Everyone has insecurities, but not everyone is a drama queen about it like Victor. Yuuri, however, loves him too much not to deal with it. I wrote this fluffy Victuuri fic after seeing episode 7 (won't reveal if you haven't seen it yet!). Includes married life and an adopted daughter! Rated K. [Romance] [Humour] [Family]


The shenanigans had started exactly one week ago.

That day had started like any other day. Yuuri woke to the sound of his ring tone with Victor's head resting on his chest, both their bodies tangled in the sheets when he could have sworn they were spooning when they first fell asleep last night. Victor had probably had one of his trippy late night ice cream induced dreams again and tossed and turned them into this awkward position. Yuuri did tell him that rocky road ice cream at 12am was a bad idea... The dark haired man didn't think about it too deeply as his attention drifted back to the song blaring loudly from the bedside table. The screen flashed "6:30" repeatedly as if that would help rouse the couple faster. Wrapping one arm around the sleeping man's form, Yuuri carefully manoeuvred himself to reach over as not to wake Victor too roughly so that he could grab the phone and swipe across to turn the alarm off. Once the noise had ceased, Yuuri placed his cell back where it was and went to work gently shaking his husband by the shoulder.

"Vicchan," he half whispered into the bluish dawn light that shined in through the bedroom window. The platinum blond groaned against his chest in response, but Yuuri persisted. "Come on. We need to get Meichan ready for school."

Normally, waking up early wouldn't have been a problem for the two figure skaters, but they had each went on a semi-hiatus since the arrival of their adopted daughter, Meiling. They weren't doing a whole lot of skating nowadays because they had a budding family to focus on, but they stayed relevant in that world in other ways. Although he had to ease up on training, Victor still insisted on working out and eating the way he used to. The one thing he'd let up on, however, was waking up early. Victor hadn't had the chance to enjoy sleeping in since he was a teenager many years ago and he was making full use of his new-found time to get reacquainted with that luxury. But that didn't change the fact that it was time to wake up and prepare their daughter for the day. Yuuri shook him again.

"Vicchan."

Victor stubbornly buried his face into the cotton fabric of Yuuri's tshirt. The younger man beneath him sighed and then spoke a little louder. "Vi-"

Before he could get the word out of his mouth, the bedroom door swung wide open. Yuuri gasped at the sudden motion and Victor's blue eyes were wide with shock.

"Papa~! Papochka~!" shouted their tiny daughter, her brown eyes bright with energy. Beside her stood Maccachin, the little family's faithful canine friend. He used to only want to sleep with Victor, but ever since little Meiling joined the family as a baby, it seemed he always wanted to be around her. Perhaps he felt personally responsible for protecting the youngest member of his pack. Either way, he had grown a fondness for her that Yuuri and Victor found to be endearing.

Maccachin was wagging his furry tail as the little girl bounced across the room and climbed into bed with her two fathers. She stood on the side where Victor typically slept in her pink Little Twin Stars nightie and jumped up and down excitedly, dark pigtails dancing on either side of her little round face.

Slipping on his glasses, Yuuri laughed at her antics and glanced at the man still in his arms then back at his little chicken nugget. If Victor wasn't awake before, he certainly was now. "Morning, Meichan!"

"Morning! Wake up, wake up! Papochka, wake uuuup!" chanted Meiling. It was then that the dog on the floor jumped into bed with them as well and decided he wanted to lay down on Victor's exposed legs. The bed was starting to get very crowded. With a sigh, Victor finally lifted his head from Yuuri's chest, defeated by a 5 year-old girl and her dog. Through tired eyes, he put on a warm smile for the little one anyway.

"I'm up, I'm up," he assured her and began to pull himself off of his husband's body with a deep yawn.

"Finally," Yuuri chuckled and earned a pouty look from his former coach.

Meiling moved to let her papochka sit in his spot before wrapping her little arms around his neck. "I gotta go to kindergarten!"

Victor draped an arm around Meiling's legs so she could sit on his forearm as he stepped out of bed, carrying her with him to the bathroom, Maccachin shuffling onto the floor to follow. "Yes, I know, malyshka. Let's go brush your teeth, okay?"

Now this was the location of where everything started. The family was crowded in the small washroom as they usually were early morning on a weekday. Everyone but the dog had a toothbrush in their mouths, Victor was cheerfully reminding Meiling as she stood between her fathers on her chair that the tooth fairy loved when children cleaned their teeth properly, and Yuuri was preparing her little plastic cup so she could rinse. Maccachin watched their morning ritual curiously as he always did and after their baby, the parents took turns rinsing themselves.

