Chapter Seventeen: Yuuri vs. Incontrovertible Photographic Evidence: The Pregame Special!
Yuuri awoke the morning before the final match a lot later than usual—apparently Victor had decided that sleeping in would do him some good. The windows had been shaded too, and Yuuri lay in the dark in his futon, thinking.
What would happen after tomorrow? His whole career hinged on the Tengu recruiters liking what they saw. He couldn't describe how he felt knowing that it all might be over in an instant if they didn't.
And what about Victor? What was Victor going to do next season? If he went back to Russia like Yakov and—let's face it—probably everyone else on the planet wanted him to, where would that leave Yuuri? If Yuuri signed with the Tengu, would Victor actually go with him? Or (as Yuuri feared), was this match going to be the end of their...whatever it was?
He thought back on last year—the final match. Ohashi had been weaving back and forth, and he'd remembered the roaring sound in his ears, the tunnel vision...he'd fallen off his broom into the water and he'd been so consumed with anxiety that he wasn't able to cast a spell. His Quidditch gear weighing him down, he sunk like a stone for what was probably about twenty seconds but felt like two hours before a teacher had had the presence of mind to cast a spell to retrieve him from the churning waves.
He wasn't sure how long he lay there stewing silently, but his heart was starting to race and his palms were sweating—like it was happening all over again. Last time he'd felt like this, having Victor by his side had calmed him down a lot.
Where are you Victor? he thought. I need you.
As though summoned, Victor slammed open the sliding doors and launched himself into Yuuri's futon with a cry of "Were you still asleep?" Yuuri's eyes just barely adjusted to the light enough to see that Victor was in swim trunks—and he wasn't alone. Another body slammed into him as his futon groaned dangerously under the weight of three full-grown men.
"Can you make me some coffee?" asked the guy who was not Victor. He took the liberty of snuggling up under Yuuri's blankets and trying to spoon with him, ignoring the fact that Victor's perfectly good empty futon was right there next to them. He felt damp skin against his pajamas.
"You guys are soaked!" he exclaimed, scrambling out from under the covers. "You're getting my bed all wet!"
"We just came from the beach," Victor explained. "We wanted to see if you were ready for lunch."
Yuuri got a look at the other guy for the first time and realized he had met him before—Chris. Christophe Giacometti.
"Just let me get changed," Yuuri said, glancing nervously at Chris because they were basically strangers and he hoped Victor would get the hint that Yuuri didn't want to change in front of a stranger.
Chris leaned back on his elbows. "Could I borrow some robes Victor?" he asked sweetly, batting his eyelashes. "I don't want to have to go all the way back to the ship to get dressed."
"Of course!" Victor tossed Chris a set of silk robes and Chris just shimmied right out of his swim trunks in front of both of them like he'd done it a million times before. Yuuri turned his back on them and changed also, albeit more nervously.
"How do you two know each other?" Yuuri asked them over lunch—which was an extremely crowded affair. Chris was not the only one—Victor had evidently invited a whole slew of his Quidditch friends and conveniently forgotten to tell Yuuri, and Yuuri had to pretend he hadn't ever heard of them even though he'd read all their interviews and seen their matches because they'd all discussed Victor at some point or another. There was Michele Crispino and his sister Sara—violet-eyed Chasers on the Cesena Chizpurfles. Sara took an obviously keen interest in Seung-gil immediately, much to Michele's obvious displeasure, but he needn't have worried because Seung-gil entirely ignored her throughout the entire meal. Emil Nekola from the Czech Republic was there too, and—to Yuuri's great astonishment—a boy he'd never seen before sitting close to Guang Hong who could only be Leo De la Iglesia, judging by how pink Guang Hong's cheeks were.
"Chris is my oldest friend," Victor said. "We've known each other since we were children."
"Did you go to Durmstrang too?" Yuuri asked.
"Me? No!" Chris gasped. "I went to Beauxbatons!"
"Chris graduated two years ago and went on to play for the Quiberon Quafflepunchers," Victor explained.
