Archive of Our Own

Despite exhaustive research on the subject, little is yet known about the mechanism which allows transference of consciousness, and much of the knowledge that we have on the subject comes in the form of mere conjecture. For instance, MRIs taken at the moment of transference have shown that, for a period of five to thirty seconds, all brain activity ceases. This would indicate that the transference is not necessarily instantaneous, which in turn may indicate that consciousness must actually 'travel' between minds. Because it isn't possible to anticipate how far away mates will be from one another at the moment of transference, and because the inherent unpredictability of transference has made repeated trials of most experiments impossible or financially unfeasible, it hasn't been possible to discover if distance plays a factor in the length of inactivity—a time which is referred to by specialists as the 'transference gap.'

Likewise, it is unknown why consciousness will only return to its rightful owner during mouth-to-mouth contact. For many years, it was assumed that it was merely consciousness reasserting itself through the first orifice presented—it is, after all, a ritual in most societies to kiss one's mate upon finding them. However, after some research, it was discovered that only oral contact served to reintroduce consciousness. Individual experiments have tested mouth-to-ear, ear-to-ear, and mouth-to-nose contact with no apparent exchange of consciousness. It must be the mouth.

It is unknown how long consciousnesses can remain out of their rightful bodies. In Western society, the transference is used as a means to an end—once one's mate is found, consciousness is reexchanged immediately. This often happens after only a few days or, in many cases, hours. However, in many areas of the world, mates remain switched for months or longer as part of various rituals and ceremonies. The traditional Hindu wedding ceremony ends with the newlyweds exchanging consciousness with their first kiss as spouses. In certain parts of rural China, a mated pair may spend up to a year becoming acquainted with their partner's body before finally meeting and returning to their own. Russian Orthodox, who were once known for their speedy weddings—very famously, Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna were married only nineteen hours after their transference—have, in the past, chosen to remain switched until their wedding night, believing it to be an important part of consummation.

Few things are concrete about transference. Many consider it to be spiritual in nature; others think it a simple indication of maturity. Of those things that science has managed to pin down into concise answers, most are widely known and considered, generally, to be true. For instance:

59 percent of mated pairs are born within one-hundred miles of each other. 78 percent are born within three-hundred miles of each other. Only 1.3 percent of the population is born outside of 1000 miles from their mate. This means that, statistically, you are far more likely to be mated to someone within your own country, who speaks your language, and has a similar belief system to yours. This may be due to evolutionary drives.

It is not known what triggers transference. Only that it has something to do with chemical changes associated with the full maturation of the brain. We know that transference can only occur once both mates are mentally mature. Typically, this occurs between ages 23 and 25. Those mates who mature last are known as 'instigating partners.' This being, of course, because it is their mind which instigates the transfer.

It is extremely rare for mates to be more than ten years apart in age. In fact, there are only a dozen or so confirmed cases of this.

Although little is known about transference, it is widely considered the single most important moment in an adult's life. It is the definitive sign of maturity in most cultures, and has been exalted by religions worldwide as having deeply holy connotations. It is very likely that science, at least as we know it today, will never be able to fully explain why or how it happens. However, unlike much of the unknown, this one mystery that the world has never feared.

- Excerpt from Study of the Soul by Doctor Nia Johnson

The thing is, Viktor never even noticed that he hadn't transferred until he was twenty-six, and suddenly realized that he was too old to be the instigating partner. He woke up one day and realized that he'd neglected to care about that one person whose life fit into his, whose soul would someday call out to him so loudly that Viktor's soul fled to their body to be closer.

"I mean, it's not like I…don't care," Viktor tells Chris, prostrate, miserable, little more than an athlete-shaped puddle on top of the comforter of Chris' Sochi hotel suite. Chris is in the mirror, straightening his cufflinks, and Viktor is probably catching the plague from the duvet cover. "I just never thought about it. It's not the sort of thing people actually…purposefully think about. Is it?"

