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Yuuri Katsuki remembers the first time he ever considered skating.
(Professionally, that is.)
He was doing his skates up in the locker room, the thick cotton of the laces thwaping at his hands with each and every flick of the wrist. There was something playing on the television in the corner: a competition of some sort, though Yuuri can’t remember which. Worlds or the Grand Prix or something. Yuuri cannot recall the season, nor the year. But then again, he was only barely paying attention to the competition, just out of the corner of his eye.
Then he saw it:
A white wisp of a figure, gliding across the ice with hair like starlight.
Yuuri blinked a couple times, then turned his attention solely to the TV. There was nothing there—or rather, there was the competition that had been playing all along, but that person from before was nowhere to be found. Not on the ice, not at the boards, not in the stands. Yuuri watched for a while, then slowly turned away. It must have been a trick of the light, he thought. The sun reflecting off the screen or something. Some static from a poor reception.
But Yuuri couldn’t shake that ethereal being from his mind no matter what he did. He started seeing them everywhere: the ghost of them, a shadow circling him on the ice. The split-second after-image of a spirit, an echo to his movements, a mirage-like vision that couldn’t adequately be explained.
And so Yuuri skated more and more, trying each time to catch a better glimpse of them.
Somewhere along the way, he became rather good at it.
Sometimes, Victor Nikiforov talks to himself.
Er, well... not to himself. To someone. A non-specific someone, out there in the ether. Occasionally whispering little things under his breath, like, “Look how well you are doing,” or “Yes, that’s the way,” or “I’m in absolute awe of you.” And it isn’t to himself. It’s to... someone.
He likes to think of them as a potential soulmate. Someone out there, made just for him. They don’t have any particular appearance or gender or even a personality when he thinks of them. They’re just... there. A stirring. A feeling. A warm and pleasant presence at his side.
Somewhere along the way, he starts referring to them as “darling.”
He would make lunch, for example, and ask them, “What do you think about this, darling?” referring to the amount of salt or as to the flavor. He would do his laundry, muttering aloud, “The blue or the white sheets tonight, darling?” He would take off in a jump and land it perfectly, exclaiming, “Did you see that, darling? Did you see it?”
Truthfully, he’s starting to think that, perhaps, he is just very, very lonely.
Yuuri Katsuki does not know when he started hearing voices.
Or, uh, well... That sounds wrong. Like he is sick or something. But it isn’t that. He just has, uh... an enthusiastic inner monologue that likes to speak to him often, encourage him. At first it was just random thoughts, quiet affirmations.
But then he once caught a “darling” at the end of one of their statements, and it made him blush up to the ears.
He would be more worried, but it’s a welcome respite to his anxiety, if he’s being honest.
Victor Nikiforov is thinking about quitting.
Or well… was. Is. Is going to. He doesn’t know anymore, honestly. He considers it every year, really, deep in the competition season when his toes are bloodied and his mind has dissolved into static. This year, he thinks each time. This is the last one. But it never is. He always finds some reason to keep going, some reason or other to keep pushing forward.
And then there is the matter of them.
Victor only tends to see “them” on the ice—and mostly at competitions, at that: the barest hint of a darkened figure, darting between crowds, leaning against the boards, elongating Victor’s shadow just a hair’s breadth away. Victor would worry it was some sort of crazed fan, stalking his each and every movement, but somehow, he senses no ill intent—almost as though the presence isn’t regarding him at all. Like it’s mere coincidence that they always seem to be a half-step apart, objects just out of orbit of each other.
One time, Victor even swears he saw them skate.
It was just a moment—hardly a blink—but he swears it: He witnessed that familiar vision conduct the world’s most elegant Ina Bauer, early in the morning before a competition when the ice was bright white and new. No one else had been in the rink; Victor was sure of it.
It was just him and this stranger.
But then they were blotted out of existence, like a dab of ink.
Victor tries to tell Yakov, but his coach brushes it away as the inane workings of an overactive, overimaginative workaholic, strained from a combination of jetlag and an open hotel mini bar. There’s some truth to this statement, admittedly, but Victor knows what he saw.
