#now i have to draw yuuri too | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

oatmealcrisp-freak · 2 months ago

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Obviously it started as any other day, coffee in the morning and yogurt with cut fruit and granola for breakfast and a hot, vanilla scented shower for dessert after. Walking into the living room as he toweled his hair dry, Victor helped himself plentifully to the sight of his husband framed in the dark window, who was watching the tributary waters that flowed beside their apartment as he enjoyed his coffee and woke slowly. Yuuri was a vision with the soft kitchen lights bringing out the rust in his deep black hair, the peach and gold in his skin, draped in one of Victor’s button up shirts that he’d found on the floor.

Victor had never understood the appeal of The Boyfriend Shirt, prior to Yuuri, in fact he’d considered it all a bit tacky whenever his previous lovers made an attempt at it. Perhaps the difference was that those moments had all rang false somehow, or maybe it was a symptom of this love that Victor had never known before now, territorial and protective and burning so hot with affection it sometimes blinded him. Or it could have something to do with the way that Yuuri, half asleep in the mornings and nearly blind without his glasses, would search for a garment to cover himself and invariably find something of Victor’s, smell it, then bundle himself into it as though it made him feel safe. Hell, it could have even been the image of Yuuri in naught but a barely buttoned too-large longsleeve and his black boxer briefs, acres of glorious flesh on display. It was probably all of it. Either way, Victor understood the draw now.

Draping the towel around his shoulders, he sidled up behind his husband and draped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders, nuzzling in and kissing Yuuri’s throat, breathing him in deep. He smelled like clean hair, the coffee he was drinking, and Victor’s favourite cologne. It was a heady combination.

Yuuri leaned back into him in a way that never failed to make Victor’s heart flutter, his hand reaching up to draw arcane patterns on the skin beneath Victor’s ear.

“Today’s the day Nikolai is doing all the shopping with Mila and Georgie, isn’t it?” Victor asked as he watched the waters below too, Yuuri’s memory more reliable than his without question.

“Mhm. So we’re taking Yurio out for lunch after practice. I was thinking the restaurant that Nikolai likes, the one a couple blocks from the rink?”

Yuuri turned around, his sleepy eyes glittering with love and amusement. “We can bribe him with food, for himself and his grandpa. Make sure they eat good.”

Victor laughed. That would do the trick, alright, and given how things had been lately, had more than just the one benefit, too. With Nikolai’s radiation treatment making it hard for him to eat or cook, Yuri had needed to pick up the slack and he’d never quite paid attention in his home ec classes. He didn’t cook poorly enough to make them sick but Victor knew the two were leaning hard on canned soups, boxed meals, and smoothies. It had been stressing Yuuri out, trying to find the balance between honouring Yuri’s pride and providing balanced meals to the both of them.

“Perfect, my sun.” Victor said and kissed Yuuri’s nose.

Yuuri looked pleased. He was getting better at accepting compliments, to Victor’s eternal delight. Yuuri leaned in and they spent a soft moment exchanging gentle, chaste kisses. Then Victor stole his husband’s coffee and Yuuri proceeded to chase him around the apartment to steal it back, which of course meant Makkachin had to join in. Their home was alight with barking and laughter.

Victor couldn’t believe he’d somehow found such peace. It almost felt as though he didn’t deserve it. It didn’t matter, though, if he didn’t deserve it or if he did, Yuuri was with him and married to him and loved him and had vowed to never leave him. To stay close to him always. Thank God for champagne and Vicchan’s tender sweet ghost, who’d certainly leashed them together.

The morning passed in a rush as it always did, nailing down vital elements interspersed with off-ice training to keep up their limberness and strength. Yuuri and Victor had started mashing up ideas together for choreo and costumes. Yuuri was apparently attached to the ideas of feathers and vines this season but Victor, in a stark reversal, was feeling something elegantly simple, maybe even minimalist. Of course without their programs nailed down yet, nothing was set in stone. They didn’t even have their themes decided on yet. But it meant they got to play in a way Victor had never been able to before, his mind and Yakov both deadset on carving perfection out of his every line and motion. It was work, too, but it was also chasing Yuuri around the ice while his husband looked back over his shoulder at Victor, his whisky eyes potent, earthy, and inviting above the flirt of his Mona Lisa smile.

Yuri had much to say about how foolish they were being and maybe Victor was a fool, but he was a fool in love, and he never wanted this ride to end.

“Yurio!” Yuuri called across the ice when their morning slot was coming to an end, waving a hand. Victor and Yuuri had sequestered themselves by the wall to mumble about C-steps and jump combinations, but Yuri seemed to be winding down and that required pouncing before the kid left.

Yuri gave them a grumpy look but seemed to decide to indulge them, much to Victor’s gladness.

“What?” Yuri snapped.

Victor was too excited, he was practically bouncing on his toe picks. “Nik-”

Yuuri’s hand slapped over his mouth, his smile a thing of hospitality beauty. How Yuuri managed that so well in some situations and so poorly in others, like interviews, always baffled Victor. Oh well. One of those cute little idiosyncrasies, he supposed. Lord knew Victor had more than a few. Yuuri had even taken notes, after they moved in together, to make sure he replaced Victor’s creams and scents in the arrangement that gave Victor the most satisfaction, and that wasn’t even getting into his superstitions over touching any medal that wasn’t gold. They’d suck the talent right out of Victor, he was sure of it, and then where would he be?

“We’re going out for lunch,” Yuuri said, voice deliberately light, and glanced Victor’s way.

That vaguely warning look was a good reminder. Oops. Yeah. Victor had sort of been about to spill the beans, hadn’t he? He nearly laughed, successfully chided, and proceeded to bury that soft smooth glove in kisses. How could he not when Yuuri’s hand was right there, after all, so temptingly warm on his lips?

Yuuri’s smile warmed substantially and he looked back at Yuri. He cleared his throat behind his fingers then asked, “We were wondering if you wanted to join us?”

Yuri’s suspicious eyes glanced back and forth between them.

Jumpcut to the restaurant, Yuri already scrolling on his phone with his typical affect of teenage boredom, and Victor remembered the last thing he’d meant to do at the rink right as he finished taking off his coat.

“Ah.” He winced a little bit. Yuuri blinked at him. “I have to-”

Victor tilted his head in the direction of the washrooms, covertly tucked into a little hallway barely visible from their booth. Yuuri’s eyes lit up in understanding.

“If the server comes by before I’m back, will you order for me, love?” Victor asked, more than confident in Yuuri’s ability to both know what he liked and communicate it by now.

Yuuri wouldn’t call himself fluent. He didn’t even consider himself fluent in English and sometimes joked that he wasn’t fluent in Japanese either. Of course that meant not much missed him by these days, at least not in general conversation. What he didn’t know, too, he had a good enough grasp on the written to guess and look up the meaning himself.

Yuuri laughed, a little sound that seemed to shine in his eyes, and nodded. “Of course, Vitya,” He said then tilted his head slightly, eyes widening only a little as he looked up at Victor through his brow, continuing with “Try not to take too long?”

He was sure this feeling was what was meant by the term ‘doki doki’. Well how could Victor say no to those puppy dog eyes? Before he could say anything, though, Yuri broke in.

“Swear to God, if forty minutes go by and I find you measuring your hairline in the fucking mirror again-” Yuri said, cutting himself off, likely to leave the threat up to Victor’s more than competent imagination.

Victor couldn’t help his eyeroll. Kids. Geeze.

“As if I could,” Victor mumbled a couple minutes later as he dried his hands, squinting at his hairline in the mirror. “With Yuuri hiding my favourite tape measure for that kind of thing…”

Admittedly it could trigger some spiraling, sometimes, so Victor allowed it without asking Yuuri where he’d stashed that pretty golden tape. Yuuri loved him and was very attracted to him. Not a single ‘reporter’ had commented on his receding hairline since he’d sued the last (and first) one into the ground, and the world was still of the general consensus that Victor was one of the sexiest men alive. Which was true. But was his hair thinning?

Victor leaned in closer, picking at the strands and trying to distinguish any fine downy hairs that might signal regrowth. Mila had bought him some hair products that were supposed to be good for that on a lark, ones that Victor actually had yet to try before even, and though he’d never tell her in a thousand years that he was using them, well. He was.

“Frailty, thy name is male pattern baldness,” Victor whispered to himself and held his index finger between his eyebrow and the top of his hairline. He squinted. Had it started at that spot last week…? He tilted his head to examine the part of his hair with narrowed eyes. It was nice and full still, right? Then he stopped squinting because he’d read once that could promote wrinkles. Victor sighed and played with his hair for a few more minutes before recalling Yuri’s threat when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

‘Probably telling me I’ve got until the count of ten before he comes in and drags me out,’ Victor snorted to himself with a smile, pulling his phone out with a smile and swiping through the lockscreen.

He read the message, blinked, felt his eyes widen as he read it again. His smile died.

It was indeed from Yuri, but no, it was nothing so affectionate.

‘thers guys with REL GUNS i think were being held hostage CALL THE COPS’

Heart picking up a pace, Victor looked around the bathroom then sprinted for the door, peeking out gingerly and, seeing nobody, snuck out to peer around the modesty wall separating the bathrooms from the rest of the restaurant. His breath shook and he held a hand to his mouth and nose to muffle the sound. There were three men at a minimum and all of them had deadly looking pistols. Yuri had not been lying.

“Oh God,” He whispered and ran back into the bathroom. Did he lock the door? No, if he did that’d just be a tell for sure that someone was in here and if they couldn’t get in they’d probably shoot the place up. Victor looked around as he dialed and spotted a small closet. He promptly ducked inside, grateful for a figure skater's grace and flexibility that meant he didn’t instantly trip over the mop bucket and other cleaning supplies.

The call answered. “One oh-two, what is your emergency.”

“There’s armed men at Restaurant Esli-” Another text from Yuri, whose information Victor quickly relayed. “-and they’ve locked us in, we can’t leave, we need-we need help, oh fuck-” “Just stay calm, sir. Where are you now, are you safe to leave?”

There was an employee exit that the masked men wouldn’t be able to see but Victor shook his head in an instant. “My husband and kid are here, I’m not leaving!”

“Okay, sir, I understand. Just stay calm. Where are you?”

“You mean in the restaurant?” Victor asked, doing his best to keep as quiet as possible. The dark was stifling. He swallowed and looked around. “Uh, a supply closet in the bathroom. Yuri texted me when they came in.”

“Yuri? Is that your husband’s or son’s name?”

Victor blinked once, twice, the question throwing him for a temporary loop until he remembered what he’d just said in his panic. “Uh.” He said. “...Both? It’s a funny coincidence actually, my husband’s name is Yuuri, with a long ‘u’ right because he’s Japanese and-”

“Hold on. W-What’s your name, sir?”

“Victor.”

“...Victor Nikiforov?”

Victor beamed in delight. “Ah, you’ve heard of me! Then you know how imperative it is to send all the police. All of them. Every single one. And it’s Katsuki-Nikiforov, by the way. Just so you’re aware if you somehow weren’t already.”

“ Fuck. Okay, uh. They’re already en route. Have you heard any gunshots?”

“No, not yet, but those guns looked very real,” Victor said, sobering as he bit at his bottom lip, a habit he’d hopelessly imported from Yuuri and hadn’t been able to rid himself of. “They were all wearing masks, too.”

“Could you describe the masks?”

“Yes. Really, really cheap Disney Princess ones.”

Leave it to a criminal to have poor taste.

Another text. Victor pulled his phone away from his ear to check. His heart skipped a beat and he began to shake.

‘they took katsudon i swear victor andreevich niliforv u better be on th line with the cops and not havin ur 100th melt down over ben a soviet era relic or il godam kill u’

Victor quickly texted back a hasty, fingers-trembling affirmative. ‘ On the line w/them now theyre en route ’

“Mr. Nikif- Katsuki -Nikiforov, I need you to stay on the line with me, okay?”

Because his life was just one big joke, that was when the supply closet door opened, leaving Victor to look up into a deformed face that was probably supposed to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. He was a little insulted because that mask was the opposite of beautiful but, granted, it was intimidating. Fear settled over him in a thick blanket as he took in the lumpy plastic flesh, the backlighting turning the eye holes dark and impenetrable and lifeless.

They stared at each other for a second. Victor swallowed back his fear and waved. Maybe if he was cute, pretty, and charming, he wouldn’t get his brains splattered on the oxy-clean behind him.

“Hallo! How are you today?” Victor smiled widely.

The man gestured at his phone. “That the cops?”

Victor looked at his phone, then back at the man. The dispatch person said, “Mr. Katsuki-Nikiforov, what’s happening right now?”

