"Yuuri, I love you."
It was supposed to be a normal day, just like every other day that came before. Yuuri was not expecting to get all the air knocked out of his body so early in the morning.
"Eh?" he manages to breathe out, mind racing, heart thumping, staring at Victor with wide eyes. Did he just hear-? No, that's impossible. It's a misunderstanding. He's still half-asleep, possibly even dreaming. There's no way Victor would ever say–
"My apologies, my excitement may have made my words incomprehensible. I've been so overwhelmed by my feelings this morning I decided I couldn't wait one more second to let you know of my passions." Victor chants, waltzing towards Yuuri, coyly fluttering his eyelashes as he grabs Yuuri's waist with one arm, pulling him closer until their chests are almost touching. "Yuuri Katsuki, I am in love with you and you only. You rouse my deepest desires and most feverish emotions; you command all of my affections. It is my utmost wish to spend the rest of our lives together; so much so that I can't even bear the thought of ever being apart from you. Oh Yuuri," he sighs, his free hand cupping Yuuri's cheek, "how blessed I am to be able to lay my eyes on your beautiful person every morning; my sweetest dreams are those in which you bestow upon me the privilege of your company. Words are insufficient to encompass the full spectrum of my adoration for you."
This is crazy. A dream. It has to be. He's lived with Victor for barely a year, but he's known him for years and he's never shown even a passing interest in Yuuri beyond their quickly developed friendship. And Yuuri's always been okay with that. He's never felt he was worth anything more. Not from Victor who is beautiful and kind and perfect and funny and smart. He's always been everything Yuuri ever wanted, like he was molded to all of Yuuri's dreams. That he's even allowed to be in his presence, to see him smile, to hear him call his name with those long vowels and the tilt of an accent at the end, is way more than he ever could've hoped for.
"V-Victor, wait!" he flails his arms, trying to push Victor away and make him stop his tirade of words dipped in honey, so sweet, so wonderful to his ears even as he tries to tell himself there has to be a reasonable explanation for this. "D-do you mean it?" he makes himself ask at last, heart clenched tight in his chest, because that's all that matters.
Victor is undeterred, his hand cupping Yuuri's chin; his gaze unwavering. "Of course I mean it! My Yuuri, I am ensnared by the chains of your love and I never want to be set free."
The words are so ridiculous Yuuri wants to bury himself in the ground. And yet, he can't help the bubbling happiness that surges in his chest. "This is really…" he stutters, his eyes stinging, "It's not a dream, right? This is really happening?" he asks in spite of himself, shivering from head to toe. Warmth spreads over his body at the sight of the unabashed adoration in Victor's eyes.
"If this is a dream, my darling, I shall never wish to wake up."
A voice nags at the back of his mind. Something's off, it whispers. The blush on his cheeks is too pink, his pupils are dilated too wide, and he has a glow to him that's not a product of Yuuri's own romanticized vision of Victor. His heart insistently tells him to ignore all those signs because this is finally happening, Victor actually reciprocates his feelings, Victor loves him and this should be the best moment of his life, the culmination of all his dreams, the start of his happily ever after.
Except he can't.
"Are… are you sure you're feeling okay? What happened with your headache?" Victor had complained about feeling a little dizzy when he came to wake Yuuri up earlier today, and Yuuri remembers telling him to take a pain-killer potion he'd finished brewing last night.
Victor blinks rapidly, but quickly regains his composure. "Just seeing you would cure me of any malady, my love." He grabs Yuuri's hand and kisses his knuckles reverently. Yuuri can almost taste his own heart when it jumps to the base of his throat. "The medicine you recommended was also very effective, and delicious. I don't think I've ever had such a tasty medicine, you truly are a gifted potion master, light of my life." He sighs dreamily, nuzzling the back of Yuuri's hand.
It takes Yuuri a moment to go over Victor's statement and make sense out of it through the heat burning under his skin. But once he does, the heat is instantly replaced by freezing panic.
"V-victor, which potion did you take?!"
