I love tragic endings because they’re so painful and emotional and raw and it makes it real but at the same time I hate tragic endings because they’re so painful and emotional and raw and it makes it hurt, you know what I mean?
Pairing: Victor Nikiforov/Yuri Katsuki
Word Count: 4200+
Rating: M
Summary: Yuri's days are connected by the music that plays throughout them.
Excerpt:
Yuri’s itching to thread his hand through Victor’s fingers again. He settles for stuffing his hands between his knees and biting the inside of his cheek.
Later, he thinks. But that reprimand doesn’t do anything to douse the high giddiness he’s been swallowing down since he got off the plane and tracked down Victor outside of customs.
Oh, he thinks, with something like wonder etching onto his heart, I’m excited.
Here on tumblr, and on Ao3
There isn’t snow the first day Yuri arrives in Russia. Instead, a fog hangs low on the ground, smudging out views of the water under the bridges they pass in Victor’s car.
It snowed when Victor came to Japan. It would be fitting if it snowed again now, considering the month.
Maybe they left all the snow back in Hasetsu, and only brought warmth with them. But that’s the type of thought that makes his stomach squirm with embarrassment and redirect his gaze out the window.
Yuri’s itching to thread his hand through Victor’s fingers again. He settles for stuffing his hands between his knees and biting the inside of his cheek.
Later, he thinks. But that reprimand doesn’t do anything to douse the high giddiness he’s been swallowing down since he got off the plane and tracked down Victor outside of customs.
Oh, he thinks, with something like wonder etching onto his heart, I’m excited.
Victor keeps shooting quick glances his way, and it’s easy to notice how pleased he is to see both Makkachin and Yuri after more than a few days apart.
“You must be tired,” he says, and Yuri’s considers the time. It’s about 4am in Japan right now.
He shrugs, “Not really. I slept during both flights.”
Feeling a little coy, he adds, “I’ll probably be awake all night.”
Victor sends him a smile that’s too flirtatious for its own right, and says, “What a coincidence, I will too.”
Yuri bites the inside of his cheek again.
Bon Jovi is currently testing the capacity of Yuri’s speakers on his laptop from where it sits on the bedroom floor. Livin’ On A Prayer fills the room in a way that makes him feel nostalgic for college.
His music taste is… eclectic, at best. He doesn’t really know genres the way some of his friends do. Mari’s room used to mirror Yuri’s own walls when they were younger, when posters that came in magazines were coveted. Her walls had been covered in odes to rockstars that were huge in the 2000’s.
Yuri had been too busy taping up posters of long haired athletes to care much about JRock at the time.
Phichit loved music with the same experimental openness he approached everything else, dropping folders of 80s and 90s American ballads onto Yuri’s laptop as an act of friendship in their first year together. There was a weekend where all they watched were MGM musicals, listening to Debbie Reynolds, and watching Fred Astaire dance while Yuri felt a reverent burning itch to transfer those step sequences to the ice.
Victor’s taste in music-
“If you want, we can connect my speakers to your laptop.”
Yuri jumps at the voice and drops the hanger he was threading through his shirt. It hits the floor with a clack, plastic on hardwood.
Victor’s leaning against the door, his hair still messed from the cold wind outside.
“You scared me,” says Yuri as he bends for the hanger. He just realises now how his music being played this loudly is suddenly something he’s embarrassed by.
“I’m sorry, I’ll turn it down,” he says, and quickly reaches for his laptop. Presses the volume button fast enough to transmit a Morse code of anxiety. “I didn’t think you’d be back for another half hour.”
“You can leave it on,” soothes Victor. When Yuri looks over he sees him smoothing hands over his hair, taming it back from its windswept tangles. Victor doesn’t like to wear hats in the winter. They leave his hair crackling and hovering with static.
Unfortunately, the next thing he decides to do is help Yuri unpack. He picks the first thing he can reach for out of one of the boxes. “What’s this?” he asks, looking down at a picture frame, as if Yuri could answer the question without actually seeing the subject.
He prays it’s not some poster of Victor his mother had decided to frame and shove in with the rest of his belongings. Or worse, a poster of himself, like the kind plastering the walls of Hasetsu’s train station. He gets off the floor and walks over.
“Oh,” and then flushes with mild annoyance. “It’s my degree. My mom wanted me to hang it up before. I guess she bought a frame for it.”
Victor turns to him, practically glowing.
“I’m not hanging it up.” Yuri quickly amends. He’s proud of his schooling, and he enjoyed it for the most part, but hanging up your own degree wasn’t something he found comfort or humility in.
