Work Text:
A hand pushes Yuuri’s waist at the height of his quad salchow. He lands hard, and pain slices up to his knees.
Yakov prods at his right ankle, ignoring Yuuri’s protests. He pronounces the ankle sprained, wraps it tight in athletic tape, and orders Yuuri to leave until Monday.
Victor offers his elbow. His lips press tight in a worried smile. Together, the two of them limp towards the locker room.
“Watch it, Yura,” Pyotr warns, trailing after them on the rink. “Vasilisa is just getting started. Next time she’ll break your neck.”
Yuuri can’t ask for an explanation with Victor pressed to his side. He sits down hard on the bench, his arms still shaking. Victor busies himself with gathering Yuuri’s duffel and street clothes. He’s talking, babbling something. Yuuri tunes in as Victor works at the laces on his skates.
“I’ll cancel the reservations at the restaurant. It’s going to be so cold I’m almost glad. Now we can curl up with Makkachin and watch Netflix!”
“Um,” Yuuri says, and Victor blinks up at him. Victor’s eyes are a little wet, his words a little fast.
“Can you get me some water?” Yuuri shakes his empty bottle, for emphasis.
Victor rushes to do so, promising to be fast. Yuuri saw the line at the water fountain when they were coming in here, and with any luck it’ll be a few minutes.
“Is she trying to kill me?” he asks Pyotr when the older man settles next to him
“She wanted to scare you,” Pyotr says. “But you won’t be scared, and so she will grow more and more violent.”
“What can I do to make her leave me alone?” Yuuri asks over the roaring in his ears.
“Leave,” Pyotr says, looking a little sad. “The only good pidor is a dead one.”
Yuuri doesn’t ask for a translation. “She won’t go after Victor, will she?” Most ghosts can’t do more than breathe on people that aren't him. But if Vasilisa is determined enough, she might summon enough power for the right pushes, the rough shoves.
“She adores Victor. She would never hurt him. He’s never brought a lover to this rink before, and she sees you as the instigator.”
“Alright,” Yuuri says, as Victor returns to the locker room. He drinks from the bottle gratefully.
“Ready to go home?” Victor asks, shrugging Yuuri’s backpack over his shoulders.
“Don’t underestimate her, Yurochka,” Pyotr says as the two living men make their way to the doors. “I would rather not see you join us just yet.”
Victor doesn’t look at him very much as they walks. He talks a lot, gesturing with his free right hand, but Yuuri’s getting pretty good at seeing through the talk.
Just three days into training at the new rink in St. Petersburg, and Yuuri already has an injury. Victor will hoard his worry, add it to another tally of reasons for Yuuri to hate St. Petersburg. There’s no way for him to know about the slurs Vasilisa had screamed yesterday when Victor kissed Yuuri’s cheek.
“Yuuri?” Victor’s looking at him now, smiling hesitantly. “Is your ankle hurting you?”
“No, it’s fine,” Yuuri says, and he smiles back. “Just worried about dinner. I don’t trust you to follow my instructions.”
Victor’s grin ruins his attempts to look affronted. “I lived alone for years.”
“I think Makkachin would have more luck in the kitchen than you.”
Victor scoffs. “Does Makkachin know the number for Ryumochnaya?”
Victor helps him settle on the living room couch, stacking pillows under his head and fetching an ice pack before he goes into the kitchen to order. Hana crouches on top of the TV. “What happened?” she demands, looking worried. Yuuri shakes his head.
“It’ll be here in thirty minutes,” Victor says, coming back into the living room. “I’m going to take Makkachin for her walk now. If you need anything before I get back, just call me.”
“I think I can make it to bathroom by myself,” Yuuri says, smiling a little.
Victor leans in, dropping a kiss on his forehead. Then he scoops Makkachin up. “She wants a kiss goodbye, too,” he explains as she licks Yuuri’s face.
“Did that bitch do this?” Hana asks as soon as the door shuts.
Yuuri sighs. He turns the TV on, the volume low. Hana jumps off the tv and floats through the air, falling into the couch next to him.
“Pyotr says she’s going push me again when I go back.”
“I’ll kill her, I really will,” Hana seethes.
