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It's become a tradition of sorts, this: running through unknown cities hand in hand, laughter echoing in empty streets and following wherever the city lights may lead them. They end up sleep deprived and aching the next day, but it's worth it: this, this, this, cold air whipping his face as sneakers pound on the concrete in tandem, a flurry of silver sweeping him along, a lilt of Yuuri, Yuuri! singing in his ears.
✧✧✧
It begins in Barcelona, in a haze of limerence and delirium. He's flushed, and he thinks that maybe this is how it will be, from now on. A post-Victor state of being: besotted and touch-crazed like a teenager discovering love for the first time - it's been eight months and the novelty of him, here, his, is yet to wear off. Yuuri thinks that dusted pink looks so, so pretty on Victor’s pale skin; he thinks of flying too close to the sun and going up in flames.
"Tomorrow's an early start. Better call it a night." He can’t see it in the dim night, but he imagines the glint in Victor’s eyes. It sounds like a challenge, and he knows that Yuuri has never liked losing.
He bumps their shoulders together. "How about a walk?" Victor turns and raises his eyebrows, a smile reminiscent of sweet victory on his lips. "You know, to burn off ... nervous energy?"
Victor hums quietly, raises a playful finger to his lips. "I suppose as your coach, I’ll have to acquiesce in the name of your health!" Victor sighs dramatically, but sweeps up Yuuri’s hand and twines their fingers the way he's been wanting to all night. (And all week and all month and all year too, really.)
A clink of chilled gold on his bare skin, and Yuuri feels flowers bloom in his chest. A swing of the hand and a flash of gold in his eyes and stars come thrumming alive beneath his skin.
Ah. Yuuri thinks. Ah.
And who knows how long this will last? Yuuri isn’t naïve enough to wish for grand schemes like eternity. But on this night, Victor’s laugh sounds like tinkling bells, like afternoon naps and meadows in the sunshine.
(For the first time, Yuuri lets himself think of forever.)
✧✧✧
Once they start living together in Victor's home, it really does entrench itself as an ongoing occurrence between them.
They spend their mornings bundled in blankets and being woken by an excitable faceful of brown fur. They spend their evenings bundled in blankets and resting their aching bones together on the couch. They spend their nights bundled in blankets (what can they say, they love their blankets) and reading books over cups of warm tea.
But sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, in snapshots of stillness, Victor will breathe: "Yuuri, let's go on an adventure," with wonder in his voice and stars in his pretty blue eyes. And despite groggy grumbles and cursory complaints, Yuuri’s hand will always, always find his beneath the blankets and find himself on adventure.
(Even if it is sometimes just a Mcdonald’s run for hotcakes at 3 o'clock in the morning.)
"Vkusno?" Victor asks, a sleepy smile propped on the hand that isn't entwined with Yuuri’s.
Sitting in a greasy booth with a disgruntled teenager sweeping the floors, the entire world is quiet outside their little cocoon.
"Vkusno." Yuuri smiles.
(Warm pancakes and syrup sweet on his tongue - it tastes like forever, especially when he leans over and tastes it on Victor’s lips too.)
✧✧✧
They sit on the steps of the Opera House, ice cream sticky on their fingers and saccharine on their lips. The city lights splay on the water like a picture, the harbour breeze cool in the humid night, the hustle and bustle of a city yet to sleep choruses around them.
6,538 kilometres from his home. 13,151 kilometres from their home. An island a lifetime away, and for the most minuscule of moments, a wayward thought brands itself in Yuuri’s mind, a burning desire that courses through his veins.
Let's run away together. Here, just me and you.
"Yuuri..." Victor mumbles, siddling closer to his lover’s side and intertwining their fingers. "Do you think we'll see a kangaroo?"
"Victor."
They've still got things to do: crowns to hold, medals to win, history to make. Yuuri files the thought away for another day.
(But maybe, in time. They'll have forever, after all.)
✧✧✧
It is essentially a guarantee, that whenever Victor and Yuuri are competing in the same event, that at least one of those nights, there will be an empty hotel room, a balcony door thrown open (because Victor always needs those kinds of dramatics when he declares it's time for an adventure), clothes thrown about in a flurry to find warm enough gear to have all their fingers in tact when they return, and a post-it note on the bed to inform concerned/overprotective parties (read: Yakov) that they haven't eloped to Alaska in the middle of the night.
