Chapter Text
Yuuri and Phichit were lying on the floor together, head to foot.
They were in the middle of rehearsing a scene, Phichit filling in for Victor.
Yuuri had been rehearsing every moment for the past week since he got his copy of the final script. He not only knew his lines, but most of everyone else’s at this point. And he’d practiced about five different ways to read every scene, ready to give the director options if something wasn’t working. He’d read the intense pair scenes with Phichit so many times that his roommate could be an understudy himself if this were a play instead of a movie.
But this scene Yuuri couldn’t get right.
And he knew that if he couldn’t get it right acting with Phichit, his best friend and one of the people despite occasional betrayals he trusted more than most people in the world, there was no way he’d be able to get through this scene with Victor.
And maybe it would be fine, one botched scene in an otherwise great movie would probably be excusable. It wouldn’t ruin the film entirely.
Except, it was the last scene of the movie—the last thing that the audience would see, and if done correctly, what they would most remember.
“Cal,” Yuuri said, staring up at the ceiling, “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”’
There was a long pause. Yuuri had told Phichit to read it like that—but of course Yuuri had no idea how Victor would read it.
“Okay,” Phichit said. “I understand. There are other things to do in the world besides this. I’m sure any of those things would be happy to have you.”
“But—” Yuuri said. “What if—what if I don’t want anything, anymore?”
“Nothing?” Phichit asked. “What—what about me?”
Yuuri sat up.
“That’s not what I—” Yuuri stammered. “You don’t need me. We should end this.”
“Fine, but that’s not the leap you’re making,” Phichit said, quietly.
Yuuri lay back down.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did,” Phichit said. “I know you, Neil.”
“Cal,” Yuuri said.
“No, wait, I know!”
Phichit turned on “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Yuuri asked.
“What doesn’t it?” Phichit returned, standing up and holding a hand out to Yuuri.
Yuuri took the offered hand.
“Come on,” Phichit said, slowly starting to sway his hips.
This was the part Yuuri couldn’t figure out. Yuuri was a classically trained dancer, but he for the life of him couldn’t figure out how he was supposed to move his body in this scene. And Phichit tried, but his movements weren’t quite right either.
But still, they tried to dance, growing more joyous with the passing second. That felt like how it was supposed to go.
“Maybe you should just kiss him,” Phichit said. “This movie is going to get slammed for queerbaiting anyway.”
“No, it’s supposed to show men behaving outside of gender roles outside of a sexual context. There aren’t any love interests in this movie,” Yuuri explained, sighing as the song ended.
“How about this?” Phichit said, suddenly grabbing Yuuri by the shoulders and standing up on his toes as he pressed a kiss to Yuuri’s forehead.
Yuuri’s brow furrowed.
“Yeah, cause I’m just going to be able to suggest that Victor should kiss me,” Yuuri said, collapsing onto the couch.
Phichit shrugged.
“It’s worth a shot,” Phichit smiled wryly as he plopped down beside Yuuri. “Now can we order dinner or are you going to make us take it from the top one more time?”
Yuuri sighed.
“Get me a salad,” he said. “Just because they’ve decided that I don’t need build my upper body into a triangle and reduce my body fat percentage to 4% for this movie doesn’t mean I can slowly evolve into a potato over the process of filming.”
Phichit rolled his eyes but didn’t bother to argue.
*
“Yuuri, what are you doing?” Phichit asked as he peeked into Yuuri’s room.
Yuuri was lying on his bed, a towel wrapped around his waist—clearly recently(-ish) out of the shower—showing no signs of further movement or life for that matter.
And Phichit knew it was bad, because typically if Phichit caught Yuuri in any state of undress, Yuuri would immediately dive under the nearest piece of fabric or furniture or door to keep his bare skin hidden. You’d think growing up at a hot spring that mandated nudity, Yuuri would be slightly less modest, but whenever Phichit had brought that up, Yuuri would only say things like, “that’s different,” and “it’s tradition,” and “everyone keeps their eyes to themselves there, something that you don’t ever bother to do, you perv.”
