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The first time it happens (or, at least, the first time as far as he is aware) Yuuri is still half-asleep and hungover as fuck.
It had been one of those nights, the ones where his anxiety was just ripe enough to aid him in some not-so-sound-decision-making.
Phichit had said, “Just one more drink.” Phichit did not have an 8am morning class the following day. Yuuri had then proceeded to have several just-one-more drinks, and Yuuri did have an 8am morning class the following day.
He has no idea how they had gotten back to their flat, but they had somehow made it, for Yuuri most definitely wakes up in his own bed to the blaring of his snoozed 7:45 alarm, mouth tasting of acid and cotton, leftover Pad Thai and very bad decisions.
Head spinning and stomach still working through the not inconsiderable amount of alcohol ingested a few hours prior, Yuuri sluggishly lifts his phone up to his face and pales.
It’s 7:54. He has overslept, and this morning is the date for his group’s presentation of a project that’s worth a ridiculous percentage of his mark in a class Yuuri is already suffering in, because it collides too much with his precious rink-time. The only reason he is able to afford university and skating under Celestino in Detroit is the grant money the JSF delegates and a precious academic scholarship, both of which are slipping through his fingers the longer he stays there, staring at his clock, willing it to tell him it’s all a joke and that he hasn’t slept through his first three alarms.
The Withworth building is a fifteen-minute walk from the flat—Yuuri can usually make it in five if he sprints. By the time he has located his glasses and project notes it’s already 7:58, and he is well and thoroughly fucked.
I messed up. He’s scrambling to put his shoes on when his eyes start prickling and he feels his breathing hitch. The thoughts keep rushing and his throat suddenly feels very tight.
If only he hadn’t gone last night.
If only he hadn’t let Phichit try to cheer him up.
If only he had said no to that first drink. He’d made a mistake; now he would fail this course and lose the grants, and it was all his own fault.
He gasps for a breath of air and squeezes his eyes shut, forcing down the churning in his stomach. No, he can’t give up now. He needs to be in that classroom. If he is lucky, his professor will be running late, and might even give them a late start. If he runs, he can still make it.
He needs to be in that classroom.
With this one thought in mind, Yuuri steps through the front door, and into classroom 262b in the Withworth building.
His classmates are buzzing; they’re yawning and chatting with each other around the classroom. Michelle Wang waves at him from the corner of the room where the rest of his group has gathered. He scrambles for the phone in his pocket.
08:00.
He’s on time.
He shouldn’t be. But he is. He stepped out his door but a second ago, and he’s made it on time.
This is impossible, he denies. This can’t be real.
The professor walks up behind him and clears his throat; he’s blocking the doorway. Embarrassed, Yuuri mumbles an apology and bows briefly, rushing over to his group who’re all waiting for him.
“Wild party last night,” quips Chad Warton, looking more or less as dead as Yuuri feels. He nods to express his agreement (though he can’t remember if they had met up last night at all. He’ll have to ask Phichit).
They’re called up first. The presentation goes by with only a few minor hitches, but they’ve definitely passed.
-
Yuuri returns to the flat to sleep off the effects of the hangover.
Later that day, Phichit is very sorry for what happened; it hadn’t been part of his plan at all. Of course, it’s all forgiven. In the end, Yuuri had made the choice for himself, no one else should take the blame for it. He makes sure his rink mate knows it.
In the spur of the moment, he tells Phichit about his strange experience.
“Yuuri… were you still drunk this morning?” Phichit asks, studying him carefully. “Maybe you were sleepwalking. Or you fell asleep in the doorway.”
Yuuri, still, is baffled over the events, knowing perfectly well how logic and reasoning conflict with what he is so certain he experienced. In the end, he brushes it off as a hangover miracle.
He swears off alcohol for a little while, and nothing like it happens again.
Until a month later.
The European Championship is on, and while they both should be preparing for Four Continents, Yuuri wouldn’t miss his idol’s free skate for the world.
The short programs were magnificent, but everyone knows that the free skate is where it matters. After Christophe Giacometti delivers a podium-worthy performance, it is the reigning champion’s turn to take the ice.
Yuuri waits with bated breath as the announcer calls for Victor Nikiforov to take his position. The costume he wears is stunning in its simplicity; the shirt is simple yet elegant, the gentle blue of the torso accented by the white of the sleeves. The cuffs and the neckline are made with stunning gold detail. The black of his trousers run into the skates, and the signature golden blades gleam against the ice.
He greets the eager crowd with confidence and slides smoothly into his pose, holding still as he waits for the music to start. The first notes resound through the great hall and Yuuri can’t withhold a surprised gasp—this music, this program, is not the same one he had skated at the Russian nationals but a few months prior. This free skate is all new.
Phichit enthusiastically voices the same exact thought, but Yuuri is far gone, swept up in the spin of Victor’s first quad—a salchow—and envies each and every soul in that rink who gets to witness history in the making.
Victor’s skate delivers his signature quadruple flip before he sets off into the step sequence, and suddenly there is nowhere Yuuri would rather be than at that rink side with a prime view of this stunning, first-class program.