Victor places his index finger on his chin, pensively. "It was on your work desk, in a blue vial. Beautiful, like everything that's yours."
Yuuri's heart crumbles.
"Victor, the blue vials are for my class demonstrations! I've told you a hundred times!" A tear spills down his cheek, and then another, and he chokes on a sob, extracting himself from Victor's embrace.
"I'm sorry Yuuri, my sweet love, I'm such a terrible, undeserving suitor for forgetting the words you preciously spoke to me. I wasn't thinking, my darling, the scent was just so good, so enticing, I couldn't resist it! What's wrong, my heart?"
What's wrong, he asks, Yuuri thinks bitterly, biting down on his lower lip to reign in the tears, every sugary word tasting like poison now. What isn't wrong.
He was supposed to teach a special lecture today, so he'd brewed the featured potion –Phillyax- to show his students and left it to air overnight with his other medicines. And instead of the medicine for his headache, Victor had taken that potion.
A love potion.
How could he have been so careless? He knows Victor is forgetful, but he'd stayed up really late brewing and had been so sleepy when Victor came in the morning he'd completely forgotten to remind him about the vial colors.
"But Yuuri, I promise I'll be more careful and attentive, I'll prove I'm worthy of you, please my Yuuri; however poorly I'm demonstrating it, I swear I do love you."
No, you don't.
He bolts away, eyes fixed to the floor. "I have to go."
"Yuuri–!"
The dry slam of the door silences everything else.
So stupid. He feels so, so, so stupid. How could he possibly believe that Victor would love him? How horribly conceited. And the only thing he's achieved is hurting himself. He never imagined that hearing those words coming from Victor's mouth could be so painful, that he'd ever want to erase them from his memory. But every time they replay in his mind, it makes the ache of those ephemeral moments of hope and happiness grow sharper.
'Yuuri, I love you'
He bumps into half a dozen people in his rush through the school before finally reaching his office, where he can slam the door shut and enjoy some much-needed solitude in which to allow his tears to run more freely. He thought there would always be that small edge of sadness to being close to Victor and knowing he'd never have his heart, but that dull ache is nothing compared to the piercing pain of having thought, even for an instant, that Victor might love him, only to realize it was all a lie.
The stack of papers and books on his desk remind him he's supposed to teach a class today. And he doesn't have the potion he was supposed to use. Because Victor drank it and it made him believe –what a foolish thing- that he was in love with Yuuri. Victor Nikiforov, the most gifted aerial skater –probably in history- and a condecorated coach and teacher, half-fae and connected by blood to the Faerie Royal Family, voted most desirable bachelor in Witchopolitan magazine five years in a row, in love with dime-a-dozen Katsuki Yuuri. Victor would probably laugh at how ridiculous that sounded, and even then, at his most thoughtlessly, inadvertently cruel, Yuuri would still love him.
"Yuuri?" A voice calls from the other side of the door. "Everything alright?"
He flicks his hand, casting a wordless spell to open the door, letting his best friend, Phichit Chulanont, inside, but doesn't respond to his question. He opts instead to bury himself under his desk, hoping by some miracle that all his worldly obligations disappear so he can stay holed up in here until the end of time.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Phichit insists, crouching under the desk next to him. "Did the headmaster scold you?"
Yuuri shakes his head, refusing to look up and meet his friend's eyes. He curls further into himself, hugging his knees and hiding his face in his arms.
"You know you can tell me anything." Phichit presses, scooting closer. "Or don't. I can just sit here with you until you feel better if you want."
It is quite often that Yuuri finds himself wondering what he ever did to deserve a friend as kind and understanding as Phichit. He flicks his hand again to close the door and lock it, making sure no one can overhear their conversation.
"Victor drank Phillyax this morning."
He can almost hear the sound of Phichit's jaw hitting the floor.
"But Yuuri, that is—"
"I know."
"But did you…?"
Yuuri flinches, horrified by the mere suggestion. "No, of course not! I would never do that!"
