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Yuuri shivers. Arctic spring is still Arctic anything. But this is the Ice Hotel. They only redecorate once a year and ice sculpting is a niche art from. When times are lean, Yuuri's taken commissions and entered competitions for sand sculptures of all things.
There's no dignity in sand. Yuuri is sick of people staring at him in swim trunks. One of the competitors was wearing a speedo—how can anyone call themselves a professional in spandex? Sand gets everywhere and you're still finding it two week later in the sheets of your bed because you passed out before remembering to change. Not that Yuuri would know anything about that.
The hotel has hired him to do some repairs in the meantime—before the other artists show up. There's something soothing about mending something that was broken, or in the process of breaking.
It's still a little windy, even though it's early April. There's a fresh layer of snow on the ground, but that's not surprising—Jukkasjärvi is two hundred meters north of the Arctic Circle. He's come at the right time, the Torne River creates huge, untouched sheets of ice every the spring. Perfect.
Forty artists are invited every year. But Yuuri's the only one who bothered to arrive early.
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JJ is the first of his fellow artists to arrive.
"Yuuri!" his voice echoes in the mostly empty halls of the hotel. The cold rooms are closed; the warm rooms are for the artists.
Yuuri shoots him a weak smile, and JJ takes that as an invitation to pull out the stool next to him at the bar and drone on about his home brewery and the benefits of growing your own hops.
Two hours later and Yuuri knows more than he ever wanted to about yeast.
After the first wave, it doesn't take long for the tide to come in. Artists arrive in droves, Yuuri recognizes a few of them—the ice sculpting world is small. JJ works primarily with wood, but he's never backed down from a challenge. Others are complete strangers that will pass like shades through the frozen halls without ever exchanging a word.
Then Victor Nikiforov arrives and all hell breaks loose.
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Victor Nikiforov looks as though he was carved from the ice. Clean lines, crystalline beauty, quick to thaw.
After months of texting and skype calls after the Harbin International Ice Sculpting festival, it's startling to see Victor in a wool suit instead of sleep-mussed and covered in dog hair.
Victor speeds over to Yuuri's side like he's magnetized, ignoring three separate tables trying to catch his attention, to wrap Yuuri into his arms and nuzzle into his neck. Phichit shoots him a look from the other end of the bar. Yuuri's still not sure if he and Victor are dating. He saw Phichit nuzzle Seung Gil this morning and they aren't dating.
"What are you talking about Yuuri, Seung Gil and I are definitely dating."
Yuuri almost spits out his drink "Since when?"
"Since last night!" Wow, Phichit works fast.
"I thought you were just hanging out?"
"Yuuri do you even know what Netflix and chill means?"
There's only a finger of whiskey left in his drink. Yuuri frowns. "Victor asked me to Netflix and chill over skype three weeks ago. We watched Homeward Bound. He cried."
"Did he cry at the movie or because he had blue balls?"
"Phichit."
Phichit smiles, menacing white teeth glittering in the bar light. "That was not an answer."
Victors been called away to the other side of the room. Yuuri feels the empty space at his side. He ignores it.
"How was Thailand?"
Phichit whips out his phone in an instant. "It was amazing! My mom says hi, by the way. Also I got a museum named after me." While he's thumbing through the pictures to show Yuuri how utterly fabulous his life is—which Yuuri agrees, it is—Victor comes back over and nuzzles his neck again. Yuuri might have hallucinated a kiss, it's hard to be sure.
"Yuuri, I missed you." Phichit shoots Yuuri a look. "Hi Phichit!"
"Hi Victor."
"You've only been gone for twenty minutes?"
Victor's arms are still wrapped around his back. After hours of skype calls Yuuri can picture the exact pout on Victors face.
"Mhmm, and it was too long."
Oh god, is he dating Victor? Have they been dating for months and he didn't even know it?
He thinks about that as Chris and Seung Gil join them at the bar. He thinks about it when Victor follows him up to his room and kisses on him on the cheek (but that's something Europeans do right?). He thinks about it while staring at the ceiling of his hotel room for hours while sleep abandons him in his hour of need.
