Chapter Text
Yuuri awoke in searing pain. Absolutely everything hurt, no exceptions. His head, his feet, his legs, his back, his eyes – not that he’d even opened them yet – and even his skin hurt. He knew he deserved it – a failure of an athlete as he was.
He only had dim memories of what had happened. Or, to be more specific, he had very CLEAR memories of what was likely the worst competition of his life, start to finish. He remembered failing his short program, remembered the call from Mari about Vicchan, remembered the disgusting performance that was his free program, remembered how a JUNIOR skater had found him crying in the bathroom and chewed him out for it.
Remembered being offered a ‘commemorative photo’ by the one man he’d idolised since childhood. Remembered being dragged to a banquet he hadn’t wanted to go to… and he remembered booze. So yes, the hangover he was suffering through felt like something he DESERVED. Well and truly deserved. Forcing his eyes open against the harsh light of the morning sun, the sting of it nearly blinding him for a moment.
When his vision cleared, he absent-mindedly realised that in order to see past the tip of his nose, he’d need his glasses. Fumbling around on the bedside table for them, he cursed when they were nowhere to be found. Indeed, glancing over the edge of the bed and fumbling around on his pillow didn’t reveal them either.
He cursed again, louder this time. He didn’t know where his spare pair was – how did one lose glasses anyway? He was LITERALLY supposed to wear them ON HIS FACE. Then again, he’d had that sort of week, hadn’t he?
A soft chuckle made him rear up in his bed, his bleary eyes focusing on the vague outline of another person in the room. That was… problematic. He didn’t normally sleep around, wasn’t the type for one-night-stands, and he certainly had no idea who he could have dragged to his room with him. Or why they were still there the next morning.
The person was sitting in a chair at the foot-end of the bed, most likely wearing a suit, going by the colour and outline he could make out. That was already a bad start – whatever small hope he’d had that it was just his coach was dashes instantly. Even without his glasses he could see that this wasn’t Celestino.
He swallowed thickly, resisting the urge to squint – it wouldn’t make enough of a difference, would only make him look foolish. At least the chuckle had sounded male. That was slightly less horrible than the alternative.
Desperately looking for something to say, a greeting, anything other than the raw pounding in his head, he cursed again. “Glasses?” He finally managed to say, spurring the other man into action. Disturbing action. In what looked like a very sleek movement, he slid from the chair to the bed and crawled towards Yuuri. On all fours, like a cat might.
And really, he didn’t need more than a few seconds to figure it out – there were only so many men with silver hair at the Grand Prix. His headache intensified. Victor Nikiforov was in his room. Was on his bed. Was crawling towards him. Was… wearing his glasses?
Yuuri’s fingers clumsily picked the frames from his face when he came into reach, putting them on as if they would reveal a different picture, somehow. He shivered. “You are… Victor Nikiforov.”
He was half-hoping the person in his bed would deny it, because surely a look-alike made more sense than the actual living Victor being in his bed, a smirk on his face?
“Yes, I am. And you are Yuuri Katsuki.”
A stab of anger ran through him – apparently NOW Victor knew his name? Ridiculous. “What were you doing with my glasses?” He asked. Defuse. Change the topic. Distract. He could practically taste his panic attack already.
Victor’s smirk only got worse – better? “I was looking after them for you, of course! Don’t you think they suit me?”
“No.” He answered before he could stop himself. Victor – Nikiforov, the one in his bed, somehow – looked distinctly surprised.
Yuuri rubbed a hand across his forehead.
“...No?”
He groaned at the man’s tone. “No. Uh, the blue frames, they don’t go with your eyes. Your eyes are a much better shade of blue.” He cursed again – he’d been trying to say brighter, not better. Of course he THOUGHT it was a better shade of blue, but who was he to say so?
The Victor mirage in his bed smirked again, crawled closer until he had enough space to sit, his legs splayed out to one side, next to Yuuri. In his bed.
“Why are you, uh, here?”
“Don’t you remember, Yuuri?” His tone was teasing but unfortunately, Yuuri did NOT remember, had absolutely no idea whatsoever.
This seemed to rather displease the man in his bed, if his frown was anything to go by. Before he could reply, ask for clarification, his stomach lurched, and he leapt out of bed, straight across the room and for the bathroom. He made it just in time for his stomach to try to crawl out of his throat.
He was only vaguely aware of a warm hand settling on his back, rubbing gentle circles as he threw up several times. For all that he felt better for it afterwards, he was also all too aware of the identity of the person comforting him.
Victor. He didn’t have to look back to know he was crouched down next to Yuuri, mumbling soothing nothings in Russian while Yuuri made even more of a fool of himself than he already had. It only got worse from there. Victor brought him a glass of water for him to rinse his mouth with, offered him two aspirin and helped him to the sink so he could brush his teeth all without Yuuri having to ask for a single thing.
To say he was shell-shocked would be the understatement of the century. He allowed himself to be led, ignoring the pain as he cleaned himself up as best as he could. Quickly washing his hair and brushing his teeth certainly made him feel better though, so that by the time he came out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his neck since his hair was still wet, he actually felt like a human being again.
That lasted exactly until he reached his bed and simultaneously realised three things. Firstly, Victor was sitting on his bed, leaning against the headboard, the first few buttons of his shirt undone, looking for all the world as if he just dropped down from one of the posters on Yuuri’s walls.
Then, Victor was holding his phone – more than, he was playing with it, meaning he’d unlocked it, meaning either he knew the passcode or had guessed it. Neither were great options given that the code was his own birthday, the 25th of December.