Love potions are among the most selfish and deplorable things that can come out of a sorcerer's cauldron. They cloud the drinker's mind and judgment, bend their thoughts and feelings, subdue their will and make them say everything the brewer wants to hear. The whole point of his lecture was never to teach his students how to brew it –it's forbidden after all, and for good reason- but to show them how to identify it by its smell and appearance, and how to counteract its effects. It's not a common part of a magical school's curriculum, but Yuuri's always thought it important to teach this kind of lesson to young sorcerers, so this year he'd made his case in front of the school board and gotten their approval to include it in his classes.
And now he's paying the consequences of defying that status quo.
"It was for class. Victor drank it by mistake. And now he keeps saying he l-lov—" He whimpers and starts crying again. He can't even say it. His heart squeezes hard in his chest. It's so hard to breathe.
"Oh, Yuuri…"
"I'm such an idiot, I actually believed it for a moment… Before I knew he'd taken the potion, I thought… how stupid." He sobs, angrily rubbing his eyes with his hands to wipe the tears away.
Phichit squeezes his arm gently. "It's not stupid. Honestly, if Nikiforov hasn't fallen in love yet after living together all these months living together, he's the idiot."
Yuuri appreciates the sentiment, even if he knows Phichit's being overly kind on account of their longtime friendship. Doesn't make him feel any better, though.
"Did you give him the antidote yet?"
That gets Yuuri out of his downward spiral.
"Antidote?" he parrots before his brain can catch up with what Phichit is asking.
"Well, if I know you -and I think I do- you wouldn't give a class for a potion you didn't have an antidote for. You should probably give him that before this gets more complicated."
Yuuri bolts upwards so suddenly he slams his head against the desk he was hiding under, and rushes towards his potion cabinet, furiously rubbing the sore spot right on the crown of his head. He'd been so busy feeling sorry for himself, he'd completely forgotten that there was an easy solution for the problem. It was terribly irresponsible to just leave Victor like that without giving him the antidote. He slams the cabinet door open and rummages through his large collection of vials: blue for class, green for medicine, black for antidotes –poisons and other dangerous potions are kept at a different location, under heavy security measures. Finally, he finds the black vial labeled "Panacea", a potion of his own invention that can largely mitigate the effects of any other potion, drug or poison. Relieved, he retrieves the vial from the shelf, but the moment he feels its weight in his hand, his relief dissolves into dust.
"It's empty," he whines miserably.
"What do you mean 'it's empty'? Yuuri, you never run out of your omnipotent antidote!"
Yuuri shakes the vial, watching the last few drops of the potion swirl inside the crystal. This amount would suffice for a simpler joke potion, but not for Phillyax. "There was that incident three days ago, remember? When a fifth grader mixed a laxative potion with the water during lunchtime?" Phichit nods, the dismay in his face proof that he remembers the nightmare of over fifty students trying to make it to the restrooms, trampling over each other like furious trolls. "They didn't have enough antidote in the infirmary so I had to give them mine, too. It was so chaotic I completely forgot to make more."
"But you can make more now, can't you?"
With his shoulders slouched, Yuuri shakes his head. "Panacea is a very complex potion, it can take up to a month to brew, and I don't even have all the ingredients with me." If today's disaster doesn't ruin his life forever, maybe he'll remember to get in touch with Minako-sensei to resupply his ingredients cabinet.
"What about an anti-Phillyax potion? If you were gonna use it for class, surely you made some of that too, right? You always take measures for the worst possible scenarios."
Yuuri knows Phichit is trying to help, but the more he talks, the more Yuuri despairs as every option he doesn't have is emphasized on.
"I can't use that, not on Victor," he mutters, grabbing a fistful of his own hair in frustration. "That potion contains pure iron, mined by the mountain dwarves. Victor is half-fae, iron could kill him."