“Then I’ll hang it up.” Victor says with some bolster of pride. “I’ll put it next to our medals.”
Yuri makes a choking noise of embarrassment at the idea of his lonely degree hanging next to Victors wall of medals and trophies. Eight Grand Prix gold medals, and a Bachelors from Wayne State University.
Victor is rich.
How rich he was didn’t necessarily surprise Yuri anymore. Spending longer than a few hours together back when they’d crashed into each other’s lives (the second time) made everyone in Yutopia aware of just how well the other half lived.
Yuri had taken the time to explain why they were hand washing the dishes when Victor nodded at the broken appliance next to them. “Why not just buy a new dishwasher?” he asked. Yuri just stared.
Living with him in his own bachelor’s apartment brought that awareness to the surface once again. Victor’s housecleaner came on Wednesdays. Half of his clothing had ‘dry clean only’ on the tag. He owned three cars.
Yuri once bought half his groceries at the dollar store during college.
“Alexa, play track 14,” Victor says. The speaker on the kitchen counter lights up and Victor’s newest choreography experiment plays.
They breathe each other’s program music. Yuri enjoys the routine sound of it in the apartment when it’s still fresh and something exciting to listen to. He watches Victor run through choreography from his spot on the couch; watches the expressions that pass his face, the lay of his arms, the tilt of his shoulders.
Tomorrow, or maybe next week, Victor will ask him to run through some of the routine, to see it in its fruition on the ice in front of him.
Right now it’s easier for Victor to dance across their hardwood floor in socks.
“Alexa, Pause,” he says. Then, “Rewind 20 seconds,” before he does the same steps again. He transitions this time with a deep lunge, brushing the tips of his fingers along the hardwood.
“I like that bit,” says Yuri, transfixed.
Victor turns his head and his expression softens.
“Who’s it for?” asks Yuri, straightening a little.
Victor lips curl up at the edges. He places his finger to his lips and hums. “Hmm? Would you be surprised if I told you?” he teases.
Yuri sighs, incredibly fond. They’re caught like that for a few seconds, just staring at each other, matching smiles softening for the other.
Victor cracks first, “You’re so handsome when y-“
“Alexa,” Yuri interrupts, “Play ‘Late Night Jazz’ playlist on Spotify.”
He stands up to hold Victor close, just to see the light pinking of his ears up close. Victor’s biting down his own smile.
Yuri’s not a romantic. At least, he’s not sure if he is. But, little actions like these, bridging the distance between them so they sway slowly to trumpet playing, leaning closer to Victor… Yuri presses his face into the shoulder of Victor’s shirt, smelling laundry detergent and dog. What would he have done if he’d given up this opportunity in Barcelona?
They dance together next to the living room coffee table for the next twenty minutes.
Victor’s taste in music is just as dramatic as he is. It almost matches the taste that teenage Yuri imagined Victor would have: a playboy with a Hugh Hefner bachelor’s pad with soft opera music in the background.
Well, matching a playboy persona to a man who rolls around the floor and coo’s endearments to his dog doesn’t seem to fit. And Victor’s apartment is actually smaller than Yuri ever would have expected. It’s modern, and filled with…an interesting theme of décor.
But Victor’s taste in music is exactly what teenage Yuri had imagined, filled with operas and old jazz, soft ballads from tenors and aching reprises from movie scores.
Yuri and Makkachin come home to Nessun Dorma blaring from the radio on the television. Makkachin’s already dancing around Yuri’s legs, waiting for his leash to be unhooked. Apparently, none of this fazes him.
“Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,” belts Victor from the kitchenette. He had skated to this in 2005, back when he could use songs about disappearing into history, name forgotten.
“Il nome mio nessun saprà, No! NO!”
“Whose name?” mutters Yuri. He puts his coat in the closet. He’s cold, and wet from the sleet outside. Victor was destined to have three stadiums and a shopping mall named after him. No one would forget his name.
Warm arms circle around his waist, and a kiss is pressed behind his ear when he turns his head.
“Mine, won’t you take it?”
And it’s both the cheesiest and most annoying line Yuri’s heard, but he flushes anyway. He loves the idea that he’s the one who gets to keep Victor; loves the idea that he’s the one who will get to wear his name. Victor knows this, and slides little facets of Yuri’s possessive nature back to him like they’re gifts that cost Victor nothing to give. Like he’s not aware that it makes Yuri shiver from his neck to the base of his spine and want to drop to his knees no matter where they are.
Yuri’s going to destroy himself one day thinking of all the things Victor’s willing to give him through no struggle at all.
