#but unfortunately it v much does feel like a physical gaping wound in the center of my chest lmao and does in fact ache and shit and

[izzy-b-hands]

I keep starting fics (and have a few short ones finished rn) for my fictober that are s2 inspired but I'm afraid to publish them bc I wanna see what the actual writers did first (along with everything else they're gonna give us in the rest of the eps bc I'm just. excited for everything!!!!)

[droewyn]

Intervention, Part 2

Part 1 here.

Cold.  He was lying on his back.  It was cold and dark and a heavy weight was pinning him to the ground. He tried to groan and wound up with a mouthful of hair, Victor’s favorite styling gel bitter on his tongue. “Vitya?”  No response.  Yuuri forced his eyes open, and found himself staring up into the night sky.  It had been the middle of the afternoon just moments before.  His husband was lying on top of him, unmoving.  “Victor?”

“Tell Yakov I’m dead,” It was a drowsy mumble, and he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  Whatever the hell had just happened, Victor was okay and Yuuri wasn’t alone.

“Victor, you’re crushing my kidneys!”  

He felt Victor’s breath hitch an instant before his head snapped up to look at him.  “Yuuri?”  The word was laced with confusion and worry.

He tried for a reassuring smile.  “I’m fine, love.  Just… get off me?”

Victor blinked, then swore and rolled quickly off of Yuuri.  The two men helped one another to their feet, clinging tightly to each other’s hands for comfort as they looked around them.  

They were in an alley somewhere in a city center, though the buildings were all wrong for it to be St. Petersburg.  Skyscrapers that Yuuri recognized as being in the American “art deco” style stood next to shorter, slightly more modern structures of glass and concrete.  The juxtaposition was oddly familiar.  He found himself staring at one building in particular, a rusty brick and sandstone tower.  Spotlights illuminated the upper floors, which were decorated with a mosaic of patterned tiles, and a flag waved from the spire.  

“Yuuri, I think we’re in the past—” “Victor, I think we’re in Detroit—” The words made no sense, all jumbled together as they talked over one another.  The words made no sense, period.  To go from day to night, halfway around the world, in the span of a kiss?  It wasn’t possible.

Victor was staring at his phone as though he expected it to bite him.  Yuuri peered at it and blinked.  The display didn’t change.  Wordlessly, he reached into his back pocket for his own phone, thumbing the home button automatically to wake it up.

Their lock screens were identical.  Twin images of Victor lifting a radiant Yuuri during their Stammi Vicino gala skate. Status bars showing cell reception (LTE? Downtown?  Was America(?!) really so backwards in updating their infrastructure that their metropolitan areas still had 4G?), battery life, and various app notifications.  Clocks showing 9:37 pm.  Dates?

Friday, January 15.

The year wasn’t displayed, and Yuuri bit down on a laugh that would have been more than slightly hysterical if he’d let it escape.  Why would anyone need to know what year it was, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t like people could just--

“Time skips aren’t real,” he whispered, willing the words to be true.

“What else could this be?” came Victor’s hushed reply.

Time skips were an urban legend -- a joke -- and the only people who took the idea at all seriously hung out in the tinfoil-hat parts of the internet that also believed in chemtrails and people with Rh- blood being descended from alien lizard people.  The History Channel ran programs on time skips, for pity’s sake!  Faux documentaries where people with overactive imaginations talked about being instantly transported through space and time in order to meet up with their past selves and prevent them from making some kind of terrible mistake…

But he and Victor were standing in the heart of downtown Detroit.  The air was chill but not quite freezing and carried the normal city smells of food, car exhaust, and garbage.  The sidewalks were clear, with the ghost of an old snowfall in the corners where people didn’t walk.  A half-moon hung low in the west.  The least romantic moon possible for a night like this, he remembered suddenly, the bitter satisfaction of the thought echoing forward through the years, except it wasn’t a memory because it was this moon and it was happening now and Yuuri felt the blood drain from his face because he knew why he needed to be there.  Yuuri knew.

