Work Text:
( 1 )
The wall of arousal hits Viktor like a storm.
Not a storm – a hammer.
Not a hammer – a train.
Not a train – a, “Vitya if you don’t take your skates off and get over here in the next thirty seconds, so help me,” Yakov cuts through his thoughts. His voice is even, measured, quiet, and that’s how Viktor knows this is a command to listen to. Yakov only talks like that when he means it. Viktor stops chatting to the press about his hair. He takes his skates off, puts them in his bag, and gets. When he’s where Yakov wants him to be he hands over his gold medal for safekeeping and luxuriates in the emotions rolling through him.
His soulmate is feeling lustful again.
Viktor is immensely curious about his soulmate. Who are they? A girl? A boy? And do they know who Viktor is? Viktor is fairly famous now, at least in the right circles. It could be possible. He usually feels the most from his soulmate during performances, and after. Not always. Sometimes he’s on a plane, flying from one competition to another, and he doubles over with a wave of how much his soulmate wants someone. He imagines it’s him his soulmate wants. If he has no proof it’s not true isn’t that a little like proof that it’s true?
He goes to the banquet that night and it’s very boring, but he’s long stopped minding. Banquets are for sponsors and for keeping Yakov’s blood pressure in a reasonable range. The real fun is to be had at the after party, and the parties after that. Viktor likes parties because he likes fun, and people who like him, and there are a lot of people who like him at figure skating parties. He gets wine in his hair and it’s annoying. He wonders if his soulmate will still feel like a fire during Viktor’s skates if Viktor chops off his hair.
What a funny idea! Yakov’s been telling Viktor to cut his hair forever. What if Viktor actually did it? He could always grow it back if the feelings went away. If his soulmate didn’t like it. Viktor’s not one of those boys who only does things because his soulmate wants them, but he can see himself wanting to make his soulmate happy. He hasn’t met his soulmate yet but he’s pretty sure he’s going to like him. Her. Them. Him.
He goes to sleep that night dizzy and bright and young and beautiful and wishes, not for the first time, that soulmate connections went more directly. They do go both ways, he’s read, but how is he supposed to know if his soulmate knows the joy Viktor’s sending is because of what Viktor’s soulmate sent first? It’s all terribly bothersome and Viktor hates it. The sooner he meets his soulmate the better.
( 2 )
Yuuri has days that are completely grey and he knows they aren’t his. Which is odd in its own right, because Yuuri goes entire months without feeling happy once and that’s all on him. He knows what a grey day feels like. Most days he feels like he invented them. And on those days he wonders if his moods have transferred on down to his soulmate. If he’s ruined his soulmate’s life in addition to his own.
“I can hear you thinking,” Phichit will say from across their room when Yuuri’s stuck in one of those spirals. It’s his code for ‘you better stop or I’ll tickle you to pieces.’ Yuuri doesn’t always stop, but he acknowledges what he’s doing and that’s a start.
Once he gets a pang of relief from his soulmate when Yuuri lets Phichit cheer him up with memes and hamsters. It’s better motivation to attempt to spiral up instead of down than most things. Almost as good as watching YouTube videos of Viktor Nikiforov.
Viktor Nikiforov, god among men. Yuuri bets Viktor never feels like this. He’s so glamorous! And he always looks like there’s something to be amused about in the situation. Something he’s privy to but no one else, but he’s got too much class to spoil the joke. Yuuri wishes he could feel like Viktor does. He wishes he could live life like that, or be even half as good of a skater.
“How do you think your soulmate will take having to share you with a celebrity?” Phichit asks one day while they sit on Yuuri’s bed and pet the hamsters that definitely do not live in their no-animals-allowed dorm, just ask anyone.
“Share me?” Yuuri asks.
“With Viktor Nikiforov.”
Yuuri splutters and tries to talk about anything else, but the reality is that's something he's going to have to deal with. Or his soulmate will have to deal with. It's been almost ten years now and his crush is still going on, stronger than ever. He pushes that feeling down and hides his face behind a textbook.
But if he concentrates hard enough he thinks he can feel rare laughter rising through his connection to his soulmate. Maybe they won't mind sharing with Viktor after all.
( 3 )
Viktor has never had a problem with interviews before. Viktor usually loves interviews. Loves them. Loves catching up with sports reporters who’ve been at the business longer than he has. Loves trading gossip with fellow competitors who’ve made the switch to commentating. Loves casually flirting with and/or insulting the fresh faces who have read plenty about him but don't quite know how to handle him.
It is different at Yuuri’s regional qualifier. The Kyushu what-have-you that should feel blessed to get to watch Yuuri skate at all.
It could be that Viktor’s being thrown by his change in role. This is his first official appearance as a coach. Yuuri’s coach, most importantly. It’s been so long since the pressure to do well has really mattered to him; maybe Viktor no longer knows how to wear it. So he folds himself into a suit so sharp the creases could cut glass. He shines his shoes and styles his hair and tries to be like every coach he’s ever known – but better. Yuuri deserves better than Viktor’s best.
He could be Viktor’s soulmate.
He really, truly, seriously could be Viktor’s soulmate. But Viktor is only mostly sure because Yuuri hasn’t said anything yet. Shouldn’t Yuuri have said something if it were true? If Yuuri could feel how Viktor feels when he so much as breathes the same air in the same rink – wouldn’t he say anything? Viktor feels cagey. Restless. Nervous. He attributes it to Yuuri and tries to bury it down and hold it close at the same time. It’s very inconvenient to be nervous in front of reporters and fans, but if the nerves are Yuuri’s then Viktor wouldn’t dare ignore them.
