I LIVED! As a celebration, have another chapter! This is based on a request from Loveless043. Thank you for the request, it gave me a chance to write something that I've been wanting to do for a while! I hope that you like it! And to everyone else who sent in requests, I promise that I'm working on them!
In other news, this story has hit a whopping 97 reviews! Thank you so much! If we can make it to 100, it would make my entire life! Also, I've written a total of 14,000 words for this story. That's . . . a lot. I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm grateful to you guys for motivating me to keep going with this! You rock!
So, I was going to base the movie that they watch in this chapter off an actual movie, but then I realized that I haven't really watched any horror movies. So it's intentionally vague, you can pretend that they're watching whichever one that you want. As per usual, Yuuri K. is Yuuri and Yuri P. is Yuri. Enjoy!
"Oh, it's almost Halloween!" Yuuri exclaims, smiling at his phone. Pichit had just sent him an early Halloween greeting, complete with cute little bats and ghosts. Neither of them had really celebrated the holiday before they'd lived in Detroit, so it had become their little joking tradition every year.
It's just a little observation, and Yuuri doesn't expect much to come of it. But as soon as he mentions Halloween, he has two confused Russians staring at him. "What's that?" Yuri asks, his face scrunched up in confusion, green eyes narrowed. He's perched on one of the arms of the armchair, Bella on his lap.
"Halloween?" Victor ponders, tilting his head to the side. It causes more of his bangs to fall in his face, and he huffs and brushes them aside. "Oh, isn't that an American holiday?"
"That's right!" Yuuri says, his enthusiasm undiminished by their confusion. "Pichit and I used to celebrate it when we were in college together!"
"How do you celebrate this Halloween?" Victor seems fascinated by this new discovery.
"Well, the younger kids, like Yuri, would dress up in costumes and get candy from the neighbors," Yuuri begins to explain, only to be interrupted by an indignant Yuri.
"I'm not a kid!" the teenager snaps, almost dislodging Bella from her spot on his lap. She gives an irritated huff, and Yuri strokes her soothingly in apology.
"Of course not," Yuuri agrees, hoping to placate him. "Since Pichit and I were too old for that, we would just buy a bunch of candy from the store and rent some movies. It was always really fun!"
"That sounds like a great idea, Yuuri!" Victor says, beaming. "We should all celebrate Halloween together this year!"
Normally, Yuri would protest this as ridiculous and unnecessary, but he had perked up, his interest piqued at the mention of candy. "I guess that would be okay," the teenager admits.
"That sounds good, Victor," Yuuri agrees. His fiancé's enthusiasm is infectious.
"Perfect!" Then, Victor seems to remember something important. "Um, Yuuri? What day is Halloween?"
Yuuri hadn't thought much of it when Victor had insisted on doing all of the preparations himself. And anyways, he'd done a great job: there was an excellent selection of candy (which Yuri had already managed to eat half of before the movies even started), several movies which Victor promised were supposed to be "Halloween classics," and he'd somehow even managed to find Halloween decorations in Russia. The living room had been turned into the perfect setting for a spooky party. Bats hovered over the fireplace, a ghost lurked in the corner behind the armchair, and several spiders seemed to be scuttling up the wall near the kitchen.
"Victor, you really outdid yourself this time!" Yuuri gasps in amazement when he sees the result of Victor's hard work. "Isn't it great, Yuri?"
Yuri is sitting on the couch nearest the candy bowl. "It's fine, I guess," he grunts, tearing open another chocolate bar. Apparently he's too cool to show enthusiasm.
"You might want to slow down a little," Yuuri cautions him. "Don't you want to save some candy for during the actual movie?"
"Whatever, dad." Yuri rolls his eyes, taking an enormous bite of the candy bar in his hand. "Let's just get this over with."
Victor takes that as his cue to start the movie—he insists on picking the first movie they watch. "It's supposed to be perfect for Halloween! And it had excellent reviews." He pops the disk in the DVD player, and Yuuri turns off the lights.
They all squish together on the couch, Yuuri in the middle between Victor and Yuri. At first, it's cozy and fun. It isn't until they're almost a quarter of the way through the movie before Yuuri realizes that letting Victor make the movie selection might have been a horrible mistake. "V-victor?" he stutters, trying to keep his voice steady. "I thought this was supposed to be a fun Halloween movie." On screen, an invisible presence shatters a window, and Yuuri stifles a whimper. He's clinging to Victor like wet seaweed, their limbs all tangled together. On his other side, Yuri has his arm in a death grip. Another explosion has the teenager forgoing his pride entirely and burying his face in Yuuri's shoulder.
"Oh, no." Victor looks confused. Out of the three of them, he's the only one who looks completely unaffected by what's happening in the movie. Makkachin and Bella have long since fled. "When I looked up movies that we should watch, it said that people watch horror movies on Halloween."
"Some people, maybe, but Pichit and I always watched the fun, goofy ones!" Yuuri gives up entirely on watching the movie and squeezes his eyes shut. It's fine, he's just never going to sleep again. Who needs sleep, anyway?
The screen freezes. Victor, apparently finally catching on, pauses the movie. When the sounds from the movie finally, blessedly stop, Yuuri finally dares to crack his eyes open. "Is it over?" Yuri whispers, not daring to lift his head until he knows that it's safe.
Yuuri ruffles his hair. "Yeah, it's safe now."
Cautiously, the teenager lifts his head from the safety of Yuuri's shoulder. "That was awful," he announces, breathing an audible sigh of relief. Noticing their eyes on him, Yuri flushes bright red. "I wasn't scared!" he snaps, pushing away from Yuuri. "I just—" He breaks off midsentence, unable to come up with a good excuse.
"It's alright," Yuuri reassures him, struggling not to laugh at the teenager's obvious embarrassment. "We won't tell anyone."
"Because there's nothing to tell!" Yuri retorts, bristling.
Victor, who has been rummaging through the DVDs on the coffee table with a frown on his face, interrupts him. "I'm sorry, Yuuri, I only rented horror movies," he says, looking crestfallen. "I should have asked you what type of movies you wanted to watch."
"It's alright," Yuuri soothes him. It's not really Victor's fault; plus it's impossible to be mad at the older man when he looks so upset. "There's always Netflix."
It has come to my attention that I tend to write Victor like Tamaki Suoh; I have no regrets, I think that it works for him (it does make me want to do a crossover, though).
Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please leave a review! They keep me motivated, and constructive criticism is always welcome.
Also, this story is open for requests! If there's something that you want to see, please let me know and I'll do my best to make it happen!
This fic is also cross-posted to AO3.