Hi, everyone! I had a plan to post this tomorrow, but my online AP Enivronmental Science teacher decided to give us a really ridiculous lab today that's due in a week, so I figured I'd work on that tomorrow instead of this, which is why I'm posting this at around 12:45 AM EST (I don't have school tomorrow, don't worry).
This one's a lot of fun and is longer than the past three chapters; I think you'll really enjoy it!
Late January, 2012
It's not a secret or a scandal in the figure skating world that Christophe Giacometti and Victor Nikiforov are good friends. Some people are surprised by it, but it's mostly become an accepted fact of the universe, like how Victor will almost surely win this competition too, whatever said competition may be. It's because of this that the two of them are sometimes asked for joint interviews, as they are today a few days after the European Championship, Victor winning gold and Chris winning silver.
Bundled up tightly for late January in England, Chris and Victor stand on a curb while an interviewer presents them with several cameras and a microphone, arms wrapped casually around each other. The interview setting is supposed to bring forth an air of casualness, but there isn't a person there who isn't shivering and wishing to go inside. They've been talking about figure skating mostly, Chris and Victor both talking about some of their plans for future competitions and making little jabs at and congratulating each other, all friendly and comfortable. An innocent, topical question is asked to Chris—about pre-competition traditions. He answers, "Oh, my sister makes me cookies sometimes. She recently altered her recipe to make them vegan for me."
"Oh, you're a vegan, Mr. Giacometti?"
Victor, without thinking about it, lets his expression slip into a slight frown.
(Dressed in pajamas for the late December weather instead of buck naked, scratching at his stomach in Chris's kitchen, Victor opens up the refrigerator and then grabs rather roughly at the carton of soy milk, lifting it up in the air and squinting at it like he's trying to detect some sort of treachery. He puts the soy milk back, next grabbing a box of butter and lifting it in a similar manner, seeing it also to be vegan. Victor, suddenly suspicious of all the food items in Chris's house, pours himself a glass of orange juice, contented to see that it's the same kind he remembers from his last time here. He sits at the kitchen table, taking tiny sips of his juice and tapping his fingernails against the wood, waiting for Chris to come down.
A few minutes after Victor sits down, Chris comes into the kitchen equally as not-naked, stretching his arms over his head and telling him good morning. Victor glares at him for several seconds for the purpose of being dramatic. "Chris," Victor begins, wrapping both of his hands around his glass, "why don't you have milk?"
"I do," Chris says, not batting an eyelash at Victor's tone as he shuffles through his refrigerator, "it's soy." Victor puts his face in his hands and thinks about knocking his glass over to be spiteful, a gesture imitative of Fifi.
"Why is it soy?"
"Because I'm a vegan, and I like soy milk best."
Victor scrunches his brows together and curls his lip up a bit. He stares at Chris, who has now pulled out all the ingredients he wants to make his breakfast and shut the refrigerator. "Since when?" Victor asks, incredulous. Chris pauses for a moment, thinking.
"About two months ago." Victor continues to stare at him in mounting disbelief. He switches his gaze back forward, taking another sip of his juice.)
"Oh, yes! I've been a vegan for several months now."
"How do you incorporate veganism into an athlete's diet?"
"It's really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be," Chris starts, going into a discussion about the presence of different types of nutrients in all sorts of foods and the benefits of dietary supplements, if the situation calls for it. Victor spaces out a bit, the small, distant frown still on his face.
Victor doesn't remember or realize what, exactly, his face looked like during this particular moment in the joint interview until the next morning when he wakes up to an article linked to him on Twitter with that face as its main picture. "Victor Nikiforov Shows a Surprising Amount of Insensitivity for Fellow Skater Christophe Giacometti", the title reads.
The article outlines the joint interview, making sure to interrupt plain summarization with a photo of Victor's slight frown stretching across the page before going exactly into what the author thinks of it.
"This would be a lovely, informative interview segment," the article reads, "if Nikiforov didn't look like he'd prefer anything over standing next to Giacometti in these moments. Giacometti and Nikiforov have claimed various times in the past few years to be friends, but Nikiforov certainly doesn't seem to respect Giacometti's personal choices judging by his facial expressions."
