Luggage was never something I thought very hard about. When I had to travel to compete, I would just pick up a few random suitcases that had been left to rot in the lost and found at the resort my family owned. It saved me money and as someone with a mass of student and coach debt to repay, I didn't need to be wasting my money on something as mundane as luggage when I could find it for free.
Viktor thought differently than I did, especially when it came to how he traveled. It was something I had noticed right away about him. When he came to live with us most of his things were carefully tucked away into luxurious baggage, slapped with brand names that showcased his status as someone who was world-renowned. He kept a careful eye on all of his belongings, taking great pride in material things. Back then, I didn't see it as a vice. A little bit of materialism never hurt anyone, until you begin to think of people as objects. But I never thought Viktor would think that way about people. Narcissistic as he could be, surely he cared about people. He treated his fans so kindly, always gracing them with a genuine-looking smile and the occasional wink.
Even if the adoration of his fans was a lie, at the very least he loved me. That was something I was sure of. We exchanged rings in Barcelona and his eyes literally were shining when his shaky hands slipped a ring on my finger. My hands couldn't keep steady either. It was a moment beyond words, something I can never explain the magnitude of. I knew it was the best moment of my life, and from the look of his eyes, I would have thought it was the best moment of his, too. That greatness was only to be replaced by our wedding, and honeymoon.
Viktor had bought me new bags to pack for our honeymoon. While I was folding up my clothes, gentle hands filed in around my waist and whispered to me about the gift. I remember grinning, laughing about how ridiculous it was.
"Viktor, I don't need new luggage! This stuff is just fine." I had chuckled, hands still wrapped up in the motion of folding a nice dress shirt. He wanted to take me to the finest reaches of Barcelona, and I wanted to dress to match.
He kissed my cheek, beautiful breath of his tickling against my skin. "My Yuuri deserves the best, doesn't he? Take the luggage darling."
That memory always brought a smile to my face, but now I only grimaced as I rustled through our closet. I needed to find my old luggage. That new luggage belonged to him now, and whoever he was with. It wasn't me anymore.
When I moved in with him, many of my old things became tucked into corners. Never thrown away, only hidden from view. I would come home sometimes searching for the most mundane things, only to find that Viktor had somehow replaced them with something grand. It was always small. An old pair of slacks, a worn out set of tennis shoes, a mostly-used bottle of hair gel. Nothing with sentimental value, but things I had grown used to having around. He'd replace them without asking, gifting them to me with a smile. In the moment I had thought it was sweet. But now I just think he wanted me to change. I wasn't enough for him clearly or else this wouldn't have happened. He wanted me to be more somehow, wanted me to dress in his expensive clothes and eat his classy food. What I had was common and he was rare. I had to match up. But he was Viktor Nikiforov and I was Yuuri Katsuki. I never could quite match him.
The pathetic thing is that I would have been willing to go my whole life like that. I would have gladly spent a lifetime with him, always striving to be more of something I could never be. I could pretend to care about the brand name attached to every item I touched and I could boast about the price of everything we held together. At least then, we would hold it together. It would have been such a small sacrifice to make. Even now, I wish I would have made more of an effort to make that sacrifice. It was a ridiculous thought. To think that if I had been more, that maybe this wouldn't have happened. I would have been miserable to have him if that was what it would take.
There was so much I would endure if it meant I could stay by him. He could have done almost anything to me, and I would think up an excuse for him. Fuck- I could have handled him beating me better than I could handle this. He never put his hands on me, of course. But I would have taken it over this ending.
The deeper I delved into his closet that was once our closet, the more I found of life before Viktor. The life I had to return to. My things still mixed with his. I added an old pair of sweatpants that obviously belonged to me to my pile of things, but only after I threw back a pair of his boxers. I tried not to hold onto his boxers for too long. I knew I had once slipped those boxers off his body, but all I could think now was that I wasn't the only one who had. Touching them long enough to throw them aside made my stomach flip inside out. This whole ordeal was making me physically sick, and the night I found out I spent over the toilet. I had cried so much that my body was convulsing, rejecting every bite of food I had that evening. It was like even my body didn't want to go on after that. I knew my heart didn't want to, either.
I blamed my body at first, so maybe that was why I spent that whole night throwing up and shaking. It was my damned belly that Viktor could never make go away, the stretch marks and cellulite. The first time he saw me naked outside of the hot springs, his eyes fell onto those spots I hated so much. I shied away from his gaze, and he told me not to worry. "I love them, Yuuri. I love you, Yuuri. Don't be shy, don't be scared. I want you to feel good." Remembering the words made me cringe when they used to make me shiver. His love gave me comfort in the body I once hated. He'd grab my milky thighs, the ones that were strewn with stretch marks. My thighs- the ones that looked like a child's art project of purple scribbles on white paper, and the thighs he swore he loved. Thighs he'd leave kisses on with his angel soft lips until his mouth found sanctuary between my legs. Only I wasn't his only sanctuary.