“Fuck.”  He was moving, sprinting, ignoring Victor’s startled cry.  His love was just going to have to catch up and keep up on his own because it was 2016, it was after Vicchan, it was after Sochi, it was after Nationals, it was after setting Celestino loose, and he needed to get to the river right now and there wasn’t enough time.  His phone was still in his hand, and he breathed a prayer to the gods of wireless technology that the network would recognize the same international carrier and the same phone number and that it wouldn’t notice the oddity of two phones with the same credentials and that Phichit would be there and pick up and—

“Yuuri?” Oh, thank you.  Thank you.

“Yes,” he gasped into the phone.  “No! Sort of.” He couldn’t allow himself to slow down for an instant, and his voice was harsh with exertion.  “He needs you.  Yuuri needs you.  At Hart Plaza.  It’s an emergency.”

“Yuuri’s on a date,” Phichit said slowly.  “He met someone and they’re going out to dinner in Royal Oak.”

“And you believed that horseshit?”

There was a pause, and then Phichit swore explosively in Thai.  “Who is this?” he demanded.

“Just hurry,” Yuuri said. “And bring his skates!” He ended the call and kept running.

                                              ~            ~            ~

 Hart Plaza wasn’t much to look at, particularly lying in the shadow of the Renaissance Center’s gleaming silver towers.  It was a park with no green space, a huge concrete and stone terrace designed for hosting outdoor festivals, and judging by the crumbling or outright missing paver bricks it hadn’t been properly maintained in years.  Yuuri ignored scattered works of abstract art and a truly hideous aluminum fountain, intent on not breaking an ankle on the uneven footing.  A cluster of bronze statues with some unknown historical significance guarded the stairs that led down to the riverwalk. Many of the decorative lampposts lining the water were dark, either through neglect or vandalism, but it still only took a glance to spot the lone figure who was staring into the icy water of the Detroit River from the wrong side of the guardrail.

Yuuri knew exactly what worked to pull himself out of various states of mental crisis; after existing in his own head for a lifetime, how could he not?  A physical stimulus could ground his anxiety and help stave off a panic attack, but once an attack happened he could only bear to be touched in certain very specific ways and needed words to focus on.  On days when he lacked the energy to move or care for himself, it was skin-to-skin contact that kept him from spiraling into something darker. When anxiety and depression started tag-teaming him, only solitude allowed him to weep without shame. Thanks to years of therapy and the love of friends, family, and Victor, Yuuri had an arsenal of tried and true coping mechanisms at his disposable.  

Unfortunately, his plan had pretty much evaporated after get there and the frantic half-mile run hadn’t burned off anywhere near enough adrenaline to allow for rationality, much less empathy.  Five years ago, Katsuki Yuuri had done the unthinkable. The unforgiveable.  He’d given up.  And in doing so, he’d apparently fucked up so badly that the gods, or aliens, or the universe itself had needed to rewrite causality just to fix it.  Now, five years later, five years ago, right this minute, Japan’s Ace was within shouting distance of Japan’s Shame.  And now that he was done being scared, Yuuri was pissed.

Unloading on himself like a teenaged Yuri Plisetsky who had just witnessed someone literally pee in his Cheerios was a perfectly reasonable response, given the circumstances.

“You pathetic little coward.”  Rapid-fire Japanese spilled from Yuuri’s mouth almost unbidden as he stormed over to his younger self, who visibly stiffened at the intrusion.  “Phichit and Celestino care about you, not that they don’t deserve better; how do you think they’ll feel when your stinking corpse gets dredged out of the river?”  The other Yuuri’s head snapped up at the familiar names, and he gaped as he met his own eyes and recognized them.  “And don’t forget Kaasan and Tousan; do you think they’ll be pleased when they’re called to pick up their son’s coffin from the airport?  Especially when it’ll be the first time they’ve seen you since you were seventeen. Maybe Minako-sensei will make a special banner for your homecoming.”  He was spitting the words like the poison they were, forcing them past a lump in his throat that was threatening to choke him.