"You excited for kindergarten?" Yuuri asked as he brushed his daughter's hair. Victor was bent over the sink washing his face while his husband carefully braided Meiling's dark tresses. At first, Victor had always been the girl's hair stylist seeing as he had experience with long hair himself, but Yuuri decided about a year ago that he ought to learn too. Truth be told, he was starting to get the hang of it.

"Yes!" Meiling replied cheerfully. "Can I bring Maccachin to show-and-tell?"

The dog's ears lifted a little at the sound of his name and Victor chuckled, lifting his head while turning off the water and then patting his face with the towel hanging around his neck. When he was done, he ran his fingers through his hair thoughtfully. "Not until we've spoken to your teacher."

Meiling pouted. Even though they were not related by blood, she had Victor's pout down pat. "Why don't you bring your Maccachin plush toy instead?" Yuuri suggested.

The girl's expression seemed to brighten at this before turning into confusion when she heard her papochka gasping deeply. Yuuri turned to see his husband looking down at his hands as if someone had shot him there. Concern welled up in his stomach, but he tried to keep his voice calm as not to scare their daughter. "Vicchan? Are you alright...?"

Victor's lips moved, but no sound seemed to come out. He whispered something that was very hard to hear.

"Vicchan, I can't hear you..."

He whispered again, this time a little louder, but Yuuri still had to focus to hear. "G-grey."

"'Grey'?" Meiling and Yuuri repeated in unison.

Victor turned to them both with a horrified expression and held up the alarming thing in his hand: a single grey strand of hair.

"A grey hair," the Russian man said, hauntingly.

...

The bathroom was completely silent. Yuuri's brown eyes looked at the hair, then at Victor's face, and then at the hair again, and then at Victor's face again. Meiling fixated on the offensive little thing in her papochka's hand, a curious look on her features. No wonder Maccachin hadn't even flinched at his owner's alarm.

"Uh... Vicchan..." Yuuri spoke slowly, but he was interrupted before he could say anything more.

"It's happening," said Victor, his hands now on either side of his face. "I'm getting... old." He seemed to have some difficulty with that last word.

Meiling continued to look perplexed. She thought her dads were already old (even though they were both still pretty young). There was a huge elephant doing back flips in the room, but Yuuri didn't have the heart to point it out. Instead, he decided to console his distraught partner.

"Come on, Vicchan. It's only one hair."

"This is terrible!" the man called papochka lamented as Maccachin yawned, clearly unphased. "First it's thinning. Now it's turning grey?"

"Your hair isn't thin. It's beautiful."

The elephant was singing Destiny's Child now and Meiling could hear it. Yuuri continued to pretend it wasn't there.

"Don't try to comfort me, Yuuri. It's gonna happen – I'll be bald and grey and hideous."

"Vicchan, no. You know that's not true."

"But it is true. All of my hair will go grey!"

"But, papochka," Meiling interjected innocently. The elephant paused its chorus of "Say My Name" and watched the scene with and expression that said, finish him.

Yuuri knew exactly what she was about to say. Please, no.

"Isn't all of your hair already grey?"

By the time the triplets arrived to walk Meiling to school as they always did, Victor was still in his black boxerbriefs from that morning, siting on the toilet lid as if Mohammed Ali himself had kicked down the bathroom wall just to knock his block off. Yuuri had assured the little girl that her father was alright and then sent her off with a kiss on the forehead. He counted himself lucky that she had no idea what she had done nor that papochka's subsequent behaviour was as a result of her question.

For the next week, Victor carried himself with this sullen look as if he were dying tomorrow. A dark cloud seemed to follow him wherever he went. He would never get dressed – he'd just walk around in his underwear (the comfortable ones, not the sexy ones) with a long blanket covering his entire body and making him look like a floral patterned ghoul floating about the house. He would play Mozart's Requiem on loop with his phone to the point that everyone could tell before seeing him that he was coming. For every question or comment directed his way, he always seemed to have some doom and gloom response that sounded like bad emo poetry.

"Hey Vicchan, Meichan and I are about to watch Ponyo. Wanna join us?" Yuuri had asked one day.

"No thank you, darling," Victor replied. "I am afraid it is no longer appropriate for someone as old as I to enjoy the fruits bore by the tree of youth."

"Vicchan, I'm ordering pizza. What toppings do you want?"

