Archive of Our Own

Victor’s hands are on him as soon as they cross the threshold of Yu-topia.

They’re supporting one another as they slip out of their shoes, Yuuri’s trainers kicked half over a neat lines of slippers in his hurry to help Victor out of his loafers. Laughing, Victor steadies himself on Yuuri’s shoulder, reaching down to pull the last shoe off by the heel. He smiles up into Yuuri’s eyes, from just those few inches down, and Yuuri swears he is flying again.

Then he thinks of those lips, kissing his fingers—no, his ring finger—in the airport and he has to look away, up into the shadows, the beams of the ceiling, before he spontaneously combusts. Or cries.

Closely, they follow and lead each other down the inn’s narrow hallways. Makkachin scrambles between them, hopping up for attention against the backs of Victor’s legs. Victor turns to the dog, another irrepressible smile on his face. This one softer, it grows as Makkachin bounds back to Yuuri and headbutts his knees. Yuuri manages to tear his eyes away from it—just—and is so busy crouching down to scruff his hands through the thick fur around the dog’s face that he misses Victor turning to open the sliding door to his room, that little spare banquet hall that will probably always be “Vicchan’s room” to the Katsuki family. There’s a quick scrape, and then a short silence.

Yuuri glances upward, one hand still on Makkachin. “Victor…?”

Victor is looking down at him, a little askance. In that soft undertone, the one that sets an uneasy, glorious tremor through Yuuri, Victor says, “I was thinking… She could sleep here tonight? She’s been with me constantly for the last couple days, she’ll be okay without me for a few hours.”

It’s what Victor doesn’t say, of course, that sends the blood rushing to Yuuri’s face. Tonight’s endgame had been implied, foreshadowed in that long airport embrace and then heavily suggested by their stumbling together in the genkan. Isn’t it a little embarrassing to have Victor articulate it, though, even obliquely…?

No, he decides. It isn’t embarrassment—or even shyness—that he feels pulsing in his veins, now.

Yuuri unwinds his fingers from Makkachin’s fur, and stands up slowly.

“…Take care of her, and I’ll be right back.” Then he clarifies, “Meet me in my room?”

Victor flashes him a grin at this—a little surprised but all genuine, the eyes above it very bright in the darkness. And before Yuuri can ruin his own display of confidence, he turns around and steps away quickly in the direction of the washroom.

He manages to meet his own eyes in the mirror over the sink. He’s a little mussed—alright, a lot mussed from the long flight. But he’s also flushed and, in his ever more confident estimation, reasonably appealing. Enough that he doesn’t feel completely ridiculous as he starts to wash up.

Distracting himself as he does, he can only think how strange it is, how wonderfully strange, that Victor came to meet him at the airport. That he rode with him on the train, thighs pressed closely together in a mostly-empty train car. That he is waiting for Yuuri, right now, in his room. By his bed.

The world may not believe it, but since China, they have not slept together.

Other things, yes. But the short, mostly-unsuccessful nap before his free skate had been the last time they actually shared a bed.

And even that had been a lot less exciting than Phichit’s Instagram account suggested.

They’ve grown ever more cozy since the spring, when Yuuri had hugged Victor before the Hot Springs on Ice event—the hug that had apparently popped the seal and turned Victor Nikiforov into the unstoppable cling-monster he is today. The constant contact had simmered away for months, a barely stable equilibrium. And when Victor had kissed him (for the first time ever, on international television, the exhibitionist), it broke the surface tension over a reciprocal monster inside Yuuri. A hungry thing, that beast: one that begged him to eat lest he be eaten.

He’d been too shocked—by himself, almost more than by Victor—to do anything about it in China, but once they’d landed back in Japan, all bets had been off. Victor had invited him in. Yuuri had accepted every invitation and initiated a few of his own, more than a few of them resulting in intimate encounters. Of various shades. But all of them playful, slow.

Exploratory.

Still, they’ve not actually slept for a whole night in the same bed. Even while traveling, though they shared a room, it was a room with two twins. He let Victor think it was because he was shy. But he was keeping close to his chest the real reason: that he didn’t trust himself to share a bed with Victor and not lose himself altogether.

Yuuri decides that this changes tonight.

As he pads quietly back down the hall, he thinks on the man who’d agreed to wait for him, to stay with him—and knows he’s not unjustified in believing this decision to be a mutual one.

Victor is already there, of course, when Yuuri pokes his head around the door to his room. (He’d known, but irrational fear was a hell of a thing and a hard habit to break.) He stood almost in the center of the small space, outlined in silver moonlight. It caught in his hair, shone over his profile and in the ice blue of his eyes trained somewhere in the middle distance. Over the absent little smile on his lips. His arms are crossed over his chest, the muscles there all corded, whiplike, where he’s pushed the long sleeves up over his forearms; and his feet are bare, toes tapping a little against the fuzz of the area rug.