Victor smiled even wider. “No?”

Belle sighed then extended his hand. “Give me the phone.”

“I’d really rather not, what if you look at my private pictures of my beautiful husba-”

The man cocked the gun and levelled it deadset between Victor’s eyes.

“Give it.”

Victor stared, smile dying, scarcely breathing. He gave him the phone. He was waved out of the closet with a gesture of the pistol, and unwrapped himself to step out delicate and slow. It almost felt like courting a wild animal, Victor thought as he took in the slightly shorter man. No sudden moves.

“Hands up by your head,” Belle said, pocketing the phone and moving in behind him. Victor felt something nudge into his back and felt it safe to say that was probably what a gun felt like. “Right where I can see them, okay?”

Victor lifted his hands with a mute nod.

“Not to worry, Vic. We’re already aware of who you and your husband are, and we’ll be taking special care of you.”

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that in the context of a threat,’ Victor thought, opening the door and stepping out of the bathroom with Belle at his back. ‘Kind of impressive given the Madame’s bratva connections.’

The armed men had set up towards the front of the restaurant, one of them seated with what appeared to be a cook kneeling in front of them. Among them was a seated figure with no mask, dark hair clearly visible. Victor’s heart leapt into his throat. Face visible or no, he’d recognize his husband anywhere.

Yuuri turned around slowly, his body stiff with terror, and Victor sucked his gasp in behind his teeth.

Anger. Oh anger. It swept through him at the sight of the blood on Yuuri’s sweet face, sharper and more invigorating than any razorblade, awakening Victor fully. His body trembled minutely, begging for violence, but.

But.

Victor kept himself tightly contained.

‘Not yet,’ He thought. ‘It’s too risky yet.’

Restraining himself became a significantly more difficult matter when the man wearing the Snow White mask grasped Yuuri’s shoulder and leaned in, eyes not once looking away from Victor. It was a garish scene that would live forever in Victor’s nightmares, he was certain.

“Well, well, well,” Snow White almost seemed to laugh. “I thought you said your husband wasn’t here?”

Victor’s heart could burst and he burned with sympathy. ‘Oh Yuuri…’

Were their positions reversed, Victor would have done the same. Yuuri was starkly pale with fear under the blood and the bruising already showing on his forehead, his shoulders rising and falling with his hummingbird wing breathing.

“I,” Yuuri spoke in a rough voice, trembling hand rising to his mouth. He looked at Victor. Somehow he seemed to grow confused, oh so slightly, beneath the fear, just a fine shift in the nuance of his face. Shit. Shit, was the head wound-? “I. I thought he wasn’t. I. Wha-Victor, what are you doing here, weren’t you going to help Yakov while I met with Mr. Orlov?”

‘Oh brava my darling,’ Victor glanced rapidly around, taking in the men holding them hostage. They were skeptical, perhaps, but this was a rare situation where digging the hole deeper might actually be a good thing.

He was shoved, and stumbled forward another couple of steps. Still, he didn’t hesitate to pick up the thread.

“And leave you to figure out-” Yuuri mouthed ‘denki’ through his fingers. Denki. Japanese. Light. Electricity. Didn’t make sense in this context. With different characters it could mean, “-our biography all on your lonesome? Why Yuuri, I could never!”

He knew Yuuri more than well enough to count the relief that lowered Yuuri’s shoulders by a fraction. Success thrilled through him. Victor knew he’d nailed it and continued. “Knowing you, you’d completely under represent your achievements and spend the whole time glamourizing me. I knew I’d have to surprise you, though, I…”

Victor took a slower, more thorough look around at the men who were holding the restaurant captive. There were four men he could see, three guns in clear sight, all held with the casual air that signified they probably knew how to use them. The only one who didn’t have one out and about was the man in the Ariel mask, slumped in a chair and groaning softly with pain as a cook did his best to patch up what looked like some sort of stomach wound. Victor turned to look at where they’d been sitting. He didn’t see Yuri at all, something that could either be very good or very bad, though there was a different man sitting at the table now. The Mr. Orlov in question maybe?

“I can’t say I expected this.” Victor finished in a soft, grim tone.

Yuuri swallowed, knuckles braced tightly to his lips, and looked toward the ground.

“In fairness, neither did we.” Cinderella said. “Hey. You. You done yet?”

The cook who was fixing up the wounded man looked up. “I’ve done what I can but I’m no doctor.”

It did make sense that they would come here with an injured man, Victor realized. There was a bank only a few buildings down in fact, they’d probably come from there in search of a first aid kit which any half decent restaurant should have on hand. Given how close that bank was, should that hypothetical be the truth, the police were probably already stationed outside. Victor looked out the windows but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t even hear sirens yet. Then again, if they’d been in clear sight, it might have spooked the gunmen into opening fire and who knew what would happen then. Victor could admit that personally and privately he wasn’t the biggest fan of cops but what the hell else could you do in a situation like this?

‘Hope for the best,’ Victor looked back at Yuuri who looked back at him. ‘I guess.’

“Right. And fat chance there’s one in here.”

Cinderella looked around then at Snow White. “What do you think?”

Snow White shrugged. “I think we’ve got a two for one special on the VIP section and it’d be a waste if we didn’t use it.”

Cinderella nodded, then in a second he lifted his gun and fired.

Pain. Oh, indescribable agony. Victor couldn’t contain his cry as it carried him to the ground, grasping frantically at his shoulder as he heaved and sobbed for air. Yuuri screamed his name. There was a clatter of furniture. It hurt. Fuck, it hurt so much oh God-

He’d been shot, Victor’s eyes opened onto the ground, rapidly staining with his blood. Those fuckers had shot him.

‘Not a fan,’ Victor clenched his teeth and released a stuttering groan as he tried to curl his fingers and they only flared with fire. ‘Not even a little bit.’

He better not lose this arm or he swore-

The other diners were shrieking, and so was one of the hostage takers, but the whole cacophony was buried under Yuuri’s voice, Yuuri who yelled a guttural echoing sound twisted between frustration and fright. Victor forced himself to look up. His heart must have stopped.

Snow White had his husband in a hold that Yuuri had very nearly broken free of, but in his other hand was his gun, and the mouth of the pistol was bouncing in their struggling beside Yuuri’s neck and head. Victor clawed at the carpet, the pain going backseat as clarity stole his vision, turned it sharp, turned it slow. Nightmare scenarios raced through his head. What if the gun went off? What if Yuuri broke free and they shot him in the back, killing him instantly just because he’d tried to help Victor? Yuuri’s entire world had narrowed down onto him, Victor knew, he probably hadn’t even realized -

“Yuuri, stop, I’m fine!” Victor said through gritted teeth then tried to smile. “It’s okay, my love, my life, stop. Just stop.”

Yuuri’s lips trembled around his teeth. Victor’s heart broke at the sight. Yuuri jerked again in Snow White’s grip. “Vitya-”

“STOP,” Victor managed to very nearly yell with all the authority he could muster.

Yuuri stopped, fingers spasmodically gripping the arm around his middle, and was promptly drawn in firm to Snow White’s chest. To Victor’s relief, Yuuri even allowed it. It was a little interesting to see the intelligence begin to shine back to life through Yuuri’s eyes, parting the dewy curtains of his bloody minded panic.

Now, Yuuri’s jaw only firmed despite the tears on his face, his eyes rapt on Victor, his fingers tightening on the arm around his waist.

Cinderella walked the short distance between Victor and himself and kicked him over onto his back with his foot, tilting his head down as he stood over him. Victor grimaced tight as the motion sent the fire of pain even higher somehow. Oh that had not been pleasant. Cinderella laughed. “Nah, I wouldn’t call you ‘fine’, but the Kremlin isn’t going to want to lose Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov. They’ll even suck our dicks now that we have you in an emergency state if it means saving you, I’m sure. You called the cops, right?”

Victor, breath hissing between the clench of his teeth and his hand clutching at his shoulder, nodded. Belle stepped forward and held out Victor’s cell phone.

“I didn’t end the call. They’ve been able to hear everything.”

“Good thinking. Give it.”

Cinderella walked off as he got to chatting with the dispatcher, chatting as though this was just any ol’phone call. There were the requisite threats, the bla bla bla. He was very firm about getting only one paramedic in here, presumably to tend to Ariel first and then Victor, if Victor was lucky. Then Cinderella started to flirt in very nearly the same breath he’d threatened Victor’s and Yuuri’s lives with. These assholes were rude as hell, Victor decided, and he did not like them at all. Not one bit. Oh the world for a gun of his own, right now.

Victor gave his eyes back to his husband. There was a look in Yuuri’s face that caught his attention, that made his instincts sit up and take notice. Gone were the tears, gone was the fright. What lay beneath Yuuri’s skin now was rage tempered into a fine blade of consideration. Snow White, vision unfortunately limited by his mask and position, was oblivious to this.

“That’s a good boy,” The man crooned, petting Yuuri’s face with the muzzle of the gun. Victor clenched his teeth all the tighter to bite back his growl, instead doing his best to glare Snow White to death. “Nice and soft, easy does it. You don’t want to make this worse for him, do you? I don’t think he’d like getting to see your head get blown off.”

If Yuuri died here, Victor thought as he breathed heavily through his nose, he swore to himself, promised himself, that not a single one of these assholes would make it out alive. If they somehow managed, if Victor failed, he would live, and he would track them down one by one, and he would kill them brutally and painfully and fuck the consequences.

Yuuri’s eyes hooded as he peered down, meanwhile. He seemed to take in the position of their feet, evidently electing to ignore Snow White’s creepy ass warning.

Victor’s heartbeat stuttered when Yuuri looked back to him. He shook his head and shifted to start scrambling up, managing to move somehow onto his side.

“Yuuri, don’t!”

Snow White’s gun was instantly pointed at Victor’s head. “YOU shut the fu-”

Yuuri wasted no time. He always had been a bit of an opportunist, Victor thought as his jaw dropped.

Snow White howled as Yuuri brought what must have been all his strength down onto his foot with a mighty stomp, instantly dropping everything to reach for it. Victor watched in shock as Yuuri promptly ducked down, grabbed on, and heaved with a throaty growl, sending the larger body flying. Victor blinked. He could see one of the other diner’s jaw drop, which was fair, actually.

‘Well,’ Victor thought numbly. ‘He can bench press nearly double. Uh. Me. So.’

It was good training for lifts, even if Victor’s greater height could make Yuuri lifting him a little ungainly looking. It’d never stopped him, though. There was still a big difference between throwing a prepared partner into an elegant aerial spin, however, and hucking a guy across a room.

Victor didn’t have time to puzzle that out, though. In a blink Yuuri had dropped completely to the floor, sweeping up the chair he’d been sitting in and delivering it into Belle’s face. The crack of skull and breaking wood was legendary. A couple people actually cheered. What? The hell. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t trained. But it was brutally effective.

‘Oh my God, I gotta suck his dick so bad,’ Victor stared with not a little bit of gobsmacked arousal. It dropped out of him when he heard a blue streak go up from behind them, though. Yuuri was booking it for the gun. Cinderella was booking it for Yuuri. Victor choked on his breath and pain, shoving himself onto his knees as Cinderella fired. It scored Yuuri’s hip. His formerly white sweater was a ruin now, the collar stretched and stained, the side torn and rapidly dyeing red. Yuuri didn’t even seem to notice, snapping up the gun and pivoting on his toe. He had two guns now. They were both aimed at Cinderella.

‘The adrenaline,’ Victor thought numbly, eyes wide on his husband. ‘Probably.’

Panting, his glasses slipping down his nose and his tongue peeking out to catch a flash of blood, Yuuri circled slowly, his steps prowling to the right and outside of Belle’s reach with a danseur’s grace. Wow.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier than this in my entire goddamn life,’ Victor thought with a gulp. It almost distracted from the agony of the bullet wound in his shoulder and the feeling that he might pass out any second. Yuuri glanced down at Victor, blinked, raised an eyebrow a little bit then returned his attention to Cinderella. Victor got the feeling he’d be hearing about whatever face he was making right now later but not even God could blame him for his feelings at present.

For a moment, it was quiet.

“I thought you, like, danced. Ballet and figure skating and shit,” Cinderella said, then, Victor’s phone still at his ear, tone a little breathless.

It was a fair statement of confusion in any other tone of voice. As it was, right now probably wasn’t the time to get possessive given Victor had been shot in the shoulder, a fact his body was taking explicit pains to remind him of. It was debatable if he could actually do much about it either.

He still let himself glare. That was HIS husband.