“I’m going to talk to her,” Yuuri says. “Monday. She’s young, younger than you-“
Hana laughs. “It’s cute that you think I’m young-“
“I looked her up the other day. She only died a year ago. So she’s a teenager at best. She’s dumb and angry, but I don’t think she could really kill someone.”
“Don’t be naive, Yuuri,” Hana says. “You know better than that.”
He does. “I want you to be with me when I talk to her. Just as a warning, so she knows I’m not alone.”
“She won’t give up,” Hana says. “Death is different for us. She won’t understand the consequences. You know that.”
Yuuri does know that. He’s seen Hana at her worst before, her teeth bared, her eyes wild, phantom blood splattered across her face. He doesn’t want to see her like that again.
“Don’t hurt her,” he says. “Like I said, she’s young. She might still go into the Other Side peacefully.”
Later that night, he and Victor curl up in bed, Makkachin lying at their feet, wheezing gently. Victor has an arm over Yuuri’s shoulder, his chest pressed against Yuuri’s nude back. He strokes Yuuri’s hand with his index finger.
“I’m really sorry, darling,” Victor says, and he only says darling when he’s practiced a conversation in his head. “This must be so frustrating.”
Yuuri grabs Victor’s hand and presses kisses to his palm and his engagement ring. “It’s just a sprain,” he says. “I’ve had plenty before. I’ll have plenty more.”
Yuuri’s ankle wakes him in the middle of the night, so raw and painful he has to grit his teeth. Victor’s a light sleeper, and he starts as Yuuri’s digging around for his slippers.
“I’ll get it, Angel.” He’s up before Yuuri can find his glasses. A moment later he’s back with the icepack and the ibuprofen. He fills a glass in the bathroom sink, and the light spills into the room, carving out his furrowed brow.
He rubs Yuuri’s back as Yuuri takes the ibuprofen, downing the water. Makkachin noses up to them curiously as Yuuri presses the icepack to his ankle. It’s swelling bad now, but Yuuri’s too groggy to be disgusted.
“Do you want some more water?” Victor asks, and he’s still rubbing his back.
Yuuri shakes his head. “Just want to sleep.” He sets the icepack on the nightstand. Victor gets up to turn off the bathroom light, and the room goes dark. He hears Victor fumbling around. A moment later Victor’s hands brush over his hip, patting at the sheets. Victor falls on top of him, giggling a little, and worms his way into bed behind Yuuri.
“Does it feel better?” Victor asks, his breath on Yuuri’s neck.
“Yeah, a lot. Thank you.”
Victor kisses both of his shoulder blades tenderly. Victor Nikiforov is a rainstorm of energy, loud and wide, his body demanding all the attention in the room. But Yuuri has learned he can be very gentle when he wants to be.
Victor’s arms go back around Yuuri’s shoulders and pulls Yuuri tight against his chest. Yuuri thinks, this is what love feels like.
It takes him a lot longer to fall back asleep than Victor, and he gets to see the nightmares. Mostly just Victor’s head twitching, a few muttered Russian phrases, and the hard sound of his grinding teeth.
Yuuri squirms around in Victor’s arms until they’re face to face. He strokes his hand over Victor’s jaw and hums. After a few moments, the grinding stops, and Victor’s face softens out. “I’m here,” Yuuri says quietly, as Victor sleeps on, dreamless.
Victor’s apartment building was built in the early two thousands, and Yuuri only runs into three ghosts on a regular basis. There’s Mr. Sokolov, a ghost in his late seventies who died sometime in 2010. There’s Mrs. Sokolov, who died only a few months after her husband. The last one is a woman in her forties with long dirty blond hair, who won’t tell Yuuri her name. She hovers at the building’s entrance and whispers him good morning every day when he leaves for practice.
Mrs. Sokolov is sweet on the surface, catty when the mood strikes her, but overall always greets Yuuri with a smile and a ‘good luck!’ Her husband had beaten her until the day he died.
Mr. Sokolov followed Yuuri and Victor in the lobby for the first day after Yuuri’s arrival, screaming in Russian. Then Hana tore his arm off and told him she’d eat the rest if she saw him again.
Still, it had shaken Yuuri, and until he was sure Mr. Sokolov was scared off, he avoided kissing Victor in the hallway. Victor had misinterpreted his reluctance, and now it's habit for them to save kisses until they're alone or at a private practice at the ice rink.
