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“Yuuri?”
“Yes Victor?”
“Do you remember that time shortly after Barcelona where you tearfully apologized for everything you did to me and said you would do anything to make it up to me?”
“....”
“Yuuri?”
“...I remember...”
“Good!~ Because I've just thought of the perfect way for you to do exactly that!”
“...”
“Don't give me that look! Do you want to walk down the aisle into wedded bliss with all this emotional baggage hanging over our heads? Do you want to start our marriage under a dark pall Yuuri? Do you?”
“...no.”
“Of course not. So, here's my idea. I think we need to incorporate some roleplaying into our life!”
“R-roleplaying?”
“Yes. You know. To spice things up!”
“O-oh. Oh! Um. Okay...that actually. Um.”
“Yuuri! You're blushing”
“S-shut up!”
“Aww! You're so cute! Let me hug you!”
“Ah! Victor! Too tight!”
“No such thing.”
“...”
“Yuuri hugs are the best hugs!”
“No. Victor hugs are.”
“Mmmmm. You know what this reminds me of?”
“I have a few ideas...”
“It reminds me of the first time you made me cry!”
“Whaaaaaa?!”
“I can't wait anymore! Yuuri, we need to roleplay right now!”
“Oh. Okay. Um. Should I...wear something...?”
“Maybe next time.”
“Okay. You know, when you said you wanted me to make it up to you, I thought you were going to make me do something way worse than a little—”
“Here's your script!~~~”
“My...what?!”
“Learn your part well, my love.”
“Um. Okay....wait, why am I saying this again?”
“Reaaaaaad iiiiiiit~~~!”
“........oh...my God.”
Yuuri sits at the dinner table opposite Victor. His hair is limp and his glasses are slightly smudged, but even the greasy fingerprints of off-season, hasn't-showered-in-three-days Yuuri can't hide the way all light and life have fled from his eyes. In his hands, he limply holds the script Victor has given him.
“Start whenever you're ready,” Victor says.
Yuuri inhales. He holds his breath. Just when Victor is beginning to think he means to hold it until he passes out, he releases it in the longest, most soulless sigh Victor has ever heard.
“Katsudon,” he says, deadpan. “That's what eros means to me.”
Despite the delivery, Victor immediately slips into character. It comes easily to him. After all, he has replayed this moment over and over in his head more times than he can count.
(Lies. It is 5,653)
“Yuuri,” he says, shaking his head in disappointment. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He waits for Yuuri to say his line. After another sigh, he does. “Why am I doing what, Coach Nikiforov?”
“Head coach.”
“...Head Coach Nikiforov....”
“Pretending.” Victor glances down, pressing his lips together as if his heart is breaking right before Yuuri's very eyes. A moment later, he lifts his head, chin shaking like he's just summoned up an incredible reserve of strength from some unknowable source deep within himself. “Pretending that night meant nothing to you.”
“Head Coach Nikiforov,” Yuuri says dully. “Please don't cry.”
“Enough Yuuri!” Victor stands, slashing his hand in front of him as if to violently slap Yuuri's words away. “Head Coach Nikiforov this! Head Coach Nikiforov that! Am I truly nothing more to you than an amazingly talented head coach?! Does your heart not yearn the way mine does!”
He allows his lips to tremble as he stops blinking long enough for tears to begin to form in his eyes.
“I've never even called you that,” Yuuri mutters under his breath.
“Script!”
Yuuri sighs yet again. “Head Coach...I mean...Victor...read this with longing and try to cry a little bit, you know what you've done to this man and you feel the beginnings of regret.”
“Don't read the stage directions.”
“...I feel more than the beginnings of regret.”
“Script!”
“It's your turn.”
“Oh, right.” Victor clears his throat and gets back into character. “Yuuri,” he says, his voice filled with longing. “I flew halfway around the world to be with you. All I wanted was to be close to you, and hold you, and marry you, and adopt six children with you that we would raise and train together to be Olympic figure skating and/or ice dancing champions. Why are you destroying my dreams this way?”
