3. Beat It Down Before Its Sins Grow Worse

Viktor stared at the bottle. It was very expensive and he hadn't planned to drink it alone, but there was no-one here to share it with. With trembling hands, he fetched a shot glass and promptly dropped it. That he managed to shake off the desire to sit down on the floor and cry made him proud.

After what had been called an acute stress disorder, they had kept Viktor in hospital for another four days. It was only when the fact that someone had actively tried to harm him and successfully killed his dog had sunk in that he managed to get himself out of the mire of pain. Not because he was angry, but because it confused him immensely that someone would go to that length for no apparent reason. Viktor felt no desire to fight this person. He just wanted to be left alone. And yet … Maybe rage would be easier to bear. If only he could get himself to feel any.

Sighing, Viktor cleaned up the shards and grabbed a second glass. Successfully this time. His phone shrilled, and for a moment, he wanted to ignore it. Then he remembered that he'd promised Linda and Katarina that they'd be able to reach him. They were way more worried than was warranted. He wasn't going to harm himself. He didn't want to, hadn't wanted to even during his nervous breakdown. What his father had done after his mother's own suicide had nothing to do with him. He liked living. Even when it sucked hard.

He glanced at the display, cracked after he'd let it slip in the hospital, to see if it was one of the two women and jerked into instant movement. He didn't have the number saved, but +81 said everything he needed. Tears breaking from his eyes, Viktor took the call. 'Yuuri, oh Yuuri, I'm so glad. I really need to hear your voice. I don't know how to handle this alone.'

'Shut up, idiot.'

Viktor blinked. 'Minako?'

'No, I'm the fucking prime minister, crap for brains.'

'Uh … that's a new one. Hey, Minako, I really need to talk to Yuuri?'

'After you told him to kill himself? I think not.'

Viktor dropped the second glass. 'I told him what? Minako, is he all right?'

'No, he damn well isn't, he isn't talking to anyone and he isn't eating enough, believe it or not. Where do you get off telling him it's his fault you tripped over your own stupid feet and that he doesn't deserve to outlive this?'

Viktor slammed his hand onto the counter. 'Minako, make sure he doesn't hurt himself!'

'Oh, he won't. He's just a drama queen.'

Kneading the bridge of his nose, Viktor forced himself to keep some semblance of control. His chest still hurt when he breathed too hard. 'Please take this seriously,' he said. 'You can't look into a person. He needs to know that you love him, that he isn't alone!'

'Oh, we're making sure of that, even if you're failing hard. He made it clear enough that he isn't going to do something like that but that you think he should. Honestly, I don't think he's a danger to himself, despite what you told him.'

'Listen to me. I didn't even speak to him after the accident. I was unconscious, and by the time I came around, he was unreachable! I'd never say anything like that. Tell him to come home. Tell him I love him and really, really need him. Please!'

'Where does he get that crap from, then?'

'I haven't the faintest idea!'

'Okay, I believe you. But I don't think he'll pluck up the courage to just go back to you. He's convinced himself that he's bad for you. You want to have him, you'll have to collect. Good luck.'

The line went dead and Viktor stared at the screen of his phone. Feeling weirdly more settled after being screamed at, he cleaned up again and went back to his bottle. Before he could so much as touch another glass, his phone rang again. If this was Minako again, he'd let her have a piece of his mind now, but the number was Russian. 'Why does everyone I don't know enough to have in my contacts want to talk to me right now? Hello, who's this?'

'Someone who's going to flay you alive if you don't bring back the little piggy.'

Viktor fought down a burst of crazed laughter. He was getting a headache. He probably shouldn't drink while recovering from a concussion anyway. He contemplated putting the bottle back in its place but ultimately didn't trust himself with anything breakable right now and left it where it was. 'I didn't know you cared, Yurio.' He frowned. 'How do you even know he left?'

'It came on the news. He was seen at the airport, completely dishevelled. Listen here, if you stop coaching him, he'll retire and then I can't beat him. So get him back here.'

