Chapter Text
Victor stands at the altar. A swell of awkward whispers and creaking seats rises in the air. He starts to laugh.
Chris touches his elbow and looks at him like he’s lost his mind, which, hey, he might have.
“I’m sure he’ll be here,” Chris whispers in French, like what’s happening right now is a secret. Everyone knows exactly what’s going on, from the officiator dabbing sweat from her brow with a piece of paper (Are those the vows?), to the ring bearer who just asked his mother from across the room, “Can we leave yet?”
“He did it again,” Victor says through a manic giggle, shaking his head. “I can’t believe he did it again.”
“Did…did what?” Chris asks, like he doesn’t already know.
Victor doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. Instead, he bends over, hands on his knees, and laughs like he’s never laughed before. He laughs like he’s vomiting, sobs bubbling from his throat, his stomach muscles spasming. His audience falls silent, and though he doesn’t look, he can feel their bulging eyes on him like insects on his skin.
With a clap, Victor shoots upright and hops off the altar. He strides down the aisle, praying Chris has the wherewithal to follow him.
He doesn’t let the tears fall until he’s down the street, only a few paces from the nearest open bar. Ripping the green carnation boutonniere off his lapel, he tosses it over his shoulder.
Yuuri Katsuki has broken his heart…again.
Victor falls in love with Yuuri the moment he sees him.
He’s sitting with Yakov, helping him review submission tapes for his Figure Skating and Ballet intensive summer camp, when he first claps eyes on the young prodigy from Japan.
Yuuri moves like he’s made of music, with emotion and passion that renders his slightly above average jumps irrelevant. Every flourish, every spin calls to Victor in a language that feels like it was made just for him.
“Wow,” he breathes. “Amazing.”
“His jumps need work.”
Victor grabs Yakov’s arm and shakes him.
“You have to pick him! He’s perfect, Yakov! Perfect!”
Yakov looks at him like he regrets everything about his life.
“If I’m going to take on someone with jumps like that, you’re responsible for tutoring him.”
Victor beams. He has a feeling Yuuri is about to become his new best friend.
Yuuri hates him.
It’s the only possible explanation for why he went stiff in Victor’s arms when he hugged him in greeting, and why he’s ignoring him now as he unpacks his suitcase in their shared room.
Still, Victor is nothing if not persistent.
“Yakov says I’m going to be tutoring you. Isn’t that exciting?”
Yuuri doesn’t answer. He keeps his head down, focus married to the sweatpants he’s folding and placing in a drawer.
“I saw your submission tape. You could be really incredible if you work on your jumps and lose a little weight.”
Yuuri goes rigid, his fists clenching. Frowning, Victor chews his lip and rocks a little where he’s sitting on his bunk. Perhaps Yuuri doesn’t think he’s qualified. After all, he probably has no idea who Victor is.
“I’m the best skater here, so I’m capable of helping you with your jumps, even though I’m only a couple years older than you. I was much more advanced at your age than you are, so don’t worry, I can definitely make you better.”
Yuuri still doesn’t respond.
“Don’t you…speak English?” Victor asks, starting to wonder if he’d read the application wrong.
“Yes,” Yuuri says, so quiet Victor can barely hear him.
While he’s relieved that they’ll be able to communicate, Victor realizes that the reason Yuuri isn’t talking to him isn’t because he can’t. It’s because he doesn’t want to.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Victor asks, cutting right to the point. Yuuri cants his head and they make eye contact.
His eyes are a coppery shade of brown, stunning behind blue glasses that are too big for his face. A high flush paints his chubby cheeks, his hair disheveled and falling across his forehead. He’s beautiful and adorable and Victor falls in love just a little bit more.
Then Yuuri says, “Yes.”
And Victor’s heart breaks for the first time.
“He hates me,” Victor bleats, smooshing his face on Yakov’s desk. Yakov sighs and curses his “tortured existence” under his breath.
“Who doesn’t?” he deadpans.