He blinks away one of the tears.
“Why have you rejected my love?”
“I am so sorry, Victor. You are right. I have been acting like a...oh, come on, I'm not saying—”
“Script!”
“....I have been acting like a cruel temptress, ensnaring your heart with my wiles and then casting it aside when I was done eating it like a sexy bowl of katsudon. But katsudon is not my true eros. You, Victor, beautiful Victor, are the only real eros in my life.”
“Y-Yuuri!! Do you truly mean that!”
“....with all of my heart. I want you to skate for me and once again impregnate me...I can't believe Yuuko told you about that...”
“Scr—”
“I know!” Yuuri clears his throat. “I want you to skate for me and once again impregnate me with your eros. This time with six triplets...shouldn't this say 'sextuplets'?”
“No, Yuuri. You are overcome with your passion for me and now want even more children. Six sets of triplets at once. That is how much eros you are feeling towards me right now.”
“...can we become unengaged?”
“Is that really what you want?”
“...no.”
“Then continue.”
Another sigh. “This time with six triplets, who we will name after not only all the skating jumps, but all the spins and that one short program I did a few years ago when I wore those pants that made my ass look like two cantaloupes shoved into a lace stocking.”
“Yuuri!” Victor gasped. “Do you truly mean it??”
“Of course, Victor.” Yuuri stares across the table at him with all the heartbreak and angst of a man trying to remember if he forgot to add anything to the grocery list. “I mean every word.”
“Yuuri! I love you so much! You have truly made me the happiest head-coach-slash-5-time-consecutive-gold-medal-winning-champion there ever was!”
“But, Victor, you're the only one of those to ever exist.”
“Am I?” Victor gasps and holds a hand to his chest. “I forgot!”
“I am even more attracted to you now than I was before.” Yuuri scrunches up his nose and mutters, “As if I'd ever forget a single competition Victor won...”
“Script!” they both say at once, Victor with icy, sing song tones and Yuuri with an exasperated sigh.
They glance down at the script, then pause.
“Oh,” Victor says. “That's the end of the script.”
“Thank God,” Yuuri says, showing actual, genuine emotion as he collapses face first onto the table.
“Hm.” Victor taps his lips thoughtfully. “Okay, that was pretty bad, even for a first run through. Take five, then we'll come back and do it again.”
Yuuri closes his eyes and prays for death.
“Okay, that wasn't so bad. Though I'm not fond of your ad libbing.”
“Victor, if I say the word pregnant again I'm going to slit my throat with the edge of this script.”
“That seems very impractical, but I'm getting bored, so let's move onto the next scene!”
“....the what now?”
“Here! Take it!”
“...is that...”
“Your new script? Yes!~~”
“Where do these keep coming from?”
“I have a lot of free time now that I'm retired.”
“But you're not—”
“Semi-retired.”
“You were trying to convince me to take up pair skating with you in addition to our singles careers just last night—”
“Yuuri. Do you truly doubt that I can do anything I put my mind to?”
“Wha—no! Victor! I'd never doubt you!”
“I know, my love. I was just joking.”
“Oh. Okay. But, really, it is pretty impressive that you found time to take up a...writing...hobby even with—”
“Plus, I commissioned Phichit to help.”
“I knew it!”
“He's on this wonderful website where you can pay people money and they'll do things for you!”
“...”
“I'm thinking of joining myself when I'm retired for real.”
“Please. Please tell me you're not talking about making an Only—”
“Fiverr? Yes!”
“Oh, thank God.”
This time, they are sitting in the living room in their shared St Petersburg apartment. The curtains are open, and the nighttime skyline of the city shines through the glass double doors of their balcony. Aside from the kitchen light they forgot to turn off, this is the only illumination in the room.
“Act 2, Scene 1,” Victor says happily. “Yuuri Destroys Victors Fragile Heart Once Again. Setting, Barcelona, The Hotel of Despair. Aaaaaand, begin!”
“....”
“Begin.”
A sigh. “Victor. After the final, let's end this.”
