Yuuri is an electrician / repairman and... oh look.... Victor keeps breaking things... why isn't his lamp working anymore?? His oven, too?
10:00 am. Tuesday, March 14th.
“Katsuki Electrical, Yuuri speaking.”
Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose. “Victor. How can I help you this time?”
“What do you mean, this time?”
Yuuri is required to keep track of the house calls he receives, and he doesn’t even need to check his chart to know that this is probably the fourth time Victor Nikiforov of 124 St. Petersburg Lane has called him within the past two weeks. “Absolutely nothing,” replies Yuuri hastily.
“Well, my oven’s not working,” continues Victor, his tone much brighter than it should be for a man whose oven isn’t working. “It’s not heating up.”
“What brand?” asks Yuuri, already half expecting the answer.
People honestly have to stop installing JJ appliances in their homes. He receives at least a call a week about one malfunctioning.
“So do you need me to come over there and check it out?”
Yuuri sighs. The first time Victor had called, it had been his kitchen lights flickering incessantly. That had been a more normal request. But then it had been his living room lamp malfunctioning, his microwave not heating up his food–
Because Victor had apparently never changed a lightbulb, nor had he seemed to realize that a microwave needed to be plugged in to work.
The main problem isn’t that Victor is making him come over to his house to fix these bordering-on-ridiculous problems, because Victor still pays him and tips him excessively. No, the problem is that Victor Nikiforov is making him come over to his house, period. Because Victor is terribly attractive, and Yuuri needs to keep it professional, but every time he goes, his neurons snap, and the impulses that should be running toward his brain are instead running wild. And Victor is not subtle.
Yuuri goes to fix the oven anyway.
Victor Nikiforov is not an idiot. Yuuri knows this because of the bits and pieces that he’s gathered over the past two weeks. Victor likes books, and teaches Russian literature at the local college. Victor knows more about Anton Tchekhov than Yuuri knows about correctly wiring an entire kitchen. Victor knows more about the history of Eastern European art than Yuuri knows about, well, anything. Which is why suspicion has been tickling the back of his neck for a while now.
Yuuri rises up, having fixed the oven (which was actually truly not working), and Victor is standing behind him with a cup of tea.
Victor also knows how to make good tea, with just the right amount of sugar. It smells inviting, like an embrace, and as he takes a sip, the satisfying heat pops and crackles down his throat.
Yuuri thanks him, and Victor nods with a smile.
“I really have to thank you for all the help you’ve given me,” says Victor.
“Oh,” replies Yuuri, and as he looks up, Victor’s eyes are gazing straight into his own, lustrous and warm. “It was nothing.”
“It is something,” says Victor, and he opens his mouth again, a faint smile lining his lips and his cheeks dusted with a pink flush. “Are you busy tomorrow?”
“Got a laundry machine for me to fix?”
“I’ve got something else, if you’ll take it,” says Victor, biting his lip. “Dinner with me?”
“I’ll take it,” says Yuuri.