“This is serious! I think I was bothering him.”
“Imagine that.”
“He barely even talked to me. How am I supposed to make him fall in love with me if he won’t talk to me?”
Yakov picks the exact worst moment to sip his coffee. He chokes on it, coughing and sputtering as Victor looks on with impatient eyes.
“Victor. I told you to tutor the kid, not seduce him.”
“But he’s my soulmate,” Victor cries, rubbing his face back and forth on Yakov’s desk. Yakov glares down at the snot he’s smudging into the wood.
“You’re sixteen. You have no idea what a soulmate is.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re getting a divorce.”
Yakov kicks Victor out of his office and tells him never to cry on his desk again.
Deflated and utterly miserable, Victor shuffles to the rink on the camp grounds. He hopes some practice will distract him from the ache in his chest.
He expects the rink to be vacant this early in the program, since most of the campers haven’t arrived yet, but it isn’t. Swirling across the center of the ice is Yuuri, and he’s even more compelling than he was in the video. Every inch of his body is engaged as he moves through complicated footwork that would challenge even the most advanced skaters. Victor can’t take his eyes off him.
Yuuri doesn’t seem to notice him, either because he’s too absorbed in the music, or because his glasses are folded on the edge of the half-wall. Victor gets an idea.
Snatching up the glasses and stuffing them in his pocket, he scuttles back to the locker room and tries not to snicker. With a deep breath, he straightens his posture and strides back into the rink.
“Oh, hello Yuuri!” he shouts as he enters.
Yuuri stumbles, falling to his knees, hard. Victor winces. Pain contorts Yuuri’s face, and he teeters as he pushes back to his feet.
“Sorry if I scared you,” Victor says, plucking off his blade guards and gliding out onto the ice. He scratches the back of his head bashfully as he approaches Yuuri. He can’t tell if Yuuri is glaring at him or squinting because he can’t see without his glasses.
“I was just finishing,” Yuuri mumbles. It’s the most he’s spoken to Victor so far. Victor decides to take it as a good sign.
“Now that I’m here, maybe we could run through some jumps since—”
Yuuri pushes past him like he doesn’t hear, and goes to the spot on the wall where his glasses used to be.
Victor bites his lip to keep from giggling, as he watches Yuuri fumble around for them.
“What are you looking for?” he asks, voice shaking with suppressed laughter.
“My glasses.”
“Oh, you mean these?” Victor says, producing them from his pocket and slipping them on. “Wow, you really are blind.”
“Give them back.” Yuuri skates back up to him, keeping a safe distance between them and holding out his hand. Victor closes the gap and watches the blurry flush on Yuuri’s cheeks flare. He decides that Yuuri is lovely when he blushes.
“How about his. I’ll give you back your glasses if you let me tutor you in one jump.”
“Y-you can’t do that.”
“If you still hate me after, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll…” Victor swallows, rallying himself to take the gamble. “I’ll even ask Yakov to change my room so you won’t have to deal with me anymore.”
“I don’t—“ Yuuri starts, but cuts himself off, gaze deflecting to the side. He chews on his lip, sucking a breath in through his nose. “Fine,” he says at last, and their eyes meet. They can barely see each other, of course, but Victor feels a spark between them nonetheless.
“Wonderful!” he says, pushing the glasses up to rest on the top of his head. “Now, can you do a triple flip?”
Yuuri shakes his head.
“I can do a quad flip,” Victor says, preening. Yuuri looks neither impressed nor surprised. Victor’s grin falters.
Victor pours all of his focus into teaching Yuuri. He speaks concisely, identifying Yuuri’s strengths to enhance them, and correcting his weaknesses. It’s obvious from the start that Yuuri has some confidence issues, but he’s also an exceptional student. He takes Victor’s notes seriously, an intuitive command of his body allowing him to soar through a triple flip in no time.
Victor can’t fight his disappointment when Yuuri succeeds. He's taken aback to find how much he loves coaching Yuuri. He doesn't want it to end.
