rcmclachlan:

“Wait, someone actually sent you their used panties?” Yuuri has no idea what kind of a face he’s making, but he hopes it does the sheer disgust he’s feeling justice, because what is wrong with people?

Victor laughs. “On more than one occasion. Most of the time Yakov just sent them to the incinerator.” 

“’Most of the time’?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered,” Victor says, horrifyingly, then brightens. “I didn’t get to keep any of the chocolates people gave me—for safety reasons, you know—but the plushies were mine to do whatever with. I usually gave them away to sick kids.”

He remembers. It was SKATING’s December 2003 issue cover story. Victor had been in a white doctor’s jacket smiling wide while the two children he had tucked under each arm flashed peace signs. Stuffed animals were strewn across the floor around them like fallen soldiers. He’d taped it into his cubby at Ice Palace until Takeshi joked that they should beat Yuuri up so Victor would come visit him in the hospital. Yuuri seriously considered it. 

“I can’t believe you kept some of this stuff,” Yuuri marvels, holding up an actual wedding invitation. You are cordially invited to the marriage of Victor Nikiforov and Joanne Spiers…

Yuuri gently places it back into the box. Well, chucks it back in, more like.

“Oh! Let me show you my favorite one!” Victor nudges him out of the way to rummage around, eventually coming up with a little blue envelope with a sticker that’s faded with time and oddly shaped. Yuuri squints at it, trying to place it, when it hits him. He goes very, very still.

“I think I was… maybe 16 when I got this one? It was the sweetest letter I’d ever received.” Victor sighs wistfully and cradles the envelope to his chest as though it were precious, spun glass and lace, before handing it over.

If Yuuri’s hands shake a little as he undoes the katsudon sticker on the backflap and slides the piece of notebook paper out, Victor doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he notches his chin onto Yuuri’s shoulder to read it along with him.

It’s a little yellow, but the faded images of sakura still comes through behind shaky, painstaking Cyrillic penned to fill the page.  

Dear Victor,

You are the greatest skater in the whole wide world. I am a skater too but I am only 12 years old and I am still learning. I did a triple axel for the first time yesterday! I hope you are proud. Someday I would like to hold your hand and skate with you. We could do a triple axel together. Please wait for me. 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

“I wanted to write back, but they didn’t leave a name or a return address,” Victor says softly, reaching around Yuuri to brush reverent fingers over the page. “Even with the terrible translation, it was the most genuine expression of love I’d ever seen at that time. I brought that letter with me everywhere I went, hoping I might catch a glimpse of that kid in the crowd, or even on the ice. Whoever it was, I hope they continued to skate. I really would’ve liked to have skated with them.”

The boxy letters swim and blur, spreading out until they’re vague blobs, and when Yuuri blinks to clear it, the page is wet. “It wasn’t terrible.”

“Hmm?”

Turning in Victor’s arms, Yuuri beams up at him through his tears. “The translation. It wasn’t terrible. Vasiliev-sensei at Ice Palace wrote it out for me and I spent hours practice-copying it to make sure it was perfect.”

He can see the moment realization dawns, because Victor’s furrowed brow ripples and smoothes out, jaw dropping almost into Yuuri’s lap. “You—”

The world tilts dangerously and skews when he’s tackled onto his back, and Yuuri laughs up at the ceiling as Victor presses frantic kisses to his mouth, his neck, the swells of his cheeks and the sides of his nose. He shakes with a giddy sort of joy, drowning under a wave of relief nearly fifteen years in the making, and reaches up to palm Victor’s face—a little older, a little more mature, but still the greatest skater in the whole wide world who was everything to a little boy once. Even more now as a man. 

“Thank you for waiting for me,” Yuuri murmurs, then leans up and meets Victor halfway.