"Think about your current state of affairs, my friend, and then answer that question for yourself." Chris crosses from the mirror to the bathroom door, knocks gently with one knuckle and coos, "Mon chou!" through the door.

"Did you just call him your cabbage?" Viktor grumbles. Markus and Chris talk to each other in a dizzying mixture of French, German and English that Viktor can seldom follow. Chris transferred shortly after last year's World Championships, and he and Markus had the entire off-season to get to know each other. The wedding is planned for April.

Chris doesn't respond; he disappears when Markus comes out of the bathroom and they slide past each other through the doorway with ease. Markus replaces Chris in front of the mirror, and glances over his own shoulder at Viktor, still languishing. "Oh, Viktor. Are you going to be this way all night?" His accent his thicker than Chris', and much more German.

"No," Viktor says, as he does nothing at all to alter his current state. "I'm just—well. You were the reciprocating partner. You were waiting—and you didn't know when it was going to happen—"

"It happens to half the population of the world, Vitya!" Chris calls from the bathroom. "I know you're under the impression that you created beautiful misery, honey, but you really didn't."

"Did you think about it?" Viktor asks Markus, finally sitting up from his sprawl. "When you passed the age of instigation, did you start to worry? That it wouldn't happen? I didn't even think about it until…"

He knows why he thought about it. It was in part passing that unspoken age marker that meant there was now an 'indefinite' stamp on the length of his wait for his soul mate. But the realization was ushered in not by something within himself—rather, it came with watching Yakov and Lilia walk very suddenly out of each other's lives two summers ago, and the gold ring on Yakov's finger still remain.

"What happened?" Viktor whispered, on the day he found Yakov three sheets to the wind in some back alley pub, slumped over the bar and muttering to himself. A bartender had used Yakov's phone to call, and when Viktor asked how the bartender knew to contact him, she said, "He has you listed under family. From the contact photo, I assumed you were his son."

"It's a lie, Vitya," Yakov said. "Soul mates—phah! Only one more person who will let you down. I give forty years to that woman. Over half my life, Vitya, and suddenly she—she needs time alone? For what!"

Viktor took him home and tucked him in, left a cup of water on Yakov's bedside and a bottle of aspirin within hand's reach.

"I don't understand it," Yakov murmured as Viktor stood in the doorway, on his way out. He would sleep in the living room that night, trying to ignore the mournful noises coming from a person he'd always thought of as utterly unflappable. "How could I be her soul mate? How could I be the one meant for her, when I couldn't even give her the one thing she ever asked of me? We tried for years, Vitya. Years. A couple of times, we thought she was…but no, it never happened."

"Oh," Viktor whispered to himself, and slowly closed the door.

He and Yakov never talked about it.

"We've all been where you are," Markus sighs presently, perching himself on the corner of the bed. "There isn't a person on this planet who hasn't thought, at some point, what if I'm alone here. The truth is, the chances of that are so low—"

"But possible," Viktor mumbles.

"It's one in a hundred million, Viktor." Markus reaches over and pats Viktor's knee, then rises from the bed again. "Now come on. There's an open bar downstairs with your name on it."

"Yes! Blind drunkenness. That is what my friend Viktor needs." Chris sweeps back into the room and smacks a kiss onto Markus' cheek. "You're a genius, my darling."

Markus, who is an editor at a major Zurich newspaper and whose only one-on-one experience with athletes before meeting Christophe was through interviews, chuckles under his breath and briefly adopts an expression that Viktor has come to think of as his I don't understand figure skaters face.

Chris hauls Viktor by the hand forcefully to his feet and shuttles him to the doorway, hands firm on his shoulders. Viktor straightens his tie and tries to rearrange his hair, and Chris says, "We're athletes, Vitya. We peak at twenty-two and retire at twenty-nine. We're too superstitious and most of us are too busy ruining our knees to wax poetic over daydreams about transference. You'll have plenty of time to moon over your soul mate when you actually meet them."