“Can I have my glasses back now, please?”
“Yeah,” Victor says. He pulls the glasses off his head, jerking them out of Yuuri’s reach when he tries to grab them. Before Yuuri can escape, he gently slots the glasses onto his face, pressing on the bridge to ease them into place. Yuuri blinks at him, frozen, and Victor wonders if he’s overstepped. “You learn really quickly, you know,” he tries.
“Uh…thanks.”
“Or maybe I’m just a good teacher. I’m so good I can make anyone decent.” Victor is trying to lighten the mood, make a joke about his own ego, but he can see immediately that it falls flat. Yuuri’s eyes narrow like he can’t stand the sight of him. A hidden part of Victor crumples. He can’t seem to say anything right. He wishes, fruitlessly, that Yuuri could speak Russian. Maybe things would be easier.
“Should I change my room?” he asks, quiet. Yuuri stares at him for a moment, expression unreadable.
Then, Yuuri shrugs. He turns and skates away from him, and he doesn’t look back.
For the first time in his young, successful life, Victor feels like a failure.
“Get me four shots of the shittiest tequila you have.”
“Woah, buddy. Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?” the bartender says.
“His fiancé just left him at the altar,” Chris announces helpfully from behind him.
“Coming right up.”
Victor collapses into the nearest barstool and nearly topples to the floor. Chris steadies him with a grip on his shoulder and sinks into the adjacent seat.
“Victor, I know you’re upset right now—”
“You think?”
“But is it possible he just got delayed? I don’t know him that well, but everyone can see he’s—”
“He’s done this before.”
Chris’s head jerks back, his brow puckering behind his round glasses. He doesn’t respond until the bartender has handed over his shots and Victor has sucked down one of them.
“He….left you at the altar before?”
“No,” Victor says, voice hoarse with tequila. “He’s broken my heart. More times than I can even count.”
Chris doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that. Victor doesn’t expect him to, so he swallows down another shot and hides his face in his forearm on the bar top.
“He broke my heart the day I met him.”
“When did you meet him?” Chris asks tentatively. Victor turns his head on his arm in time to watch Chris pilfer one of his shots.
“At Yakov’s skating camp. He was adorable. And he hated me.”
“Wasn’t he, like, fourteen?”
“Yes.”
“He was probably just shy.”
“He was,” Victor says, unable to quell a throb of fondness. He loves thinking about Yuuri back then, with his baby fat and his big eyes and nervous hands. “But that wasn’t the first big bad one. I was eighteen when it happened.”
Chris gestures for Victor to elaborate. Part of Victor is hesitant to conjure up old, painful memories when he’s got such a gaping, new wound to survive, but he figures he has nothing left to lose. He sucks down the final shot, orders another, and talks.
Victor has never been more nervous in his life.
It’s the last day of summer camp, and he is going to tell his best friend that he’s in love with him.
It took years of persistence and goading and desperate gestures of affection, but Yuuri has finally started to open up to Victor, and Victor knows that if he doesn’t make his move now, he never will.
The camp is finishing with its usual dance, an event for skaters to mingle and build relationships for their future careers, but for Victor it’s the last opportunity to ask Yuuri to be his date. He’s eighteen and a World Champion, and he has to leave the camp behind him. He won’t be able to bunk with Yuuri again, or share silly chats in the dark, or touch him a little more than necessary when he tutors him. It’s time for him to go to university and become a professional. A legend. And he’s terrified that if he doesn’t bind himself to Yuuri in some way, he’s going to lose him.
Victor is an instructor-slash-counselor now, so it’s not strictly appropriate for him to be pursuing his student, but Yakov is well aware of his long-standing crush on Yuuri, and seems resolved to the fact that he can never tell Victor what to do once he sets his mind to something.
Fiddling with his hair and adjusting his shirt, Victor takes a deep breath and steps up to the door of their cabin. He’s reaching for the handle when the sound of voices on the other side stops him.
