Work Text:
What if I was to tell you that we are not alone in this universe? That, by chance there are planets full of life and love around every corner, hidden away with each light-year.
If you can wrap your funny little head around that, then you can also understand this: their way of living is extremely similar, yet totally different to ours. To help you understand this, we’re going to take a little trip. I am going to take you to a planet where people can bond, much like the concept of soul mates. But also, not at all like this concept. More like science on your planet. Covalent and ionic bonds, maybe. Yes. That is the perfect example.
Are you ready for your glimpse into another galaxy?
* * *
The planet of Chaldene. Magnificent and elegant as it is, has even more beautiful things inside of it. People scuttling about, performing daily tasks. The season is winter. This season just so happens to be the favorite of a certain figure skater. Today we look at a city by the name of Riverdale.
A young Yuuri stared down at his wrist. Curiously enough, a black ‘VI’ had appeared. What was this for? The young boy had seen this before on older people. People like his mother and father, even his siblings. He had noticed a small pattern, no matter what, each group would have the same number on their wrist.
This is where I tell you that on this planet, families are called groups. Much like on a periodic table, they have the same amount of valence electrons; a group in this world has an identical roman numeral on their wrist. The Katsuki family, much like the nonmetal carbon, has six “valence electrons” which are represented by the tattoo naturally forming on their wrists once they hit a certain age.
As Yuuri pulled on his skates, getting ready to see his friends Sodi Umphred and Clora Eene, his wrist showed the mark in which he received at a young age. He had been so confused. The reserved boy was only eight when he received his mark. The mark showing the amount of “valence electrons” he had, if you will.
He ran to his mother, crying and confused. The mark had not caused pain, but tears still streamed down the little boys face as he held his wrist out to his mother and, voice shaking, asked what it was and why it had chosen to come.
Mrs. Katsuki smiled kindly at her son.
“That is your mark, my little katsudun.”
“Mark?”
“Yes,” she pulled up her own sleeve to show the mark she held, identical to her sons. Six valence electrons. She then went on to explain why it had come.
First, she had to explain the easy things. Bonds. There were three types of bonding: metallic, covalent, and ionic. Mrs. Katsuki then went on to explain why they were important.
“Yuuri, did you ever wonder why you only see in two colors? Black and white.”
A nod from the raven-haired boy encouraged his mother to continue.
“When you’re bonded… that changes. You begin to see in color. “
“Color?”
“Mhm. But you can only be bonded when you and your partner make each other be an eight.” The woman smiled down at her son. “So you need someone who has enough electrons to make you see color.”
She then went on to explain that you could have more than one set. This was extremely complicated, but as your narrator, I will explain in terms you will be able to understand.
Much like the elements, when bonded you can have more than one of a certain element. For example, Dry Ice (or CO2) can be bonded. A person on this planet can represent more than one element or multiple elements of one type. It all depends on the number of tattoos they receive.
Yuuri went back to tying his skates, the memory quickly returning to the back of his mind. His friends were already skating. The two were bonded ionically, seemingly always holding hands, never letting go. Yuuri couldn’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy. They had color. He did not. It was not the act of finding someone to love him that he craved, but rather the need to see color. The incessant reminder of color surrounded him. It was in the trees, the flowers, and his skates. The only reason he ever really felt the need to become a bond was because of the consistent desire to see the color hidden in these things.
The two out on the ice seemed endlessly dazzled by the color engulfing them. Yuuri was hungry for that feeling.
Ionic pairings are extremely strong, fast, and never-ending. It takes extreme effort to tear them apart. You could see this in the two skating on the ice, hand in hand. Together they made eight on their wrists, so they bonded. One of them, Sodi Umphred was from the right side of the period. He’s excitable, easy to bond with, only needing one person to sweep them off their feet. Clora Eene, she is less excitable, shy, and picky with who she is friends with. These characteristics come from something similar to periods in the periodic table. As you go from left to right, they get less reactive and more unwilling to bond.
As Yuuri stepped onto the ice, he did a few complicated warm-ups.
Skating was one of the few things he could tolerate. The ice was white, so he could comprehend its color, and everything surrounding him tended to be black. His skates, everyone’s uniform, the trees – now without leaves – were sleeping, grey with cold. These were colors he could understand and comprehend. Colors he knew. They had a certain familiarity.
