Chapter Text
In hindsight, tea was a Very Bad idea. Not so bad as coffee, of course, but Yuuri generally avoids coffee, mostly because it tends to aggravate his anxiety. Which is currently, infuriatingly active, making his bones vibrate in his skin, and what caffeine is in the half-cup of English Breakfast he’s had is making it worse. When he wraps his hands around the circumference of the paper cup, his fingers are trembling.
He takes a deep breath, and presses the home button on his phone, making the screen light up. 6:56pm.
Definitely should have done something herbal.
Definitely should have worn a different shirt.
His phone has barely dimmed when he taps it awake again, swallowing thickly. 6:57pm.
Definitely going to get stood up.
Definitely shouldn’t have let Phichit talk him into a blind date.
Definitely—
“Hello.”
Yuuri jerks so hard that some tea sloshes up and out onto the white plastic lid, and he pulls his hands away quickly before they can cause any further damage.
He looks at his phone. 6:58pm. He takes a settling breath, looks up, and is thankful for it. Apparently, that breath was his last.
“Are you Phichit’s friend?”
This is definitely a mistake.
*
“When was the last time you even went on a date?”
This bookstore is not big enough considering that no amount of artfully dodging between the shelves has allowed him to lose Phichit. Then again, Phichit is like a blood hound when he wants to be.
So Yuuri is deploying the only other tactic he knows—ignoring his best friend entirely. He pulls another book from the shelf, more to block Phichit’s evaluating stare than out of any kind of interest.
“You know what, you don’t even have to answer, because we have been friends for six years, and unless you really do have a secret fiancé, you’ve been on one date, and—”
“That wasn’t a date,” Yuuri argues, exasperated enough to finally break his silence. Even then, he keeps his voice down, despite the fact that this is a bookstore and not a library.
“Exactly. So you’ve been on no dates.” Phichit makes a zero shape with his hand, leveling Yuuri with a look that is simultaneously one of concern but also judgement. But it's gone just as quickly as it came, wiping away as Phichit brings his hands together in front of his mouth, the gesture pleading despite the easy smile that graces his face. “Just give it a shot. He’s apparently a real catch, and he’s friends with Chris! You remember Chris, right?”
Yuuri has a vague memory of someone introduced to him in a too-crowded bar while he was halfway to an anxiety attack from being in said bar. Either way, being friends with someone whose face Yuuri can’t even recall isn’t exactly something he would consider a vote of confidence.
So he turns away and walks further down the shelf, eyes flicking lazily over the titles as Phichit scrambles after him.
“Yuuri.” His name comes out as a slight whine. “If you hate it, I’ll call you half an hour in and you can use me as a reason to leave.” Phichit crowds close, doing his best to take Yuuri’s attention away from the book spines. “We can go to Little Tokyo.”
“Racist.”
“You and I both know that’s the only reliable place to get authentic Japanese food.” They both know that's not true. Yuuri could easily counter that there are dozens of other places he could name outside of Little Tokyo, especially since they go to school right next to Sawtelle, but… Well, he does like it there. Phichit frowns finally, closes his eyes, and when he sighs, it sounds like defeat. That’s enough to catch Yuuri’s interest—Phichit rarely lets on that he’s losing. “I’ll clean the bathroom for a week.”
Yuuri’s eyebrows raise, but he simply plucks another book from the shelf, flipping it over to read the back.
“Two weeks.” There’s a tinge to Phichit’s voice, and, wow, he must be getting desperate. Yuuri surveys the book with contemplation, reading absolutely nothing of the description before turning to his best friend.
“A month,” he counters, and Phichit gapes at him in surprise, although it isn't long before it morphs into absolute delight. Yuuri has the sudden, sinking feeling that he gave in far, far too soon.
“You drive a hard bargain, Katsuki, but I accept.” He holds out his hand, and Yuuri reluctantly seals the deal with a shake, his resignation hung over his shoulders like a weighted shroud. Phichit whips his phone out of his back pocket. “I’ll let Chris know you’re down for Friday at seven.”
