Work Text:
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
–– "The More Loving One" by W. H. Auden
Viktor Nikiforov meets Yuuri Katsuki on the first day of spring.
The air is heavy with the scent of rocket fuel. It’s unseasonable warm and Viktor sweats in his uniform, tugging at the collar every few minutes. It’s his first time watching a launch in person. He’s seen them on TV plenty of times, but today is the first time he gets to see it up close.
It’s beautiful, in the destructive way that most explosions are. There’s the first bloom of smoke and then a bright spark of ignition. The rocket streaks upwards, leaving behind dark grey smoke clouds, bleeding into the air like ink in water.
Viktor hears Chris gasp softly. “That’s going to be us in a year.”
“I can’t wait,” Viktor replies.
He tears his gaze away from the streak arcing through the air and turns to look at Chris. In the row past him is the rest of his crew: Mila, Georgi, Sara, and Yuri. They’re the best Earth has to offer, all of them having been in the astronaut training program for years.
Mila and Sara are the power couple of the space exploration world. Mila can get anything to fly, given enough time and equipment and Sara is the best data analyst in the world.
Little Yura is quite possible the closest thing Viktor will ever have to a little brother. He’s only eighteen, but he’s already a world renowned biologist. His work, combined with Georgi’s chemistry, will teach them more about how life functions in space.
Chris has known Viktor for longer than most people. He’ll be their resident psychologist, in charge of maintaining crew mental health and just generally assisting Viktor as his right hand man.
They make a good team, the six of them. Viktor is so proud to be their captain.
After the launch, they’re herded towards the command center, to meet some of the faces behind the math. Yakov, the mission director, gives them a personal tour.
He points out the training rooms and the model control panels where they’ll drill safety procedures until they’re seared into their brains. Viktor takes mental notes of where everything is. They’re going to spend a lot of time preparing in here, before they launch next March.
“And finally,” Yakov says, “this is Dr. Katsuki’s office. He’s going to be your main point of contact both during training and on your journey.”
Chris makes a surprised noise. “We’re working with Yuuri?”
Yakov side-eyes him. “You know him?”
Chris nods, looking stunned. “We went to the same university for undergrad. He’s wild. He’d do a kegstand and party all night and then show up to class the next day and ace all his finals. One time we went ice skating together while drunk.”
Yakov’s eye twitches. Viktor is delighted.
Just as he’s about to ask Chris more questions, the door to the office opens and a small, bespeckled man steps out. He blinks at them, clearly thrown off guard by six astronauts just hovering outside his office door.
“Hello, there. I’m Dr. Katsuki,” he introduces himself with an endearing little wave. “You can just call me Yuuri, since we’ll be working together. It’s nice to meet you all.”
Oh, Viktor thinks, something fragile and new budding in his heart.
Oh no.
Over the next couple of weeks Viktor learns a few things about Dr. Yuuri Katsuki.
- He has a PhD in both Mathematics and Aerospace Engineering, but he’s somehow still younger than Viktor.
- His lab is a mess, but it’s a highly functioning mess, much like Yuuri himself.
- He actually enjoys pineapple on pizza, like some kind of uncultured heathen.
- He love dogs of all types, but especially poodles.
- He’s from Japan. His family moved to America when he was a child. He grew up not too far from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Yuuri says he fell in love with space travel when they visited the labs on a field trip for school.
- He has, apparently, been following Viktor’s career.
“I’m a fan,” Yuuri admits to him sheepishly one day, over a shared lunch in the only clean corner of Yuuri’s office. There are model spaceships suspended from the ceiling with clear string. Yuuri has a bit of sauce smeared across his bottom lip.
Viktor doesn’t think twice about leaning over and wiping it away with his thumb. Yuuri blushes. “A fan, huh?”
“We had a department wide betting pool on which candidates would be selected for the Uona mission,” Yuuri says.
Viktor grins. “I hope I won you a lot of money.”
“Oh, you did,” Yuuri chuckles. “Phichit had to treat me out to dinner for a week. It would have been longer, but I let him off the hook easy. He’s making the rest up by doing my laundry for me.”
Viktor feels his smile grow stilted. “Phichit?”
“Oh! Uh, Dr. Chulanont, head of material science and engineering.” Yuuri points to a framed photo on his desk. “My best friend. We’ve been roommates since undergrad, but he’s moving in with his fiancé soon.”
Viktor makes a curious noise. Yuuri waves a hand.
“I almost killed his fiancé once, but that’s a story for another time.”
Viktor shakes his head incredulously. “Yuuri Katsuki, you are the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”
“Not really.” Yuuri smiles shyly. “I’m just Yuuri.”
“Just Yuuri, with two incredible degrees and a top position at the most prestigious space exploration organization in the world. Just Yuuri, who’s going to be the main point of contact between my team and mission control. Just Yuuri, who sacrificed his valuable, limited time to have lunch with me.”