Even the following beep of the terminated phone call sounded pissed off. 'Well, if I thought there was a point I just might go,' he said quietly.

Giving his drink up as a bad job, Viktor decided to do as Linda had asked him and meet her at the Theremin, a food chain she was rather fond of. He liked it well enough, but he wasn't hungry at all. He didn't particularly want to go, but he had promised to think about it and he felt like the apartment was going to crush his soul. Maybe the bustle at Pulkovo Airport would distract him for a bit.

Ϡ

The place was buzzing with people when Viktor entered. He spotted his friend immediately, sitting at one of the tables with a book in front of her and a large cup cradled in her hands. There was a suitcase next to her. Viktor hadn't known she was leaving, but she travelled so much, it was hardly a surprise. She hadn't looked up, and when Viktor joined her a few minutes later with a coffee of his own, she jumped. 'I didn't think I'd see you,' she said when he sat down across from her. 'I'm glad I was wrong. How are you?'

'Tired. Sad. Lost.' He shrugged. 'Thanks for letting me bury Makkachin in your garden, Linda.'

'You're my best friend, Vityok.'

'Not when you call me that, I'm not.'

She punched him. Gently. 'I've got a question for you. You won't like it.'

Groaning, Viktor took a deep drink from his cup, burning his mouth in the process. 'Let me have it, then,' he said through clenched teeth. Damn it, he'd get a blister on his palate, he just knew it.

'Who are you going to invite to your wedding, from your side?'

'Assuming there will be one?'

'There will be one.'

'Well … You, obviously, and Katusha.'

'Your family?'

'You know the answer.'

'Tell me anyway.'

Setting his cup down hard enough to spill a bit of its contents, Viktor glared at her. 'You're right, I don't like it. You know my parents are dead and the rest of the family has long since decided that this is my fault. You also know that I can count the real friends I have on the fingers of one hand. So where is this going?'

'What about Yuuri?'

'Well, seeing how I'll be marrying him, he'll be there.'

'No, дуб. Who's he going to invite?'

'His family I expect. Phichit. Maybe Minami, he got a lot closer to the kid recently. Obviously Minako and the Nishigoris. All of them, God help me. Not that you know any of the people I just listed.'

'And yet, he's here.'

Viktor narrowed his eyes and glared at her. 'He isn't. That's part of the problem.'

Linda was absolutely unimpressed by his scowl. 'Well, not right now, but eventually you'll get your shit together and go to Japan to drag him back here. Unless he comes to his senses before you and shows up at your door.'

'Are you saying he's better off without me?'

Now it was Linda's turn to give him a dirty look. 'Did you hit your head or something?'

Unable to help himself, Viktor laughed. 'Yes, in fact.'

'Knock it off, Vityok. Your passive aggressiveness makes people want to hit you. He's all over you, we both know that. Of course he isn't better off without you, but … before this happened, you said he wasn't feeling well. Have you considered that he misses his family?'

Viktor blinked slowly. He picked up his cup again, if only to hide behind it. 'Whereas I have no-one except the two of you. You're right.' He took a careful sip and decided that the temperature was much better. 'I've … wondered if maybe, seeing how I'm not staying active, we should relocate. It's funny, when I talked to him about getting papers from his embassy was the first time I thought … maybe he'd rather do this in Hasetsu. He never said, though.'

'That's because somewhere deep down he thinks he doesn't deserve you to begin with. Does he know that your family isn't speaking to you?'

Viktor nodded. 'He knows everything, Linda.' He looked at her, fighting down his emotions to a degree he could manage. 'I want to go there, but I can't. In my head that scenario always ends with him sending me away.'

'Won't happen. But if it does, you come here and we'll all three get ugly drunk together before we figure out what to do next. The question is, are you willing to risk not going? Do you think he'll come back here on his own?'

