Work Text:
The windowsill is swollen pale with moonlight, murky from the wisps of passing clouds that bait the moon into an uneasy compromise. Some of this light flecks the wooden floorboards, scatters its eager shine across quilted covers, and teases the rumpled bedsheets beneath that twist like rivers around two still figures. Well, not completely still- the taller occupant of the bed hovers with stilted breath, muscles rigid, watching the moonlight illuminate the sleeping face of one Katsuki Yuuri.
about five minutes ago
Viktor wakes up to mumbling. Words, barely coherent, that trip over themselves in a train of unfiltered expression, shaking Viktor into a bleary state of consciousness. For a second he’s about to ignore it and fall claim to the soundless demands of exhaustion, all until he hears a voice unmistakably shape his name and cast it into the night air. It’s murmured like a secret, on a tongue soft and heavy with sleep. Almost immediately Viktor’s alert, irises darting into focus beneath crusty eyelids as his senses filter in.
It’s Yuuri. Yuuri’s the one talking. And Yuuri, Viktor stiffens as the realisation shuffles his heart between its claws, is the one mumbling his name in his sleep. Trying to reign his eagerness in, Viktor inches up until he’s halfway propped against the headboard, in possession of a good vantage point for all things sleepy and muttering and Yuuri. Viktor thinks he’s never listened harder in all his life.
“…My theme for the Grand Prix this year is…love,” Yuuri’s lips curve around the words like they’re something precious, almost reluctant to let them leave. Viktor feels a thrill shoot down his spine, whirling like an ache in the juncture where it bends to meet his waist. He’s talking to a reporter in his dream, huh? Viktor senses the corners of his own mouth quirking up even before he registers the twitch in his hands. He wants, so much, to frame Yuuri’s face with them, to run the pads of his fingers across the velvet tops of fluttering eyelids, to smother Yuuri in his arms and feel warm breath fan across his face. How cute.
“Yes. Viktor is my…coach.” Viktor laps at the pregnant pause between Yuuri’s words like a man dying of thirst. Oh, but I am also so much more. “A strength of his? Well, I think-“ Viktor’s heart gives a lurch, so loudly that it might even interrupt the sanctity of the moment, and Yuuri trails off. No, no, no, no-
“-He has a really nice ass.”
Viktor isn’t breathing.
“It’s really, sculpted, and everything. Especially when he wears the pink and purple leotard, you know, the one from 2014, Stuttgart championships? I just stared at the TV the whole time.”
Viktor has the headboard in a death grip.
“Plus, when he does those quad flips. He kickstarted my sexual awakening when I was thir… teen…” And with that, Yuuri goes silent. It’s almost embarrassing how a roiling want can surge straight to Viktor’s lower abdomen with a just few murmured words, heat escaping through the fractional pauses between his quickened breath.
“So you’re only thinking about my body, are you?” Viktor whispers, half to himself and half to the gods, wincing at how his voice emerges like a pant. His hand knocks against his chest as he shifts away, afraid that he’ll combust if he stares at Yuuri’s face for too long. Fingers used to elegance and precision, now scrambling to soothe his heart as it protests the confines of his ribcage- abysmal!Living legend Viktor Nikiforov, reduced to a jumble of nerve endings by a man who’s passed out and clutching a stuffed dog to his chest. A man who will have absolutely no knowledge of this when he wakes up.
“-No!” Yuuri blurts abruptly, and Viktor clutches at the sheets in surprise. Yuuri is going to be the death of him, and for so many reasons. Viktor’s eyes traverse the crests and dips in Yuuri’s face, concerned, as Yuuri’s eyebrows scrunch up and his lips form a tight line. “That’s not it, that’s not true…I don’t only think about Viktor’s body.”
Yuuri just answered him. Viktor stops thinking and speaks.
“What do you think about, then?” His heart is shivering on the threshold of his throat, and the blankets are suddenly unbearably warm.
“I think Viktor is kind. He’s so talented, but of course he knows that. He’s proud but it doesn’t change him. He cares. He tries his best to even when he doesn’t understand.”
Everything is still, from the air to the fingers that remain splayed over Viktor’s heart. Viktor is filled with so much light that he can do nothing but breathe, the night spilling over into him like ink, stars affixing themselves to Yuuri’s words and the slight rise and fall of his chest.
“And I think he loves me. I hope he does. Because…I love him too.”
Yuuri’s mouth closes painfully over the last syllable and Viktor wants to clutch it tight before it disappears. He chases it with the corners of his lips, burrowing into the bed and smiling so hard it imprints itself on his pillow. He’s never felt anything like this before. They’ve been dating for a few months now and he knows that it has to be love, what else could this feeling be, exhilarating and frightening and safe, but hearing it as an unconscious truth perched on Yuuri’s mouth sets him on fire. The perpetrator himself has snuggled further under the covers, mouth tucked into the stuffed Maccachin toy, and Viktor doesn’t know whether to feel wretched or utterly, thoroughly relieved.
Anymore and he doesn’t know what he would have done.
Or what he might be going to do.
now
In the moonlight Yuuri is the same and yet entirely not the same. His soft features, bitten away at the edges with a candid glow, forehead and chin and jawline rendered in tender shadow; his eyelashes casting a soft darkness against the half-moons of his cheeks; his skin fair and smooth and laying waste to Viktor’s heart. Viktor, trying to suppress his blush like a sixteen-year-old on the verge of doing something stupid, thinks that Yuuri is utterly unfair for existing. And for looking the way he does, carefully debauched in the dimness of the room. And for saying those things about Viktor with no idea the effect that they have-
In the moonlight Yuuri is kissed, softly, a set of warmer lips melding carefully to his own, afraid to rouse him from sleep. If Yuuri were awake he’d see Viktor bracing himself over his head with steady arms, and If Yuuri were to look closer he’d discover those arms aren’t that steady after all. If Yuuri were awake he’d feel the shaky puff of air Viktor blows out when he pulls away, pupils dilated, fringe falling in a sweep over a fair slate of forehead.
He’d also see Viktor turning quickly away, removing himself from the orbit of Yuuri’s personal space with a jerk like he’s being wrenched, like it hurts him to increase the distance between them. He’d see Viktor curling in the opposite direction, fingers running themselves over grinning mouth like a reminder, an etching, a prolonging of a memory he never wants to release.
He’d see Viktor trying to hold back a dizzy laugh.
“Oh, Yuuri! How forward.”