Yuuri ducks his head. “You say that like spending time with you would be a burden.”
“Is it not?” Viktor asks, and he’s joking but some small part of him is actually very insecure about this. “Am I not too much, sometimes?”
“Never,” Yuuri says sincerely. “I like hanging out with you. I like seeing you everyday, uh, outside of just work.”
Something dangerous blooms in Viktor’s chest. Something sparking and hot, like a lighter held over a vat of gasoline.
Viktor falls in love with Yuuri the same way the sun rises: a gradual lift of the pitch black of night into a dusty blue; the warm glow as the sunlight begins to crest the horizon; rising, rising, until he’s left blinking in the early morning light, warm and bathed in fresh sunshine.
Viktor stops denying his feelings only an hour before he’s set to leave Earth forever.
It’s excruciating, looking at Yuuri now and realizing that he’d drop everything, if Yuuri asked. It makes it harder to say goodbye.
“I’ll call,” Viktor promises, “I’ll write, I’ll send holo videos, I’ll–– I’ll–– I’ll––”
He doesn’t say “I’ll stay if you ask” but he thinks it. He thinks about opening his mouth and letting the words spill out. He thinks about telling Yuuri he loves him. He thinks about asking Yuuri to wait for him.
He won’t. They both know how space travel works. If, by some miracle, they ever see each other again, Yuuri will be much, much older. Viktor won’t make Yuuri promise himself to a man who may never come back.
(But he thinks about it: Yuuri, pointing up at the night sky and saying “there’s the love of my life, among the planets, among the streaks of light above us.”)
They take a selfie together, a couple minutes before Viktor needs to start heading down to the launch pad. He makes some poor intern rush off to find the nearest printer just so he can tuck the photograph into the lapel pocket of his shirt just above his heart. Yuuri watches him do this with something akin to understanding in his eyes.
“For good luck?” Yuuri asks.
“I won’t need luck, not when I have you on my side,” Viktor replies. He takes off his flight jacket–– the one with his last name printed on the back, the one with all his mission patches lining the sleeves–– and drapes it over Yuuri’s shoulders. “Take care of this for me?”
Yuuri grips the jacket with white knuckles, pulls it tight around himself. He nods wordlessly.
Yuuri walks him down to the elevators. He needs to stay behind in the control center to make sure everything runs smoothly. Viktor, selfishly, wishes Yuuri would put his back-up in charge and walk Viktor all the way to the launch pad. Viktor wants Yuuri to be the last person he touches before he leaves Earth, the last face he sees before it’s just him, his crew, and the oblivion of deep space.
“Stay safe out there,” Yuuri says, hugging him one last time.
“I will.” Viktor smiles, though he can feel the edges fraying.
“Name a star after me, please.”
“I’ll name an entire galaxy after you, if Yura doesn’t do it first. He’s grown very fond of you, you know.”
“Has he?”
Viktor hums. “It’s a good thing you’re getting paid to talk to us, when we’re up there. We’ll probably take up a lot of your time.”
“I don’t mind,” Yuuri says, his face still buried in the crook of Viktor’s neck. “Call anytime, even if it’s not for mission reports.”
“Even if it’s just because I’m feeling lonely?”
“Especially , if you’re feeling lonely.”
Viktor needs to go, now. He really should have left five minutes ago, but he hangs back. He pulls away and drinks in Yuuri’s face, commits every angle and curve to memory. He wants his last words to Yuuri to be something deep, something profound. Something meaningful.
“I––” he starts. “You know, I––”
He clears his throat.
“You alone will have stars,” Viktor says slowly, “as no one else has them.”
Yuuri looks at him for a long second, eyes round and shining, before he bursts into laughter.
“Saint-Exupéry? Really?” Yuuri giggles. “You’re quoting a children’s book at me?”
Viktor pouts. “It’s a very good children's book! There are a lot of lessons to learn from children’s books!”
“Like?” Yuuri asks teasingly.
“Like friendship,” Viktor says. “Like learning to let go and growing up. Learning how to love someone, no matter how far from you they are.”
“You got all that from Le Petit Prince? Maybe I should give it another read.”
“It’s better in the original french.”
“Of course you would say that.” Yuuri takes a final step back, slipping out of Viktor’s arms like sand in an hourglass. “I can’t read french.”
“Then we’ll read it together,” Viktor says, “and I’ll translate for you.”
Yuuri smiles at him, dazzling and warm. “I’d like that.”
Viktor’s answering grin is bittersweet on his lips, stretched just a little too wide, but genuine all the same. He doesn’t say anything else. He just gives Yuuri one last, quick embrace before he’s turning on his heel and getting in the elevator.
