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Victor is twenty-seven years old when he throws back a shot of tequila for the first time.
It doesn’t pound through his head as much as the trance-heavy music and the frenetic noise around him does. He doesn’t recognize any of the songs playing, but he’s not sure if he’s supposed to. He’s not even sure why he’s here, having had plenty of time to talk himself out of coming to a place like this while standing in line for an hour outside in the cold. Maybe he was afraid of looking silly for simply walking out of line. Maybe he was trying to pretend like he was waiting for someone to meet him there.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be—clubs and the beating electronic pop and the drunk people—that’s what Victor concludes. He hates it, but loves the way it distracts him. He feels lonely. He downs another shot, which tastes awful. He goes for another one, in misguided hopes, and it tastes just as awful.
A hand falls on his shoulder, smooth voice next to his ear. “You’re Victor Nikiforov, aren’t you?”
Victor around turns in his seat at the bar, shot glass halfway into his mouth.
Yuuri Katsuki is standing beside him.
Truthfully, it would’ve been weirder to see him here if Victor hadn’t remembered that they’re all here in the same city for the same tournament.
He has to yell over the noise if he wants even a chance of being heard. “Oh! Uhh! Yeah? How did you recognize me?”
Yuuri stares straight at him. Victor’s not wearing anything particularly different than what he normally wears outside of programs. “You look like Victor Nikiforov!” Yuuri exclaims.
“Oh!” Victor says again. “I guess I do?”
Victor can’t see quite as well as he could in this horrendous lighting but it’s definitely Yuuri Katsuki in front of him, dressed to the nines among everyone in skimpy outfits, in an undone suit jacket with his tie looped around the back of his neck instead of on his neck. He looks like he’d just come from a formal event or a dinner date of some sort that didn’t go as well as it could’ve. Yeah, that’s judgey of him, but Victor probably looks about the same way. Maybe they both stand out just a little.
“Didn’t think you were the type to be in a place like this!” Yuuri says to him, holding some kind of coloured cocktail in his hand. It’s half drunk, but probably not his first of the night from the way Yuuri’s eyes have the confidence to stare right at him instead of through him as per usual during the sidelines of competition, like he could never fully bring himself to acknowledge his own presence in front of Victor. There’s anything but a cutthroat vibe in the skating world that would prevent most of their interactions, instead mostly being a combination of Yuuri’s normally never-failing shyness and Victor’s chronic emotional unavailability that makes this their first real conversation.
“Same with you!” Victor yells back.
He’s been picked up in a club before, but this is the first time it’s done by Yuuri Katsuki.
It isn’t long before he’s asked to dance after the do-or-die nerve Yuuri seems to muster up from downing his glass all at once, and Victor really doesn’t want to dance.
But Yuuri must not have heard his non-answer because all of a sudden Victor is letting himself be pulled through the crowds towards the dancefloor by Yuuri taking Victor’s hand into his own to make sure they don’t lose each other. Victor already knows himself so intimately, that this little action of having his hand held so sweetly like this will secure itself amongst his other lovely memories with barely-known strangers that he’ll think about again and again until it’s replaced with something else. Because he’s deprived and lonely and a disgusting romantic at the worst of times.
And he’s mostly terrible—he’s good on ice, but Victor is one shitty dancer when it comes to being squeezed between people in a sweaty nightclub. He tries to tell Yuuri this, but the only thing he gets back is a tug on the wrist and a slur of “Well, I’m fairly drunk, too ” in his ear.
Yuuri doesn’t so much dance as put his hands around Victor’s neck and swing his hips back and forth, or sway, or something. But he gets closer and closer with every movement. Victor can see the top of his head bob to the beat, and the only natural place for his hands to settle around is Yuuri’s waist. They have no choice but to glide along Yuuri’s soft white shirt, thin enough to feel like there’s nothing there at all.
“Do-Do you come here often?” Victor tries to ask over the pulsating music. Yuuri doesn’t respond, so Victor drops close next to his ear and repeats the question.
“Ah, no? I actually don’t even know why I’m here?” Yuuri says, putting a hand to that same ear, as if the music is becoming too loud for him. His eyes dart away, but the look of concern on his face says something more to the effect of “Why are we having a conversation in the middle of the dancefloor? ”
“I don’t know, either!” Victor replies.
