Chapter Four: Yuuri vs. Exercise: Getting Back on Track!
Yuuri woke from a wonderful dream of watching Victor, wearing nothing but a smile, competing in the Moscow stadium to—
"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" Victor crooned from his perch on the edge of Yuuri's futon. He brushed Yuuri's bangs out of his face. "First day of classes!"
Yuuri pulled the covers up to his chin.
"Uh...good morning, Victor," he stuttered. "Lemme just...I'm gonna get my, um..."
He slipped off the other side of his futon, as far away as possible from Victor and grabbed his school robes.
Victor stood and peeled off his pajamas as though he changed in front of Yuuri every day. Yuuri slowly turned around and hooked his hands in his pajama bottoms, trying to focus on what he was doing.
"How do I look?" Victor asked, spreading his arms and turning so that Yuuri could admire him from every angle. "Like I belong here?"
"Uh, sure," said Yuuri. He'd never seen anyone Victor's age with a robe that pink. Usually by the time students reached eleventh year, their robes were more of a rose gold—like Yuuri's. He wasn't sure if Victor knew about the color-changing robes, but he decided he wasn't going to be the one to break it to him.
"Our robes at Durmstrang are red," Victor said, fixing his hair in the mirror. "With a fur lining. My robes for the national team were red too—this is a nice change. Something a little softer."
Yuuri crammed his bag full of books, sumi and fude—he doubted Victor had the foresight to bring his own ink and brush to write with, if he hadn't even remembered to buy textbooks—before heading down to breakfast.
To Yuuri's astonishment, Victor ate his natto without complaint and even asked for seconds again. Breakfast mostly consisted of keeping quiet (with Victor shoved up against him again) while Victor fielded questions about Quidditch from Yuuri's teammates.
"I'm a better captain than I am a player," Yuuko admitted between bites. "My goal is to someday own a practice stadium. Where do you think I'd have the best luck with that?"
"Why not here in Japan?" Victor asked her. "I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to leave!"
"Did you play for a house team at Durmstrang?" Mitsumi wanted to know.
"Oh, of course!" Victor told her, eyes lighting up. "The houses are not quite so friendly with one another as they are here. I played up until last year, actually— "
A screech interrupted him at that moment as a snowy owl soared through one of the doors and landed deftly on the rim of Victor's coffee cup. Several people squealed in surprise as it flew over their heads. It dropped a large red envelope into Victor's bowl of rice.
"Oh, hello!" he said to the owl, stroking its feathers. "Thank you very much. Yuuri, is there a place for her to get something to eat?" Yuuri pointed dumbly in the direction of the Mahoutokoro Aviary. The owl regarded him judgmentally with large eyes and then took off again out the door.
Yuuri then turned his attention to the red envelope in Victor's rice. Victor picked it up carefully by one of the corners and placed it in the center of the table. There was no name—the return address simply said Durmstrang Institute.
"Sorry about that," Victor said, brushing away the interruption. "Where were we?"
"Durmstrang house rivalry," Phichit said immediately.
"Ah yes, thank you," Victor replied. "My house was called Drekr and of course, we won the Cup five years in a row."
The envelope had begun to smoke softly at the corners.
"Um, Victor?" Yuuri whispered, pointing to the letter.
"Don't worry about it," Victor said, placing a hand on Yuuri's forearm and causing Yuuri to promptly forget how to breathe again. But even as he said it, the smoking intensified. It was starting to gather the attention of the other people at the table.
"Why is your letter smoking?" Guang Hong asked.
"Do you not have these in Japan?" Victor said. "Ah, you see..."
The letter burst open and a howl of rage filled the shokudou.
"VICTOR!" a voice boomed. The room shook. "YOU SHITHEAD, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DAMN MIND? I SHOWED UP YESTERDAY WITH GAMEPLANS FOR YOU TO LOOK OVER AND YOU'D DISAPPEARED. I HAD TO FIND OUT FROM STUPID YAKOV OF ALL PEOPLE THAT YOU'D DECIDED TO DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? I'D HAVE FLOWN THERE MYSELF AND BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU WITH MY BAT IF I DIDN'T HAVE TO SUDDENLY LEARN HOW TO BE A SEEKER ALL BY MYSELF. IF I DON'T SEE YOU BACK AT DURMSTRANG BY NEXT WEEK, I'LL COME TO MAHOUTOKORO AND KIDNAP YOU AND DRAG YOU BACK TO DURMSTRANG MYSELF IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!"
The echoes of the screaming voice were still reverberating in Yuuri's head as the letter tore itself to pieces and then smoldered into ashes. Every single person in the shokudou was staring at them. Yuuri turned to Victor, ready to face the tears of humiliation that he expected would be streaming down his face (there's no way Yuuri wouldn't be crying after a letter like that) but Victor was smiling benignly. Yuuri's face burned from second-hand embarrassment.