Yuuri’s still smiling at him. Viktor watches him until the mirrored doors of the elevator close and he’s left just staring at his own reflection.
The launch goes off without a hitch. Viktor feels calm, with Yuuri’s voice in his headset guiding him through the control checks. The rest of the crew are in varying states of excitement, from Mila’s childlike glee to Chris’s more casual curiosity.
They blast off in a flurry of light and sound. Bright flashes of orange and pink, the powerful roar of 7.5 million pounds of thrust beneath them. Then it’s a fight against gravity as they climb higher and higher, escaping the embrace of Earth’s atmosphere. Mission control disappears until the city, the country, the entire continent is just a smudge of green against the royal blue of Earth’s oceans.
It’s incredible, the chemical reactions that take place, the combustion that pushes them up and away from their comfortable bubble.
Chris looks back, exactly once during the whole launch. He looks at the Earth rapidly disappearing from view and says, “there goes every person I’ve ever loved, minus five.”
Once they’re settled in and their course is plotted, the actual living area of the ship expands out.
It’s an inflatable habitat with just enough room for the six of them, sectioned off into places for work, sleep, and exercise. This is where they’ll spend the next six months, safe from solar radiation and stray space debris.
It’s clean, space efficient, and technologically advanced. Viktor hates it.
Everything is too clinical. The first thing he does is go into his room and put up the photo of him and Yuuri. He then pushes himself towards the back of the ship, where all their luggage is, and digs around his bag until he finds a headband. In zero gravity, his usually perfect swoop of bangs is free floating. It tickles his nose and gets into his eyes, so he pushes it back with a pink, sparkly headband. Then he starts unpacking.
He pulls out his books, his tablet, and some clothes and sets about arranging him in the limited cubby holes along the wall of his room. He gets bored halfway through and decides to call Yuuri.
“Is everything okay?” Yuuri asks immediately. His voice is slightly staticy, but the sound quality is overall not too bad. If Viktor tries hard enough, he can pretend he’s talking on a cellphone. Yuuri is just across the city, not hundreds of thousands of miles away.
“Everything is fine, except it turns out that organizing things in space is just as boring as organizing things on Earth.”
“Ah, that’s good to hear.” Yuuri drops his work voice. “You had me worried, calling so soon after launch. I thought something was wrong.”
“We’re just getting set up. I think Yura’s already in the living room, setting up the artificial gravity.”
“It’s not artificial gravity, it’s just centrifugal–– You know this, why am I explaining it to you?”
“Maybe I just like it when you talk science to me. Gets me all hot and bothered.”
Yuuri snorts. “Viktor this is a recorded conversation. You called my work phone.”
“Good. Tell the PR department to cut this into their next commercial.”
“Ugh, those things are getting worse, somehow.” There’s a sound of a mug being set down on a wood table, which means Yuuri is probably in his office. “Just an hour ago, they interrupted my post-launch check-ups to ask me for a statement. They want something that the news outlets can quote tomorrow.”
“I hope you made a pun. Like ‘the launch was out of this world’ or something.”
Yuuri laughs. “Puns are more your specialty. Besides, I’m not good with interviews. I’d probably say it wrong or choke halfway through.”
“So, besides PR, what else is new?”
Yuuri updates Viktor on everything that’s happened in the whole six hours since they last spoke. Viktor blames it on the hours of training, but something in him is deeply unsettled when he goes too long without hearing Yuuri’s voice. He feels the need to constantly check the power levels, run through a series of checks. He’ll probably settle down once they’ve been on the galactic road for some time. While Yuuri talks, Viktor organizes his books in first alphabetical order, and then by cover color, and then by subject, just so he has something to do with his hands while he listens.
After a half hour, Yuri’s voice crackles to life on the ship wide speaker system. “Headsup, gravity starts now.”
The habitat begins to spin, slowly, until Viktor’s feet are pressed against the floor and he can move around without accidentally launching himself into a wall.
“How does everything feel?” Yuuri asks, concern bleeding into his voice. “Is it set to the right rotation speed.”
“It’s exactly like training. You worry too much.”
“It’s my job to worry about you. Uh, and the crew! All of you.”
Viktor smiles to himself. “Now that I can walk around, I should probably get to work. I’ll call you back later?”
“Later tonight is okay,” Yuuri replies. “I get home around six.”
Viktor wrinkles his nose. “I’m not sure what time that would be, ship time. Wow, and I thought calculating the time difference between Detroit and Russia was hard.”
“We’ll figure it out. Call me later, or if you need help with anything. Video chat, if you can.”
When Viktor hangs up, he’s still smiling.
Viktor calls Yuuri back later, though it ends up being early morning for him. It turns into a nightly tradition.
Sometimes, if they both have a lot of free time, they set up the holo video chat. It gives Yuuri’s skin a slightly blue tinge, but otherwise it’s almost like being in the same room as him.
