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Phichit meets Katsuki Yuuri at 9:37AM on a Thursday morning, approximately five hours after his disastrously prolonged trip to the United States has ended. Phichit knows this for a fact because two minutes later he’d said, “Selfie! Come here, Yuuri!” and tugged Yuuri in for the inaugural #waynestate selfie. “Who should I tag you as?” he’d asked Yuuri, who had said, “I don’t have an Instagram,” like the delicate, newly-opened flower that he was.
“That’s adorable,” Phichit had told him. “Oh, look, I’ve just checked and @katsuki-yuuri isn’t claimed, you need to grab it before somebody else does!”
“Uh,” Yuuri had said, blinking like a baby deer caught in the headlights of Grandma’s Hilux. “Okay?”
~
Detroit sucks, in many ways, but Phichit is determined to ignore all of that in favor of his delight in the experience. It may be a very ugly city--possibly the ugliest city that Phichit has ever seen, and he’s been to Sochi for World Juniors--but the art collection that they’d attempted to sell is very nice and all of the goals that Phichit had made before coming to the United States, like visiting all of the Starbucks in a four-block radius and taste-testing the difference between their soy chai lattes (#2), going to a Walmart (#7), and getting a selfie with every figure skater at the Detroit Skating Club (#9) doing funny faces (#10), seem attainable.
Maybe even, dare Phichit say it, too attainable.
“Well,” Yuuri says, when Phichit is lamenting this, “you could always focus on classes.”
They’re in Yuuri’s dorm room, which he shares with Bryan, No, Just Call Me Bryan, No, Really, and Phichit is on the floor, stretching his hamstring. It had felt tight after the morning’s practice, in a way that Phichit has learned not to ignore. If it doesn’t feel better after being stretched out and worse tomorrow, he’ll talk to one of the physical therapy staff members at the skating club.
“It’s only the third week!” Phichit says. “What’s there to focus on?”
“I have an essay due in three days,” Yuuri says. He’s been at his computer most of the afternoon, occasionally tuning in to hum attentively at things Phichit has read off of his phone and then gone back to typing furiously. His surprising reticence suddenly makes sense.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Phichit demands, sitting up too fast. His hamstring twinges in warning. “I would’ve left!”
“Oh,” Yuuri says, in that nervous near-chuckle that he has when he’s been caught doing something he feels that he shouldn’t, like riding the zamboni (America Goal #5: reproduce Ice Arena zamboni photo & surpass likes and comments!!) or stealing an entire pie out of the dining hall, which had not been a preplanned America Goal so much as a golden opportunity. “You don’t have to leave, Phichit-kun, I just meant--uh, that is--”
Phichit has know Yuuri for nearly a month and they’ve shared every meal as well as a dozen ice packs and half a pint of Blue Bunny at two-thirty in the morning. There are certain circumstances under which you get to know somebody very well, and freshman year of college is one of them, as it turns out. Sort of like going to war.
“I’ve got some reading for my English Lit class,” Phichit offers, steamrolling as gently as he can over the edge of Yuuri’s tangled sentence. “I’m gonna go get my stuff and come back, okay? Do you want anything?”
“Oh,” Yuuri says. Blink blink blink go his long, beautiful eyelashes. Phichit has seen Yuuri look out from underneath those eyelashes at the beginning of a free skate program and felt like he was being punched in the chest by innocence personified. It’s not a totally different experience when Yuuri is just sitting at his desk, wearing his hideous glasses. This is probably why Phichit has spent every meal and half of his pint of Fruity Fun with someone allergic to photographs and interpersonal communication. Yuuri says. “No, but thank you. I don’t need anything.”
When Phichit is waiting for the elevator down to the third floor, he thumbs open his reminders app and adds #15: New glasses for Yuuri onto his America Goals list.
~
Phichit and Yuuri’s first American football game leaves a lot to be desired, most of it comprehension. Chantelle, who teaches Skating for Beginners [Adult], overhears them whispering about it during their warm-ups and says, “That’s because the Lions suck ass.”
“Hey!” Celestino says. He’s lived in Detroit for twenty years and is married to someone who does something with sports merchandising--he and his wife have a really, really nice house--and the other skaters have told Phichit that he takes both American football and ice hockey very seriously. “Watch your mouth.”