“What will my poor, secret fiancé think?” He grumbles monotonously, sliding the book back into its nook on the shelf. Phichit chuckles, fingers flying over his screen. “If you needed someone to go on this date so badly, why didn’t you ask someone who’d actually be willing? You know everyone. I’m sure you could have found a candidate without offering servitude.”
Phichit never cleans the bathroom. Yuuri isn’t even sure if he knows how. It’s always just been one of Yuuri’s chores, and it’s never bothered him. The thought of not having to do it for a month, though…
He’ll have to make sure Phichit actually cleans it.
“Ah.” Phichit smiles, unabashed and unashamed, finishing his text with a flourish. “I already told Chris that you were going weeks ago.”
“Phichit!”
He laughs. “It’s okay, Yuuri! You’ll be fine!”
*
Yuuri is absolutely, one hundred percent not fine.
He’s just consciously aware of the fact that his mouth is open. He’s probably gaping. He’s sure he would stop, but he’s forgotten nearly all of his motor functions suddenly and so the act of closing his mouth has gone from marginally difficult to basically impossible.
The silence is like another presence between them. Not just a single presence, but an entire crowd, huddled right there at the small round table that separates Yuuri from one of the most beautiful people he has ever been blessed enough to lay eyes on.
It stretches, and the look of charming confidence that adorns his blind date’s face (it has to be him, there’s no way it’s not him, but how how how is it him?) starts to slip, certainty turning to doubt.
Yuuri’s heart beats in his throat.
“Or—”
“Yes,” Yuuri blurts, the word so sudden it nearly comes out in Japanese. It feels like he’s answering a question that was posed hours ago. His breathing is too rapid, making his chest ache, and he bows his head, nearly bumping his chin against the table with how low he goes. “I-I’m Phichit’s friend.”
He winces. A normal person would have given their name. Introduced themselves.
But a normal person also wouldn’t be making themselves light headed with the pace of their breathing, and wouldn’t be bowing like they’re meeting the Emperor (…in a country where bowing isn’t even customary).
Maybe he’ll just leave. He’ll realize that this is some sort of mistake and will just walk away while Yuuri’s eyes are on the table, so he doesn’t have to watch.
Inadequacy swells like tar on the back of his tongue, thick and heavy as it drips down his throat and into the rest of his body.
Why would Phichit do this?
“Oh.”
He’s still there, and, what’s stranger, he sounds… Relieved?
“Thank goodness.” There’s a slight lilt to his words, like a childhood accent long since rounded and ground down by the California coastline and the lights of Sunset Boulevard. “I didn’t see anyone else who—how did Chris describe you?” Yuuri glances up just in time to see a long, slender finger tap contemplatively against perfectly shaped lips. “Ah, yes.” Those lips break into a triumphant smile that makes Yuuri’s stomach feel like it’s going to erupt, and he drops his eyes to the table again. “Very cute, very Japanese, glasses.”
Yuuri can feel flames ignite beneath his skin, no doubt painting his neck and ears a noticeable shade of red. He pushes self consciously at the bridge of his glasses. Maybe he shouldn’t have worn them. He could have worn contacts, instead. Never mind that he doesn’t own contacts, and kind of hates them, he would have acquired some if he’d known he was being set up with an actual male model.
(Well, maybe not actual, but it is a possibility. Yuuri is rapidly realizing that he knows absolutely nothing about this date other than the fact that it’s taking place in a café at seven on a Friday. Phichit hadn’t been forthcoming with any details, and Yuuri hadn’t thought to ask. Yuuri never thinks to ask.
So, really, this is all his own fault.)
Suddenly, there are fingers gentling caressing the tip of his chin, lifting until Yuuri’s eyes lock with a shade of blue that reminds him of the winter sky.
“True on all three accounts, really.”
The eye contact holds for one, two, three seconds, before Yuuri hears his brain screaming at him and his body responds, his back slamming so hard into the back of his chair it’s a miracle he doesn’t topple backwards. The look that follows him is one of utter surprise, but then that charming smile is back, looking almost playful as the hovering hand drops to splay against the tabletop.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Remember? Yuuri can feel the confusion skewing up his face. There is no way he has ever seen this person before in his life. He would have remembered. The man in front of him is not someone he would have been quick to forget, even if he’d just seen him at a glance.