He can almost feel it. The chill of the ice seeping through his clothes and clashing with the heat of excitement building in the crowd. The cheers, gasps, and claps all sound terribly real, and the silent anticipation before a jump is all consuming until Victor’s blade hits the ice in a perfect landing.
Cheers erupt from the crowd and Yuuri can’t help but cheer with them, standing up from his seat with the overwhelming excitement that rushes through him—and feeling the rush of cold against his face as he stands, eyes wide, on the rink-side of the European Championship.
Victor Nikiforov is there, but a few metres away, performing his brand-new program across the ice and stealing Yuuri’s breath away because he is there, seeing it, and not believing that it can possibly be real.
Victor slides into his final pose, arms open and head thrown to the ceiling and the crowd goes wild.
Yuuri is conflicted. On one hand, he is almost in tears because that skate had been truly, absolutely brilliant and beautiful, and on the other, he is not supposed to be here.
Then, just as Victor is about to go to the Kiss and Cry, right next to where Yuuri stands, Yuuri panics, flees behind the camera, and disappears.
-
There is a rush of temperature change from the cool rink-side to their dorm room as Yuuri steps into it. Phichit is gaping at the TV, but quickly whips his head around when Yuuri reappears, eyes bulging.
Disbelieving, he exclaims, “You were on TV!”
“Yeah,” Yuuri says, not really affirming it as much as he is computing the statement for himself.
“I mean—you were here, but then—and I saw you! In Paris.” Phichit’s eyes light up as if he’s uncovered some great mystery. “Yuuri. You can teleport.”
Safe to say, they both freak out.
-
“Can you go to this place—it’s in Bangkok, see we’ll find it on google maps and you can pick up this amazing Khao Mun Gai they serve at the corner—don’t give me that look, Yuuri! It’s for science!”
Phichit is somehow quick to whip out his laptop and perform a google search on everything known about the small number of people around the world that have strange, supernatural abilities. Soon enough, he has several tabs up, most regarding all comics and science fiction that’s ever been written on the ability of teleportation, its uses and limits, eager for Yuuri to discover the extents of his newfound ability.
But, as it appears, Yuuri can’t teleport on command. No matter how much he tries, no matter what place he imagines, nothing seems to happen.
Phichit elaborates on his research, trying to figure out exactly how his powers work. “Is it actually super speed? You’re just moving insanely fast between places? Or do you actually dematerialise and then rematerialise at your destination? Are you even made up of the same particles anymore? Are you even Yuuri anymore?!”
The sudden turn to existential questions has his head aching, and no progress is made on discovering just how he was able to disappear from their dorm room in Detroit and reappear in Paris just in time to see Victor finish his skate in person.
Phichit, at least, finds a YouTube video of Victor’s skate that shows, in grainy detail, a dark-haired blob on the rink-side that is, to a trained eye, definitely Katsuki Yuuri.
So, it definitely happened. He just doesn’t know how to make it happen again.
The strange event is their topic of conversation for the next few days, but exams are dreadfully close.
Yuuri, in the midst of it, kind of forgets a bit about the strangest aspect of his life for a while. But during one of those high anxiety weeks when five different finals are weighing down on him, when he almost wishes he had skipped out on perfecting his triple axel instead of reading his text books on time, when he really misses home and all he wants is his mother’s katsudon… he suddenly gets his wish fulfilled.
He has only just begun to reminisce about the sounds of home, the hint of salt in the air around the town and the clatter and various smells of food around their kitchen, and then he is in Yutopia, 2pm in the afternoon, just after lunch rush, and his mum walks in and drops her tray in surprise.
(And Yuuri is suddenly there just in time to catch it).
“Yuuri,” his mother gasps softly, frozen in surprise. “O…okaeri.”
His answering ‘tadaima’ is just as soft and perplexed, and he has barely gathered his wits before Mari comes around the corner and the whole process is repeated again.
They are both very happy, albeit confused that he is there. Yuuri can hardly even be relieved that he is, even though he had wished for it only moments ago. His throat still feels clogged from all the thoughts of his imminent failure, and all he can think is that he really just needs that katsudon while he explains to his mother and sister that he has no idea how that happened, he just wanted to be home and then…
“Yuuri, it’s always, always okay to come home,” his mother assures him after she sends Mari to the kitchen to dish up something to eat. “No one here will be disappointed if you want to quit. You always have a place here.”
The warmth in her voice almost makes him want to cry again. He tells her ‘thank you’, sincerely—but he knows that he won’t. Give up, that is. He wants to do this. He misses them all terribly, but he must go on, because this is what he’s always wanted. To be on the ice.
Mari calls them to sit down and eat, and Yuuri has never tasted a better katsudon in his life.
It is only later, when they ask if he brought any of his things, that he panics again. Because how is he supposed to get back to Detroit in time for his finals when all his things—his passport, his phone—are in America?!
Again, he doesn’t realise it when it happens. In his distress he teleports back—it only takes a moment for him to be back at his desk in his dorm. The only evidence that he ever left is the taste of katsudon in his mouth. He calls home immediately and his mother picks up, very happy that he has made it back safely. “Please come visit again soon. Vicchan misses you terribly.”