“Why aren’t you out practicing late into the night, Mr. Nikiforov?”
“Tired of practice!”
He wonders if Yuuri’s ears are as shot as his now.
“Ah, the confidence of a gold medalist!”
Victor shakes his head. “Nah, I just…”
He doesn’t want to mention that his coach told him to take the night off because his jumps were terrible and just about everything else looked plain awful. Though, it probably is a mark of the great to be able to skip practice and then throw back shots days before an important event without any worry. Curiously, that also seems to describe Yuuri right now.
“I just got dumped,” Victor confesses, embracing his constant need to fill the silence with oversharing of his life that he knows he’ll only come to regret later on, especially when silence isn’t exactly something that has a dire need to be filled right now.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Yuuri says but he doesn’t sound all that sorry, hovering ever closer to Victor, opening the palms of his hand so they curl protectively around Victor’s neck.
Yuuri’s fingertips drum against him, staring entranced, feeling like the two of them are closed off from the rest of the people around, in their own little bubble, safe in the attention between Yuuri’s arms. He likes this a lot.
It has a strange thought cross his mind: why couldn’t anyone, the people closest to him for that matter, for just one moment out of their day find some microcosm of time to hold Victor like this? Humour him, please. Just once he would’ve liked something like that. It’s not like he’s asking for much.
“It’s okay!” Victor scrambles out, losing track of himself. “I don’t—even know why I brought it up.” Even though you have to be pretty purposeful to get anything across in this loud of an environment. “I’m just going through some stuff. Dumb stuff. Really dumb stuff.”
Yuuri seems to understand, at least it feels like he does. “I don’t know anything about your relationship or what the other person was like, but they don’t deserve you,” he says.
“Oh, thanks.”
“They shouldn’t treat people like possessions or things to show off in front of others whenever they get the chance.”
“Right—”
“They’re people who don’t know how to properly cherish you or treat you how you deserve to be treated! You’re a real person with real feelings and a personality!”
“...Y-Yeah!” Victor agrees wholeheartedly. “I know, right?”
And then Yuuri is suddenly kissing him, with arms around him and fearlessness alone. It has his head spinning, forgetting all about bad breakups and bad people and equally bad sob stories.
Maybe it’s the way he can tell Yuuri has been smiling this whole time even through the dim lighting and the strobe lights, from the way his lips quirk against his, pulling back to graze lightly across Victor’s cheek when they continue swaying—that there’s absolutely no way Yuuri doesn’t know what’s been going on with Victor’s relationships. How much of a wreck they’ve been. How Victor has developed the unintentional habit of smudging his eyeliner to the point that it can’t even pretend to be a smokey eye anymore. How picturesque it must all look to everyone else, yet Yuuri doesn’t, for one second, believe any of it.
It’s never been particularly under wraps so he has nothing to admit to, not if someone decided to put in just a little effort to find out what’s really happening.
But Victor still doesn’t like talking or thinking about it.
So, he kisses Yuuri more.
He kisses until his heart feels free, freer than he’s felt in a long time, like he could cry and this time it wouldn’t be because he’s mourning the death of something that should’ve died a long time ago.
The only thing he can smell is the smouldering scent of Yuuri’s cologne, so he drowns himself in it. He knows he’s so, so, so easy. He attaches himself to people who take advantage of it until he cries when they’re here, cries when they’re not here. It’s insane. He’s a notorious devil-may-care heartbreaker.
Victor screenshots a different web article every other week, ones with scintillating headlines about his love life, to put as his phone background, and it gives him such a rush. He thinks: he can make something out of this because he’s that brilliant. Whether it’s an overly emotional routine or a program or a narrative where Victor gets to come out on top despite perpetually feeling like he’s always on the verge of jumping off—this, at least, is what’s keeping him on.
“Sorry, I should’ve asked first if you wanted this,” Yuuri says breathlessly when he breaks from Victor, but his arms are still slung around Victor’s neck. Again, it’s hard to hear the sheepishness, if there even is any, in this loud of an environment. All Victor can see are the blinding lights and what will become of this the morning after.