So he folds up the image and tucks it away safe and sound in the deep recesses of his mind.
“Hey, darling, it’s me,” Victor Nikiforov says up to the ceiling of his apartment late one night, like an absolute madman. He’s lying on the bed, one of his knees iced and elevated. There’s a stack of books on his nightstand, but for the moment, he doesn’t feel like reaching for any of them. “Are you there?”
Silence. Of course. Victor doesn’t know why he expected any different.
“Well, if you are,” he goes on, unbidden, “I need some advice. I’m not sure if I should… keep going. With skating, I mean. I’m getting—” He pops a fist against his thigh. “—rather on in age, you see. And the inspiration… it’s almost dried up. I don’t know what to do.”
He strains his ears, for a reply.
“You don’t know either, I suppose,” he sighs. “That’s all right, darling. Don’t stress yourself over it.”
Yuuri Katsuki wakes unreasonably and uncharacteristically early.
“Six,” he mumbles, slapping a hand down on the digital clock upon his dorm table. “Why six?” He fumbles for his glasses, then sits up in bed. He can feel a headache brewing already behind his eyes. But then—
—darling. Don’t stress yourself over it.
Stress over what? Waking up early?
I wish— you were— but that’s— isn’t it?
Yuuri rubs at an eye.
Bizarre consciousness he has. Truly.
He goes to the bathroom to ready himself, brush his hair and his teeth. He hardly looks in the mirror when he does this, usually, but something draws his attention this time—has him squinting at the prints upon the glass, looking for anything untoward.
And then Yuuri sees him: a quick flash of a taller, broader man in the mirror, with two piercing eyes like sapphires.
Yuuri whips his head over his shoulder, to locate this presence in his bathroom. Yet no such person exists; it’s just Yuuri here. Just Yuuri, in his pajamas, with a toothbrush hanging out of one side of his mouth.
Just Yuuri, whose heart is suddenly going a million miles a minute.
Yuuri Katsuki is thinking about quitting.
Perhaps it’s too early for such a thing. He’s only twenty-three, after all. And yet on every level, he feels completely washed up. He looks now at the progressively younger and younger faces that crop up at each competition and feels chagrin, shame and a sense of time gone by deep down to his core. He thinks about it a lot—retirement, irrelevance—but this year more so than ever before, all but convinced he’ll throw in the towel, after this one last bout.
Now if only his inner voice could be quiet.
Beautiful jump, darling! Much steadier landing than before.
Yuuri doesn’t know how this entity could at all have a basis on his jumps—current or previous—but the tone is to such a degree of enthusiasm that Yuuri’s mind is entirely soothed by it, lulled into such a blessed silence that even his anxiety dares not approach him. It’s the most peaceful practice he’s had out on the ice in months, in fact.
So he’ll take it.
“You should take a vacation, Yuuri,” his coach says from the boards, apropos nothing.
Yuuri startles—throws out his hands, to steady himself upon his blades. “W-what?”
“I mean it.” Celestino leans against the barrier, with his chin cradled in his hand. “You’re ahead of schedule, and you haven’t visited your family in, what, five years? You’ve finished up your college credits too, haven’t you? You should go home. Rest, before competition season.”
Yuuri hadn’t really considered it—not that he didn’t miss his family. He did. Does. But he was always so busy, and money was tight. And in a strange way, he never felt worthy of facing his family. He almost felt he needed to justify his presence in Hasetsu, with some sort of award or accolade. Not just… show up because he wanted to.
But that was ridiculous, right?
“Yeah… maybe I will.”
Victor Nikiforov doesn’t know why he’s here:
At an airport, staring up at timetables, with a bag in hand and Makkachin safely tucked away in the flat of his rinkmate.
He doesn’t even know where he’s going, for god’s sake. But he feels as though he needs a bit of a break—something, anything new.
So… timetables.
Suddenly, a location in the corner that was previously shown as “delayed” flickers to “on time,” instead.
KYUSHU, it says, in bold red letters.
Japan? Victor thinks, and something feels right with it, as though unlocking some deep, unknown longing in him that was waiting for that exact sequence of letters at this exact time.