Yuuri doesn’t go home nearly as often as he’d like. The next time he tries, just after exams have finished, it doesn’t work.
-
When he one day sums up his experiences with his newfound ability, Yuuri reaches the following conclusion: it seems like he can only do his trick when he is in a highly emotional state. Which is… less than convenient.
It means that his ability, just like his feelings, is highly uncontrollable and might bring him more trouble than good… although, so far, it has only ever kicked in at times where he has sorely needed or wanted it.
That’s something, at least.
-
He is about to start summer training to prepare for the new season when it happens a bit differently.
He’s in a dream, in which he is skating. He is flying across the ice, nailing the step sequence he’s been working on with a grace and accuracy that surprises even himself. Then he is jumping, he is landing a clean quad flip in front of Victor, his idol, and the other skater can’t take his eyes off him.
In the dream, Yuuri wants nothing more than for him to keep watching him.
And so, just as soon as he has wished for it, Yuuri’s feet are ice cold, because he’s standing in the middle of an ice rink, wearing only the sweats and t-shirt he wore to bed that night…and the only other person there is Victor Nikiforov himself, standing on the ice in practice gear and skates, the low morning sunlight glinting off the newly resurfaced ice.
He speaks to him in Russian. And then, when he doesn’t reply: “English? Are you ok?”
He nods slowly, unable to find his voice to answer the question, and Victor smiles, kind and somewhat hesitant.
“Ah, good. Do you know where you are?” and Yuuri looks around in amazement.
He does know, although he can hardly believe it. He’s in Victor’s home rink, in Russia. In St Petersburg. And Victor Nikiforov is speaking to him, looking at him, looking—
—down at his bare feet.
“Did you…walk here in your sleep?”
Yuuri feels the cold bite painfully through his naked soles, even though the touch feels heavenly on his bruised skin and blemishes.
Victor’s eyes narrow in concern. “That’s not good for your feet. Here, hang on. I’ll carry you off the ice…”
“N-No no no no! I can—"
Yuuri panics exactly at the moment Victor Nikiforov skates far too close and wraps his lean arms around him, preparing to lift him off the ice… and end up teleporting them both over to the bleachers.
“Wow.” Victor says once they’ve landed, looking around, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Yuuri can see the exact details of his gorgeous face from where he sits, perched on Victor Nikiforov’s lap, pressed against Victor Nikiforov’s warm, chiseled chest, with Victor Nikiforov’s arms around him.
Yuuri’s insides practically combusts. He jumps out of the other skater’s hold not a second later, screeching, “I’m so sorry!” wanting nothing more than to crawl under his duvet in humiliation for having landed on Victor Nikiforov, and gets his wish fulfilled a moment later when the rink around him and Victor’s dumbfounded expression warps and disintegrates and is replaced by a wall filled with posters of the same man staring seductively back at him. He has ended up teleporting back to Detroit and into his bed, only to immediately stumble and fall to the floor with a resounding bang that causes Phichit to wake up. He is knocking on his door just a moment later.
“Yuuri? Is everything ok in there? Can I come in?”
“I-I’m fine! Just a weird dream!” he reassures, dazed, because the only evidence he has that he didn’t just have a messed-up dream are his wet, ice-cold feet.
Later, he finds a short, silvery hair stuck to his dark t-shirt and… well. It most definitely was not a messed-up dream.
-
As it turns out, a lot of Yuuri’s strongest emotions have some sort of connection to his figure skating idol, and the ice-rink incident is not the last time he finds himself randomly popping into Victor’s life.
He could be doing something very mundane, like practicing a jump, but if inspiration strikes him and a thought such as “Victor would do this” sneaks up on him, he might quad toe-loop all the way out of the rink and into Victor Nikiforov’s living room (which he only recognises because of a home interview in a Russian skating magazine he had managed to get a hold of through the wonders of eBay). Luckily, his skates hit the carpet and he doesn’t end up ruining the probably very expensive hardwood flooring. He barely stumbles out an apology to the slack jawed Russian Olympian standing in the kitchen with a take-out bag in hand before he stumbles out of St Petersburg and back onto the bleachers in Detroit.
One such incident happens when he and Phichit are watching their favourite performances on a Saturday afternoon, and Yuuri picks the Olympic Gold winning one that always brings a tear to his eye. Next thing he knows, he is sitting, teary eyed and heart soaring, in a blue sofa, pressed up against his idol on said sofa while the TV plays some random Russian drama in the background. Victor spills his drink on him and Yuuri jumps sky high, stepping on Makkachin’s tail along the way and crying out “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you!” while drying his eyes.
Before Victor can say anything at all, he manages to teleport back to Phichit in Detroit, shirt smelling of vodka and soul crushed that he’s dared to barge into Victor’s home and hurt his idol’s dog…
“He will write a post on instagram about this crazy fan of his showing up at his house. I can never face him in real life. I can never compete again. He will have me arrested for harassment and animal cruelty the moment he sees my face.”
