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The divorce goes through on a Thursday. Mari tells her parents on Friday morning through a short phone call, promises she’s fine but has to spend a few days away. She makes them promise not to tell Yuuri. They make her promise not to keep it from him. After the call she lights a cigarette and stares at the peeling paper on the wall across from her, slowly molding in this dumpy little motel four hours away from home in the direction of the first train she could take.
She doesn’t tell Yuuri until Sunday.
On Monday she makes her way home to Hasetsu. Viktor is waiting for her in the train station. “Yuuri will be here tomorrow,” he says, barreling her into a thick hug. He’s always been emotional and for once she doesn’t begrudge him for it. “There was a bit of trouble with Makkachin’s health certificate. One of us had to stay behind to sort it out and Makkachin won’t fall asleep without him anymore.”
They start to walk towards the exit and she notices he has a large red suitcase with him. He probably came straight to the station from the airport and never left. She almost regrets not telling Yuuri when she meant to get back to Hasetsu, but imagines Viktor would have done the same thing anyway.
“Are you jealous?” Mari asks while they walk. She pulls her box of Casters out of her jacket pocket, but frowns when she realizes she only has one cigarette left. She’ll have to buy another box. Later, after she’s dropped off her things at home.
“Hm?”
“Of Yuuri. Your dog…?”
Viktor laughs. Two housewives on the other side of the street look up at him and linger before they look away. “No, no, she learned too early how to get by without me,” he explains, “I was gone too often for competitions when she was younger. But she’s gotten dependent on Yuuri. And he refuses to go to ice shows abroad, now, which really only makes it worse.”
That sounds exactly like her brother. “So he sent you instead.”
“I sent me,” Viktor huffs. “Because you’re my sister and I care about you.”
Mari’s first instinct is to lash out. It always has been. When she was in middle school and someone said she acted too much like a boy. When she was in high school and anyone said anything about Yuuri’s hobbies. When that sour old hag Mrs. Nakamura next door gives her grief about her hair. But Mari has been tempered by her years and she doesn’t actually want to cut Viktor down to pieces. She wants her brother, but he’s not here, and her brother-in-law is doing his best.
“You could call more if you cared so much,” she allows herself to say to the wind. “Or visit.”
They turn down off of the main road. Seven years ago Mari would have never thought the face from Yuuri’s posters would ever consent to carrying his own luggage, let alone to dragging it across town. Viktor has a fickle face. It’s not his fault.
“I call the inn every Saturday,” Viktor says, poking her in the side. “It’s not my fault your brother is hopeless.”
“He is, isn’t he,” Mari muses. Tacitly agrees. Viktor has taken to the Katsuki family with so much enthusiasm she feels too embarrassed to tell him it’s un-Katsuki-like of him. When he was adopted for the registry he wouldn’t shut up about it for months. Years. But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? He loves Yuuri. He’s good for Yuuri.
She stops walking at the bottom of the steps to the inn. “Viktor,” she starts.
“Hm?” He pauses one step above her. He’s already taller than her without the help, but she feels herself overwhelming him with her presence anyway, right now. Probably it’s the divorce. Divorced women are a force of nature if she believes the dramas. Or maybe it’s big sisters. Maybe it’s both. Maybe he just respects her.
“He never liked you,” she says. She doesn’t need to explain.
Viktor’s eyebrows rise up and up.
“I should have known that was a warning sign.”
“…a lot of people find me very trying,” he chooses to say, “I didn’t want to presume.”
She laughs at that, short and dry, because really, and he joins her. He doesn’t wait a moment to check and see if she’s going to break down. She appreciates that.
“I want you to promise me something,” she says.
He doesn’t say he will. Smart man. That or he’s learned from his years with Yuuri.
“Never hurt my brother. Never leave him. Because if he ever feels like this,” she admits, and the tears aren’t there but her voice is catching. She needs a cigarette. “If he ever feels like this I’ll fly to Russia and shoot you in the throat, and I won’t stop shooting you until I run out of bullets.”
“I promise,” Viktor says, weighty and honest.
Mari lights her last cigarette. She turns and goes inside. Their parents are probably wondering what’s kept them.
The first thing Yuuri notices, after over fifteen hours of travel, is the raucous laughter. He toes the door open and then the smells of alcohol and food and home hit him.
“Hello?” he raises his voice to just below a shout. “Someone? Can you help me?”
The laughter pauses and then Mari and Viktor appear from around the corner. They are both wearing jinbei, and they are both trashed. Viktor is clutching an album to his chest. Yuuri recognizes it immediately. It’s BABY YUURI SKATES!!! VOLUME 3! Why me, he whispers into Makkachin’s fur, gods why.
“Yuuuuri!” they chorus together. Their voices become a jumble of “my life! my love!” and “baby brother!” after that. All Yuuri wanted was for someone to help him set Makkachin down on a pillow somewhere so he could get his bags and pay the taxi. That was all. That was it.
“Yuuri?” his mother pokes her head into the entryway. She is thankfully sober. “Oh, Yuuri! We were expecting you! Come in, come in! Is that Makkachin you’re holding? Oh, but her fur has gone so white!”
It has, but Yuuri doesn’t like to be reminded of it. Makkachin has brown fur with very light white accents around the muzzle. Just like Yuuri has black hair with just a bit of grey starting to thread at his temples. He shifts Makkachin in his arms and she whines at him. She hates travelling these days and if it weren’t an emergency he wouldn’t have asked her to do it. As it was the front steps tired her out so much Yuuri gave up and carried her the rest of the way to the inn. And now Viktor’s holding out his arms for a hug and Yuuri just knows if he surrenders their dog she is going to be dropped and there will be tears and howls all around.
“Mama,” he says, “Can you set a pillow down? I have to –”
“No, no!” Mari crowds him then, gives him a heavy pat to the top of his head and then a kiss on his cheek. Absolutely trashed. “Let me hold her, let me hold her! I’m the divorced! Everything I say you have to agree!” Somehow she ends up cuddling Makkachin into her arms and the heart attack Yuuri suffers worrying over whether Makkachin’s hips will be jostled or her sore paw will be stressed is small and manageable. “Yuuri brought the granddog!” She waltzes back to a low table covered in bottles of sake and whiskey and cups and albums full of Yuuri’s shameful childhood. “My favorite niece,” she hums.
Yuuri retreats back to the cab, sans one dog, plus one husband hanging off his shoulders. He wraps the robe a little more firmly around the husband for decency’s sake.
“Yuuri,” Viktor shouts in his ear while Yuuri grabs his suitcases under both arms.
“Yuuri,” Viktor shouts in his ear while Yuuri hands new, crisp bills from the Travelex at the airport to the cab driver.
“Yuuuuri,” Viktor sings as they trundle up the walk.
“What?” Yuuri asks because he’s used to this. When he’s drunk he’s a hundred times worse, so.
“Yuuri,” Viktor takes a deep breath. Yuuri worries he won’t remember to exhale. “I love you, and I’ll never leave you, and I promise forever and ever, and let’s stay here for a while, for a few months, until we want to go back, let’s stay with Mari and Mama and Papa and our children.”
“Maybe,” Yuuri says, noncommittal. He’s very curious about the part about children, but he sets it aside to hyperventilate over later.
He’s already making a note of which things to have shipped and which things can keep, and how Viktor can be the one who tells Yurio where his coaches will be for the indefinite future if he wants to train with them at all this season. “Maybe,” he says again, but he’s home, and Mari might appear to be okay but she’s not, and this is where he needs to be.