But here Phichit was, witnessing Yuuri nearly nude, and the other man barely even so much as blinked.
“Yuuri,” Phichit tried again, his voice gentle, as he walked slowly over to the bed to sit down beside Yuuri. “Don’t you have to be to the studio soon? It’s your first day.”
Yuuri didn’t say anything and Phichit sighed.
“Okay, Yuuri, if you don’t show some sign of life in five seconds, I’m going to undo your towel, snap some pics, and sell your nudes at the peak of your fame for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Yuuri, evidently calling Phichit’s bluff, still remain motionless.
Phichit let out a huff of air.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “I’m not going to do that. But I will—” Phichit paused to think. “Oh, I got it! I’ll tickle you!”
At that, Yuuri ever so slowly turned his head to the side to look at Phichit, still saying nothing, but at the very least raising his eyebrows skeptically.
“I’ll do it! Here—here comes the tickle monster!” Phichit said, raising his hands as Yuuri’s expression grew even more dubious. “All you have to do is say something!”
Yuuri did not say anything, and Phichit dropped his hands.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “I’m not going to tickle you. But you’re going to have to become responsive again and move on with your day at some point. Probably pretty soon.”
Yuuri just continued to lay there.
“Oh, wait! I have an idea,” Phichit said, standing up and going to grab Yuuri’s phone off the night stand. He entered the pass code and went into the text messages and quickly he found the right contact.
The first thing he did was label it, because god, how did Yuuri ever find anyone in his messages when basically the only contacts he had labeled in the dozens of different messages he had were Phichit, his sister, and Celestino.
After the contact was labeled as “Victor (ﾉ´ з `)ノ,” Phichit sent a text. It wasn’t anything too inflammatory, just a simple, Looking forward to working with you today!
But, the amount of time that he’d been typing away at Yuuri’s phone now was conspicuous enough that Yuuri finally murmured, “What are you doing?”
Phichit looked up from the phone, smiling victoriously.
“Oh, nothing much really. Just sending Victor Nikiforov a text.”
At that, Yuuri sat bolt upright.
Success.
“What?”
“Yeah, you know, to let him know how excited you are to work with him today!”
“You didn’t,” Yuuri whispered, looking pale, but Phichit didn’t feel the slightest bit bad.
“Yeah,” Phichit said. “I did. And oh look,” Phichit announced as the phone vibrated in his hands, “He responded! He says, Me too! See you soon!” Phichit read aloud. “And oh, there are a bunch of emojis. Wow. He really likes emojis.”
Yuuri was now up and on his feet, trying to grab the phone out of Phichit’s hand.
“No!” he protested. “You didn’t! Don’t kid with me!”
“I’m not kidding!” Phichit said, dodging Yuuri as he attempted to grab the phone out of his hands. “Now, how should I respond?” Phichit mused, leaping away as Yuuri took another pass at him. “Do you think if I told him you just took a shower, I could bait him into responding, Without me?”
“Don’t you dare, stop messing around!”
Phichit hopped up on Yuuri’s bed as Yuuri dove at him another time and held the phone high up above his head.
“Are you up then, and going to put on your big boy pants—the ones that I pressed for you last night, you’re welcome by the way—and go to work?” Phichit asked.
Yuuri crossed his arms over his chest.
“I don’t see why that is the only option,” he grumbled.
“If you don’t like the outfit, kiddo, we can pick a different one,” Phichit said with a shrug as he stepped down from the bed and held the phone out to Yuuri. But just as Yuuri reached out to take it, he snatched it away and said, “Or, maybe we can ask Victor for advice.”
“No!” Yuuri cried. “Come on, I’ll get dressed. I’ll go to work. Just give me back my phone, please.”
“Fine,” Phichit said with a shrug, tossing the phone over his shoulder onto the bed.
But then, because apparently Phichit was feeling a little mischievous after all, as Yuuri dove after it, Phichit grabbed a hold of the edge of the towel that was around his waist, unraveling it and leaving Yuuri bare as he landed on the bed on his stomach.