Viktor grumbles something unintelligible and swings his limbs around to dislodge Chris' hands. Chris laughs and says something to Markus in German that they both chuckle at as they walk down the hall towards the elevator bank. Viktor feels his inner Yuri Plisetsky attempting to rise through his mouth and say something snotty. He manages to hold it at bay until he gets downstairs and gets a drink in his hand, at which point the urge goes away and he feels mostly normal again.

That night, a Japanese figure skater drapes himself over Viktor and invites him to his family home in Japan, where he assures Viktor that his parents will be very welcoming. He croons drunken sweetness in the vague direction of Viktor's heart and tells Viktor that his twenty-third birthday is nigh, and that he's terrified to meet his soul mate. Somewhere in the middle of his inebriated ramblings, he asks Viktor to be his coach. It takes all of Viktor's self control not to agree at that very moment, because this man is beautiful and moves like sin and sacrament all at once.

When Viktor asks Christophe, much later, who that man was—although not in so many words, or any words at all really, because Chris freely volunteers the information upon seeing the still-shocked look on Viktor's face hours later—Chris tells him, "Yuuri Katsuki is an enigma among men, Vitya," and Viktor isn't sure how to take that, so he chooses instead to fall asleep half-propped up on the settee in Chris and Markus' hotel room.

Viktor had a long list of things that might happen when he up and moved his entire life to Japan, but he doesn't think the coldness of Japan's top figure skater was one of them. Yuuri is a shy yet formidable entity lurking on the edges of rooms, sliding through on silent feet and only speaking when spoken to. Viktor would think Yuuri didn't like him at all if it hadn't been for that night, months ago, when Yuuri hung himself around Viktor's neck and pressed his red face into Viktor's chest and begged him to do the very thing he's just done. That is, come to Japan.

But when Yuuri is on the ice, Viktor remembers why he came here. That, more than anything, is why he weathers rejection after rejection. That, and the pressing urge to be close to this man, as close as possible, even if as close as possible means on either side of any given room.

Now, the added variable of Yuri Plisetsky is altering the barely-there status quo into something that is even more challenging to navigate.

"We thought he was your soul mate, you know," Yura tells him when they're alone, Yuuri being off at Minako's studio for the day. Viktor has been forcing the thought of Yuuri in tights out of his mind for hours. It isn't conductive thinking.

"Excuse me?" Viktor mutters.

Yura, who's sitting on a bench gulping water like it's the only thing keeping him alive—Viktor is somewhat satisfied that he's gotten him to sweat—swipes a hand across his face and says, "The piggy. We thought he was your soul mate."

"Don't call him that," Viktor snaps without meaning to, or at least without meaning it so harshly. By this point, he knows it's fault that Yuuri has been visited upon by such an unflattering nickname, and he's been coping with the realization badly. His lighthearted teasing about Yuuri's endearing post-season weight gain had been the victim of mistranslation and culture shock. Yura has adopted it into his sometimes cruel teenage vernacular, and every time it sets Viktor's teeth on edge. When they speak in Russian, Yura doesn't even bother to use the word Viktor had at first; the cute one, the one that Viktor had thought would translate into a sweet nothing rather than a grave insult.

Yura shows Viktor his tongue and reaches down to tighten his skates. Viktor, curious, drums his fingers on top of the boards and after a moment asks, "What did you mean? You thought he was my soul mate?"

"Well, what did you expect us to think when you just up and went to Japan because of some guy?" Yura demands, frowning like it was Viktor who instigated this vein of conversation, like he resents the very idea of it. "Who even does that? I mean, yeah that's really far to transfer, but that was the only reason any of us could come up with. Aside from you being a fucking lunatic, that is."