Yuuri took notice that the rink was packed. There was no way he was going to be getting any complicated practice done. His friends had disappeared in the crowd. Yuuri sighed and began to perform crossovers allowing himself to be flown along with the rest of the people circling the rink.
The rink got more and more congested, and Yuuri began to feel annoyed. Someone bumped against him , then another person, then another, the-
The world flashed. Everything around him changed and shifted, giving it a different look. The night wasn’t black anymore, but something else. What is it called when everything changes? When your heart stops, and everything suddenly looks so perfect and pure that it-
A heartbeat, for a second in sync with Yuuri’s.
Yuuri turned, and as the world slowly returned to what it was before he bumped into the man with-what color would that be- platinum hair. His eyes took in every detail before the man disappeared, seemingly unaffected by what had just happened. Yuuri couldn’t move. Was this how it felt? How it felt to see color? To suddenly be whole? He pulled out his phone and dialed Sodi Umphred and Clora Eene and begged them to meet him at Pop’s Diner.
He had so much to say.
What was he to do for the boy with hair the color he imagined moonlight to be?
Could he find him again?
* * *
“How did it feel?” Clora Eene asked, looking at Yuuri. She was extremely worried. She had been friends with the young man his whole life and had never seen him this way.
“It felt like I could do anything, but I didn’t need him for it. Like… just knowing he was there would help, but it was still me just as much as it could be him.”
Sodi Umphred and Clora Eene looked at each other before Sodi Umphred said, “ Then it was a covalent bond. That’s how those feel. If it was ionic, you would have a stronger dependency, and it would be near impossible to think of anything else.”
Yuuri nodded with understanding.
“How am I going to find him again?”
Sodi Umphred and Clora Eene smiled sympathetically at Yuuri, acting like the same person.
The boy felt hopeless. He pursed his lips and put down a five-dollar bill to pay for the milkshake he got and walked out the door. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he got into the car and drove home.
All he did was want color, why must it be so complicated?
The last time he saw color was sixth grade. A fresh, now regrettable haircut and a new pencil case joined him on his first day. He sat in the front of the bus, much too shy to go to the back and join the popular kids. Everything seemed so important back then. Eleventwelvethirteen year olds acne ridden and pumped to the brim with ideas of ‘the one’ and colors. That day, a girl sat next to him. She pulled down her sleeves and smiled shyly. Over time, the two began to talk. And one day, Yuuri accidentally touched her hand while they were playing a card game. Color took over, and the two held their breath, not wanting to lose sight of this.
She had two valence electrons on each wrist. Hydrogen.
The next day she didn’t show up. In the dead time between Monday in Tuesday, she had managed to move to a different town. They made covalent bond, weak and easily breakable. Their personalities were much too alike. But it still hurt.
Rumors filled the halls about her, and Yuuri ignoredignoredignored them until the memory of color melted from him and left him empty again.
He never sat in the front of the bus again.
Yuuri ends up in a traffic jam. The people roll along at six miles per hour, each illustrating different aspects of a certain element, including its size and its electronic properties. The traffic slowed to four miles per hour. Yuuri could run this fast, faster, even. Then it increased to seventeen miles per hour. He couldn’t run this fast.
Somewhere in-between his house and Pop’s Diner, Yuuri began to feel tugs at his heartstrings. As snow fell to the ground, one of the many storms to hit the city this year, Yuuri hoped he would hydroplane.
Sharp snowflakes flew onto the ground and clung greedily to anything they could touch. The doors to Yuuri’s home had frozen shut, and he spent thirty minutes chipping away at the thick layer of ice that had accumulated in the few hours he had been gone. It was always easier to open from the inside.
Yuuri didn’t bother making anything to eat or changing. He stripped off his shoes and made his way to his bedroom, and laid back. It wasn’t long until sleep took him.
When everything was big and Yuuri was small, he was introduced to the laws of the world he lives in. Scientists were only beginning to figure everything out. Electronegativity or the laws of attraction was the latest scientific news. Yuuri was in love with this concept. The thought that, depending on what your electronegativity was, your personality was determined. This helped Yuuri make the few friends he had.