“Phichit!” Yuuri screamed, grabbing his phone in one hand and doing his best to attempt to flip his duvet up over his now exposed behind with the other.
Phichit whistled.
“Look at that ass!”
“I’m gonna, I’m gonna,” Yuuri tried to come up with a threat as he tangled himself up in his duvet until only his head was popping out. “You’re too shameless, I can’t think of a way to get you back!” Yuuri whined.
Phichit smiled.
“Eh,” he shrugged. “Someday, I’m sure I’ll like a boy or have an important job and you can give me a much-needed kick in the ass to help me get over myself too. That’s what friends are for.”
Yuuri huffed.
“Just—leave me,” he groaned, falling over face first into the bed so now all you could see on the bed was a large duvet covered blob.
“If you’re not out of this room in another fifteen minutes, I’m going to snap a picture of your Victor shrine and send it to him sometime.”
Yuuri just grumbled indistinctly from under the duvet blob.
“Love you too!” Phichit called out as he left the room, shutting the door behind him, even if he knew that was not at all what Yuuri had said.
*
When Yuuri got to the studio that first morning, he had a hard time getting through the gate.
Which felt like a fucking cliché—overnight success newcomer shows up for their first day at work on a Hollywood backlot and can’t get past security.
Thankfully though, Victor Nikiforov did not pull up alongside him, smile charismatically at the security guard, and say something along the lines of, “He’s with me.”
If that would have happened, Yuuri might have been forced to say, “Actually, never mind, I am a stalker trying to break onto the lot—sorry, I’ll see myself out.”
But because that hadn’t happened, instead Yuuri stood on the pedestrian side of the security booth (because Yuuri ever so glamorously had taken an Uber to the studio), scrolling through his email on his phone trying to find the number of someone who he could call who might be able to get his security clearance resent to security or come down and get him.
“I’m really sorry,” Yuuri apologized for a third time to the security guard. It was of course the security guards fault, technically, that they were in this situation to begin with that had led Yuuri to apologizing repeatedly for the sake of having something to say to fill the tense silence.
But then again, the security guard was probably only doing his job.
“Oh wait, I found you, they have a different spelling of your name here. Y-U-R-I K-A-T-S-K-I,” the guard said.
“Oh, that’s a more phonetic spelling,” Yuuri murmured, helplessly.
When he’d registered with SAG last year, he’d insisted on keeping his name spelled slightly more traditionally. Not that there was really anything traditional about the Latin alphabet anyway when it came to his Japanese name, but none the less, he’d been determined not to try and make himself more convenient just for the sake of Americans.
But he was steadily regretting it as his name was spelled or pronounced wrong again and again, one way or another.
The guard shrugged and handed Yuuri a visitor pass.
“Just stop by the office some time today and have them make up an ID for you.”
“Right,” Yuuri said. “Okay. Thank you,” he stammered. “Have a good day,” he called out as an afterthought as he walked away.
And then after that, the day showed no signs of improving as he found himself stumbling across the lot, unable to find the right building in a sea of beige stucco buildings. It wasn’t one of the big sound stages, right? They were doing a table read, there had to be a building more office-like somewhere, right?
Then he was almost run over by a golf cart.
Of course.
“Watch were you’re walking!” someone shouted and Yuuri watched with wide eyes as a golf cart slammed to a stop just inches from him.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Yuuri gasped. The girl that was driving the cart stared back at him.
Then for some reason she blushed.
“No! I should be apologizing!” she said. “Sorry, I’m just running late, I needed to get this cart back across the lot like ten minutes ago.”
Yuuri smiled and hoped it somehow didn’t look as pained as it felt.
“Ah, that’s alright. I’m running late too,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh! Where are you going? I know this lot like the back of my hand—only damn thing I’ve learned in this internship—maybe I can give you a short cut?”
“Oh, no, it’s fine, I’ll figure it out, I don’t want to keep you.”