Victor goes on a run, then to a lunch meeting with a representative from AFOUR, who want to feature him on their website. Yuuri is stuck on the couch, a little jealous after googling AFOUR, which he knows is silly, since he’s in the middle of an email conversation with Uniqlo’s head of marketing, who wants to take pictures of him in their clothes looking sexy and put him on billboards.
Makkachin greets Victor at the door. He ruffles her fir with one hand, unlooping his scarf with the other.
“Victor’s home,” Yuuri tells his mom. Mari and Minako crowd his parents, straining for space in the skype window.
“Vicchan,” his mom sings. “Are you looking after my boy?”
Victor flops down next to Yuuri, still shaking on the snow in his hair. “As much as he lets me,” Victor says. His nose and ears are red, his smile bright, but he looks back at Yuuri twice in a row, so he’s thinking about something else.
After his parents sign off skype, Yuuri closes his laptop and sets it on the table. “How’d it go?” he asks.
“Good. Really good. They to film an exhibition skate for the website. I saw the storyboard. They want to pay me a lot of money.”
“Which program are you going to do?”
“It’s mostly going to be shots of my footwork - they sell sneakers, after all - but they want something with some frilly jumps. The representative was thinking of my short program from 2014 - the Shostakovich C Minor Quartet. They want to use classical music with a similar tempo, so it’d be easy for them to edit later.”
“Oh!” Yuuri says, and blushes, because he likes that one. Hana snickers from her perch on the TV.
Victor grins at Yuuri’s expression. “They want to film me Wednesday.” He hesitates a little. “If I go to the rink tomorrow, I’ll have four days to get ready. But I can wait until Monday, when your ankle is better.”
“No, it’s okay,” Yuuri says. Vasilisa adores Victor, Pyotr said. But Victor is made of soft skin and fragile bone; Yuuri does not trust a dead thing with Victor’s safety. “I’ll come with you.”
The next morning most of the swelling is down, and he walks with one hand tucked into his pocket, the other arm linked with Victor’s.
Yuuri wears Hana’s bracelet, and she trails after them, making snide comments about the other pedestrians.
His ankle doesn’t hurt as much as the first day, but he walks with a pronounced limp, the best excuse they’re going to get for their shoulders to be so close. Still, they get some sideways glances in the fifteen minutes it takes to get to the rink. Yuuri can tell Victor notices from the tension in his jaw.
Normally, Vasilisa waits at the entrance to the rink, her lips curled as she observes. Today the rink is empty and still, the ice smooth. Hana walks ahead of Yuuri, her chin up, a fight in her eyes.
Yuuri sits at the front row and unlaces his boots. Makkachin’s claws scrabble on the hard floor as she jumps up next to him. Victor rolls his shoulders and bends down into a split, the hem of his shirt riding up.
“Looking good, hot stuff,” Yuuri says, which makes Victor laugh so hard he breaks the stretch.
Pyotr settles into the seat behind Yuuri as Victor pushes out onto the ice, Hana floating after him. “That’s a handsome boy you’ve got there,” he says with approval, running his gaze over Victor’s back. “Hold tight to that one.”
Makkachin is glowering at Pyotr. “He’s alright,” Yuuri promises, coming his fingers through her fur. “He’s a friend.”
Pyotr holds his hands out for Makkachin to sniff. After a moment, she licks his hand. “Oh, Yurochka, no dog’s given me a proper hello since I died,” he says, leaning in to rub his face into Makkachin’s fur. “You’re the most interesting thing to happen in ages.”
“When did you die, anyway?” Yuuri asks absently. Victor is running through a step sequence, one foot after the other, gliding and twisting.
“Long before your time,” Pyotr says with more than a little condescension. You have to be careful with ghosts; most are older than they look, and take offense to questions about their age. “If I were alive, I’d go out on the ice with that boy.” He bites his lip, considering.
“You could skate with him now,” Yuuri says. “He wouldn’t notice.”
“You’d get a jealous,” Pyotr says, propping his skates up next to Yuuri’s head. “I got in more than enough trouble for that kind of thing back when I was alive.”
Yuuri smiles. “You’re probably right.” He looks back at Victor, who’s springing into a jump. A few other skaters are gliding out onto the ring now, other students of Yakov, who have permission to use the rink at this time.