Victor snorts.
Don't they know that Chris once put his cat on my face to wake me up when I passed out drunk and naked on his floor?
Before Victor has a chance to think of a plan for dealing with the article, he gets a text from Chris.
chris (emojis) [9:34 AM]: /how/ could you disrespect me so? oh, I'll never recover
vic (emojis) [9:35 AM]: it's funny how they think me making a face bc u DIDN'T TELL ME U WENT VEGAN B4 I CAME TO UR HOUSE is something notable w/ us
chris (emojis) [9:35 AM]: true, mr. i don't know how to take a nude. dw. i'll save u ;)
vic (emojis) [9:36 AM]: my hero
Within several hours, the article has been taken down, and Chris has made multiple posts in multiple languages explaining away Victor's frown.
—
Early December, 2012
Chris and Victor are distinctively giggly-buzzed when they're forcibly corralled for a (forgotten) joint interview, cameras, reporters, and microphones slightly crowding them as they lean all over each other, arms splayed around each other and squeezing. The questions are typical—mostly professional, some personal, some bordering on intrusive, some blatantly intrusive. Victor stumbles a little after leaning too far to the side after one question, and he can distantly see disaster on the horizon—a faraway car approaching too quick.
"Shouldn't you be asking us about skating?" Chris, who hasn't once stopped laughing since they were dragged out of the bar, asks after the question of whether or not he wears underwear during his routines arises.
Victor grabs at Chris's ass, whispers in his ear, "I like it when you don't." Chris doubles over with laughter, and Victor keeps his arm around his waist, smiling, very proud of himself. As Chris stands back up again, there's a very bright camera flash and yet more questions, all from people who certainly didn't miss that last moment.
One reporter asks, rather suddenly, "Are you gay?" and another member of the interviewing crew turns to look at them, mouth slightly agape, growing horror on their face.
Chris and Victor look at each other at the same time—in unison—and grin, the same thought coming to their heads at the same time.
"Which one of us?" they ask together, completely dissolving into laughter. To the side, both Chris and Victor's PR teams are hastily trying to cut the interview off and likely forcibly drag their two charges back to their hotel rooms, but they don't manage it before the next question comes.
"Both of you—together," the same person who had started the two PR teams' frenzies says, either oblivious or indifferent to the reactions of the people around them. The other members of the interviewing crew look increasingly horrified, turning to each other and mumbling in fast, panicked tones. Chris and Victor smirk at each other again, and then, Victor moves his arm up from Chris's waist to wrap around his shoulders.
"I don't know, Chris," Victor says, mischievous smile sneaking through as he talks, "are we gay?" He and Chris turn to each other; they grab each other's faces and, without any more preface or preamble, start making out.
There's a flurry of camera flashes and voices, but Chris and Victor ignore it all, lips staying locked even a bit after members of their respective PR teams start calling their names. When they pull away from each other, the managers of their PR teams are staring at the both of them in a mix of irritation and slight shock. Chris's PR manager says, "Do you know what we're gonna have to go through to keep that from circulating?"
Chris laughs. "Let it circulate!" he says. His PR manager rolls his eyes and groans. He firmly wraps an arm around Chris's waist and tugs him along.
"Come on, Chris," he says, "goodbye, Victor."
"Bye, Vic!" Chris calls, blowing a series of loud, smacking kisses at him.
"Bye, Chris!" Victor yells before his own PR manager starts scolding him.
Chris and Victor don't pay much attention to what actions their PR teams undertake to keep the videos and pictures of their make out session from reaching the public, but all evidence of it disappears and doesn't resurface until several years later. (Chris and Victor have been asked before if they were the ones who leaked it—they'll never tell.)
—
2030
Years after these several years later, Victor and Yūri's kids discover the leaked videos, which is almost entirely Victor's fault.
Though, some blame can be placed on Yūri too, even though he doesn't mean to worry his husband when he makes a throwaway comment about the kids discovering the highlight days of Chris N Vic online. He fully intends it to be a joke, but Victor sits straight up in bed, gasping and looking at Yūri in horrified realization.
