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Yuuri is gone again.
He does this sometimes when he gets sad or anxious, Victor knows, but now…
It’s raining, and it’s after midnight, and he’s worried.
In his heavy rain-resistant jacket, Victor leaves the onsen alone and goes out to find him.
The splashes of the rain around his feet are like music, and the sea roars in the distance, and the gulls are silent for the night. The puddles overwhelm the dips in the road, and, daring in the dark, Victor is walking right down the center line. It isn’t long before his shoes and socks are soaked through. It doesn’t matter to him, though. Finding Yuuri is so much more important, and he’s not here.
It’s honestly hard for Victor to be alone without him, nowadays. He’s gotten so used to the comfortable, constant company. When Yuuri isn’t around, isn’t near him, everything seems a little darker; it feels a little harder to breathe. And if Yuuri was gone because he was hurting, Victor wanted to be there. Wanted to be near him, and share in his pain or help him to smile again. He never wanted Yuuri to be sad if he didn’t have to be.
Victor finds him in a park just on the edge of town, under the dark towers of the wrought-iron street lamps. Yuuri is dancing. He is soaked through and he’s only wearing a sweater and jeans, and his glasses are folded over the collar of his shirt. He moves with his eyes closed. His hands are extended upward, and he spins en pointe with his free leg extended. The sound of the wind through the leaves of the trees is a symphony. Yuuri slides through the rain and the puddles, and he is so unbelievably, ethereally beautiful that Victor holds his breath. Rain drips from his eyelashes; his hair is stuck to his neck. Yuuri’s mouth is open, pink lips parted and cheeks flushed, and his breath puffs a little in the air around him, just on this side of cold.
He is incredible. The water flares around his spins like magic, like he hasn’t a care in the world for the earthly bother of the autumn rain.
He moves like he is so, so lost. Every inch of him aches with pain. Victor wants to be near him, and Yuuri is still so far. Somehow, he can’t. He can’t look away, and he can’t interrupt until he knows why Yuuri is moving like he his soul is dying. He knows somehow that if he watches, Yuuri will find a way to tell him.
Loss, in the yearning reach of Yuuri’s hands. A figure held close to him, moving further away, and then gone. The pull of Yuuri’s own body inward, alone. Vulnerable. So small, curled so tight, impenetrable in his shield his body has made against the pain.
Yuuri reaches out again, a solitary figure. He dances in open arcs, graceful leaps, nothing around to impede his free-flowing movement and the outward stretch of Yuuri’s fingers. He is searching and not finding… calling without answers.
Then, without warning, he stops trying so hard. His expression is crumbling, so agonizingly sad, and Yuuri moves like he is crying with the lines of his body. He never stops, but he pines.
When he extends onto his toes again, his arms are curved above him—he looks as though he could control the rain as a god. He is a creature too beautiful and sad and lonely for words. He turns, he bends, and the water curves around him, displaced by the motion of his limbs. But it beats down onto him even so, and when his hands drop to his sides and he is still, the rain continues to fall.
Victor is stricken, so consumed. Yuuri is incredible. Talented. Hurting. He doesn’t know why. Victor is here, is still with him. He would never leave Yuuri if he didn’t want Victor to go.
Victor loves him.
He loves Yuuri too much to stand this.
Victor strips off his coat, and lets it fall to the sidewalk, forgotten, and goes to dance with him. What else can he do? He is no longer impervious to the rain as it falls hard around them, with force enough to kick up a mist of droplets he has to walk through. He is soaked. He is dripping.
He doesn’t care.
His hands slip into Yuuri’s, into all the open spaces his fingers were leaving that fit Victor’s perfectly, and if Victor hadn’t known this was about him before, he certainly does now. He steps into Yuuri’s open arms, filling the empty shape of Yuuri’s body with his own.
Yuuri is startled enough to jolt, but it’s pouring rain and Victor is soaked through and dancing with him. It’s like a dream. He doesn’t speak. But Victor knows his heart is in his eyes and open for the breaking, and Yuuri stares at him and lets Victor guide him through the motions like there is nothing else he can do but take what Victor offers. Up, and out and apart until only their fingertips touch, they are two figures clinging with all other limbs outstretched, and finally curling back together again.