‘I wonder which one of them busted his head open,’ Victor thought, debating if he should try to stand up and kick a guy when he was down. He glanced over at the groaning pile that was Snow White, laying in the ruins of a table, then over at Belle, picking himself up slowly onto his arm and knees and examining his head with a shaking hand.

Yuuri had to take a second to translate, if Victor recognized that expression correctly. He huffed, eyes intent on Cinderella and said, “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Cinderella laughed. It was, admittedly, slightly nervous. “Do you even know how to use tho-”

The answer was no. Or it should have been no. That didn’t stop Yuuri from turning as Belle grabbed at his foot and shooting a hole through Belle’s leg, prompting a scream and cutting Cinderella off.

Yuuri actually looked a little surprised but he turned and shot at Snow White too. Another howl said he had not missed. Victor blinked. Yuuri pointed both guns back at Cinderella and seemed to briefly check the side of the gun he’d actually fired, then tilting the one he hadn’t to confirm something.

‘The safety,’ Victor understood immediately. No, if these assholes had come straight from the bank it made sense these guns would be primed and ready to go.

Yuuri looked back at Cinderella, his eyes even rounder than their usual doe eyed look and ever so slightly feral.

“You’re gonna need more than one paramedic,” Yuuri said, then dropped the sights and fired at Cinderella’s feet, dropping the man with yet another cry of pain.

Yuuri stared for one second, two, as a woman lunged onto Cinderella and ripped away his gun, then he turned to Victor and the half-feral rage was gone, replaced with a heart wrenching softness that was much more familiar. Victor breathed a sigh and dropped back down onto his back. Was it all over now? Thank God.

“Vitya,” Yuuri gasped, rushing over and dropping the guns onto a nearby chair, whisking off a tablecloth and dropping to his knees. “Vitya, my Vitenka,” Victor started with a sharp gasp as Yuuri applied pressure to his shoulder. He was doing what he should be. Didn’t stop it from hurting like a bitch, though. “You’re gonna be okay, you have to be okay-”

Victor opened his eyes and even through the pain, the fear, through all of it, he couldn’t help his smile. With the round dome of the ceiling light over his head, his face painted in soft hues and stark red and the browns of his big eyes acute, Yuuri looked like a little angel. A bloodied and battered one, but an angel nonetheless.

“Stay with me,” Yuuri begged, “Please!”

“I’ll be okay,” Victor breathed, reaching up before he could even think about stopping himself and cupping one of Yuuri’s cheeks. Yuuri’s eyes shut as he leaned into it, nuzzling in desperately with a shivering breath that was nearly a sob.

He couldn’t have seen it coming, therefore. Honestly, neither did Victor, his whole focus enraptured by his husband who was there one second then ripped away the next, replaced, it seemed, by the man in the Ariel mask who was lowering his foot. Because he’d kicked Yuuri in the head.

Oh God he’d kicked Yuuri in the head-

“Yuuri!” Victor cried out, clutching at the table cloth with one hand and desperately wrenching himself to his knees on the other no matter the pain. Yuuri whispered a soft groan, pushing himself up but then Ariel was on him, evading Victor’s snatching grasp, an arm around Yuuri’s throat and scrambling them backwards and onto their feet.

“Nobody move,” Ariel sounded crazed as he jerked his own sidearm to and fro, a wild light in his eyes as he squeezed tighter. Yuuri’s face was tomato red as he clawed but the kick had seemed to take it out of him. His struggles were weak, and weakening all the more with each second. Victor managed to pry himself to his feet and take a step forward, lifting a supplicating hand. He was crying, he realized. He wasn’t usually given to tears but he was crying. Fuck. Oh fuck.

“Okay, okay, just calm down,” Victor heard himself babble, his eyes locked on Yuuri’s face. He was greying out. Ariel jerked another couple steps back, his arm apparently loosening enough for Yuuri to get a breath because he sucked one in with a wheeze, wet lashes fluttering.

Ariel pushed the gun under Yuuri’s chin and Victor stopped. God damnit, where the FUCK were the police!?

“I said nobody move,” Ariel screeched. “Or I’ll blow his head clean off I swear to God, come at me if you want but if you do that’s what’s gonna happen!”

Those frightening colours were fading from Yuuri’s skin at least, Victor noted in gaunt relief, his eyes opening slowly as he panted in thin desperate breaths.

“Okay,” Victor repeated himself, blinking through a wave of dizziness and patting at the air as though it could reach Ariel’s shoulder. “Okay.”

Yuuri’s faculties seemed to be returning to him if the way his eyes were glancing around was any indication. With his glasses knocked off his face, he wouldn’t be able to see much but Victor knew his husband. He was almost certain he could follow Yuuri’s thoughts just by the way his eyes moved. He had to stall for time. Victor licked his lips and continued.

“Nobody is gonna move. Let’s all just stay calm here, nobody else needs to get hurt. Look,” Victor said, eyes snapping between Yuuri’s face and Ariel’s godawful mask. “You’re hurt, right? That cook patched you up but you need proper medical attention-”

“Go fuck yourself!” Ariel shrieked, jerking about and Victor restrained a whimper as Yuuri let out a very peculiar gurgle, his brows crinkling upward in pain. “You don’t know shit about what I need you pompous-ass fuck. YOU! Waitress, get your ass up and unlock the doors!”

Victor watched as the pair stumbled back, his head beginning to spin, his fear sharper than anything he’d ever felt before. He watched as Yuuri’s eyes flitted in the direction of their booth. Victor’s eyes automatically followed, finding Yuri’s head poking out from the corner of the tablecloth and almost dropping a shivering breath of relief. There seemed to be a woman with him too, with thick curly hair. Victor’s eyes flicked up to take in the man sitting in Yuri’s spot. His jaw was tight with tension and his hands were clenched so hard they were trembling. Orlov’s family was under there too, then?

‘Oh good job, my Yuuri,’ Victor thought to himself as he realized what must have happened. His man, for all his tears and trembling, had been on the ball from the word go. He looked back at Yuuri, fierce pride singing through him. ‘And you think you’re incompetent. Wrong as hell about that aren’t you, my love?’

What the hell did Victor do, though? How did he help this? His husband was beaten to hell with a gun pressed to his head and an arm wrapped around his tiny throat. Yuri, secreted away beneath a table, was forced to listen and do nothing in a way so very against his nature. Victor himself, shot, his knees beginning to weaken and his head growing dimmer by the second. He had no idea. Victor considered himself to be very intelligent but he just. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what to do.

Fortunately or unfortunately Yuuri, Viktor realized, was getting a very familiar look on his face. It was the look that said he was debating pulling a stunt he knew was potentially very, very stupid, but could also rocket his score into the stratosphere and or flatter Victor very, very much. The last time he’d worn that expression he’d twisted his ankle so hard the doctors had been worried about his ligaments. The time before that, it’d netted him a perfect GOE score and he’d shattered an Olympic world record.

‘I can’t take anymore of this,’ Victor whimpered mentally, dropping to his knees as they went out from underneath him.

Funnily enough, Yuuri’s did the exact same thing.

Deadweight, Victor belatedly understood. It was a noun, meaning “the unrelieved weight of an inert mass”. In long and in this context, it meant that a person was no longer supporting their own weight, making them significantly harder to heft about. He’d heard of cops getting back injuries because they tried to keep holding up protestors who went limp on them like this and, generally speaking in those circumstances, those were healthy and intact men and women.

Ariel was neither healthy nor was he fully intact. He dropped under Yuuri’s weight like a rock.

From there it all got rather confusing. There was a struggle for Ariel’s gun, people joining Yuuri in a dog pile, a mass of seething bodies in heaving motion. Victor, knowing he’d be rather useless and likewise kind of struggling not to pass out, watched and panted and tried to make sense of it all. Everything was getting so blurry. So dim.

He blinked as Yuri dropped down beside him then yowled as the blond shoved him down to the floor, cussing him out, his hands crossing over the bunched up table cloth to take over for Yuuri even as he called Victor about thirty words that at the end of the day all meant ‘idiot’. Okay. That’d woken him up a little bit. Ouch.

“Aren’t you…” Victor breathed, admittedly grateful, but concerned. “Supposed to be under the table?”

“Shut your fucking trap you miserable old man or I swear to God I’ll rip this hole they put in you wide open,” Yuri hissed through his chattering teeth.

His eyes were dry, Victor noted, but everything in Yuri’s entire body vibrated with his fear. Victor reached up and clasped the kid’s hands. Yuri, notably, did not shake him off or tell him to go eat a dick. Instead he was watching the fight with intensity, whispering under his breath then hissing and ducking in a nod.

“He’s fucking got it, that insane basta-” Then Yuri’s eyes popped open. “YUURI!”

Victor didn’t actually get to see what happened next. When next he opened his eyes he was looking at a white ceiling, and there was an irritating beeping noise. Victor blinked once, twice. Yakov leaned into view.

“Good to see you awake, Vitya.”

Victor stared for a moment, trying to piece together what was going on through a brain that was even more sluggish than usual, all greyness and fuzzy thick cotton. He almost felt like he’d been sedated. He turned his head and that drew into sight an IV stand and a bevy of hospital equipment. Aha, he thought in victory, he knew it, he had been sedated.

There was something, though, or rather some one who was most certainly missing. If Victor was here then-

“Where’s Yuuri?” Victor asked, still trying to remember why he was, apparently, in a hospital.

“Quite likely sleeping by now. It’s just after eight in the morning and I made him stay up most of the night. He ended up with a rather nasty concussion in all that nonsense, easier to ask him questions to check his memory that way.”

A concussion, Victor thought in alarm, and promptly found his body rather to heavy to jerk up to grab Yakov and ask him what the hell he meant by that.

“What the hell do you mean by that?!” He squawked only verbally instead. “Is he okay? What happened?! Wh-”

“Vitya, Vitya. Settle. Tch, of course you’d forget. Well, the nurses did say you might be even more addled than usual when you woke up. You were taken hostage, Vitya,” Yakov said without levity, his dark blue eyes serious as he adjusted Victor’s blankets. “You and an entire restaurant full of people, which included both our Yuri’s.”

For a moment Victor stared at the man without comprehension, albeit with no small amount of affection. Then it started to come back to him.

“You didn’t leave him alone, did you?” Victor breathed.

Yakov grimaced. “No. Yurochka and your Christophe are with him. I think that Chulanont boy is trying to get a flight out this way as well. Leaving Yusha alone right now would be very stupid, considering.”

There was a gravity in Yakov’s tone that Victor didn’t like the sound of, something that sounded even too grim for the context.

“Yakov,” Victor whispered, filling with dread. “What do you mean?”

Yakov eyed him for a moment then sighed and took off his hat to scrub a hand over the balding top of his head. It was a familiar gesture, one that spoke of significant stress. Victor’s dread mounted.

“Yusha very well may have killed a man yesterday.”

Victor felt his jaw drop and he stared for one breathless moment before whispering, “What?”

Yakov nodded, settling his hat in his lap and wiping at the top as if to get rid of some fuzz. “One of those Disney idiots got his head blown off while he was struggling with Yusha over a gun. Nobody seems to have seen who pulled the trigger but.” Yakov shrugged, concerned for Yuuri but otherwise quite ambivalent apparently. “He’s quite dead.”

Victor stared, hearing distantly as the heart monitor’s beeping sped up. Yakov pulled out his phone, knocking him back to reality.

“Call him. Please. Right now.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Yakov snorted. “Foolish boy.”

Yuuri was different, after that. Quieter. By a lot. He barely spoke, as a matter of fact, when he visited. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t there, in his head, he was, and Victor could pry a few words out of him occasionally, he was just. Busy, internally speaking.

Victor didn’t resent it. He refused to. Yuuri could be given to pettiness and spite and theatrics but he was, above all, a gentle man who hated to so much as inconvenience someone and became desolate if he thought he’d hurt anyone. He refused to even kill spiders, day or night. Killing a man …

Suffice it to say, Yuuri had a lot of things to process emotionally, mentally. Victor didn’t begrudge his husband this. He was a more than accomplished enough speaker to carry on a conversation for two. Not to mention, though Yuuri had given way to a heavy, thick silence, he was there. He was present. He held Victor’s hand and he kissed him and fell asleep at his bedside, and then eventually in his bed too once Victor had successfully cajoled him onto it and bribed the nurses to allow it.

All the while, Victor, too, thought. He’d watch Yuuri’s sleeping face, for if the dark circles under his eyes were an effective tattletale he really wasn’t doing much of it, card his fingers through Yuuri’s hair, and think.

What if Yuuri had meant to kill that man?