"I miss school," Chris pouted, resting his chin in his hands as he picked at his yakisoba. "I miss the pillow fights in the dormitories and the gossip and those uniforms..."
Yuuri was pretty sure the lack of gossip and uniforms were going to be his favorite things about leaving Mahoutokoro. Chris looked around wistfully at the student body.
"Ooh," he squealed, pointing over at the Komainu section. "Victor, who is Yuri sitting with?"
Yurio, seated across from Otabek and apparently peacefully enjoying his lunch, glared over at them and gave Chris the middle finger.
"That's the Keeper for the Komainu House Quidditch team," Victor said. "The one I was telling you about. He's going to be on a National Team someday for sure. Seems like he and Yurio have become quite good friends."
Friends, thought Yuuri. Right. That's what we're calling it nowadays.
"That reminds me!" Chris said. "Did I tell you I moved in with Masumi and— "
"You didn't," Victor gaped.
"Yes!" Chris said, eyes sparkling. "A few months ago! We got a cat too—want to see?"
"Did you say you have pictures of cats?" Yurio was at his side instantly. He eyed the photographs with interest. "Yakov wanted me to tell you that we're all having dinner on the ship," he said to Victor, without taking his eyes off of Chris's cat. "You and Katsudon and the rest of his loser team can come too."
Yuuri and Victor spent the rest of the afternoon giving Chris and the others a tour around the island. Yuuri showed them the school, the beach (Victor and Chris had already covered that in the morning, but they went again anyway), the onsen—and that's where they got stuck around twilight. Chris, Emil, Michele, and Sara parked themselves right in the springs and showed no signs of moving.
"What do you say Yuuri, care for a soak?" Victor asked him.
"No thanks," Yuuri found himself saying. "Would...would you like to go watch the sunset down by the beach?"
Yuuri honestly didn't even know where that came from. He usually went along with whatever Victor suggested or holed himself up in his room if he didn't want to do what Victor suggested but this was the night before a game that would define his future, and if it was going to be the beginning of the end, then he would have this hour or so with Victor alone to watch the sun set over the ocean.
When they reached the beach, Yuuri sat facing the tide, but instead of sitting by his side, Victor sat cross-legged in front of him.
"Don't you want to see the sky?" Yuuri said.
"This view is better," Victor told him, smiling and reaching for Yuuri's hand.
They sat quietly, staring at one another until Yuuri gathered the courage to speak.
"What are we?" he asked.
Victor looked down at their joined hands, smoothing his thumb over Yuuri's palm.
"What is it you want me to be to you?"
Yuuri remembered the first time Victor asked that question, back on this same beach in October. It felt like an entire lifetime ago. He hadn't had an answer then, and he felt that the fact that he did now spoke to how far he'd come as a person over the last few months. Like he'd become a fully-grown man without even realizing it.
"Mine," he whispered.
Victor didn't answer immediately, which, in that other lifetime last year, would've been cause for panic. But he knew now, his implicit understanding of what Victor wanted and how their desires twined together was a reassuring weight in his heart.
Victor lifted Yuuri's hand and kissed his ring finger.
"That I can promise you," Victor said softly.
Neither of them said anything for a long time after that.
Dinner on the Durmstrang ship was at sundown, so Yuuri and Victor made their way directly to the ship from the beach. Victor slung an arm casually around Yuuri's shoulders and led him up the ramp, past the deck and then down a winding wooden staircase inside.
It was like no place Yuuri had ever been before. Dark wood paneling covered the walls, ceiling and floor. In the middle of a room stood an intricately carved and polished dining table with matching chairs set around it. Yuuri and Victor were the last ones to arrive—Victor's Quidditch friends, Phichit, Yuuko and Takeshi were already there. Yurio had evidently invited Otabek as well.
A portrait of an extremely severe-looking woman in a tight bun narrowed her eyes at them disapprovingly.
"Is your Headmaster not joining us?" Yuuri asked Yurio. Yurio glared at him and gestured to the portrait with his thumb.
