A/N: This is not a one-shot. This is an accompanying snippet to one of my completed works called Coalescence. I highly recommend reading that before you read this or it won't make much sense. This is a gift for a reader that read Coalescence recently and kinda sorta wanted some more heartbreak for the final kill.
Hope I delivered!
Takes place during Yuuri's last visit in Viktor's body when he says his final goodbyes to his family during chapter five.
When Yuuri wakes, back in Viktor Nikiforov's bed, in Viktor Nikiforov's house, beside Viktor Nikiforov's dog, he knows that he's going to miss this. It no longer feels daunting to be here, staring at his hero's medals up close and parsing through his wardrobe without a squeal or a squeak or a pink-cheeked grin. Yuuri looks at himself in the mirror and doesn't see the Viktor Nikiforov that coated his bedroom walls. He doesn't see his hero.
He sees the man that he loves.
The man that is waiting for him, soul drifting somewhere within this remarkable body that houses two.
Not for much longer, Yuuri thinks, and he fists the t-shirt over his chest. Even in this world, the really real world, Yuuri is losing sensation. His fingertips are numb. Aside from absurdly striking or brain-piercing smells, he smells little to nothing at all. He sometimes misses entire sentences that people speak.
This is fine. It's how he was meant to be from the start. A ghost. A haunting presence.
It's cruel of him to do this. To visit his family. To make them say goodbye again.
Giving your loved one over to death once is horrifying. Twice is unthinkable.
But Yuuri takes this chance. Another gift in a series of gifts that he does not deserve.
Viktor is waiting for him.
Yuuri thinks of him, of their house filled with books that he will never read and a skylight pelted by rain that he will never truly feel, as he enters the inn.
There's something different about his mother, a somberness to her. She knows. Like she can sense it. Vicchan yaps at his feet, up on his hind legs and reaching as high as he can manage to get to Yuuri's hand. Yuuri pets him, and he cries. He bursts before he can get the words out. He can hardly smell the things that he knows exists – the lemongrass scent of the detergent that Mari cleans the inn with, that loving dog smell of Vicchan's - but he can smell the katsudon, powerful like a rocket ship that bursts through his chest and lands on his heart. They have dinner together, for the first time in years, he and Mari and his mom and his dad and Minako and Vicchan won't leave his lap, and Yuuri knows that he wasted this. This precious, precious time. He should have been having dinners like this every night when he was alive, instead of ramen and vending machine snacks in his dorm room with Phichit.
He can't hold all of his feelings. They slip out into his bowl, in his mother's arms and beneath his father's chin.
"I'll never forgive him," Mari says.
Yuuri has a mini-heart attack, wants to tell her all of the reasons why this isn't Viktor's fault and he wants to gush about all of the things that make Viktor so lovable and dependable and passionate and real. Instead he says, "Go easy on him. He would have been your brother-in-law."
It breaks the stone wall that is Mari's face. She pushes her palms into her eyes, cursing Viktor and Yuuri and crying about how Yuuri can't die until they make it official.
Yuuko doesn't touch him. For all of her spunk and personality, she is a normal girl. A normal girl that doesn't know how to touch the spirit-ghost-thing that he is. He slowly, cautiously takes her shaking hand and holds it until she gets used to the firmness of his presence. Even though it is Viktor's body, Yuuri tries his best to leak out anything that is himself. He pulls her out onto the ice and they drift there, like the giddy kids they were.
"Tell obaachan that I miss her, will you?" she asks, and her eyes sparkle.
"She was always nice to me." Yuuri remembers Yuuko's grandmother, a woman that made every bento of Yuuko's and at one point single-handedly ran Ice Castle.
"She'll take care of you," Yuuko sniffs, "since I can't anymore."
Phichit won't let go.
"Never," he announces with finality and he holds Yuuri there in his arms.
Yuuri has already had dinner with Phichit's family, met his parents and his many, many siblings. Yuuri was sitting cross-legged on the floor in Phichit's room, petting Phichit's hamsters when the man encircled him in a hug that refused to give. Phichit was their sunshine in Detroit, never failing to bounce in a room and sprinkle rainbows on someone's day with a smile that was too vibrant to look at directly. To have him sobbing like this, with a river flooding down Yuuri's shirt, Yuuri knows that he can never fix this kind of hurt. He doesn't think he's ever seen Phichit cry like this.
"I'm never letting you go. Viktor can't have his body back. I won't let him take you."
The sentiment melts Yuuri to the deepest, darkest crevices of his soul. Yuuri stays there, hugging back until Phichit tires. Yuuri blinks with bleary, tired eyes that have swollen up with sadness as Phichit pulls away.
"I'm happy," Yuuri finally chokes out when they part. It's the first thing he's said in what feels like hours.
"I know." Phichit's smile wobbles. "That's why I let go."
Chris waits for him when he arrives back in Russia.
"I miss those cheeks of yours," Chris says and Yuuri remains confused until he understands. Yuuri immediately colors upon realization, growing three shades of scandalized as he covers his bottom.
Chris waves the action off, laughing. "That's a look that I have never seen on his face." Yuuri pouts. "Don't worry. Feeling up Viktor is no fun."
Yuuri purses his lips, curling them to the side as he mutters, "I think it's fun." Chris' eyebrows raise, and Yuuri realizes what came out of his mouth before stuttering out a slur of unintelligible noises.
Chris howls with laughter. "I just had to see that look," he reveals when he sobers. "Something so you even in his body."
Makkachin stays by his side when Yuuri returns. Yuuri finds that he can't say the word 'goodbye' to her big eyes and drooping ears. He gives her a belly full of treats, takes her on the longest walk like he did Vicchan. Yuuri kisses her ears, her nose, and cries as he writes a letter.
The next is his last goodbye.
His hardest.