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Rose Petal Tea; for matters of the heart. Red is for the beginning of a love story. White is for the end.
Viktor eyes his tea cup he had made himself. Floating with tea coloured petals, long since shell white. It’s the only thing he can concentrate on.
“Viktor, you’re crying again.” Yurio remarks, scowling. It doesn’t have any bite to it. It’s more of a statement than anything now. His stinging words hold no venom, they just sound tired, wary.
“I know.”
It doesn’t matter.
Nothing really matters.
This isn’t the sort of care-free reasoning he had had in his younger years. God, he wished it was. Even back then, at least he’d had something to grip onto. Now, all he can grasp is the crumbling ice above him, leaving him in what almost feels like an indefinite position of hollowness.
It’s the night after the wake, before Yuuri’s funeral back in Hasetsu that it finally sinks in that he’s not there beside him anymore. It’s after everyone leaves and he’s in a hotel room all by himself with Maccachin. Yurio and the others long gone back to their own room for the night.
The poodle whines, scratching at the door glumly. Every night, he’d always wait for Yuuri to come home. He just couldn’t figure out why he’d stopped coming to the door.
“He’s gone, Maccachin.” Viktor whispers to the dog quietly, his voice breaking. “He’s not coming back.”
Maccachin’s head turns towards his owner at the call of his name, his perky ears resting low on his head in understanding. That grim tone in his voice was palpable to anyone.
“He’s never…” Viktor continues, he’s not sure if he’s talking to his dog anymore. “Never coming back.”
At the sight of his owner’s distress, the dog only whimpers more. Padding up on to the mattress beside him. Viktor clings to him like a lifeline. He doesn’t realise he’s crying before Maccachin is licking the tears away like he’s trying to comfort him.
“I’m never going to see him again.” He hugs the dog closer. “He’s gone.”
Now he’s certain that he’s not talking to Maccachin.
It repeats in his head like a mantra. Mocking him from every end of his head. Ironically enough it’s the only thing keeping him sane. It’s the only thing from keeping his head from going to numb, quiet, nothing.
Viktor sobs into his pillow for the first time since he was five years old and he doesn’t stop until he falls asleep.
Rosehip Tea; to strengthen you.
Yuuri sits primly at the dinner table in front of Viktor, pride beaming from every inch of his skin.
“I can’t believe you made Katsudon by yourself!” He grins.
Viktor smiles shakily at him, placing two cups of tea in front of the both of them. “It will never be good as yours, Yuuri~”The Japanese man had truthfully been feeling a little homesick here in Russia. Viktor could tell just from watching him. He knew this would be just the thing to cheer him up.
It looked like he was right.
This was the biggest smile he’d seen Yuuri have on his face all week.
“What’s the occasion?” The brunet asks, eyeing the golden pork like it was a treasure.
“We’re celebrating me finally knowing how to navigate the grocery store to find all these ingredients!”
“But Viktor, I’m not supposed to have these unless I’ve won something.” Yuuri protests weakly, already picking up the chopsticks beside his table.
Viktor chuckles, “Then let’s say that you have won my heart, zolotse.*”
Yuuri flushes, “That’s the best prize I could have asked for.”
This time, Viktor is the one going all red. His eyes meeting the wood of the table the two sat at. His stare meets the golden ring on his finger and is overwhelmed with a feeling of true and utter contentedness for most likely the first time in his life.
“I love you, Yuuri.”
The other doesn’t even hesitate. After the few years they’d been together… Hell, after the first month they’d trained together in Hasetsu he’d wanted to say it. This wasn’t the first time he’d said it to Viktor, but it felt like it was very important to tell him at that moment.
“I love you too, Viktor.”
--
Yuuri had been correct about the importance of this such declaration.
After all, it had been the last time either of them had said it to each other.
Valerian Root Tea: for sleepless nights.
Viktor wakes up too quickly with a start, his bleary eyes searching his mattress. Just like every time since the accident.
His arms reach out until the end of the bed, only to find it as cold and unlived in as the night before.
Every morning it breaks his heart.
Maccachin is there to greet him in consolation, his head nudges Viktor’s arm under him, pulling at the Russian’s sleeves to get him out of bed.
If it wasn’t for the poodle, in all honestly Viktor wouldn’t bother getting up most days. He gives Maccachin a well-deserved pet on the head and a weary smile.