His name was Dmitri Sokolov, the police said. He was the man in the Belle mask. Apparently he’d tried to come to Ariel’s defence, or get revenge on Yuuri, or something, because shortly after Victor passed out they said Belle assaulted Yuuri again and. Well. Hadn’t lived to see the end of it. The police asked him if it was possible, in his opinion, whether Yuuri had done that on purpose. Victor scoffed and said of course it wasn’t.

Inside his own mind, he didn’t believe that.

Yuuri was a gentle man. A sweet man. A sometimes sassy and mischievous man. When he got angry he did it in short bursts that wound the wick down quick - quicker, the louder Yuuri’s voice got, as though raising his it scared him and knocked the anger right out of him. He was petty. He was passive aggressive. He was incredibly persnickety about the ‘right way to clean’. He didn’t trust easily.

He didn’t trust easily because when he loved, he loved with his whole heart, with his whole body, and his heart was too glasslike to withstand the arrows of a person he’d given it to. He loved deeply. Passionately.

Furiously.

Sweeping Yuuri’s hair away from his brow, Victor gazed down into his sleeping husband’s face, idly counting Yuuri’s sooty black lashes, the very faint freckles on his cheek. It wasn’t hard at all to recall what had happened at the restaurant that day, now. In fact, Victor remembered it all vividly. He remembered especially Yuuri.

“Do you think he did it on purpose?” Yuri asked, curled up beside them on a chair as he screwed around with his Switch - the birthday present from Yuuri. Victor had gotten him a bunch of games and accessories, or rather Yuuri had, and then gave them all to Victor and told him to gift them to Yuri for his birthday, because Victor was bad at remembering things like that. Important dates always just seemed to sneak up on him.

“Did what on purpose?” Victor asked, playing dumb.

“Killed that guy.”

‘Yes,’ Victor’s instincts said. Yes he had, because Yuuri was a man who loved deeply and who would go to the edges of the world in the name of that love, or destroy himself under the weight of it. He almost had, once. Victor still couldn’t believe Yuuri had completely forgotten that fucking banquet. It spoke a lot of compliments to the strength of Yuuri’s liver, however.

“That expert guy our legal team found said it was pretty unlikely, I think. The way they were going at it, Sokolov probably shot himself completely by accident,” Was what Victor said instead.

“Hm.”

Victor lifted his eyes to find Yuri’s green gaze watching him closely.

Victor blinked. “You have a zit,” He tapped his chin. “Right there.”

“Oh FUCK OFF you bag of dicks!” Yuri bristled.

If Victor had been in Yuuri’s place, he would have killed Sokolov too, no ifs, ands, or buts. He couldn’t imagine selling his husband out for protecting his loved ones. For protecting Victor.

The idea of it, honestly, the memory of it, the thought that Yuuri had murdered a man out of love for Victor, for Yuri, it settled into Victor in something akin to a glow - soft, sweet, growing slowly and spreading through his limbs with a relaxation he thought he should maybe be alarmed by, morally speaking, but it mostly just made Victor feel safe. Safe, and loved.

Tracing the soft downy hairs on the pink of Yuuri’s cheekbone, Victor took in his husband and wondered if he should tell Yuuri this but.

No. Not yet. It’d be best if Yuuri came to him first.

He didn’t want a repeat of the Cup of China, where he’d reduced Yuuri to jaw-trembling tears. That’d been bad then, but in the context of this the idea was almost reprehensible. Above all else, Victor decided, Yuuri needed time. Time to process. To reflect. To get his thoughts in order.

Yuuri was still here. Yuuri had stayed. Yuuri, Victor thought as he ducked down to kiss the man’s forehead, would tell him eventually. Victor only need wait. Patience had never been his forte but for Yuuri he would do his best to learn.

The door opened and Chris walked in, arm strapped liberally with bags. He opened his mouth to say something, saw Yuuri asleep in Victor’s bed, then smiled and shut the door behind him.

“Behold your God for I’ve brought,” Chris declared, lifting the bag. “A plethora of bath products to replace what is no doubt cheap trash.”

Victor would have opened his arm in delight but his good arm was holding Yuuri and his bad arm had been shot, so. “Ah, bless you my darling! I think Yuuri tried but got overwhelmed.”

Yuri snorted. “No shit. All that anti-aging BS you own could stock an entire Sephora.”

Victor blinked, paused, then turned to Yuri with a frown. “How dare you.”

He gave his attention back to Chris who was dropping into a chair in a beautiful mess of long, graceful limbs. “Can you believe every time I need to take a shower they need to come and unhook me just so I can take my shirt off? It’s ridiculous, I don’t see why they can’t just figure out some other method of delivery that’s not so inconvenient. Magic or something maybe.”

Chris blinked then looked at Yuri. “Is he high?”

Yuri snorted, attention fully back on whatever game he was playing. “Like he needs drugs to be an idiot.”

“Don’t make me tell Yuuri you’re bullying me!” Victor huffed.

Given Yuuri had shot three, maybe four people to protect Victor (well okay and possibly a few other people but MOSTLY Victor), Yuri did not look nearly as frightened or intimidated as he reasonably should of that threat in Victor’s opinion. He would have said something to that effect had Yuuri not whispered a soft sigh in his sleep and shifted to tuck his face deeper into Victor’s throat, breathing in, humming, and relaxing. Heart melting, Victor looked at the light of his life and smiled.

‘Please,’ Victor took up his husband’s hand and gave his ring finger a soft kiss. ‘Share your burden with me soon, my love.’ Were he could only take it from Yuuri, would if he could only trade their places, but he couldn’t do that any more than he could imagine wanting Yuuri shot and gasping in pain on the floor.

“I’ll be here when you’re ready, my sweetest light,” Victor whispered, tangling their fingers and tugging Yuuri’s slumbering form closer, luxuriating in the soft wash of the man’s breath on the skin of his throat. “But please come to me soon.”

“Dude, he’s literally right there you sappy old dumba-”

“Yurio, shush.”

“My name’s NOT YURIO.”

“Aw mon petit, you’ll let Yuuri call you Yurio but not moi? Ach, I see how it is.”

“GO DIE, GIACABASTARD.”

“If you wake Yuuri up I will call the nurse and have you both thrown out, fair warning.”

They settled down after that.

‘I still can’t believe,’ Victor thought as he tweaked the covers higher onto Yuuri’s shoulder. ‘How in love with you I am.’

There was nothing he could conceive of that could change that.

i figure ill post this on tumblr too cus whyyyyyyy not. Stay! That yuri on ice podium-family-is-taken-hostage fic where yuuri kicks ass and kills a guy cus his husband got shot while his skate-son hides under a table and wishes he could kill people too

“Yurio!” Yuuri was pleased when the irritable teenager’s head whipped up, the familiar scowl darkening even more as Yuuri waved. “What?” Yuri snapped but skated closer. “Nik-” Yuuri slipped a hand over Victor’s mouth and smiled. “We’re going out for lunch,” He said, flicking a glance at his husband.

Victor was blinking at him in mild surprise but affection warmed his gaze soon enough and he pulled Yuuri’s hand from his mouth, burying Yuuri’s glove in kisses instead. Yuuri couldn’t help his no doubt foolish grin but cleared his throat and got back on track. This was important. Nikolai needed time to get everything together for Yuri’s birthday which was next week and had asked them to keep his grandson distracted. If they didn’t Yuri would demand in his irascible way to help, and, well, nothing would be a surprise after that.

Nikolai had been declared cancer free just five days ago and though the treatment had left him somewhat delicate, and Yuri a cacophonic whirlwind of a protective and overbearing grandson, it had also left him ecstatic to see another of Yuri’s birthdays. He wanted to make this a special one. He, and all of them, were of the opinion that Yuri deserved it.

That kid had been working so hard lately between his school, his training, picking up the slack in cleaning house and getting food on the table and groceries from the store. Yuuri had needed to sit him down just the other day to trim the split ends out of his hair because Yuri was taking care of himself less and it showed. Yuuri understood it. He did. Sometimes the self had to slide in situations like that, go on the back burner, because other things got more important. Plus side, Yuri had eventually hired a house keeper to come in once a week. Downside, there was still plenty of daily maintenance that required doing and Yuri insisted on doing the bulk of it himself like he was alone, to care for Nikolai as Nikolai had cared for him.

Nikolai wasn’t alone anymore though, because Yuri wasn’t alone. He had the Madame and Yakov. Their whole team adored him and his yelling temper. Victor and Yuuri himself had done their best to be there for him too. Yuuri didn’t want to infringe, to step on Yuri’s toes, by inserting himself into their home and getting that work done as though to insinuate Yuri was incapable because he wasn’t. And Yuri would probably never, ever ask. So instead he talked about certain things where Yuri could hear him, things like getting pet stains out of carpets, fur off of curtains, the household cleaning products that absolutely should not be mixed together. Yuri was obviously capable of Googling things but Yuuri wanted to get the kid’s brain on the right track at least, make sure he wasn’t taking the ‘obvious’ for granted, which meant feeding it the knowledge and food both that it required.

Yuri had really put himself out to care for his family. Everybody wanted to honour that.

However.

Yuuri had refused to play along though until Nikolai conceded to taking Georgi and Mila with him to act as pack mules, happily ensuring Nikolai’s compliance by brutally tugging on his heartstrings with the reminder that Yurio would be horrified if he hurt himself over his birthday. Plisetskys were stubborn. Yuuri was too. He’d sicced the pair on Nikolai with no remorse. They’d left about ten minutes ago and had shot Yuuri a thumbs up on the way out. Now he only had to keep Yuri unaware and distracted. This also meant keeping Victor from spilling details. Yuuri adored how excitable his man could be with every fraction of his being but in instances like this it could be just a teensy bit inconvenient.

“We were wondering if you wanted to join us?”

Yuri squinted between them for a moment, a paragon of teenage suspicion, then rolled his eyes.

“And watch you two make out? Fuck that. Nah, I gotta get home after this.”

“Are you sure?” Yuuri asked, tilting his head. “We were thinking of going to that one restaurant Nikolai likes, the one a couple blocks from here? We figured we’d send you home with some lunch for him.”

That made Yuri pause to consider and Yuuri knew he had him.

“...You’ll pay?” Yuri asked, eyes continuing to go back and forth between them.

Victor beamed. “Of course!”

Yuri thought about it for another moment then sighed heavily with a roll of his eyes. “Fine. Whatever, if you old fucks need the company that bad I’ll come, sheesh.”

Victor pouted. “Hey!”

Yuuri just laughed. “Perfect. Twenty minutes?”

Yuri was already skating off. He waved a hand over his shoulder. “Fine, fine.”

Victor waited until Yuri was out of earshot then laughed and ducked in to kiss Yuuri’s cheek. “Divine, my Yuuri, simply divine.”

The laughter swelled out of him and Yuuri twizzled away, casting a flirty look at Victor. “I know. You almost spoiled it though.”

Getting food into those two right now was very important, so he’d admit to some relief that Yuri had agreed for more reasons than just the main. Victor sighed with drama and slipped the back of his hand over his forehead.

“My Yuuri is so mean to me,” He said, swooning with impeccable grace and a long, swan-like throat. Yuuri quickly ducked in to catch him. Victor grinned up at him and Yuuri swallowed, feeling suddenly very warm.

“Making fun of my memory like that,” He said even as he wrapped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders. “While being so beautiful.”

Yuuri snorted before he could help himself. “Oh shush with that.”

It was impossible not to bend over and not kiss those sweet pink bowstring lips just a little bit, though. Just a little bit.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Yuuri breathed, pulling back. “If your feelings are that hurt?”

Victor’s smile was truly a thing of beauty, his whole heart in it from its shape to its shine. “They are. Truly.”

“Later, then.”

“I’d like that.”

One cool down and a shower later saw them dressed for the St. Petersburg afternoon, an unseasonably warm February day that saw Yuuri comfortable in simple jeans and a white sweater. It was strange to see so little snow on the sidewalks. Yuri, forever insisting on looking as punk as possible, would be sweating shortly in his dark studded jacket tiger sweater combo and Yuuri reminded himself to make sure the kid drank plenty of water at the restaurant. Victor set his Dior sunglasses on his nose, looking every bit as glamorous as he deserved, and with his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders they were off. Because the restaurant in question wasn’t far, they walked. Yuri, of course, had immediately stuffed his ears with earbuds so he didn’t have to talk or listen and Victor and Yuuri left him to it, chatting to each other softly enough that they wouldn’t be heard over Yuri’s music but careful to avoid suspicious talk of Nikolai or his birthday all the same.