“Yuuri—”

The stupid, selfish boy in front of him was a watery blur now.  “And it’s not like Mari-nee is already blaming herself for letting Vicchan get out into the street, so what’s another layer of guilt?  And, oh god, Yurio, he’ll probably—”  Yuuri’s voice cracked.

“Yuuri!”  Strong arms wrapped around him from behind, steadying him, and Victor’s breath was warm in his ear.  “Enough, lyubov moy.  This isn’t helping.”

“But he’s – I’m – going to ruin everything,” he wailed.  Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, clearing his vision, and he glared at his younger self.  

The other Yuuri was clutching the guardrail as if it was the only thing keeping him standing upright, shocked eyes darting back and forth between his face and Victor’s.  “Y-you,” he stammered.  “V-vi—”  He closed his mouth with a snap, clearly giving up.  

“Nobody’s ruining anything.” Victor’s embrace was tender, but his voice was artificially cheerful.  Yuuri could tell from the tone that if he turned to look at his husband, he’d be flashing one of his celebrity smiles.  “Yuuri-chan isn’t going to be taking a cold bath tonight,” Victor declared brightly, drawing the name out in emphasis, “because he knows that if he does, you won’t be going in after him.”

The younger Yuuri emitted a strangled squeak, whether from the idea of his idol and future self watching him drown in the Detroit River or from being referred to as ‘Yuuri-chan’ by Victor Nikiforov, it was hard to tell. Yuuri would have felt sorry for him in a different circumstance; he’d heard that edge in Victor’s voice before, though it hadn’t been turned on him in a long time.  This was the Victor who’d so innocently wondered how Yuuri could be eating katsudon all the time when he hadn’t stood on a podium in half a year, and who had called Yuri Plisetsky a mediocre kitten shortly before sending him off to be slapped around by a temple priest.  The man who had sweetly ripped a journalist to weeping shreds when she’d tried to manufacture a scandal by suggesting in an interview that Victor’s continued friendship with Christophe Giacometti might be a sign of marital infidelity.

Knowing that his husband was struggling with his own temper was oddly calming.

“No,” Victor continued as though the other Yuuri’s noise had been a polite request for more information, “I’m afraid that I’ll have to jump into that freezing river if Yuuri-chan does.”  One of his arms changed positions against Yuuri’s shoulder, and he imagined Victor bringing his index finger to his lips in studied contemplation.  “Or, if Yuuri-chan already has so little regard for himself, perhaps he is unmoved by the thought of others risking their lives on his behalf.”

Red bloomed across the younger Yuuri’s cheeks, and he shook his head wildly.  “N-no!” he gasped, “I don’t w-want you putting yourself in danger f-for me.”  He glanced at Yuuri.  “Either of you.”

“Excellent.”  Victor clapped his hands together as though the three men had just decided on a restaurant for dinner together.  “Since we’re agreed that no one will be suffering from hypothermia or contracting any diseases from swimming in disgusting water tonight, now it’s time to come back over here where the people belong, yes?”

The other Yuuri – Yuuri-chan?  Might as well use it if Victor was going to, Yuuri decided – hesitated, his gaze flickering between the two time skippers again.  “Please?”  Yuuri found himself begging.  “I’m – I’m really happy.  You have no idea how much.”

After another long moment, Yuuri-chan finally nodded.  Yuuri and Victor helped him climb over the railing, sharing a sigh of relief once he was safely back on the ground.  Yuuri-chan looked at their joined hands, Victor’s in his right and Yuuri’s in his left, making no move to let go.  “This isn’t a dream, is it?” he asked wonderingly.  “You’re really V-Victor, and,” he turned to Yuuri, “you’re me.”

In answer, Yuuri tugged up the sleeve of his sweater.  There was a blue-gray mark on the underside of his forearm, an artifact of a childhood accident that had left a pencil point lodged permanently in his skin.  “Takeshi used to tease me about this all the time,” he said almost fondly.  “Remember? He called it my blue freckle.”