“No, it’s fine. No one will probably even care, really, if I’m late, I’m just paranoid,” she said. “Hey, how about I give you a ride?”
“Oh no!” Yuuri said quickly. “It’s really alright!”
“Oh, come on, arguing with me is just going to make us both late,” she said. “Hop on!”
With great hesitancy, Yuuri slid into the cart and perched himself on the edge of the seat carefully, as if the golf cart was some fragile and important thing he was at risk of breaking—even though just moments ago it had been the cart that had almost broken him.
“Hold on!” the girl said. “I’m admittedly not very good at driving this.”
Yuuri reluctantly planted his feet slightly firmer on the floor of the cart but didn’t make any other effort to increase the amount of himself that was coming in contact with it.
However, his idiocy and blatant disregard of instructions for no apparent reason turned out to be a terrible, terrible mistake—
Because then the golf cart lurched to a start and he nearly fell out of his seat. Thankfully, instead he managed to catch himself on the edge of the steering wheel. Less thankfully, he’d managed to grab the exact same spot on the wheel the girl was already holding, accidently crushing her hand under his and nearly steering them into a bush.
Thankfully, the girl slammed on the breaks.
“Oh my god I’m so sorry!” the girl cried at the same time Yuuri gasped, “Shit, I’m sorry!”
For a second, they looked at each other. Then the girl looked away from him towards—oh! he was still crushing her hand.
Yuuri quickly pulled away.
“Sorry,” he murmured, daring to glance up at the girl.
The expression on her face was strange though, and he quickly ducked his head and looked away.
“So, um,” the girl said after another long moment passed, “I never asked where you were headed.”
“Oh, it’s the G- something building,” Yuuri said, suddenly unable to remember the combination of letters in the email he’d gotten with instructions for where to show up that morning.
“Oh, the Goldman building?” she asked.
Yuuri nodded, although if there was another G-named building on the lot, he was screwed.
“We’ll that’s right around the corner. Hold on tight this time,” she said and Yuuri grabbed a hold of the roof of cart as it started to move again, this time slightly less abruptly.
They rode in awkward silence across the lot, although Yuuri supposed awkward silence was better than awkward small talk. This morning really was a disaster, and it certainly didn’t bode well for the rest of the day.
And then, just because things couldn’t get any worse, suddenly, someone called out his name.
“Yuuri!”
And Yuuri whipped his head around to see none other than Victor Nikiforov waving to him.
“Is that—” the girl whispered as she slammed the cart to a stop in front of a building and incidentally only a few feet from Victor. “Victor Nikiforov?”
Yuuri closed his eyes.
“Evidently,” he murmured, suddenly aware of heat rising to his cheeks for absolutely no apparent reason.
“Yuuri!” Victor called again.
Yuuri opened his eyes.
“It appears I’m being summoned,” he muttered, and the girl gasped. “Thank you so much for helping me out,” he said, reaching out to tap the steering wheel, very carefully next to where the girl was clutching it. “Really. And I’m sorry for making you late.”
“Oh, it’s uh, no problem, really.”
Yuuri stepped out of the cart and offered the girl a slight bow of his head before walking around the cart over to Victor.
“Good morning,” he said doing his best to try and pretend he wasn’t beyond ready to crawl back into bed.
“Morning Yuuri!” Victor exclaimed, apprently not as devoted to hiding from the day as Yuuri was, and in fact maybe even excited by it. “I got this for you!” he said, holding out a paper take-away cup.
“Hm?” Yuuri hiccupped.
“It’s green tea!” Victor proclaimed.
For a second, all Yuuri could do was stare.
“Try it, tell me if it’s okay!”
Helplessly, Yuuri took the cup and took a sip.
Except the drink was scalding and Yuuri couldn’t taste anything, unless searing pain was a flavor.
“Mm,” Yuuri tried to cover up his hiss of pain. “It’s very good.”
Yuuri forced himself to look up at the other man as he said it, but he watched as Victor’s eyes widened and became the best human embodiment of puppy-dog eye’s that Yuuri had ever seen.