Phichit assures him that won’t happen, but Makkachin’s yelp still echoes in his ears and, really, he is very close to turning himself in for the animal cruelty part of the claim.
However, there is a bright side to all of this. The suddenly growing frequency of his ability kicking in teaches Yuuri to recognise the feelings that trigger it. His regret over hurting his idol’s dog very notably sparks one of them.
One Monday morning, when he is certain Victor must be out or at practice, he manages to conjure up the same regret, and easily teleports back to the flat. Makkachin is there, and it doesn’t even take an apology to win the dog over. He must deal with several enthusiastic, wet kisses before he can calm the dog enough to find the time to leave a note for Victor on the counter. Luckily, Makkachin seems to have forgiven him.
“You must get lonely waiting for him every day,” he murmurs as she licks his hand, just before he leaves. The encounter makes him wish he could go see Vicchan more often. He really should.
-
A crazier incident, which Yuuri doesn’t really want to think of, but which Phichit has dubbed the “Yuuri should have said fuck it and gone for it incident” happens when Yuuri, in the peace and quiet of his bedroom lies down to relax and... take care of himself.
It starts out purely for the physical side of it, to let out steam and feel good. But, as his thoughts are wont to do, they wander. Soon it’s not just him in his room, and in his mind his partner is a willing participant who’s watching him hungrily from the doorway as he strokes himself. He moves closer to the bed and sinks down next to Yuuri on the bed. His hand touches Yuuri’s and they move together. His breathing gets ragged as the pace quickens, and a name is on his lips.
His imagination quickly fills in the gaps for him, adding a layer of excitement to the narrative. Yes, it’s after a competition. They’re both there because of some competition they’ve both been in, and he’s been bold enough to ask him for a drink, and it goes extremely well. Better than he has dared to hope for. He’s clearly interested in Yuuri beyond the role of a competitor. He gains the confidence to invite him to his room, and he’s said yes and now he’s there, with him, touching him. Wanting him.
The word “Victor” barely leaves his lips as a breath before the world swirls around him and he opens his eyes to realise he is in… not his own bedroom.
It’s late, in the very early morning hours, if he were to guess. He looks to the side and finds another figure there, dozing under the blankets. Victor’s face is lit up by the soft lights from the city outside. He is breathing evenly, fast asleep, not aware of the Japanese skater currently lying next to him, frozen, hardly daring to breathe or move, even if only to take his own hand off his dick.
Makkachin whines from the foot of the bed, her snout brushing against Yuuri’s bare leg. “Shhh,” he whispers urgently, attempting to be as quiet as he can, but Makkachin doesn’t take the hint and starts getting up, nudging playfully against him, perhaps recognising him by scent.
“No, no Makka, stay!” he finally moves his hand, struggling to pull up his briefs as the dog chases his hand. She probably won’t answer to his commands because she only knows the Russian ones, which is understandable, but “oh my gosh, Makka please, he’s going to wake up—”
And no sooner has he said it before Victor is awake and looking at him with his bright, bright blue eyes.
Yuuri wants to die from the overwhelming embarrassment. (At least he has managed to pull his briefs up.)
“Oh. Good morning. I was wondering when you would show up again,” Victor says, sleepily, but somewhat warmly at the same time.
Yuuri swallows. “I can explain. Please don’t call the police or anything, I’m not doing this on purpose!”
“Oh, no, I guessed it wasn’t completely intentionally when you first showed up barefoot at the rink,” the Russian skater explains with a playful wink that shouldn’t make Yuuri’s heart flutter the way it does. “But the stumbling out of thin air with your skates on in my living room certainly did give me a few more indicators.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all well. I see even Makkachin has forgiven you.” He laughs softly and sits up.
Only then does Yuuri realise Victor is… naked under there. And, judging from the bulge he had seen as he moved, he’s hard. Which is why he’s bunching the blankets over his crotch.
Yuuri blushes and his throat is suddenly very dry. I can’t believe I’m witnessing this. His idol, naked in bed, sporting a… well, morning problem. This is something straight out of his fantasies—something that wasn’t ever supposed to come out of his fantasies and into the real world.
“Ah, this is a little awkward…” Victor starts, “but um. I’m about to take a shower. Could you perhaps… let me have the covers?”
“O-Of course!”
Victor smiles gratefully in a way that makes his heart skip a little when Yuuri rolls off the bed, letting him wrap the covers around himself. As if he should be thankful when it’s his duvet in the first place. “You can stay here until you… pop off again. If that’s what you’re doing? I don’t really understand it…”
“Ah… yeah. Me neither.” There’s a pause before Yuuri thinks to say, “Thank you.”
He is offered another, soft smile. “There is tea and coffee in the kitchen if you’d like some.”
He mumbles another, slightly overwhelmed “Thank you” at the sudden display of hospitality he is being shown. Especially for being a burglar. (Technically, anyway).
Victor disappears into the bathroom, and Yuuri catches himself watching him go. Totally not appropriate behaviour at all. Soon enough the shower starts, and Yuuri can’t help but wonder. Is it a cold shower to just quickly get rid of the problem or… is he… perhaps he is…
Yuuri flushes and can’t help a breathy “oh” as he imagines Victor, in his shower, taking care of his… problem. The thoughts begin flooding in, his previously active imagination springing back to life.