They waltz, together and apart. Victor is spinning Yuuri with an arm around his waist, Yuuri’s upward-arched body dependent on Victor’s twirl, anchored atop Victor’s leading foot. Their foreheads are pressed together, and Victor never looks away. Yuuri stares back.
They’re so close.
Everything is a rush. They’re dizzy.
They hold hands and pull apart again only enough to breathe, and Victor dips him, his hand strong at Yuuri’s waist. They linger. Yuuri’s hair falls back, and his neck is stretched out long and beautiful, and Victor can feel Yuuri’s leg pressed tight along his hip, extended. He places his hand on the back of Yuuri’s thigh, and they maintain. When he pulls him back, Yuuri’s face is red and his chest is heaving with his breath and he snaps back so responsively into Victor’s hands, a true artist. A true dancer.
His hands now firm on Yuuri’s waist, he lifts Yuuri with both hands in an ascending spiral above his head, and Yuuri’s eyes are huge and dark—and with Victor’s touch warm just above his hips, he realizes. Victor can see the moment he comprehends how much he is needed.
Yuuri had been so busy feeling alone that he had somehow forgotten how much Victor loves him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s crying messy tears, sniffling, and Victor is carefully dropping him down to hold Yuuri tight against his body. “I’m sorry.”
Victor hushes him with his lips frantic against Yuuri’s temple. His hands are warm in Yuuri’s cold, tangled, wet hair, and they cling together.
“Don’t leave me,” Victor begs. It’s all he can manage. His eyes close. He tries to memorize this, being so close, in case it isn’t meant to be his for much longer.
He can’t imagine. He doesn’t want to think about if Yuuri decides to leave him for good once the season is done, decides to say that Victor should leave. How could he? How could he walk away? This place with Yuuri had become his home, and he didn’t think he could go back to being alone again. He didn’t think he could go back to boring nights and empty hotel rooms, cold sheets beside him, without Yuuri’s warmth to remind him that he wasn’t alone during the night.
He begs. He begs with his heart and every shaking bone, in every grasp of his hands against Yuuri’s arms, his back, his neck, his hair. Please don’t make me go away. Please don’t make me leave you. Keep me. Want me. Need me. Love me. Make me stay. I’m yours.
“I—How could I ever leave?” Yuuri asks. The relief Victor feels is sweeping, overwhelming, a flood of joy. “You’re the one that can’t stay here, in this nowhere-place. You need more than I can give you. You need the world, their eyes on you, to witness everything that you are. How can I take you from that, Victor? What kind of person would that make me?” Yuuri’s tears are lost in the deluge that has soaked them both, but Victor knows they’re there, present and real as Yuuri’s sorrow between them.
But that doesn’t matter. Yuuri wants him.
“Then come with me,” Victor pleads. Yuuri wasn’t wrong entirely—neither of them could stay here forever. Hasetsu was not the kind of place they could continue to grow together. It bore the peace of a happy life that—if they wanted—could be theirs. But they weren’t ready for happy, for settling down. Victor certainly wasn’t. Neither was Yuuri, whether or not he believed he deserved to carry on. “If that’s what you think I need. Wherever we need to go. Don’t let me be without you, Yuuri. That, or just let me stay here forever. I will find a way to be happy, no matter where I am, as long as I’m with you.”
Yuuri looks up at him, his eyes sharp and focused on Victor, the proximity of their bodies providing physical focus even without his glasses. “I’ll go with you,” Yuuri breathes. “Anywhere, if you want me.”
“Let’s show them,” Victor whispers, breathless, and his eyes are bright and shining as he clings to Yuuri, so close. He presses his lips to Yuuri’s cheek and tastes cold and rain, again and again. “Together. When the season is over, we’ll both skate. We can leave here, be somewhere new. We’ll take the world by storm.”
It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t concrete, but it would be enough.
Yuuri turns Victor’s face until their mouths are pressed together. When he speaks, his words are simple.
Life-giving. Life-changing.
“Yes. Of course. Yes.”