“It’s fine,” Victor replies hurriedly, pulling Yuuri back in. “I’ve moved on already.” And then with a hand on the small of Yuuri’s back, Victor dips him once more.
Dance with me, Yuuri had said to him so hopefully like it was his last dying wish, even though Victor has become so tired of dancing and fulfilling other people’s wishes. But to be deceived is to hope for something at all. Because he’s weak to those hips, wanton to that smile. Just one more time, it’s always one more time, that Victor places all of his hopes and leaps of faith in—that things might just be different and hearts might not be broken.
-
“So, are you going out with anyone new?” Late Night Television asks him after they make it to the gossip portion of the interview.
“Nope!” Victor responds cheerily. “Not for a while now.”
“Have your eyes on anyone?”
“Hm, I wonder?”
“Still in recovery?”
“You could say that.”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you… Recently, we had Yuuri Katsuki on the show and he said something veeeerrry interesting. I’m sure you’ve heard by now already. We asked him about his ideal type, and he mentioned it would be someone like you, Victor! How do you feel about that?”
“Wow! Really?”
Victor laughs, genuinely amused.
-
He’s not quite the same when he’s off the ice, that Yuuri Katsuki—is what Victor would say, but that’s not entirely true. On ice, he’s confident, passionate, beautiful, like something meant for Victor and Victor only, even though he knows it’s not like that at all and thousands of other people are watching too. He can’t explain this sudden possessiveness other than it feels so thoroughly convincing, different to anything he’s ever experienced before this, like he’s just woken up and this is how things in the real world should be, have always been like. And he’s not sure if this is his justification to himself for continuously pursuing something new to fill the emptiness of heartbreak or if this time it really, truly is different.
He doesn’t need anyone else to be on the same page about this, except, perhaps, for Yuuri himself.
Victor says hi one day during competition. Yuuri is stoic and serious as he stands with his arms wrapped across his body, concentrated on the live feed from one of the TVs by himself.
He looks over when he hears Victor’s voice but doesn’t respond for a couple of seconds. He reaches into his pocket for a pair of large-framed glasses with blue plastic around the edges, putting them on his face, and Victor can tell right then already that something feels off.
Yuuri’s façade drops away as his eyes widen in bewilderment. Victor can usually handle that in any other circumstance, but the utter lack of meaningful recognition in Yuuri’s eyes is what he can’t. “Victor Nikiforov?”
Victor accidentally lets a pause go by.
“...Uh, yeah!” he saves, smiling. “Yuuri Katsuki, right?”
And then Yuuri gives that pause right back.
“Yeah… did you—did you hear what I said on the… I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to. I mean, it’s not like that. They were looking for a specific answer and I felt put on the spot and I wanted to try something a little different, so, just, I wasn’t thinking...”
“Oh,” Victor says, realizing. “It’s fine! It’s all good. Actually, I was flattered, you know? I just came over here to tell you that. That I was flattered.”
Yuuri rubs at his arm, looking off to the side. He looks suddenly distressed, fidgeting back and forth on his feet, and Victor, unsure what to do to make this situation better, can only think to himself that Yuuri looks so, so cute.
“I know you must get stuff like that all the time,” Yuuri says, “So I thought you wouldn’t have minded, if you hadn’t said anything yet. But if it really bothers you, I can go on social media and try to clarify there’s nothing between us and hopefully they’ll all believe—”
“No! No need! It doesn’t bother me. Really.”
Victor waits, just for a few more seconds, to see if there might be a flicker of recognition in Yuuri’s neutral expression. Of delayed remembrance. Anything.
And then Victor gives an off-hand smile.
“Ah, can you excuse me? I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
“...Oh, okay.”
Victor shuts the stall door behind him, thankful that no one is in here, hopes that no one else will come by the time he’s done. But he doesn’t do anything except for stand there in front of the toilet.
This feels a little too idiotically reminiscent of the cold shoulders and the cultivated distance between himself and others who were supposed to be his lovers, that he tried explicitly not to put himself through again. These things should be nothing to him anymore, should be used to it, but he can’t help letting himself be affected. Is it wrong of him to place such expectations on people? On total strangers, even? He doesn’t cry anymore, he’s above that, but something does push, hot and pressured, against the back of his throat.