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Apparently there's been a mistake and the organizers invited one too many artists. Yuuri's sure they're going to send him home. Instead, they pair him with Victor.
"It's like fate, Yuuri!"
Yuuri squints at him. "You planned this didn't you?"
Victor gasps,"me? I would never!"
"You would, and you have, and I'm not falling for the ditz act. I know you have a degree in engineering." Yuuri rolls his eyes but he's smiling. They're alone in the restaurant. All the other artists have gone to the bar or their rooms.
Victor hooks a finger under his chin and tilts his head up just a little, "and you, say the sweetest things."
"Are you trying to be suave right now? Because you still haven't answered the question." Not everyone will carve one of the rooms. Some will do decorations. Yuuri and Victor have one of the suites.
Victor lets go of Yuuri's chin, but stays close, "I'm offended you think I have to try."
"And I'm offended that you think I haven't noticed the Harlequin romance novels in your apartment."
Victor laughs and asks Yuuri if he'd like to go to his room to plan their design. They huddle around Yuuri's laptop, perched on the bed, sorting through ideas. Victor insists on using Pinterest. Yuuri pretends he has to create a new account so that Victor doesn't see all the Pinterest boards dedicated to him.
They work late into the night Victor somehow ends up drapes across his lap. His hair is a mess, and he's snoring softly. It's almost like ambient noise. And it's something Yuuri never heard over Skype.
If this is dating, Yuuri thinks, it's pretty nice.
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Their first week is a mess of planning. They decide to use East of the Sun, West of the Moon, as their inspiration. Victor paints Yuuri a picture of the troll princesses' castle, of the bear's loneliness—never able to show his face to the woman he loves, of the place between worlds that becomes a world of it's own.
Then, they break out the chainsaws. Victor looks so cute in his earmuffs. When they break for lunch, halfway through the first week Victor stares at him over his plate of dense rye bread, salad, and smoked salmon.
"What?" The tip of Victor's nose is pink. Yuuri thinks it might be from the cold, but they've already been inside for twenty minutes.
"Watching you today....the way you handle a chainsaw is like making music."
Yuuri stares at him over his glasses. The steam from his soup fogs the lenses. "You do realize people use chainsaws as a metaphor for making terrible music, right?"
Victor chokes a little on his salmon.
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The second week Victor asks him why he lives in a warm climate. Yuuri moved back to Hasetsu a few months ago after the lease on his apartment in St. Paul ran out. He's not sure what he wants to do next, but Vicchan didn't like the plane. That alone is enough to keep Yuuri in Hasetsu for the time being. Even if it means working with sand.
Victor "accidentally" falls asleep in Yuuri's room every night—Yuuri doesn't mind. The press of Victor’s body and of his arms around Yuuri’s waist in the middle of the night, have become more comforting than they’ve got any right to be. But they're only here for four weeks; then Victor will go back to Russia.
"Why did you move back home?" Victor's taken off his earmuffs. They've gotten some of the big chunks carved out, the detail work will come later. Right now it's all chainsaws and "get out of the way before you're crushed by a block of ice."
Yuuri shrugs. "The lease ran out on my apartment."
"Most people renew their leases. You moved across the world." Victor's leaning on his chainsaw like it's a cane. Yuuri's waiting for him to fall over. Then Yuuri can put his hands on Victor's shoulders and brush the snow from his eyelashes.
"Maybe I just missed home."
Victor squints. "Did you?"
He did. "Yes," he doesn't mention that, he'd returned home because he felt lost.
"Tell me about it. We have time."
Yuuri's not sure they do but he goes along with it anyways. He tells Victor about the hot kiss of the onsen after a long day, the way it pulled the tension in your muscles away on a current, the inimitable taste of his mother's cooking, the seagulls who stole his okonomiyaki whenever he made the mistake of bringing them to the beach.