He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the door is half screen, and he can’t help himself when he hears what they’re talking about.
“Who are you taking the dance?” a boy asks. It takes Victor a second to realize it’s Phichit, Yuuri’s new friend. He feels a stab of jealousy. It’s only Phichit’s first year at the camp, and he’s younger than Yuuri, but he managed to befriend him instantly. He spends more time in Victor and Yuuri’s cabin than his own, always whispering with Yuuri about some private joke and making him smile. Victor never makes Yuuri smile like that.
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you usually go with?”
“I usually don’t go.”
“Why not?” Phichit asks. Victor doesn’t breathe.
“It’s not really my thing. And no one ever asks me anyway,” Yuuri says. He sounds dejected. Victor almost uses the opportunity to burst in and grandly ask him out, but then Phichit speaks.
“Aww, Yuuri, that’s sad! Why don’t we go together this year? It might be fun.”
An ache twists in Victor’s chest. He reaches up to slam the door open, to do something, anything, to interfere.
Yuuri’s reply stops him short.
“Okay.”
Victor’s stomach drops to his shoes.
He’s failed. He’s missed his opportunity, and they’ll grow apart and Yuuri will never love him, no matter how hard Victor tries. It’s over.
He turns away and stalks across the grounds in a daze. He drops the flower he’d picked for Yuuri somewhere along the way, but doesn’t notice until he glances down to find his hand empty.
The only reason Victor agrees to attend the dance is because Yakov threatens him in innovative, colorful ways until he gives in. Besides, he’s too hollowed out to argue. He doesn’t bother putting on the special outfit he’d picked out, and he avoids looking at Yuuri when he returns to the cabin that evening, just before Victor is about to leave for the dance.
“You going to the dance?” Yuuri asks. He plops down on his bed and picks up a book, propping it on his knees.
Victor shrugs, tying his shoes.
“I think I’m actually going to go this year. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear it,” Yuuri says.
“Why would that make me happy?” Victor hears himself say. He glances at Yuuri for only a second, but it’s enough to catch the blush rising on his cheeks, the wide eyes.
“I…I just meant…because you always pressure me to go.”
“I didn’t pressure you this year.”
“Oh. Yeah, well…Phichit wants to go, so--”
“I’m glad you’re going for him, then.”
Victor tries to make his tone polite, unaffected, but he knows he fails when he sees Yuuri flinch in his periphery.
Before he can dig himself any deeper, Victor shoves to his feet and strides to the door.
“I have to help set up,” he mumbles. “I’ll see you there.”
“Oh…kay.”
The dance has barely begun and Victor already wants to leave, but of course if he did Yakov would never stop punishing him.
He sips his punch, wishing it was alcoholic, and tries not to glare at the campers as they trickle in. Yuuri still hasn’t arrived.
The atmosphere is awkward but that doesn’t stop a few brave campers from approaching Victor and chatting him up. Victor is kind and courteous as always, but detached. There’s only one person he wants to talk to.
Victor knows the moment Yuuri arrives, not because he’s looking, but because a hush falls over the room. He’s in the middle of gently rebuffing a pretty skater from France when all eyes turn to the door.
Phichit is there but all focus is on Yuuri. He isn’t wearing his glasses and his hair is slicked back, showing how the baby fat has left his face. He’s wearing a fitted black t-shirt and grey slacks instead of his usual armor of baggy, ill-fitting sweats. It’s obvious in every curve that the extra practice has paid off.
Victor’s mouth might be hanging open.
It’s apparent that Yuuri is uncomfortable with everyone ogling at him. He takes a step back, hiding behind Phichit, and Victor feels a swell of envy. He wants to go to Yuuri, wants to be the one to protect him. He wants to tell him how anyone would be lucky to have him, how he should be proud of how handsome he looks tonight.
But then the thrum of the party resumes, and Victor is accosted by a boy begging for his number.
