Chapter Text
Chris Giacometti was sitting on a rooftop above the entrance to a Tokyo train station with a pair of binoculars, engaging in his favourite pastime since time immemorial: people-watching. And people-judging, of course.
Chris had left his lunch break in Switzerland and transported here on a whim, transforming his clothes into a grey flak jacket and combat boots, and added a toothpick to the corner of his mouth just to complete the look. He visited a different city every day, just to see the different sorts of love disasters each city specialised in. It never got boring. All miserable people were uniquely miserable, as Tolstoy said. Or something like that. Chris didn't remember exactly, because at the time he'd been trying to give Tolstoy advice for fixing his marriage.
He was known as Chris Giacometti in his business circles, and various other names when he was on pleasure trips, but when he stepped away from the mortal world he was simply the god of love and lust.
In the olden days, when the pantheon had been grimmer and more powerful and mortals had truly believed in them, they had had no moral obligation to anyone. In those days, Chris could create love out of nothing, between any two souls, even making a man and a mountain long for each other. Nowadays... well, he couldn't make anybody fall in love who didn't really want to, nor change their nature. But he could certainly help. That's why he was the creator and CEO of Emberz, the world's most popular speed dating app. Even gods had to move with the times.
In Tokyo it was late in the evening, when the workaholics were heading out for a drink, spring-loaded with desperate regrets, and the college students wandering about in little clusters of carnal joy. Chris scanned the crowd heading for the entrance to the station. Set up by his side was a shimmering, sky-blue rifle, and slung across his chest was a bandolier holding various magical missiles to erase doubt, insecurity and anxiety, each targeted to a specific problem. He saw an old man in a business suit unwilling to let go of grudges that kept him from embracing the old school-friend who'd come back into his life. His binoculars caught a glimpse of a young mother torn between a dull marriage and an exciting new lover. Finally he spotted a young man in a tracksuit with a scarf tucked over his mouth, dragging a wheeled bag behind him.
"Ah, there's a boy who needs some love in his life," Chris murmured to himself. The young man was wracked with emotional pain and pent-up desires. With a glance, Chris detected that he was aware of his sexuality but unwilling to act on it, and that he blamed his career for the absence of love in his life, when in fact only his own fears were holding him back. The perfect target. Chris smiled, put down the binoculars and picked up his shimmering rifle, which pulsed in excitement. He selected a dark blue missile and slid it into the chamber, took aim and fired.
"Bullseye," whispered Chris, as he felt the missile sink between the target's shoulder blades and into his heart. He waited for the young man's spirit to lift as a new desire for love flooded through his nervous system.
Nothing happened. Chris grabbed the binoculars. He knew he'd struck his target. After thousands of years changing the hearts of mortals, he didn't miss. But the young man hurried on with his head still hanging low.
Chris frowned. He picked up the rifle and folded it into itself until it reformed into the shape of a fountain-pen. Then he stepped up onto the edge of the roof and leapt off. Invisibly, he soared downwards, landing on his feet among the busy crowd and appearing in a dark, plum-coloured business suit with the blue pen tucked into his front pocket. The young man was just ahead. Chris pushed through the crowd to follow him. Why hadn't the missile affected him? Even if it hadn't been potent enough – and Chris prided himself on always getting the dose right – there should have been some response.
The young man had his phone out now. "Hi, Mom. Yeah, I'll get the next train home. I don't know if there's one tonight, I might have to stay over with Touma. No, I'll call him."
Chris stared at the back of the young man's head, feeling the self-pity wash off him. And then his gaze slid down to the disposable tote bag in his hand. JAPAN FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS, the block letters said. MEN'S SINGLES.
Chris' eyes went wide. His lips parted in a sharp inhale. The young man stopped to look up at the schedule board winking above their heads and Chris almost collided with him. The boy pulled down his scarf for a moment, squinting through his glasses at the timetable. Chris grabbed his phone, thumbed the contact "V" and turned away so he wasn't so obviously staring.
The phone rung four times, Chris bouncing on his heels, and finally the god of Viktory picked up, sounding very disheveled. "Da? I'm in San Fran. You woke me up."
Chris spoke in Swiss-German in the hopes the target would take a few minutes to translate it, hissing as quietly as he could. "I found him, Viktor!"
"What?" a paused. "Are you going to elaborate? Who have you found?"
"I'm not going to ring you at this hour for just anybody."
"Last year you rung me just to boast about who you were in bed with!"