“Lilia and Yakov have been arguing lately,” Yuri Plisetsky admits quietly one day. The way he says it, as if he’s hiding a secret from the empty ice, eyes looking anywhere but at the only other person in front of him-
It hits Yuri in the chest, and lodges tight in his throat, his jaw.
The rink is empty save for the zamboni which is circling around the first half of the rink. The arena speakers have come back to life in preparation for the novice classes that would take place in half an hour, pushing out Russian and American pop.
Yuri Plisetsky looks lost.
“Do you want to come over for dinner?” Yuri asks. He’d be eating it alone in Victor’s house anyway. Victor’s currently hosting double hours at the gym, studios, rinks, physios, in order to get both himself and his student on the podium in time for World’s. He wouldn’t be home until late.
There’s tension present in Yurio’s jaw. ‘Don’t pity me’ it says.
Yuri smiles. The pride Yurio exhibits feels like a little like navigating a field of landmines sometimes. There’s almost ten years between them, but he doesn’t remember being this proud at Yurio’s age. Then again, Victor’s 28 and he’s still this proud.
“Okay,” Yurio mumbles eventually, and slides off the bench they were sharing. “I need to pick up some homework first.”
Yuri nods along.
“I’m only speaking Russian once I get there!” Yurio threatens.
Trial by fire, thinks Yuri, and prays he can remember enough vocabulary to make conversation better than a toddler.
He can’t, but Yurio speaks slower and lets Yuri respond in English.
“Oh!” says Victor, abandoning his coat on the nearest chair. “Yurio!” he sings out in acknowledgment. Yurio sends him a look of impetuousness from the kitchenette table, but says nothing of the nickname.
“Makkachin,” Victor coo’s and bends to pay attention to the dog jumping and snuffling around his legs. What follows is a verse of Russian that Yuri can barely pick apart sentences from. “Good boy,” and “Did you miss me?” and “Taking care of the home.” Makkachin loves it and wiggles around on the floor.
“There’s broccoli, carrots and rice in the fridge” says Yuri. He’s surrounded by Yurio’s homework and an answer card, checking over his calculations.
“Thank you,” is accompanied by a hand at the small of his back and a body draped over the back of his chair. Victor’s looking down at Yurio’s physics text books, and then back at Yuri with a confused expression like he doesn’t understand where this fits in with the fiancé he knows and loves.
“You’re really a nerd, Katsuki-kun” teases Victor, in Japanese.
Yuri sticks with English, “I have a bachelor’s of science. What do you have?”
Yurio snorts from across the table, “You’re marrying an idiot, Katsudon.”
“I’ll be a trophy Husband,” Victor says, not at all ashamed.
“Yakov and Lilia are fighting,” says Yuri, when it’s just the two of them. The movie on tv is being played at low volume, subtitles in English present for Yuri.
“Mm,” mumbles Victor, and he angles his face further into Yuri’s neck, presses straighter behind him on the couch until there’s a long line of Victor Nikiforov touching Yuri’s side.
“They’re not. They’re thinking of getting back together.”
“Yurio thinks they are,” whispers Yuri.
“Yurio is 15. Do you know what I was doing when I was 15?”
Yes, thinks Yuri. Out loud he says, “Tell me?”
“Living with Yakov and Lilia,” Victor says, and smiles against Yuri’s neck. Yuri almost rolls his eyes.
“They were fighting then, and they divorced when I was 17. This is different.”
“Did they always fight?” asks Yuri, and shifts on the couch so he can look up at Victor, whose hands have been maddeningly tracing lines up and down his thigh.
“No, but there are some people who yell when they want someone to understand them.”
“Oh,” says Yuri. And then a moment of silence stretches out between them while Yuri gives Victor a significant stare.
“What?” asks Victor.
“Nothing,” Yuri dismisses. Victor has always been yelled at a lot by Yakov, and now, to a lesser extent, Lilia.
“Yuri~” whines Victor, and tucks his smiling face back into Yuri’s shoulder.
Yuri wakes up with a headache. He wants to fall back asleep, but drags himself up with a resolve he finds every morning.
Two glasses of water later, he takes Makkachin out for his walk, and comes back with his head pounding with every heartbeat. He swallows a pill that Victor assures him is for headaches, helps with the breakfast dishes, and then pulls Victor out of the door for morning rink time.
By the time they reach the bridge, his headache has slipped away, and has been replaced by a flushed warm fogginess that settles right through his body.
Back in Hasetsu, he’d seen Victor step onto the ice still drunk from the night before. At nationals, Yurio had skated with his nose red and dripping, hissing and sniffling as he sat in the kiss and cry.
