: dyes, soaked directly into the roots. It is exactly for this purpose that Yuuri has been washing the dishes more, fishing the remnants of black tea and coffee grounds out of the bottom of ceramic cups. Combined with water, he’s been carefully tending a patch for months, and now he finally sees the fruits of his labor fulfilled: brown orchids, with their mouths unfurled like elegant forest moths.
He plucks the prettiest ones, then sets himself to the task of arranging them along a circular wire he borrowed from his mother’s sewing kit, fastening them in place with napkin rings and hairclips and whatever else he could find around the inn. In the end, it’s not exactly a crown worthy of the Prince of Woodland, but it stays in place, so he figures it’ll get the job done.
Upon returning, Yuuri sees, again, the exact need for this device he’s created: elven children ducking away out of sight as they pass by his parents’ place, shrieking with a combination of fear and laughter as Victor glances at them from where he sweeps the front courtyard.
Yuuri only hastens his steps.
“Vitya—” Yuuri watches as Victor’s expression softens in an instant, the kids’ reactions phased out of his mind with the approach of him. “I… I made you something.” He fingers the circlet, from where he has it tucked behind his back.
“Really?” Victor’s smile dawns like a new day. “I do so love surprises.”
Slowly, Yuuri brings his hands forward to reveal the crown. In the midday sun, the petals are more auburn than deep chocolate, as though warmed from the inside out. Still, the effect remains intact; if Victor dons this, he’ll be a brunette from a distance. Even up close, his silver hair will be mostly hidden, the short strands covered in a veritable field of flowers that Yuuri hopes will endear him to the citizens of Sealand.
“I love you hair,” Yuuri states, emphatically. “But I fear it’s hurting your chances of people getting to know you. If you wear this… perhaps they’ll look past it for the moment, then fall in love with the real you underneath, as I have.”
Cautiously, Victor takes the crown in both hands. Yuuri’s fingers linger, the two of them wreathing Victor in tandem. Though the accessory is meant to have a dulling effect, the muted hazel of the orchids just above his brows only seems to make the blue of his eyes stand out all the more, a stunning contrast that leaves Yuuri gasping.
Victor tilts his head, the crown pitching to one side. “Is it bad?”
“Far from it,” Yuuri assures. He rights it, then gives his partner a little push towards the direction the elven children ran off to. “Go on then. Let’s see if my invention works.”
Victor does, with only a small amount of trepidation caught visibly in his throat. Yuuri watches from a distance: Victor approaching; the kids startling, initially, then settling as Victor crouches beside them to give them a better look at the flowers. They touch, hesitantly. Some words are exchanged. One of the children must voice a desire for a crown of their own, which prompts Victor to touch a finger to the crest of their head. There, an icy circlet appears, wreathed in crystals and sparkly dew. The children squeal in delight, lining up instantly to be given the same treatment.
As Yuuri thought, no one could resist Victor’s charms. He’s content to take his leave then, allowing Victor to luxuriate in the full brunt of his moment.
If only he’d stayed, Yuuri would have been in the range to hear marry me, marry me, marry me ring through Victor’s mind, like the sweetest refrain.
It’s winter in Sealand, and it hasn’t snowed. Not even one flake.
Victor gazes out the window, periodically, as he rubs the pane of stubborn salt. Even if it did snow, he reasons, nothing would ice over. The ocean was too vast for that; the river, too wild. A lake, perhaps, if the temperature allowed, but such an event was a rarity. Still, Victor yearns for water frozen over, just as it would in his idyllic Woodlandian childhood. He and his friends would don skates—shoes insulated with fur, equipped with sharpened steel—to slide across the ice, spinning and jumping and amusing each other with tricks.
But skating wasn’t merely uncommon here; it was unheard of. When Victor described it, Yuuri only tilted his head, murmuring wonderingly how anyone could balance on such thin blades. Victor tried to describe it further—then think about it really hard, as though Yuuri could lift the image whole cloth from his brain—but the exercise only resulted in a vague feeling of nostalgia in Yuuri, the bittersweet sense of which wrinkled his nose, endearingly.
So there would be no skating. That’s fine. Sealand has its host of own wintery activities to indulge in, from seasonal dances to displays put on by light talents to imbibing drinks tinged with a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. Skating didn’t have to be a part of it.
But then, why did it hurt so?
On his birthday, Victor puts in every effort to be cheerful. He accepts the gifts from Yuuri’s family with genuine graciousness, takes Makkachin for a romp along the beach, then settles inside by the fire next to his beloved. The two curl into a blanket—Yuuri’s head on his shoulder, Victor’s chin on his head—until he’s certain Yuuri has fallen asleep; so it surprises him greatly when Yuuri’s voice echoes through his mind, barely above a whisper: I have one last present for you.
