Chapter Text
Viktor looks at the words written on his wrist. His soulmate’s words, they’re there for him to take to comfort in. He doesn’t care that he’s twenty seven and he still hasn’t met them. He puts his uncertainty into his skating, he makes sure no one else knows those words but himself. He makes sure no one knows the words etched on his wrist. Those words are meant for him and no one else.
His mind drifts from the words Yakov’s spouting to him and Yuri as his mind drifts to the nights where he’d wake up to a small redness surrounding those words. It drifts to the times he would fall over after landing a jump badly because he felt a pang in his chest. He knows it’s his soulmate, he knows that his soulmate isn’t coping with something but he can’t figure out what it is.
Yuuri Katsuki had been fretting about the words on his wrist ever since they’d first appeared on his wrist. He’s always found it unsettling that he knew what someone who he’d never met knew what he’d say when they first met. He’s tried to rub them off multiple times, he hates those words. He hates the words, constantly teasing him. He’s hated the idea of soulmates, he’d love his soulmate to the ends of the earth he knows that much.
He doesn’t know why he hates them, he hates the fact that Yuko had met Takeshi while she was in highschool. He hates how Minako had found hers at her studio, he hates hearing the stories. He’s twenty four and he still hasn’t met his soulmate. He feels utterly hopeless, utterly helpless, he feels out of synch. The only thing that brings all his emotions together and wipes it all away is skating. The only thing that calms him is skating.
*~*
A commemorative photo? Sure! Are the words written on Yuuri Katsuki’s wrist. They’ve been teasing him for ten years now, people have always asked him if he’d already found his own soulmate. He always avoided the subject of soulmates. Thinking of his always caused nervousness and anxiety to skyrocket, his mother would always ask him if he’d met them. He always would smile, and shake his head and say not yet. It’s become routine now.
Yuuri’s come to love training in detroit, he never really enjoyed training at home when he’d always see everyone with their own soulmate. It was just a constant reminder of his loneliness but in Detroit he wasn’t as lonely, there weren’t as many people who had found their soulmate. There weren’t as many people who bothered asking him, he almost forgot about the words adorning his skin. It was as if there’d been something lifted off his shoulders.
Why are you here? Are the words written on Viktor Nikiforov’s wrist and they’d always had a negative effect on him since he’d first seen them appear. They’d first appeared when he was around seventeen years old, around ten years ago. He’d been so scared he’d be alone forever, he’d been so scared that he’d end up alone with no one. He was sick of seeing everyone with words on wrists and seeing them with each other and then he met Yuri.
The boy had slashes through his words, it was rare that this happened. It meant they had no one, their soulmate's gone, they were no longer on this earth. Yuri will never have anyone now, he was destined to remain alone. Viktor met Yuri at a competition and he’d noticed the slashes in the words, and he felt a pang in his chest, his own words hadn’t appeared. He grew close with Yuri and the two bonded and he had screamed when his own words had appeared. Yuri had cried when Viktor had shown him the words scrawled on his wrist and Viktor felt terrible that he’d almost flaunted it but Yuri had just said that he didn’t care, he was just happy that Viktor wouldn’t end up like him, lonely and without a soulmate, destined not to find anyone. That's the worst thing that someone could be in this world, alone.
*~*
It’s at the grand prix when Yuuri lets it all get to him, the pressure, his emotions, everything overwhelms him during his performance. He wants to scream and shout, he finds himself running into the bathroom and locking himself in one of the stalls. There’s nothing good for him here, he came dead last, he isn’t worthy of being out there, isn’t worthy of competing on the same ice as Viktor Nikiforov.
His fingers are sliding over his mum’s phone number, he can barely bring himself to say anything. As soon as he hangs up there’s someone banging on the door and he can’t take this anymore, he can’t take any of it. He opens the cubicle door and is faced with Yuri Plisetsky. He can’t bring himself to say anything, he just feels his worlds becoming a jumbled mess and tears are starting to fall from his eyes as he walks from the bathroom.
On the way out he watches as Viktor walks past with Yuri, lecturing the other about his short program and his free skate. He doesn’t pay attention to anything his coach says and he just looks across and watches Viktor. He wishes he was worthy to skate on the same ice, to skate with him, to talk to him, he wishes he could be everything Viktor is and maybe even more.
He feels his whole face turn red when Viktor notices and smiles and he swears he can’t breathe and his heart skips a beat.
“A commemorative photo? Sure!” Yuuri feels everything in his body freeze up for a second, those words, he knows those words. It can’t be, it isn’t, it’s not possible. He almost looks down to check, but he knows them by heart, they’re ingrained in his head and he can’t get them out. He does all he can do, he turns away and walks right on out. He doesn’t listen to the reporter asking him why he isn’t taking a picture, he just walks, he needs air and he needs to get home. He wants to get away from skating even if only for a little while.
Viktor watches as Yuuri turns away from him, he feels something in his heart, he feels something like sadness. He doesn’t know why, he doesn’t even know Yuuri Katsuki, he found him interesting, he found himself surprisingly immersed in the song and choreo for Yuuri’s short program, and he’d been nitpicking everything that deducted his points. The routine had caused something to stir, he’d felt something like electricity flowing through his nervous system and he’s been taken away. Viktor had liked everything about his routine but he hadn’t been shocked to see that Yuuri had ended up last but he realised that he didn’t really care.
He’s napping on his couch when he hears his phone vibrate on the coffee table, he tries to ignore it, but he honestly can’t bring himself to answer it. He attempts to roll over but he finds it almost impossible when he feels Maccachin lying across his stomach. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes as he reaches for his phone. There’s a message from Yakov with a link to a video, and he almost throws Makacchin off when he reads the title.
Yuuri Katsuki Skates Viktor Nikiforov’s Stay By Me
*~*
Viktor had noticed a lot in the video, he noticed that the routine was almost perfect, there were only some minor errors and they were mainly in the jumps. He had been shocked, surprised to see that someone had attempted his own routine. It actually makes him happy, he finds himself looking up plane flights to Japan and he finds out that his family owns a small bath house around the hot springs in Hasetsu.
He finds himself packing for Japan, he’s booked his tickets for the next day and honestly he can’t say that he’s felt this inspired since he’d first started skating. Everyone had started expecting the impossible from his routines so it wasn’t as special anymore.
He hears shouts from inside the house, he hears smashes and scrambling and he lets out a small chuckle as he sits down in the bath. He notices that Yuuri looks at him as if he isn’t there, as if this is all a dream and he smiles at the other from where he’s sitting in the hot spring.
“ V..Viktor..” He isn’t prepared for the words he hears next.
“ why’re you here?”
He almost lets them get to him and he shakes his head, why would those words said by Yuuri Katsuki mean anything to him. It’s not like he hasn’t those words said to him before, he likes to surprise people so he’d heard those words too often in his life.
“I’ll be your coach, and you will win the Grand Prix.”
Yuuri’s face heats up when Viktor stands up from the bath and extends his hand. He turns away blushing and he wants to run back inside, because his soulmate is standing naked in front of him, with a hand extended offering to coach him. His soulmate is Viktor Nikiforov, no one else has ever asked him for a commemorative photo and no one else has ever smiled at him like that.
He turns around again and he looks at the words scrawled across Viktor’s wrist, they’re gone as soon as he sees them but they’re there. And he’d just said those words, he just runs back inside, not saying another word. He’s always hated confrontation.