"Worry not for my indulgence, my young love, for I am no longer able to appreciate life's sweetest luxuries with the innocent wonder which makes them so sweet." (Pepperoni it is, thought Yuuri with a sigh.)

"Vicchan, it's your turn to do the dishes."

"I shall get to the task, oh my resplendent Yuuri, however, please allow me more time for these raggedy old bones no longer move with the swiftness they once had." Yuuri, whose back was turned at that moment, rolled his eyes.

"Papochka, I saw a butterfly!" Meiling exclaimed cheerfully that Saturday when she ran inside from the back yard.

"How wonderful, but truthfully, it is you who are the only ray of sunshine in my cold, blackened world, little one. I'm afraid I know not the foreign beauty of which you have named 'butterfly'." He said that last word as if he hadn't a clue what it was.

"Bark," said Maccachin.

"Be still now, dear hound," Victor murmured, holding the dog while still covered in sheets. "So that I may use what few hours the Lord has afforrded me to marvel at the softness of your fur coat."

Yuuri had to tell poor Meiling that her father was just practising for Halloween when she asked. Luckily, the fact that it was spring didn't seem to poke holes in the validity of this explanation for her. It all seemed like a fun game to Meiling at first, but after a while, even she grew tired of Victor laying in the candlelit bedroom all day like a corpse in a casket, holding a single dried red rose to his chest, the Requiem reaching a crescendo as he weakly sent her off to retrieve for him a "pittance of crackers" from the kitchen.

This morning, after sending Meiling off to school yet again, Yuuri decided he'd had enough. Victor had recently started refusing to come down for breakfast, instead opting to stay in their bedroom with that infernal music playing and the curtains drawn and the candles lit. As he reheated the miso soup, Yuuri fried another tamagoyaki to be brought to the dramatic overgrown child upstairs. Surely, Yuuri could understand having insecurities. He himself had many, but to sulk around for an entire week the way Victor had been was absolutely ridiculous. Shovelling some rice out of the rice cooker and into one of the small bowls, Yuuri took the tray of food and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, Mozart's Requiem seeming louder with each step. The Japanese man knocked twice.

"Vicchan," he called. "I've brought you breakfast."

From inside the room, there came a rather small voice. "Hark, merciful angel. Waste not your comforts on me. Please, just leave me to die."

Oh for the love of...

"Victor," Yuuri said sternly. He only called his husband by his real name nowadays when he was serious. "This is ridiculous. I'm coming in there."

With that, the door swung open and in stepped Yuuri, his eyes finding Victor sprawled on the bed, his chiseled chest exposed and the sheets wrapped around him making him look like a nude Greek goddess, but Yuuri was too frustrated to stand back and admire him. He placed the tray of food on the night stand and hovered over his partner looking like an angry parent about to scold his child.

"You need to stop this right now."

His head laid on its side, Victor opened the eye facing upwards halfway to look at Yuuri where he stood. He said nothing, so Yuuri continued.

"I know you're afraid of getting old and all that, but you can't go on like this. Meichan's going to start really worrying about you if do you." And so will I.

Victor closed his eye again with a sigh. Deep down, he knew this was silly. When he opened it again and shifted so both his eyes could gaze at him, Yuuri was surprised to see a genuinely sad expression. "I know... But I just... I know most people wouldn't worry about it so much, but I think of that grey hair and it makes me feel... so bad."

The Russian man sat up then and stared at the wall across from him. Slowly, his partner sat down at the edge of the bed beside him. Finally, they could have a real conversation about what Victor was feeling. This wasn't a melodramatic show. This was the real Victor talking, and even being a little vulnerable.

"You know, Yuuri, male patterned baldness runs in my family. It's only a matter of time. You're lucky your dad still had a full head of hair. Mine looks more like Yakov."