“Where is she?” Yuuri asks.
Pyotr’s no good at hiding his emotions. He watches Victor skate, but even then his mouth twists hard.
“Scared off by that friend of yours.” He nods to Hana, who's perched on the edge of the rink. “But she’s seething.”
“I figured she would be.”
“She’ll take this as an invitation to escalate.”
“You said she was going to kill me,” Yuuri says. “Where is she?”
Yuuri limps slowly, his hand on the backs of the seat. Victor skates over to him in concern, but Yuuri waves him off. “I’m just going to get some fresh air.”
He meets Hana by the door. “Is it time for our little talk?” she says, smiling cruelly.
The side exit opens onto a service parking lot elevated above the street. Vasilisa is waiting at the ledge, her back to them. She turns, her bare fists clenched, her blond hair streaming past her face in the wind.
“I’m not scared of you,” she spits.
Hana speaks English in an American accent, picked up from Yuuri’s five years in Detroit. “Oh, little girl," she purrs. “You really should be.”
Yuuri holds up a hand. She rolls her eyes, but waits.
“What do you want?” Yuuri asks. The dead always want something.
“I want you to stop stinking up my rink,” Vasilisa snarls.
“This isn’t your rink,” Yuuri says. “You just happened to die here. What do you really want?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Vasilisa says.
She really is very young, younger than Yuri. There’s still baby fat in her cheeks. She reminds Yuuri of this girl he knew back in junior high. Three of her friends had circled Yuuri and pushed him, trying to get him to kiss her. They’d shrieked homophobic slurs in high-pitched voices when he’d started crying.
It’s been more than a decade. He can’t even remember her name.
“Okay,” Yuuri says calmly. “Be spiteful for the hell of it, I don’t care. Hana’s going to be watching over me from now. Try any shit like Thursday and she’ll rip you apart. This is your only warning.”
Vasilisa’s whole face scrunches up. “You couldn’t take me on your own,” she sneers. “You need to hide behind that demon of yours.”
“Play fair and maybe I will,” Yuuri says. “But I won’t sink to your level, not when you’re taking low blows in the middle of a routine. You’ve got a problem with me. I’m willing to work it out, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ll let anything slide.”
Her lip curls up, and she doesn’t say anything. Yuuri knows this is going to bite him in the ass later.
Yuuri’s ankle is almost healed Sunday morning, and he makes it to the coffeepot without any problems. Still, Victor insists on taking a taxi to church, citing the shitty weather.
Yuuri went with Victor last week, and since he’s coming along this week as well it’ll probably become a routine. Yuuri’s whole family is vaguely Shinto, and before Victor the most exposure he had to catholicism came from TV.
He and Victor attend the service at St. Isaac’s Cathedral, one of the oldest places Yuuri’s ever been in. Ghosts linger at arches. He got them all excited last week. There aren’t very many people who can see them, and they all spy on him as he follows Victor into the pews.
The service is in Russian, and Yuuri can’t really follow along. He turns his head to watch Victor. Victor’s leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, his wedding ring glinting. He notices Yuuri staring, then tilts his head and shoots Yuuri a smile before refocusing.
Yuri meets them at the exit, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. “I want pancakes,” he announces.
Victor clasps his hands on Yuri’s shoulders. “I didn’t see you during the sermon.”
Yuri’s scowl intensifies. Other churchgoers stream past them. “I woke up late,” Yuri mutters. “I caught the last half, all right?”
Victor’s grin widens. “I don’t know if arrogant little heathens deserve pancakes,” he says.
Yuri shoves Victor’s hands off him. “Oh, yeah? What does the bible say about sake?”
“I eat and drink for the glory of god,” Victor intones. “I don’t think god benefits from your Overwatch rankings.”
“Fuck you, old man. If you don’t buy me my pancakes I’m going to riot.”
While the two of them argue, Yuuri’s caught in a dilemma with a pair of ghosts who’ve floated in front of him, jabbering in Russian. He wants to at least acknowledge their presence, since ghosts always get a kick out of being seen.
“Angel?” Victor asks. “Did you see someone you know?”
Yuuri stops waving and shoves his hand into his pocket. “Uh.” He feels himself flushing.