When everything was gumdrops and lollipops he was studying who he would fit best with and why. He had hoped maybe, just maybe, this would be the reason he would get along with people. This proved to be false. Due to his innocence, he was unable to realize this only applied to people who were bonded.
This was around the time he found ice-skating. He dropped out of school at ten in favor of tutors, and moved to Detroit. He met his best friend there. Phitchit. It was there he learned that he couldn’t predict friendships. His interest in electronegativity dropped then, and instead he let himself roll with the flow. His twelvethirteenfourteen year old self learned it was okay not to fit in. And while everyone else was seeking out bonds, he stared out into space and wondered whenwhenwhen he would see color again, and forced himself to focus on figure skating instead.
But now he’s twenty-eight. And he’s lost his second chance at colors.
Maybe bonds just aren’t for him.
When Yuuri was a real boy, blissfully unaware of bonds and color, he spent his days in a dance studio. Today, he’s going back for some practice. He doesn’t stay in shape out of season without practice. Weight likes to cling to him, so he has to work it off somehow.
And skating just isn’t an option today.
Yuuri drove himself to the studio and began to pull on his jazz shoes. The routine he’s planning requires charisma, and sadly that is something he lacks. Because of this misfortune he’s going to have to put three times as much practice time into the dance. He does, after all, need to learn to pick up an entire personality. Yuuri dances to forget. His misfortune is great but his love for what he does is greater. He is able to blind himself with commands of chateaus and pirouettes rather than color and bonds.
By four in the afternoon, he is dripping with sweat and gasping for air.
By four in the afternoon, he makes a decision.
By four thirty in the afternoon, Yuuri is grabbing his skates and running to the ice rink.
By five in the afternoon, Yuuri is at the rink, pulling on his skates.
He doesn’t want to waste his life away allowing the color to drip out of his hands. Allowing himself to be ice.
He doesn’t want to lose something that can help him get out of this cycle of work practice work.
Yuuri no longer wants to spend his time watching his life drip out of hands and wishing it away. Yuuri he’s spent too long taking anything he could, grasping for any crumbs left when it comes to bonds and colors. He is done painting black and white memories. He wants them in color, and he wants someone to share it with.
“This universe is clothed in color,” Yuuri thinks “and I want to see it. I want to touch it with my palms and smile and laugh. I want to see the color blue and all of its variations. I want to breathe the color pink and know how it feels. I want too look at the ocean and determine if it is green or blue or clear.”
Let there be light in Yuuri Katsuki’s life. Let there be a yellow sun and a grey moon and, what were the color of the eyes that made him feel this way? Yuuri wants to know that most of all.
Yuuri steps onto the ice.
Cold.
White.
Lost.
Where could he be?
He saw the colors, too, right?
Let me be right.
Let me see light.
Give me courage.
This universe was made just for us. Join me. Please be on this ice with me.
With shortness of breath, Yuuri began to slow. He came to a halt on the ice. Unforgiving and cold.
Like the world that would not give him color. Like the world that let it slip out of his hands.
All he needed was a bond.
It felt like a hundred years. But he’d wait a hundred more. He wanted stability, a life to live. He wanted to know what it felt like to be complete.
Someone grabbed his shoulder and Yuuri turned.
Color.
Yuuri had been living so long. But now, with color, he knew what he was living for. Nothing had prepared Yuuri for the privilege of being complete. Infinity could not describe this.
He turned and smiled at the man with the moonlight hair.
“I’m Yuuri.”
“Viktor.”
Yuuri didn’t know how to place it, but they connected. He glanced at the man's wrists. Two sixes. Oxygen. Covalent, yet infinite. He smiled, and Viktor smiled back.
Yuuri is thawing.
* * *
What if I was to tell you that we are not alone in this universe? That, by chance there are planets full of life and love around every corner, hidden away with each light-year. If you can wrap your funny little head around that, then you can also understand this: their way of living is extremely similar, yet totally different to ours. To them, every touch is something new. Every breath is a blessing. They aren’t hanging by the edge but hanging onto hope. Maybe they are like us, in a way. But we will never understand how bonds feel. We will never truly grasp the pull they feel towards each other. No matter how much we study, we wont know why it is like this. But we accept. We move on. We learn more.
Are you ready for your glimpse into another galaxy?