It really was a wonder how two people could look at the exact same thing and see something so completely different. From the moment Yuuri had laid eyes on Victor many years ago during childhood, he ignited something inside of him. It was a strange feeling he'd never felt before. He almost thought he was sick, but when he tried to explain these feelings to Yuuko, she assured him it was only because of how amazing Victor was and that everyone felt that way. Yuuri had believed her, but how was she supposed to know? She was only a child like him, after all. She had no idea what love was and neither did he, so he continued to tell himself that his feelings for Victor were merely that which a fan would have for their hero. It wasn't until after they had formally met that Yuuri realized that that burning adoration persisted. Once he was finished being starstruck, Yuuri could still feel any burden lift off of his heart when Victor was around. Sometimes during practice, he felt more like he was walking on air than gliding across the ice. It was better than fandom. It was better than katsudon. It was something he'd still never experienced before, and yet at that press conference so long ago, he'd proudly proclaimed it was love, but even then, he had no idea. It wasn't until later that he realized just how much he was truly drawn to Victor. He would cross one thousand oceans and climb one thousand mountains if it meant the Russian man would stay by his side. And so, he couldn't see age or grey or any of that when he looked at him. To Yuuri's eyes, Victor was the most beautiful, the most talented, the most amazing, and the most affectionate man on earth. No one could even be a close second. Only he could see the way his blue eyes shimmered like sunlight on the water or the pearlescent quality of his soft milky skin or the way the curves of his muscular body resembled picturesque mountains and blossoming valleys or the strands of pure metallic silver moonlight mixed in with his platinum blond hair or... Oh he could go on for hours.

How curious it was that Victor could look at himself in the mirror and see anything less. Surely, the mirror must be lying because it is jealous that it could never emulate such beauty in its reflection, but Victor didn't seem to think so. Would he even believe Yuuri's rose-coloured vision of him? Would it hurt to try?

Yuuri felt the same surge of courage he would often feel just before performing, knowing that Victor would be watching from the sidelines. He adjusted himself on the bed so that he faced the other man and took both his hands in his own, squeezing them gently. Surprised, Victor looked Yuuri square in the eyes, curiosity colouring his gaze.

"Victor, I understand that this is something you're insecure about. And I'm sorry that you feel this way. I just want for you to know that I've never in my life set my eyes on someone I thought was more attractive than you are. I was completely captivated ever since I first saw you when I was only 12 years old. And to this day, that's all I can see when I look at you: the exact same beauty that trapped me – and even scared me a little to be honest," he laughed a little then when he remembered the confusion of his youth and continued, Victor's eyes reflecting a kind of heart-struck surprise not only at his words but at how genuine Yuuri was being. "I wish I could just give you my eyes so that you could see. I swear you'd never doubt yourself again! But since I can't do that, I'll do everything I possibly can to help you believe it... The way you do for me."

There was a silence in the air then, but it wasn't awkward or heavy. It was as if a burden had been cast aside or the window had been opened to let all the stuffiness out. Victor continued to stare, his face inches from Yuuri's, but the other man only smiled warmly and didn't seem to mind being stared at. Suddenly, the gap between them closed as Victor planted an innocent kiss on Yuuri's lips. The younger man was taken aback by the abrupt nature of the older man's actions, but he quickly returned the kiss and involuntarily squeezed his lover's hands tighter. When they had parted, Victor swiftly claimed Yuuri's lips again to deepen the kiss, freeing his hands from his grasp so he could hug the smaller man closer to his body. They broke apart again, breathing now a little more difficult for them both, but they managed to touch their foreheads together and stare into each other's eyes to share a warm moment of mirth between them.

"No one's ever said anything like that to me before," Victor admitted. This was the closest thing to shyness Yuuri thought he'd ever seen in him. "I didn't know how else to respond but to kiss you."

"Well, I certainly don't mind," Yuuri laughed. His lover smiled in response.

"Do you... you really meant all of those things?" he asked. Deep down, he knew the answer, but he still loved hearing it.

"Of course! You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen – I promise you."

Victor thought for a moment. "... More than Chris Evans?"

Yuuri looked at him with incredulous amusement. "Haha, what?"

Victor's grin widened. "Am I more beautiful than Chris Evans?"

The smaller man sighed. He could see this was turning into a game, but he was certainly willing to play. "Yes, Vicchan."

"What about Gackt? Am I hotter than him?"

Yuuri blushed. He wanted to play along but it was starting to get embarrassing. "Yes, you are."

"Okay um... How about... Utada Hikaru?"

"She's a woman."

"So?" Victor winked at his partner, earning a laugh from him.

"Vicchan! Okay, fine. You're more beautiful than all of them."

"Oh! What about Lupita Nyon-" He was cut off when Yuuri, tiring of this game, held his face in both hands and silenced him with another warm, gentle kiss. Victor laughed softly into it and grinned at his lover when he pulled away. "Alright, I'll shut up."

"Good. Now your breakfast is getting cold!"

This of course was not the last time that insecurity would rear its ugly head, but remembering Yuuri's little speech did tend to help Victor fend it off in the future.