Chapter Text
“Yurio!” Viktor yelled down the hall, hands cupped around his mouth. “Hurry up! We’re going to be late!”
Yuuri stood at his side, playing with the ends of the scarf wrapped around their neck. They did their best to avoid Nikolai’s stern gaze as they loitered in his kitchen. “You don’t need to yell, Vitya,” Yuuri scolded.
Viktor glanced at the time on his phone. “Parking at the theatre is going to be a nightmare,” he grumbled.
Yuuri put a placating hand on Viktor’s arm. Yurio was at his Grandpa’s place in Moscow for the weekend to seen Ondine at the Bolshoi. Lilia had ordered Yurio to go, insisting that he watch the danseur noble for this year’s program. Since Yurio had shot up four inches over the summer, he was having to relearn the grace and poise he’d had the year before. Lilia insisted he could learn a lot from observation. And, well, Yuuri wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to see the Bolshoi Ballet in person. Viktor was just along for the ride.
Viktor fidgeted impatiently “Yura, what’s taking so long!” he whined, marching down the hall to Yurio’s room.
“It’s not my fault that all of my dress pants are too damn short!” Yurio shouted back.
Yuuri followed Viktor, ready to diffuse the situation if necessary. Viktor stood just outside the door, talking into the wall. “Just put on those black jeans of yours, no one will notice!”
“Lilia will kill me!”
Viktor huffed, reaching for the doorknob. “I’m coming in to pick something out.”
“Don’t you dare!” Yurio threatened at the same time that Yuuri said, “Vitya, don’t...”
But impulse control and Viktor Nikiforov had never been on speaking terms, and he pushed the door open before he could think twice.
Silence descended over the three of them. Yurio was on his hands and knees on the floor, pantsless and surrounded by half his wardrobe. That’s not what caught Yuuri’s attention. Yurio’s room was like a snapshot of Yuuri’s own when they were sixteen. They counted ten, eleven, no, twelve posters on Yurio’s walls. But instead of Viktor’s likeness staring back at them, it was Yuuri’s.
Yurio was frozen on the floor, staring at Yuuri and Viktor in horror, eyes wide like a deer in headlights. Yuuri was similarly frozen. The only one of the three that retained their motor capacity was Viktor, whose face quickly split into a shit eating grin.
“Yura,” he gasped, covering his smile with his hand.
Yurio unfroze, replacing embarrassment with anger. “What the fuck, Viktor! Don’t just come into my room!”
Viktor ignored him, fanning himself dramatically. “I’ll have to be careful, or little Yurio is going to steal my Yuuri from me!”
Yuuri was dying, somehow this was worse than Viktor finding their own poster collection. Yuuri covered their face with their hands, desperate to hide from the train wreck occurring in front of them.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, shithead!” Yurio spat. He leapt up to cover the largest poster (a recent print of Yuuri in their Eros costume) with his body. He did nothing to hide his dignity or the other eleven posters staring at them. “They’re for motivation!”
Yuuri’s face was on fire. In contrast, Viktor appeared to be having the time of his life. His eyes wandered to a framed photo on Yurio’s desk (Yokohama, from 2008). Viktor practically bounced with glee as he walked to it, because his shame was surgically removed as a child.
He held it up to show them both, as if they weren't both dying where they stood. “This is from Yuuri’s Junior days,” he commented, glancing at the picture again to appreciate Yuuri’s rounder cheeks. “It’s not in print anymore.”
Yuuri didn’t want to know how Viktor knew that.
Yurio stammered. “W-We’re rivals!”
Yuuri had thought they were past the rivals shtick. They weren’t sure you could consider yourself rivals with someone you housed in your apartment five nights a week.
“Don’t look at me like that, you old farts!”
Yuuri wasn’t looking period. Viktor was doing enough looking for them both.
Viktor tapped a perfectly manicured finger against his lips like the asshole he was. “You make a good point; Yuuri, do we need to hang a poster of Yurio above our bed?”
Yuuri noped the fuck out of that conversation. They pivoted on their heel and walked a straight line back to Viktor’s car. They waited in the passenger seat for Viktor and Yurio to join them. The Yuris didn’t speak the whole night.
The next weekend, Yuuri found Viktor hanging up a wall-length poster of Yuuri during their Stammi Vicino duet in the guest room (really, Yurio’s room in all but name).
Yuuri stood in the doorway, arms crossed. It took a moment for Viktor to notice, at which point he flashed a blinding smile. “I want our Yurochka to feel at home!”
“He’s going to murder you,” Yuuri pointed out. “And I’m not going to stop him.”
Viktor pouted, stepping back to look at the poster of both of them on the wall. “How could he not appreciate us?”
Yuuri stepped up to appraise the poster, their reflections framed in purple light in their twin costumes, arms braced on each other’s sides. “Maybe if we cut off your half.”
Viktor gasped. “Yuuri!”