And so Victor walks up to the counter and purchases a ticket.
Yuuri Katsuki doesn’t know how badly he needed to be home until he almost is.
The feeling is nearly tangible: the tugging of a string, pulling him along the roads he knows forward and backward and sideways.
By the time his family’s inn comes into view, he’s nearly in a full sprint.
Victor Nikiforov slept most of the plane ride to Japan—but then he’s full of manic, pent-up energy, upon the descent. Like he needs to go somewhere, do something.
Something fairly specific too. Though he’s not sure what.
He can’t rely on the timetables anymore; the locations are all written in a foreign lettering now, characters there that stir not even a faint sense of familiarity in Victor. He might as well be looking at Klingon.
But—
But then a sweet old woman purchases a train voucher to a small coastal village by the name of “Hasetsu,” and Victor thinks that sounds nice enough.
“There’s a rink?” Victor Nikiforov asks himself aloud, in coming down the escalator from the train platform.
And indeed. There’s posters all around the station: of a stark, imposing-looking castle in the distance flanked by cherry blossoms, as well as a thin sheet of ice as its main focus in the forefront of the shot.
Victor doesn’t know why, but the picture feels bereft, somehow. Incomplete.
He blinks—thinks he sees that familiar jet-black figure for a moment, that they’ve doggedly followed him to Japan—then sees nothing again.
He needs a drink.
Yuuri Katsuki luxuriates in the hot springs. Eats katsudon. Chases his puppy down the beach. Plays several rounds of shogi against his sister. (Loses, a lot.) Sleeps in his childhood bed. Drinks with his father. Catches up on J-dramas with his mother. Walks the streets of Hasetsu, idly.
It’s nice. Pleasant, even.
And yet, something is missing.
Several days into this, Yuuri’s feet find a familiar pattern, taking a walk across town to his oldest and most familiar haunt.
It’s night—morning, more like—and Ice Castle is closed, but Yuuri still remembers where the owners used to leave the spare key. It’s quick work to find it and even quicker work to slip into his skates, settle onto the ice and run a few figures, slowly etching a pattern onto the surface over the same imaginary lines he followed as an amateur.
He can almost see himself there, under the edge of his blades: a child of no more than five, chubby and bubbly and bruised and scraped. He looks down and sees skates mirroring the movements of his own and is nearly convinced of it then, in watching his figure reflected there upon the ice. But then he looks further—looks closer—and oh—oh—
He and another skater stop, dead in each other’s tracks.
Truly, Victor Nikiforov did try to relax when he got to Hasetsu.
It was hard, but he gave it a shot. A good ol’ fashioned college try, if you will. But despite the charming seaside town’s best efforts, Victor could simply not stay still. Every shop, every restaurant he tried felt just slightly off, in a way he couldn’t define. As though it wasn’t the correct destination. As though there was somewhere else he needed to be.
It led him to wandering the streets late at night, feeling safe in the “everybody knows everybody” sort of way that only a small town could provide.
Inevitably, he finds himself at the rink.
It’s closed, obviously. But when Victor tries the entrance, the door opens, as though unlocked beforehand just for him. He looks around—feeling as though he was being tricked in some way—but there’s no one to laugh at him, nor offer any explanation, and so he slips inside without further delay.
He’s got his skates on him, of course. As though he would simply leave them in the hotel.
Victor’s not usually one for figures, but he does them anyway, to feel out the ice and stretch his legs. For a while, he merely meanders, content to fall into a pattern that—while not intimately familiar—feels easy and free, watching the reflection under him do the same, in lazy circles.
But the mirror is off.
Victor digs his toepick into the ground, nearly faceplanting with the strength of his momentum.
Because Victor knows them.
Would know them anywhere.
Darling, is that you?
Yuuri freezes, flinches upon the ice. It’s his ghost—the one that’s been following him all this time—but Yuuri sees him now clearer than ever, as though the other was merely standing on the other side of a piece of glass, his frame solid, his expression readable.
But how does one answer a question like this?
“Yes,” he says, his voice shaking, reverberating heavily in the vacancy of the rink. He clears his throat, then tries again. “Yes. Can you hear me?”