“He’s going to break his own personal best,” he says again and again, feels the tickle of sweat on the back of his neck, a twitch in his fingers he thought he lost before he even left Russia for the first time. “Oh, easily, of course! You won’t believe it!”
Then Yuuri pulls him aside to exaggerate about perceived failures, but Viktor hears none of it because across his connection he’s feeling worry and frustration and anger, and some of it is fond, and all of it is for him.
Yuuri is his soulmate.
He has to be.
( 4 )
It hits the hardest when Viktor isn’t even looking at him.
When Viktor is reading in the other room, or flipping through the updates on his Instagram, or chatting in halting Japanese with Yuuri’s mother. Yes Mama. I like spring. Russia is cold. Hasetsu is cute. When Viktor isn’t even paying attention to Yuuri.
That’s when waves upon waves of soft affection roll through Yuuri’s connection and he almost can’t lie to himself that it’s not all for him. Aimed at him. There’s so much of it, too much, and Yuuri’s drowning in it. He’s disarmed by it. He has to fling out a hand to stabilize himself against the hallway wall because when it comes for him he feels too boneless to stand.
“Yuuri?” Viktor calls from the edge of his bed. He’s reading something on his phone, possibly something to do with their arrangements for Barcelona. “Close the door behind you. You’re letting the heat out!”
Yuuri shakes off whatever’s rushing through him and stumbles the rest of the way into Viktor’s room. Shuts the door softly. Makkachin whuffles up at Yuuri from his spot sprawled across Viktor’s pillows near the headboard. Odd. Yuuri’s heart has been making the same sound all evening.
“You should go to sleep soon,” Yuuri says. “We have an early morning.”
Viktor’s eyes meet his then.
“I, your coach, should be saying that to you, my skater, Yuuri,” he scolds. Yuuri is being scolded in his own house, by Viktor Nikiforov, who might. Who could. Who shouldn’t.
“I can sleep on planes,” Yuuri takes a seat on the edge of the bed at the opposing corner to Viktor’s. The space between them is smaller than it’s been for so much of their lives, but wider than Yuuri can stand. Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, or feel, or do. “Unlike someone.”
“The air is too dry,” Viktor darts back. Yuuri knows it’s really that he likes watching months old movies on tiny plastic screens too much to miss it. A novelty cemented in his childhood. A treat he associates with new victories and far-off places.
Yuuri wants to laugh but snorts instead. Bury him under a rock. Leave him there to die.
Viktor sets his phone down then. He wants to wrap Yuuri up in his arms. He wants to rest his chin on Yuuri’s head. He wants to walk along the seashore hand in hand even though it’s raining.
Thoughts don’t get communicated through soulmate connections and that’s a fact.
“You keep,” Yuuri starts to say. Stops.
“Sleep here tonight,” Viktor says.
Yuuri can’t lie to himself anymore after he agrees.
( 5 )
Is this what they call resonance, Viktor thinks, tired and thrilled in his dusty and neglected apartment. Saint Petersburg rumbles by outside his windows and the gas hasn’t been turned on yet. They won’t have any heat until Viktor talks to his landlady, because he forgot to do it before they left Japan. There’s nothing in the fridge but an old bag of Makkachin’s preferred brand of dry food. Someone’s stacked months and months of newspapers in the kitchen sink even though Viktor hasn’t read the news on a piece of paper in years. It smacks of Georgi’s doing, goaded by Mila, maybe with some of Yura’s assistance.
His bed hasn’t been delivered yet. It got held up by customs. They’re lying on a pile of couch cushions and blankets tonight, breathing in each other’s air in what is normally Viktor’s breakfast nook. It’s the warmest part of Viktor’s apartment because it shares a wall with his neighbor who remembered to pay his heating bill.
“This is better, isn’t it?” Viktor whispers. He doesn’t need to be whispering. It’s only six in the evening for all that they’re exhausted.
“I don’t know,” Yuuri mumbles, picking at the front of Viktor’s shirt. “Maybe I should get engaged to your neighbor instead. He’s got a lot going for him. I bet he has food in his kitchen. I bet he’s got a real bed.”
Viktor read a lot about soulmates when he was seventeen. He would have written a thesis about them, maybe, if he’d ever bothered to go to school longer than the state required. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Those things are a lot of work. Maybe he would have compiled his own personal library about the history and science of soulmates if he hadn’t lost too many books at too many rinks around the world before he switched to reading articles on his phone.
Viktor read a lot about soulmates because he wanted to meet his as soon as he could.
Even before he knew who Yuuri was he felt he was too far away from him.
“Well there’s one thing I have that he never will.” Viktor tickles his feet up and down the curves of Yuuri’s calves.
“Oh?”
“Guess.” Viktor closes the last bit of space between them and resonance is the only word for how the feelings traveling back and forth between them are exactly the same.
( +1 )
Viktor uses his powers for evil.
“I can’t believe you would do that, Viktor Nikiforov!”
Oh.
“Ah ah ah,” he says after a beat, thrown out of his confusion and frustration and irrational fury at the situation – why is Yuuri even fighting him on this – by the contrast between what Yuuri’s saying and what he’s sending. “What a thing to say for someone who liked it that. Much.”
Yuuri throws a pillow at his face, followed by all the Japanese phrases no one but Mari would teach Viktor even when he asked. He throws one of his socks next.
His heart begins to tinge with flustered fondness, though, and Viktor knows he’s won.