Victor gasps. “Yuuri! You don't mean that! Tell me you don't mean that!”
“Of course I don't mean it, Victor. I am...oh, come on. Do you really expect me to say—”
“Script!”
“...I am experiencing so many emotions I don't even know what I am saying. I am like...” Yuuri shudders. “I am like a woman with PMS, frail and irrational—did you and Phichit seriously write this? It's so...sexist...”
“Actually, Yurio helped with that part.”
“Oh. That actually makes much more—you let Yurio see this!?
“He was teaching me how to set up custom ringtones for my favorite people on my new phone—yours is your entire post-skate press conference after our first competition together where you declared your love for me—”
“That's why you wait so long to pick up when I call you!”
“—when Phichit facetimed me to finish writing the script. Yurio held my phone hostage until I agreed to let him sit in on the call.”
“Oh, my God...”
“If it's any consolation, he was laughing so much he barely helped.”
“No. No, that is not any consolation.”
“Hm. I suppose that's sort of like how it was very little consolation to me that you didn't actually mean to rip my heart out less than a day after I thought you proposed to me and finally made all my dreams come true—”
“We haven't finished the scene yet!”
“You may continue.”
Yuuri clears his throat. “I am like a woman with PMS, frail and irrational. Perhaps, Victor, my darling Victor, you did manage to impregnate me after all...” Yuuri scrunches his nose. “But you didn't even skate for me...”
“...Yuuri, we literally had sex the night before.”
“Oh. Oh!” Yuuri blushes. “Oh...”
Their eyes meet, and they both blush.
“Script!” they say together.
Victor clears his throat. “Yuuri, if I impregnated you, then I will be the happiest man alive.” He looks soulfully towards where Yuuri assumed a camera would be if this were actually being filmed. “But right now, I am not. I'm the saddest man alive. My heart has been torn asunder by your careless words. You have cast me adrift amid turbulent seas, clinging to the shards of the heart that once beat only for you as I desperately try to keep myself from drowning.” He slowly clenched his fist over his chest. “I, Victor Nikiforov, five time consecutive world champion and two time People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, who uprooted his life to become coach and lover to you, Yuuri Katsuki, the figure skating genius who stole my heart, but who also has never won any magazine awards for being sexy which really makes me wonder just who they have deciding these things at these magazines—”
“That part's not in the script,” says a furiously blushing Yuuri.
“Oh, right. It should be, though. I'm just saying. Have they never seen your thighs? I mean, seriously, even Yurio—”
“Can we please get back to the scene!”
“Okay, okay.” Victor clears his throat. “Where was I? Oh, yes. I, Victor Nikiforov, et cetra et cetra, and lover to you, Yuuri Katsuki, the figure skating genius who stole my heart and made me feel alive for the first time, do not deserve to have my emotions played with so callously. Yuuri, you are a cruel temptress. But I love you anyway. Please never leave me.”
“I'll never leave you, Victor,” Yuuri says. His voice is soft, even when reading the next lines. “And even though I am a cruel temptress, I vow to be that no longer. Like when Spider-Man threw his costume away in Spider-Man 2, except I won't steal it back from JJ Jameson later, even though that was one of the best scenes in the movie. From now on, I will be only Yuuri Katsuki, future Olympic and GPF gold medalist, and...”
“Read it.”
“...and sexy, round bottomed Katsudon of love.”
“Oh Yuuri!” Victor's lips tremble. “Do you mean it?”
“With every excess pound of flesh on my body,” Yuuri says. For the first time since Victor started this ridiculous roleplay, he feels like he's finally settling into his character. “I'll devote the rest of my life to making you happy, and I'll never again break your fragile, yet virile, heart. My family, who I also callously disregarded but that's not the point of this movie and they didn't want to be a part of this even though I asked, I being Victor— Victor, thank God I can't believe you asked them—but don't read that part out loud Yuuri...oh, sorry.” He clears his throat. “My family has grown. It is now you, Victor, and Makka, and even Yurio, despite being an even worse student than Victor was for Yakov...Victor, please tell me you didn't get Yakov to help with this part...”