“I’ll take you to say goodbye later, okay?” He reassures the animal. Knowing that it wouldn’t be appropriate to bring a dog to a funeral ceremony.
He wishes he could though.
Skullcap Tea; to help soothe grief.
Japanese funerals are different to the ones Viktor had been to in Russia. And yet they still held some of the same kind of values in the end.
A sea of black encompasses the crowd of people in the room, it's too much for Viktor to bear, really. It makes the situation too real. It makes his heart sink and his throat grow too thick to say much at all.
He spots out the Katsukis from metres away. He sees the grief on their features that mirror his to a tee. He has to remember that Yuuri was their son. He has to remember that he wasn't the only to have lost him.
He has to stop being so selfish.
Viktor doesn’t willingly speak to anyone that day. He hates seeing people pity him like this. He hates them glancing at the ring he still wore on his finger with sympathy.
He hates it.
"How are you holding up, Vicchan?" He hears Hiroko Katsuki ask him, suddenly in front of his vision. Her usual smile isn't on her face. He has a suspicion it wouldn't be back for a very long time.
She’s dressed in a black kimono that looks as if it hadn’t been worn in the longest of times. The sleeves still showing tell-tale signs of dust damage.
Hiroko doesn’t look at Viktor with any kind of pitying emotion. Just some kind of mutual understanding of empathy. A look that said, ‘we’re in this together.’
It made Viktor’s chest hurt.
"I should be asking you that, Katsuki-San." He returns, dodging the question like he did with everyone this morning.
"Come see me afterwards." Is all she says in reply, she puts a hand on his shoulder before she passes by. It’s a motherly comfort that Viktor hasn’t felt in a very long time.
It passes like clockwork. Viktor doesn’t hear much of what is said. It goes by like a blur that he’s too overwhelmed to pay attention to. His mind is set on something else.
What did Hiroko need from him afterwards?
--
“Would you like some tea, Vicchan?” Hiroko asks, she stands above him as he sits under the kotatsu she has planted in one of the many rooms in the inn. It’s warm but it doesn’t make him feel all that much different.
“Yes, thank you.” He replies absentmindedly, stroking Maccachin with his left hand without a second thought.
After this was done, they’d go visit Yuuri themselves.
That would be their final goodbye.
Hiroko returns with a pot of tea alongside two tea cups. It smells like rosemary.
Rosemary Tea; helps with remembrance. So you may never forget.
As soon as she places the tray down, she excuses herself once more. For but a moment before she returns again with a beat up old box.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you over here.” She speaks, placing the dusted box on top of the table with the tea. It’s then and there that she gives him a small smile.
It’s filled with grief and sadness and Viktor can’t find it in himself to return it. He’d break.
Taking his silence as the go-ahead to continue, she opens the lid and gestures for him to look.
Viktor does, and his heart is in his throat in a second.
“He would have wanted you to have these.” Hiroko says quietly, her voice wavering ever so slightly. She glances down at the box with a detached kind of look that he knew she wasn’t used to.
“I can’t-“ Viktor chokes, “These are-“
Yuuri’s figure skating medals. Every single one of them he’d earned until now.
“Yuuri looked up to you for so many years. Without you, I’m not certain what would have happened. So I need you to take them. Please.” She pleads. Her brown eyes, so alike Yuuri’s swimming with tears. “Make sure they’re not forgotten.”
California Poppy Tea: For Pain, inside and out.
The hill up to the Katsuki family grave isn’t a long one. But with the amount of lying around Viktor has been doing this past month, it’s a hike for him. Maccachin is always a few metres ahead, dawdling up the hill right in front.
The weather of is too beautiful for a day like this. The sun shines brightly on him and only does more to make him miserable. Like the world is laughing at him.
Viktor pauses to catch his breath for a moment. His hands on his knees as he pants.
Finally, his eyes meet with the marble and kanji he had been searching for. Not because he had been reading the names of each person once here. But because Maccachin sits right in front of it, unmoving.
Viktor frowns once more before collecting himself. He perches himself beside the poodle, stroking his head.
“If you’re watching me from the afterlife, Yuuri, you’d probably chastise me for not listening at your funeral, wouldn’t you?” Viktor’s bitter smile elicits a head nudge from Maccachin. “I’m sorry, Yuuri, I’m so sorry.”