It is well known that Faefolk are weak to pure iron; just touching it burns their skin and it can temporarily deprive them of all of their magic. Ever since Victor moved into Yuuri's apartment, he's had to change most of his kitchen appliances and tools to make sure there was no iron left that could accidentally harm Victor. There are horrid stories from the Middle Ages about humans poisoning faeries with iron and Yuuri doesn't even want to think of what could happen if Victor were to drink it, even if the amount required for the antidote was minimal.
Phichit sighs. "W-well, it was a potion for class, right? Its effects shouldn't last long."
"I guess," Yuuri agrees, still dispirited. He always makes it so the potions he brews for class are less potent and have a shorter effectivity time than what a normal potion would have. A regular dose of Phillyax could last from 12 to 24 hours, but Yuuri had adjusted his so the effects would be mostly dissipated an hour or two after consumption. Not that he intended to let the students drink it but, like Phichit said, he always tries to take measures for the worst possible scenario. Of course, he never imagined that the worst possible scenario would be Victor saying he loved him due to the effects of a potion.
With no usable antidote, the best he can hope for now is staying clear from Victor until lunchtime; then maybe by the end of the day this whole incident will be forgotten.
"Yuuri! Yuuri, my heart, please open the door."
Of course, luck has never quite been on his side.
"Victor, not now, please," he begs, his voice thin.
"Forgive me, my dearest love, it is not my intent to upset you, but I'm consumed by regret. I wronged you when I failed to follow your instructions and I wish to compensate you by any means, to prove that my love is sincere and that I shall make no such mistake ever again. Please, light of my life, just say the word and I'll do anything you ask of me."
Momentarily, Yuuri's treacherous heart skips a beat, the words too tempting, Victor's voice dripping with an affection Yuuri has always longed for. But is this really what he's always wanted to hear? Has he dreamed of Victor proclaiming his love in such overblown, melodramatic declarations? He knows Victor has a knack for theatrics, but it wasn't those exaggerations that made Yuuri love him. More than anything, he relishes in Victor's smaller gestures, the childish voice he uses with Makkachin, his rare thoughtfulness, his sweet, silly, heart-shaped smiles and his moments of quiet vulnerability, the side of him he never exposes to the public eye because it doesn't match the extravagance of the world's most coveted bachelor, nor the elegance of a faerie prince. Victor is a multi-faceted man and Yuuri loves every part of him individually, but he loves the sum of them above all because they make him real, imperfect and human.
But this Victor isn't real, his words of love aren't sincere. It's all a fabrication of the worst magic ever created; a falsehood that is made even more painful by the knowledge that it will never come true.
Yuuri clenches his eyes shut, hoping to swallow the tears as he dashes out of the room.
"I have a class!" he sputters as he pushes past Victor and disappears down the hallway.
The classroom is packed when Yuuri arrives –an unusual occurrence, he's normally the first to get there, and the classroom is never this full-. When the students notice his presence, they beam, notoriously excited.
"Oi, Katsudon!" first year student Yuri Plisetsky –affectionately nicknamed Yurio by Victor- barks from the back of the classroom. Yuuri flinches and some of the students giggle. "Are you going to teach us about Phillyax today or what?"
The entire class seems to buzz when the potion is mentioned. Yuuri bites his lip.
"Uhm… that was the plan but…" he hates disappointing his students, but perhaps today's incident was a sign that this whole thing was never a good idea. "There were a few issues with the potion so I've decided to take it off the program."
The disappointed whine is almost deafening, with Yurio's "What the fuck?" standing out over the other voices. Yuuri looks down at the wooden boards. He's such a failure as a teacher, it's a wonder how he's kept his job for so long.
Yuuri drags himself to the dining room and plops down next to Phichit without saying a word. His friend looks at him questioningly, but Yuuri shakes his head. He doesn't feel like talking right now. His only concern is getting through his meal as quickly as possible so he won't run into Victor. He doesn't even want to imagine what Victor will say now that the effects of the potion have faded away. What if he thinks Yuuri set things up so he would drink the potion? It seems impossible that their friendship won't be ruined for good after this.
