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Victor had watched Yuuri sleep for hours before leaving to walk to the ocean, lying next to him in the makeshift bed they’d made, watching as he shifted, his dark hair moving and his cheek creased from the pillow. He hadn’t touched him, or spoken to him, he’d just watched him breathe, and turned the ring he’d bought over and over in his fingers, thinking. Wondering.
It’s almost like a marriage proposal, he’d said, and been embarrassed instantly by it. Except that Yuuri had smiled, and Yuuri had collapsed back into his arms, and Victor had known, in that moment, that it was all going to be okay, that someday they would --
But wait. Back up.
Just for a moment.
“Dance with me,” Yuuri says, stumbling over his words like he’d stumbled over his jumps earlier. Victor is, despite himself, charmed.
“Dance with me,” he repeats insistently, taking Victor’s hand and pressing it to his hip.
So Victor does.
Yuuri dances like he’s thinking, even drunk, about how he can work it into a skating routine. He dances like he’s free, spinning wild into a jump, dipping Victor back. He dances like they’re on the ice together, staring into each other’s eyes, making the whole world jealous.
He dances like he wants Victor more than anything in the world, and he knows Victor wants him back.
Victor, for the first time in months, feels light as a feather.
“Be my coach,” Yuuri says, and then laughs, and starts to dance again, and Victor swallows his yes. He’ll find him again when they’re both sober, he tells himself. He’ll ask again.
The next morning, Yuuri looks away from him in the airport, and then he’s gone.
And then comes the video.
Victor feels his heart turning over on itself, again and again, in time to the music, like it hasn’t done in a year or more. The absent inspiration he’s been chasing -- it hasn’t been lost. It’s just been in Japan, with Yuuri, with this man who skates like the ice is an extension of his body, with this man who danced with Victor in a crowded ballroom and dipped him back, parallel to the floor, nearly kissing him --
Going to Japan is easy. Telling Yuuri he’s going to coach him is easy.
It’s what comes after that’s hard.
Yuuri is different, sober. It’s not like Victor had expected the seductive, laughing, carelessly handsome man from the party to reappear instantly; he’s had enough of his own drunken escapades to know that alcohol can make you into another person entirely. But Yuuri is so different, so timid, so confused. He’s got a fire in his eyes that he seems to barely know how to navigate, a passion for skating that rivals his fear of failure. He’s even more fascinating, even more captivating, even more beautiful.
But he doesn’t look at Victor now like he did at the party, with all unconcealed lust, all laughing, joyous want. He looks at Victor like that want is all burning under the surface, untapped, untested. Not unwanted, just as if he’s afraid to tell Victor how he feels, as if he somehow believes Victor would have come all the way here if he wasn’t desperately, stupidly in love with a drunk almost-stranger.
Because Victor loves like this, has always loved like this; he loved skating like this once, all head-over-heels devotion, all unthinking, unbreathing desperation. He loves Yuuri like this too, like he’ll never be complete again without Yuuri looking at him, standing next to him, skating in front of him. Loving Yuuri is like loving skating, a million times over. It’s all-consuming. Beautiful and terrible and raw.
(It’s quite dramatic, too, but then again, Victor is known to be dramatic.)
He tells Yuuri to skate Eros and shows him the choreography. He watches Yuuri watching him, sees the hitch in his breath, the red in his cheeks. Thinks, you want me. Thinks, almost absentmindedly, a breath of an idea that he won’t quite conceptualize until much, much later, I don’t mind waiting.
And oh, is it worth the wait.
Yuuri moves along to Eros like someone who’s only just discovered what he wants, who’s taking it by force of will alone. This Yuuri could have Victor begging on his knees in seconds.
“Don’t you dare look away from me,” Yuuri tells him, glaring into his eyes, and Victor’s knees nearly buckle.
Why are you running? he’d asked, weeks ago. But Yuuri’s not running any more, and thank god, thank god, because the fire in his eyes is blazing, and it will be a joy to burn.
Yuuri gets silver, and Victor kisses him.
(This is the happy ending, he thinks to himself, watching Yuuri smile up at him. This is the last scene in a romantic movie; the fade to black, fade to credits.