(Except it’s not. There’s no warm, Earthy, Yuuri smell. Viktor can’t reach over and ruffle Yuuri’s hair, or brush some lint off his shoulders, or fix his awful, ugly tie. Sometimes the audio lags when the hologram doesn’t, which was unsettling at first but is now the funniest thing in the universe. )
Mostly they stick to video chats and voice calls. Viktor will often just prop his tablet up on his desk and do work. It’s nice, especially when it’s late and they’re both sleepy. There’s no pressure to keep up the conversation. They’re both content to just bask in each others’ presence.
The perks of working for the most technologically advanced organization on Earth is constant access to high-speed wifi, even out in the void of space. Viktor shamelessly takes advantage of this.
(It’s just like being there with him, Viktor tells himself, but there’s something hollow and aching inside him.)
Yuuri is the first one to say it.
“I miss you,” he says quietly, his voice soft and sleep heavy.
Viktor puts down the radiation report he was reading. “Why do you say that like it’s supposed to be a secret?”
“Because I’m supposed to be happy for you.” Yuuri picks up his laptop and the video feed shifts wildly, Yuuri’s apartment a blur in the background as he moves from his desk to his bed. “I mean, this project is my life’s work. Both of our lives. I-I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to make you sad.”
Viktor laughs humorlessly. “Oh, don’t worry. I make myself sad without any help.”
Yuuri frowns, curling up under his fluffy comforter. He looks so warm and soft, his face bathed in the blue light of his laptop screen. Viktor decides to abandon his work for now and copy him, stretching out on his bed with his tablet next to him, Yuuri’s sweet face propped up on a pillow.
It’s so, so close to what Viktor wants.
“I miss having lunch in my office,” Yuuri says, voice slightly muffled through all the bedding. “And I miss all the dumb things you would say during training missions.”
“I miss that, too,” Viktor says finally, because if Yuuri’s admitting it, it must be okay. It’s not selfish of him, to admit to missing him. He’s not using it to hold Yuuri back. “I keep thinking about that dog we saw, that one time we snuck out of mission control and went to the park.”
“We should have adopted that dog because––” Yuuri yawns–– “because I think she was a stray. She could have been our mascot.”
“I’d love to adopt dogs with you,” Viktor says, but Yuuri’s eyes are already closed, his breathing even. Viktor counts his breaths until he falls asleep, too.
I should tell him, Viktor thinks as he watches a YouTube video of Yuuri giving a lecture on rocket science at Princeton.
I should tell him, Viktor thinks as he listens to Yuuri chat about his day.
I should tell him, Viktor thinks when they have a minor fuel scare, three months in.
I should tell him, Viktor thinks on one of the rare occasions when nighttime lines up for them, with Yuuri asleep and still on the call with him.
I should tell him, Viktor thinks, but what good would it do?
Every crew member is required to have at least two sessions with Chris every week, to check up on their mental health and to maintain a healthy intercrew relationship. Viktor loves his sessions with Chris. They’re one part mental checkups and one part gossip session.
“Have you been reading the news?” Chris asks him, leaning back in his chair. He twirls a pen around his finger, orbiting like a satellite.
“No, what happened?”
“Our sweet little Yuuri is causing quite a stir.”
Viktor frowns. “Yura? What did he do?”
“Ah, no not that Yuri. Yuuri. Dr. Katsuki? My favorite phone sex operator?”
“Chris ,” Viktor groans, running a hand down his face. “If you keep calling him that, he’s going to stop taking your calls.”
“He thinks it’s hilarious. Anyway, he’s not on very good terms with the media right now.”
“Why not? He hasn’t mentioned anything to me.” Viktor thinks back over the past couple of days. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Yuuri was maybe a little quieter than usual, but his assistant is away on vacation so he’s had a little more on his plate.
“Your nightly calls are actually part of the problem.” Chris rearranges himself so he’s more comfortable. He somehow manages to make sitting in a hard plastic chair look like lounging on a luxurious velvet chaise. Chris has grace coming out of his pores. “Some big American politician is requesting that all the logs between us and mission control be made public. Something about being transparent about where taxpayer money is going.”
“Um. We’re an international organization.”
“Exactly! So, Yuuri holds a press conference and lays out exactly why we can’t do that, number one being an issue of server security, of course. I can’t believe you haven’t seen the video. He’s wearing that ugly tie again.”
“The blue one?”
“No, the one that looks like old wallpaper.”
“Ugh!”
“I know, right? Okay, so he does the conference and it looks like everyone’s satisfied with his answers and everything, because obviously . But the American politician is really pushing to get our chat logs published. I don’t know why he cares so much. It’s mostly Mila complaining about our food and Georgi asking Phichit to forward the newest episodes of his soap opera.”
