Author's Note:

Me: *thinking about possible AUs I could write* Well, I have a suit fetish and an education in classical literature… All right, let's do this.

This started off as a joke but got surprisingly serious…?

And, yes, the chapter name is a Hark! A Vagrant reference, and I'm only a little bit ashamed, so there.

"Is a three-piece suit too much for a Sunday brunch?"

Chris had to blink back his initial surprise. It wasn't the suit in question that garnered this reaction; after all, this was Victor Nikiforov he was dealing with. It was the inquiry more than anything that mildly impressed him. To think his friend had the foresight to rein in his excessive personality…

"It might be," Chris replied noncommittally, feigning interest in the outfit Victor held out to him for examination. He sprawled out a little more on the chaise, mouth cradled in the palm of his hand. "Maybe you're overthinking things."

Victor huffed, trying to summon a look of disapproval, but it turned into more of a pout. "Please take this seriously, Chris. My future happiness is at stake here."

Chris couldn't hold back a chuckle. "You really like this boy, don't you?"

In lieu of a proper response, Victor merely stalked back into the wardrobe to locate more appropriate attire.

His mother had always been rather fond of that term—"appropriate"—and had used it often to softly reprimand her child. Victor Nikiforov had always been too something. Too loud. Too much. Too Vitya. "Appropriate" became Mrs. Nikiforov's go-to phrase—one he didn't care to take too much to heart despite his mother's best efforts; God bless her. Even so, in her absence, Victor found himself falling back on her advice as easily as greeting an old friend.

"Is he really all that special?" Chris's words said one thing; his tone, another. He smirked, anticipating the explosive reaction.

It was more subdued than he had bargained, Victor merely scoffing from inside the wardrobe and droning, "You've met him."

"Indeed, I have." Chris licked his lips appreciatively—not that his friend could see it with the other's head buried in fabrics. "He certainly left quite the impression."

Victor emerged at that particular remark, leveling the younger man with a glare over his shoulder. "I don't want to duel my best friend over my beloved's heart, but you may end up forcing my hand with comments such as those."

Chris sat up from his relaxed position in a hurry, offering his hands in a placating motion. "Easy there! I wouldn't dream of getting in your way!" He slumped over again—this time in a sitting position—when Victor's shoulders relaxed. "While we're on the subject though," Chris further expounded, his air of nonchalance fully restored, "I would make a move soon if I were you. After that banquet, well… I'd be terribly surprised if he remained single much longer."

"I'm well aware," Victor snipped, looking particularly pained at being reminded. Having finally found a potential outfit, he began to pull on the ensemble. "If it were up to me, I'd have proposed marriage by now."

Chris's eyebrows shot up at that. "Isn't it though? Up to you, I mean?" Courting was typically led by the eldest or more societally mature of the couple, and Victor was both, being physically older than his love interest and the head of his own household. Surely, this was more than enough to initiate a relationship, so why then was his friend hesitating?

Victor's fingers, having been struggling to clasp the last button, abruptly froze. In an act of uncharacteristic reticence, he turned away, facing his standing mirror to ostensibly check his appearance. In doing so, he caught sight of his disheveled hair and idly began fiddling with his bangs. "It's… complicated," he decided after a moment.

"What could be so complicated?" Chris probed lightly, not at all used to Victor acting so demure.

Victor dawdled with that final button. "Ah, well… You saw him at the banquet," he excused poorly.

"I did." This time, Chris kept his provocative gestures to himself as not to incur his friend's wrath. "He certainly wasn't his usual wallflower self."

"Right." Victor took on a more determined expression, having found the words with Chris's assistance. "He completely took charge. And, if I might be so bold as to say it, he was clearly interested in me—in escalating our relationship. I have no qualms in letting him direct further contact on his terms."

Chris breathed out a quiet laugh. "And yet, you invited yourself to brunch."

Victor smiled sourly, completing his outfit with a handsome top hat. "It's been a week. I may be a gentleman, but I am a gentleman with standards, after all."

-transition-

"Oy, Yuri! Someone called for you!"

Yuri, having been bent down to examine the cherry blossom saplings he had been steadfastly stoking to life for months now, straightened his posture to meet his sister's eyes. "Again?"

"Again," Mari confirmed, leaning on one of the courtyard's many columns. Despite her seemingly relaxed stance, her body was positively ridged with agitation.