And maybe it is.
But Victor can’t bring himself to mind, because while Yuuri is doing interviews and posing for pictures, Victor watches him talk, and he can’t ever remember being this content.)
“What did you think about,” Victor asks him, days after Yuuri’s win, not thinking he’ll get an answer, “that made you skate like you did?” He smiles. “Couldn’t have been a pork cutlet bowl.”
Yuuri doesn’t answer for a moment, and Victor prepares to laugh it off, to wrap his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders and move on, but. Yuuri turns and looks at him, eyes like a thunderstorm, sending electricity up Victor’s arms.
“I was thinking how I wanted them to hate me,” he says. “I was thinking how I wanted them to know that I’ve got Victor Nikiforov all to myself, and I wanted them to hate me for it, and watch me skate, and know in their hearts that I’m the only one who can hold your attention right now.”
Victor can’t breathe. Yuuri’s eyes are so intense, sharp as flint, sparks flying -- he’s breathtaking even like this, even without Eros playing in the background, without a liter of alcohol in him to loosen him up. He’s breathtaking always and everywhere.
“I wanted them to know you wanted me,” Yuuri murmurs, and then looks away, his cheeks going the slightest bit red. Victor loves him for it, suddenly and helplessly and hopelessly. “I wanted them to see how you look at me when I skate it. Christophe said --”
“Fuck what Christophe said,” Victor says, his voice a thin, reedy thing. “Look at me.”
Yuuri does. Victor doesn’t kiss him. He wants to, but he doesn’t.
It’s not the right time, he thinks.
“Yuuri,” he says. “From the first time I saw you skate Eros, I wished you were skating it just for me.”
Yuuri swallows, and Victor watches.
“Well,” Yuuri says, and his voice is just as reedy. “I suppose you’re in luck.”
Victor kisses him like someone drowning, someone burning, someone dying. Yuuri kisses him back like he could raise him back up from his grave.
(What a pair they make.)
“Dance with me,” Yuuri says, holding out a hand. They’re both on the ice, and Yuuri’s practice music is playing in the background. It’s not Eros, or Yuri on Ice. It’s something lighter.
Yuuri is smiling like he thinks he’s going to get turned down, and Victor takes his hand, relishing in the surprised delight on his face. “Of course,” he says, and they skate in lazy circles, twirling each other and laughing.
Victor goes out that night and buys a ring, to keep in his coat pocket like a promise.
“I wish you’d never retire,” Victor says, and Yuuri kisses him right there in the airport like he could freeze time and keep them here forever, just because he wanted it. (And Victor half thinks that Time would bow to his will, that Time would be as endlessly charmed by him as Victor is.)
He thinks of pulling out the ring then, of dropping to one knee and saying I love you in every way, in all ways. You are my inspiration. You’ve helped me reclaim my heart. I never want you to leave me.
Instead, he just pulls back and holds Yuuri’s face in his, and says “I love you,” as slowly and deliberately as he can. They’ve said it before -- it’s been a month since the Cup of China and their kiss after Yuuri’s jump. But Yuuri’s face always glows red when he hears it, and he ducks his head and says it back, kisses Victor, gentle as rain. Victor loves seeing it.
Today, Yuuri says “I love you too,” almost angry in how vehemently he says it, and frames Victor’s face with his hands. “I love you, and we’re going to do this together. I know I can only do it if I have you.”
The ring is begging him to take it out, to ask, to know Yuuri’s answer. He kisses him instead, and hopes that is answer enough for now.
Yuuri smiles at him, bright as sunshine. “We’re in Barcelona, take me sightseeing,” he says, and Victor does.
“Take this,” Yuuri says. “I want you to have it.”
He’s holding out a ring.
Victor swallows against a sudden onslaught of tears, and pulls his own ring -- slightly battered from being in the pocket so long -- out to show Yuuri.
“I guess great minds really do think alike,” he jokes, and Yuuri cries and kisses him, outside of the church, before sliding the ring onto Victor’s finger. And it belongs, it feels so right, it feels so wonderful --
“I didn’t know I was empty until I met you,” he says, instead of I love you in all the languages he knows. “You make me so happy, love.”