“This is ridiculous,” Viktor says. “We’re on a mission to study the best shot at a new era in humanity and people want to see our communication logs?”
“I think they mostly want to know if we’re sexting anyone back on Earth,” Chris drawls. He sends Viktor a significant look.
Viktor groans. “I already told you, Yuuri and I aren’t––”
“You talk pretty often,” Chris points out, “and he blushes every time I mention you.”
“We’re not–– wait, he does?”
Chris smirks. “I was facetiming him while he was eating lunch the other day. It was so cute, he was almost redder than the tomatoes on his sandwich.”
“That’s–– um. Oh.”
“You two are adorable. Ah, young love.”
Viktor sighs heavily. “Chris, you know how I feel about him. And, even if Yuuri felt the same way––”
“Which he does, but if you want to stay in denial about it––”
“–– it doesn’t matter. We can’t be together. I can’t ask him for that. It just wouldn’t work.”
“Wow, it sounds like you’re making a lot of decisions and assumptions based on what you think Yuuri would like, and not what he’s actually told you.”
Viktor blinks, stunned at the sudden acidity in Chris’s voice.
“You walked me into that one,” Viktor says accusingly.
“Yeah, a little,” Chris admits, “but it’s still true. You haven’t actually told him how you feel yet. You haven’t given him the opportunity to decide.”
“It’s just that–– he’s so good. He’s intelligent and hardworking and compassionate. He’ll find someone, someday, who can make him happy. He deserves to be happy.”
“Hey, Viktor,” Chris says. “Revolutionary concept here: you deserve to be happy, too.”
“I am happy,” Viktor responds automatically.
“Are you?” Chris asks, and there’s a hint of bitterness under his voice, if you look hard enough. “Are any of us?”
Life goes on. They draw closer and closer to their destination, stopping every so often to collect and analyze samples from planets that they pass.
Yuri tends to his plants. He has this theory on the composition of dirt at different planets and how the minerals and microbes affect plant growth. He has adorable little rows of aloes and mints and even dwarf sunflowers. It’s nice to have something green on board. Something to break up the monotony of white walls and metal.
Mila makes sure they all stick to their health plans. She makes them do group sessions on the treadmill once a week. She’s seemed restless lately, though she covers it up well. Viktor accidentally breaks something every few days, just so she has something to do. He really wishes they had brought some spare electronics for her to tinker with, but space was limited.
Sara gets them all to start playing Dungeons and Dragons, of all things. She says it builds team work, which Viktor thinks is a load of bullshit because during last week’s session Yuri’s character sold out the entire team.
Viktor is most worried about Georgi. He keeps on top of his work, more than the rest of them, but he also doesn’t sleep. Viktor notices that he takes extra counseling sessions with Chris.It’s not a surprise. Georgi left the most behind, on Earth. Viktor, Chris, and Yuri had no family. Mila and Sara only have each other, if you don’t count Sara’s estranged brother.
“Why did you decide to go?” Viktor asks him one evening. The lights are dimming slowly, a sign that the artificial sunlight timer is switching back over to nighttime.
“It had to be me.”
Viktor watches him for a moment.
“There’s a price, for being the best in your field,” Georgi starts again. “People expect things from you. They expect you to put yourself to good use.”
Viktor nods. He knows.
“Chemistry is my passion. I love doing it. It just–– it made sense, at the time. To be at the forefront of new chemical discoveries on a new planet, that was worth it. Worth the rest of my life.”
“Is it?”
“What?”
“Is it worth it? Do you still think it’s worth the rest of your life?”
Georgi doesn’t answer. They sit next to each other in silence for a long time, watching the infinite darkness zoom by through the viewing port.
Viktor tells him, eventually.
One day, after they’re finished taking samples on this pebble of a planet that they’ve landed on, Viktor connects a call to base and instead of a mission report, what comes out is:
“I love you.”
Yuuri blinks, stunned. And then he bursts into tears.
“Y-You,” is all he can get out. “You, you, y-you, you–– ”
“I should have told you before I left,” Viktor says, and then, quieter, “I should have told you a lot of things, before I left.”
Yuuri flutters his eyes.The droplets fall off his eyelashes, streaking down his face like rain on a windowpane. Viktor misses rain. He misses Earth. He misses Yuuri.
“D-Don’t say that,” Yuuri chokes out. “You’re doing im-important work.”
Viktor opens his mouth to say more, but then Yuuri excuses himself. He hands his headset over to the backup operator, and leaves the room, lab coat fluttering behind him. Viktor’s heart, denser than a neutron star, sits heavy in his chest.
“Mission report, Captain?” the operator asks.
“R-Right,” Viktor replies, swallowing past the lump in his throat, “Right. Uh, mission was successful. We’ve gathered several dust samples from A-498 and we’re en route to. . . .”