Yuri’s practiced through worse. He’s skated on next to no sleep, learned new step sequences while suffering from spring colds before.
He’s pulling himself through his stretches with Victor by his side, folds his body over to reach his toes, leans his warm cheek against the cool flooring of the change room, and thinks, this would be a nice place to take a nap.
Victor leans over his stretched back to land a kiss at his shoulder, and asks if his headache is okay. Yuri tries not to evaporate into a feverish cloud.
“Yuri,” calls Victor from the boards. He’s skated over to where his notebook lays open, and is flipping through it. Yuri picks himself off the ice and glides closer.
So far they’ve just been going through combination jumps, and Yuri has been drilled for the past 10 minutes on take offs alone. One of Yuri’s Phichit-gifted playlists is playing. Background noise actually helps him keep his head clear, and Victor adores the idea of Yuri having a playlist with both Bruce Springsteen and songs from Top Hat.
Weekday dawns are their private time on the ice, something Yuri appreciates with a reverence because it allows him to warm up, fall down, and be impatient with Victor’s particular brand of coaching cheer without a large audience. There’s no doubt that this private time was negotiated as one of conditions that determined Victor returning to competition - probably arranged in an iron exchange between Yakov and Victor while he was still in Japan. He’s never seen a coach and student relationship like how Yakov and Victor work with each other – full of stubbornness and respect. But he’s never seen another skater quite like Victor either.
“-see the same thing as last week, then I won’t let you do it in competition.” Victor’s smiling as he finishes, and Yuri realises he’s just spent the last 40 seconds staring without listening to a single word.
He shakes his head to focus, “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
Victor pauses. He levels Yuri with a serious expression, and then leans fractionally closer.
Victor hums in thought, and raises a hand to Yuri’s forehead. Yuri doesn’t stop him, and also doesn’t point out that he’d be cool anyway after half an hour in an open rink.
“I feel fine,” he insists, “I just have a bit of a headache, and my head feels foggy.”
He knows as soon as he’s said it that he should have kept that last part to himself. Victor’s expression turns from attentive coach to concerned partner faster than a quad loop rotation.
Eventually he goes home after ignoring Victor’s insistence for another solid 20 minutes.
He climbs onto the couch, convinced he’ll spend the next hour cycling through social media, emails and whatsapp. It’s only when he’s reading through his third email that the wave hits him, and he puts down his phone, and drops to sleep.
His dreams are filled with feverish strangeness, and the melody of Victor’s short program on sickening repeat.
He wakes up briefly to the sound of keys and the front door opening, but falls back under before Victor’s done taking off his boots.
He wakes up some time later to a hand combing through his hair, and a weight next to him on the couch.
“I brought home some soup,” Victor says softly, and Yuri notices a bowl of it on the table in front of them.
His headache has returned and he grinds a palm into his forehead in retaliation of the thumping.
“What time is it?” he grumbles, trying to push the sleep from his limbs.
“Almost 1 o’clock,” says Victor, meaning he’d slept for almost four hours. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
Yuri’s eyes are closed, savoring the coolness as Victor presses his hand against his face.
“I don’t want you to get sick,” he says. Taking a day or two off is probably okay for him. Taking Victor away from training for more than one day is not negotiable, in Yuri’s mind. He’s prepared to spend the next five days on the couch if he can avoid that.
Victor doesn’t seem to care.
“Oh, I’m definitely going to get sick.” He says it with the same cadence he usually saves for “Oh, I’m definitely going to kiss you,” when they talk about future competitions together.
Yuri considers that they routinely share a bed, and spend the remaining 60% of their day within six feet of each other. Thinks about how Worlds is only 5 weeks away and concludes fuck.
“I’ve already warned Yakov,” says Victor, completely unaware of the anxiety building next to him.
“Victor, nooo.”
Victor gets sick on day three, despite Yuri’s continued isolation on the couch. He’d gone back to light training after the second day himself, but had disinfected the apartment within an inch of its life while home. Victor ruined all his efforts by hanging around to comb his fingers through Yuri’s hair.
He also found immense joy asking Yuri questions when the fever made his answers jumbled and whiny.
“Please get drunk more often,” he laughs, right after Yuri had swatted him with away with a long, and heavily accented, “Victooooooor.”
Luckily, by then, they’d bought enough medicine for cold and fever relief that they were capable of acting like normal functioning adults. Well, to each of their extents.
They haven’t slept together for over a week. Between their fevers, and catching up on their schedules, they’d fallen into bed earlier each night, practically comatose from cold remedies.