He lifts his hand again, and Yuuri manages to embarrass himself further by flinching away from it this time, but… He isn’t touched again. Instead, the hand is extended between them as an offering.
“I’m Victor.” The smile, if possible, becomes more blinding. Yuuri is pretty certain no one’s smile is supposed to be that utterly perfect. He’s sure that people are starting to turn and stare because they have never seen anything like it before, and Yuuri honestly wouldn’t be able to blame them. “Victor Nikiforov.”
His hand is soft, and slightly cool to the touch, and that moment—when their hands clasp, Victor’s fingers curling ever so slightly around Yuuri’s, the pressure in the squeeze small yet significant—feels almost frozen in time, surprisingly more intimate than when those same fingers had been a determined touch against his face.
In the space of that moment, Yuuri forgets his manners, and that generally he should be introducing himself in kind.
“Ah.” Hand still held, Yuuri dips his head in a bow again, this time much more quickly and much less severe—an echo, a remnant, a reflex, even though he hasn’t lived in Japan for over half a decade. “Yuuri Katsuki.”
“Yuuri.” Victor hums his name, squeezing his hand. He draws the vowel out for far too long, and thank god he didn’t try to pronounce Yuuri’s last name, and yet… Yuuri finds it doesn’t bother him all that much. Victor says his name like it’s familiar, and Yuuri almost wants to replicate the situation, to see if Victor’s name sounds just as at home in his own mouth.
He doesn’t.
“A pleasure to formally meet you.”
Yuuri doesn’t realize what Victor is doing until he feels the brush of soft, dry lips against the ridge of his knuckles, like this is some sort of historically romantic meet-cute and not a cliché coffeeshop blind date.
His face is so hot he feels like he’s suffocating in it, and yet he still somehow manages to stammer through his own nice to meet you, jerking his hand back into his personal space, fingers closed in a fist like he can maybe hold onto whatever just happened.
“I see you already got something to drink.” Victor gestures to the cup of tea Yuuri had almost spilt all over himself, sounding slightly dismayed by its existence.
“Ah, yes, I was… Early.”
An hour early. Whatever is left of his tea, it’s no doubt tepid.
“Punctuality.” Victor’s face blooms with a smile. “An admirable quality.”
It’s potentially one of the strangest compliments Yuuri has ever received, and yet it still has him ducking his head and averting his gaze. He doesn’t dare say that it’s less punctuality and more anxiety. The thought alone already sours Victor’s words before they’ve fully settled in the air between them.
“Well, can I get you anything else? A pastry?”
“Oh, no. No. I, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Victor’s voice is like a coo, his fingers dancing against the table, precariously close to where Yuuri’s other hand is resting. He watches them as they move closer, like the fins of a shark circling their prey. “A cupcake, a cookie? Something… Sweet?” The back of his nail glides against the bone of Yuuri’s wrist, and Yuuri snaps his lips closed tight before he yelps, hand drawing in towards his body. He shakes his head, vehemently, and Victor chuckles quietly, slipping away with the promise of I’ll be right back.
When his shadow no longer falls across the surface of the table, some of the tension leaks out of Yuuri’s shoulders, and he looks up and watches Victor’s retreating back. There’s a part of him (a large part, the majority, even) that expects Victor to make a beeline for the door, but instead he meanders to the back of the café where a small line has formed, eyes roving in contemplation over the menu boards above.
After a few seconds, he glances over, and Yuuri’s body goes still—he’s going to think Yuuri is so weird for staring, he’s definitely going to leave now—and Victor smiles. He even gives a little wave with it, and then his attention shifts to the bake case and the plethora of foods it offers.
And he doesn’t leave.
Why isn’t he leaving?
Yuuri quickly grabs his phone, looking up one more time to see that Victor is, indeed, still in line and not gone forever, before unlocking it.
Yuuri groans, digging his hand through his hair. It’s not like he can make it look any worse, especially when he’s going to look like a dumpster fire next to one Victor Nikiforov no matter what he does. In fact, he’s pretty sure everyone in this café is already silently weighing in on how unbalanced of a couple they make.