Instead Victor talked about the dry cleaners and how they hadn’t managed to get a stain out of one of his favourite salmon coloured button downs, and Yuuri had hummed and sighed with sympathy before promising to try his own hand at it with some hospitality industry ‘trade secret’ elbow grease. It was only a wine stain so some hydrogen peroxide and Dawn should do the trick. He didn’t know how the dry cleaners had missed it but they generally did good work, it was nothing to fuss over.

Every smile Victor gave to him was a treasure, Yuuri thought as the man did just that with eager joy, happily yelling out his thanks and throwing his arms around Yuuri. Yuuri couldn’t help a small laugh, didn’t even try to deny himself the pleasure of leaning fully into Victor’s warmth as he gazed up at that precious face.

It was hard not to remember the smile he’d fallen in love with as a child, and then the one he’d pushed away his concern over as a young adult, a beauty slowly giving way to silky smooth steel that no longer seemed genuine. He knew now his instincts were correct, for all he’d tried to ignore them then. Victor had fallen out of joy.

He’d found it again. Yuuri was certain that his contribution to Victor’s happiness, though he didn’t always understand how he of all people had managed it, was one of his life’s greatest accomplishments. Olympic gold paled in comparison to Victor’s pleasure. His fingers stayed wound through the hand slung over his shoulder, his other arm around Victor’s waist as they walked. It left Victor’s left hand free to gesture as he pleased, because he was a hand talker of the highest caliber for all that he stifled it during press conferences and most interviews, and Yuuri felt privileged to get to see and enjoy it.

In the years since they’d met, he hadn’t learned to take those small things for granted. Yuuri hoped he never would.

The restaurant was a cozy affair with faded wallpapers and carpet but clean, long tablecloths and plentiful (somewhat inexpensive) servings. Yuuri felt very lucky that even in the lunch rush they were able to get a cushioned booth. In a rare show of manners, Yuri took out his earbuds and paused his music, only to get caught up scrolling as he reclined instead because of course it wouldn’t do to be seen as too polite or mindful. Yuuri hoped Mila and Georgi hadn’t posted anything to Instagram or Twitter yet.

Victor sat, then paused, then huffed and looked at Yuuri with a hint of chagrin in his smile.

“I have to,” He nodded his head in the direction of the bathrooms. “If the server comes by before I’m back, will you order for me, love?”

Yuuri chuckled and nodded. “Of course, Vitya. Try not to take too long.”

“Swear to God, if forty minutes go by and I find you measuring your hairline in the fucking mirror again-” Yuri suddenly hissed, glaring at Victor.

Victor only rolled his eyes in good humor. “I’ll try my best. Excuse me.”

They watched him leave, Yuuri with rather more intensity on his husband’s shoulders and ass and the shine of his hair than was maybe appropriate, then Yuuri shook his head and looked back at Yuri, lifting a finger to his lips.

“I hid his tape measure, don’t tell him.”

He was rewarded with a sharp cackle that showed Yuri’s canine then the boy sat back, smirking as he gave his attention to his phone again. Yuuri didn’t bother with his own, still in his pocket, instead quietly giving his eyes to the rest of the restaurant and the people inside. There was a couple with a young daughter across from them, an elderly gentleman sitting by himself and going over a book, a kid who looked about Yuri’s age, among others. Yuuri breathed it all in, glad that the sounds were low and calm, then turned to look out the window. It really was a glorious afternoon. The sky had nothing on his Victor’s eyes, though.

A waitress came by and Yuuri felt very proud of himself for managing to order in Russian well enough to be understood. Yuri didn’t even mock him for it, outside a single snort at least. Their orders taken, the waitress left, and Yuuri looked back out the window, pleased to be in a silence that expected nothing.

It was because his back was to the doors that he didn’t see it. Yuri did, though, his brow furrowing as he straightened, catching Yuuri’s attention.

“What the fuck?” Yuri mumbled to himself, almost standing to get a better look.

Yuuri blinked. He didn’t have time to turn around before the doors crashed open. He jumped, head whipping around. His eyes widened.

His eyes widened because there was a trio of men with guns, two of them supporting a fourth that looks injured, all of them wearing masks. What? No, wait, what? Had they stumbled onto a movie set or something-

“Nobody fucking move!”

No. No they had not, Yuuri realized with a settling numb horror. This was real. This was very real. They’re lucky. Their bench was on the far side of the restaurant, practically in a corner. Yuuri whipped around.

“Get under the table,” He hissed at Yuri.

Yuri’s eyes snapped to him but he otherwise didn't move. For probably the first time in his life, if Yuuri was reading the look of dead shock on Yuri’s face right, it probably wasn’t out of wilful disobedience so Yuuri reached over and shoved at him, dragging at his sleeve to get him to slide off the bench and under the tablecloth. The kid actually went without saying anything, at least until he was mostly hidden and Yuuri made no further move.

“Aren’t you-?” Yuri hissed but Yuuri tapped at him with a frantic shoe and thankfully he shut up. His breath was coming fast. His heart was in his ears. His eyes were locked on the men as they moved through the restaurant, demands for a first aid kit punctuated by one of them grabbing at a waitress and shoving her at the doors with a demand to lock them. It was impossible to see their eyes through their masks, to tell where, precisely, they were looking - not at this distance. Yuuri could feel his breath rasp in his throat, but he stayed right where he was.

He found his eyes moving slowly to the family across from them. Through some coincidence the man caught his eye. Yuuri looked at the man’s wife and child. He looked at the men with the guns. He looked back at the man and with a shaking hand reached over. His fumbling, numb fingers twitched the tablecloth, then managed to grab it and he lifted the corner.

The man, thankfully, didn’t need to be told a single thing.

“Go, go,” He whispered very quietly to his wife, ushering her down with a protective arm. It was a matter of only a couple seconds, surely, for the woman to grab her little girl and duck across the way with soft sobbing breaths, but every single one of them was a taut eternity. Yuuri could feel himself panting as he quickly jerked the table cloth up higher to clear their way then just as quickly laid it back and smoothed out the wrinkled corner with a frantic application of muscle memory. The man slid into the booth seat across from him. Yuuri looked at him and nodded. The man nodded back and set his jaw. They would both stay right where they were to distract from their loved ones underneath. Two men alone might be conspicuous. Two men together, somewhat less so.

“Ivan, Dmitri,” One said, indeed already peaking under empty tables with sharp gestures, “Go around and grab people’s phones.”

Yuuri shuddered in relief. It seemed as though they hadn’t been noticed.

“I thought we weren’t using our names-”

“This whole thing has gone to shit you fuckwit, just fucking do it! YOU. Yeah I see you, you fried fatass fuck, put the phone down. NOBODY is calling the cops until we’re goddamn good and ready or everyone in here dies, you all get me?!”

Yuuri was feeling very grateful for his improving ability in Russian that allowed him to follow what they were saying. Two of the men peeled off and began to go around the room, demanding phones then breaking them with their guns or under stomping feet. None of them had made their way over to the bathroom yet, Yuuri realized, and fumbled his phone out of his pocket to text Victor, to warn him-

“Hey.”

His gaze crawled upward, heart skipping a beat as he found himself looking down the barrel of a black pistol. The man wielding it was wearing a pasty, cheap looking but fully head covering mask that depicted, at a guess, the Disney character Snow White. He held out his other hand.

“Phone.”

But Yuuri found himself frozen. Frozen, at least, until the gun cracked across his head with enough force to knock him over. His automatic yell choked as the neck of his sweater was grabbed, hoisting him back up. “I said give me your fucking phone.”

“Here, here!” Yuuri gasped, dropping it onto the table then lifting his shaking, empty hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please-”

“Shut up.”

His phone was smashed in short order and the man across from him surrendered his own mutely, eyes huge in his face. That phone, too, was broken. Snow White shifted as if to move on, then paused, then looked back with empty eyes at the table.

Yuuri felt his stomach drop right into his shoes. Fuck. Had they been figured out? Yuri-

God, Yuri-

He’d do whatever it took to make sure Yuri didn’t get hurt, Yuuri decided in that instant, body beginning to flare with the bright singing of nerves. If this fucker laid one hand on the corner of the table cloth to lift it, he was in for a fight.

The man did reach out but instead of going for the table cloth he went for Yuuri’s face, grabbing his chin and jerking it toward him. A sizzle of terror seared his skin, breath catching in his chest with confusion as the grotesque and ill-fitting mask slowly tilted to the right.

“You look familiar,” The man said, then pulled his own phone from his pocket.

Oh. Well. Shit.

Taking Yuuri’s glasses off his face, he flicked them to the table then took a picture. Yuuri watched, his teeth clenched so tight they hurt, as the man fucked around for a moment. He considered his phone then looked back at Yuuri. Pushed his hair out of his eyes in a motion that made Yuuri hiss and realize he might be bleeding, that spot he’d been bashed hurt so much to the touch. Snow White studied him, holding the phone up to seemingly compare the screen and his face all the better. Yuuri wondered if Google Lens was that good, but going by the reaction it must be.

“Yuuri Katsuki. Well I’ll be.”

Yep. That good. Great. He was let go. Through the holes of the mask, Yuuri could barely make out the eyes that studied him, then seemed to crinkle. “Your hubby around, Yuuri?”

Yuuri quickly shook his head no, voice stuck in his throat.

“Ah, that so?” Snow White turned to look at the man at the other side of the booth, then back at him. “Not cheating on him are you? Tut, tut, Mr. Katsuki.”

It was Katsuki-Nikiforov actually but like hell if he was correcting what was clearly a gun toting maniac with anger management issues and zero patience.

He looked back at the man across from Yuuri and said in a cold tone, “Who are you, then.”

Yuuri looked at the man whose mouth was working, a useless croak bursting out from between his teeth.

“He’s a writer,” Yuuri gasped.

Snow White looked back at him. Yuuri swallowed and kept going. “V-Vitya and I, we’ve been thinking of-of publishing a biography so I came here to interview him.”

Yuuri managed a weak, rusty sounding laugh. “Neither of us can write for shit. So. Ah.” He swallowed the urge to say more, remembering somewhere in the back of his mind how apparently over-explaining could be a tell for lying. As if clinical anxiety didn’t exist, among other things. Hah. Holy hell, what had even just come out of his mouth. A writer? Biographies?

‘Please let him buy it,’ Yuuri prayed. ‘Please.’

Snow White stared at him for a moment, each consecutive second driving Yuuri’s heartbeat faster and faster and then, just when he thought it might actually explode, he turned to look at the other man.

“That so?” He asked.

The man nodded rapidly.

“Hm. Okay. Sit tight. Both of you.”

Snow White walked away. Yuuri heard a sob drop from his mouth and clapped a hand over it, trying desperately to concentrate on his breathing. Too fast. It was too fast. He was starting to see spots, his fingers tingling-

Underneath the table, a warm hand grasped his ankle. Yuuri’s hyperventilating aborted, then he forcefully unwound the tension in his shoulders. He couldn’t lose it. Not here. Not now. Not with Yuri and a little girl and her mother under the table. Yuuri swallowed tightly, let out the breath stuck in his throat, then lowered his hand to the table and took in another, deep and slow.

“H-Here.”

Yuuri hissed and winced, eyes opening to find the man leaned forward and pressing a napkin to his head. Yuuri absently swiped at a tickle on his cheek and found red on his fingers. So he was bleeding then. He hoped he wasn’t concussed, that would take him out of practice for upwards of a month or more depending on how bad it was.

Assuming he got out of here alive, anyway.

“Thank you,” Yuuri whispered, reaching for the blurry shape of his glasses and replacing them back onto his nose. The man’s face settled into sharp relief, his brown skin pebbled with a no doubt very cold fearful sweat, and the hint of a smile on it.

“No, thank you. I. I couldn’t say anything at all, I-”

The man shut his eyes, took in a deep breath, then peeled the napkin away and replaced it with a small wince. Yeah, head wounds tended to bleed a lot.

Yuuri mustered up a smile. “It’s fine.”

“My name is Roman Orlov, by the way. I, ah, I hope you’re not insulted that I have no idea what you’re apparently so famous for.”

Yuuri blinked, then actually laughed. It made his head pound sharply, and he realized it’d been doing that for a bit now. He reached up to grab the napkin. Orlov sat back.

“Actually that’s a really big relief, but if you tell Vitya that he’ll pout terribly so please don’t mention that to him.”

“Your husband?”

Yuuri’s eyes strayed to the bathroom again. “Yes.”