Yuri sighed, turning his attention back to the young trees under his care. "That's the ninth one this week…" he muttered to no one in particular. "I don't understand…"

Mari tossed her head back with a snarl. "Are you going to call any of them back or not? Because, at the moment, my entire existence entails sending suitors away and making excuses for you."

Yuri flushed at that, abusing his lower lip to the point of irritation. He teared his attention away from his sister's scrutinizing gaze to reach out and delicately trace a cherry blossom branch with the pads of his fingers. "I'm sorry… I don't know why it keeps happening…"

"You didn't answer my question, Yuri," Mari observed astutely, crossing the broad sleeves of her yukata over her chest.

"I…" Yuri's hand retraced back to his side, visibly trembling as he gripped a handful of his own Japanese attire in a vain attempt to steady himself. "I'm… waiting for someone else. Sorry."

Silence stretched between the siblings. A strong wind rustled the foliage of the garden as though trying to fill the void with some semblance of sound, but it only served to give Yuri a full-body shiver.

After several painstaking minutes of Yuri refusing to return eye contact, Mari finally conceded. "I suppose that will do for now," she stated, unfolding her arms to push off the column. The message was clear: "I'm giving you time, but I won't be patient forever." Yuri could live with that; he would have to, considering it was the only option allotted to him at this juncture.

Left to his own devices, Yuri returned his attention to the garden. The cherry blossoms weren't his only projects, after all. He was making a valiant attempt at hosting a whole cornucopia of Japanese flora. Hopefully, he thought, it would one day succeed in bringing a bit of his homeland to the English countryside.

It was by the pond where the lotus flowers floated languidly that Yuri noticed some well polished shoes make their way into the reflection of the water. He followed the trajectory of the pant legs accompanying them and found himself suddenly in the presence of one Victor Nikiforov.

"Oh, how interesting," Victor commented blithely, a smile enlightening his smart features. "I came here looking for some beautiful flowers, but imagine my surprise when I found that the most beautiful thing in this garden is you."

Yuri scrambled to his feet, adjusting his glasses with panicked imprecision. "I-I-I thought you came here to talk to my father," he settled with, finally forcing himself not to indulge in his nervous habit when he had adequately covered the lenses with fingerprints.

Victor's expression fell for the faintest of moments—almost imperceptible—but he recovered just as quickly. "Officially, yes, but let's just say there are certain perks to visiting the Japanese ambassador." He adorned his statement with a wink, drawing another blush from the jumpy man before him.

"Let me…" Yuri ventured forth before tapering off, and Victor's traitorous mind filled in the gaps with predictions of grandeur: Let me court you, let me marry you, let me have you forever and ever and ever.

Unfortunately, reality ensued, as it often has the propensity to do; and like a mighty ocean tide, it cruelly dashed his hopes against the crags.

"Let me show you to the parlor."

To his credit, Victor made a valiant attempt at keeping the disappointment from marring his carefully constructed countenance, but it proved to be a futile effort. "That would be lovely," he assured, but Yuri—ever keen at the most inconvenient of times—regarded him with the gentle lifting of an eyebrow.

For propriety's sake, the other feigned ignorance and turned towards the manor, gesturing behind for Victor to follow.

Surely, if Victor didn't offer it forward, it wasn't his place to pry, right?

Yuri's mother intercepted them in the foyer, and as always, she greeted Victor warmly despite the imposing language barrier between them.

"Yuri," she shifted in both subject and tone, casting a playfully stern look at her son's clothes, "for guests?"

Yuri made a soft questioning noise in the back of his throat, but the confusion was short lived as embarrassment teared across his face as sudden and vivid as a knife wound.

He had been gardening, and as such, was without shoes—dirt staining his skin in indiscriminate patterns—and his yukata was hiked up to his thighs. It was considered scandalous to so much as show your ankles, and yet, here was Yuri Katsuki, flouncing around in hardly nothing as though he didn't have a care in the world. And in front of Mr. Nikiforov, no less!

"I-I-If you'll excuse me!" Yuri forced out, voice breaking with the strain as he tore up the stairs.

Once the other man was safely tucked out of sight, Victor dropped the bulk of his façade, sighing forlornly at the woman of the house. "Ah, how cruel you are, Madam Katsuki," he bemoaned, the protruding of his lower lip only half an exaggeration. "How could you stand to make him change when he looked so ravishing like that?"