Victor holds out a hand. Yuuri takes it, even though his heart starts to pound. With his scarf over his jaw and his puffy jacket, people might mistake him for a girl - it’s happened before. Still, he hopes Victor knows what he’s doing.
“Let’s get breakfast, sweetheart,” Victor says, with a tight smile that says he understands. Next to him, Yuri gags.
Yuuri knows Victor’s working on a mental list.
There are dozens of items. The awful cold. The cyrillic alphabet, which Yuuri is nowhere near understanding. The roaring traffic outside Victor’s apartment, the sirens that scream late at night.
Sunday morning service - even though Yuuri said he wanted to go, said that he knew Victor would never pressure him.
The sprained ankle. The struggle with the phone company. The airline lost one of Yuuri’s suitcases on the flight from Fukuoka, the one with all his stuffed animals.
At the top of the list: the sideways glances when Yuuri leans into Victor in public.
The way they don’t kiss in their apartment building until they’re in the safety of their room.
The sick feeling in Yuuri’s chest when Victor introduced Yuuri to his landlord as his “roommate.”
The drunks who yelled slurs at them as they hurried home from practice the other night.
The list will grow and grow, until it is too much, and then Victor will give in and - apologize. He will apologize for forcing Yuuri to come to St. Petersburg, to this beautiful, vicious city. And Yuuri will say, “It’s okay,” and Yuuri will tell him the truth - that he loves it here, that he wants to be here, he lived in Detroit for years and the traffic sounds don’t bother him, the foreign language doesn’t bother him, he’s used to the awful goddamn homophobia and please, Victor, I want to be here with you-
And Victor won’t believe him. He’s too used to Yuuri bending over backwards, giving everyone what they want. And at the end of the day, Victor is scared of this city; Victor, who grinds his teeth from nightmares, Victor with scars on his ribcage he won’t talk about, Victor with parents he never mentions. Victor, who grew up alone, a gay kid in a city as awful as this.
Victor is just as scared for himself as he is for Yuuri.
Victor and Yakov unwrap Yuuri’s ankle Monday morning, prod at it, and decide that Yuuri can run sets but he’s not allowed on the ice.
Yuuri agrees, even though it doesn’t really hurt anymore. He’s had enough sprained ankles to know better than to push his limits.
He changes into sweatpants and sneakers and runs up and down the bleachers, his muscles groaning. Victor goes out onto the ice and rehearses his short program for Wednesday’s filming.
Those who have been dead for longer are less afraid of Hana. A few ghosts join Yuuri while he’s doing lunges around the media pit. He’s only met most of them a few times, on the first day of training here last week. They dip down into lunges besides him, giggling and wobbling and teasing him when he gets out of breath.
Yuuri runs another set up and down the bleachers. He watches, more than a bit envious, as Victor glides over to help one of Yakov’s younger students work through the preparation for a lutz.
Tuesday he’s still stuck on dry land, even though his ankle hasn’t bothered him since Sunday.
Wednesday he’s allowed back on the ice. His heart pounds, with nerves as much as excitement.
“She’s still hiding,” Hana remarks as he pushes out to the center of the rink. She follows him easily, tugged along by her bracelet on his wrist. “Maybe we scared her off for good.”
Yuuri shrugs, his focus on the ice in front of him. His heart pounds hard as he works up the momentum for a quad toeloop.
His blood roars as he soars through the air. He lands evenly, and it doesn’t hurt at all.
Hana slides after him on her bare feet. “That looked amazing,” she says, her voice low and her eyes big. Yuuri realizes she hasn’t seen him skate since Detroit.
“Thank you,” Yuuri says, meaning it. He glances around the rink. The only dead are a group of kids in the bleachers, hollering encouragement at an oblivious beginning’s class.
The marketing team from AFOUR reserved the rink for three hours after the public skate closes. Yuuri changes into his street clothes and waits at the bottom row of the bleachers, an ice pack on his ankle just in case.
The first hour is just the film crew messing with the lights while a makeup artist works over Victor’s face. Yakov is the only other person here who’s not from AFOUR, and he’s wrapped up in talking to one of their lawyers. Yuuri ices his ankle and fidgets.