Viktor swallowed and shook his head. 'Hard to say,' he said so quietly he was sure his voice wouldn't break. 'At least … it would be very hard for him to steel himself to do it. By now he'll have convinced himself that everything that he's done – hurting me, which wasn't his intention, leaving – is completely unforgiveable and that I won't want to see him. Maybe he'll miss me more than he'll worry about me rejecting him, but … I don't know. If I don't go, there's a really good chance it's over. If I don't go … I'll probably have lost him. You're right, I can't risk it.'

'Speaking of hurting you, what exactly happened? Could you find out?'

'Yes.' Glad for the change of topic to something that didn't have his heart ache for his fiancé, Viktor drank more of his coffee and even wondered if he shouldn't get himself a cinnamon bun. He had barely eaten recently and this was the first time he felt like he wanted to rather than fulfilling a particularly gruesome chore. 'There was apparently enough on the surveillance after the electricity came back. Someone – they don't know who, this person carefully avoided detection – used the darkness to throw a few handfuls of sand onto the ice. Now skating into an obstacle at high speed after a jump is generally inadvisable, and I fell. Pretty much as dexterously as a rock because I hadn't seen anything before and couldn't brace myself. I hit my head on the boards and Yuuri couldn't brake fast enough. He landed … badly, trying to stop before me, he must be sore all over. One of his skates brushed over my hand, but the cracked ribs and concussion had nothing to do with him.'

'Who the hell tried to murder you, I wonder?'

'The same person who broke into my apartment to poison Makkachin. And seeing how I was in hospital at that time, I wonder if …' He looked away.

'If they didn't mean to kill Yuuri!' Linda gasped, hands before her mouth. 'You have to go to him, you have to warn him!'

'I'm sure he's quite safe where he is now.' Except Viktor wasn't absolutely sure. 'The problem is that this person … they don't properly show up on any cameras because they knew how to avoid them … This is a local, Linda, or at least someone who took the time to learn his surroundings. That they turned on the electricity on their way out seems so random, though. It makes no sense.'

'I'm not sure if sense is what defines someone like that, Viktor.' She reached out to take his free hand. 'Have the police found out anything else?'

'Yes. Something worrying. This person bugged my apartment. The heard me call the rink's owners to ask them to leave it open for me alone. That's how they knew when to be there.'

'But that's scary! Anything else they could use against you?'

Viktor shrugged. 'I don't think so, but who knows? There were cameras, too. Everywhere. There's literally nothing they couldn't watch me – us – do. I had a bit of a fit when I found that out.'

'This is getting uglier with every word you say. Maybe this isn't the place to be right now. Hasetsu sounds much safer.'

'What if he does send me away, though? What do you think that will do to me?'

Linda groaned with exasperation. 'Can you live with yourself if you don't go? Give up on someone you love that much and who's stupid enough to love you back?'

Viktor squeezed her fingers gently. 'No. I can't.' He tugged her close and hugged her firmly. 'You're really something else. Thanks for setting my head straight.'

'Well, good. I would have hated to waste money on you.'

'Huh?'

'Here.' She offered him an envelope. 'Your flight is going in two hours, which means you should get yourself checked in soon.'

Amazed, he looked from the ticket he found in the slip of paper back up to her. 'Now you've done it. You've gone completely mad. I haven't packed anything, I've …'

'Katarina has packed for you. This is your suitcase, Vityok. If you need me to send something after you, just give me a call. And Viktor?'

'Huh?' he made again. He sounded like a total idiot.

'Don't mess this up. He's a fragile one, your Yuuri.'

'He isn't, actually.' A slow smile formed on Viktor's face and he pulled Linda into another crushing hug. 'He's stronger than he thinks. But … I won't. Mess it up, that is. I … I need to go!'

((Have another diminutive for Viktor: Витёк - / Vityok/

Дуб– /dub/ - literally, oak; colloquially, it's an insult and means idiot. Also today I was shocked to discover that Russian does not have a vocative except for a few specific words.

In case it needs saying: There is no Russian food chain named Theremin (at least, I don't think so), I did, however, change an existing name.))