"Wait," said Yuuri, settling into his seat next to Phichit. "Yakov isn't your Headmaster?"
"Yakov?" Victor laughed. "No, no. Yakov is Headmistress Baranovskaya's ex-husband."
"And assistant," the portrait added.
"Right," said Victor.
Yuuri wanted to comment on the fact that that was a really strange arrangement, but he didn't want to get on the bad side of this portrait.
"The one on the ship reports to the real one," Yurio muttered, glancing up at the portrait with great annoyance.
"So," said Chris, surveying them from the other side of Victor and sticking out his lower lip, "you boys look cozy. If I didn't know better I'd think you'd replaced me as your best friend, Victor."
"Actually Yuuri is my boyfriend," Victor announced to the group, squeezing Yuuri around the waist and planting a kiss on his cheek. Apparently they were sharing that information with everyone now. Nice to know.
Even Phichit's clapping and cry of "OH MY GOD CONGRATULATIONS" couldn't drown out Yurio's voice.
"That's disgusting," Yurio replied immediately, crossing his arms over his chest. Otabek raised an eyebrow in his direction and opened his mouth.
"Don't say anything," Yurio added. Otabek closed his mouth, smirked, and shook his head.
"It's hard to believe, huh?" Yuuri said, settling comfortably into the crook of Victor's arm. "If I'd seen Victor at the World Cup last year, I'd have been too scared to even talk to him."
Something very strange happened just then. Victor, who had been taking a long gulp of Butterbeer, spat his drink almost clear across the table. Every one of Victor's friends, including Yurio, stared at Yuuri like he'd just grown another head.
Victor whipped around to face him. "You seriously don't remember?!" he asked Yuuri incredulously.
"Remember what?"
"Last year during the celebration I brought you into the tent because I thought you were cute and you looked like Victor's type, but by the time I found him to introduce you, you were drunk and you had started dancing," Chris breezed. He reached for his wand—was that glitter embedded in the wood? —and summoned a stack of pictures from a jeweled bag hanging on a rack near the staircase.
Yuuri's heart plummeted as the pictures approached because...oh no. His memory of the winner's tent had been arriving, being apprehensive about the idea of meeting Victor and... drinking. He'd woken up in his tent the next morning, assuming he'd gotten a little buzzed and left without speaking to anyone.
"I never go anywhere without them," Chris said with a wink. He presented the stack to Yuuri for perusal.
Yuuri let out a sigh of relief looking at the top picture because...it was just him and Victor twirling, taking turns leading as they danced joyfully around the room. He caught sight of Victor's gramophone as they spun past it. The moves looked familiar though, was—
"Is that the same song that—" he asked Victor.
"Yes," Victor said. He squeezed Yuuri tighter around the waist. "I want to frame this one."
Yuuri couldn't blame him. He tried to memorize the smitten look on Victor's face—a look he'd caught glimpses of over the course of the year. He thumbed through several more of the dancing pictures—they were gorgeous and romantic and—
Uh oh.
"You challenged me to a dance off," Yurio snarled and—yup, there it was. Yuuri appeared to have lost his shirt somewhere between dancing with Victor and dancing with Yurio. To be honest, it was pretty impressive. Plastered, uninhibited Yuuri was not a bad dancer, and he seemed to be holding his own against a sober Yurio, who looked to be getting angrier and angrier as he went. "It was humiliating."
"So that's where you were all evening," Phichit continued, looking over Yuuri's shoulder. "We all thought you went back to the tent and fell asleep after we got separated. You were in bed when we got back."
The pictures got progressively more horrifying as Yuuri worked his way through them. He watched himself losing clothing at an alarming rate until—
The last few pictures were of Yuuri in nothing but his underwear and a necktie doing some kind of midair broomstick striptease. I wasn't wearing a tie when I got there, Yuuri thought. I didn't even bring my broom.