"If Yuuri and I were soul mates, it would be the farthest apart a pair of soul mates had ever been born." Viktor looks down to straighten his gloves, mostly so he doesn't have to look at Yura's face. "Yuuri was born in Fukuoka—I was born in St. Petersburg. Seventy-four hundred kilometers. That's almost sixteen hundred farther than the record holders." What Viktor doesn't say is that the technological age has brought with it a generation of soul mates transferring further and further. The current record holders were only discovered the previous September, born in Brazil and South Africa.

There is something far too knowing in Yura's eyes when he says, "So you've thought about it."

"There are seven billion people on the planet. Three billion of those people are unmated. The odds of me just happening to meet the person who I—"

"But you've thought about it," Yura says with the kind of bullheaded determination unique to those in their second decade of life.

"Yes." Viktor flattens his palm against the board. Yura jumps. "Yes, briefly, I thought about it." By briefly, Viktor means Often, obsessively, and even in my sleep. "But I don't, anymore. I can't. I won't."

"Why, because you're afraid?"

"Because it's disrespectful, Yura." Viktor points a finger between Yura's furrowed brows, eyes usually so full of green adolescent envy gone wide with incredulity and shock. He jabs his finger to make his point, like he told himself he would never do when Yakov did it to him. "There's a person out there who actually is my soul mate. I have a responsibility to them. A loyalty. I can't allow myself to…It's just not done, Yura. Someday, you'll understand." Someday, when he is not fifteen and irreverent and so far away from that point in his life when, any day at any time, he could be transported to someone else's body, it would dawn on him. It would dawn on him like it had Viktor.

"That's so stupid," Yura grumbles. He reties his other boot and mutters, "It's so stupid." His hair flies over his eyes when he flings his head back up. "We're supposed to spend our entire lives tiptoeing around another person whose face and name we don't even know? What if they're ugly?"

"There are worse things, Yura," Viktor mutters. He's almost glad that a physically unattractive soul mate is the worst thing Yura can think of. He pushes away from the boards and says, "No more talking. Your break is over; I want twenty minutes of suicides."

"What?" Yura demands. "That's so not fair! You're just mad because the piggy—"

"Suicides, now." Viktor rears up that tone that Yakov taught him, the one that booms from the chest and feels like it could level a room.

Yura glares at him across the dinner table that night, sitting next to the inscrutable Mari Katsuki and agitatedly shoving tender slices of beef into his mouth. Next to Viktor, Yuuri is poking at a bowl of green beans with an unreadable expression on his face, still wearing the soft heather blue shirt he went to the ballet studio in. He smells like sweat, masculine. Viktor lets himself think about waking up in that body, because the thoughts are going to come anyway be it now or later. He allows it for exactly ten seconds before forcing it from his mind.

Viktor wakes up because Makkachin clamors over him. A paw to the kidney will wake even the soundest sleepers. He grunts in dismay and wonders why his poodle has forsaken him, then rises to let Makkachin out of the bedroom before he wears a hole pacing on the tatami. Makkachin trots into the shadow at the other end of the hall. Viktor considers for a moment before following. It's just before dawn and he and Makkachin find Yuuri sitting out in the back garden, knees pulled up to his chest. Makkachin goes to him and Viktor sees the exact moment when Yuuri, correctly assuming that Viktor is not far behind his dog, realizes that he is no longer alone.

"Bad dreams?" Viktor asks, choosing to lean against the doorway for the moment instead of intrude too far into Yuuri's space. His plans are to leave if Yuuri wants him to, and then spend the next hour trying not to let his heart break.

Yuuri, although obviously wary—Why, Viktor wants to ask, why are you so afraid of me when all I want is to see you smile the way you did in Sochi—doesn't tell him to go away. He says, "Not…bad dreams, no," and scoots over just slightly on the bench. Viktor takes this as the invitation it is and sits down next to him with the care of one handling explosives.

"Odd dreams?" Viktor suggests, because sometimes those can be just as disquieting as nightmares. Viktor used to dream about walking barefoot down the center of an ice rink while his mother floated above him. There was nothing particularly scary about it, but it bothered him in ways that few things ever have.