(Not that they’re a couple, just—people might be drawing that conclusion.
Actually, on second thought, they’re probably more confused as to why someone like Victor would ever even speak to someone like Yuuri. That’s a lot more likely.)
The urge to apologize is sudden, kicking in like an unavoidable gag reflex. He’s completely and wholly underwhelming in every possible way, and that’s just now. Soon they’ll probably start talking because Yuuri is pretty sure that’s what people do on dates, and… And Victor is going to realize how utterly disappointing Yuuri Katsuki actually is.
He wishes Phichit understood that Yuuri doesn’t go on dates for this reason (among a plethora of others). If he doesn’t date, he can’t disappoint someone. Because he always disappoints people. He always lets them down.
But Phichit is a good friend, and Yuuri knows he would brush aside all of those fears with a sweep of his hand. Yuuri wishes the action was permanent. That it wasn’t just a balm, but a cure.
Maybe, if Yuuri was better at explaining all of this, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
A date is one thing, but why had Phichit thought that this was a good idea? Why had Victor’s friend, Chris (who apparently had met Yuuri and knew at least a little bit of what he was about to get Victor into) subject him to this? Who looks at someone like Victor and thinks, “you know who would complete that devastatingly beautiful picture? Yuuri Katsuki”?
(No one, that’s who.)
The next time Yuuri has the presence of mind to remember where he physically is, to take actual stock of his body, he’s shredded two beverage napkins to ribbons and he feels light headed from how close to hyperventilating he suddenly is. How long has he been inside his own head? What time is it?
He checks his phone. 7:05pm.
Not long, not long, okay. He needs… He presses a hand to his chest, trying to focus on his breathing and not on how sharp the inside of his throat feels. He takes a sip of his cold tea, as if it might help, might ground him.
(It doesn’t.)
There’s two napkins left on the table. One is mostly damp, having caught the brunt of the spillage from his tea earlier, but the other… It’s just a plain, white, slightly textured napkin, but Yuuri reaches for it, focusing on it far too intently. It’s square, but is it perfectly square or—
He folds it in half on the diagonal. Not quite perfect, but… Close enough. Good enough. He breathes.
Unfolds it, presses the opposite corners together, creates a sharply creased X across the napkin. Lengthwise. Across. Presses in at the corners, folds those pieces in, pulls these ones up.
He breathes.
For a few moments, Yuuri loses himself in the familiar motions. It’s muscle memory, the dexterity instilled through constant practice as a young child, sitting in his mother’s lap as her hands curled over his, showing them how to move. His breathing slows, and his heart calms down, and Yuuri pulls a paper crane out of a napkin.
(“I’m going to make a thousand,” he’d told his mother, all those years ago where they sat at the family kotatsu. “And then I can make a wish.”)
He wonders, in all the years his hands have fallen into these same comforting gestures, if he’s gotten anywhere close.
What would he wish for?
“What’s that?”
Yuuri doesn’t startle nearly as badly the second time around, but he does manage to hit the table with his knee, hurting himself and spilling more of his tea in the process. A few drops land on the wing of his crane, soaking in and staining parts of it a weakly colored brown. He watches the stain travel, spider-webbing through the napkin’s texture and warping the material where the liquid weighs it down.
It would be easy to crush the crane with his palm, to brush it away with the rest of the napkin scraps and into the trash.
He probably has made a thousand paper cranes, but he’d never know.
Yuuri’s never kept any of them.
“Origami?” Victor’s voice is bright with interest around the word his foreign mouth butchers slightly, cut through only by the scratch of Victor’s chair sliding out. Yuuri stares at the crane, but before he can make up his mind to throw it away, Victor is plucking it from the napkin wreckage. Yuuri’s eyes follow it. “You made this?” Victor stares at him, eyes wide and curious in a way that would be more fitting on a child than a man of his ilk.