But as he reached the second to last picture, he got a better look at the handle and realized with horror that it was Victor's broom—the Kinya—and Victor's necktie too, by the looks of it. Christophe appeared to have joined him during some portions of the dance in a similar state of undress.
"Lemme see," said Phichit, grabbing the top photo before Yuuri could snatch it away. He gasped. "Yuuri! That's so dirty!" Yuuko grabbed it from him and crammed her hand in her mouth to keep from laughing.
"I want to frame that one too," Victor said. He pointed to the obscenest of the broomstick strip tease photos. God, Yuuri wished he'd been wearing shorts or something because the boxer-briefs he'd had on during the World Cup left nothing to the imagination.
Victor got out his wand and tapped the picture where Yuuri was now gyrating his hips in the direction of the camera. An identical copy appeared on the table next to them and Victor pocketed it before Yuuri could grab it.
"What?" he said. "For if I'm ever away from you at night."
"Disgusting," Yurio commented again.
The last picture made Yuuri wonder if it wouldn't be better to just Obliviate himself on the spot. There was Victor, clearly sober and fully clothed...and there was Yuuri. Mostly naked. Arms thrown around Victor's neck. Humping him—and not even sexily, because even Yuuri could admit that the broomstick striptease was at least sort of sexy, but this was like watching Victor have his leg humped by a dog. Except it wasn't his leg, and Yuuri was very unfortunately human.
They appeared to be talking, or at least Yuuri was. He didn't know what he was saying and he didn't want to. Victor didn't seem to feel the same way about this picture that Yuuri did because he made a copy of this one too.
Yuuri looked up at the table. Chris smiled and batted his eyelashes, chin resting in his hand. Yuuri's teammates were staring at him as though they'd never seen him before. None of Victor's friends appeared alarmed in the slightest—well, they'd all been there and seen it in person... A noise came out of the back of Yuuri's throat that he could probably never have repeated if he'd tried.
He was saved further humiliation by the arrival of the meal—an interesting and very salty combination of foods he had never seen in his life.
"Do you like it?" Victor asked, holding out a bite on his fork for Yuuri to try. Yuuri hummed in approval because it really wasn't bad. Might take some getting used to if he was going to eat it regularly, but not bad.
"I don't think I could go back to eating like this every day," Victor said. "I've been spoiled by Japanese food." Yuuri's heart fluttered. Stay in Japan Victor. I'll make you Japanese food for every meal for the rest of your life.
Thankfully, when the conversation started up again, it moved on to talk of professional Quidditch. Chris was talking about a North American Cup he'd gone to see where he'd gotten a chance to skirmish with a Canadian team-the Montreal Manticores.
"...I was freezing," Chris was saying, "and the other Seeker seemed just fine, I don't know how all of you manage to play in-"
"Which Seeker?" Emil asked. "Is that Jean-Jacques Leroy?"
Yurio made a noise like a cat about to vomit up a hairball.
"You played against JJ?" he asked darkly.
"That was his name!" Chris said, snapping his fingers. "He's very good."
"Not a fan of JJ, Yuri?" Sara asked. "How do you even know him?"
"That guy is a TOOL," Yurio thundered. "My mother knows his stupid girlfriend's parents."
"Actually, they're engaged now," Michele added.
Yurio pulled a horrible face. "Good," he spat. "Hopefully they'll get married and retire to raise their spawn in Canada so I'm not forced to see him again."
Despite Chris's attempt to follow them to their dormitory, Victor managed to extract them from his clutches before bed, insisting Yuuri needed his uninterrupted sleep.
Yuuri wasn't sure what the new protocol for sleeping might be, now that they were officially boyfriends. Victor smiled as he pulled on his pajamas and climbed into bed while Yuuri stood by his futon for a truly absurd amount of time just staring at him.
"You need your rest tonight, Yuuri," Victor told him. Was that a hint of...reluctance in his voice? "Get some sleep."
Yuuri couldn't argue with him. He got into bed and fell asleep with Victor's words swirling around like magic in his mind. That I can promise you...