Hiroko laughed—but only at the hyperbolic tone Victor adopted. Her level of English competency was far from fluent (as was her husband's), and she and him relied upon their children in most instances to translate for them. With Yuri out of the room, Victor felt safe in outwardly acknowledging his obvious pining.

He could have afforded, however, to have been a bit more conscientious about his surroundings.

"I suppose that makes you number ten," Mari voiced, making her presence known from the antechamber across the hall.

"Ten…?" Victor echoed, tracking her movements with an air of suspicion as she emerged into view.

The woman leaned against the banister—nonchalance incarnate—but something was cold and calculated underneath the surface. She let the anticipation simmer a moment, and in the interlude, lit a Japanese-style pipe, slender and serpentine in design. "Ten," she finally confirmed, breathing a cloud of smoke in Victor's direction which he steadfastly ignored. "You're suitor number ten. Yuri has had ten suitors come to call since that banquet last week."

"Ten," Victor stated dumbly again, but this time, it was spoken in abject horror.

Hiroko, not following the conversation, merely gestured at Mari's pipe, urging her to remember her manners. She did—albeit irritably—and angled her body away from Victor, profile pronounced against the backdrop of the entryway.

It was nearly impossible to decipher whether Mari was taking pity on him or simply speaking out loud, but nevertheless, she quietly divulged, "He won't call any of them back though. Says he's waiting for something."

"Something?"

"Someone."

"Someone…"

"Mmm." Another slow, winding billow of smoke. "'I'm waiting for someone else.' That is what he said."

"Was that all?"

"Sorry."

"I said, was that all?"

"No, sorry. He said, 'sorry' after that." Mari groaned, the pipe dipping in her exasperation. "He has a tendency to apologize when he doesn't need to and not apologize when he does."

Victor hardly knew what to make of that information, but he catalogued it in his memory nevertheless.

"Whatever the case, you, of all people, don't need to worry."

"What do you—?"

"Come now," Mari interjected, turning her back on the man and meandering in the direction of the parlor. "You came for brunch, and you will have it. You wanted to talk about political affairs with my father, yes?"

"I…" Victor tellingly cast his gaze back towards the top of the stairs where Yuri had previously disappeared from sight. "Yes," he decided after a beat of contemplation.

Simply adding to Victor's ever growing perplexity, Mari smirked, something akin to pride smoldering in her gaze. "Yes…" She took a final drag on the pipe, looking every bit as devious and snake-like as the object. "Yes, you'll do…"

-transition-

Being the Russian ambassador, Victor really should have taken a better interest in these affairs, but despite himself, he found that his eyes kept gravitating towards the door, subconsciously seeking Yuri and mentally calling out to him.

It wasn't even that he wanted to begin a more intimate relationship with Yuri (although, he certainly did), but on this occasion, he would have simply settled for Yuri rescuing him from this tedious discussion about trade routes and embargos.

Agonizing was hardly a strong enough word for it.

Yuri hadn't even graced Victor with his presence during the meal, leaving him very much alone in the company of the rest of his family. (Did Yuri not eat very much? He certainly drank a lot, if Victor's short term memory was at all reliable. Was he eating enough? Eating properly? For some reason, these considerations came to the forefront of his immediate thinking.)

The exact moment Victor was convinced that he was going to finally keel over and be pronounced dead—death by a thousand tax cuts—his knight in shining armor arrived, poised to rescue his fair maiden from the tower.

Or rather, he was, at the very least, prepared to come in contact with polite society again.

Yuri sleuthed into the parlor room—in a proper kimono this time; never mind the summer heat—and didn't so much as offer a humble preamble to draw a modicum of attention to his presence. He merely took a seat an appropriate distance away from the tea table, keeping his head down as not to interrupt the no doubt riveting meeting between foreign powers. He even went so far as to open a book in his lap, well and truly detaching him from the idea of joining the discussion. Victor wondered, briefly, what he intended to accomplish or why he even bothered to make an appearance at all if thiswas going to be the extent of his involvement.

But then, just as Victor lifted a delicate teacup to his mouth, Yuri caught Victor's eyes and imparted onto him the smallest, most amiable smile.

That fond look transformed into a painful wince as the sound of fine china breaking on the floor resounded throughout the room.

"Oh." Victor hardly recognized his own actions, staring down dully at the shattered cup. "I… That was my fault. I'll replace it, Lord Katsuki."

Mari didn't strain herself to translate, merely waving his offer away. "Never mind. We have others."