After a few moments of compulsory hesitance, Yuuri nods, eyes suddenly critical of his tiny bird. One of the wings is torn at the end rather than pointed. The napkin hadn’t been perfectly square, so none of his points are sharp. Some of the folds overlap. The beak is an absolute disaster, and then—
Victor’s fingers slide against the stained wing, fascinated.
“Out of a napkin?”
It’s not judgmental, like Yuuri had been expecting. If anything, he almost sounds… Surprised? Impressed? None of the words make sense where he’s trying to fit them, but he can’t think of anything else. It’s not even that good of a crane.
“Uh, yeah, the, uh, the napkins are almost perfectly square, so…” He fidgets, shifting his shoulders. Most of his friends have seen him fold a paper crane. A lot of them even kept the ones he made. But those had been like a performance. He’d been ready for them. He’d had the proper paper. Those cranes were made with the possibility that they could be kept, every crease, every point, every fold—perfect.
This crane is not one of those cranes. This is a garbage crane. This is a crane born from anxiety. The only reason it exists is that it kept Yuuri from collapsing his lungs with the strength of his oncoming anxiety attack.
It’s not perfect. It’s ugly. And it doesn’t deserve the awe with which Victor is looking at it.
“A paper crane out of a napkin.” Victor sounds quietly delighted. “A napkin crane.” His smile is giddy, like what he said is particularly clever. And all Yuuri can do is watch as the crane twists back and forth by its tail between Victor’s thumb and forefinger, biting down on the need to ask for it back.
This is how Victor will remember him: spilt tea and an imperfect crane.
Victor sets the crane down finally, resting it gently against his own paper cup so that it lays on its wing rather than balancing on the body. “Where did you learn to do this?”
It’s not a question Yuuri is expecting.
He doesn’t have many friends, but most of them are American. And they seem to think that people just come out of Asia knowing origami.
(Yuuri had learned to make other things just for fear of disappointing people with the fact that the only thing he did know how to make was a crane. He can do a frog, and a butterfly, and a rabbit, but cranes are still his favorite.)
So he’s expecting it even less when he answers.
He doesn’t tell Victor why he had his mother teach him. That seems a little too embarrassing. But he does tell him about the other animals he can make.
“You said that Chris described me as Very Japanese. Is that what he meant?” Yuuri skews his eyebrows together. Is that how people think of him? As Very Japanese?
Victor laughs, and the sound is like honey down Yuuri’s spine.
“I’m not sure exactly what he meant. It makes me wonder if he describes me to people as Very Russian.” He smiles, good-naturedly, clearly not at odds with his friends rather stereotypical descriptors.
“Ah, that’s it,” Yuuri says more to himself than to Victor, but Victor still hums inquisitively. Yuuri presses his lips together, averts his gaze, shrugs his shoulder. “I could tell you had a bit of an accent, I just… Couldn’t tell from where.”
“Really?” Victor’s face washes over with surprise. “You can tell? Most people can’t. I moved to the States when I was six, so most people are oblivious to it.”
“One foreigner to another.” Yuuri gives a small smile, and something passes over Victor’s expression like a wave. It’s gone before Yuuri can look at it too closely. “So… Are you?”
Victor rests his cheek against his knuckles. “Am I what?”
“Very Russian?” Yuuri speaks as if imitating someone. The laughter that comes out of Victor is softer and hardly there at all, and it steals all the breath out of Yuuri’s lungs.
“Well, I can speak full sentences with particles and everything, and I don’t eat borscht.” He smiles. “I do have matryoshka dolls, though, and I do love the cold.” Something sparks behind his eyes. “Oh, and I’m a communist.”
For the third time in less than twenty minutes, Yuuri almost spills his tea again.
“Really?”
“No.” Victor’s smile stretches wider, and then they both laugh. Quiet, private, and Yuuri can feel his tension easing—slow, and steady, like helium escaping an air balloon through a needle point. But… It’s easing.
It doesn’t take long for Victor to realize that any conversation to be had will be mostly by his lead. Yuuri’s answers feel forced at first, dragged across his tongue and through his teeth, but no matter how stilted his answers, Victor keeps asking questions. And with every question, the answers come easier.
Maybe because Victor’s questions are simple.