"Sorry about that everyone," Victor called smoothly to the room at large. Yuuri was sure that half the people couldn't even hear him over the ringing in their ears. "Just a joke from an old friend!"
That was apparently all the explanation the student body needed. They collectively turned back to their own tables and began chattering again. Yuuri still felt like he'd been punched in the gut by a voice.
"Who was that?" he asked Victor.
"That would be the other Yuri," he said. "Yuri Plisetsky. He was on my team at Durmstrang in Drekr House. I was going to mention to him that I wouldn't be coming back this year, but it must have slipped my mind. He was our best Beater but I guess they're making him Seeker now. Good for him!"
Victor seemed less than concerned about the threat of having the shit beat out of him with a Beater's bat than Yuuri would've been—especially coming from this Yuri Plisetsky. Yuuri detected no trace of teasing in that voice—he was certain that Yuri was drawing up plans at this very moment to come kidnap Victor from the House Tanuki dormitories while they slept. Yuuri then began to worry that he was going to get the shit beat of out of him when Yuri learned that he was the apparent reason Victor had flown off to Japan.
"Are you done eating?" Victor asked him. "I'll finish that if you're not going to."
Victor whisked Yuuri's unfinished rice out from under his nose and it was gone in three bites.
"Where to first?" he said, wiping his mouth and standing. He offered a hand to help Yuuri up.
"Um," Yuuri stammered, feeling like a princess being swept off her feet by a knight as he took Victor's hand. Victor pulled him to standing easily. "We have Herbology first. Down in the gardens. By the way, what electives did you choose? I haven't seen your schedule."
"You don't need to," Victor assured him. "I just told them to put me in all your classes."
Yuuri was really starting to wonder what he could've possibly done to deserve this when Victor strolled off in the wrong direction and he had to reach out and grab his shoulder to keep him from accidentally walking into the kitchens. They made it to Herbology in one piece a few minutes later. Yuuri hoped Victor wouldn't notice how winded he was from the brisk walk out to the gardens.
"Tomorrow morning," Victor announced as they took their places around the garden fence, "you are going for a run before breakfast." He had noticed, then. Fantastic.
As luck would have it, they studied a plant native to Russia that day. "They have these all over the place at home," Victor said, tickling the underside of the leaves of his plant. The flowers blushed a deep crimson. "Our front garden is full of them. A little dangerous, I guess, if you're not used to it but..." He was perfectly adept at Herbology, clearly right on grade level. Yuuri decided that Mahoutokoro's school robes just must not have adjusted to Victor yet. That's why they were still pink.
This confidence lasted through Defensive Magic and Care of Magical Creatures until just after lunch. Yuuri learned that he had been lulled into a false sense of security as to Victor's academic propensity about five minutes into Transfiguration.
"I've never heard of this spell," Victor told him, breathing on Yuuri's neck as he leaned over to share his textbook. Yuuri tried to ignore the goosebumps erupting on his skin.
"This is a review," Yuuri told him, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. "We learned this spell in eighth year."
Victor flipped idly through the pages. "I've never heard of any of these," he said casually. "Guess you're going to have to tutor me!"
By the end of their last class of the day, Yuuri felt he had a pretty good handle on Victor's education. He was tremendously talented in Defensive Magic (which was no surprise, given Durmstrang's history with illegal practices and the recent attempts to salvage their reputation), very familiar with magical plants (but only the ones found in Russia and Scandinavia), a natural handler of magical creatures, and that was about it. He had maybe a seventh-year-level understanding of Transfiguration, Charms, History of Magic and Potions. Yuuri wasn't exactly sure how they were going to find time to turn Yuuri into a Quidditch prodigy while he frantically tried to catch Victor up to speed on his magical education, but Victor seemed incredibly cavalier about the whole thing.
"Don't worry about me," he said with a wave of his hand, like that was going to stop Yuuri from freaking out. "I'm here to focus on you." There really was no getting through to him.
Yuuri normally started on his homework first thing after classes, but Victor insisted that they "get some fresh air" while it was still light out. As it turned out, "get some fresh air" was code for Yuuri doing a grueling No-Maj exercise routine Victor had borrowed from the St Petersburg Skrzak while Victor lolled about in the grass, drinking Yuuri's Ramune and picking flowers.
"You're doing great Yuuri!" he called from across the courtyard, now wearing the flowers he'd woven into a crown. A gaggle of girls sat feet behind him, giggling like lunatics, but Victor appeared not to have noticed them. Sweat poured down Yuuri's forehead as he counted crunches.
"Is that enough?" he finally gasped, approaching Victor and collapsing next to him in the grass. Phichit had apparently joined him at some point and was conversing animatedly with Victor.
