To Viktor (Message send: 6.45pm, US - Michigan, Detroit Time):
Sorry, got to cancel scheduled skype session. Need to work on FYP.

To Yuuri (Message send: 4.05am, Russia - Saint Petersburg):
! No~~~~ (ToT) *Sigh* Alright, but what is FYP?

To Viktor (Message send: 8.10pm, US - Michigan, Detroit):
Final Year Project, need to discuss details for it with group members so had to cancel the scheduled skype session. Will update you when we can skype after group meeting with project mates.

To Yuuri (Message send: 4.12am, Russia – Saint Petersburg):
Noted... :-(

To Yuuri (Message send: 4.15am, Russia - Saint Petersburg):
I get that we can't skype, but can we still text each other? *puppy eyes*

To Viktor (Message send: 8.20pm, US - Michigan, Detroit):
Fine, you can text me but No Spamming. Thank You. :-)

Viktor Nikiforov sighed as he put aside his phone for the moment, and buried his nose into the fur of his poodle – Makkachin. He had been looking forward so much to the scheduled skype session with Yuuri that he actually make it a point to wake himself up by 4 am so he could have more time conversing with Yuuri. Now though, it seems like he had woken too early and have absolutely nothing he could do. It was much too early to go down to the rink, and there's nothing much available on the TV that could entertain him either.

"Makkachin… what should I do now?" Viktor asked, looking earnestly at his pet poodle despite knowing for a fact that Makkachin is incapable of answering him.

Makkachin merely open one of her eye lazily, letting out a small whine before burying her head back onto her front paws as she goes back to sleep. 4 am is too early for the poodle to be awake and active, thus it remove the task of taking Makkachin out for a walk from Viktor's list of things to do as well.

"Oh well… I supposed its' back to bed for a nap then." Viktor sighed before settling himself back onto the bed. His initial intention was merely to nap for an hour or so, but he ended up sleeping through his usual alarm and woke to the sound of his phone ringing incessantly.

Taking a peek at his caller ID, as expected it was Yakov calling. Most likely, the man was irate by his being late for practice again.

"Yes, Yakov… I know… I'm on my way out as it is." Viktor lied convincingly through his teeth, as he stumbled out of bed heading for the bathroom. He then proceed to put his phone onto speaker mode allowing his coach to yell at him out of frustration as he swiftly went through his morning routine, dressing up for his day, petting Makkachin affectionately on her head before proceeding to grab his apartment keys and cut off the call from his side.

"Makkachin, please do behave yourself when I'm off for training. You can do that for me right?" Viktor hug the poodle as he finished lacing up his sneakers, and preparing to leave the apartment unit.

Makkachin barked twice in acknowledgement, and another time when Viktor opens the apartment unit's door. Once Viktor stepped out from the apartment unit, he proceeded on to take the stairs down to the guard's office instead of waiting for the elevator since he was already running late to practice. Dropping his apartment unit keys at the guard's office, he informed the guard that there would be someone coming by later to do his house-cleaning and to take care of his pet poodle so that the guard would not need to call him up mid-practice to verify the situation.

On his way over to his home rink in Saint Petersburg, Viktor took out his phone and snapped a picture of the scenic view of the sun rising over the horizon as he passes by the beach and send it over to Yuuri on an impulse. To which, Yuuri responded in kind by sending him a night-view of Detroit, taken obviously from the dormitory room's window.

"VITYA! Stop Hovering Outside And Get Your Ass In Here Now!" Yakov Feltsman, the infamous coach of Viktor Nikiforov yelled as soon as he caught sight of the late comer from the corner of his eyes.

"Okay...okay, I'm coming in already... You can stop yelling already." Viktor tried to calm his irate coach down, only to receive more yelling and scolding from the elder man. Seeing as his calming tactics fail to work on his coach, Viktor opted to tune the man out instead. How his coach could handle yelling at practically every competitive skaters under guidance and still not ruin the vocal chords is really a mystery.

"So how's it going for your program, kiddo?" Viktor inquired, with a cheerful grin plastered on his face as he ruffled the teen's hair while he passes by the rink where the blond was practicing as he head for the lockers' room direction.

"Che, how hard would it be with a program without any quads. Of course, I have no problem with it. And how many times must I tell you not to call me KIDDO?!" Yuri Plisetsky muttered aloud placing emphasis at the word 'kiddo', sounding sullen before turning away from Viktor with a huff. The sheer feel of someone ruffling his hair caused the blond teen to send a glare of annoyance towards the silver-haired skater in reaction.

"But you're a kid, aren't you? Be good and listen to Yakov, if you managed to win gold this time around. I'll choreograph your senior debut program for you." Viktor said before disappearing down the hallway into the lockers' room, in order to exchange his current sneakers for his pair of skates.