He asks about growing up in Japan. He asks about his family. He asks about coming to America, and about school. But he skirts the hard questions, the ones that Yuuri keeps anticipating. He’s sure he sees them sometimes, just behind Victor’s eyes, sitting right on the tip of his tongue, but then they’re gone and Victor is moving on to his next topic.
So Yuuri talks about Japan without talking about being homesick. He talks about his family without saying why he’s been gone for so long. He talks about coming to America without explaining why he moved so far away. Victor never asks if he’s running from something. He never asks if Yuuri feels regret. He never asks if he’s happy.
And Yuuri is grateful. Because those are the same questions that keep Yuuri up at night, that tumble through his head as he searches for sleep and can only find the darkness of his ceiling. Even then, he doesn’t know the answers.
In contrast, Victor seems more than willing to lay everything bare for Yuuri to look at. He answers questions that Yuuri doesn’t even ask, and the ones that he does manage to piece together are elaborated on until Yuuri forgets what his original question even was. It almost feels like Yuuri can press in any direction and find no resistance, no walls, but he also suspects that maybe Victor is just better at this than he is.
But Victor had left Yuuri’s walls in tact, so Yuuri doesn’t go searching for his.
He keeps the questions he does work up the courage to ask completely generic.
Victor is originally from St. Petersburg. He doesn’t visit as often as he’d like. His parents are divorced, and he has one step-sibling. He’s a freelance events coordinator, which doesn’t even sound like a real job, and Victor is quick to explain that it isn’t—he’s essentially an overpaid party planner.
He also has a full-sized poodle that, 45 minutes into their date, is being shown off to Yuuri via Victor’s phone. His name is Makkachin, and for every picture that Victor has, there is a story that endears the dog quickly and firmly in Yuuri’s heart.
He stops himself from saying I can’t wait to meet him more times than he’d like to admit.
“He likes the beach. I don’t know if he has a preference, but I think the one by the pier is his favorite, because—”
Yuuri’s phone starts to vibrate violently where it’s been sitting, forgotten, in the corner of the table, and both of them turn to look at it in surprise. No one ever calls Yuuri—he’s infamous for never answering.
“Sorry.” Yuuri shoots Victor an apologetic look, and then glances at his phone curiously. It’s Phichit. Which… Doesn’t make any sense, because Phichit is the one who sent Yuuri on this date, and—
Oh.
Right.
The escape clause.
Yuuri can feel his heartbeat through his stomach and down to his toes. He draws his bottom lip between his lip, hesitating.
“Aren't you going to answer it?”
Yuuri looks at Victor, who doesn’t even seem vaguely irritated by the interruption. He’s smiling, eyebrows lifted curiously, fingers curled against the pale expanse of his cheek. The sight, frankly, makes Yuuri’s heart hurt slightly. His eyes flicker to his phone again. It won’t keep ringing for much longer. It will go to voicemail soon. If it does, will Phichit call again? Or will he assume it means that Yuuri has no intention of bailing on the date?
He looks at Victor again, watching as he tips Yuuri’s paper crane back and forth with the point of his finger, letting it rock from one wing to its center and then to the other wing, before the process reverses and repeats.
Yuuri’s heart is thundering so loudly that its all he can hear, and he’s hyperaware of the way blood pulses through his fingertips as he picks up his phone and… Turns it off completely. He expects his breath to rattle out of him, all broken pieces and nerves, but it comes out on a smooth exhale.
“No.” He sets his phone back on the table, face down. “It’s fine.” He glances at Victor, suddenly feeling shy, and drags his lips together. “It can wait.”
This is where Victor picks up their conversation, mid-sentence, like he never stopped, only he… Doesn’t. When Yuuri has scrounged together enough courage to look him in the eye again (it takes several Moments, nearly a dozen deep breaths, and a brief internal monologue of encouragement), he finds Victor staring at him like…
Yuuri’s not sure. His grasp of the English language fails him. No one has ever looked at him the way Victor is currently looking at him, and Yuuri has no idea how to describe it.
Whatever it is, it makes Yuuri’s heart hiccup in his throat.
“I, um.” He closes his eyes, centers himself. “You were saying before? About Makkachin and the beach?”