The Russian looks at what was once his fiancé and can’t help but feel everything at once.
“It isn’t fair. You didn’t deserve this.” He croaks, biting his lip as what feels like the thousandth tear this week sheds down his face. His chin wobbles as his eyebrows furrow.
He looks to the sky.
“Why?!” He screams, his yells echoing down the countryside. “Why him? Why not me?!”
Viktor feels his other hand clutch at the golden ring on his hand. He looks back at Yuuri. “You promised me, Yuuri. We’d get married when you won gold. You promised.”
He falls forward his head onto the ground, slumped completely. “I wanted one last goodbye.”
He would have done anything.
“I love you, Yuuri.”
He knows, he just knows that he isn’t going to hear a reply.
Hope is a fickle thing anyhow.
Violet Tea; Quells anguish, releases anger.
Viktor tells himself to go back to St. Petersburg. But he was never good at following orders from anyone. Even himself.
He tells himself to go home.
He doesn’t.
It never felt like home, it was just a place where Viktor had lived in. The only time it had felt like that was when-
When Yuuri had lived with him there.
Yuuri was his home.
And Yuuri’s home was Hasetsu.
And so Viktor stayed. Never at the inn. But he stayed. He walked the streets he used to greet with a cheery ‘good morning,’ now with only cool indifference.
He walks the entire town one day. He doesn’t stop. He looks at every shop front and house. He thinks about if Yuuri would have gone there when he was small.
He walks and walks until finally, he ends up here. Like an old ghost had brought him at the door of his own undoing.
The ice castle.
It brings a pang to his chest but he doesn’t hesitate when he enters. The ice smelling like watery nostalgia. The memories practicing with Yuuri becoming so much stronger within.
“Sorry we’re closed.” He hears a voice from the inside of the tiny canteen by the entrance. “You’ll have to come back at another ti- Viktor?”
At once, the voice has a face. The form of Yuuri’s childhood friend, Yuuko. She appears from behind dozens of ice skates with a confused frown on her face.
“Can I…” He begins, swallowing the catch in his voice before he talks again.
“Go ahead.” She says, giving him a weary smile while looking him up and down. Her mascara is smudged and he’s certain that she had been crying a few moments earlier.
He nods at her in thanks, going ahead and leaving her alone to her own thoughts so he could be by himself for his own.
Holy Basil Tea: Helps adapt to change.
Stay close to me, never leave my side.
hanarezu ni soba ni ite
He remembers Yuuri saying those words to him in the basement of the cup of China, just before his free skate. He remembers the flood of tears in those chocolate brown eyes of his. He remembers how utterly lost he’d felt at that moment.
He remembers just how much he’d wanted to make everything okay again but having no idea how to do so.
Viktor can’t help but feel akin to that right now as he takes the ice.
But this time he knows, that any kind of normal he’d sustained with Yuuri’s presence. Would have to be rewritten.
Or he’d never be okay again.
The music plays in his head. The Italian in the piece, originally just picked for himself had transformed into something more.
It was the song that had changed everything. It’s burned into his memory.
The steps return to him with the ease of flowing water. He reverts back to the sequence of nigh, before he’d ever met Yuuri. Viktor, for the slightest of moments thinks that, perhaps that would be better than this now- That if Yuuri was a figment of a long forgotten memory, he wouldn't feel so empty.
Back to the lost, broken lyrics of someone that had just begun grasping at straws.
He toes the ice like it was a timid animal at first, but as the chorus build up in his head, the skate’s blades are embedded into it.
He glides across the rink mindlessly. Letting his feet take him the same way hours of practice had before.
And it’s okay.
He likes it.
It makes him stop thinking all together.
It makes him forget for a moment.
It stops him in the tracks of guilt.
Viktor as a teenager had spent his entire life at the skating rink. He’d skated away every problem he’d been faced with. He didn’t stop to eat, sleep- all he had was practice.
It was all he had.
Now he feels himself mingled with that melancholy nostalgia and it’s not a welcome feeling in the slightest.
But he’d take sad memories instead of a grieving present any time of day.
Viktor tries for a quadruple flip but ends up miss stepping, his elbows meeting the burning cold of the ice. The unforgiving mistress of freezing that he’d kissed many a time.
“You’re getting rusty, old man.” He hears a voice cry from behind him. That accented insult, there was only one person he knew who would say that.