Yuuri’s hair just now was as coolly slicked back as it was the other night. But with his glasses on here behind-the-scenes, halfway zipped-up nylon jacket, he looked just as lovely. Just one level less put together. One side of him that other people who only see the performance side surely haven’t seen yet.
The two of them don’t even know each other at all. Victor’s impatient. He wants to hit it off right away with someone. He’s too overly observant, applies everything that goes wrong to himself, and doesn’t know how he became like this.
-
Victor laughs and laughs and laughs, waiting for them to cut for commercial.
“Have you ever thought maybe something could work out between the two of you, hm? Ever considered it?”
Tonight, they’re being particularly pushy, though not enough to break Victor’s composure.
“Ha ha, who knows?”
When the cameras are no longer rolling, Victor runs a hand through his hair to mess up the hairspray, places a hand over the clipped microphone on his shirt and leans over to the host with a personable smile. “Don’t tell Yuuri Katsuki I think he has terrible taste in men.”
-
There were sightings of him at the club that night, but it doesn’t make it into celebrity gossip or even a trending topic. He was sure it would. It’s what he would’ve wanted.
Victor stares with an intense scrutiny at his phone, sitting on his couch back home, after he’s sent a video with no context. Having been uploaded only a couple of hours ago, Victor has seen more than enough covers of his routines to last him a lifetime. But with the phrases Yuuri Katsuki and attempts Victor Nikiforov’s... plastered into the title so brazenly, it’s a wonder his neck hasn’t broken from whiplash yet.
“Why is he doing this!!! Does he enjoy tormenting me?” Victor relays into a text to Chris. He slumps against the couch, pouting in front of Makkachin’s drooling, excited face—the only one that has remained good and faithful in Victor’s life. He deletes the lines of text before sending them, retyping out, “He’s so beautiful.”
“He looks in love,” Chris sends.
“And he does it perfectly. He’s been breaking my heart for a while now. With unquestionable effectiveness.”
“That’s a first, isn’t it.”
“I have an idea for my next routine. But if it ends up looking too similar to Georgi then you’ve gotta tell me, alright? Make sure you tell me??”
“Maybe you should just talk to this Yuuri guy…”
“Been there. Done that.”
“It’s breaking MY heart seeing you like this.”
Victor shakes his head vigorously even though Chris can’t see it. Makkachin paws at his pant leg in front of him. “I’m lovelorn. Lovesick. But not presumptuous. I’ve tried talking to him once and if I ever valued my emotional sanity then I absolutely cannot bring myself to do it again.”
-
A loud digital camera click startles Victor out of his stupor. And then a small fuck is said under breath.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll delete it,” Yuuri whispers harshly from across the round table he shares with Victor, head down, bringing his phone up close to his body, fingers flying over the volume on the side of his phone.
“That’s…” Victor starts, head perking up from where he’s leaning against his chin, sitting legs crossed and sideways to the table. Waiting for this event to start has been an unceasing bore, trying to keep his eyes forward instead of slipping to the side where he’d been able to tell for a while now Yuuri’s phone was up against the table, pointed towards him, a little too straight to be natural. “I’d say that was creepy. But you know, I’m actually used to it?” Victor says. “It’s a little sad.”
“I’m sorry,” Yuuri blurts, leaning back in his chair as far as possible now. The event today is casual enough that his bangs are loose and down against his forehead, expression obscured by his glasses. His shoulders slope inwards. “It was really creepy. And I definitely deleted it.”
“Hmm, did you delete it from your ‘deleted’?”
Yuuri pauses, tapping against his phone. “...Yes.”
The sleeves of Yuuri’s knit sweater are a little too long past his wrists, face hiding behind layers of smartphone, glasses, and side swept hair. Victor finds he can stare at him for an unprecedented amount of time, simply because Yuuri is more focused on shrinking himself into the seat of his chair than on maintaining eye contact.
Victor chuckles. “I was only kidding. You didn’t have to delete it. If I asked everyone who snuck photos of me to delete them, there wouldn’t be enough time in the day.”