He wanted to check underneath the table. He wanted to see to Yuri, to make sure he was okay, with every fiber of his being. He stayed where he was, though, eyes on the men who were now gathered in a semi circle around their apparently hurt member, who was being tended to by a cook. They were conversing in low tones but Yuuri tensed when a hand gestured in their direction. He wiggled his ankle. Yuri’s hand was comforting beyond measure but he had a sinking feeling his and Victor’s high profile had just turned Yuuri into an ideal hostage.

Honestly, if it meant taking their attention away from this table, then so be it.

The hand released him. He took another deep breath and closed his eyes, then looked at the bathrooms again. He couldn’t see the men’s door from here. He looked back at the men. One was heading in his direction, the one who’d been doing all the shouting at the start and called his contemporaries by name. He was wearing a Cinderella mask. A hysterical giggle hiccuped from him and he slapped his hand over his mouth again, squeezing his eyes shut. That was one of his favourite ballets, in all its interpretations. Goddamnit.

“Mr. Katsuki-Nikiforov.”

Yuuri opened his eyes and looked up. The man swept an arm out to gesture him from the booth in what was probably supposed to be a gallant fashion.

“Please,” Cinderella said. “Come with me.”

Yuuri took a shivering breath, nodded, and shifted to get up from the table. A hand snapped into the back of his shoe. Yuuri hoped he didn’t hurt Yuri when he ripped his foot away. He stood and got a patronizing pat on the head for his efforts. Cinderella looked at Orlov and pointed one finger at him.

“You? Stay,” He said.

Orlov looked at Yuuri, then back at Cinderella. His shoulders rose with the depth of his breath and he nodded, hands fisting on the table. Yuuri gave him a no doubt weak smile. It broke easily when he was shoved forward, the cocking of the gun a diminutive click but a very loud, very real warning all the same. One foot in front of the other, Yuuri walked.

“I apologize for the head wound,” Cinderella said as Yuuri was guided over to his- Friends? Co-workers? Who knew. “As I’m sure you can imagine, we’re all rather stressed at the moment so tempers are running… high.”

More insinuations. Yatta.

“I understand,” Yuuri said.

“Good! Yes you do, don’t you. May I compliment your Russian? You speak it very well. Bit of an accent still but some people just never lose that, I hear.”

Cinderella ripped out a chair from the table their fellow was being treated at and waved a hand toward it with a bob as though he was bowing. Yuuri looked around himself then nodded and sat with as much dignity as he could bring to bear, clasping his hands in his lap.

“Thank you.”

The gun caressed the back of his head, too hard to approach anything genuinely tender, only making a mockery of the gesture. Yuuri’s flinched and bit down on a sob. He felt tears roll down his face.

“You’re very welcome.” There was a moment of silence then Cinderella said, “You’ve checked the kitchen?”

“Yeah, when we got the first aid kit.”

“Good. Bathrooms next.”

Yuuri’s eyes shot open. Oh God. He wrung his hands tighter, enough that his nails bit into his skin. Oh God.

A man wearing a Belle mask nodded and stalked off.

He had to keep it together. Yuuri pressed a hand to his chest as though that could encourage his heart to slow down, a cold sweat breaking out over his forehead that made the gash sting. He had to keep it together.

Yuri was counting on him.

‘Maybe he got out.’ There was an employee door right next to the bathrooms, wasn’t there? If he remembered right? ‘Or maybe he managed to hide. Maybe-’

“Nobody in the women’s washroom but look who I found on the line with police in the men’s?”

Yuuri’s head inched around slowly, his fingers biting deep into his chest. Victor, per his wont, was smiling - a stiff and restrained smile but a charming one all the same. He was uninjured.

He hadn’t gotten out.

Yuuri had known it was a fool’s hope, to wish that he had somehow, but the knowing that he hadn’t made it very tempting to break down right then and there. As it was, he was sure he was going to be in for an interesting recoup, emotionally speaking, for the next few weeks.

Victor’s eyes met his and that smile became more a gritting of teeth, his entire body bristling in a wave.

“Well, well, well. Yuuri,” Snow White said, grabbing onto his shoulder and giving him what could have been a friendly shake in any other circumstance. “I thought you said your husband wasn’t here?”

“I-” Yuuri stuttered, a trembling hand lifting to his lips. Shit. What- Okay. “I. I thought he wasn’t. I. Wha-Victor, what are you doing here, weren’t you going to help Yakov while I met with Mr. Orlov?”

Was this too obvious? Too much of a supposedly tragic coincidence to be believed? Yuuri had never been much of an actor, his so called musicality and PCS largely the result of being unable to hide his true feelings, but as he stared at Victor’s face, tears burning in his eyes and misery at their shared situation searing at him, he could only hope. People whose ‘tempers were running high’ wouldn’t appreciate being lied to. They wouldn’t appreciate semantics. Maybe this was digging the hole deeper but by God, for their sake and the sake of everyone in this entire restaurant they had to try.

Victor’s eyes flashed back and forth, his smile as stiff as his shoulders as Belle shoved him a couple more steps forward. “And leave you to figure out-” Yuuri mouthed ‘denki’ through his fingers then curled them fully to his mouth. “-our biography all on your lonesome? Why Yuuri, I could never!” Victor continued flawlessly, filling Yuuri with a shiver of relief, because of course he did. Oh how he loved this man.

“Knowing you, you’d completely under represent your achievements and spend the whole time glamourizing me. I knew I’d have to surprise you, though, I…”

Victor trailed off, looking between all the guns, all the wide eyed terrified faces watching them. He swallowed tightly and turned to look at where they’d been sitting. Yuri, thank goodness, was still under the table from what Yuuri could tell. Say what you would about the kid’s sour attitude and his refusal to listen a good chunk of the time but Yuri was not unintelligent. He was no doubt furious and cursing them out, but he was the only family Nikolai had left, and he knew it. He was not foolish enough to mess with that.

“I can’t say I expected this.” Victor finished in a soft, grim tone.

“In fairness, neither did we.” Cinderella said. “Hey. You. You done yet?”

The cook who was fixing up the wounded man, who was wearing an Ariel mask, looked up. “I’ve done what I can but I’m no doctor.”

“Right. And fat chance there’s one in here.”

Cinderella looked around then at Snow White. “What do you think?”

Snow White shrugged. “I think we’ve got a two for one special on the VIP section and it’d be a waste if we didn’t use it.”

Cinderella nodded, then in a second he lifted his gun and fired.

“VITYA,” Yuuri shrieked as he watched his husband crumple to the ground with a cry, launching to his feet only to find himself trussed up in a thick arm. He yelled and kicked out, desperate beyond reason to get to his man, to get to Victor, to make sure he was still alive -

There was a lot of screaming. It wasn’t only him. Cinderella lifted his gun again and shot at the ceiling.

“Everybody SHUT THE FUCK UP or I’ll kill you all sweet and personal!”

Yuuri could barely hear him as he clawed at the arm around his stomach. Victor looked up. His face was pale and bathed in a sheer sweat, pain described in every line of his face, but his eyes were dry as they sunk into him. Yuuri’s heart fluttered in sharp relief. He struggled harder. He had to get to him, he had to-

“Yuuri, stop, I’m fine!” Victor said through gritted teeth then tried to smile. “It’s okay, my love, my life, stop. Just stop.”

“Vitya-” Yuuri whimpered and jerked, very nearly free.

“STOP.”

Yuuri forced his body to still, his fingers still clutching fast at a dark sleeve. He was drawn shortly back into a sturdy chest. As Yuuri tried to calm himself he could feel ragged breathing against his ear, he realized - and that drew his attention to a sensation that he’d never even noticed in his panic, that of a muzzle pressed solidly to the corner of his jaw. Funny. He almost didn’t even care. He couldn’t take his eyes away from his husband, couldn’t take his eyes away from Victor’s life blood staining the burgundy carpet even darker, from the pain in Victor’s milk pale face. Yuuri couldn’t look away. Yuuri could barely even breathe.

Cinderella walked the short distance between Victor and himself and kicked him over onto his back with his foot, tilting his head down as he stood over him. He laughed. “Nah, I wouldn’t call you ‘fine’, but the Kremlin isn’t going to want to lose Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov. They’ll even suck our dicks now that we have you in an emergency state if it means saving you, I’m sure. You called the cops, right?”

Victor, breath hissing between the clench of his teeth and his hand clutching at his shoulder, nodded. Belle stepped forward and held out Victor’s cell phone.

“I didn’t end the call. They’ve been able to hear everything.”

“Good thinking. Give it.”

Belle gave. With a jaunty, farcical tone, Cinderella spoke into the phone. “Hi there dispatcher. Do you understand what’s happening? Good. One of our friends got hurt, so we sadly had to pay that forward. Insurance, you know?”

All the levity dropped from Cinderella’s voice. “If you don’t want Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov to die on your watch you’re gonna send one paramedic. One. No cops. No-They’re already on their way? Well call them off, then! ONE paramedic. That’s all. If they’re not here in ten minutes, I’m putting a bullet right between his shiny blue eyes, then we’re gonna take his husband and leave and you’ll NEVER find his body. Don’t want an international incident on your hands? Then do it. …Good. Good. Mn? Hah, yeah, sure, I’ll stay on the line,” Cinderella shrugged and laughed. “Why not. So, what’s your name? Elena? Very pretty. Elena, may I say, you have a beautiful voice…”

Yuuri watched as Cinderella ambled off between the tables. Evidently, he was a talk-and-walker. Ignoring Victor, Belle moved back to Ariel’s side and crouched next to him and the cook, muttering too fast for Yuuri to make out. The cook was sent scrambling away.

Yuuri eyed the men next to them for a moment then loosed a long breath, giving his gaze back to Victor. Victor looked back at him. Nobody was rushing to his aid. Nobody even cared.

“That’s a good boy,” Process of elimination meant it was Snow White holding onto him. The mouth of the gun swept up and down his skin. “Nice and soft, easy does it. You don’t want to make this worse for him, do you? I don’t think he’d like getting to see your head get blown off.”

The gun dug deeper into his throat. Yuuri looked down. He could barely see around the arm holding him, but their feet…

Yuuri looked back at Victor. Victor, who was still bleeding, the stain on his shirt growing visibly. There were so many arteries and veins in the shoulder, to say nothing of the nerves. So close to the neck, the head, the heart, that area was riddled with major blood vessels. Cinderella had put a hole into his husband. A hole that, if it wasn’t treated within moments, meant Victor could very well die.

Victor could die, and so could Yuri, helpless underneath the table. He was so young, still so small - barely taller than Yuuri, now, and all these men were Victor’s height or taller.

Victor, who was bleeding out. Victor, who was no doubt in agony beyond the pale. That was all Yuuri could think about. It almost made him calm, for all that his breath was racing in and out of him in something almost close to a growl.

Victor shook his head, clawing onto his side. “Yuuri, don’t!”

Snow White didn’t waste a heartbeat to point his gun at Victor’s head. “YOU shut the fu-”

Yuuri didn’t wait either. His head was clear now. It let him think. He stomped on the foot next to his with all his strength. He barely heard the cracks of breaking bones under Snow White’s scream. The gun dropped as the man went to grab for it with an agonized yell, releasing Yuuri entirely.

Yuuri could bench 110KGs. Snow White went flying, crashing into a table. Yuuri continued his drop, spinning on his heel to scoop up the chair he’d been made to sit in, the chair that’d fallen over in his panic. Belle whipped around. It made it easier to crack the back of the chair right into his face. The chair, wood, broke. Belle’s mask went flying off as he careened to the floor. There was Russian swearing behind him. He didn’t know what any of it meant but the tone made it clear. The gun was only a foot away. Yuuri grabbed it, barely breathing, hastened over to Belle. A shot rang out. Yuuri stomped on Belle’s arm, shortly adding a second gun to his collection and stumbled back, spinning around and lifting both in the direction of the sound. Nobody else had cried out in pain, hopefully that meant the bullet was buried in a wall somewhere and that it hadn’t hit anyone. He breathed, in and out, through the knit of his gnashed teeth.

Cinderella stopped, took a step back, stopped again, his gun pointed dead set at Yuuri’s head. His side was burning. Maybe he’d pulled something flinging Snow White around, it wasn’t like he’d ever taken martial arts classes. Yuuri looked at Victor as he slowly stepped away from Belle. Victor was staring at him in shock, and. Arousal? Huh.

‘Hon, you’re probably bleeding too much to get it up. Come on.’ Anyway. More pressing issues to deal with at present.

Such as, to be honest, the fact that Yuuri had no idea what the fuck he was doing. He’d never even held a gun in his life, nevermind shot one. He’d watched Highschool of the Dead once in highschool, watched a few other anime where guns were a focus. Some crime dramas. He’d even played a couple first person shooters but honestly he’d always preferred RPGs. Guns were heavier than they looked. Yuuri’s glasses were starting to slip down his nose. Everyone knew what a trigger was.