Yuri wakes up hours before dawn feeling coiled tight in the best way: confident and languid, stretched next to Victor. The clock on the bedside table reads 4:28 am. He slides closer, presses his whole body along Victor’s back, and mouths at the back of his neck.
“Mn,” Victor mumbles, “Yuri, I have to get up in an hour,” and then, “Ohhh,” quietly, as he wakes up a bit more.
Yuri uses the moment to wrap his arm around Victor’s chest and pull them closer. The cotton of his own nightshirt is riding up and he can feel the warmth of Victor’s back against his abdomen as the other stretches out, pliant under his arm.
Victor’s hand reaches back and finds Yuri’s hip, slides under the elastic of his pajama pants. He keeps it there, warm against Yuri’s skin, encouraging, and lets out an appreciative hum when Yuri kisses up to the line of his jaw.
Victor isn’t secretive about loving the feel of Yuri pressed to his back. He loves being the little spoon, loves the feel of Yuri rocking into him slow while holding a hand around his chest and breathing damp on his shoulder.
Which isn’t an issue, but Yuri loves seeing Victor on top of him. Can barely breathe when Victor presses him into the mattress, fucking into him with deep thrusts while Yuri pulls at the sheets around them, desperately trying not to come in the first five minutes.
“Ah,” gasps Victor, as Yuri drops his hand from his stomach to the band of his sleep pants. The hand gripping at his hip tenses. Victor arches back and grinds against Yuri, makes another tight noise at the hardness he feels.
It’s slow, and dark, and Yuri’s determined to appreciate Victor’s body in all the ways he finds himself shy of doing during the daylight.
He’s kissing a spot high on Victor’s jawline when Victor’s ankle tangles against his. Toes tug down against the hem of his pants. “Take these off?” Victor asks, breathless.
Yuri manoeuvres away for just a few seconds in order to shuffle out of his pants and shirt, pushing them off the bed and onto the floor.
He returns to press back up against Victor, and licks a long line across the man’s shoulder.
Victor leans back against his body, and shudders from head to toe at the bare feeling of Yuri behind him. His breath is coming uneven as he rocks back into the hardness against his ass.
Yuri returns to trailing his fingertips along the skin just above Victor’s waistband, which has been steadily sliding lower with each roll backward of his hips.
“Ah, Yuri,” breathes Victor, as Yuri pushes down the bottoms of his pajamas to grasp his cock. He stretches out in an arch, grinds back against Yuri’s hard-on. It’s dark in the room, but Yuri can hear the sound of fingers grabbing at sheets.
If Yuri had to consider it, living privately together would be one of his own non-negotiable conditions for returning to competition. Only this had been constructed silently over long weeks where they could do nothing but breathe heavily against bedsheets in Hasetsu, trying to keep quiet, and the drawn out nights in hotel rooms, where neither of them got sleep.
Luckily, this condition was never something they’d had to negotiate for.
He leaves Victor again, briefly, to reach for the lube under the bed. Uses it to slick between Victor’s thighs and ass before smearing the rest on a firm stroke up Victor’s cock. Victor’s shaking at the stimulation, voice cracking over small sounds, and kicking his pajama bottoms the rest of the way off, lost in the blankets.
Yuri kisses along Victor’s shoulders. His hand is pulling long tight strokes up Victor’s cock. He rests his forehead against the back of other’s neck and thinks, tonight I want to give him a blowjob in the shower.
When he slides his cock between the cheeks of Victor’s ass, he hears a moan that’s hastily bitten down.
A quiet “Mn,” escapes Yuri’s throat, unable to catch his reaction when Victor so clearly loves this. “Ohh,” he breathes.
They rock together like that, using the dark of the room to map each other out with hands and strained noises. By the time Victor comes, he’s whispering soft “oh, oh, oh”s into the sheets and digging his fingers into Yuri’s hip again, goading him to grind harder between his thighs.
Yuri’s practically laying over him by then, toes digging into the mattress, breathing hot pants against the side of Victor’s neck before he spills between one sharp thrust and the next.
“I love you so much,” says Victor, with a bone deep exhaustion that just spells how fucked out he is.
Yuri huffs out a laugh and kisses his cheek, still trying to catch his own breath.
They’re interrupted by the switch of the radio alarm playing classical music.
I once had to listen to someone say fanfiction isn't good literature because it's stealing ideas and character from the authors and stuff and then they proceeded to talk about how they liked Dante's Divine Comedy and I had to physically stop myself from telling them that it's literally a self insert bible fic
Was he, you know *a hyacinth blooms from his blood in the place where his corpse lies after a tragic death that has left his lover emotionally devastated*?