“Oh, are you sure?” he said. “I have some honey if it’s not.”
And then, Victor reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out an entire little plastic bear shaped honey bottle.
Now it was Yuuri’s eyes that widened.
“Oh, no,” Yuuri said quickly. “It’s alright. it’s very good,” Yuuri said, taking another sip, trying to splash as little scalding liquid as he could into his mouth. “Delicious.”
“Vkunso,” Victor murmured, and Yuuri wasn’t sure if he was speaking to him. “Take the honey anyway, I have no use for it.”
“You never drink tea?” Yuuri said, but as the words left his mouth Yuuri realized there were probably few things that he could have said that were more irrelevant and unnecessary.
“Ah,” Victor said, looking a little unsure and pausing for a moment, “In Russia sometimes we actually sweeten tea with jam!” he announced boisterously. “So you can take the honey. I do not need it!”
Yuuri was so shocked by Victor’s sudden… whatever this was that he found himself reaching out and taking the offered honey bear.
It occurred to Yuuri as he did this though that the chances that he was going to be able to just casually use this honey, or even look at it without feeling crippling levels of embarrassment, was absurdly small.
“So you’re sure the tea is alright?” Victor asked again. “If you don’t love it, I’ll bring you another kind tomorrow. Until we find one you like the best.”
Yuuri could stop his eyes from widening in horror.
“Oh, no that’s not necessary!” he said quickly. “We’re even now, right?”
For a moment, Victor’s face morphed into an unreadable expression.
Then in another he was smiling brightly again in a way that Yuuri could best describe as manic.
“Oh of course!” he said, and Yuuri made the mistake of letting out a breath he’d been holding. “We’ll take turns. You’ll bring the drinks tomorrow!”
Suddenly feeling very exhausted and finally realizing it wasn’t worth arguing, Yuuri did about the only polite person gesture he could manage and tried to smile, but only just got the corner of one side of his mouth to quirk as he looked up at Victor.
“Ah, we should get inside, shouldn’t we?” Yuuri said, accepting that Victor could probably con him into being his PA, his errand boy, just by breathing.
So of course Yuuri was going to bring coffee tomorrow if it at least meant that Victor wouldn’t be the one getting it.
“Oh! Yes!” Victor said. “I’d say we’d be late, but they can’t really start without us, can they?”
“I don’t think that makes us not late, I think that just means we’re holding everyone up,” Yuuri murmured anxiously.
“Oh, right,” Victor said, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, I suppose we could just blame it on you, I had been waiting for you for a while before you finally showed up.”
Yuuri almost dropped his coffee cup as a wave of anxiety and despair and a general feeling of doom and you’re-going-to-fuck-this-up swept through him.
Victor, however, did not even seem to notice.
And that was the moment Yuuri accepted that this day was going about as horribly as it could possibly go.
*
As far as Victor was concerned, the day was going about as horribly as it could possibly go.
For one thing, Yuuri was currently sitting across the table from him, reading a scene with such conviction that Victor could hardly think straight, none the less read his line in response.
For another, Victor had spent two hours researching tea shops in LA within a five-mile radius of the studio to find the one that seemed to have the most belief in their green tea quality. He’d even gone as far as to call the finalists to confirm that they could speak to the quality of their teas with passion.
Yuri had caught him doing this, of course—talking on the phone in a slightly purposefully tacky American accent, asking some poor barista if they knew the region of China their green tea came from—and although the list of things Yuri regularly ridiculed him for was already long, he supposed he wasn’t going to live this down none the less.
But all that work—he’d been mocked by his cousin, he’d had several awkward conversations with baristas, he’d driven out of his way to pick up the tea he’d finally chosen, he’d ordered it extra hot to make sure it didn’t go cold on the way to the studio—only for Yuuri to take one sip and look at Victor like he’d been handed a cup of bile.
And then, oh god, the honey.