Because sleep and proper athletic preparation is for the weak: instead, they dash through Tokyo, letting neon lights sear themselves into the backs of their eyelids. Victor delights in reading them aloud and translating them into English. He preens when he's right and pouts when he’s wrong - and where Victor learnt the characters for 'sex shop', Yuuri doesn't even want to know.
They devour enough karaage to feed a small city, buy out an entire shelf of posters of themselves while snorting into their disguises of beanies and sunglasses, belt out karaoke that leaves Yuuri reeling with the migraine of a lifetime - from the Madonna pounding in his ears or from Victor's grievous singing, he's not quite sure.
They visit a temple to pray for tomorrow's success,
("May my fiancé not flub his jumps tomorrow!")
("May my fiancé not be distracted by me and ram into the boards during warm ups like last time!")
and when snow begins to drift down like fairy dust, catching on their lashes and melting on their cheeks for the first November snow in Tokyo in fifty-four years - well.
(It's been a string of miracles since that snowy day in Hasetsu – Yuuri takes this one too, stores it away with the rest of his little treasures on their road to forever.)
✧✧✧
"How do you feel for tomorrow?" Victor asks, as they nibble puits d’amours and wander the city.
"Good," he hums, and the words come easier to his lips now. He smiles cheekily, his eyes alight. "It helps that my coach isn’t half bad too, I guess."
Victor gasps and splays a hand theatrically on his chest. "Now what kind of coach has been teaching you to be so rebellious?"
You. Yuuri thinks. Never anybody but you, from now on.
It’s been two years since the shattering humiliation of non-recognition in Victor’s eyes, but also two years since he swept Victor off his feet and up into his erratic pace without even realising it. It’s been a year since tears fell like dew drops from the corner of aquamarine eyes, but also a year since the night Victor murmured from above him, flushed and sweaty and everything he’s ever needed: "I’ll be here for as long as you’ll have me."
Hey, Victor. We made it, we made it, you know. I’m going to stand on top of the world, here, with you.
Yuuri feels his eyes burn and a lump catch in his throat at the sheer propensity of it all. So when rain drops start tumbling from the sky, Yuuri does not hide his tears. He lets the rain wash them away with watery kisses, lets his entirety be cleansed and left ready to love, and to be loved in turn, anew.
They let rain soak through to their bones, they laugh and whisper sweet nothings in their own little world. They take this moment and make it theirs – they will remember narrow streets, half-lamplight, red tile roofs, for as long as they live. Victor’s hair is plastered to his forehead and his lips are blue, Yuuri’s glasses are rain-splattered and his fingers are cold and it's perfect, perfect, perfect. They race back to the hotel, but not before sharing a kiss in the midst of the downpour. And another, and another, another, and just one more -
Because while Victor still pours his soul into anything and everything on the ice, he's learnt of the quiet joys in life - warm coffee in bed, cold feet tangled together, dozing off on the couch hand in hand. And he knows it's reckless, letting himself go like this. But Victor pours his all into the things he cares about - it's just recently that he's begun to care about himself. And so, when they arrive to official practices the next day with red eyes and plugged noses, he cannot bring himself regret.
(Yakov calls them ‘foolhardy love-struck idiots’. Victor thinks it sounds like forever.)
✧✧✧
Infinite. Yuuri thinks it’s prosaic and overused, but he thinks he finally understands what it means, in this moment.
They dance together in snowy streets drunk on bibimbap and soju and joy - a tango and a salsa, a dip here and a spin there. They trip and they fall, they step on each others toes and crash their heads together. But they do not fret: they pick themselves up and sway to a different song, instead. Yuuri delights in the weight on his chest as he falls back into Victor’s arms, is enraptured by the resounding clink of twin metal when he and Victor come together.
And when they tire of moonlit waltzes, they slump together beneath the street lamp, lean on the base and let their eyes grow heavy and their breaths grow soft. Yuuri peppers kisses onto Victor’s eyes, nose, cheeks, temples, fingertips and collarbones, runs a calloused thumb over the skin under Victor’s eyes. Victor traces confessions of love onto Yuuri’s palm in every language he knows, says them aloud again and again into Yuuri’s hair like a sweet lullaby.
They sleep like that, suspended in a quiet moment just for the two of them, together on top of the world at the centre of the universe.
(Victor thinks
(Yuuri thinks
they’ve found their forever.)
(And if anyone notices last night’s Olympic gold and silver medallists Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov walking shamefully back to their hotel at 7AM looking a little worse for wear, they are kind enough not to say anything.)