While lacing up his skates, Viktor made it a point to put a note in his phone's memo reminding himself to assign 'On Love: AGAPE' to Yurio when the time comes. Recently, he had made it a point to address Yuri Plisetsky as Kiddo much to the younger skater's aggravation. However, it cannot be helped as Viktor was simply too used to addressing Yuri as 'Yurio' so in order not to slip up in front of the blond - he had to come up with other nicknames for the young skater and thus, the nickname 'Kiddo' was born.

Meanwhile, Yuri Plisetsky was left staring at the back of Viktor Nikiforov with his mouth agape. It took a tease from Mila Babicheva to snap him out of his stunned-like manner, before turning his attention back to the practice inwardly vowing to win gold for his last Junior Grand Prix Finals so that he could make Viktor choreograph his senior debut programs.

Viktor practice his short program routine over and over again, wanting to train up his muscle memory. Due to his average stamina level, he was unable to keep going like Yuuri tends to do and thus had to stop every fifteen minutes for a short break to rest and recover before continuing on with his training regime. Yakov only drop by every ten minutes or so to check on his progress, for that Viktor was thankful. Because the lack of Yakov's supervision means that he could afford to goof off in between his practice and breaks.

For the better part of the morning, Viktor spend his breaks in between practices to stalk the instagram account of Yuuri's room-mate – Phichit Chulanout. Due to Yuuri's request for him to be discreet in his social activities, Viktor made it a point to cut down on the number of likes he was to give to Phichit's post that involves Yuuri in one way or another. Since Viktor is not allowed to Spam Phichit's instagram account with notification of likes, he ended up nicking several good shots of Yuuri's solo picture from the Thai skater instagram instead. Majority of these photos are taken without Yuuri's awareness, meaning snapshots – there was one which consists of Yuuri playing the flute. Viktor resolved to find some time inquiring on Yuuri's musical talents, since he had no idea that his Yuuri could play an instrument until he chanced upon this particular picture. The caption Phichit had used mentioned something about Yuuri preparing for mid-term recital.

By the time lunch hour comes around, Viktor had went through everything that Phichit Chulanout had posted on the instagram and had resort to surfing the JSF website for official figure skater merchandise. From there, he purchased several posters of Yuuri that he finds attractive and briefly he wondered if he could persuade Yuuri to sign a copy of the posters he purchased. After purchasing the posters, he tried browsing through the JSF archives records for Yuuri's past interviews but ended up giving up on navigating through the site as his knowledge of Kanji was too little to make sense of the JSF navigation site.

Viktor took his lunch together with his rink-mates, so at least the bantering between Mila and Yurio had somewhat distracted him from his thoughts of Yuuri. He completely tuned out of Georgi's tale of his destined love – Anya, whom Viktor was more than certain would be leaving Georgi soon. Though, he was not quite certain on the exact time-frame that Anya would be dumping Georgi… but it should be sometime in between the off-season.

"So Viktor, care to enlighten us on why you'd suddenly decided to change your theme for this season?" Mila questioned, her gossiping muses acting up as soon as Yakov is out of sight.

"Well… all I can say is I'm suddenly hit by inspiration." Viktor smiled as he replied.

"Right… you and your insistence on tailoring your programs to suit your inspiration muses." Yuri Plisetsky muttered under his breath as he rolls his eyes at Viktor's response. He could never understand what was going on in the mind of Viktor Nikiforov. One moment the man could be so calm and elegant, and the next moment the man is behaving like an idiot that only knows how to goof around.

It was later that night at 9pm, Russia – Saint Petersburg time did Viktor finally managed to speak with Yuuri. With Detroit being eight hours behind, it basically meant that Yuuri was calling him on skype during Yuuri's own lunch break.

"I hope I didn't caught you at a bad time?" Yuuri greeted hesitantly, once the skype request had been accepted by him.

"No… its' fine, I'm only in my bathrobe because I've just taken a shower. Training is off for tomorrow, as Yakov wanted us to head down to Vancouver early so we will be flying out to Canada around noon." Viktor responded, as he grabbed a towel and start drying his hair.

"I see… well, in that case I'm glad I managed to speak to you now since I'm not sure if I am able to speak to you at all for tomorrow. What's with you flying to Canada and the possible jet-lag, as well as the time-zones confusion…" Yuuri smiled a small smile, his cheeks tainted with slight pink making him look all the more adorable in Viktor's eyes.

"Hm..m… true, arranging a skype session might be a little tough for tomorrow… but we can still make use of the chats application to text one another. Granted, the replies may not be as prompt as a face to face conversation it would have to do for the time being. So what's this final year project thing about?" Viktor asked, steering the conversation away from skating related topics for a while opting to inquire about the FYP that caused Yuuri to cancel out on him earlier on in the day instead.