He’d actually grabbed it from his own cabinet that morning, and yet had started rambling about only putting jam in his tea for some godforsaken reason and insisted that Yuuri take it. But actually Victor never drank jam in his tea. Victor didn’t like jam in his tea. Victor probably hadn’t purposefully bought jam in years, maybe even never.
And Victor could see the stupid little honey bear sticking out of the side pocket of Yuuri’s messenger bag that was hanging off the back of his chair and Victor had never felt like more of an idiot.
But it was all Yuuri’s fault that he was so flustered!
He was the one who had rolled up in a golf cart fashionably late, looking like the textbook definition of a movie star, complete with a girl ogling him like Yuuri could ask her anything and she’d say yes.
He was the one who had stood there with this girl drooling over him, with Victor himself drooling over him, probably, and was still just so—unaffected.
How was he so unaffected?
And then Victor clearly had served him piss and he smiled and thanked him. He’d presented him with a gift of slightly used honey and he'd accepted it modestly.
And then, and then—Yuuri had smiled at him and Viktor could have cried at the sight of it. It was the kind of most perfect, earnest, little quirk of the lips that had ever happened in all of human history, Victor was sure.
And then, Victor had said something thoughtless and arrogant, just trying to be as cool as Yuuri was, and Yuuri had called him out. But he’d done it so kindly.
And—
“Victor!” the director shouted, “It’s your line!”
“Oh,” Victor mumbled. God, and now he was getting yelled at by a director? Victor hadn’t gotten yelled at by a director in years. “Where were we?”
“I love you,” Yuuri said from across the table.
“What?” Victor startled.
There was no way Yuuri could be they’d only just met, was it in like a friendly way, it didn’t make sense, but Victor would take it, maybe—
“That’s your line,” Yuuri clarified. “I love you.”
“Oh,” Victor said, scanning down his script. They were a little more than half way through the movie, well into the second act, and agents Neil Reilley, Calen Kensey, and Alyson Cobbler, played by Sara Crispino, were just about to head off on their rescue mission. “Right. I love you.”
“Could you two idiots get going?” Sara read from besides Victor, “We’re going to be late.”
“Aw, don’t be that way Alyson,” Yuuri read. “We love you too. Right Calen?”
Yuuri was looking at him across the table, smiling brightly.
It took Victor too long to remember that he was acting.
There was a loud cough from the director.
“Right,” Victor read, after an inexcusably long pause. “We love us our Aly.”
“Okay, okay, how about we take a break?” the director called out after Sara read out the last line of the scene, looking at Victor in frustration. “Twenty minutes. And Victor, can we chat?”
Victor shot a glance back at Yuuri before pushing his chair back from the table to follow the director out of the room, feeling like a dog with his tail between his legs.
*
“So,” Sara said, looking at Yuuri. “What did you do to Victor?”
Yuuri blinked across the table.
“I—I didn’t do anything,” he stammered.
Sara was playing the young rookie detective who gets dragged off on a life or death stakes rogue international mission with two long time partners, Neil Reilley, played by Yuuri, and Calen Kensey, played by Victor.
He’d seen her last year in some indie rom-com that was good. She seemed like a very chill kind of person. But maybe only if by chill you meant mercilously blunt, it would appear.
“All we have to do today is read words off a piece of paper, and the multi-Golden Globe Winning and Oscar winning actor Victor Nikiforov can’t even do that, and it seems it must have something to do with you.”
Oh, god, Yuuri thought and crumpled a bit, everything that went wrong on this film really was going to be his fault, wasn’t it?
Because that was true, Victor Nikiforov has been involved in a project that would win a Golden Globe or an Oscar every year for the past five years in a row for something or another—something fairly unprecedented. And three of those awards were Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Three. In five years.
And now for some reason Victor couldn’t even deliver lines read off a script? Victor had acted with almost everyone else on the cast at some point before. The only new addition was Yuuri.
“Am I really that bad?” Yuuri murmured, unable to bring himself to look at Sara.
But when Sara didn’t say anything, Yuuri managed to bring himself to steal a glance.
She was just staring at him, her face scrunched in confusion.