Victor’s changed into his short program costume from 2014. A tight red top with an open collar and sheer pale sleeves on top of black slacks. He looks really fucking sexy, and Yuuri gets distracted imagining tearing the costume off. He’s blushing and more than a little flustered when Victor skates over to him and leans over the wall.
Yuuri hops over to him, holding his bare right foot in the air. “I like your costume,” he says, the fucking understatement of the year.
Victor grins big, like he knew how much the costume would turn Yuuri on. “Your ankle okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. You should hurry this up so we can get home and I can fuck you,” Yuuri says casually. He’s rewarded with Victor turning red all over.
Victor glances to the left and right, and Yuuri echoes him. No one’s watching them. Victor leans in, grabbing Yuuri’s hand, running his fingers over Yuuri's engagement ring. Then he hesitates.
“I need to go talk to the director,” Victor says.
Yuuri swallows, trying to hide how much he feels like he’s been slapped in the face. “Okay. Good luck.”
He sits back down and curls his knees to his chest, arms crossed in front of him. The sick feeling doesn’t go away while the camera crew fusses around the ice, getting ready to shoot.
The Shostakovich quartet sings from the speakers, and Victor skates. He’s perfect, flowing muscle - the most beautiful thing Yuuri has ever seen. For some reason it only makes him feel worse.
The director makes him repeat some of his step sequences a few times, the camera low to the ice to catch an insert shot of his skates. After they’re done shooting, Yuuri greets Victor with his Makkachin tissue box and water bottle.
“You looked good out there,” Yuuri says.
Victor nods without really looking at him. “I’m going to go wipe this off.” He gestures to his face. Yuuri steps back, letting him unlace his skates and gather up his duffle bag.
“You know it’s not his fault,” Hana says, sitting on the ice rink wall.
“I know,” Yuuri says. His stomach is still in knots. Since Victor doesn’t compete anymore, endorsements are his only source of income outside of the occasional exhibition skate. The last thing Victor needs is Yuuri being a needy boyfriend and fucking up a deal.
“He’s probably scared to talk to you,” Hana says, and her voice is chastising, reminding Yuuri that even though she looks fourteen she is the ghost of his great-great-great-aunt. “You should go after him.” Then she judges him silently until he stands up.
He finds Victor in the locker room, throwing his stuff into his backpack. Victor’s still breathing hard.
“We should talk about it,” Yuuri says.
Victor starts stuffing his feet into his sneakers. His fingers shake on the laces. “Don’t want to talk,” he says, his accent thick.
“I get it,” Yuuri says. “It’s not like you turned me gay when I met you, okay? I’ve liked guys for as long as I can remember. I know how it works. I know that sometimes we have to do things just because-“
“Yuuri,” Victor snarls, and he stands up and turns on Yuuri. His eyes are pale, and that’s when Yuuri realizes something’s wrong.
Victor grabs Yuuri by the throat and shoves him back into the lockers. Yuuri’s head bangs hard against metal, and blood fills his mouth. Victor’s pupils are swollen, pale grey engulfing his eye. His fingers dig into Yuuri’s throat. Yuuri gags, kicking out. His vision starts to dissolve.
Something slams into Victor, and he falls, his hands ripped from Yuuri’s neck. Yuuri staggers, straightens only to see Hana on top of Victor, clawing out handfuls of skin. Touching him, somehow - no, no, it’s Vasilisa, and Hana’s ripping and dragging until Vasilisa is wrenched from Victor with a scream.
Vasilisa howls something in Russian. Pockmarks riddle her body. A dark, opaque shell is spreading over her transparent flesh. She flies at Hana, hits hard, and the two of them crash into the lockers, very solid and very real.
Yuuri’s seen this in ghosts before, when their anger gets so bad they start to get solid. It means they’re burning out, it means they’re dangerous.
Vasilisas’s hard fists punches right through Hana, opening a hole in her gut. Hana screams and whips her arm out, catching Vasilisa’s unprotected head, caving her skull it. Vasilisa makes a strangled sound and sinks back into the lockers, out of sight.
Hana’s sobbing, hunched over the hole in her gut. Still, she starts for the wall, fury burning in her eyes.
“Stop!” Yuuri snaps. “Hana, don’t you dare!”