Lo and behold, the tiger of Russia steps onto the ice alongside Viktor, a nasty scowl on his face.
“Yurio.” Viktor acknowledges.
Yurio meets his eyes, he almost misses the annoying enthusiasm the older had greeted him with before. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Viktor returns, skating circles round and round. Never meeting the blonde’s eyes.
“I came to think.”
“Likewise.”
Yurio grumbles at the lacklustre answer, knowing full well he would be the one having to carry on the conversation this time. “Do you… want to talk about it?”
Viktor looks faraway into the distance, his eyes scanning the further wall ahead of him.
“Not in the slightest.”
Yurio almost smiles at that before his thoughts drift to others. His expression just changes into a frown.
“You’re not going back to Russia, are you?”
Viktor made his decision the moment he stepped inside the ice castle.
“No.”
Lavender Tea: Eases heartbreak.
Viktor crosses the many shop vendors as the sun is just about to rise. His apartment was far away from the ice castle, but he didn’t mind the walk. It gave him a chance to give Maccachin exercise. The Katsuki family liked looking after him while Viktor skated by himself.
Though they did sometimes call his poodle, ‘Vicchan’ out of habit. Alongside him. Which just made it confusing.
The morning cold bites especially hard this morning and Viktor can’t help but hug his scarf closer to try and shield himself from the icy wind. Finding it ironic he was walking to a place where it would be even colder.
Something hot right now would be heaven.
Something like-
The dainty old store took Viktor by surprise. He had walked across these street fronts every day for almost three months, day in and day out.
But he’d never seen it before.
A sign written in careful katakana saying ‘Oishiicha*’ just above the door frame catches Viktor’s eye. But even more so, the aromatic smell from inside.
Tea leaves.
Viktor finds himself walking inside in curiosity to an old tea shop that looked like it had been there longer than tea its self.
From the wooden beams decorating the roof to the old flooring it was ancient. Just like many others of the buildings here in Hasetsu.
Yet it was enticing. It called out to him in a way that he’d only ever experienced a few times before.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
He’s impulsive, he’s an emotional wreck. He’s not in the right mind to even think properly.
He catches the eye of the old woman sitting by the counter.
He’s retired from the sport he loves. He doesn’t know what else to do with his life.
He’s lost his home.
He’s lost Yuuri.
“I’d like to buy your store.”
Dandelion Tea: To dispel fears of darkness.
It’s an entire year when Viktor finally coaxes himself back to the Katsuki grave.
It's the day when he finally goes through his things that Yurio had begrudgingly shipped to him. Boxes upon boxes of his possessions that had filled out his entire living space.
It's there that he finds it.
He knows what to do.
As time had passed Viktor had never forgotten Yuuri. He saw him in the cherry blossoms every day as he walked by. He saw him in the indents on the ice on the rink at the ice castle. He doesn't forget his grief- he holds onto it like a grudge. He pushes himself into work- he takes interest in tea leaves. Apparently they could predict the future sometimes- he needs something to hold on to, he knows that. Something solid and study- not like his present. And so he believes.
And even more so he skates. He has no real goal but it’s the best he can do.
There's a constant hollow feeling every morning he wakes up without a dark head sleeping on his chest- it's a sad reminder of what his life was like now.
Yuuri was gone.
It makes the time Viktor returns to Japan to see a sick Maccachin seem laughable. They had vowed that life without each other would be- well it would be unforeseeable.
When Yuuri had been pronounced dead- a darkness enveloped Viktor like no athletic slump could ever prepare himself for.
It was cold, that summer day in Russia.
It's even more freezing now though. The wind whips at his cheeks as he trudges up that grassy hill. The one he vowed never to return to.
It's easier this time. But even then, with every step his hard hammers in his chest painfully. His brain providing him with precious memories from his years with Yuuri as he climbed.
Even Viktor was against Viktor these days.
Maccachin is plodding by his side, bumping into him with every step he took, his usual prance is replaced with a trot as he nears the grave.
Dogs were so much more intuitive than anyone thought.
Viktor pauses first this time, he stops when he sees the delicate kanji engraved into the marble stone.
It fills him with dread, but not the same type of hopelessness it had the previous time.
So much had changed in a year. Just like it had when he first met Yuuri.
It all had everything to do with Yuuri. Yuuri lit up his life when he was at a loss for what he was to do with his own.