Victor listens to it all, a little bit of snow melting on his shoulder, beginning to seep into his jacket.
"It sounds wonderful. I'd love to see it some day"
Yuuri smiles. "It is. And—" the pendulum of dating-not-dating swings in Yuuri's head as he considers his next words, "—you should come visit."
Victor's smile could melt the ice. "I'd love too."
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Week three means making decisions. A lot of decisions. They fight over whether of not to include an actual sun in the room they're carving, if Georgi's room will be a tribute to Anya, and whether or not Victor will finally get Yuuri to try reindeer meat.
They make a decision about none of those.
Instead, in a crowded bar, celebrating the fact that their room is so close to done, Victor decides to call Yuuri his boyfriend.
Apparently the pendulum firmly landed on "dating."
Across the table, Phichit looks very smug. But Yuuri's not sure if it's because Victor said he and Yuuri are dating, or of how much he and Seung Gil are enjoying their relationship. Phichit was very detailed.
That night Victor follows Yuuri up to his room and kisses him. They've kissed before. But Yuuri had kissed—and more than kissed—a lot of people in St. Paul and that definitely didn't mean he was dating them. There hadn't been any of those since he'd started skyping with Victor.
(Plus, all the awkward run-ins at the Starbucks on St. Peter St. made moving back to Hasetsu look better and better.)
"Did you not know we were dating?" Victor's eyes widen with panic, "We are dating, right?"
"Well, we told Phichit so..." Yuuri's smile is more a curl of the lips than a full blown grin.
Victor buries his face in Yuuri's neck. "Yuuri! Are you only dating me because your friend won't let you get out of it?"
Yuuri laughs. "Well. It's not the only reason."
The soft grey sheets are incredibly inviting, so Yuuri pulls Victor down with him. "Maybe you should give me another."
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During Week Four, it's all about details.
Everyone's rushing to finish their projects. Chainsaws are switched out for chisels. Yuuri spends a lot of his time watching Victor carve snowflakes into the walls, and adding details to the large the sun on the west wall. Victor won that argument.
(He did not play fair. But Yuuri didn't really mind.)
A day before they’re supposed to unveil their room, Yuuri finds a ticket to Japan sitting on the desk in his—their—hotel room. All of Victor's things have managed to migrate here. Yuuri's never even seen Victor's room. He's been staying with Yuuri every night since they got here.
"Victor?"
"Hmm?" Victor hums from the bathroom. He's applying mascara, face contorted.
Yuuri shuffles over and holds up the plane ticket in front of the mirror. "What's this?"
The mascara wand comes to an abrupt halt. Victor smears a little on his cheek. "Well, you invited me. And...I don't have any projects planned after this. And I could use a break, and—"
Yuuri kisses him.
"I'm going to take that as 'I'm happy about this'" Victor smiles when they break apart.
"I'm definitely happy about this."
They finish getting ready, grinning the whole time, before pulling on their coats to head downstairs. The bar is packed, all of the artists drinking to their success. It's toast after toast, most of them unintelligible inside jokes that only make sense to the people making them.
"Come on," Yuuri says, a couple hours in.
He tugs Victor through the hallways, "I'd ask where we're going but we've taken this route every day we've been here."
"Shhhh!" Yuuri stumbles a little over his feet, but they make it to the suite intact. An hour later, they can't say the same for the bed.
"Oh my god." Yuuri's face is buried in his hands. "We worked on this for a month!"
A perfect imprint of Yuuri's ass is melted into the ice.
"It'll be fine. We can just level it out!" Victor is entirely unconcerned, still basking in the afterglow as he hunts around the remnants of their construction site. "Do we have any plaster left?"
"How are you so calm right now?"
"Because," Victor says, triumphantly brandishing a bucket of plaster, "we've only added to the beauty. Your ass is art. Now help me take a cast of this before we level it."
Yuuri stares, incredulous, "I can't believe I agreed to date you."
Victor, plaster still in hand, wraps Yuuri in his arms and kisses the top of his head. "I can't either."