For three days, every time Viktor calls Yuuri, the backup operator picks up. Yuuri’s personal number goes straight to voicemail too.
He taps out “You can’t avoid me forever” in morse code and sends that as a voicemail. He knows that Yuuri is curious enough to decode it instead of ignoring it outright, and hopefully that gets him to consider calling Viktor back. In the meantime, Viktor does his work and wallows in his own self pity. He looks at the photo of him and Yuuri often. He keeps his tablet on the maximum ringer volume.
When Yuuri finally calls him back it’s three in the afternoon, ship time. Viktor unstraps himself from the treadmill and flings himself at his tablet, picking up a split second before it would have stopped ringing.
“Yuuri?”
“Um. Hi.”
Viktor closes his eyes. Just hearing Yuuri’s voice again is making him feel better. “Yuuri.”
“Viktor.”
Viktor’s name sounds like something different, coming from Yuuri’s mouth. The two syllables somehow transform into a full sonnet, an entire symphony. “We need to talk.”
“Y-Yeah, that’s why I, uh, called?”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Viktor waits for Yuuri to continue and it takes a while, but he does eventually start speaking again.
“I’m sorry for running out on you like that,” Yuuri says. “And I’m sorry for not picking up, the past few days. And I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything back, but I want you to know––”
“It’s okay,” Viktor says. He sits down at the edge of his bed. “You don’t have to say it back, I understand. I wasn’t expecting you to say it back, when I said it.”
“I’m not saying it back because I think it’s what you want to hear,” Yuuri says firmly. “I’m saying it because I mean it. I love you, Viktor.”
The hungry, love drunk thing masquerading as Viktor’s heart screams. Viktor wills it to calm down.
“I love you, too, Yuuri. So much.” His voice is steady, but there are tears streaming down his face. He’s not sure if they’re tears of joy or not. He’s honestly just feeling very overwhelmed. “Too much. I’m so in love with you, but solnyshko. What do we do now?”
“We, uh, date? I think we date. I’m not sure.”
“I am, at this moment, almost an entire lightyear away from you.”
“Well,” Yuuri says slowly, “at the very least, I think we hold the record for farthest long distance relationship in history.”
Viktor bursts with a surprised laugh. He keeps laughing until his belly aches and Georgi comes in to check on him.
“Everything okay, Captain?”
“Everything is glorious, Georgi,” Viktor says, grinning. He raises his tablet in one hand. “I have a boyfriend now.”
“Oh.” Georgi raises his voice a little. “Hello, Yuuri.”
“Hi, Georgi.”
Georgi leaves and Viktor realises he’s crying again. He switches over to video with Yuuri.
“I miss you now,” Viktor says, “and I’m going to miss you a lot in the future.”
Yuuri switches on his video feed, too. Viktor notices that he’s wearing Viktor’s flight jacket, the one he gave him before he left. “Chris is going to be so smug when we tell him.”
“We should probably thank him, for putting up with both of us.” Viktor wipes his eyes. “Mostly me. I’m a handful.”
“Nothing either of us can’t handle,” Yuuri replies easily. Then, his expression shifts to something a little more somber. “You sounded so sad when you told me you loved me.”
“I am sad. I wish–– well. We can get to it some other time. I want a lot of things, for us, many of which are impossible.”
“I want to hear about them,” Yuuri says, and it’s astounding how deliriously in love he is, “I want to hear about every one of your impossible dreams about us. Start with the dogs. What kind of dogs would we have?”
It starts like this:
Viktor tells him about everything he was thinking during those long training sessions back when they first met. He tells Yuuri about how calming he finds his voice. He tells him about almost staying, almost telling Yuuri how he felt right before he left. That makes Yuuri cry.
“I’m the worst boyfriend in the entire universe,” Viktor says, panic rising in his voice. “I’m always making you cry.”
“I’m not–– it’s n-not your fault,” Yuuri sobs. He swipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his sweater. The inside of his apartment is bathed in a warm sunset. “I just wish things were different.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Okay. But I am sorry, though.”
Yuuri flashes him a fond smile through his tears. “You never follow my instructions.”
“I always follow your instructions,” Viktor says, smiling back. “Otherwise I’d die in the cold vacuum of space!”
Yuuri’s small smile drops completely. He starts crying harder.
“Ah.” Viktor winces. “Bad joke?”
“T-The worst.”
“See? I’m not good at this––” Viktor waves a hand–– “I’m not good at being a boyfriend.”
“I don’t need you to be my boyfriend,” Yuuri says, still hiccuping with tears. “You say that like it’s a whole identity. I don’t need you to be ‘My Boyfriend’ I need you to Viktor, who just happens to be my boyfriend.”
“That’s–– oh,” Viktor says quietly. “I can do that.”