We made love, but I suppose it was just fucking to him. Sex was an overgrown rose garden with the sharpest of thorns threatening to envelop me at every turn, and Viktor had been there to help me trim down the fear until it was just beautiful petals. He was so good at making me feel good, able to make me strip every ounce of my shame and do the most depraved of things. We would tie one another down, we would go at it for hours at a time, and all the while he would show me things I never thought I wanted to know and made me love every moment of it. And I thought it had been safe. It was with Viktor, for Viktor, the love of my life. We could do anything and none of it would leave our hearts or our bedroom.
But then I found out about Viktor's habit of leaving our bedroom.
There had been rumors in the news, but there had always been. Viktor had a promiscuous past that I was aware of, and it was something that only brought me the slightest discomfort. He promised me that all he needed was me, that I was more than enough to fulfill whatever needs he had. Even with the off-season tummy and imperfections abundant within me, he had been able to look me in the eyes and swear that I was all he needed to get off. Viktor Nikiforov, the five-time champion in men's figure skating, could have also been renowned as the world's very best liar. I never doubted him for a second.
He could have told me he was cheating and I would have shrugged it off as a cruel sort of joke. Viktor had an off sense of humor at times after all, and sometimes he forgot how his words impacted others. All it would have been was a misguided joke. But I walked in on it. I had to witness my worst nightmare, in our bed we used to share. Viktor was wrapped up so close in the arms of a stranger. Clothes were strewn about on the floor, flung in so many directions that the passion was obvious. He was loving this stranger with the same vigor he fucked me with. The worst part wasn't watching their bodies connect, seeing the few powerful thrusts he got in before he realized I was gawking at the scene. That was only physical. The part that was haunting me was the blissed-out smile on his face and the shine in his eyes that I thought he only held for me. Viktor loved this sex with this stranger. Viktor loved outside of his love for me, and it broke my heart.
I had run directly to the bathroom. My throat refused to produce any noise that wasn't a suffocating sob, so speaking to him would have been useless. I slammed the door and fell immediately to the floor, shaking so strongly that I thought it was the Earth moving, not me. The image had been tattooed on the back of my eyelids, and every time I forced my eyes shut to keep up with the tears I saw it again. And when my eyes were open I saw that bathroom around me, and things that only reminded me of life before what I had witnessed. We fucked in that shower before, but who else? Who else shared his body wash like I did when I ran out of my own? Who else used our mouthwash after swallowing Viktor's cum?
Viktor had spoken to me after. He sent whoever he was off and sat on the other side of the bathroom door for what felt like years. He spoke in that too-gentle, too-perfect voice that made me want to forgive him and forget it. I wanted to chalk it all up to a bad dream, but I knew better. We couldn't go on like this. I could never be touched by him again without feeling violated, I could never sleep in that bed knowing I was falling to sleep in the physical aftermath of his infidelity.
I threw up all night, and he left a bottle of water by my door. He was quiet after a while, but I could hear his breathing on the other side. He didn't leave my door side, thinking maybe that it would make up for the pain he caused me. Maybe it was just to make himself feel loyal to me. It did nothing to make me feel better, it did nothing to encourage me to forgive him. I knew I never could.
And this is where we are now. We argued this morning, and through the thickest wall of choking sobs, I managed to tell him we were over. This may be his apartment, but I screamed at him to get out while my knees trembled, threating to stop holding me up. I would have screamed up to him from the floor if I had to, just so I wouldn't have to see him while I gathered my things. I told him to go back to whoever's house while I packed up my own things into my own damn suitcases. The divorce papers would be in his mailbox soon enough. I never wanted to see his stupid face ever again, the dumb heart-shaped smile he wore in the mornings, even the morning after cheating on me. It was like it never happened to him, but it was tearing my entire fucking world apart and it wasn't fair in the slightest.
When I get home I would have to tear down every poster of him that lingered, every vestige of worship I had felt for him almost my entire life. From the moment I laid eyes on him I knew he would change everything, and then we fell in love and now I was broken by him. Or should I say, I fell in love with him. I hardly doubt that feeling was every truly mutual. I was a toy, one of his many toys, just a toy he happened to lend his last name to for a few years.
My hand fell over that dusty old luggage of mine, and I felt like I was finding it for the first time all over again. When I grabbed it hastily from the lost and found all those years ago, I hardly thought anything of it. They were there out of convenience and served me well. And maybe that was all I had been for Viktor. He snatched me out of a failing career on a whim, used me for a short while, and thought nothing of it. When I switched to the fancy luggage he gave me, I didn't care how my old luggage would be treated after.
I clamped my jaw tightly, vision blurring again from tears threatening to spill over. All these thoughts made me realize that this whole time, I was nothing more than a suitcase to Viktor Nikiforov. I was there to faithfully hold his emotions and his desires, to tuck myself back into a corner when I wasn't needed. I was a fucking suitcase.
When I zipped up my baggage, my vision was so trashed from my tears that I could only see the outline of the zipper. Hopefully, the memory of my one-sided love would one day be that blurry, too.