"They were a prime minister," Chris pouted.
"All I'm saying is, this better be the us-damned Pope."
"Better. It's him," Chris breathed. "I found him."
Finally, the sleepy Viktor seemed to catch on. "That's not possible."
"He’s in Tokyo. He's dressed up like a moody millennial with spectacles, but it's definitely him. I tried to shoot him with one of my love spells and it had no effect."
Viktor's voice was a little strained. "Perhaps you're just losing your touch, old man."
"My touch is as good as ever!" Chris scolded, smirking to himself. "I know it's him. He's a skater."
There was silence for several seconds. Then Viktor said, "Delay him. Change your shape, don't let him recognise you." There was the sound of blankets and the thump of half-asleep feet. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Yes, oh-captain-my-captain," Chris said, and hung up. He turned around. "Oh... whoops."
The young man was gone. The crowd flowed around Chris, heading on and off trains in all directions, carrying people to all corners of the country.
---[]---
The steel ceiling beams stretched into an oval dome above their heads. The dark green walls were solid and windowless, giving no clue as to what might lie outside – or above – the expansive room. Behind the table were several white projection screens, and curved desks had been set at regular intervals, holding black rotary-dial phones. These were preferred to their more modern counterparts, let alone any type of computers. Cellphones and wireless transmitters of all types were banned in here. This room could not be compromised by any possibility of digital eavesdroppers.
The last of the generals and policy-makers had taken their seat a few minutes ago, and were now beginning to fidget with impatience. Some turned to their neighbours and made small talk about the political news beyond the borders. Some scribbled reminders to themselves on scrap paper, while others simply sat with tense shoulders, shadows growing in the canyons of their faces. A few assistants and aides stood behind their bosses or scurried around the table, leaning in to whisper messages.
There was a knock on the door. An aide rushed to open it. A man walked in with a relaxed stride, one hand in his pocket and the other supporting a thick pile of files under his arm. There was nothing military in his pose or his smile. His suit was impeccably tailored to display a honed figure, and his dark curls had been shaved on the sides of his head but left long on top.
"Morning, gentleman," he smiled to the room, with the smooth accent of an Eton boy sliding between his thick lips. "My name is Alan Savage, CEO. Sorry to keep you waiting. My boss is on his way from London right now."
The general closest to the door got up and held out his hand. He spoke in clear English. "Good to have you, but I hope you mean he's on his way downstairs. Most of us have ten minutes at most."
"Oh, he won't be long." Savage winked at him as he shook his hand and turned to survey the room.
"Ugh." The general who'd been sitting next to his colleague was one of the oldest in the room, balding on top and with a chunk missing out of his nose. He turned away, balling his fist. "What is this shit? We don't have time for this. We can cancel our contracts with you at any time and buy arms from anyone."
Savage shot him a beaming smile full of flawless, white teeth. "Trust me. He's worth the wait."
He turned at the sound of another knock on the door. The aide pulled it open.
"Ah! There you are, sir."
The entire room leaned forward slightly to stare at the young man who had just walked into the room. He wore an expensive, grey suit, but he couldn't even have stretched to five-foot-five, and his round face was still adolescent, not yet sculpted by puberty. His blond hair was tied back from his face in two plaits, knotted into a bun at the back of his head.
"Gentlemen and ladies," Savage waved his free arm at the young man. "My beloved mentor, Yuri Plisetsky. Founder of YuTech Defense and Security, and your best friend if you hope to win the – uh – numerous conflicts that you are currently pursuing. This, good fellows, is the God of War."
There was a moment of silence. Several of the generals glanced at each other. A woman near the front put her hand to her mouth to hide a smile. The man next to her wasn't so polite and broke out into a crack of laughter.
"What is this?" the balding general with the chunk of nose missing jumped to his feet. He waved his hand at the newcomer. "Is this a joke? Who's this short-arse brat?"
The young man's gaze turned on him at once, and there was a crackle as the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted. Exhalations turned to fog around the table. The woman who had smiled looked down at the pen in her hand and found that frost crystals were rapidly spreading across it. Yet steam seemed to be rising from the shoulders of the young man, and his eyes were blown into huge, black pupils. The corner of his mouth twitched into a snarl.
"You think I'm a joke?" he stepped forward and raised his hand, and the balding general gasped and nearly fell out of his chair, his spine curving backwards. And then he seemed to be standing up, yet his feet were not supporting him, and his neighbour made a gurgle of repressed shock as the imprint formed of a balled fist curled around the general's lapels. The balding man was lifted higher and higher.