What is he thinking about? Who does he imagine? What does his face look like when he does it? All red and breathy, or more scrunched and controlled. Does he do it quick or does he like to drag it out?
Before Yuuri can think to stop, he’s growing hard again and feeling very scandalous for it. How is he in this situation, lying in Victor Nikiforov’s bed while the other man is literally in the next room, possibly masturbating while Yuuri is getting hard imagining it?
He wants to die from the humiliation.
Then, he hears a soft moan from the bathroom and his blood rushes in his ears before he blinks out of existence and reappears in his own dorm room, aching and dishevelled before rushing into his own bathroom, turning the shower on cold and trying his best to forget what happened, not risking the chance of popping back when he knows exactly what Victor is doing in his bathroom right then, in this moment.
The next day, however, Phichit quickly catches on and presses it all out of him, laughing himself sick on Yuuri’s behalf.
“Oh my god—Yuuri, at least, tell me… how big was he?”
“I’m not answering that.”
Yuuri has a hard time trying anything after, and just vows off masturbating all together, lest he suddenly, as Phichit put it, “shows up with his favourite dildo up his ass right in front of his idol—or worse, his idol’s dog.”
-
The new season starts off unexpectedly well.
Somehow, whenever he skates them, his programs turn out remarkably clean. His focus isn’t wavering as it is wont to do in competitions. After his third place in his first event in the Grand Prix series, Celestino tells him he genuinely believes he can make it to the final in Sochi.
Victor will definitely be there. That knowledge leaves Yuuri somewhat conflicted, as he’s afraid Victor might recognise him after how often he’s been seeing him in these very unfortunate situations. But then, if he made it to the final…he could finally skate on the same ice as Victor. A lifelong dream come true, possibly only a few weeks ahead. And maybe, just maybe, if he makes it onto the podium…
He hardly dares think on the possibility, tries not to imagine the rush of standing there by his idol’s side, as his equal, but the determination it gives him takes him all the way through his second event and qualifies him for the final in Sochi by a hair’s width.
Through it all, he somehow manages not to use his ability at inopportune moments. He has gotten better at recognising the pull of it and is very quick to squash it or distract himself from it, should those feelings arise. It wouldn’t do to disappear indefinitely in the middle of one of his skates, after all.
Luckily, he doesn’t, and his trip to Sochi is done by an economy class flight with a long layover at JFK instead of by mysterious transportation powers.
-
Sochi is amazing, until it’s not.
In the first few days he has manages quite a few near-impossible feats. Firstly, he skates a decent short program that brings him to fourth place in the competition. Secondly, through all the commotion he avoids bumping into Victor and get recognised anywhere in the hotel or rink. And lastly, he has successfully seen the Living Legend’s amazing new short program live, first hand.
All in all, things are going smoothly, almost too much so, and if he can only skate a clean program tomorrow chances are he might even climb the scoreboard. Just one more rank, and he could be skating the best season of his career. When he is not on the ice for practice, where his nerves seem calmer than ever, he is practically vibrating with excitement over the possibility.
That is, until Mari calls him the evening before the free skate.
-
It takes all of Yuuri’s willpower not to go home.
He is finally there, at the Grand Prix Final. He can’t afford to give this opportunity up. Not now, when he is so close. Not even to mourn the sudden passing of his family dog.
Yet, the feeling keeps building, the pull keeps dragging at him, and unless he stops it soon he will—
A distraction. He needs a distraction.
The hotel hosting the skaters has extensive room service, he remembers someone mention. He lifts the phone off the receiver.
-
It’s hard to accept that his dream of the GPF slipped away from him as easily as it had been to gorge himself on the fries that came with his burger the night before.
It’s even harder when he realises how he alone messed up his big chance when he calls his mother from a bathroom stall at the rink.
Yuri Plisetsky’s words ring through his head for the rest of the day, somehow even more clearly when he sees Victor walking through the stadium with his coach and rink mates. He makes sure to hide his face immediately. He can’t afford to be seen.
How stupid he had been, thinking he could skate on the same ice as his idol.
How stupid of him to think he could even place higher than dead last in the final of the most intense competition of the season with all those talented skaters as his opponents.
How stupid of him to even imagine…
Yuuri takes all these stupid thoughts and drowns them in a glass of champagne at the banquet that evening.
(And then in another. And another.)
-
The week leading up to All Japan is nerve-racking. Lately, practice hasn’t gone well at all. The programs he had skated relatively well in the Grand Prix Series are suddenly dull and filled only with bad memories of falls and failure from the Sochi final. The music no longer reaches into him the way it used to.
Nationals end up about as well as he’s expected. He places last. He loses the qualification for the Four Continents as well as the World Championship.
It’s only December and his season is already over.
It’s a bit of a blur after that. Ending things with his coach. Moving out of his flat in Detroit. Going back to Japan to focus on finishing his exams and finally graduating, now that his staying in Detroit and taking classes at the campus there is meaningless.