Victor swallowed. "Still…" His gaze—having not sufficiently learned its lesson—searched out Yuri's once more.

Yuri seemed… conflicted, to say the least. It was as though half of Yuri had seen straight through him, recognizing Victor's oversight for exactly what it was; but the second half disbelieved the first and was mentally berating himself for having so much as even entertained the idea that Victor might, in fact, be entirely smitten with him.

Perhaps, thought Victor, he would have to be more direct.

"Yuri, I—"

"Lord Nikiforov!" A young, plucky servant to the Katsuki's—Minami, Victor's brain helpfully provided—burst into the room. He bowed lowly but continued with just as much zeal, "There is a call from your estate! It seems you have visitors!"

Victor didn't give a damn about visitors—especially in comparison to finally testifying to Yuri about the depths of his feelings for him. And yet, if he didn't depart immediately to receive his guests, it would reflect poorly upon his character.

Victor arose from the tea table, appearing in no small part chagrined. "Yuri, would you see me out?" he requested, all the while adjusting his riding gloves. "I would like a word with you."

Murmuring his assent, Yuri abandoned his book face down on the chair behind him and strode over to Victor's side, following his lead towards the entryway.

Once his hat and coat were properly replaced upon his person, Victor cast a pointed look at Minami, hoping the boy would get the message. He did indeed—none too tactfully—and let out an undignified squeak as he excused himself.

"Yuri, I…" This was infinitely more difficult alone, Yuri's big brown eyes peering up at him with all the reverence of an art critic surveying a masterpiece. Victor suddenly had the urge to run his hands through his own hair to disperse some of the nervous tension but knew it would only succeed in knocking the hat from his head and further embarrassing himself. "I want to see you again. Would you allow me the honor of hosting you tomorrow?"

"Victor…" Yuri's own anxiety betrayed him, his eyes skittering to the side to engage in an intense stare down with the entry door.

"Please," Victor embellished, finding and seizing the other's hand, a little muddied from his earlier activities even then. Victor barely resisted the overwhelming urge to grace it with a kiss. "I want to build some trust in our relationship."

"I…" Yuri bit his lip—already abused to reddened perfection—and Victor had to tamper down the desire to kiss that too. "I… Yes, I'll go—if you'll allow me, that is."

Victor visibly brightened, his hold on Yuri's hand tightening with the extent of his enthusiasm. "Nothing would delight me more."

Yuri nodded—mostly, it seemed, to himself—and the motion appeared to steel his resolve. "Then, tomorrow. When should I…?"

"Hmm?" Victor physically shook himself out of his pleasant reverie. "Oh, yes, of course. Is dinner all right with you?"

"Dinner would be wonderful," Yuri assured even as his face began to flush with the implications.

"Then I'll send someone over for you at six," Victor declared, tipping his hat cordially. "Good day, Yuri."

"Good day," Yuri returned, waving even as the door closed fully before him. He sighed, tension leaving his body in rush, but the bliss was short-lived as his Mari grumbled behind him. He spun around to meet her and observed that she was slumped against the wall—kiseru pipe in hand—and clearly had been nursing it for a while if the amount of smoke was anything to go by, which meant, undoubtedly, that she had likely witnessed the majority or perhaps the entirety of the exchange.

"Seems he forgot he has company," she asserted before Yuri could make a demand for his privacy, and he realized with a start that his sister was very likely correct and promptly forwent his plans to admonish her.

"Oh no, should I go after him? Or should I call him later? We may have to reschedule—"

"This isn't your problem, Yuri," Mari dismissed, stalking over to peer through the window. She squinted at the glass in an attempt to catch Victor's receding form but quickly gave up on the endeavor when it proved fruitless. "It's his problem. If he needs to reschedule, he'll reschedule. There is no use worrying the meantime."

Internally, Yuri maintained that he was going to worry either way and that no one was going to stop him—thank you very much—but opted not to forfeit these thoughts, merely sighing once more in defeat.

Even so, he was to have dinner with Victor Nikiforov. The Victor Nikiforov.

Yuri's mood could hardly stand to be dampened for the rest of the day.

Author's Note: Damn, writing in a Victorian style for seventeen pages sure takes it outta ya.

By the way, if you're new here and don't know who I am: Hi, I'm Abby, and I love to liberally abuse em dashes and ellipses. Enjoy your stay.

And I'll be continuing this very soon (and even sooner if there's a good reception~!)