His thoughts are abruptly interrupted by the bowl that materializes in front of him, emitting an uncannily familiar scent. His eyes widen when he recognizes the dish sitting right in front of his eyes.
"Katsudon?"
He looks around, wondering where it may have come from. All the other teachers on the table have received the regularly scheduled Thursday menu. Briefly, he wonders if his mother had decided to sneak into the school for no reason at all. He wouldn't quite put it past her, but it still seems very unlikely.
He takes a closer look at his bowl, confused. Then he notices the red design –ketchup, most likely- outlining a curvaceous heart on top of the breaded pork. That's definitely not from his mother. Maybe someone is trying to poison him, and is using his favorite food hoping he will fall for it easily. Or maybe it's a prank.
"Yuuri! Do you like my surprise?"
Yuuri almost jumps out of his chair. He glances up, heart pounding, to the man standing on the other side of the table, right in front of him. It can't be…
"Victor? What… what is this?"
Victor beams, cheeks flushed in beautiful pink, his silver hair littering faerie dust when he bounces on his tiptoes. Under any other circumstance, Yuuri would find this lovely, but now…
"It's an apology! I asked the kitchen staff to let me cook for you, to make up for upsetting you this morning. It's my first time trying to cook katsudon, but I hope the secret ingredient will make it delicious for you." Victor says, still smiling, eyes sparkling with excitement.
"What secret ingredient?" Yuuri asks, and immediately regrets it.
"My undying love for you, of course, my darling!" Victor declares, suddenly hovering a few inches above the floor and twirling in the air, punctuating it with a wink before landing back on the ground.
Yuuri's heart drops.
It's not possible.
"Why hasn't the effect worn off?" he asks out loud without thinking, turning his gaze to the floor in absolute despair. It's been more than four hours, the potion shouldn't have lasted this long. Did he mess up the brewing process?
"What hasn't worn off, love of my life?" Victor asks, his voice warm and gentle.
Yuuri feels sick. Some teachers have turned their heads towards him. What if they realize? What if they think Yuuri gave Victor the Phillyax on purpose? It's not like his infatuation is a secret to anyone, it wouldn't be hard to assume. He'll lose his job and go to jail. And if the potion never wears off? How badly did he mess it up? What if the antidotes don't work either? It would ruin Victor's life.
"Yuuri, my sweet love, what's wrong?"
Every word Victor says seems like a cruel reminder that it's not real, that it will never be real.
When he looks up, he finds Victor leaning closer to him, his eyes dripping with worry, a pale hand reaching to touch his face. Yuuri snaps and pulls back, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.
"I-I'm… I'm feeling a little sick, I'm sorry, I don't have any appetite. I have… I have to go."
And just like earlier today, he dashes out of the room, trying to shut down the whispers and voices and Victor calling out for him, and ignoring the sinking weight in his chest.
Predictably, the students from the afternoon class are as disappointed as the morning class when Yuuri tells them they won't be studying Phillyax anymore. His conviction is even stronger now after the incident in the dining room; if he'd used that failed potion in class, only god knows what could have happened. What was he thinking, really, exposing his students to something so dangerous?
He goes back to a topic about antidotes, but he can tell from their expressions that they're not interested. Only a few of them seem to be paying attention to their cauldrons and none are taking any notes. One of the kids in the back is adding ingredients that are obviously not part of the potion they should be brewing –judging by the mushrooms on his desk, he's probably going for an anti-acne potion.- As a teacher, theoretically, he should stop him, but he's too downtrodden to even try.
He's about to tell the students they can leave early. It's not like they're going to retain any of the information he's trying to give them with the current mood, and he's too distracted worrying about when the effect of the Phillyax Victor drank might wear off, so he's not focused enough to give a proper class. But just as he stops stirring his cauldron, a gust of wind comes through the window and the sound of fluttery windchimes inundates the spacious classroom. Yuuri looks up to see a tiny silver creature zooming around the room, its eyes big and dark, its body lean and humanoid, barely the size of a mouse, sparkles sprinkling from the iridescent wings on its backs.