“It’s true,” Chantelle says. She’s skating in lazy, backwards circles, cooling down after the last of her students have shuffled off to remove their skates and nurse their bruises, and she sticks her tongue out at Celestino. “The Lions are the worst and an embarrassment to Michigan.” She shrieks and takes off across the ice when Celestino makes to grab her. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here to yell for you--”
“Chantelle!” Celestino roars, and off he goes, Phichit and Yuuri left to warm up without supervision.
“--WIN OR LOSE, WE’LL ALWAYS SING YOUR PRAISES--” Chantelle shouts in vague melody. She’s a former hockey player and has the thighs to show for it, which means it’s easy for her to stay out of Celestino’s reach. He’ll need trickery to slow her down.
“I still don’t understand what a down is,” Yuuri says to Phichit.
America Goal #3: Watch American football & eat nachos!!! had included no mention of actually understanding what was happening, which meant that after Phichit and Yuuri had spent American Thanksgiving watching FOX on their dorm lounge’s enormous television, Phichit had been happy enough to cross it off his list as an accomplishment.
Yuuri, addicted to hard work, had been less convinced.
“--BRING THE BACON HOME TO--” Chantelle shrieks; Celestino tries to tackle her and they miss a dirty collision by a hairsbreadth.
“I just don’t think we should mark it as accomplished until we know what’s going on,” Yuuri says.
“But the point of American football is community and eating,” Phichit points out.
“--OOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLDDDDDD--”
“I’m sure somebody can explain it to us,” Yuuri says. “Americans love explaining things to foreigners.”
“--GREEEEEEEEEEEENN--”
Phichit, who had liked the microwave nachos from SNL Quick Stop just fine but found American football to be pretty boring, is nonetheless trapped. He says, “I guess,” and Yuuri tightly nods, eyebrows narrowing above his glasses.
“We’ll figure this out,” he says seriously, as Chantelle is cut off with a loud gurgle; Celestino has caught her and is yelling something about jinxes utilizing his impressive lung capacity. “No America Goal will be left unaccomplished, Phichit!”
“Yes!” Phichit shouts, punching a fist in the air. He may have zero interest in American football but Yuuri’s enthusiasm is always infectious. “And more nachos!”
“More nachos!” Yuuri yells, also raising his arms. “Go Lions!”
~
One of the nicest things about Yuuri--beyond his beautiful voice, soft sense of humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of every major figure skater in the last decade--is that, like Phichit, he hadn’t ever had a coach before coming to Detroit. There had been skating teachers, of course, and dance instructors who had been willing to spend some one-on-one time with Phichit, and he’d shared a coach with five other young skaters in Bangkok, but Phichit has never had anybody like Celestino.
The adjustment curve is rough; it’s nice that Phichit shares it with Yuuri, who is so very nervous and therefore incredibly, amazingly honest. Yuuri cries the first time Celestino corrects his leg extension, which makes Phichit feel better the first time he bursts into tears--luckily back in his dorm room with no witness except the sleeping body of his roommate, Chad Perkins--after a rough practice. Phichit cries silently for about twenty seconds, staring blurrily at Chad’s lumpy body, and then he rushes up the stairs to the seventh floor and cries into Yuuri’s arms.
“I cried too,” Yuuri tells Phichit, once he’s gotten his sobbing under control. “In the bathroom at the rink. I was sure somebody was going to walk in at any second.”
Yuuri doesn’t need to share this vulnerability with Phichit. It’s exactly like him to do it, though.
“Thank god!” Phichit says, laughing through a bunch of snot. He’s careful to keep his hand over his nose so none of it ends up on Yuuri’s sweater. “I thought it was just me who couldn’t handle it.”
“It’s hard,” Yuuri says thoughtfully. They’re both on Yuuri’s bed, wedged into the back corner so that there’s room for Yuuri’s enormous stuffed poodle, and Yuuri leans his head back to rest against the window behind him. “I always thought that I was my own harshest critic, and that nobody could say anything to me that I hadn’t already thought myself. It made it easier to live through the bullying if I thought that.”