And now he was also the light that had been doused far too soon, right in front of his eyes.
“Hello, Yuuri.” Viktor greets, quiet and mellow. Not at all how he used to talk to him.
He’s changed. Even he can tell.
“I thought that last time was the only time I would see you like this but then-“ Viktor stops himself, pulling a page out from his pocket. Giving the stone that was no what was left of Yuuri a weak smile.
“I found this.”
He’s been learning to smile properly again.
Slowly.
“If I can’t tell you this to your face. I want to say it to you in this way I guess.” Viktor kneels in front of the grave, steeling himself.
“To tell you the truth I started writing this in my head the moment I saw you attempt a quadruple flip at the cup of China all those years back.”
Completely unfurling the crumpled paper, filled with corrections and different coloured inks.
It’s his wedding vows to Yuuri.
He absentmindedly touches the ring on his finger, the gold had dulled significantly but it still shone like a diamond in the sunlight.
Taking another breath before he begins, he glances at Maccachin.
The poodle bobs his head up and down. Like he was giving Viktor the go-ahead.
Such a clever dog.
“Katsuki Yuuri. Victory was your namesake and your right. You’ve won so many medals upon medals that no amount of gold or silver could compare with this wedding band I’ll be putting on your finger. And yet I hope this piece of metal makes it into your top five wins, at least.”
He chuckles to himself.
“Most important of them all, you have won my heart. Completely and contentedly. I am yours for as long as we both shall live, even in death- we’ll be doing quadruple salchows in the heavens.”
The Russian sniffles, his bottom lip wobbling.
“Yuuri, I love you with every inch of my being. The first time I saw you I knew you would be special to me. And not just because you had sauntered up to me, severely dishevelled and drunk on champagne.“
If Yuuri were here, he’d probably have shrieked at him to change that part, Viktor! Change it! My parents will kill me!
Viktor is just met with the silence of the wind and leaves around him.
“I wasn’t sure what love felt like before I met you. But Yuuri, not only are you my eros you are also my agape, because now I know that no matter what happens. I will treasure you unconditionally.”
Viktor can’t stop the tears flowing from his face as he reads the final sentence.
“And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life together with you.”
The Russian watches as his tears sink into the soil of the ground, un-stopping waterfall that couldn’t compare to the way his heart was heaving.
His eyes are fixes on the ground. Frozen in place, he closes them.
A stray petal from the thinning sakura tree a few metres by drifts near the animal and man companion, it floats in the wind, weightless and free.
It lands softly, on the top of Viktor’s head.
On the very spot Yuuri had poked him when he needed to get his shit together. So softly and gently that Viktor nearly doesn’t feel it.
But he does. And it makes his blood turn to ice water.
His eyes reopen, pulling the pink petal off the top of his head. He looks at it curiously, his eyes glance at Maccachin. And then back to the petal.
Then finally to the gravestone.
Viktor stares for a moment more. His mouth twitching.
And then he bursts out laughing. It’s a broken kind of chortle that doesn’t sound sane whatsoever. It’s filled with unprocessed grief and over processed pain. It’s hysterical.
It’s a release.
Viktor sits there, laughing to himself, beside his old poodle for more than a few minutes. He laughs for so long more tears roll down his face. And suddenly he isn’t sure if he’s crying or laughing anymore.
He’s not okay. He’s always been certain of that.
He’s just gotten better with accepting that as a fact.
He’s gotten better accepting that Yuuri isn’t here anymore. But he knows he’ll never fully understand it. Even now he accidentally turns to talk to the Japanese man. He reaches out on Yuuri’s side of the bed to cuddle someone who isn’t even there.
Viktor will always have Katsuki Yuuri burned into his mind, no matter how many years pass.
He only hopes time doesn’t fade his memory of him. He never wants to forget about the way Yuuri’s eyes light up when he’s thinking about something. How his dark hair sticks up adorably when he wakes up in the morning. How Viktor’s name sounds on his lips.
The pain is all worth it if he can keep these memories with him forever.
Viktor pulls himself up from the dirt. Looking at the yellowing sky, at the crashing waves beside the ocean town of Hasetsu.
“Come on, Maccachin. I think a cup of tea would do us both good.”
And Viktor smiles.
Hawthorne Berry Tea: legends say it heals the heart.