“She’ll kill you,” Hana sobs. “She wanted to kill you and Victor. I saw it. I have to stop her, Yuuri, I have to-“
“She’ll kill you, and then there will be no one to protect us.”
“Yuuri?” Victor says groggily. “Yuuri, who are you talking to?” Yuuri falls to his knees next to him. Victor reaches up and touches Yuuri’s neck, where purple bruises are surely forming.
“Oh, god.” Victor yanks his hand away, and there’s fear in his eyes. “Yuuri, I didn’t mean to, I swear. Oh, god.” Tears well up in his eyes. He pushes himself into a sitting position and scoots back against the locker. “There was - there was this girl, she got inside of me, and I couldn’t control myself. I’m so sorry, god-“
“I know.” Yuuri exhales. “Victor, it’s okay.”
Victor shakes his head. “I hurt you,” he croaks. His shoulders are shaking now as he breaks down.
Somehow, Yuuri manages to get Victor out of the locker rooms and onto the street without running into them. Hana trails after them, her teeth clenched tightly, her hands over her healing wound. Victor stops crying but he’s still shaken, and he doesn’t really listen to Yuuri’s explanation.
They get back to the apartment. Yuuri heats up leftovers and makes Victor eat. Makkachin nuzzles Victor’s hand in concern.
“It sounds crazy,” Victor mumbles, sounding a little more tuned in than earlier.
“You know what you felt earlier,” Yuuri says. “Victor, I know you. I know you’d never hurt me. And you know that something took control of you.”
Victor shakes his head. “All this time - all your life- why didn’t you say anything?”
“It’s a hard thing for people to believe.” Yuuri strokes his fingers through Victor’s hair. They’re curled up in bed, still in their street clothes. “The only other people I’ve told are Mari and Yuuko.”
“Is it scary?” Victor whispers.
“A little.” Yuuri leans in, pressing his forehead to Victor’s chest.
They walk Makkachin. Victor replies to Yakov’s calls, making excuses and apologies for suddenly leaving. They change into their sleeping clothes and curl up together in Victor’s queen sized bed, Makkachin at their feet.
“We can go back to Hasetsu,” Victor says into the darkness. Yuuri can’t help the way his whole body tenses up.
“I want to stay here.”
“She almost killed you today.” Victor says. “And - I know it’s hard here. I know you don’t like it.”
“I like it,” Yuuri says, uselessly.
“I don’t want you to get hurt, just because you felt like it was the only way to make me happy.” Victor says wetly.
Yuuri turns on the lamp at the nightstand. He pulls Victor’s face against his chest and strokes his fingers through his hair.
He tells Victor about the spirits in Hasetsu who tired to lead him astray on his way home from school - how once he followed them and the search team found him three days later, starving and bloody in the woods. He tells Victor about the ghost of a World War 2 soldier in Detroit who tried to kill him in his sleep, who’d almost gouged out his eyes, shouting racial slurs while Yuuri thrashed and begged. He tells Victor about the girls in middle school who tried to get him to kiss their friend.
They’re both kind of a mess by then. Victor mumbles something about his parents, about living with Yakov when he was fourteen. He’s crying too hard to say much more. Yuuri kisses his hair, and promises over and over again that he’s here, that it’s okay, he’s not leaving no matter what, that there are a lot of things that scare him, but staying with Victor is not one of those things.
Victor always falls asleep after he cries. Yuuri’s too keyed up, too much anxiety in his stomach. He turns off the lamp, but after a while his eyes adjust to darkness. He traces circles over Victor’s bicep, watching the tension fade away on Victor’s face.
He pulls Hana’s bracelet off his wrist and sets it on the nightstand. “Will you watch over him till I get back?” he murmurs quietly.
Hana glows in the dark room, just a little. The wound in her chest is still gaping. She looks afraid, really afraid. “You can’t go back there alone,” she says.
“I won’t.” He starts to slide out of bed.
Victor mumbles, reaching out for him. “Where you going?” he mumbles.
“I’m going for a walk,” Yuuri says. “I’ll be back soon.”
Victor blinks at him in concern. “S’not safe,” he says. “Yuuri, it’s not safe out there.”
“I’ll take Makkachin with me. I’ll be back soon.”
Victor accepts it with a nod. Yuuri waits till he’s snoring softly before he crawls from the bed.
