Work Text:
Katsuki Yuuri turns down Viktor’s offer for a commemoration photo after the Grand Prix finals, but they end up with photos together anyway.
A lot of photos.
One: Yuuri balancing on one foot and pointing at Viktor with raised hands as if daring him to make a move, other leg held loosely behind him. Viktor, suit jacket bunched up in one fist, easily returning his defiant stare.
Two: both of them striding in unison, Yuuri with an arm wrapped tight around Viktor’s waist as he leads them forward. He’s pressed flat against Viktor’s back. Their eyes are fixed on each other.
Three: Viktor leaning back with a leg extended gracefully in the air, fingers splayed across the back of Yuuri’s shirt. Yuuri’s got one hand on his thigh and the other pressed to the side of Viktor’s jaw, gently cradling his face. They’re laughing, almost close enough to bump noses, almost close enough to kiss.
To put it simply, the banquet that takes place after the Grand Prix finals is a riot.
Here are the facts:
Yuuri is drunk. Viktor is not.
Yuuri is riding an alcohol-induced high so far up above the clouds he cannot even begin to comprehend the weight of his actions back in the human realm.
Viktor is falling in love.
“If I win this dance battle, you’ll become my coach, right?” Yuuri squeaks out the question in a lilting language that Viktor can’t speak yet (it sounds like a question but it’s more like a plea, a shout, a child’s wish), eyes shining. He’s affixed himself to Viktor like a particularly flashy fashion accessory, had had him in a crushing hug until Viktor had gently shrugged himself free a moment earlier.
Viktor stares at him.
“Be my coach, Viktor!” he continues brazenly in English when Viktor doesn’t say anything, voice high and hopeful.
Yuuri’s got the ugliest tie Viktor’s ever seen wrapped around his head like a bandana, and he’s so red in the face he looks like he might explode at any moment. He’s sweaty and drunk and he smells like five different types of alcohol.
Viktor thinks he's beautiful.
See the person Viktor, figure skating legend and highest achiever in the history of the sport, who has never known love and long since forgotten about living, falls for is Yuuri. He falls for the way he beams up at him like Viktor is the sun, falls for the sparkle in his eyes and his wind-chime laughter, falls for the way he held him and dipped him and spun him around as if Yuuri thought he was the most beautiful person in the world.
(Yuuri does think Viktor is the most beautiful person in the world, actually. It's only a year later that they realize the feeling is mutual.)
Everything about Katsuki Yuuri makes Viktor’s head spin and his chest hurt and his vision erupt into a kaleidoscopic mess of color and light. He's ten years old again, a single, blooming wildflower clenched behind his back as he talks to his crush in the hallway.
But this is no hallway. This is the banquet that follows every Grand Prix final. Yuuri asks him to be his coach, and Viktor scrabbles to find his voice but finds it locked up inside his chest, fit tight between his lungs.
Eventually, Yuuri leaves, still singing at the top of his voice and swishing his hips from side to side. He takes a fraction of Viktor’s heart with him.
//
To Viktor, love has always been a bit of an abstract concept.
Love is a gesture. A hug, a kiss, a hazy, passion-fueled night. Maybe Viktor’s heart is secretly made of ice. It would explain why no one’s ever been able to touch it without recoiling from shock.
Love is a person. Someone you never tire of, a constant at your side. Viktor's already tired of himself.
Love is a feeling. But Viktor can only feel two things: the exhilaration of being on the ice, and the dull throb of boredom and disinterest when he's not.
Perhaps love isn't something Viktor needs.
He has five photos from the last Grand Prix final banquet saved in his phone's photo library. Yuuri’s the star of every single one, swinging wildly in and out of each frame with all the grace of a dancer that's hammered on sixteen flutes of wine, give or take.
(If there's anything Viktor regrets more than not grabbing Yuuri, kissing him on the spot, and getting his number, it's that he didn't take more pictures of him.)
Viktor thinks about ridiculous dance battles and outrageous, strip club-esque moves and the exact moment he decided his suit jacket was in the way and needed to be removed. He thinks about Yuuri’s hand on his waist, warmth spreading like thick honey from the point of contact.
He locks his phone.
//
The YouTube video is just the pretext, really.
Viktor Nikiforov loses inspiration, flies to Japan on impulse to coach 2014 Grand Prix Finalist Katsuki Yuuri. Or so the reporters speculate, so the poets say, tapping away at tablet screens and keyboards, spinning gaudy gossip articles for clown-colored magazine columns.
Viktor Nikiforov finally has excuse to meet handsome man that stole his heart last December would be a far more appropriate headline, if you asked him. But of course, no one does, so Viktor keeps the truth tucked away in his coat pocket like a small, delightful secret and smiles to himself.
The “attempted skating cover” video Viktor gets tagged in at least three hundred times on Twitter and twice as many times on Instagram, only serves to prove three things:
One— Yuuri’s true talent as a skater is something the world has yet to be privy to.
Two— the ache he'd felt in his chest for the past few months was not due to a complicated medical condition, as Yakov had been so certain of, but rather this gorgeous, graceful miracle of a man.
Three— Viktor needs to meet him. Right now.
He's packed everything he needs in the blink of an eye, autopilot taking over as his mind takes a backseat and fades into a blurry, static haze.
Clothes, toiletries, Makkachin, the parts of him that Yuuri didn't steal away with him back to Japan.
It's a bit late (really late, the logical side of his brain informs him in a seedy voice), but he's finally fulfilling Yuuri's request.
//
The Yuuri that skids his way into the open-air hot springs at Yu-topia looks vastly different from the man who'd swung from a stripper pole like he'd been born to dance on it. The slant of his expression is less bold, more guarded; he’s rounder, too, cheeks peach-plump and soft-looking.
Viktor takes one look at him, and his heart sings.
He stands, schooling his expression into what he hopes is something appropriately delighted and confident. Sticks his hand out in Yuuri’s direction and holds his ground, proud and gleaming and buck naked in the water. Winks, too, because surely the man who dirty danced with him at a formal party event and then with Chris in nothing but his underwear wouldn't be impressed with a simple “hello”.
“Yuuri, starting today, I'm your coach!” He declares, though what he really means is Yuuri, starting today I'm going to make you fall madly in love with me or die trying because you're the light of my life and possibly my sole reason for living(!!!).
Yuuri balks. “Huh? What?
—What?
//
Hands on his hips, breath sweet with champagne, fingers playfully skirting the sharp line of his jaw.
You'll become my coach, right?
Be my coach, Viktor!
Viktor.
Here are the facts:
Viktor hasn't forgotten anything about last year’s banquet. Yuuri remembers none of it.
Viktor is hopelessly, hopelessly in love with him.
And neither of them knows this yet, but Yuuri’s already begun falling.