When he looks again, Victor is blinking back to himself. He looks about two seconds away from shaking himself into composure—if people like Victor did such obvious acts of recalibration. Instead, he smiles again, and this one is different still. Yuuri is sure he’s seen a hundred different smiles since Victor walked up to the table, up to him, and this one is… It’s not bad, or forced, or anything like that.
He thinks, maybe, it’s a little warmer.
“Right.” His voice curls around the word, fondly. “Makkachin.”
They sit in the café until one of the employees starts bussing the tables, flipping up chairs even though there are still customers in the lobby. Victor is laughing softly, telling Yuuri in vague details about his last client, when said employee drops a chair and it clatters against the tile flooring, drawing everyone’s attention and pulling Yuuri and Victor from whatever bubble they had come to exist in.
Yuuri’s eyes widen.
“Are they closing already? What time is it?” He picks up his phone, only to remember that he shut it off… He’s not sure how long ago now. He frowns at it, holding down the buttons to turn it back on.
“Ah… Nearly 10,” Victor muses, and Yuuri looks over at him, to see Victor's own phone in his hand. “Seems like we’ve been here for quite awhile.”
Looking at their table now, Yuuri can tell. He’s had two more cups of tea (some fruity green blend this particular café offers, and then a peppermint herbal), and Victor had his own cups of chamomile. There’s a plate from what had been a very delicious slice of lemon bundt they had shared, covered in Yuuri’s napkin shards and small crumbs of cake that their forks had left behind. The crane is still next to Victor, slightly perkier now that its wing has dried, and it’s hard to believe that Yuuri made it nearly three hours ago.
A surprised laugh escapes his throat, and he blinks rapidly.
“Yeah.” It comes out breathless, and it makes him want to laugh again. He can’t seem to fit the time he spent with Victor into three hours. There’s no possible way it’s been that long. It feels like they just started talking.
“What’s your phone number?” Victor asks without preamble, and Yuuri has become so used to answering questions—easier questions, and much harder ones—that he prattles off the number without thinking about it. It’s only a moment later that he realizes that Victor is typing it away into his phone.
Yuuri’s phone vibrates, signifying that it’s powered on once more, and then begins to vibrate furiously.
“Ah!” Yuuri grabs it off the table, trying to muffle the noise, but Victor is already chuckling.
“I promise those aren’t all me.” There’s a pause in the vibration, and then there’s a final one a few seconds later. “But that one was.”
Yuuri glances down at his phone. He has… Wow, a lot of messages from Phichit, but the most recent is from an unknown number, and simply has a purple heart emoji.
Yuuri isn’t sure what to say, pressing his phone to his chest and looking at Victor helplessly. If they truly have been talking for three hours, Yuuri’s words have finally dried up.
“Let me walk you out, before the staff starts glaring at us anymore than they already are.” He grins, already scooting his chair back, and an employee descends on their table to quickly start clearing away their cups and trash. “Oh, wait, not that.” Victor just manages to scoop up the crane before it gets taken away, cupping it carefully in one hand, and Yuuri feels embarrassed as he stands.
“You—” He swallows. Shrugs. “You don’t have to keep that. It’s not… It’s not very good.” The flare of discomfort feels foreign after it’s been absent for so long, and Yuuri twists his hands together in front of him.
“I know I don’t have to.” Victor’s voice is gentle. “I want to.” His smile floods Yuuri’s vision, and he realizes that he’s bent down in order to invade it. As much as they’ve been talking, the table had stayed firmly between them. Even when they’d been eating the bundt, and their fingers had casually brushed together, it had never seemed deliberate and invasive. This is the closest Victor has been since the beginning of their date, and Yuuri forgets how to breathe all over again.
His fingers are warmer now, as he pushes some hair up and away from Yuuri’s eyes.
“If you want, you could make me a better one tomorrow.”
“T-tomorrow?” Yuuri is astonished he’s able to speak at all, especially considering his brain is certainly short circuiting from Victor’s small, affectionate touch.