Yuuri-chan looked at the mark – and burst into tears.  Dropping Victor’s hand, he flung himself at Yuuri, who curled his arms protectively around his younger self and let him cry.  Victor moved close behind him, and Yuuri knew that he was rubbing comforting little circles on the small of Yuuri-chan’s back.  It had been a long time since sudden tears had made Victor panic.  “Shh,” Yuuri whispered into thick black hair.  “It’s okay now.  You’re safe, and I’m safe, and everything’s going to be okay.  I promise.”

“I’m sorry!” Yuuri-chan sobbed into Yuuri’s shoulder.  “I’m s-so, so s-sorry!”

“Phichit incoming,” Victor murmured, and Yuuri could hear the stomping footsteps that took the riverwalk stairs two at a time.  Yuuri-chan stiffened, dreading the encounter.  “Go on, solnyshko,” Victor told him, not unkindly.  “You two need each other.”

He looked like he was being sent to face a firing squad, but allowed himself to be peeled off of Yuuri and pushed toward his best friend and roommate, who dropped the skate bag he’d been carrying and shrieked his name, ignoring the two time skippers entirely. Yuuri-chan broke into a run and the two crashed into each other, Yuuri-chan babbling tearful apologies while Phichit alternated cursing him out in a garbled blend of English and Thai and peppering his face with frantic kisses.

Feeling like he was intruding on a private moment, Yuuri looked away from the two oblivious roommates. Victor had turned toward him at the same moment and they shared a small smile, in tune as always.  His husband opened his arms in invitation, and Yuuri sank gratefully into his embrace.

Victor felt like home.

“Are you all right?”

Yuuri huffed a laugh. “I don’t feel like I’m disappearing from reality, if that’s what you mean,” he said.  “Not that I’d know what that would even feel like.  If you’re asking about my emotional state, let’s go with a point somewhere between ‘nope’ and ‘probably going to be’.  What about you?”

He shrugged.  “Slightly less terrified out of my mind than I was. So what happens next?  Are we done here?”

“Hell if I know.  This night is a total blur for me.  I remember looking down into the water, and then I’m waking up tomorrow with Phichit and it’s almost six o’clock at night.  Phichit missed practice and Celestino was livid. I knew I hadn’t gotten drunk, so I always assumed I’d had some kind of breakdown.”

Victor hummed thoughtfully. “That’s a time skip thing, isn’t it? The people who claimed to have done it always said they didn’t remember being there until they were sent back.”

“Those are weird internet people.  Not exactly sources you can cite on Wikipedia.”

“That includes us now,” Victor pointed out.  “Figure skating legends, soon-to-be world’s greatest coaches, and weird internet people.”

Yuuri sniffed.  “Only if we decide to be, and I’m not planning to jump on Reddit with my life story anytime soon.”  He sighed.  “We’re getting off topic, though.  How do we know that we’ve done what we were sent here to do?”  He glanced over at Yuuri-chan.  The other Yuuri and Phichit were laughing more than crying now, Phichit’s kisses were starting to linger, and Yuuri-chan was starting to kiss back.  He found himself smiling wistfully.

“You miss him.”

“Always.  But I’ll get to see him in a couple weeks when he comes to stay with us.  And anyway, that isn’t my Phichit.  He’s Yurio’s age.”

Victor chuckled.  “I’m not suggesting that you drag him off into the nearest bathroom stall,” he teased.  “But no matter how old he is or isn’t at the moment, he’s still your best friend and you don’t spend nearly enough time together in person.  You’ve been given an opportunity; why not make the most of it? Besides, aren’t you just dying to see the look on his face when he realizes who we are?”

“You make a compelling argument,” Yuuri grinned.  Then he turned thoughtful.  “Actually, it might not be a bad idea to show baby-me how great the future is rather than just telling him.  We don’t seem to be going anywhere at the moment, at any rate.  And I do want to make sure.”

“I like it.  I think we have a plan.  Bet you a thousand yen that Chulanont is too shocked to take a picture?”

“You’re on, sucker.”