All he knew was that he need to get his Vitya, his Yura, safe.

Everything was quiet, so quiet he could almost hear Elena on the phone.

“I thought you, like, danced. Ballet and figure skating and shit,” Cinderella said, Victor’s phone still at his ear, tone a little breathless if Yuuri was hearing right.

It took Yuuri a second to figure out how the hell to say anything in Russian through the buzzing that told him he was in a state of adrenaline, though a boost significantly higher than the ones he got at a competition. Honestly he didn’t know how well he’d been doing so far with his linguistics, sarcastic compliments notwithstanding, he didn’t even know how he’d managed to say a single damn thing. What was the Russian term for ‘ghost writer’ anyway? He’d look it up when he got home. Because he was going home.

All of them were.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything,” Yuuri breathed.

Cinderella laughed. “Do you even know how to use tho-”

A hand touched his ankle and Yuuri turned, found Belle snarling up at him through a font of blood. Every little detail he knew about guns was surging through his head. There was something about a safety switch, a hammer, cocking-

Whatever. Yuuri pointed a gun at Belle’s lower leg and pulled the trigger, cutting Cinderella off.

Somehow, he didn’t miss. Breath coming in shuddery gasps, Yuuri turned the same gun onto Snow White. More screaming. The muzzle was smoking. It smelled like shit. His hand and wrist were burning. Yuuri pointed the gun back at Cinderella. This one for sure had the safety off, it seemed. He checked the position of what he thought might be it, a little switch in the side that almost blended into the carbon black, looked at the other gun and found it was in the same position. He gave his eyes and sights back to Cinderella.

Yuuri blew out a shivering breath and said, “You’re gonna need more than one paramedic.”

Before Cinderella could respond he dropped the sights down and pulled both triggers. One hit Cinderella’s foot and the man dropped with a shriek. A woman at a nearby table pounced and grabbed the gun with shaking fingers. Yuuri stared for a second then dropped the ones he’d stolen onto a nearby chair, yanking at a tablecloth and rushing for his husband.

“Vitya,” He gasped, pressing the tablecloth into Victor’s shoulder and holding it as firm as he could manage with his suddenly shaking, tingling hands. “Vitya, my Vitenka, you’re gonna be okay, you have to be okay, stay with me, please!”

Victor hissed in pain but he was still conscious, that was good, that was very good. In the distance, Yuuri was pretty sure he could hear sirens. Victor’s eyes opened and they were a bit glazed but they still latched onto him and a shaky smile lifted his lips. He raised a hand to cup Yuuri’s cheek and Yuuri leaned into it with a weak sob.

“I’ll be okay,” Victor said.

Yuuri’s eyes shut around his tears.

He didn’t see it coming.

An explosion rocked through his skull. He hit the ground, a numb body, Victor’s cry of his name, several gasps echoing through his ears. Yuuri felt himself groan, came back to his body somewhat through the spinning and stars and opened his eyes as he tried to push himself up. An immense weight came upon him, though, an arm wrapping around his throat. Yuuri choked. He clawed at it. Someone was saying something. He was dragged backwards then onto his feet. The arm loosened enough for him to breathe, at least a little, and he sucked in a raspy gasp like sunlight.

He was dizzy. He was so dizzy. He opened his eyes and he couldn’t see anything more than smudges and blurs. His glasses were gone. His hearing started to come back through the strange, cottony haze that’d muffled it, deafened him to everything but Victor’s voice.

“-obody move or I’ll blow his head clean off I swear to God, come at me if you want but if you do that’s what’s gonna happen!”

The voice was unfamiliar. Yuuri strained his eyes to the side, panting roughly, and saw red. Ariel.

He closed his eyes, actually a little exasperated with himself. He’d thought Ariel too injured to really do anything about. The English expression about assumptions was knocking at his door, he was sure. Oh well, even monkeys fell from trees.

His legs felt like butter. He looked to the right. This close it was impossible not to see the gun shoved into his face, the mouth kissing his cheek. Ariel’s finger was on the trigger, ready to pull at any second. Yuuri licked his lips and tasted blood. He looked around himself. They were backing up toward the door. Ariel was barking at a waitress to unlock it. As far as he could tell without his glasses, people looked reasonably terrified.

Yuuri looked toward the table he and Yuri had sat at. Orlov was paralyzed in his seat. He thought he could see a blond head peeking out from beneath the table cloth.

Yuuri looked at Victor. Victor hadn’t been crying before but he was now, great big fat tears. For all that he was starting to look rather grey he was standing, a bloody hand reaching out for them, the other limp at his side. He could definitely hear ambulance sirens. Yuuri swallowed. He shut his eyes. His head was spinning so fast it was hard to think.

‘It was a gut wound,’ He tried to remember, his thoughts instead summoning the firm look in Mari’s eyes as she’d told him to go for the weak spots and never hesitate. She’d been talking about eyes and dicks and hair. Yuuri didn’t know exactly how Ariel was injured, but thinking back, yes, he was reasonably sure the cook they’d conscripted had been attending to Ariel’s core. ‘Right?’

The arm around his throat squeezed tight and Yuuri heard himself make a very strange gurgle.

Well. He was dizzy, and getting dizzier. May as well lean into it.

‘I hope this doesn’t kill my back,’ Yuuri thought and promptly went dead weight. Ariel grunted and they toppled. Impact made him see stars again. He groaned softly and rolled over onto his front. The bell pepper slices and hummus he’d had as a snack earlier were doing their best to say hello to the floor. Ariel was groaning too, curling up around his stomach in pain.

He was still holding onto the gun, Yuuri saw, and lunged for it. The waitress was on Ariel in a second, too, dogpiling onto him while Yuuri did his best to rip the gun away. Ariel’s elbow smashed into the waitress’s nose, making her fall back, and Yuuri snarled, scrambling until he could dig his knee with force into the side Ariel had been protecting. The man howled, his free hand shoving at Yuuri then digging into his hip in a way that made Yuuri scream in pain and surprise, his entire leg going numb. He didn’t let go of the gun, though and another man joined the fray, then a second, and with that Yuuri was finally able to rip the gun away.

“YUURI!”

A hand grabbed his hair and ripped his head back, another shortly groping for the firearm. Yuuri was deeply annoyed to find Belle back at it but then he had seemed to fawn over Ariel quite a bit so maybe it made sense. They struggled. Belle let go of his hair and reached into his pocket as he pulled and tugged for the gun. Yuuri kicked out the leg that wasn’t sizzling with pins and needles but missed. Belle pulled out a knife. The struggling had put Yuuri on his back but this close he couldn’t miss. He kicked out again. The gun fired. The back of the man’s head ballooned, shattered pieces and gore raining down. He slumped over, collapsing onto Yuuri. His body was still warm. Pieces of him splattered onto Yuuri’s face. He blinked. He stared. He felt his body go limp in one huge drop of tension.

Yuuri knew he was going to be seeing that in his dreams tonight.

“Katsudon-!”

The body was pushed off of him. Or maybe kicked was the right word. Yuri’s face swam into his vision. Yuuri pulled himself up, patting over the boy, lifting his jacket, his breath kicking back up it pace but Yuri was fine. He was just fine. Not a hair was out of place on his head. He was fine. Yuri’s hands swatted his away.

“I’m just fine you stupid pig, fuck, you should worry more about yourself-” Yuri’s voice actually sounded breathless.

Yuuri shook his head passed the swimming in his eyes, blinking hard as the world started to sway a little bit. “Vitya?”

“Alive. That cook asshole is trying to keep his blood in him now but he’s still alive. Katsudon what the hell were thinki-fuck, shit, head between your knees you fucking jackass, oh my God, I can’t with you people-”

Yuuri let the flustered blond manipulate him into position. He closed his eyes. He tried to breathe.

He couldn’t smell anything but copper.

The doors opened. Paramedics. Cops. They were all here. Yuuri learned that he’d been shot, after a sort - grazed more like - a deep wound in his hip area which was what Ariel had dug his fingers into. He hadn’t even realized it. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug. He had a moderate concussion as well. Hard not to after being pistol-whipped then kicked in the head, since apparently that was what had happened to make all those fun stars blink to life. Made sense. It made sense. They were safe. Victor would live. Yuri was just fine, and so were Mrs. Orlov and their child. Everyone was safe. Everybody was going to be just fine.

Yuuri would later learn that someone had taken a picture of him, seated on the ledge of the ambulance back. His image, white sweater dangling from one shoulder and covered amply in blood, large glazed eyes staring into nothing through the disheveled mess of his hair as paramedics bustled around him, was sold to various news outlets. It was not the first time Yuuri went viral, but it was the most miserable circumstance of it to date.

They would be going home though. Everyone was going to be fine. Yuuri lowered his head and looked at his hands. He lifted them to his face and breathed in, noticing a faint scent somewhere between charcoal and sulfur. Yuuri lifted his eyes to the sky. He needed a cigarette. ‘So that’s what gunpowder smells like.’

Phichit's dark grey eyes were concerned and unimpressed. "Don't even try to tell me you're okay."

Yuuri blinked at his phone's screen. He paused and considered that.

"What do you want me to say, then?" Yuuri asked, honestly not sure.

Phichit rubbed a hand down his face, grimacing, careful not to dislodge the hamster on his head. He dropped his hand and looked back at his phone screen, eyes seeming to study Yuuri's face. Yuuri didn't know why. He wasn't a pretty sight right now, all over in bruises and stitches. Maybe Phichit was just trying to ascertain the extent of the injuries.

"You can start by giving me the run down. How are you, physically?"

Yuuri thought about that.

"I have a headache the size of Kyushu?" He offered. It was very hard to brain, currently.

He looked over at Yakov, seated on the recliner as he watched the television, pretending rather adroitly that he wasn't listening. It was strange to have Yakov here instead of Victor, but Victor was in the hospital, sleeping off emergency surgery. Yuri, of course, had gone home to his grandfather and Yuuri was proud to see that he had no injuries whatsoever. He'd been of half a mind to invite Yuri and Nikolai to lounge around in his and Victor's apartment - they certainly had the room and Yuuri was feeling very clingy at the moment - but he had the feeling that Yuri needed some grandpa time. He'd invite them over tomorrow. Chris was due in tomorrow, Yuuri recalled that string of text messages he and the other man had shared an hour or so ago, sometime in the afternoon.

"I'm tired," Yuuri finally said, looking back at the phone.

Phichit winced with sympathy. "Yeah, I bet..."

The young man took in a deep breath and asked the next most obvious question. "And, uh, mentally?"

Yuuri blinked slowly, his hand running up and down Makkachin's stomach. He was laying on the couch because he felt dizzy, though it was difficult not to sleep because of it, with a mopey, confused Makka snuggled up to his front little spoon style. Mentally... How did he feel mentally? Yuuri tried to come up with an answer but it was difficult in all the brain fog.

"I don't know yet," Was what he settled on eventually.

Phichit nodded and looked to the side, clicking around on his computer apparently. He scrolled for a moment. "Do you have a therapist there already? I know you had one in Hasetsu but that was pretty generalized, wasn't it?"

"No, I've been doing pretty good since I moved here."

"I'll get you one," Yakov said. Yuuri blinked at him then said "Thank you," then looked at the phone. "Yakov says he'll get me one."

Phichit smiled. "I heard, good. Thanks Yakov!"

Yakov grunted. Yuuri wasn't too sure how to relay that to Phichit, but Phichit didn't seem to care. He was already clicking around on his computer again.

"I've got some things I need to shuffle around first, damn me for deciding to take online classes, but the moment I've got that cleared up I'll be on the first plane out there, okay?"

Yuuri waved a hand. "Phichit, no, please don't put yourself ou-"

"Yuuri. Sweety. Seriously? Are you being for real right now?"

Phichit now looked very unimpressed, his smile hard and sharper than his eyeliner. "Don't you dare pull that bull with me. I know for a fact that Chris is packing to head over there and Minako's debating it too-"

Yuuri sat up in alarm and winced as his head spun. "Since when do you have Minako's number?!"

"Since always. Anyways. Back to the point. You'd do the same for me. Don't pretend otherwise. I'd be putting myself out MORE by staying here and worrying about your oblivious yet delicious backside, you got me? No, never mind, I'm gonna book a flight right now before you can pull some top tier malarkey."

Opening his mouth to say something, Yuuri paused, shut it, then opened it again.

"What does malarkey mean?" He asked. He hadn't heard that one before.

