a soft thought for your consideration: viktor nikiforov, notorious polyglot and bookworm extraordinaire, getting to share some of his favorite things with his life and love
stories are a good way to fill a lonely heart, even if only for a little while, and viktor has known this all his life. he supposes his childhood love for fairy tales might have shaped him into the hopeless romantic that he grew into, searching and searching for something he didn’t quite know how to see.
(oh, he sees it now, clear as day and brighter than the sun glinting off the ring on his finger.)
his apartment is full of bookshelves that are filled to the brim, neatly arranged and very stuffed. he has several copies of the same books, some in french, some in russian, some in english. he loves the way the words of the same story taste different when told in a new tongue. it never ceases to amaze him.
lately, he’s been adding a few in japanese.
some nights, he curls up with a mug of steaming tea (the blend hiroko katsuki uses, which yuuri packed half his suitcase full of) and a blanket and a well-worn, much-loved copy of les misérables in the original french. it’s quiet. it’s peaceful. yuuri looks down at the page, tells him he’s brilliant and kisses his hair, then quietly sits with him and plays pokémon on his ds.
other nights, yuuri joins him, settling against his chest and listening, quietly enraptured, as viktor reads russian literature to him. tolstoy, war and peace. sometimes he stops him with a touch of a finger, asks for the meaning of a word he didn’t quite understand, and viktor kisses his fingertip before explaining.
yuuri always smiles just so whenever viktor reads to him, even in french, when he doesn’t understand a word. viktor asks what that little smile is supposed to mean, and yuuri gives him a look of such adoration that he almost melts on the spot.
“i like hearing your voice,” he says, shrugging as if it’s just that simple, and lays his head back against viktor’s chest. “read to me more?”
other nights, he likes to read dramatically, putting on voices for every character and exaggerating them to comic effect. yuuri says that viktor’s voice is the nicest sound he’s ever heard, but viktor has to disagree. he’s pretty sure the world will never top yuuri katsuki-nikiforov’s laugh.
they’re doing the dishes together on a sunny afternoon, yuuri soaping while viktor rinses, and he just keeps thinking about stories. beginnings, middles, endings. and eventually he speaks up.
“hey, yuuri,” he says, and when yuuri looks up at him and the sunlight catches in his hair, the question dies in his throat because his answer is already right in front of him. he asks it anyway. “do you think we’ll get to live happily ever after?”
yuuri blinks at him, then breaks into a beautiful smile. he bumps viktor’s hip playfully, passes him a soapy ladle, and easily answers, “aren’t we already?”
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