"This is the first time I have revealed myself to unknown mortals for a millennia!" the young man cried. "I will be shown the respect I deserve!"
All the eyes in the room were staring at the floating general, and those few that tried to move to help him found their couldn't twitch a single muscle in their body. The general likewise frozen in shock, hanging four feet above the table. And then the shape of the fist vanished and he plummeted back into his chair. He landed right on the seat, seemingly unharmed. One of the wheels of the chair snapped off and rolled across the floor.
Savage was still smiling. "Not a joke, fellows. An opportunity."
There was a rapid intake of air and everyone who had found themselves frozen was suddenly released. A few of them shoved their chairs away from the table or bent over its edge, gripping their chests. To their credit, none of them jumped up and reached for the phones. They sat in silence.
The young man who had been named Yuri Plisetsky adjusted his tie and sniffed. "This is only the beginning. You must all have noticed that the powers of the gods have been waning. No more! War is spreading, and I am the only one who can truly know its nature or direct it where it does not wish to go. I have chosen your puny civilisation as my favoured people, but do not think I owe you any loyalty. If you help restore me to my true glory, help me unseat the fragile king of the diminished pantheon, then you will be unstoppable wherever you send your tanks and your drones and the eyes of your satellites. Fail me, and you will see how quickly the tides of war can turn."
Most of the table sat stunned. One older woman who had been sitting near the back now stood up. Her hair was streaked with silver and her lapels identified her status above almost all the men. Her voice was sharp and unafraid when she spoke. “An impressive display, Mr Plisetsky. What would you do if we were to call the guards in right now? I’m simply curious.”
Yuri Plisetsky raised his hands again and stretched out his fingers. Every rotary-dial phone in the room began to shake, and then flew off their desks and thudded down onto the table in the centre of the room, their cords ripping out of the wall but somehow remaining intact. Those closest to them jumped and surveyed them with wary gazes.
“Call them,” Yuri said. “I will leave. But you will wish you listened to me.”
The woman had only flinched a little as the nearest phone had landed in front of her. "If you truly have this power, may I ask why offer it to us now? Did your last 'favoured people' disappoint you? We must be sure, you see, that you did not fail them. Or worse, we want to be sure you will not return to them if there if we present you with... disagreements. I, for one, do not makes deals with the devil. Only partnerships."
Yuri Plisetsky turned his eyes on her, her pupils now restored to an emerald green. He tossed a strand of hair off his face with a flick of his fingers. "A fair question. I will tell you the truth: I have not given my favour to any single group since I was worshipped by those you call the Romans."
"Why?" the woman pressed. "What has changed now?"
Yuri's eyes narrowed, but after a moment he tossed his head. "One of the pantheon has vanished. One who stood in my way many times, who had the power to turn enemies to comrades and craft even the worst rage into joy. After a quarter of a century, I feel confident that he will not return to oppose me. He may have been finally swallowed up by the pious apathy of mortals. Now it is my time to rise."
---[]---
Yuuri Katsuki opened his curtains to see a world turned white.
"Snow, this late in the year?" he frowned, peering out over the garden. "Great."
He flopped face-down on his bed and turned his head to reach for his phone. He switched it back on for the first time since the video of his skating had gone viral, selecting all the emails in his inbox and setting them to "Mark as Read". The top post on his Facebook feed was a composite video of his skate in Ice Palace Hasetsu, next to Viktor Nikiforov's gold-medal performance in 1964. Yuuri sighed and stopped to watch the video, his eyes fixed only on Nikiforov. Even viewed through the grainy lens of the black-and-white camera, Viktor was perfect, far more elegant and charismatic than Yuuri's skate. It was embarrassing to even compare them.
Yuuri turned his phone off and pressed his face into the pillow. The poster of Viktor Nikiforov above his head smiled down at him. The picture had been snapped just as he finished his Olympic performance, one of the few professional images of the skater in action, the resolution high enough to see the sweat beading on Viktor's neck and the strain of his tendons against the sheer cloth of his costume. Yuuri had found the photo in an old book when he was fifteen. He had written to the archive who owned the photographer's work to get a copy of the negative, and had it blown up to poster-size with his own pocket-money.