Oh? Victor thinks this is going somewhere—and he’s proven half right, when Yuuri gets up to retrieve his coat and boots, helping both of them into their things and leading them outside.
They walk for some time—until they’re outside the bounds of Sealand proper, inland where the rivers begin to fill out and the hills, to run. There, Yuuri brings him to the lip of a small pond, sequestered in a grove and still as cooled molasses. Victor thinks, just to a moment, that it might be iced over, but a fish jumping at that exact moment dashes his hopes. Still, he manages a laugh. “You don’t mean for us to swim, do you?”
“No.” Yuuri gestures at the pond, with a flourish. “We’re going to skate.”
Victor raises an eyebrow at him. “You know as well as I do that nothing freezes in Sealand.”
“Yes, nothing freezes…” Yuuri hip-checks him, gently. “… except you.”
Victor considers this, taking in the pond then with new eyes. He has never attempted to freeze over something of this caliber. He’s barely eight hundred; he thinks a body of water this size would require a least another two hundred years of practice. Yet, when Yuuri looks at him with such determination, he feels electric, coursing wells of talent he hadn’t known he has access to. And so—
Victor takes to one knee, placing both hands on the surface of the pond. It’s cold. It wants to be ice. Victor can feel its will; he merely needs to nudge it in the right direction. Slowly—then all at once—the water beneath his fingertips bursts into snowflake patterns. The design gathers, coalesces; then it shoots in all directions, bouncing around until it’s covered the pond many times over in a thick layer of frost.
Yuuri claps, enthusiastically. He goes to step on it—until Victor rises, barring him from the rink with a hand held to his sternum. “Not yet, love. Let me try it first. I need to make sure it’s sturdy enough.”
Yuuri pouts at him. “I trust your work. And what if you fall in?”
“I’m an ice talent. I can easily magic my way out.”
Victor does test it, and it quickly proves to be as sound as it appears. He beckons for Yuuri then, who easily obliges. They’ve no skates to slide across it properly; yet, that’s hardly an issue. Victor uses his talent to slicken the bottom of their shoes. The result is an impressive glide, one which Victor takes full advantage of to spin Yuuri around in wide arcs, startling delightful shrieks out of him.
They swizzle; they pirouette; they sashay. And somewhere in the middle of it, that old sentiment overwhelms Victor again, from where it originates from his heart, his mind: Marry me, marry me, marry me.
Victor stares at the garnet—from where it gleams crimson, just beneath the bronze column of Yuuri’s throat—with a sense of absolute awe, of wonderstruck beguilement.
He did it. It took ten years of a careful balancing act—maintaining restraint while at the same time gathering courage—but Victor finally proposed to Yuuri with the necklace he was gifted upon birth for this very purpose. He, too, now wears the sapphire Yuuri was bestowed with for the same reason, the gem already warm and steady against his skin as though it’s where it has always belonged.
They lie together in bed now, just hours after the event. The sun is draining out of the far window; Yuuri’s sooty lashes are lowering, kissing the ripe curve of his cheeks. Victor presses his lips against Yuuri’s head, from where he’s tucked into the circle of his arms.
Just as he is about to join his fiancé—fiancé!—in sleep, Yuuri stirs, minutely. You know, I almost asked you a thousand times.
Victor yawns. Asked me what?
To marry me.
Victor sits up straight in bed. “What? When?”
Yuuri follows. “Constantly.”
“You—! You didn’t show it!”
Yuuri smiles, crookedly. “That’s because I had this.” He reaches behind him, to the bedside table. There, he pulls open the drawer, bypasses the more intimate things for a plain notebook: leatherbound, worn, with a colorful ribbon to denote the pages.
Yuuri hesitates for only a moment before handing it over. Victor cracks it open at the spine, carefully.
June 23: Victor’s lips form a heart when he smiles. I want to marry him.
July 2: Victor taught his dog how to kiss me on command. I want to marry him.
July 17: Victor lets me read his thoughts whenever I desire. I want to marry him.
July 28: Victor peels fruits for me and feeds me like a baby bird. I want to marry him.
August 5: Victor holds my hand whenever the opportunity arises. I want to marry him.
It goes on for many pages. Ten years’-worth, in total. And here Victor thought his love could never grow fuller than it had felt hours ago, when Yuuri agreed to marry him. What a fool he had been.
“Why did you keep this from me?”
“Because…” Yuuri hides behind his fingers. “It was a little embarrassing. I liked you so early on. I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“Luckily…” Victor moves Yuuri’s hands, to kiss at his nose. “… I liked you just as much.”
“W-well—” Yuuri laughs, pushes the journal more firmly into Victor’s hold. “—I don't need it anymore, so you should keep it. Call it an early engagement present…?”
Victor smiles. “I’ll treasure it forever.”
And when an elf makes a vow of forever, it can be assured that you can take him at his word.