The third realisation was perhaps the worst – Yuuri was naked. Well, not entirely naked, he WAS wearing his usual pair of black briefs… but other than that, he was wearing skin and a towel around his neck. Had he not been busy feeling like death, he would have probably blushed to the point of passing out.
“Feeling better?” Victor asked, as if he HADN’T just humiliated himself even further.
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it. You slept quite late, didn’t you?”
“What time is it?”
Victor glanced at the phone. “Ten to eleven. Do you always sleep this late?”
Yes.
“No, of course not.”
Victor just hummed.
“Victor… why are you in my bed?” The man looked around himself as if he’d somehow not noticed that he was sitting in another competitor’s hotel bed.
As if. “Hm? Oh, I’m simply here to make good on your challenge from last night.”
He sighed. “Challenge?”
A positively predatory smile spread out on his face, entirely different from his usual empty smile, and different from his ‘I won gold’ expression too. It was… sexy, to put it simply. He crawled forwards again, towards Yuuri and by all rights, it should have looked completely ridiculous, except it was like every wet dream Yuuri had ever had.
He was perfectly hypnotised by the man as he reached the edge of the bed, mere inches away from Yuuri’s body.
"I can’t believe you don’t remember last night, I’m hurt, Yuuri!” The man’s pout was obviously fake, though the pure panic Yuuri felt at his words was not.
“Victor… what happened last night?”
" Oh? You’d like to know? I suppose I could tell you...”
“Victor!” His voice came out harsher than intended, more of a bark than a whine, and he didn’t miss the tense expression on the other’s face. It was gone after a moment, his earlier smirk back.
“Well, where to begin. You had a few too many at the banquet. You challenged Yuri Plisetsky to a dance-off and wiped the floor with him. You challenged Chris to a dance-off, wiped the floor with him too. Then you made me dance with you. Tango, paso doble. THEN I took you to your room because you refused to go with your coach.”
Victor shifted closer, so close he could feel his breath ghost over Yuuri’s skin. “Then, here, you kissed me, shoved me against that door there-” He pointed at the door to the hallway. “You picked me up threw me on the bed… and when I tried to go along with it, started taking off your pants, you stopped me.”
Yuuri was relatively certain that he was going to die from complete shock at absolutely any moment. Instead, Victor simply reached out and warm hands settled on his hips, pulling him until his legs were flush with the bed and Victor was leaning up, using Yuuri’s body for balance.
“Do you want to know what you did next?”
He really, really didn’t.
He nodded.
“Welllll, you told me that you weren’t that easy, that if I wanted you to fuck me, I’d have to work for it.”
He whimpered in humiliation. Not only had he half-assaulted the man… he’d then told HIM that HE had to work for it?
He belonged in a jail, or possibly an asylum. Things couldn’t POSSIBLY get worse.
“You… said something about a challenge?”
Victor chuckled, a low, breathy sound that made Yuuri’s toes curl. “Ah yes… you challenged me to prove to you that I was worth it.”
He blinked. That… made very little sense. Even drunk out of his mind, Yuuri was well-aware of just how much he adored Victor – never in a million years would he say something outrageous like that.
Even in Yuuri’s own FANTASIES he was sometimes too shy to actually converse with the other, to the point where he had brought himself off to a still image of him more times than he could count. “And… that’s why you’re here now?” He asked, hoping that at some point, the puzzle pieces would slot into place.
“Of course, Yuuri! How could I ignore such a challenge? Don’t you know me at all? I thought you were supposed to be my fan...” Without him noticing, Victor had somehow shifted off the bed and had forced Yuuri to step back enough that they were standing chest to chest, expensive suit to bare skin.
He remembered he was mostly naked and dove past the other man, into his suitcase. He’d never put clothes on faster than at that moment. When he turned back to Victor, the man looked… displeased to say the least. Good. That made SENSE. Anger. He could work with that.
“You’re getting DRESSED?”
“I… well, yes. Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?”
Victor huffed and crossed his arms. “Fine. We can discuss this while we have breakfast together.” Yuuri dropped the sock he had been holding. Picking it back up, he had to fight a wave of nausea.
“Victor… I just threw up. I apparently said completely outrageous things to you, behaved horribly and you somehow WANT to have breakfast with me?”
The Russian nodded patiently.
“Okay… why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Yuuri spoke two languages with perfect fluency and knew the basics of a few more. Not a single one of them had words for how NOT obvious it was. Of course, all his tortured head managed was a weak whine.
"It’s not.” The other man’s lips tightened into a thin line.
“Well, it’ll be obvious soon enough? I have a challenge to meet after all.”
Yuuri put his foot down – literally, in order not to fall over.
“Look, I absolutely can’t remember what happened last night, but whatever this challenge is… obviously you don’t have to do it. In fact, I have no idea why you’re even here.”
Victor stepped closer, easily invading his personal space. “Oh Yuuri… I DO have to do it. I’m not about to let you get away from me so easily.”
“Let ME get away? Victor… I…” The other man gave him a long, searching look. Yuuri held still until he seemed to come to some kind of conclusion. Next thing he knew, he found his wrist snatched and pulled and he was stumbling after Victor, barely putting on shoes on the way out.
They walk – well, Yuuri stumbles – to the elevator. He casts a hesitant glance into the mirror installed in the elevator as Victor presses a button. He looks… like death. Like an insult next to the perfect as always Victor. “Where to…?” He mumbled, suddenly tongue-tied.
“Hm? My room. I’ll order us room-service. I don’t think you’re up for a restaurant.” It was blunt, yes, but it was also… strangely considerate. Yuuri suddenly felt ravenous.
"That… would be nice.” Victor gave him a dazzling smile – not the kind Yuuri had seen him give reporters. This was different… warmer.
He relaxed, despite himself.