The way Yuuri tilts his head is an agreeing one, and Viktor waits patiently for him to explain.

"I'm standing on a beach I've never been to before," Yuuri says softly, tracing his finger over the knee of his pajama pants. They, like him, look soft. "There are sea gulls. Lots of them. There's someone standing down the beach. I can't see their face. They hold out their hand to me, and I start walking towards them, but the seagulls take flight and I can't see anything. By the time the seagulls are all gone, I can't see the other person anymore—they've vanished."

Viktor, in a carefully neutral tone, asks, "How long have you been having this dream?"

"A few months," Yuuri replies. His body language is still closed off and he still won't look Viktor in the eye, but this is one of the longest conversations Viktor has had with him that wasn't about figure skating or figure skating-adjacent, and he's going to milk it for all its worth. As long as Yuuri keeps talking, Viktor will keep listening. "Maybe…maybe since last year. I've been having it once or twice a week, recently."

"Hmm," Viktor hums, trying to sound casual and contemplative as every brain cell screams at him in unison. He almost manages to sound like a normal person when he says, "It sounds like a transference dream, to me," even though his heart is trying to beat through his chest and his toes are going numb.

"That's what my mother told me," Yuuri says, quiet and perhaps a little sad, not like one should sound when they are contemplating meeting their soulmate for the first time. That it might happen in the near future, judging by the nature of the dream and how long he's been having it. That someday soon, probably within the next few months, Yuuri will have that dream and wake up in his soulmate's body. Yuuri is twenty-three, and will soon meet the person who's biologically predisposed to be the most important in his life. He's the instigating partner.

"You're the right age for it," is all Viktor can make himself say, as his palms sweat and he refuses to let himself think there's a chance, there's a chance…

"I know," Yuuri murmurs. Makkachin has found something interesting at the other end of the yard and is frantically pawing at it as they watch. Viktor's chuckle comes out slightly hysterical. "I just thought I would have…more time."

"More time for what?" Viktor asks. Yuuri's hair blows into his eyes; Viktor's fingertips itch with the want to push it back. It's soft, from what he remembers.

Yuuri's shoulders move uneasily, like he doesn't quite want to answer the question. He eventually says, "To make myself better. For them."

Viktor's jaw physically drops. How? How can this beautiful creature not see that everything about him, including his flaws, is entirely loveable? Does he not know that his soul mate, when he meets them, will inevitably realize that they've done the equivalent of winning the lottery? Unmated twenty-somethings the world over are waiting for the day that they might wake up in Yuuri Katsuki's body. Viktor knows this because Hiroko has told him stories about school boys and girls giving her son chocolate on certain days of the year. He came home with them clutched in his hands and told his mother that they were given to him by classmates out of obligation, whatever that's supposed to mean. Hiroko had a glint in her eye and a curve to her lips when she told Viktor that, in Japanese tradition, you gave chocolate to the person you hoped would one day be your soul mate.

"I want to buy him so much chocolate," Viktor had whispered against Makkachin's fur later, alone in his bed and surrounded by pillows and blankets and poodle, feeling his biological clock scream at him. Soul mate! Soul mate! "I would buy him all the chocolate. The best chocolate. He would get chubby and I would kiss his belly and we would be so, so happy."

Makkachin had pressed a cold nose to Viktor's chest and huffed in a way that might have meant I know, or maybe Please stop squeezing me, I can't breathe.

"Yuuri," Viktor lets himself say, because his soul will not rest until he does, "You're perfect. Just like this."

Yuuri's head swings around, cinnamon-sugar eyes huge.