Yuuri looks overwhelmed and emotional, cradling Victor’s face in his hands.
“I think I’ve loved you since I knew what love was,” he says. “I must have.”
Victor presses their foreheads together, and chuckles.
“We’re a mess,” he says.
Yuuri laughs, his eyes growing wet. “I wouldn’t have us any other way.” His face grows slightly more serious, but there's still something endlessly soft and joyful shimmering along with the tears. "It's a good luck charm," he says. "It's -- it's my own piece of gold. Even if I don't win a medal, I'll have something for you to kiss."
Victor cradles his face between his hands, his handsome, beloved face. "Yuuri," he says, "you know that even if you don't win gold, I'll stay, if you want me."
More tears slip out, and Victor knows he's said the right thing.
"You will?" Yuuri says, hushed like a prayer, like he barely believes it.
"Nothing could ever keep me away from you," Victor promises, and kisses him there, in Barcelona, in front of the church.
("Congratulations on your marriage!" Phichit says.
"It's an engagement ring," Victor clarifies, and thinks of kissing Yuuri in front of a church in a different context, and suddenly he can't stop smiling.)
"Why are you letting him do this to you?" Yurio yells at him, and he's a teenager and he doesn't know, he can't possibly know what it is to be so lonely for so long and suddenly have that ache lessened. He could never understand what Yuuri means to Victor. He means a lifetime of mornings waking up to the smell of coffee or the smell of Yuuri's hair, he means a lifetime of wrapping his arms around Yuuri from behind and feeling warm in the Russian winter. He means a lifetime of cooking dinner with someone else in the same room, kissing Yuuri's neck to distract him from the dishes. It's a welcome change to a lifetime that, until very recently, Victor assumed he would spend completely alone.
Well, with Makkachin, he supposes, but as wonderful as the dog is, he does not compare to Yuuri.
Victor could tell Yurio all this, he knows, but Yurio would not understand it. He would only see it as another thing that is taking Victor away from the rink.
"How long would I have been able to skate, do you think?" he muses, instead, still staring at his ring, glowing with the sunrise. The unmistakable mark of being Yuuri's. "Two more years? One? I could have made it to thirty, maybe. But would I have kept winning? Or would I just have injured myself?"
"I wanted to beat you," Yurio snaps. "I want the whole world to know I'm better."
"You still can beat me," Victor says. "I have records, Yura. Make new ones. And I can retire with this gold medal." He waves his hand in Yurio's direction. "Trust me, it's the best one I've ever gotten."
"Is that why you did it, then?" Yurio asks. "Because you knew you were done?"
"No," Victor says. "I told you once, when you first started training with Yakov, to always skate what you feel."
Yurio inclines his head the barest amount. He remembers.
"Think of Stammi Vicino," Victor says. "Think of how that one felt to watch."
He knows Yurio is good at this, even if he pretends to think it's all nonsense. He watches as his face shifts in minuscule degrees, working out the loneliness, the way Victor's heart was screaming out all through that routine.
"It's easy to spend all day skating when you know you're coming home to nothing," Victor says, gently. "It's easy to devote your life to something when there's nothing else that matters to you."
He looks up towards the hotel, then, where Yuuri is no doubt waiting for him, and leaves Yurio there on the beach.
“Marry me,” Yuuri says, his voice clear and sure. He’s wearing his silver medal from the Grand Prix around his neck, and he’s not on one knee, or holding out a ring, or even smiling. He looks serious and slightly scared, and his eyes are burning. There are reporters around them, watching, cameras high and ready.
Victor meets the eyes of Yurio, who is showing an old man his gold medal, and watches as Yurio gives a tiny, accepting little shrug.
“Yuuri?” he asks, turning his full attention back to his fiance.
“I know I didn’t win gold,” Yuuri says, pressing his hand to the back of Victor’s neck, tilting their foreheads together. His voice drops to a whisper. “Marry me anyway.”
“Ah, darling,” Victor says, as gently as he knows how, with as much love as he can muster. “All that you had to do was ask.”
Yuuri kisses him like they’re making history, and Victor kisses back like a man in love.
The cameras flash around them like fireworks.