The only thing that really helps is skating. Not his own programs, no… but when he skates Victor’s…
There is something about Victor’s free program this season that touches something in him. He can’t pinpoint it exactly, but there is something about the music, about the song that he hears when he watches and re-watches the recording, a sort of longing and loneliness that makes him... want to skate. Want to skate it as well as Victor does, to be the only other person who can match it, the program’s required skill and emotion.
The first time he skates the entirety of the program, sometimes just after New Year’s, when the rink is quiet and empty because everyone is with their friends and families celebrating, visiting the temples and eating together, he feels the pull again.
He is very tempted to let it happen.
If anything, now that he has gained this amount of control over his ability, he should leave Victor a note to reassure him he won’t be bothering him again. Yes, he’ll leave a note with an apology. Perhaps something nice for Makkachin.
-
The next day he goes through with it. He thinks of skating, thinks of Victor on the ice, and lets the feeling build until it consumes him, and he steps out into a now somewhat familiar living room in St Petersburg, Russia.
He fully intends to go straight to the counter, leave the note and the dog-friendly treat there and then return, but it’s an ungodly hour here and Victor, by all assumptions, should be asleep. But Yuuri hears sounds coming from the other room. Almost like someone might be in pain.
At first, he freezes, fighting against the instinct to rush forward, but images of news websites posting about the tragic death of the star of the figure skating world alone in his own home wrenches him out of his stupor. He nearly barges through the door, and by then it’s far too late when he realises that Victor is definitely not dying.
He can’t stop looking.
Through the somewhat open door he sees Victor, spread out naked on his bed, hand encircling his rather impressive cock, jerking off. His face is flushed, the same redness dusted over his chest, breathing heavy and sensual as he works himself slowly in his hand. Yuuri is almost hypnotised by the way his lips part with each sigh, each moan, the way his eyes are closed, allowing his impossibly long lashes to brush against his cheeks, how the head of his dick slides up through the ring of his fingers… it’s all straight out of a fantasy, and Yuuri is half convinced he is still sleeping.
And then, Victor glances up and sees Yuuri through the door.
His breath hitches as their eyes lock, and he immediately wills himself to disappear… only he’s just been thinking about how much he wants to be there, in that bed, with Victor
…so that is, of course, where he ends up. In Victor’s bed. And by the way the man grins his way, it’s almost like Victor has anticipated this.
“Hello there, my voyeur. You finally came,” he practically purrs as Yuuri scrambles not to brush against him unwillingly.
“It’s not—I just wanted to—”
“It’s ok.” Victor interrupts his ramblings with an amused smile and a soft hand on his cheek, sliding down to his hand and guiding it towards him. “Here. You can touch.”
His hand ends up on Victor’s pectoral, fingers spread out across lovely pale skin stretching over hard, bulging muscle. He must be staring, much to Victor’s amusement. The other skater leans over, into his space, their faces so close he can feel the other’s breath across his lips. Their eyes meet, and Victor’s are so full of life, of passion and wanting, and Yuuri just can’t believe he is looking at him.
“There you are,” Victor hums, a playful smile on his lips. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
He places a hand gently on Yuuri’s cheek. Yuuri’s own hand on Victor’s chest is really the only thing keeping them apart at that moment. Yuuri is no longer sure if he wants it to.
Victor must somehow read the hesitation on his face, or felt the resistance in his touch, for he doesn’t move any closer just yet. “It’s ok. I haven’t had anything to drink this time. Promise.”
There is a teasing lilt to the statement, like there is a joke there that he is supposed to get. But he doesn’t. He is too focused on the fact that if he leans in just another few inches, his lips will surely—
“Can I kiss you?” The question is so sudden, it steals the breath right out of him. A little of the confidence that Victor constantly displays seems to slip from his face when he doesn’t answer for a long moment. Somehow, that’s what finally kickstarts his voice.
His “yes, please” comes out like a quiet whisper, but Victor hears it, for his eyes are suddenly closing slowly as he leans in all the way and drowns Yuuri’s surprised gasp in a sweet, irresistible kiss.
They part, just barely, just enough for Victor to guide Yuuri’s arms around his neck. The gesture makes just enough room for him to pull their bodies even closer as he kisses him again, deeper, harder. Yuuri can feel Victor’s warm, naked body though his own sweatshirt, can feel the beat of his heart against his own chest, feel the throb of his need against his own, stirring crotch, and he can only moan and let his arms tighten around Victor’s broad shoulders. He lets it all happen.
When they part next, their eyes meet again, both thoroughly dishevelled, lips red and raw with their shared moment of passion.
“I’ve wanted to do that since Sochi,” Victor confesses, breathily.
“I’ve wanted to do that since... forever,” Yuuri, unthinkingly, confesses in return, and almost groans with the embarrassment as Victor laughs airily and kisses him again.
“There’s a lot more I’ve wanted since back then.” Since Sochi, he said before. The information doesn’t quite click. Had Victor recognised him at the Grand Prix Final? What could he possibly have done to make Victor suddenly... want him?