“Tomorrow.” Victor’s words are firm, serious. Yuuri swallows. “Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”
His lips part, and his tongue is limp and useless in his mouth.
Something is telling him to say no.
Something bigger is making that impossible.
Yuuri gives a small nod, and Victor’s eyes crinkle warmly with his smile.
The closeness ends. Victor steps back, his hand falling away only to confidently take up Yuuri’s own and lead him from the café. There is a lightness to his gait that seems to match the erratic, giddy firework spectacular currently taking place inside Yuuri’s ribcage.
“Do you need a ride home?” Victor asks, once the door to the café has closed behind them. It’s early April, but the night still holds a bit of chill. It’s nice, especially considering the dry, hot nights that will inevitably follow as summer gets closer.
“Ah, no, I drove here.” His car is parked just around the corner, thankfully tucked from view. If Victor can afford to live downtown, chances are he probably drives something nice. No need for him to see Yuuri’s used Honda. “But thank you.”
They come to a stop at the curb, skirting the soft glow shining from the twinkly lights that decorate the edges of the café’s storefront windows and onto the sidewalk. Yuuri’s eyes keep jumping to where Victor’s hand is still wrapped firmly around his, so it’s a little startling when he glances up and finds Victor facing him.
“I guess this is where we say goodnight, then.” He reaches up, brushing pieces of Yuuri’s hair from his eyes again, and Yuuri’s free hand curls against his chest, the bite of his nails into the meat of his palm the only grounding factor in what could so easily be a dream.
How did the night get here? Yuuri’s not even sure. The last several hours feel like a blur, the line between points hard to find and retrace. It just… Doesn’t seem possible. Not that he just went on a blind date and survived, but that he… Enjoyed it. That Victor enjoyed it.
(Yuuri assumes. Victor wouldn’t be inviting him out to lunch if he hadn’t enjoyed himself, right?)
That’s probably the hardest thing to justify.
Victor had stayed. Victor had, potentially, had a good time talking to and getting to know Yuuri. Victor wanted to see Yuuri again. Tomorrow.
There’s a voice in his head, that sounds annoyingly like Phichit, that says, See? That wasn’t so bad, right?
Ugh. Phichit. He’s going to want to know every detail of the night, and his smugness is going to be their third roommate for the foreseeable future.
But, well… Yuuri looks down at Victor’s hand in his again, and can’t help the blushing smile that dances from cheek to cheek. It’s very likely that it’s worth it.
“I guess so.”
“Yuuri.” Victor takes a step closer, his fingers pausing against the angle of Yuuri’s jaw. “This is a date.” There’s something sparkling in Victor’s eyes that makes Yuuri’s stomach roll over on itself. “Don’t I get a kiss goodnight?”
Yuuri’s eyes widen, and he knows he rocks back a step, even without consciously meaning to. The cacophony in his head leaves little room for the fear that he just insulted Victor, that he just ruined everything, the anxiety a mere prickle of spikes underneath the bells and whistles and the ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod’s.
But Victor just smiles, slightly softer, and his finger travels over Yuuri’s bottom lip before it falls away.
“Maybe not tonight.” But Victor’s face still hovers close, too close for Yuuri to be held responsible for basic bodily operations such as breathing, speaking, and keeping himself upright at the same time. He almost fails at all three when Victor’s lips press, chaste and sweet, against Yuuri’s cheek, his breath warm and tea scented when he whispers, “Goodnight, Yuuri.”
And then he’s gone. He steps away, his hands leaving Yuuri behind, gives one last devastating smile, and then turns and walks down the street. Yuuri watches him go, one hand pressed carefully to his recently kissed skin, and belatedly remembers to inhale.
Victor crosses the street, his figure cutting a striking silhouette under the streetlights, and Yuuri watches him as he does a spin, a gleeful laugh escaping him, and… Yeah.
Yuuri might not be doing spins in the middle of the street, but he can’t stop smiling, heart rabbit quick where it beats beneath his palm, every fiber of his being remembering that single point of contact and the way it still seems to to tingle and spark even now, like a star pressed permanently into his skin.
He lets out a quieter laugh of his own, pushing his hands into his pockets, and heads for his car.