The figure speaks—Yuuri can see his lips move—but hears no sound. Just the vast emptiness of the building: the buzzing of a ventilation system, the straining of a lightbulb on its last leg.
“Victor?”
Yuuri startles. The moniker came from him, but it rings true, somehow. As though the name was always meant to be there, always meant to be on the tip of his tongue. “Victor,” Yuuri says again, with resolve, and he sees the presence on the other side of the ice jump with recognition, his countenance steadily becoming more animated. Yuuri points to himself, then pronounces carefully, “Yuu-ri,” in case the other is simply reading his lips, rather than hearing the sounds of his own voice.
Darling. It was “darling”!
Yuu-ri, Victor’s darling clarifies, as though sensing Victor’s very thoughts.
Oh.
Yuuri.
His darling Yuuri.
He was there, just on the other side of the ice. Standing, smiling, looking just a bit chagrinned as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, as though bashful on his and Victor’s first date.
“Yuuri, darling—” But Victor chokes on the endearment, even as it comes tumbling out. Because how can he express himself, his absolute glee? His gratitude at Yuuri being not only his inspiration, his drive, his only motivation for continuing as he had been, but for being real, on top of that?
Tears dapple against the ice.
Oh, Victor. His Victor—the Victor that had called him “darling,” so many times he’d lost count. Yuuri sees him cry, and it’s not fair; he can’t watch someone cry without crying himself, and he’s an ugly crier, while Victor is so pretty and stoic and solemn. But once he’s started, he can’t stop. The tears flow unceasingly, because how is he to quantify this moment? Through minutes? Through stars? Victor doesn’t just exist now; he’s always existed. Always been there for Yuuri: to show him the way, share in his successes, comfort him in his failures, call him “pretty” and “lovely” and “darling” when he felt so undeserving of it.
Then the vision under him starts to blur.
“V-Victor—?” Yuuri scrubs at his eyes, violently. No, it isn’t simply his tears; the image of Victor is melting away, ever slowly.
And so Yuuri does what he does best:
He panics.
“Yuuri?” Victor watches, horrified, as the image of Yuuri starts to smudge, as though a wave was washing over him. No. Not now. Not this soon. Not when Victor has just found him.
The blurred image of Yuuri seems to recognize this too, falling to his knees upon the ice and clawing at it with his nails, as though he could dig Victor out. For a single, haunting moment, Victor only looks on, frozen, as Yuuri desperately scratches at the other side, tears dappling against the back of his hands as the fingers grow bloody, and then—then—
Victor takes notice of his blades, touching the ice underneath Yuuri’s fingertips.
Stand back, darling.
Yuuri hears Victor as though he was in his very ear, tearing himself away long enough from his desperate quest to witness the look in Victor’s eyes, determined even though the thick fog that was starting to encroach on them both.
And so Yuuri scootches back, just a touch.
There’s a crack then, so hard that Yuuri hears it across universes.
The ice chips: a blossoming of pieces, splintering out from the middle. Then there’s another crack, and another—from Victor’s skate, Yuuri realizes, being brought down upon the barrier—and another, and another.
And then—
Victor Nikiforov is falling.
It happens all at once, like a plunge in the pool.
A cosmic dip, over universes. It’s hardly a second—hardly an experience at all—except that he feels changed with it. A celestial baptism, with eternal love awaiting him on the other side.
It’s then, suddenly, that he realizes he’s not falling at all.
He’s ascending.
Yuuri Katsuki catches Victor Nikiforov, as he falls out of one universe and rises into another.
For one eternity-long moment, Yuuri only holds Victor—doesn’t even look at him—with his face pressed against Victor’s shoulder, his battered fingers clinging to the back of the other’s jacket, as though afraid Victor would fly to pieces if he dared to let go.
Finally, Victor pulls back—just a bit, just enough to see Yuuri—with a hand cupping his cheek, keeping them in contact.
Yuuri loves him for it.
“I’m home, darling,” Victor chuckles, wetly.
Yuuri laughs—cry-laughs—and only holds him tighter. “Welcome home.”