This is, obviously, one of the saddest things Phichit has ever heard, and he can feel his eyes start to well up. “Oh, Yuuri!” he can’t help wailing.
“But Celestino sees many problems that I couldn’t,” Yuuri continues. “I haven’t been prepared for his criticisms.” His lower lip wobbles, dangerously; Phichit’s vision starts to go blurry. “But that’s why we have him!” Yuuri says, finally, his voice quavering with what is surely an effort to collect himself. “We’ll work hard and stop disappointing him!”
“Yeah!” Phichit cheers, and then he bursts into hiccuping sobs again. “Oh Yuuri, my poor son, why didn’t you tell me that you were bullied?!”
“It’s not--important,” Yuuri tries. Phichit tackles him into a hug that sends them both bouncing off of the gigantic stuffed poodle. “Did you just call me your son?”
“My tiny son!” Phichit wails. “We’ll work hard and both succeed, Yuuri!”
~
It turns out that the Walmart Supercentre across the river has a vision center, which means Phichit can cross two America Goals off of his list at one time. They take the 6, and then the TunnelBus, and then the 053, which is hardly the worst public transit experience Phichit has ever had but certainly subpar compared to the rest of the United States.
“I’m pretty sure we could’ve flown to New York City by now,” he says to Yuuri. “We could’ve bought you glasses from Versace or something.”
“I don’t want--Versace glasses?” Yuuri says. He hasn’t complained once about the bus transfers or the fact that it’s approximately -20C out. They may be figure skaters but they’re not Canadians.
Phichit says, “That’s why you have me.”
Walmart is incredible. Phichit has never seen anything so grey or sad before in his life, except maybe Detroit Metropolitan Airport. “Wow,” he says, and Yuuri says, also staring as though he can’t help himself, “It’s so--”
Yeah, it’s so.
It takes Yuuri and Phichit an hour to find the vision center. It’s an hour full of personal growth and discoveries; in Sports, Fitness & Outdoors, Yuuri literally kicks the tires on a series of road bikes and pronounced them overpriced and underwhelming, before remembering himself and looking around warily for an employee who could have overheard them. Phichit loses his head a little bit in the seasonal section and nearly buys a white artificial Christmas tree that’s 70% off--“It looks just like Chad Perkins!” he tells Yuuri, who says, palpably desperate, “Oh, look, candy canes!”--but settles instead of two bags of chocolate shaped like little fat reindeer. They mutually talk themselves into and then out of purchasing a set of badminton equipment for “summer conditioning.” Yuuri bonds, quickly and deeply, with a lost toddler they find in the toy section who wants more than anything to climb the shelves in pursuit of an Iron Man action figure at the very top.
“Do you think he’s an orphan?” Yuuri asks, looking like he’s ready to find the Walmart Child Adoption center and begin legal proceedings. Phichit, in the middle of offering the child the Iron Man action figure that makes noises versus the one it is already clutching, fetched by Yuuri, that lights up when you press its chest, looks up at Yuuri’s shining eyes and can’t help the bubbling font of affection that this sentence has engendered.
“No,” Phichit says, “but you’re a very admirable person, Yuuri.”
“How would we even know?” Yuuri asks. The child is not so much holding Yuuri’s hand as grasping the box that the light-up Iron Man is in, which Yuuri is holding from the other side. “We’ve gone hours without seeing anybody else. What if the store is closed? What if we’re trapped?”
“Walmart never closes,” Phichit says. Two of his sisters had gone to college in the U.S. before him and Phichit had grown up on their stories. “Just start yelling or something.”
“What?” Yuuri says, scandalized.
“Can you yell?” Phichit asks the toddler.
“Iron Man,” the toddler says, presumably, but Phichit can’t tell. It’s really cute and is wearing pristine little blue sneakers but it doesn’t have very advanced language skills.
“Yes, Iron Man,” Yuuri says to it. “Do you like Tony Stark?” He calls it something cute-sounding in Japanese and the toddler looks up at him and beams. Phichit whips out his phone so fast that he nearly sprains his shoulder.
They find the baby’s dad eventually--”Tony!” he shrieks, sprinting down the aisle with two older, sheepish-looking children in tow, and Yuuri hands the toddler and his action figure off with palpable reluctance--and then, exhaustion dogging their heels, they return to their search.