“Of course not!” Victor says, aghast. “He doesn't have a creative bone in his body for anything that isn't skating. I wrote that myself! Very magnanimous of me, yes?”
Yuuri has to think for a minute to remember what magnanimous means in Japanese, but once he does, he chuckles. “Maybe. But since Yakov is never going to see this, I think the effect is a bit lost.”
Victor hums noncommittally. Yuuri chooses to ignore it for the sake of his sanity.
“It's your turn,” he prompts.
“Oh, right!” Victor says. “Yuuri! That makes me so happy! I love you so much!”
“I love you, too, Victor...” He reads the next line and blushes. “Oh...”
“What does it say, Yuuri?” Victor purrs.
“And now they kiss...”
And as he looks up from his script, Victor does.
Yuuri melts. Victor's precious kisses have never once decreased in potency. Every kiss was like the first, surprising and exhilarating and tasting like victory. Yuuri closed his eyes and lost himself in his husband to be, deepening the kiss, opening his mouth and—
Victor pulls away.
“Excellent!” He grins his happiest heart shaped grin. “That's a wrap!”
Yuuri blinks. “Huh?”
“Thank you, Yuuri. This performance was much better than the last one. I won't even have to fix it too much in post!”
Yuuri frowns. He would very much like to go back to the kissing of his fiance, please and thank you. It takes a moment for Victor's words to register, and when they do, he's sure he must be mishearing.
“Victor? Why are you acting like we just made...a....”
Yuuri watches in silent horror as Victor prances over to a nearby shelf and takes his phone off one of those tiny tripods people use when filming...
“Victor...”
“Yuuri!”
“...did you...film this?”
“Of course!”
“Victor! You said this was just a roleplay! You don't film roleplays!”
“Well, that's a very boring way to approach this kind of thing, Yuuri. But we'll work on it! And anyway, what's acting if not roleplaying?”
“What are you doing? Where are you going? Victor, don't leave without deleting that!”
“Of course I'm not deleting it! I need to cut and edit it into something we can show all our friends!”
“Victor!”
“Victor...I really am sorry. For all the times I hurt you...”
“I know, Yuuri. And I forgive you. I forgave you months ago. But this was fun, wasn't it? We got to be creative in ways we never get to on the ice!”
Yuuri laughs softly. “I guess...it wasn't the worst thing we've ever tried.”
“Definitely not! The worst thing was—”
“Couples barn raising,” they say together.
They shudder.
“The Amish have so much to answer for,” Yuuri says. Victor nods emphatically.
“But I'm glad you forgive me. I love you, Victor. More than anything.”
“I love you too, my Yuuri.” He smiles and gives Yuuri a quick peck on the lips. “But I'm still showing our movie to everyone.”
“Dammit.”
Three months later
“Hey, Victor?”
“Yes, my Yuuri?”
“Do you remember that time in China when I was having an anxiety attack and, instead of doing literally anything helpful, you threatened to resign as my coach if I didn't win?”
“...”
“Do you?”
“Um. Heh. Yes, I remember something like that...”
“And do you remember when you said you'd do anything to make it up to me?”
“I don't actually—” Yuuri's eyes disappear behind the light shining off his glasses. Victor swallows heavily. “But I do tend to forget things sometimes! I know Yuuri wouldn't lie to me about this.”
Yuuri grins. “Good. Because I have something for you.”
He holds up a notebook.
“Yuuri, is that...?”
“It's a free skate I choreographed, just for you. I want to go down to the rink and have you perform it for me.”
“Oh. Oh! Well, that actually sound like fun!”
“Here. Read it.”
“Okay! Wow! Yuuri this is so detailed! You really...”
“Victor? Is something wrong?”
“There are... Yuuri, there are 23 quads in this program.”
“One quad for every year of slowly and painfully built self-esteem you almost destroyed with your thoughtless comment.”
“....”
“Victor?”
Yuuri tilts his head ever so slightly. The last shred of resistance Victor has crumbles.
“I'll...get my skates.”