Yuuri laughs wetly. “I love you, Vitya.”
“Even though I keep making you cry?”
“Even though you make me cry,” Yuuri confirms. “Even though you never follow instructions and you care more about finding aliens than filing your lab report. Even though we’ll never see each other again.”
One night, Viktor wakes up in a cold sweat and realizes that he’ll die without feeling the sun on his face, one last time.
The homesickness embeds itself into his bones and fills his lungs. He cries himself back to sleep, thinking about Uona’s foreign soil and twin suns.
It’s one in the morning, Yuuri’s time, when Viktor calls him one day. They keep the channel open for eight hours straight, as Yuuri sleeps. By the time Viktor is finishing up his experiments, Yuuri is waking up again.
Yuuri wakes up in stages, like a computer booting up. Viktor thinks it’s adorable.
He allows himself to imagine it, getting to wake up next to Yuuri everyday.
Viktor thinks he could grow to love early mornings, purely because he’d get to share them with Yuuri.
He imagines the secure curl of Yuuri’s body next to his, the way their ankles would interlock beneath the sheets. He thinks about the way the sunlight would filter in through the windows in Yuuri’s bedroom, pure white sunlight spilling across the sheets and over their faces. They’d be delicate in the early morning light, creatures made for lazy kisses tangled up in the duvet.
Or maybe, Viktor thinks, he’d wake Yuuri up with breakfast in bed. He’d cook in their kitchen, trying hard not to drop anything or clang any pans together. Yuuri would like that, to be waken up to the sweet smell of pancakes, the steam from a fresh cup of tea spiralling upwards and fogging up his glasses.
Viktor would be good, for Yuuri. He’d be so good, just like how Yuuri is already so good to him
Yuuri gets ready for his day and Viktor gets ready for bed, banishing all his impossible dreams from his head. He falls asleep with Yuuri’s voice echoing in his ears, spotty over the slow connection as Viktor hurtles farther and farther away from him.
Sara brings their very first team D&D session to a close. They’re heroes complete their quest and go home to their families.
She asks them if they want to start another campaign, but everyone but Mila declines. The ending hits a little too hard for Viktor.
He can’t keep pretending he’s okay.
He calls Yuuri later that night, like he always does.
“I thought there was nothing on that entire planet for me,” Viktor mumbles. He flashes Yuuri a small, sleepy smile. “Until I met you.”
Yuuri blushes. Viktor thinks it makes him look divine.
“During the application process, they have us a psych eval,” Viktor continues, “and one of the questions was asking about what we’d be leaving behind, what reasons we’d have for staying. I didn’t have an answer for that one, back then, but if they’d ask me again now, well. It would be you. You’re my reason for staying.”
“No.”
Viktor makes a pained noise. “No?”
“No,” Yuuri corrects gently, “I’m not your reason for staying, I’m your reason for coming home.”
Viktor’s heart breaks.
“Yuuri, solnyshko, you know I can’t––”
“Actually, Vitya, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
Viktor calls an emergency meeting. He switches on the artificial sunlight generator and broadcasts a ship wide announcement, blaring Wannabe by the Spice Girls on the loud speaker because he knows it’s the quickest way to get Yuri on the bridge without physically dragging him out of bed.
Mila comes in first, huffing in annoyance. Sara has her arms wrapped tightly around Mila’s middle, shuffling in with her eyes closed like she’s still asleep. Georgi sits down at the conference table, still in his work clothes. Viktor suspects he’ll have to give him another lecture about working himself too hard. Yuri sprints right past Viktor to the control panel and shuts off the music, cursing loudly. Chris doesn’t even come fully into the bridge. He leans his hip against the edge of the door port so it doesn’t slide closed again.
“What’s going on? It’s, like, four in the morning Viktor. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Please sit down Chris.”
Chris raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so this is serious?”
Viktor nods.
“Is something wrong?” Mila asks, concern replacing the lingering traces of sleep from her eyes. “Is it the ship? Our supplies?”
“No, nothing’s wrong, but––”
“But what?” Yuri butts in. His voice is loud and grating, but Viktor can see the underlying fear in his eyes. Sometimes Viktor forgets just how young he is. How young they all are.
“We have an offer,” Viktor says slowly, “from home.”
All five of them perk up at the mention of Earth. Viktor takes a deep breath.
“I’ve noticed something, over the past year,” he starts, “and maybe Chris can confirm this for me, but it seems like we’re all a little homesick.”
Chris makes eye contact with Viktor. He nods.
“I think,” Viktor continues, “I think I’m not only speaking for myself when I say that this mission isn’t quite what we were expecting.”
The room is silent. Sara and Mila seem to be having their own conversation solely through small nods and nudges. Georgi is worrying at his bottom lip, the way he does when he’s not happy with the results of an experiment. Chris reaches over and takes Viktor’s hand.