Victor tries to do his counselor duties as best he can, stopping a camper from dumping shitty vodka in the punch (as much as he understands the compulsion), and separating couples when things get too steamy. Still, he can’t stop searching the room for Yuuri. His heart flutters every time he catches sight of him, always hiding in the periphery with Phichit at his side.
Victor had been in love with Yuuri from the moment he saw him, but it was never so intense. So painful. Victor decides he has to talk to him.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to get close to him. Yuuri is practically a ninja when it comes to blending into the crowd, and Victor can’t seem to shake his admirers whenever he does spot him.
He doesn’t know what he wants to say, exactly, but he has to do something. It could be years before they see each other again.
Finally, after an hour of bad songs and obnoxious teen couples and lost opportunities, Victor gets Yuuri alone. Phichit has left him to refill their drinks. Yuuri is hiding by the door.
“Yuuri,” Victor sighs in relief, walking up to him. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
Yuuri blinks at him. He doesn’t speak.
“You…you look different tonight,” Victor says.
Yuuri’s eyes cast down.
“Phichit made me dress like this.”
Victor’s throat burns, but he bites back his bitterness, hoping none of it shows on his face.
“I wanted to tell you something,” Victor says. He swallows hard, ignores how his hands shake where they’re linked behind his back.
Yuuri looks up at him, expectant. His eyes are warm in the low light, pretty and distant and oblivious to Victor’s feelings, and Victor’s resolve falters.
“Good luck,” he says, voice cracking. “I hope we can share the ice someday.”
It’s not what he meant to say at all, and the words sit false and ashy in his mouth. Whatever faint emotion had been in Yuuri’s face falls away.
“Okay.” The word is cold, and Victor’s gut twists. He can’t let it end like this.
“Yuuri, I—”
“Hey guys,” Phichit says happily as he approaches, two cups in hand. “How’s it going?”
“I’m ready to leave,” Yuuri says. Victor’s head snaps to him.
“So soon?” Phichit whines. “But we haven’t even danced.”
“There’s no one I want to dance with.”
Phichit doesn’t take his insult nearly as harshly as Victor. If anything, he looks mildly inconvenienced. Victor, on the other hand, feels like he’s been slapped.
“Alright, let’s get out of here.”
Without so much as a glance in Victor’s direction, Yuuri turns on his heel and leaves through the open door.
“Goodnight, Victor!” Phichit says as he rushes after him. Victor stands there, paralyzed, as Yuuri disappears into the night.
He catches him say “I’m sleeping in your cabin tonight,” to Phichit before he’s out of earshot. It’s the last words Victor will hear from his mouth for three years.
“So that’s how he broke my heart,” Victor slurs. He forces another shot of tequila down, wincing when it makes the back of his throat curdle.
When Chris doesn’t say anything, Victor looks at him.
“What?” he says.
“That’s how he broke your heart…”
“Yes, that’s what I told you. It ruined me for years.”
“It sounds like it was just a misunderstanding. Have you ever asked him about it?”
“Of course I have.”
When Victor doesn’t elaborate, Chris nudges him.
“He said he didn’t want to talk about it,” Victor mumbles.
Chris stares at him.
“What?” Victor says again.
Chris sighs a world-weary sigh. He and the bartender exchange a look.
“You said that was just the first ‘big bad’ time. What was the next?”
“Well I’m not going to tell you if you’re gonna’ say it was just a misunderstanding.” He’s too drunk to care how petulant he sounds. Yakov would never let him be such a brat, but Chris is a much better person than Yakov, he decides. Or at least more tolerant of his bullshit.
“Okay, okay. I won’t. So, what happened?”
Victor takes a deep breath, licking a drop of tequila from his lip.
“So you know how I didn’t see him again until he made the Grand Prix Final a few years later?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. I’d planned out everything I was going to say, how I was going to finally tell him how I felt and sweep him off his feet…”
“Let me guess. That didn’t go according to plan.”
“No,” Victor said, tossing back another shot. “It did not.”