Nikiforov was a mystery that had an ending too unsatisfying to interest most people. The completely unknown Russian had appeared on the skating scene in 1962, winning the world championships twice with incredible performances that at the time were beyond revolutionary – they were almost unscorable. Even today, Viktor's skates would have netted him world records. In the 60s, several committees were convened just to decide whether his jumps would be allowed, and how to judge them. The 1964 Olympics had been his crowning glory, launching him onto the world stage and charming audiences with his boisterous and cheekily self-aggrandising interviews. He had been slated for an exhibition tour of Europe and North America, but after the Olympics finished his tour had been suddenly cancelled and the revolutionary skater had simply disappeared. Most sports historians agreed that the iron curtain had slammed shut behind him – that he had been suspected of defecting, or worse, and had been taken into indefinite custody. Either he'd died in prison or been paid enough to never raise his head in public again. Skating would take several more decades to produce athletes of his skill, and even then, they were inventing his achievements anew: most of the skaters Yuuri met had barely heard of Nikiforov and had never watched the handful of recordings of him skating.
But when Yuuri was young, he'd seen glimpses of Viktor in a documentary and fallen completely in love. Since then, he'd hunted down every image of his hero, every video of his performances, even the radio broadcasts of his interviews. Viktor had been his inspiration to go professional, and during his failure at the last Grand Prix, it was Viktor he thought of with the greatest shame. Maybe the mysterious Nikiforov really had been dead for fifty years, but Yuuri still felt as if he'd let him down.
There was a knock on the door and his mother's voice broke him out his trance. "Yuuri, dear! Come to breakfast. We need someone to shovel the paths!"
"Coming, Mom," Yuuri mumbled.
Dressed and fed, he pulled on a thick jacket and went outside. As he slid open the front door, he was almost bowled over by a large dog that bounded inside. Yuuri yelped and sat down to let the dog greet him, its tail wagging as it nuzzled his face, huffing foul breath all over him. He pulled off his gloves and dug his fingers into the curly hair on its head with a laugh.
"Hey there, cutie. Who do you belong to?"
"Oh, he's with some new fellow who just arrived." Yuuri's dad was going past with a crate full of crockery. "Foreign tourist. Rich too." His dad winked. "And handsome. I'm sure you'd stick around if we had more like that!"
"Dad! Please, stop." Yuuri pressed his face into the dog's flank for a moment, thinking of Vicchan. The dog bounded away into the snow again, leaving him sitting on the front step. “You know I don’t have plans to keep skating."
"Of course. Well, we're here to talk about it when you're ready," his dad nodded and when Yuuri just sighed, his father sidled away.
Yuuri spent the rest of the morning clearing the snow from the entrances. Just as he was finished, he looked up at the upper storey of the hotel and saw someone watching him from an upstairs window. There was a pale-haired man with his hands and faced pressed right up against the glass, grinning at Yuuri. He looked strangely familiar. Having finally made eye contact, he waved frantically. With a frown, Yuuri took one hand off the shovel to wave back.
The man disappeared from the window with a brief flash of a trenchcoat being snatched up. Yuuri shrugged and went back to shoveling, but within seconds he heard the crunch of shoes on the snow and looked up to see the lanky figure of the man from the window leaping off the steps of the side-door and lunging through the snow towards him.
"Privyet, golubchik!"
"Ah—" Yuuri dropped the shovel and raised his hands just as the man half-collided with him, seizing him by both arms. He was still smiling broadly. Yuuri flinched. "I'm sorry, I don't speak..." he wasn't even sure what he'd just heard, it had all happened so fast.
"Oh! Of course, you've been here so long," the man laughed in passable Japanese. "It's so good to see you!"
Yuuri stared at him. And then the man’s familiarity slid into frame in his thoughts. His eyes went wide and he felt his heart thump in his chest so hard it made him dizzy. "Viktor? Viktor Nikiforov?"
"If you like." Viktor released him and propped his hands on his hips. Then he leaned in so close that Yuuri almost toppled over backwards. “This rustic, shy look you’ve got going is adorable.”
Yuuri stared at him, pushing his glasses up his nose. "This... this isn't possible. You're not him. You're too young," and alive he added silently. "Where did you come from?"
"San Francisco this month." Viktor tilted his head in confusion. "And you're named Yuuri, aren't you? I looked you up in the Japanese Nationals. You were terrible," he grinned.
"Oh." Yuuri wilted. "Uh... thanks."
"You obviously need me!"
"Need... you?"