Yuuri lets his eyes drag over Victor’s form one more time, from toe to tip, and then opens the door all the way.

“What are you staring at?”

Victor looks to him eagerly, still smiling. “The faded paint. On the wall—it looks like you used to have a lot of posters in here. I did too, when I was a teenager, I mean. What did you have…?”

“N-nothing you’d recognize,” Yuuri interrupts, a little quickly. His heartbeat catches as he steps through the threshold—this time, admittedly, with a shot of embarrassment—but he holds Victor’s gaze.

He continues holding it as he presses his back up against the door, making sure Victor sees it when he reaches back to click the lock into place. Next, he reaches up—slowly—and takes off his glasses. Victor maintains eye contact with him, watches every movement with care. Yuuri is sure of that, as he takes a half-step forward and sets the plastic frames against his desk, muscle memory ensuring the lenses keep from scratching against its wood surface.

As he had in the terminal hours before, Victor holds out his arms for Yuuri—but it’s hardly needed, now. They are already wrapped up in one another, Victor’s hands cupping Yuuri’s face as Yuuri goes up on his toes to bring their mouths together. He grabs onto Victor’s shoulders, pulling himself up even further and letting out a grunt of a breath when Victor nudges his jaw wide for easy access. Their faces are pressed so tightly against one another, tight enough that Victor’s nose might be digging into Yuuri’s face a little—but it’s a blur, a good one, and all he can feel is Victor, Victor’s tongue against his own, Victor’s fingernails skimming down the back of his neck.

Yuuri drags his fingers over Victor’s sides, flicking his tongue against Victor’s mouth just before he flicks his fingers underneath Victor’s shirt, where it’s come untucked. He pulls the rest of it free, and then starts to work at the buttons.

While Victor leans away to pull the shirt off each of his shoulders, Yuuri grabs the back of his own collar and all but rips the shirt over his head. It’s cold, was on the plane just as it was in Moscow, so he’s wearing another layer, and he impatiently yanks that off as well. When his face comes free, Victor is grinning at him, amused. Yuuri blushes again—and his face gets hotter when Victor smoothly sinks to his knees, his hands coming to frame Yuuri’s hips. Helpless, Yuuri’s hands grip the older man’s shoulders.

Victor looks up into his eyes while he undoes the button and zipper on Yuuri’s jeans. He only breaks eye contact as he helps Yuuri slide out of them. Yuuri watches the muscles in Victor's bare shoulders move, and makes it a point to remember to ask Victor to take that own undershirt—as soon as he can un-swallow his tongue. In the meantime, knowing he looks ridiculous, he crouches down, too, uses Victor as a support as he takes off his own socks.

Then he’s standing there in front of his idol turned coach turned lover, in nothing but his boxers.

And Victor has the nerve to look up at him with stars in his eyes. Like Victor feels like the lucky one.

“C-come up here…”

Yuuri’s voice breaks a little as he tries to urge Victor to his feet. Victor, who does’t need any prompting, presses a kiss over Yuuri’s hipbone and then stands.

A tangle of push and pull leads them to the bed. Between grasping limbs Victor skillfully pulls off the last layer separating the skin of his chest from Yuuri’s (without any verbalized request—Yuuri could sing about how in synch he and Victor are tonight, he’s so buoyant) and maneuvers them until they’re laying against the dark blue coverlet, one on top of the other, his forearms bracketing Yuuri’s head.

They continue kissing, Yuuri barely having time to register that the reason Victor’s hands aren’t cupping his face as they usually do when they make out is because he’s busy balancing his weight on one arm and using the other to wriggle out of his own slacks, kicking out of them and then kicking the discarded wool out of the way. Soon enough, he feels the reason for Victor’s urgency, hard against his hip. He breathes harshly against Victors mouth, realizing that his own erection is pressing firmly against the other man.

Victor rears back a little, the sound of their disconnecting a distinct, absurd pop. “Too much?”

Yuuri rolls away at this—but as he does, mutters a firm, “No.” With an almost distracted air, he removes his boxers. He misses Victor doing the same—and this stings only a little bit; he’s seen him get dressed and undressed a hundred times before, at the rink and at the onsen.

He thinks Victor would put them back on and let Yuuri watch him undress, if he asked him. He thinks Victor might do anything he asked of him, right now.

Either way, Yuuri barely has to turn and stretch out his arms to reach into the drawer by his bedside, from which he retrieves condoms and lube. Tossing them lightly toward the middle of the bed, he goes back to Victor, whose face is all surprise but who meets him with an eager mouth and an ever more eager set of hands. He digs his fingernails into the small of Yuuri’s back as he pulls him closer.