More silence, and then:
“I want to go back to school.”
Viktor’s gaze snaps over to Yuri, who is glaring fiercely at the table, his hands fisted in his lap. Despite the severe expression, there’s a certain forlornness in the slope of his shoulders, a quiet melancholy in the fall of his hair.
“I-I’m not saying I’m not way smarter than all of you,” Yuri says loudly. “And I know in my psych eval I said there was nothing left for me to learn on Earth, but––”
He looks up at Viktor.
“I was wrong. There’s a lot I don’t know–– a lot that I want to know. I want to–– to––”
Yuri looks frantically at Chris.
“Go on and say it,” Chris says, “no one will laugh. Tell them what you told me last week.”
Yuri swallows thickly. “I want to go to culinary school. Like my dedushka.”
“Oh, Yura, that’s a wonderful idea,” Mila murmurs.
“I want to go to the beach!” Georgi blurts out. “I want to feel sand again. I want to feel sunlight, real Earth sunlight.”
“I miss my brother,” Sara whispers. “It was a stupid fight. I should have said sorry before I left, I should have––”
“I forgot to tell my dad I was leaving and h-he never called––” Mila says.
“I gave up my cat before I left. I want to pet her again, she was always so soft and fluffy, her fur was like snow––”
“Snow! I want to see snow again! I want to visit Russia––”
“–– because I don’t know if anyone has been leaving flowers at my mother’s grave––”
“––and I never saw the Eiffel Tower, before we left––”
“–– doesn’t know how much I miss him––”
The noise builds and builds, a cacophony of longing bursting forth from their throats without control. Viktor finds himself throwing in his regrets, almost without thinking. It started in whispers and grows into shouts, until they’re yelling, sobbing, banging their fists on the table. The void swallows up their despair, dark and unforgiving outside their ship.
“Viktor,” Yuri says quietly, amidst the chaos, “Viktor, I want to go home.”
“We can.”
Everyone stops talking. They turn towards Viktor, the hope in their eyes burning brighter than a supernova.
“There’s a plan,” Viktor tells them, hoping to whatever deity is listening that it all works out, “they gave us a plan. We can go home but only if everyone––”
“It’s unanimous,” Mila says sharply. “I’m pretty sure it’s unanimous, or did I imagine the last five minutes?”
“It’s tricky,” Viktor warns, “and dangerous. And it’ll take us another year to get back, minimum. Yuuri said he was only beginning to calculate––”
“We’re doing it, fuck the math.”
“Well, no, the math is keeping us alive so––”
“Shut up!” Yuri yells, but he’s laughing this time. “Shut up! We’re going home!”
The slingshot around Uona is tricky, but they make it.
Thanks to Yuuri’s math.
“Katsudon, when we get back I’m going to cook you so much piroshki you’ll hate me,” Yuri says.
“Ah, Yura, I could never hate you,” Yuuri replies. The bags under his eyes are deeper than the Pacific ocean. Viktor still thinks he’s lovely, washed out in the holo video feed.
“I can’t wait to punch you in your big dumb face,” Yuri replies, then they have to end the call because the connection is weak.
There’s a point during the slingshot, where they’re caught in Uona’s gravity and shooting around the curvature of it, when Viktor looks out the view port and down at the world they were supposed to call a new home. It looks remarkably Earth-like from up here.
And then they’re past the literal turning point, springing free and racing back the way they came.
Back home.
In the year it takes them to get back to Earth, the crew of the History Maker celebrates:
- Five birthdays (Dec 25, 2079; Dec 26, 2079; Feb 14, 2080; Feb 22, 2080; Mar 1, 2080; Sep 13, 2080)
- The Curiosity rover’s birthday (Aug 5, 2080)
- Hanukkah (Dec 18- Dec 25, 2079)
- Christmas (Dec 25, 2079)
- Mila and Sara’s engagement (Jan 1, 2080)
- Their homecoming (Dec 25, 2080)
The moment they break into the Earth’s atmosphere, Viktor starts crying.
He makes the smoothest damn landing in human history. There’s no way they came all this way only to crash in a fiery disaster because Viktor forgot to pull down the landing gear.
He vibrates with excitement, standing shoulder to shoulder with his crew, waiting for the loading doors to open. He stares hard at the seam of metal, the thick hull that protected them for two years. He can hear the ground crew working outside. They clang around, messing with the shields and the wings. They start towing the ship into its special hangar, the one they never thought they’d use again. It’s an eternity of waiting and then––
The doors open. There’s a figure, standing just outside the hangar, in a lab coat and jeans, wearing clunky blue glasses, tears streaming down his face. There’s Viktor’s favorite parts of the entire universe condensed down into a figure, waiting for him patiently.
Viktor breaks into a sprint.
“Welcome home, Vitya.”