“Oh…” Yuuri squints. “That sounds sort of awful. Don’t they have any sense of privacy or is their only hobby stalking people? Wait, I guess that’s hypocritical of me.”
Victor snorts into his hand.
It’s so strange. When he’s trying to move on, Victor is the type to eat single-serve cones of ice cream, send dedicated folders of his lover’s face to the trash bin (created both for convenience and for inevitability), and—worst of them all—find another vaguely attractive someone who can shut up for five seconds to rebound with. He has no idea what to do when he doesn’t have any photos at all to delete or even an Instagram account to add to his block list. He’s not sure if Yuuri was telling the truth when he said he was going to post to his social media because a simple Google search of his name comes up with nothing.
When the presentation is over and the lights turn back on, Victor grabs for his jacket on the back of his chair and starts his trek for the courtesy food table.
“Um!” Yuuri stands up so quickly his chair knocks over behind him, clattering against the floor. He rubs a hand to the back of his head. “Actually, if… if I didn’t have to delete that picture earlier, would you mind if I took another one to replace it…?”
Victor’s gone out with die-hard fans of his before as well as those within the skating world, but never the two at once. He wonders if he’d underestimated the degree to which Yuuri really loves him, and if the ability to put skill where his mouth is is the catalyst for why Victor has been finding himself pleasantly astonished so often.
“And I thought you were the type to only be daring when you’re drunk?”
He rounds the table to where Yuuri’s standing, has to psyche himself up a bit when being directly in front of Yuuri, so boyishly handsome, with any discernible shame gone from his round eyes. But Victor has to do this. He drops his stance slightly and throws an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders.
That cologne is treasonous, even though Victor knows it’s all psychological. He accidentally inhales a large breath of it through his nose and out his mouth, and being right next to Yuuri’s ear, the lack of a deafening club atmosphere isn’t enough to hide what he’d just done.
“Sooo, are you ready…?”
“I-I didn’t mean we had to take a selfie together,” Yuuri stutters, stiffening up under Victor’s touch before relaxing all at once. The phone in his palm is frozen in the air. “I just meant… another picture of just you… But-But, this is better! If you don’t mind it… shit—I can’t believe this is happening… with Victor… shit! I’m so glad I came today.” He covers his mouth like he’s about to cry. “I’m so happy. I could die.”
Victor doesn’t know if he ever did get to take that selfie.
“I-I-I wasn’t going to use that picture for anything perverted, I… I swear, ah.”
Yuuri moans when Victor mouths up the side of his neck behind a rack of coats in the cloakroom somewhere. Yuuri’s sat up on a cabinet with Victor between his legs.
“I was just going to show my friend proof that I got to share a table with you. That’s all…”
“It’s fine, Yuuri.”
Victor licks a line up his skin, indulging in every light pinch to Yuuri’s sides. It causes a yelp and the heels of Yuuri’s feet to circle the backs of Victor’s legs. He’s pent up. Yuuri smells good, tastes just as good, except there’s no electronic music or sticky people around them. It’s blisteringly silent except for the whining noises coming from behind Yuuri’s lips trying not to let it all out.
“You’re, you’re good at this?” Yuuri pants.
“Thanks.”
With one last nip to Yuuri’s neck, Victor drops to his knees. His hands trail from Yuuri’s sides, outlining around his shape, settling towards the insides of his thighs. His heart races. Victor wants to do so many things.
It isn’t that he’s been dreaming of this in particular or had planned for any of this to happen, but it almost feels like an impromptu reward—to thank Yuuri for giving him this. For distracting him all this time. For letting him be sober and chaste, for once, being unable to ruin this innocent one-sided thing they had, that Yuuri wasn’t even aware of. Victor was pining for something that may very well never have come to fruition, and he surprises himself with how okay with it he’d been.
So, for just this. Just this once. If this only ends up being a tryst that Victor can look back on and feel totally and completely satisfied with, then let it be that. Because he had fun doing it. Not just this—all of it. Let him continue suffering like this as long as possible, drinking in every vague hint Yuuri throws at him like a parched man, agonizing. Allow Victor the opportunity to give his gratefulness. Just this once.