"The final year project is basically a coursework, it took up about 50% of the overall grades and so it is very important to graduating students to actually complete it. Depending on the course of study, the final year project differs from one to another. For example, a business student might be asked to submit a detail business proposal; a five years financial plan proposal; given a case study and later to compile a report comprising of several factors in terms of a performance evaluation of the case study provided or even a proposal that deals with the marketing of a certain products targeting a certain group of audiences." Yuuri explained the concept of the final year project, and proceed to give several examples of what he knew of the coursework usually assigned to business course students.

"Oh… okay, so what does your final year project entails?" Viktor blinked twice, feeling a little bit lost about what Yuuri had just explained to him. It sounds rather mind-boggling to him, since he had never done college before choosing to focus fully on skating instead. Still, he could not helped but ask Yuuri about the final year project Yuuri is working on and speaking of which, it seems like he wasn't even aware of Yuuri's course of study. Oh he knew Yuuri was good in dancing, but after his discovering a picture of Yuuri playing the flute – he wasn't so certain about Yuuri being a dance major student anymore.

"My final year project…well, if you really must know… we, meaning my group members and myself are supposed to be producing a musical as our coursework. So far, we've only managed to get the outline out… as for the details we had decided to straighten out after the Skate America tournament. Rather, they will continue to meet up for discussion while I'm away for competition and one of them would fill me in on the details after I got back on campus. I felt so bad though… it seems as though I'm forcing them to take on a heavier work load." Yuuri responded with a blush highlighting his cheeks initially, the term 'musical' was said very softly so much so that if Viktor was not well-versed in lip-reading he could have missed the term entirely.

The later portion of Yuuri's response was slightly more audible than the first part, but when Yuuri reached the last word of his response the pink blush was missing and instead a guilty look had taken over his features. The moment Viktor noticed the guilty look on Yuuri's feature, alarm bells started ringing in his head as he scrambled to find words that can provide re-assurance to his dear husband. He would have hug Yuuri if he could, but since he couldn't' – reassuring words would have to do for now.

"Well… Yuuri, they're just being considerate for you. If you really felt that bad, you could always volunteer to take up a heavier load towards the later part of the project? I mean, judging from what you mentioned just now… this project is not going to be a short-term one, isn't it?" Viktor hurried to re-assure Yuuri, not wanting the guilt to spiral down into something else that will torment Yuuri throughout his Skate America performance.

Granted, Viktor was curious about the musical production thing but he wasn't going to ask Yuuri for details now. Yuuri was currently guilt-ridden by the fact that due to his impending Skate America competition, the majority of the organizing work for the musical production would lies on his fellow group members. So if Viktor were to ask what exactly would Yuuri be doing for the project, there is quite a high chance of Yuuri over-thinking things and freaked out on the issue. Therefore, Viktor resolved to let things be for now.

"I guess so… when you put it that way, it somehow just sounds logical. I mean, one of them did mention that there's some plan or was it event that needed his attendance in Sydney later on in the month of October… Since Skate America would be over by then and NHK Trophy would not happen until mid-November… I should be able to pay them back for their efforts made during the week I'm away for Skate America." Yuuri sighed, taking Viktor's advice to heart and decided to speak with his group-mates further during tomorrow's meeting and hopefully to work out a better schedule for the whole musical production thing.

"Good. Now, I understand that this should be your lunch hour. Have you eaten already?" Viktor frowned, while he was reluctant to end the skype session with Yuuri – he was also unwilling to let Yuuri starve during the limited lunch hour.

"Erm… not exactly, I mean I have a sandwich by my laptop's side but I haven't really touches it." Yuuri admitted sheepishly.

"Well then, I guess we will have to cut the conversation short in order for you to have lunch. You knows as much as I do that practicing on an empty stomach is hardly promising. So please go and take your lunch. We can continue our chats via Whatsapp, and I need to take Makkachin out for a walk as well. I'd somehow neglected to walk her over the last three days, and she's getting restless being cooped up in the apartment already." Viktor told Yuuri in a no-nonsense tone of voice, that immediately caused the Japanese skater to make a grab for his untouched sandwich and started unwrapping it, going to the extent of biting into it in front of the web-cam to prove to Viktor that lunch is in progress.

"Good. Make sure you finished your sandwich, rest for a bit before attempting your routine. After all, you don't want to vomit on the ice – do you?"

"Mou… can you don't talk about vomiting when I'm eating?! It is quite unpleasant, you know?!" Yuuri throws Viktor a look of irritation, before the skype connection was being cut off in an impromptu manner.

"Oops… looks like I'd accidentally annoyed Yuuri so much so that he cuts off the connection in agitation. Oh well, I'll just apologized to him later…" Viktor thought aloud to himself, as he hurried to change into a set of comfortable sweatshirt and pants before approaching the restless Makkachin to bring the poodle out for a nice cooling evening walk.

~ to be continued~

Date completed: 1/3/17.