Yuuri wasn't sure where he was at emotionally speaking at the moment, he barely even knew where he was at physically speaking the brain fog was so intense, but one thing he did know for sure was that he felt loved. Loved, and warm, and-and so intensely grateful for it. There were people, so many people, ready to hold him up, ready to support him. Yuuri hadn't always understood this.

He understood it now.

"It's another word for bullshit, or, like, silly behaviour." Phichit lit up. "I learned it on Tumblr!"

Charges were brought against him for excessive force then just as quickly dropped. The restaurant’s security footage did show everything - if Yuuri hadn’t cooperated for the most part, the chances of the charges actually sticking were higher. Only the one man who Yuuri had known for the Belle mask died - Dmitri Sokolov. Mostly because Yuuri had shot him in the head, of course. The others had survived, even Ariel. Their little group had killed three people in the bank they’d tried to rob. Ariel had been wounded when the bank manager pulled a gun of his own.

Expert testimony certified that it was fully possible Sokolov had pulled the trigger himself in the struggle, when the defense team tried again to put Yuuri on trial even with the charges dropped. At least they hadn’t put him in the box. Cage. Whatever. The footage was grainy and made the little details of their struggle largely indistinct. Nobody testified to the contrary.

“I don’t recall pulling the trigger,” Yuuri said with special care to his accent, hands clasped tight in his lap, just as their legal team had told him to do.

“But it is possible YOU killed that man, is it not?”

“Objection, defense is asking leading questions.”

They said the fact that he only became aggressive after they shot Victor, that his prior shots had been non-lethal, that he hadn’t even bothered with further wounding an injured man, that the moment he thought he’d incapacitated the robbers he’d gone straight to tending Victor’s injury, all proved he was acting as a devoted husband in protection of his spouse. He’d done his best in an untenable situation, they said. He couldn’t be blamed for anything except, perhaps, saving lives. Since the charges involved murder, it was a jury trial. The jury didn’t disagree. Within the week the papers reported that Yuuri had been pardoned.

Ivan Nikitin, Chad Kuzmin, and Konstantin Adoratsky had not been. Yuuri put the length of their sentences entirely out of his mind. He tried to put the whole event entirely out of his mind. It got hard to talk. He picked up his teenage habit of smoking again, something he’d managed to kick when he’d been broker than pennies in Detroit. His family was gonna kill him when they found out.

But the nicotine calmed him down, worked even faster and harder than pork cutlet bowls, and if there was one thing Yuuri was right now, it was stressed. He needed… something. Anything. They didn’t sell his brand, Mari’s brand, in St. Petersburg. It didn’t matter. He was disappointed in himself. He decided not to care. He did forget to mention it to Victor, however, even as he went through the motions of keeping the JSF up to date.

Yuri’s birthday party had still managed to be a lovely affair, but only with a lot of willful determination to leave all the angst at the door.

There had been some fear initially that his sponsors and endorsements would drop him. They hadn’t, largely in thanks, Yuuri didn’t doubt, to Roman Orlov’s impassioned defense of his character. They were friends now. Yuuri babysat for them in the afternoon sometimes. Their little girl, Nikita, loved Yuri and was a darling, very easy to entertain as long as she had something to colour or draw on, though her mother Anna had grimaced and said she didn’t especially like Disney movies anymore. But yes. Something about how Yuuri hadn’t hesitated to put himself at risk if it meant protecting Roman’s wife and daughter and, of course, young star Yuri Plisetsky.

Somehow, that’d actually drawn the brands in.

Yuuri didn’t get it, but he knew better than to refuse sponsorships and endorsements these days, at least if they were halfway decent. He had a lot to thank Hasetsu for and his family especially. If his parents couldn’t retire comfortably with Yutopia a gleaming spectacle around them, Yuuri had failed. It meant sending them a significant sum of money regularly - or rather, sending it to Mari so she could pressure their parents into accepting it or using it on them and the onsen covertly, because they’d refuse otherwise. Mari had no problems accepting his money. Something about a Baby Brother Tax that was “usually paid for with noogies and pranks and shit but you were so goddamn delicate growing up I didn’t even dar-Yuuri, no, come on, I’m joking. …Maybe I shouldn’t have put that in the past tense.” Either way it worked, and it meant Mari got to do the arguing, which she enjoyed significantly more than Yuuri did. Everyone won.

Yuuri gingerly closed the velcro strap of the brace against Victor’s back then kissed the lovely cervicis of Victor’s nape. “Does that feel okay, love?”

It’d been a long day of shooting for Moschino, so busy Yuuri hadn’t even managed to sneak in a cigarette break, leaving him anxious and jittery. They wanted him on their runway for some bizarre reason even despite Yuuri’s height and thighs. He still didn’t know what to make of that and why they wanted him instead of, say, his more-beautiful-than-the-stars-in-the–night-sky and very leggy husband. Victor hadn’t even blinked and told the representative they’d get back to her after checking on a few things, but they were immensely flattered and tempted. Yuuri mostly appreciated being given time to process everything. There was a lot to process these days.

Plus side, being in Milan was helping him practice his Italian. Also plus side, Victor was sitting in front of him in naught but loose sweatpants and a very strappy shoulder brace. He wondered if it was wrong to appreciate the visual, given what had caused the latter, but it was hard to ignore the similarity between the structure of the brace and the chest straps those hot K-Pop guys used, or the visuals he’d seen of chesty gladiators. Not to mention the way it accentuated Victor’s body. Should he feel bad about this? It was hard to tell, given his husband’s beauty and Yuuri’s own natural talent for feeling guilt and shame at any given opportunity. It was a little hard not to be flustered either way, but Victor often left him flustered, so maybe it was okay.

Victor turned to look at him, taking Yuuri’s hand and kissing his knuckles. “That feels perfect, my bunny. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Yuuri managed a wan smile. “Do you think you’ll be needing any pain killers tonight?”

“No,” Victor sighed, clenching and unclenching his hand a few times. “It’s not bad enough for that tonight and I can’t stand the idea of getting addicted to those things. I think the physio is really helping.”

“Good.” Yuuri sighed, nuzzling his cheek into Victor’s warm back. “Good, I’m glad.”

Victor’s thumb was tracing his nailbeds. “Were you still going to call Phichit?”

“No, not tonight I don’t think. If I do, I'll spill about the whole runway thing and then he won’t give me a choice, I’ll have to do it.” Yuuri managed a weak chuckle, using his free hand to reach for the bottle of his own new medication.

He looked at the label. Trazadone. An antidepressant that was also used as a sleeping aid. The dosage was very low. It gave him strange dreams, sometimes, but it got him to sleep reliably and the dreams were never nightmares, so he’d take it. The first few weeks after the restaurant… hadn’t been easy. Especially those days and nights where Victor had been in the hospital. Yuuri had been discharged into Yakov’s care the same day with several stitches, prescriptions, and orders to bring him straight back if there were any sudden cognitive declines, but it had taken Victor a week to be released. He’d missed Yuri’s birthday party, after a sort. They’d held a large portion of it in his hospital room.

The bullet had fortunately, miraculously, missed the major blood vessels, but the same couldn’t be said of Victor’s nerve endings and clavicle. The neuropathy was minor, most of the time, and he’d regained most of his range of motion by now. It’d pretty soundly taken Victor out of the running for Worlds, though, effectively retiring him earlier than they’d planned.

Yuuri had been disappointed and worried about how Victor would take it, but his husband was just as alive and in love with life as he ever was these days, taking every new morning with a deep breath of air and a gigantic smile that never read as false. Yuuri hadn’t been disqualified from World’s or disowned by the JSF or FFKK either, somehow, so. They at least had that to focus on. Their early ideas for his routines had pivoted significantly. Yuri’s probably had, too.

Yuri had suggested with a pithy comment, once, that Yuuri should do his exhibition skate to We Both Reached for the Gun from the Chicago soundtrack, a movie Yuuri had introduced him to when they’d been relaxing before their final skate at last season’s GPF and one he himself had discovered while living in Detroit. Yuuri had tried to laugh. He’d not succeeded. Everyone had seemed pretty awkward about it.

It was just too close to what happened for comfort, the idea of shining that kind of spotlight on the incident sent Yuuri into a nervous cold sweat, especially because, “I meant to kill him.”

He felt Victor stiffen, spooned to his side, his head pillowed on Yuuri’s chest. Yuuri didn’t pause, the backs of his fingers continuing to sweep up and down Victor’s downy nape.

“They said I couldn’t even see him, through the concussion, my nearsightedness. The blood. But I could. I kicked him so I could get his head in range cus the gun just wasn’t-I couldn’t otherwise. I thought he was going to kill me and then you. I.”

Yuuri stared at the dark of the ceiling. In the daylight it was a white and cream demure coffered ceiling. At night it was a streak of pallid gray.

“I was angry.” Yuuri’s voice nearly shook just remembering the intensity of that rage. He’d never felt anything like it before in his entire life. “They hurt you. They hurt you so bad. And if they’d of found him, they would have hurt Yura too, and I. I was angry. So angry.”

Victor breathed, in and out, in and out. After a moment his fingers trailed down Yuuri’s stomach over to the new puffy scar on his hip. The wound had been too deep not to leave one. It’d grazed the bone.

“I’d wondered,” Victor said at last, then took in a breath and shifted onto his good arm to lift himself up, bracing it over Yuuri’s head. Yuuri didn’t hesitate to meet his husband’s eye, or to kiss him back when Victor leaned in to give his lips to him.

“Yuuri, you can’t tell anyone,” Victor whispered when he pulled away. “Nobody, okay? My kitten? Nobody. Not even Yura.”

“There’s no way he doesn’t suspect.”

“It doesn’t matter. If you don’t say anything, then nobody else needs to say anything. So don’t, okay? Yuuri, I-”

Victor closed his eyes, his brow clenching together tightly. He shook his head. “I can’t lose you-”

“Sshh,” Yuuri hushed, rising onto his own elbow as his other hand cupped the back of Victor’s warm neck. He pressed a kiss to his husband’s lips, then another, then another, then Victor pushed him to the bed and they rolled until Yuuri was rising up on Victor’s hips, pelvis to pelvis. They kissed again.

“I’m here,” Yuuri whispered into Victor’s mouth. “For as long as you’ll have me, my Vitya, I promise. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. I won’t say anything. Not to noone.”

“That’s my good boy,” Victor breathed, reaching up to trace a line over the small of Yuuri’s back through his shirt, his finger leaving a hot trail behind it.

Yuuri withdrew a shuddering breath. “You really don’t hate me? For- …For-”

“No, no, my Yuuri, I could never.” Victor kissed him. “Not you, never you.”

Yuuri could cry with relief. He’d held onto that thought so tightly for so long now it’d been eating at him kilogram by kilogram, wasting him away as he tried to come to terms with what he’d done, with the life he’d taken, with the pain he’d spread.

“I’d do it again,” Yuuri said through trembling lips instead, rolling his hips down. Victor’s body was already answering him, calling to his weight, and it made his heart soar. “For you, I’d do it again. In a heartbeat. Oh Vitya. I love you. I love you. I’d go to hell for you.”

“Only if you take me with you,” Victor chided, kissing down his neck, his shoulder, his good hand drifting down Yuuri’s back to slip under his new teddy bear Moschino shirt and into his underwear. “Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow, my star, my sweet, don’t you dare.” His fingers clawed in deep, seizing him, clinging to him. “Stay with me.”

“Always, love,” Yuuri breathed, kissing Victor’s ear, reaching down to make quick work of his husband’s sweatpants drawstrings. “Always.”

They made love, for it was certainly that, in a desperate rush that left Yuuri with scrapes on his hip and Victor with livid cherries marking up his throat, then they fell asleep, entwined so closely Yuuri could barely remember whose flesh was whose.

People looked at him differently, Yuuri couldn’t help but notice at Nationals, after that. They looked at him like his fingers were blades and his eyes the bullets, like he kept a pistol in his glovebox and rat poison with his heels, like they were… intrigued by it. There was fear in the speculation, perhaps, but mostly, it interested them. Yuuri couldn’t understand it but there was one benefit.

For the first time, more people were watching Yuuri than they watched Victor and when they did look at Victor and saw that Yuuri saw them looking they bowed their eyes and turned their heads away. Fingers stroking the silk of his husband’s tie, up and down, up and down, Yuuri watched another avaricious gaze flutter away and leaned in all the closer to his husband, insides soft, heart tight, his blood hot. Victor was his. Yuuri would kill to keep him. Everybody knew it and, more, they respected it in a way they never had before.

Yuuri laid his head on Victor’s shoulder, eyes on the people around them.

It pleased him.

#rated m

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