“Huh,” was all she said, finally.
Yuuri chewed on the inside of his lip.
“I’ll work on it tonight, and every night. I swear I’ll be ready by the time the cameras are rolling!” Yuuri exclaimed suddenly.
He may have already been devoting every moment of his life to this project, but surely he could work harder.
He would work harder, if that’s what it took to not let everyone else down.
But Sara just looked more confused.
“No, it’s not that. You really think—” but she was interrupted.
“Yuuri,” Victor called out, peeking back into the room. “Can you come out here?”
Oh no.
“Alright,” Yuuri said though, swallowing the terror that he was going to be scolded or maybe even fired.
He slid out of the room and followed Victor out into the hall to where the director was waiting for them.
“Alright you two,” he said, sounding a bit exasperated. “I don’t know what is going on with you two, but whatever it is, you need to work it out.”
“What?” Yuuri asked.
“I don’t have time for this to be the project that made the mistake of hiring some big-name actor whose peaked and his name is now worth more than his talent and some bright-eyed newcomer who we’ll see in retrospect is only a one-trick pony.”
Yuuri thought all his internal organs might have been spontaneously combusting inside of him.
“Oh,” Yuuri said.
“I’m going to call for lunch for everyone else, you two are going to stay behind and work on reading the final scene, alright? And I want you ready to finish up the read this afternoon, alright?” the director announced.
Yuuri managed to get himself to nod.
And with that, Victor and Yuuri were directed into an empty meeting room next door to the conference room they’d been doing the read through in.
“Do you need to go back to the other room and grab your book?” Victor asked as the door clicked shut behind them.
“No,” Yuuri murmured.
“Okay, well then—” Victor started but paused as Yuuri lay down on the floor. “What are you doing?”
“The script says we’re lying on the floor together.”
“Oh,” Victor said. “Right.”
And then he lay down right next to him, his head beside Yuuri’s.
“Oh,” Yuuri breathed.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just I’ve been having Phichit lie the other way. Head to feet.”
“What’s a Phichit?”
“My roommate, he’s been practicing with me at home.”
“And he’d lay the other way?”
“Well, I told him too. I thought it—it just made more sense. The shot is supposed to be overhead, we’ll be on our backs, it looks better, make the action of us talking take up more of the screen, it makes more sense for the characters, etc. But if you want to lay like this, we can—it’s your choice.”
“No,” Victor said. “We can lay the other way. I hadn’t given it that much thought.”
Yuuri didn’t say anything as Victor got up and lay down again, this time his head by Yuuri’s feet.
“So, do you just want to start then?” Victor asked.
Yuuri nodded, it not even occurring to him Victor couldn’t see his head and started.
“Cal,” Yuuri said, staring up at the ceiling, “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”’
Yuuri couldn’t see Victor’s face. He wished he could see Victor’s face.
“Okay,” Victor said, more quickly that Phichit had, and more frankly. “I understand.” Then he took a pause and became gentler. “There are other things to do in the world besides this. I’m sure any of those things would be happy to have you.”
“But—” Yuuri said, faster than he usually did, nearly jumping his line, and froze at the mistake. “What if—what if I don’t want anything, anymore?”
“Nothing?” Victor asked, and Yuuri felt him sit up. “What—what about me?”
Yuuri was always the one to sit up here—should he stay down if Victor sat up? In compromise, he rolled over onto his side, propping his head up on his arm to look at Victor.
“That’s not what I—” Yuuri said murmured. “You don’t need me. We should end this.”
And it was like the universe fractured—the silence that fell after those words as Yuuri looked at Victor.
And then the fracture grew to a full shattering as a tear rolled down Victor’s cheek.
“What?” Yuuri gasped, breaking script, and slamming his mouth shut as soon as the word escaped.
“Fine,” Victor whispered and then took another long pause as tears fell.
Yuuri sat the rest of the way up, getting to his knees to go over and kneel in front of Victor, as if compelled.