Throwing one knee over Victor’s naked hip, Yuuri straddles him and presses their bodies close together. He feels the hard muscles in Victor’s thighs tense under the backs of his own, and he continues the snakelike movement, constricting it for everything it’s worth, until it sounds like Victor has no breath left in him. They’re not quite at eye-level, like this, so it’s easy for Yuuri to reach out and bury his fingers in the short hair at the back of his partner’s head, for Victor to lean forward and drag his teeth over Yuuri’s collarbone.

“Like this?” Victor all but gasps against him.

Yuuri nods impatiently.

Victor gives a half-chuckle, but pulls back to look Yuuri in the face. “I want to make sure. It’s your first time, isn’t it? You don’t want to top?”

Yuuri is not surprised by the generosity, but his mouth still drops open. Knowing how hard he’s blushing now, Yuuri makes himself say it: “I’d be too shy.”

Victor actually looks shocked. “You don’t have to be shy! You’re gorgeous, I’d consider myself lucky to-”

“Nervous, then,” Yuuri babbles—almost giggles, too turned on to even process the high compliments Victor is paying him. He smooths his thumbs over Victor’s cheeks and narrows his eyes a little so he can more clearly see the man under him when he says, “I… You’re right, I’m not shy, really. Just… I think it’ll feel good. And I don’t mind you teaching me, at first.”

Victor’s cheeks color a bit—and Yuuri is silently pleased. He’s learned a thing or two about the way Victor likes to be seduced; and the mixture of brazenness and innocence is always a winning combination.

Taking pity, though, and saving Victor from the need to answer, Yuuri brings one palm to rest against the side of Victor’s face and kisses him thoroughly. He breathes into the kiss when Victor reaches between them and lightly closes his fist over Yuuri’s cock, before trailing his fingers lower.

Yuuri is so eager—and practiced, at least at this part—that even when Victor sinks a second finger inside of him, it barely registers as a stretch. He’s breathing heavy by the third, but with anticipation—with longing.

“Now?” Victor asks.

Yuuri sets his chin against one of Victor’s shoulders and rolls forward, trapping Victor’s hand under the cage of his hips and using the leverage to force Victor’s fingertips against his front wall. He shakes, groaning—thinking, it’s probably loud against Victor’s ear. Victor, who lets Yuuri ride his fingers and uses his other hand to push down over Yuuri’s hip. Fingertips kneading the muscle there. Subtly suggesting his own rhythm already.

“Okay, yes, now,” Yuuri answers, finally.

Finally.

And Victor pulls his fingers out—taking his time, flicking his fingertips and teasing Yuuri as he does it, damn him—and then leans away for just a moment so he can find something to wipe his hand with. Yuuri waits—but not patiently—until Victor has the base of his own cock in one hand, holding himself steady and guiding Yuuri forward with the other hand at the small of his back.

There’s a warning in Victor’s eyes, though, and Yuuri leans in to kiss his forehead before Victor can articulate it.

That moment of sweetness renders the penetration easier. Yuuri moves; Victor’s hands steady him; Yuuri breathes unevenly as Victor sinks all the way to the hilt inside him. The last breath he gives is all ragged truth—all relief—before a long moment of stillness and silence.

Yuuri feels drunk on the contact. On the depth of their connection. On the way he can hear, as Victor breathes just under his ear, that Victor’s jaw is clenched tight.

Rolling forward, he lifts up and then drops down. His head tilts back almost of its own accord as he does it again. Arms wrapped tightly around his partner, he starts to circle his hips, chasing the contact, the friction. Victor meets him halfway once he establishes a rhythm, whipcord strength in the muscles of his arms refusing to let Yuuri do all the work.

He leans Yuuri backward, after several long moments of pulsing equilibrium; Yuuri has to throw one hand behind himself to keep his sense of control, finding Victor’s ankle and wrapping itself around the warmth. His other hand lands against the bedding, barely holding his weight up, slipping with each crest of the wave, when their hips connect.

Victor ends up laying him down so damn smoothly that he barely even notices until his back rests against the sheets that Victor is above him, between his legs, pinning him to the bed and hitching one of his legs higher. He wraps both of them around Victor, his body relentless in its pursuit of his climax—though a little broken gasp, almost a moan, escapes him when he does.

Victor says something in Russian—with a pet name, at least, that Yuuri recognizes.

“Mm?” he manages.

Victor presses his forehead against Yuuri’s as he switches back to English: “Don’t let me hurt you, love.”