"You should have just told me you were in such a dire state and I would have come years ago!" Viktor clapped his hands on Yuuri's shoulders, making him flinch again. His voice became plaintive, "Yuuri, why have you been hiding for so long? I missed you. We all missed you, but..." something flickered across his face that Yuuri couldn't read. "Myself most of all."
"I'm sorry," Yuuri pulled himself out of the man's grasp. "We’ve never met. You've mixed me up with someone else. And you can't be the Viktor Nikiforov I was thinking of. He would be eighty years old by now, if he's even still alive."
"Ah, I see," Viktor winked. "Staying in deep cover, is that it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
Viktor gave an even more exaggerated wink, as if he thought Yuuri might somehow have missed the last one. "A true mortal life. I understand. Going for an ordinary body and everything," he reached out and pulled Yuuri's coat up, exposing a slice of his belly to the freezing air. Yuuri yelped and jumped backwards, pulling his clothes down. Viktor nodded. "I've been tempted myself, many times. It's hard to bear the burden of who we really are, especially in an age of disbelief."
Yuuri grumbled, tucking his shirt in his trousers in case Viktor tried that again. "And who exactly do you think I am?"
Viktor's expression softened, and Yuuri couldn't shake the conviction that he really was looking at the 1964 Olympic champion in the flesh. He'd studied Nikiforov's videos so many times he could see every moment when he closed his eyes and feel the shape of the jumps when he was on the ice. He had stared at photographs of Viktor on his walls since he was a teenager. This man was identical, from face to voice to the rakish way he stood, with all the grace and self-awareness of an athlete. But it was also impossible.
"You've had many names and many forms," Viktor said, drawing closer as he spoke. "Dionysus. Gambrinus. Ninkasi. Ægir. Hathor. Bacchus. And you have taken many roles as a spirit of celebration and reconciliation. But always, my dear Yuuri, you have been beloved by mortals. For you are the god of parties, the god of drinking, the god of alcohol in all its forms."
Yuuri stared at him for a long, long time. At last he picked up the shovel again with both hands and said, “I don’t know how my dad talked you into this, but when you see him, tell him this is the worst possible way he could have set me up on a blind date.”
"No, no!" Viktor laughed, waving his hands in dismissal. "It really is me! I haven't even changed my face since you left. I've been looking for you for over twenty years!"
"Look." Yuuri pinched the bridge of his nose. "Tell Dad this isn't funny. I've got chores to do and my life to sort out."
He shook his head, wondering if the cold was getting to his brain. How could this stranger look so much like Viktor Nikiforov? It had to be some kind prank. But who would know Yuuri well enough to set up something so specific to him, yet be rude enough to call the masquerade ‘God of Victory’ after all his failures this year? It didn’t make sense. Yuuri gripped the shovel and stabbed it into the snow so hard he struck the tile underneath with a painful jolt that vibrated in his teeth. His cheeks were burning and his neck muscles were so tense that they hurt.
"Okay, Yuuri." Viktor was still saying Yuuri's name with a kind of wink-wink-nudge in his voice, as if amending quotation marks to it in his mind. "Obviously you're enjoying your little mortal life and don't want to come home." Yuuri gripped the shovel tighter and gritted his teeth. "But at least tell me you believe me. I'm not some nymph taking Viktor's face to play a trick on your or something."
"You're not Viktor Nikiforov," Yuuri said over his shoulder. "He's been gone for fifty years."
"I'll prove it to you," Viktor said firmly. "Tonight, at that local skating rink. Meet me there after dinner!"
Yuuri looked after at him. Viktor was just standing with his hands in his pockets, watching him with an expression that was difficult to read. A few flakes of snow were beginning to fall around him, catching in his hair and sparkling there before they melted.
Whoever he really was, whether he was delusional or just playing a stupid prank, he didn't seem dangerous. Yuuri sighed. "Sure. Prove it to me."
"Kpyto!" Viktor clapped his hands and grinned. "I just have to go home and get something. See you later!"
He turned and dashed off across the snowy lawn, around the side of the building. Yuuri raised his hand. "Wait, that's a dead end," he called.
He followed Viktor's footprints in the snow, but when he came around the corner, there was no one there. The footprints just ended at a screen taller than Yuuri, which blocked visibility to the outdoor hot springs. He blinked, looking around the narrow space between the screen and the blank wall at the back of the hotel. Viktor Nikiforov had vanished.
"Go home?" Yuuri frowned to himself. "Did he mean go back to his room?"
He shrugged and went back to shovelling the driveway, trying not to think any more about the bizarre stranger.