And then when he started to reach out, he almost stopped himself, but then a voice in his head reminded him, “You aren’t Yuuri, you’re Neil. And this isn’t Victor, it’s Calen. You aren’t strangers separated by worlds and a lifetime. You’re best friends. Nearly brothers. You love him.”
And so, Yuuri wiped a tear from Victor’s cheek with his thumb.
Victor sniffed.
“But that’s not the leap you’re making,” Victor said after another moment, his voice steadier as the tears stopped.
Yuuri’s hand fell from Victor’s face.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did,” Victor said. “I know you, Neil.”
“Cal,” Yuuri said.
Victor just shook his head. Then he stood up.
“No,” he murmured, looking at the ground, seemingly not even talking to Yuuri. Or Neil. Or whatever.
And Yuuri, suddenly feeling terribly unbalanced as Victor stood over Yuuri while he knelt, stood up.
“Wait, I know,” Victor said, still seeming distracted.
Victor dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, putting on the song. He didn’t move a muscle though as the music began to play.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Yuuri asked, staying equally frozen from where he stood across from Victor.
It was actually a song from earlier in a movie. It had come on in a club and Neil, Calen, and Alyson had danced to it, in a fun, carefree moment amid the chaos. It made a lot of sense to reprise it narratively.
But now they were at the part of the scene Yuuri couldn’t get right.
They were already standing, so Victor couldn’t help Yuuri up like Yuuri had had Phichit doing. There was nothing to do but stare at each other.
“What doesn’t it?” Victor returned, offering Yuuri a smile.
And then, as the lyrics started, Victor began to lip sync them, and started hoping around in the cheesiest dance.
Like Hugh Grant in Love Actually dancing around 10 Downing Street level cheesy.
And Yuuri just stood there in shock.
“Come on,” Victor said, grabbing Yuuri’s hands and spinning him around.
And they danced. Badly and freverously.
And Yuuri found himself laughing. And Victor laughed too, his eyes shining.
And for a second, Yuuri did forget that he was Yuuri Katsuki and that Victor was Victor Nikiforov. For a second, they could have been best friends. They could have been Calen and Neil. They could have been anyone or anything.
As long as they didn’t stop dancing. As long as the scene didn’t end.
So keep dancing is what Yuuri did.
And as the song came to an end, Victor collapsed onto the ground, pulling Yuuri down beside him.
They were head to head this time.
And Yuuri looked at Victor.
And Victor looked at Yuuri.
And they smiled.
And without giving it another thought, Yuuri leaned forward, until his lips were against the corner of Victor’s jaw. And then—years later he would not be sure what possessed him to do this, he could only blame Neil—he stuck his tongue out and licked across Victor’s cheek.
And, maybe because Victor was a professional, maybe because he was the best and most generous actor in the business, Victor laughed.
And pushed Yuuri away from him by the shoulders, wiping at his wet cheek.
And maybe because Yuuri wasn’t Yuuri in this moment, maybe because this moment didn’t feel real, Yuuri laughed again too, flopping back over onto his back.
“That—” Victor said, speaking as himself now evidently since they’d run out of lines Yuuri knew, but he still somehow felt like he was in the scene. A part of Yuuri still wanted to keep pretending—wasn’t going to stop pretending as long as he could keep the moment from shattering. “Was perfect.”
He sounded a little awestruck.
Yuuri rolled over again to look at him.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Really?”
“Perfect. That lick alone was worthy of a lifetime achievement award. It was—the most unexpected thing that’s ever happened to me in my decade plus of acting.”
“Well,” Yuuri found himself saying, “Everything you did kept surprising me, I guess—I guess I just had to find a way to top it. That’s what Neil’s and Calen’s relationship is like, isn’t it? Full of competitive spirit?” he asked. “It wasn’t too ridiculous?”
Victor didn’t say anything in response to that, and instead just sat up.
“I think we must still have some time for lunch—you want to come get something to eat with me?” Victor asked.
And Yuuri, still not feeling quite like Yuuri, and probably only because of that, said without hesitation—
“Okay.”