A pixie.
Before he can even wonder why such a creature is in his classroom of all places, the pixie stops its random zooming and hovers in the air in the middle of the room.
"Lord Yuuri Katsuki?" It asks, addressing the students with a high-pitched voice.
"That-that would be me," Yuuri says without thinking.
The pixie looks at him and nods, then claps its hands and another gust of wind carrying the sound of bells breaks into the classroom, four more pixies buzzing inside. All of them together are carrying something that is much larger than their bodies, but Yuuri can't make out what it is before they're already on top of his head and dropping whatever it is on him. He doesn't even react fast enough to duck away.
Unexpectedly, what lands on his head doesn't harm him. In fact, he hardly feels its weight at all. He raises his hands to touch it, noticing the students' gasps and giggles. Before they can reach the object, the first pixy holds a mirror in front of him. A crown of dark blue and purple flowers interweaved with vines full of small white blossoms sits on top of his head. He blushes at the sight and takes the crown off his head to examine it closely.
"These are midnight ink lilies," he observes, more to himself than the pixie hovering in front of him.
He touches the dark colored petals and observes with disbelief the inklike smudges they leave on his fingers. These flowers are extremely hard to come by, only blooming under very specific conditions in remote, dangerous areas of the planet, impossible to recreate in a greenhouse. They have multiple uses for potions and medicines, but there aren't many people who have the skills to find it and collect it.
"His Highness, the Prince, was certain that Lord Yuuri Katsuki desired them. He hopes this present will help compensate for his imprudence of today and promises to be more mindful so as to not overwhelm Lord Yuuri Katsuki with his inflamed devotion."
Students squeal and giggle even louder. Yuuri feels himself burn from head to toe. He had once told Victor that he would love to get his hands on these flowers to try and tweak his Panacea antidote, but he didn't think Victor had been paying attention. It's the kind of random thoughtful gesture that makes Yuuri's heart ache. The ache becomes sharper when he is reminded once again that none of this is real, and that Victor didn't do this out of genuine concern or thoughtfulness, but simply a stupid potion making him think he loves Yuuri, and pushing him to do whatever it takes to prove that love, even though it never existed. And then there's also the implication; that two more hours have passed and the potion shows no signs of wearing off.
"W-with all due respect, you are interrupting the class. I must kindly ask you to leave" Yuuri says, at a loss for what else to do, clutching the crown of flowers to his chest. "Thank you," he adds, hoping not to spite them with his reticence, "Tell your Prince that… I appreciate the thought." Even if he wishes these flowers had never been sent to him, it would be unwise to antagonize the faefolk.
The pixies nod and zoom out the window from where they first came. The students stare at him with wide eyes and knowing smiles and Yuuri hopes the ground will swallow him up. A part of him knows he should discard the crown of flowers, for his emotional well-being if nothing else, but even as he thinks about it, his fingers curl tighter around the vines.
Victor remembered.
At last, Yuuri puts the crown away, carefully wrapping it with a piece of cloth to place it in his ingredient cabinet. He tells himself he's only keeping it for the advancement of his research. The dark, inky splotches on his palms remind him that he's lying to himself.
Yuuri holes himself in his office for hours, skimming through all the books he has on Phylliax, and digging through the magical network for any recent articles or research results, desperately trying to figure out what may have gone wrong with his potion and how to fix it, but comes up empty. That it also helps him avoid Victor is only a happy coincidence. Eventually, though, the night guard knocks on his door to say he's shutting the lights down and locking the main gate and "would you mind letting me do my job." He's forced to leave without any answer, and dreading what will happen if he doesn't come up with a solution tonight.
By the time he reaches his apartment, all he wishes is to go to sleep and never wake up again. He walks through the door as quietly as possible, hoping Victor will have followed his usual routine of going to bed early ("staying up so late is bad for your health, Yuuri!"). If he's lucky, he might be able to make it to his bedroom without having to encounter Victor and get smacked in the face with his false words of love yet again. And then, hopefully, the potion will have faded away by morning.