"What?" Victor asked. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. But look, I made you something!"
Victor placed the flower crown on Yuuri's head, declared it "very pretty," and promptly went back to his conversation with Phichit while Yuuri did his best not to die of exertion.
"That was fun," Victor decided unilaterally. "We can get homework done after dinner. We're going to do this every day."
"Every day?" Yuuri echoed. "Every day until when?"
"Until this," Victor poked Yuuri's belly, "is gone and you're fast enough to catch the Snitch again."
House Kirin was in charge of dinner (no katsudon) and Victor spent most of the meal trying to figure out when the next House Tanuki dinner would be.
"If you like katsudon so much," Yuuri told him, "I can try to sign us up for dinner a few times a week. Most people just want to get in for breakfast so that House Komainu can't sign up for natto every morning." Victor's eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously.
True to his word, Victor poked Yuuri awake at the ass crack of dawn for a run, then immediately curled back up under the silk blankets he apparently brought from home and went back to sleep. Cursing the universe, Yuuri spent the forty-five minutes before breakfast sprinting around the school grounds, climbing staircases and jogging backwards. By the time he got cleaned off and back to the dormitory he felt as though he could've slept for a thousand hours and made to crawl back in bed for a quick nap, but Victor (already dressed and looking irritatingly well-rested) tossed him his robes and watched him change before they went down to the shokudou for breakfast.
No fewer than six owls brought messages for Victor that morning. He thanked each one individually and piled the letters in a stack next to his breakfast without looking at them, then surreptitiously slipped them into the garbage on the way to Charms.
Thus began three weeks of hard work that Yuuri would've gladly condensed into a montage, if his life was a movie. Quidditch practices only started three weeks into the school year as a courtesy to the teams who needed to have tryouts for new players, so the time he would normally have spent on his broom was instead devoted to Victor's god-forsaken No-Maj training routine. Getting Victor to do any amount of schoolwork was like pulling teeth—he spent all his time lounging around the school, snacking and making friends while Yuuri ran and jumped and climbed until he dropped. The letters kept coming, and Victor kept ignoring them. Twice more, the snowy owl who had visited on the first day of classes brought letters for Victor—thankfully not the screaming red envelopes—and Victor tossed out those messages as well. Whenever they were alone, Victor flirted outrageously at him as Yuuri flailed helplessly and melted with mortification.
"So," Victor said one Sunday as they sat on the shore on the opposite side of the island, "what is it you want from me?"
"What I want you to do is stop flourishing your wand so much," Yuuri said, pointing to the Charms textbook laid out in front of them. "The movement is more straightforward. It's like—"
"No," said Victor, shaking his head and putting his wand down, closing the book. "I mean, what is it you want from me?"
It still took Yuuri a second to grasp that he wasn't talking about homework, and the question really threw Yuuri off. What did Victor even mean by that? It wasn't like Yuuri had asked him to come here—he just...showed up.
"I don't know," Yuuri muttered.
"What do you want me to be to you?" Victor pressed. "A mentor? A father figure? A brother?"
"No," Yuuri sulked, because none of those sounded right.
"So then your lover," Victor declared. "I'll try my best!"
"No! What? Wait...no. I don't...I just...what?" Yuuri stammered. Victor just threw his head back in laughter, tossed a stone into the ocean and suggested they head back up to the school.
That evening, Yuuko came back from an after dinner meeting waving a stack of paper in their faces.
"Quidditch practice schedule!" she trilled, tapping it with her wand and making copies of the top sheet for everybody. Victor peered at the schedule over Yuuri's shoulder.
He hummed, then grabbed Yuuri around the waist from behind. His fingers brushed over Yuuri's ribs and Yuuri tried hard not to make a sound—something told him it would be a bad idea to ever let on to Victor how ticklish he was.
"You've really slimmed down already," Victor told him. "I'm going to kind of miss your tummy, but you look cute like this too."
Yuuri looked around wildly to see if any of his friends had witnessed this bizarre exchange, but they were all engrossed in their own schedules. Victor spun Yuuri around by the waist and held his face with both hands, squishing his cheeks together.
"Does ish mean I can shtop running before breakfasht?" Yuuri managed.
"You'll be getting plenty of exercise during practice," Victor considered, "so I don't see why not."
While Yuuri silently held a party in his head over having his precious morning snooze returned to him, Victor turned to Yuuko.
"Do you have a game schedule yet?" he asked.
"Oops!" she said, leafing through her packet, "Somewhere in...here you go!"
Yuuri let out a shaky sigh of relief. First game in two weeks—Sunday, October 9th—Komainu vs. Kirin. He'd get to sit this one out. Victor seemed to catch on.
"Somehow I get the feeling that you'd be better off playing first," he said, frowning slightly and skimming the page. "But I guess more practice time can't hurt."