"They already use the Internet," he says. He turns his head sharply towards their bedroom door, as if in this way he can hear any actions their two children might be taking to dig up information on his life as a wild young twenty-something. "I have to tell them. Before they find out."
"Victor," Yūri starts softly, rubbing at his arm and trying to get him to lie back down, "sweetheart," he trails his fingers lightly down Victor's back; Victor's tension dissipates, just the slightest bit, as it always does at Yūri's touch, "I doubt they'd even find anything unless they specifically went looking for it."
"Yūri, of course they'd go looking up their dad online!"
"The first thing on Google about you is not that you used to make not-entirely-wise decisions while drunk in your early twenties, Victor." Victor huffs a breath out of his nose and lies back down; Yūri cuddles into his side, resting his cheek on his shoulder.
"Give me more credit, Yūri," Victor says, "I wasn't always drunk when I made my questionable decisions." Yūri snorts and pokes him in the side, prompting Victor to start tickling him.
The ensuing tickle fight isn't enough to deter Victor's train of thought, as in the morning, he sits down he and Yūri's ten and nine and a half year olds for breakfast and spends about five minutes very suspiciously fiddling with a bag of bread before the kids comment on it (Yūri snickers into his hand), and he has to say what he wants to say.
"Kids," Victor says, finally putting the bag of bread back in the refrigerator (Yūri's hand is doing very little to conceal his giggles now), "you know how your dad and I used to be professional figure skaters?" They nod. "Well, I just wanted you two to know that, when we were younger, your uncle Chris and I made some not so smart decisions," Victor winces at his wording—Yūri keeps his mouth shut because he's a gracious husband, "and…I wanted to tell you before you run across it online, or something similar." Both children look thoroughly confused.
The younger of the two opens his mouth to speak, and his sister kicks him under the table. He turns to look at her, and they make a series of expressions at each other before they reach some sort of silent sibling consensus and turn back away from each other. Yūri and Victor stare at the both of them. "I don't know what just happened here, and I don't know if I like it," Victor says. His children put on their best expressions of innocence.
It's a few days later when Victor happens to be at the store that Yūri hears a shout and an, "Oh my god!" from the older of his two children's room; she then calls for her six-month-younger brother, yelling that he has to come see this. Yūri, more than just mildly suspicious, comes too.
"Is that Dad?" Yūri hears as he rounds the corner to his daughter's room, and when he sticks his head through the door, the tablet positioned in front of his two children is suddenly, forcefully turned off and thrown across the bed. "Oh, come on, it isn't that bad—even if it is gross," his son says, grabbing the tablet and turning it on again, "and Dad's probably seen it already anyway."
"What are you two watching?" Yūri asks.
"Um. Nothing?" his daughter tries.
"It's just a video of Dad and Uncle Chris making out," Yūri's son says, and while his sister tries to shoot him a glare, she can't help laughing in bursts of short, poorly concealed giggles. For a moment, Yūri doesn't really know what to do.
After a bit of thought, he says, "Well, scooch over," figuring that it really can't do that much harm. The kids break out into bright smiles and laughter.
Scooching over, the kids yell out things like, "Look at how young Dad and Uncle Chris were!" and "This was before you knew them, right?" Yūri answers their questions and responds to their comments to the best of his ability, noting how amused they are with a slight smile.
Victor comes home from the store to find his family sitting on a bed together watching a video of him drunkenly making out with his best friend at 23, all of them judging him together. The way that his daughter is strewn half-on and half-off her bed in unabashed laughter is enough to abate the majority of any of the negative emotions he might feel towards the scene.
WATCH ME SIDESTEP NAMING THE VICTŪRI BABIES
bonus points headcanons: Victor and Yūri adopt their first kid when they're 32 and 28, respectively. She's about 1 to 1 and a half. They adopt their second kid a few years later, and he's about 4 or 5 at the time
also: Christophe Giacometti, a vegan? Me, projecting? never