There’s very little time to think, though. Very little incentive to think at all when Victor Nikiforov, the most beautiful man in the world, is laying him down on his bed in St Petersburg, naked and excited, telling Yuuri that, “fuck, you’re so gorgeous,” before proceeding to kiss the living daylights out of him.
They make out like this, hands clumsy and determined, finding purchase on smooth skin, on clothed hips, on bare, sculpted muscles, grinding up against each other.
Only when Victor moans into his ear, “Yuuri… ah, Yuuri…” does Yuuri sober up enough to consider their situation a little strange, a little too familiar a little too soon.
He has to catch a hand that’s just started to pull down his sweats, pleading “wait, Victor. Stop.”
Victor does so immediately, his expression a little surprised, but otherwise not miffed or irate at Yuuri’s request to slow down.
He only stares at him, patiently, slowly pulling back to give him the space to speak. “Are you… alright?”
Yuuri nods quickly. He gathers himself, somehow finally able to think more clearly without Victor being so close to him. “How did you know… my name?”
Victor smiles, his eyebrows rising in amusement. “You told me, of course.”
Yuuri frowns, confused. “When?”
“Well, not at first… but I recognised you,” Victor confesses. He’s still smiling, but it’s taken on a more hesitant quality now. “From the competitions. I pay attention to the competitors, after all… but I didn’t get to speak to you before we met at the banquet.”
And here Yuuri draws a blank.
He never spoke to anyone at the banquet, except for Celestino.
Belatedly, he realises he must have spoken that thought out loud. Victor is suddenly looking at him like he killed his puppy. A moment later a smile, too bright, too practiced, takes the place of the shock and he says, voice light, nothing like the deep, natural tone he had used before, “I see.”
There is a sudden stillness between them, awkward and long, unbearably loud in its silence. Yuuri can hardly think, the strange taste of sweetly veiled euphoria from only moments earlier gone bitter on his tongue that suddenly sits heavy in his mouth. Not that it matters, nothing coherent but a jumble of what had just gone wrong fills his head.
Victor moves first, rising from the bed, the lack of his warmth leaving Yuuri to suppress a shiver of cold.
His face remains frozen in this bright, practices smile that conveys nothing and masks the openness Yuuri had been met with before. His voice is far too light when he finally says, “I must have made a mistake. I hope I didn’t frighten you. I will...make myself decent. I’ll boil some water so you can have a drink while you… wait to disappear again, I suppose.”
There is a palpable disappointed bitterness in that the last of his words that pricks sharply in his chest as Yuuri swallows.
He cannot help but feel he has unknowingly hurt him.
Victor stands up, not at all concerned for his bareness, but swiftly goes to collect a bathrobe that he slips into and ties around his waist. He is about to leave when Yuuri finally finds his voice again.
“Victor…” he begins, weakly. Somehow, it still makes the other skater stop in the doorway and slowly turn back around, his eyes betraying the neutral mask he has constructed by flickering with a glimmer of surprise, perhaps even… hope. Yuuri swallows again, but feels that he can’t stay silent any longer. “I’m sorry… I don’t know, but… I mean. You’re amazing and I really look up to you but—I don’t even know you. You don’t even know me. Not enough to… that is just...”
“...a bit too much?”
He’s surprised when Victor carefully picks up where he trails off, and even more surprised when his shaky nod earns him a soft laugh.
“I… I suppose you’re right,” Victor agrees then, dragging a hand through his messy hair, creating an image that is ridiculously sexy for the kind of situation they’re in. He looks at Yuuri then, mask once again put away eyes apologetic as he says. “I’m sorry. Yakov has always told me I rush into things, but I… well, it’s not really a good excuse.”
He pauses, apparently not ready to tell Yuuri what this “excuse” of his is. Yuuri gives him what he hopes is a reassuring smile.
“It’s ok.” He fidgets a little where he sits on the cooling sheets, glancing down briefly as he remembers what had just happened on top of them, cheeks flushing a little. “It...it’s not like it was all bad.”
“So it was...good?” Victor tilts his head, a teasing smile playing on his lips.
If his face wasn’t red before, it certainly is now. “Ah—um, well. It was… but just a bit… sudden,” he stumbles over the words, trying not to be too direct about just how much he had enjoyed it while it lasted. “Like I said, we don’t… we don’t really know each other.”
Victor’s expression sobers in the next moment of silence between them and he stares on the floor for a long moment, thinking. Yuuri wonders if he should say something else, ease some of the tension between them, but Victor looks back up at him before long, a careful smile on his lips, eyebrows curved somewhat… nervously when he speaks.
“I want to, though. To know you.”
It’s a sudden proposal, an outstretched branch in this strange, confounding swamp of mistakes and misunderstandings they’ve been treading, and Yuuri feels a strange mixture of warmth and apprehension twist and flutter in his chest like a rapidly multiplying swarm of large butterflies struggling to find his esophagus and escape through his mouth.
“M-Me?” is the first word he lets out. “I’m just… compared to you, I’m...I’m just...”