A truly indeterminate period of time later--Phichit’s phone has actually died, like it’s the Stone Age--they trudge down an aisle of laxatives and as they turn the corner they find themselves deposited into the vision center.
“Oh,” Yuuri says. He blinks a couple of times at the fluorescently back-lit displays of plastic frames and metal frames and the two free-standing racks of reading glasses.
Phichit, who this morning had been lit by such an incredible fire to replace Yuuri’s hideous glasses that he’d said, “Put on your coat, we’re going to Walmart!” with two thumbs up, does the same. “Eh,” he says.
“What’s wrong with my old glasses, again?” Yuuri asks.
The soles of Phichit’s feet hurt. This morning he had said, they’re too small for your face, Yuuri! You have beautiful eyes and they’re not shown off properly! but--Yuuri can still see, right? It’s not like they’re nonfunctional, they’re just ugly.
Yuuri and Phichit split the bag of chocolate reindeer at the bus stop, waiting for the next 053 or the river to freeze over--whichever one will come first.
“Next weekend,” Phichit says, chomping the head off of a reindeer, “we’re going to Target.”
~
Phichit wakes up the morning of his birthday and takes a quick selfie, flashing a peace sign. Happy sixteen!!!! he captions the Instagram post. Chad Perkins is visible in the background, staring vacantly into his laptop has he finishes his all-nighter for his anthropology midterm, but Phichit has a busy day planned and doesn’t have the time to arrange the lighting for a different angle.
Most of his sisters have responded by the time he’s made it to the rink for morning practice. One of them is in San Francisco, teaching kindergarteners, and she’s commented, Looking forward to this weekend~~~ with four hearts and three rocket ships.
“You’re sixteen?” is what Yuuri greets Phichit with, instead of “Happy birthday!” or even “I love your new shirt!”
“I wore this just for you,” Phichit says, pulling on the hem of his shirt so that Yuuri can see it better. Yuuri is fucking nuts for Chibi Maruko-chan, Phichit has his number.
“Yes,” Yuuri says impatiently, “it’s nice, but: you’re sixteen?! Since when?”
“This morning,” Phichit says, and he laughs at Yuuri’s frustrated expression. “I’m only three years younger than you.”
“You call me your tiny son all the time,” Yuuri says. He’s gotten distracted; only one of his skates is on, and he’s holding the other in his hand. If he gestures with it with any more emphasis than he currently is, he’s going to stab someone accidentally.
Phichit, slinging his bag into his locker, says, “That’s because you’re my tiny son, Yuuri. You just have to accept it.”
“Why are you in college?” Yuuri demands.
Phichit sits down to change his socks and put on his skates. “I’m pretty good at math, I guess,” he tells Yuuri. “I told you that one of my sisters said she would pay for Celestino’s coaching fees if I got a university scholarship, and coming here now means I get experience with a coach faster than waiting three years.” He tests the tightness of the laces on his left skate and then moves on to the right one. “Is this really freaking you out, Yuuri?”
“Yes!” Yuuri says, in a strangled shriek, and then he puts his face in his palm. It looks like an automatic motion so Phichit offers a quick thanks to the universe that he hadn’t automatically done it with the hand holding his remaining skate. “No,” Yuuri finally says. “I guess not.”
This is good, because when Yuuri meets Khanitta--by far the least ridiculous and nicest of Phichit’s sisters--that weekend, she is extremely thorough in vetting whether or not Yuuri is a pervert.
“He’s my baby brother,” she says to Yuuri over dinner, which is pizza at Cafe Luigi’s, too fancy and expensive for a couple of college students double-fisting Lactaid pills. It’s Khanitta’s treat. “So you understand my concern, right?”
Yuuri is staring at her, brow furrowed, across the table. “You think--sorry, what?”
“Yuuri isn’t a pervert!” Phichit tells his sister. “How dare you assume something so callous and disgusting of my son!”
“Did you want--parmesean on that?” the waitress asks Khanitta.
“No, thank you,” Khanitta tells her, smiling politely, and then she turns back to stare across the table at Yuuri. “It’s a reasonable question; he was fifteen until four days ago. He’s ripe for childhood molestation.”