But before his fingers can unclasp the button on Yuuri’s pants, a hand flat on his forehead gently pushes him back.
He looks up and Yuuri is blushing, eyes soft, smiling timidly but reassuringly. He has a hand gripping his shirt in nervousness.
“Not yet… okay?”
Maybe Victor’s been a little too eager, throat dry but mouth watering.
He nods, standing back up. He moves the palm of his hand further in, brushing against the inner seams of Yuuri's jeans and the edge of his zipper.
Yuuri catches his hand once more.
“Not today. Please.”
This time he sounds a little less composed, a little more antsy. And Victor grows hot with embarrassment, nearly freaking himself out with worry that he’d done too much. It wasn’t his intention to make Yuuri uncomfortable.
But he looks up once more, ready to stop all this, and is surprised to see Yuuri doesn’t quite look desperate to leave the situation. He seems… sad? But his eyes are firm. It’s a little like he’d foreseen this all happening, but there’s something on the tip of his tongue that he wishes so badly he could say even though this isn’t the right time for it. There’s something holding him back, afraid he’ll be interrupted before he’s able to say it all.
His hand comes up to curl around the back of Victor’s head, carding his fingers through Victor’s hair, softly, in comfort, so that Victor can’t help but close his eyes and enjoy how serene it feels. His heart still throbs with want, but Yuuri hasn’t taken his eyes off him.
When he presses encouragingly, beckoning, into the back of Victor’s neck, Victor unwittingly leans in—more and more forward—sliding his hands against the smooth wood of the cabinet Yuuri’s sitting on until Victor can hold him in place there.
Their lips meet, but only just. Skirting the surface. Yuuri kisses him, light but somehow intense, wrapping his arms around Victor like they did that first night. And Victor feels himself on the edge again, but a different edge this time, falling a little more. It’s different from dreaming, from all of his daytime fantasies of what true love is supposed to be like, crushing all his desperate attempts to remember exactly how it had felt like before. It doesn’t compare. Not even close.
They’ve been kissing for a while. In the middle of it—Victor doesn’t know how long it’s been—Yuuri comes to some sort of realization, whispering against his lips, “We’ve done this before.”
And Victor, the picture of oblivious, says, “Yeah?” He waits for an elaboration, having become good at waiting, finally determining what Yuuri said to be in more of a questioning tone than anything. “Wait, you don’t remember?”
“Oh,” Yuuri says, staring off into space somewhere behind Victor’s head, like it’s all coming back to him now. “I thought that was some sort of fever dream…”
Victor blinks, not understanding.
Yuuri practically startles himself with the apparent memories coming back to him, knocking his head back against the wall, going on about saying weird things and having probably made a huge fool of himself. He covers his face with his hands. And then, “Oh, no… ah, shit. This whole thing, all of this really is... it’s all just a—”
“It’s not!”
Victor can’t even begin to explain his absolute incredulity.
“You’re not,” Victor repeats with emphasis, “Not just a rebound.”
The sentiment lingers in the air longer than expected, and Victor forgets this isn’t yesterday or last week or last month. The past few minutes had seemed so dreamlike, he forgets this isn’t one of his dreams at all.
“I don’t know if… you’re offering for something more, or what?” Yuuri says, gaze escaping to the side.
“Yuuri…”
“You should know I’m not usually like that. I really am only daring when I’m drunk.”
“Yuu—”
“You won’t like me. Not like you think. You’re delirious because I have on that cologne you like—I, um, I saw you mention it in one of your magazine interviews... sorry.”
He keeps going before Victor, impatient, clears his throat with finality. Because it would be stupid of him to stop here, not when he’s gone through so many and so much to end up in the right place, where he’s supposed to be—right here, in a closet. He takes Yuuri’s hand that had fallen to the side and squeezes it, bringing it up to his mouth, kissing his knuckles. “Yuuri Katsuki, this isn’t a marriage proposal! I’m aware how graceless this is.”
But it’s thrilling, the endlessness of Yuuri’s eyes shining on him. It feels so good, so right. Heartbreak seems so far away.
“I’m only asking if you’d like to try going out with—”
“...Yes.”