He dresses for the shitty weather, slings his duffel over his shoulder, and steals Victor’s rink keys from their hook by the door. He doesn’t take Makkachin - he doesn’t think she would appreciate what’s going to happen next.
It’s after midnight, and Victor’s street is quiet except for the occasional car. The cold hits his fingers first, working his way up to his wrists and forearms. His breath scrapes with each inhale, painful in his throat. He can’t remember the last time he was this alone.
His glasses steam up when he steps inside St. Isaac’s. He catches a few homeless people sleeping in the pews, but no one bothers him. The only light comes from the lamps placed at the bottom of each arch.
“Good evening,” he says, in awkward Russian, all of the dead watching him with big pale eyes. “I need your help for the night, if you’ll give it to me.”
The ghosts have been here for centuries. They’ve long since forgotten their own names, and they don’t care about inconsequential things like what form his lover takes. All they understand is the heat of his flesh and the request in the air.
They circle him, then dive down, sinking into him. One after after until the dead are packed into him, pressed up against his lungs, closing up his throat. He feels their bodies in every of his, and he looses sense of his own two feet. When he leaves St. Isaac’s, the cold air feels distant and tame.
The rink is empty, dark and humming. All the ghosts hide from Yuuri and the thousands curled up inside his body. Vasilisa waits for him on the center of the ice, too far gone to hide. The opaque shell has spread over her neck, past her jaw.
She is a child, yes, but she tried to kill him, she tried to use Victor; and Yuuri will never be so old to forget everything his peers did to him when he was young. She screams at him, wordless, and Yuuri lunges.
His fists close around around, sweeping her up. He smashes her hard against the ice, and the shell cracks. He strikes two more times. The shell shatters and dissolves, and he strikes again, and she lies broken on the ice, a weeping, fragile thing.
Yuuri exhales. The ghosts from St. Isaac stream from his mouth, chanting and taunting. They swirl around Vasilisa and she screams, her hands over her head, cowering. Then they pour out the rink and into the night, back to where they belong.
Yuuri is suddenly a human in sneakers, only sheer luck keeping him from falling on his ass. He shuffles over to land and sits, wrestling his duffel bag open.
Vasilisa isn’t moving. Her glow is very dull now. She’s close to passing - whether she’ll simply disappear, or make the transition to the Other Side, Yuuri can’t say.
He laces up his skates. The cold is starting to get to him again, and he shivers as he skates out to join her. She blinks up at him, her face ugly with tears, her body torn and mangled.
“You going to rub it in?” she says hollowly.
Yuuri shakes his head. “You don’t have much time now,” he says. “Maybe a few minutes.”
He’d looked her up when she first started threatening him. It had only take a few minutes of googling to run across her name. Vasilisa Ivanovich. Twelve years old when she died, falling too hard and hitting her head. She’d lived for another two weeks, clinging to life support, but she’d never woken up after the fall.
She’d been in the advanced skating classes, not good enough to compete yet but enough for her to love it. Her parents still live in St. Petersburg, but they never come to the rink anymore.
He holds out his hands. After a few moments, she takes them, and he pulls her up. She doesn’t have the strength to float, and her skates make contact with the ice.
He doesn’t forgive her. He can’t ever forgive this kind of monster. But it’s over, and now she’s just a dead child on the ice.
She holds his hands tight. Slowly, he skates backwards, pulling her along with him. She tries to copy his footwork, stumbling, but not falling. After a minute, she starts to smile.
When she’s gone, he skates for another few minutes, his heart beating hard, his hands shaking.
Victor’s asleep when he sneaks back into their bedroom, Makkachin flopped over his legs. Makkachin side-eyes Yuuri when he squeezes in behind Victor.
“You okay?” Victor mumbles, not really awake.
“Yeah. Tired.” He buries his face into Victor’s neck, and inhales deep.
Victor goes back to sleep almost immediately.
In the morning, he will tell Victor what he did. Later they will talk about St. Petersburg, and they will both probably cry. And Yuuri knows he has this, has Victor in his arms and soft against his skin - and that he will always have this.
Victor sighs something from his dreams. Yuuri kisses his neck. “I’ve got you,” he tells the dark, and he knows Victor can hear him.