That minimal hope shatters the moment he shuts the door of the apartment.
"Yuuri, my love! Welcome home!"
It's all Yuuri can do to keep himself from crying for the umpteenth time today.
"Victor," he replies, breathless, "Why are you up so late?"
"I could not possibly go to bed without seeing your beloved face once more! How could I hope for beautiful dreams if I don't see the most beautiful dream-come-true before I fall asleep?"
Yuuri's starting to get the sinking feeling that, rather than wearing off, the effects of the accursed potion are getting stronger. Has Victor ever looked at anyone with such unrestrained adoration in his eyes, he wonders?
"Did you like my present, zolotse?"
He's using Russian endearments now. Yuuri's never heard him use those, ever, at all. Not even with Makkachin. He knows them because Victor explained them to him, trying to make a point about how romantic the Russian language could be before gruelling Yuuri with questions about whether he had anyone worthy of receiving such petnames. Yuuri still doesn't quite understand what that was about.
"It was… very thoughtful. Thank you," he mutters, biting his lower lip.
"I remembered that you told me how hard you were trying to find some of those flowers for your Panacea. You're so amazing, so dedicated to your work…" he grabs Yuuri's hand in both of his, squeezing it tightly, and Yuuri stands frozen in place, his heart banging against his ribcage. "I thought I could show you that I listen to what you say, solnyshko. I treasure every single word you speak to me and I'm really sorry about my mistake this morning. I can tell it has upset you greatly and I can never forgive myself for it." His thumbs stroke the back of Yuuri's hand gently, his skin smooth and soft. There's that crinkle in the corners of his eyes, his head tipped slightly to the side, and Yuuri ponders on how he'd always dreamed that Victor would look at him like this, and how now he wishes he could forget what it feels like. "My devotion to you is as true as the morning dew and I swear that I shall never give you cause to doubt it again, light of my life."
Yuuri's eyes sting red hot, his heart beating so hard and hurting so much it feels like it might tear his chest open at any moment. It is so unfair, that Victor can voice his false feelings so eloquently, so beautifully, the affection in his voice so sincere it made him forget –for a split second- where those words were coming from. And Victor is standing so close now, holding Yuuri's hand against his chest, his warm breath tickling Yuuri's face. And Yuuri feels that his heart might actually physically shatter if he keeps listening to him.
"My Yuuri… my love, this might be too precipitous but I have no doubt in my heart that I wish to spend the rest of my days on this Earth with you. Is it perhaps too self-serving to hope you might share my wish, beloved? If you would give me the chance, I'd dedicate every day of the rest of my life bringing you the utmost happiness that you so deserve. Would you, Yuuri? Will you marry me?"
And indeed, it shatters.
Just like that, Yuuri pulls away sharply, tears running down his face; the hand Victor held stinging like it's on fire. He pants heavily, feeling more and more breathless with every inhale, blood thrumming in his veins.
"Yuuri? My l-"
"Leave me alone, Victor!"
There is a moment of stunned silence in which Victor stares at him, his eyes wide.
Yuuri chokes on a sob and remembers how to use his legs just enough to dash into his bedroom and lock himself inside, collapsing against the door the moment the lock clicks into place. He hears Makkachin scratch at the other side of the door and whine, but for once, he pays him no mind, curling into himself to cry until sleep takes over.
To be continued
This was originally posted for Victuuri week, Day 3: Longing
Though if I'm honest, I always approach these events the wrong way, first I have an idea, then I try to force it to fit into any of the chosen prompts orz
As always, I finished this very girigiri. Really need to organize my writing schedule.
Ideally I would've liked to have part 2 ready, but i'm like 2/3 done. This has been sitting on my WIP folder since like, July, but victuuri week gave me the extra push to finish it. I hope you like it, please let me know your thoughts, I had a lot of fun writing Victor's awfully cheesy lines.