“No?” Yuuri barks. He’s turning red. “Absolutely not? Never!”
“Khanitta!” Phichit yells, but he’s enjoying himself so much.
“Mom would never forgive me if I let your new friend by without these important questions,” Khanitta insists, loudly, pulling two slices of pizza onto her plate. The first one of the three they’d ordered is loaded with arugula and cheese, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and Phichit has already burned the roof of his mouth on his first slice.
“I’m not a pervert,” Yuuri says, yelling the first three words and hiss-whispering the last one. “Phichit is my friend, and I would never let anything happen to him--”
“Ah, good,” Khanitta says, chomping on her triangle of pizza. “If you will protect my baby brother with your life, then I’ll tell Mom that I approve of you.”
Phichit can’t help saying, “That’s nice, Khanitta, but Yuuri couldn’t protect a baby kitten. He’s the one who needs the protecting.”
“I feel like I should be objecting to this,” Yuuri says, quiet now, to himself.
“He’s very cute,” Khanitta says to Phichit in Thai.
“Hands off,” Phichit says to her, in English, because it’s rude to gossip about somebody with whom you’re sharing a meal.
~
Phichit makes Yuuri come have celebratory omelets with him in the dining hall after they’ve handed in the last of their overdue work from Four Continents.
“To academic freedom!” Phichit says, clinking his fork with Yuuri’s.
“To a short break,” Yuuri agrees.
After Phichit has cut up and inhaled half of his omelet, he asks, “Did your Microeconomics professor agree to extend the deadline for you?”
Yuuri makes a face. “No,” he says. “It’s still due tomorrow, but he said that he’ll reduce the late penalty in half if I get it in within twenty-four hours of the deadline.”
“Gross!” Phichit says.
“He didn’t have to do anything at all,” Yuuri points out, and Phichit makes a face at him.
“Don’t let yourself be bullied!” Phichit scolds him--gently, of course, because Yuuri is a delicate flower--and he immediately adds, “Try this, the mushrooms are really good today!”
Yuuri impales the piece of omelet that Phichit puts on his plate and nibbles the edge. “Mmm,” he says. “It’s okay, Phichit-kun. I’ll get the work done.”
“I know you can,” Phichit says. The problem with Yuuri isn’t that he’s lazy--it’s that he doesn’t know when to stop working. Now that they are best friends and Phichit is planning on throwing over Chad Perkins for Yuuri’s spot in next year’s housing lottery, it is Phichit’s responsibility to ensure that Yuuri doesn’t run himself into the ground. “You always do your very best, Yuuri-kun.”
Yuuri smiles at this, but it doesn’t turn up the corners of his eyes the way that it should. This is a Fake Smile. “Thanks, Phichit,” he says.
My tiny son!!! Phichit wails, but inside his head to keep Yuuri from becoming embarrassed. “I’m going to take a nap,” he says. “Maybe you should have one, too.”
“I’ve got this paper--” Yuuri tries, and Phichit says, “A little rest will make your brain work better, Yuuri! A twenty-minute power nap, that’s all you need.”
“That sounds like a bad idea,” Yuuri says suspiciously.
“I’ve read about it,” Phichit says. “Twenty minutes and your REM cycle is reset.”
Yuuri says, “That doesn’t sound right, either,” but they walk back to Yuuri’s room and wedge into the bed with the gigantic stuffed poodle, which is named Vic-chan, after Yuuri’s dog, who is named after Viktor Nikiforov because Yuuri works too hard and has fried his brain. Phichit sets a timer on his phone and puts it under the pillow where the vibrations will wake them up.
Without his glasses--one day, Phichit will succeed in replacing them--Yuuri looks more like the Walmart orphan than a nationally-ranked figure skater. Phichit’s love for Yuuri is so big that it feels like an ocean. As the baby himself, Phichit had never gotten to hold a baby brother, but he imagines that it probably would have felt like this.
“Sleep well, Yuuri,” Phichit says. “Sleep hard, work hard, okay?”
“You too, Phichit,” says Yuuri sleepily. “Sleep hard, work hard.”
~
America Goal #1: Make a new friend for life!!