The pet name remains the same, and Yuuri smiles. “You could never. Victor-”

He moans again, trying not to hear it and instead forcing his hips up against Victor as the other thrusts inside him. His next breath is desperate—and Victor must hear it, because he reaches between them and trails his fingers up, down, then around Yuuri’s cock.

It isn’t moments later that Yuuri bites down against a sound that he doesn’t recognize of himself—then comes with a familiar and yet altogether alien intensity.

Victor lets him chase it, each undulation of Yuuri’s hips losing velocity, until he tips his head back against the mattress and gives a long exhale, almost a whine. At the sound, though, Victor is set alight, the warmth of him inside Yuuri pulsing with a quick, jerking rhythm until he, too, comes to satisfaction, settling heavily against Yuuri just as Yuuri begins to wonder if he’ll have to beg for the other’s completion.

***

Yuuri is just starting to get comfortable again, burrowing against Victor’s side and one leg thrown over his, when Victor sits up.

“Come on,” he says, slipping away as Yuuri reflexively grabs for him.

“…huh?”

“Before you get too sleepy.” He holds his hands out, motions for Yuuri to get up. “Let’s go rinse off and then we can sleep.”

Yuuri closes his eyes on a defeated sigh, but reaches for Victor’s hands and lets himself be pulled out of the bed.

They chance it a little, wrapping themselves quickly in towels before stepping out into the hallway. The inn is all-but deserted at this time of year. Yuuri doesn’t even reach for his glasses when they leave the room, trusting his longest-term memories to guide him around corners, around even the squeakiest floorboards.

While it's normally pretty inconvenient, the one great thing about wearing a prescription is that without it, the world is something a little other. Blurry vision sets Yuuri into one of two mindsets: skating, or sleeping. Possibly three, after tonight—but regardless, even as they make their way through the dark, then into the tiled shower, he manages to stay in that liminal space between states of consciousness. Not quite alert, not quite asleep, not even quite in the hazy headspace of lovemaking, though Victor’s hands helping him wash are adding a couple points to that column.

Thoughts flicker in his mind like the fingers over his skin. Of Victor, mostly, but also of the tile, of the ground, of the two continents that have been under his feet in the last twenty-four hours. He thinks of lips against the fingertip on his left hand, the electric shot that is still ringing from it straight to his heart.

And as they stand under the warm water, he isn’t surprised and doesn’t try to hide it as his vision gets a little more bleary.

“Yuuri-”

“‘m happy,” he says, interrupting the other man before he can ask about the tears.

“Okay,” Victor says, on a slight hesitation but with a note of humor. “It’s just that… most people, if they’re going to cry, cry during the sex. Not after.”

Yuuri huffs and pushes him away a little. Then steps back into Victor’s space, away from the spray of the shower, and wraps his arms tight around his middle.

***

“You’re staying here?” Yuuri asks—even though that was the first thing they had taken care of tonight, with Makkachin in the other room and all.

Victor is threading his fingers through Yuuri’s bangs, slowly, lazily. He doesn't look like he’s going anywhere, not when he’s nestled against Yuuri underneath a pile of blankets and wearing one of Yuuri’s old t-shirts. Which fits—but only just.

“Of course. Unless you don’t want me to?”

Yuuri doesn’t hesitate. “I don’t ever want to sleep apart from you again.”

Stilling, Victor sucks in a breath through his nose. It’s a little like the gasp he gave when Yuuri had laced their fingers together before his short program at the China Cup. And Yuuri smirks minutely, hiding it by pressing his forehead to Victor’s shoulder and thinking, he’s glad that he can still surprise him.

Then Victor’s other arm around him squeezes a little tighter. “We’re gonna have to buy a bigger bed.”

Yuuri laughs a little, squeezing back. “Does Makkachin hog the blankets?”

“No, I do.”

“Hm. Maybe we can ask for it as a wedding present.”

Victor surprises Yuuri utterly by going silent. Then he’s pressing his face—which feels distinctly warm—against Yuuri’s neck.

“…You don’t think what I said in the airport was silly?”

Yuuri drums his fingers against Victor’s shoulder blades and tries to decide how to respond without the return, the exhausting display, of happy tears. After a moment, he shakes his head—to reassure Victor—but he still needs a minute to choke down the lump that rises in his throat.

After a long silence, Victor pulls away a little and meets his eyes. They are stark blue, even in the dim light. A little wide, a little unsure. A lot hopeful.

“Yuuri?”

He smiles. “I think that it was probably the least silly conversation we’ve ever had. And… thanks for saying it. For interpreting me, I mean. I wasn’t being a hundred percent clear.”

Victor leans forward even as he’s finishing the sentence and closes his lips over Yuuri’s.

As he drags himself backward, he says, “I think you said it perfectly, love.”