Suddenly, Victor is moving back across the floor, and a moment later he is back on the bed, somehow with Yuuri’s hand in his own, clenching and compelling him to meet his eyes, finds them clear and beseeching as they bore into his, as Victor tells him, “Please don’t say you’re just-anything. Yuuri, you’re… you’re so very special. You can do amazing things that I can never even begin to. Anyone would be so lucky to get to know you, and… I really, really want to be so lucky.”
The butterflies grow wilder then, making it impossible for Yuuri to digest what he’s just been told beyond the struggle of accepting that no, this is not a dream, he has really just been told these things by the man he most ardently admires, that Victor really means what he’s saying…
Finally, he answers, “Maybe some tea first.”
The beaming smile that spreads over Victor’s face then is dangerously contagious. He can’t help a small grin of his own as he lets himself be dragged out to the kitchen.
-
“How about, to start… you tell me about your skating.”
“My skating?” Yuuri smiles, a cup of hot, oddly jam-sweetened tea pressed to his lips. “Not my weird powers?”
Victor hums thoughtfully. “Well, quite a few people out there have strange powers like yours, you know. It’s all over the news and the net, constantly. But you’re the only one who skates the way you do… like you’re creating music with your body.”
Yuuri thinks the flutters in his stomach and the flush on his cheeks may very well now be constant parts of his being. He tries to reply with something constructive, but this specific complement strikes him so deeply he can’t get anything but a stuttered “t-thank you, you too” past his lips.
Victor studies him curiously over the rim of his own cup. “You don’t take compliments very well, do you?”
“Maybe…” Yuuri offers unhelpfully, causing the other to sigh… almost fondly.
They sip their teas for another quiet moment. Somehow, Yuuri feels the silence this time around is a lot more comfortable than before and feels almost… content to sit there, at Victor Nikiforov’s kitchen table in his flat in St Petersburg, drinking tea out of his mugs like he is in a scene out of one of his ridiculous domestic fantasies.
It’s… nice.
“What if I told you I have powers, too? The power to find other people’s soulmates,” Victor says then, breaking the silence after a while. The exclamation catches Yuuri’s interest at once, and he perks up in his chair.
“…You do?”
Victor grins at him. “No. But it would be very romantic, wouldn’t it?”
Yuuri can’t but laugh at the ridiculousness of the man in front of him who is turning out to be so very different from the man he has imagined all these years, but quickly covers his mouth.
“There!” Victor exclaims, excitedly pointing a finger at him. “I made you laugh.”
As if on cue, another chuckle bubbles up in his chest. This time, Victor laughs along, as well.
-
“Can I… can I show you something?”
Their tea is long gone when Yuuri asks him this. Their conversation has been steady while careful and sometimes halted by bouts of uncertain or thoughtful silence, but through it all he has felt like something vital has been missing, preventing him from expressing himself the way he truly want to.
When just what that something is hits him, he feels stupid for not thinking of it before.
“Of course,” Victor agrees, unhesitantly. He rises along with Yuuri, and doesn’t even flinch, although his eyes marginally widens, when Yuuri takes a hold of his arms, compelling him to do the same.
“Please hold on,” Yuuri tells him. “I haven’t actually tried to… not over such a distance but… I think, with you, I...”
Victor looks at him, not a sliver of doubt in the blue of his eyes, and Yuuri clenches his teeth in determination.
A moment later, the air rushes around them. Everything except for Victor disappears, and when everything comes to a standstill, they are at the St Petersburg rink. The place where they’d first met.
He lets go of Victor as they land, the other skater looking around, amazed at their sudden change of surroundings.
“Wow,” he whispers softly, and Yuuri is internally pleased with his astonishment.
“Wait here,” he tells him, with no explanation, and disappears.
It takes him a minute or two to locate and dress up in his skate gear in his temporary and sunny flat in Japan, but it feels like it takes him hours. He easily flicks back to St Petersburg’s rink, desolate and empty in the night-time, with the exception of Victor pacing back and forth on the chilled floors in his bathrobe.
“I-I’m so sorry!” he apologises immediately when he realises what state he has left the other skater in. He is quick to pull out some spare socks from the skatebag he’s brought and swiftly delivers them to Victor. “Please wear these on your feet. I got so excited, I didn’t think…”
“It’s ok, Yuuri,” Victor reassures him, but is still quick to put the offered garments on his reddening feet. “Maybe it’s appropriate really, that I get to be the one with bare feet this time.”
They share another smile, but Yuuri can’t but worry about his state of dress. It would be a disaster, really, if his own recklessness was the cause of the Living Legend having to sit out the rest of the season.
“I’ll be quick,” he promises, and sits down to put on his skates.
He doesn’t have his phone with him, and he doesn’t know how to operate the rink’s soundsystem anyway. But he will have to make do.
He looks at Victor, and tells him, “I...I feel like this is the best way I can say what I want. With my skating. So… please watch me.”
He doesn’t wait for an affirmation, but skates right out onto the ice, and falls into a pose that’s beginning to feel familiar to every muscle in his body.
There is no music.
But he doesn’t need it. The first notes of the aria is already playing out inside him.
And Yuuri skates.
-
When Yuuri goes back to Hasetsu a month later, physically this time, Victor isn’t far behind him.