"Your soul mate will think you're perfect, no matter what," Viktor tells him. "It's biology." What he doesn't tell him is that, if Yuuri's soul mate doesn't think so, doesn't meet Yuuri and immediately feel the need to shower him in love and affection, to kiss his hair and his eyelids and his ears and his shoulders, Viktor will show up and gladly take that job. Viktor will swoop in like vengeance personified and curbstomp whatever reckless motherfucker has the guts to reject Yuuri Katsuki, sweep Yuuri off his feet and marry him two days later in the tradition of his people.

All of this goes through his head as he stares at a precious little pinprick mole on Yuuri's shoulder, revealed by the gape of his stretched collar. By the time he emerges from his daydream, Yuuri's eyes have returned to their normal size.

"I just find it hard to imagine that…I'm enough," Yuuri whispers, and his eyes drop. "It's like—there are seven billion people on the planet. Wouldn't it be disappointing for someone to realize that I'm their soul mate? When there are so many more beautiful or talented or…better people in the world?" Yuuri sighs and picks a thread on his pants, oblivious to Viktor trying to hold in screams of Marry me! We'll move to the countryside and have six children! I'll make you smile every day! "I don't know. I guess maybe…well. I've always thought it would be so much easier if everyone just got to choose who they were mated with, instead of just…having to let biology decide. I think it would be kinder to a lot of people."

"It would," Viktor agrees after a moment. "I think…yes, I think it would."

There is someone out there whose soul will one day call out to Viktor's so loudly that his own soul rushes to their body to be closer. On that day, Viktor will either have to begin living a lie, or kiss that person on the mouth and then, in the same breath, explain to them that he's allowed himself to fall in love with a man whom he was born half a world away from. A man with beautiful eyes and sad lips, whose life Viktor wants to be in for as long as he can. He will have to tell his own soul mate that he has betrayed them before he even met them, and hope that somewhere within themselves they will find the courage to forgive him.

"I'm curious about something," Viktor says as they watch Yura chase the triplets around the rink. Ostensibly, he's trying to get them off the ice because he needs to practice, but it's been going on for ten minutes now and Yura is hardly bothering to hide his grin anymore as Axel, Lutz and Loop smoothly evade his reaching arms.

"Hmm?" Yuuri mumbles. He's watching the antics on the ice with the smallest, sweetest curve on his lips. He's sitting close, so close that Viktor can feel the warmth of his thigh where they're barely not-touching, and Viktor wants him so badly.

"Yuuko is your age, isn't she?" Viktor reaches forward and hangs his arms over the boards, mostly because it takes his shoulder over the gap between them to press against Yuuri's. Yuuri shifts to accommodate the small amount of weight Viktor is now resting on him, then settles.

"A year and a half older," Yuuri corrects.

"Which would make her twenty-five now," Viktor says, "and…what, nineteen? When the triplets were born?"

Yuuri turns his head slightly, and there's a pensive look on his face that has the potential to turn fiercely protective if given the slightest impetus. He clicks his tongue and says, "I think I know what you're trying to ask. Maybe I should thank you for not asking her. Most people do."

"You don't have to answer the question if you don't want to," Viktor assures, softening his voice to match Yuuri's. Yuuko is standing clean across the rink filming her daughters on her phone while her husband booms laughter next to her. It's unlikely that she could hear anything over the distance and Takashi's voice, but there's no harm in assuring that the conversation stays in only the air he and Yuuri share. "I would understand. I don't mean any offense."

"No, I know that." Yuuri fiddles with the zipper of his jacket, looks up and squints across the rink at Yuuko. "It's just, um, she's my childhood best friend. I grew up with her. I'm very—well. I know that you…I trust you with her. I know you wouldn't do or say anything to hurt her."

"Oh," Viktor whispers, the words squeezing their way out of his throat without his permission. "Thank you."

He trusts me! He trusts me! Screams Viktor's heart, beating wildly at his ribcage.

Yuuri's lips twitch up in response, but he's distracted by whatever words he has yet to say. Viktor waits with his breath held and pressing into his throat as Yuuri gathers his thoughts.

"She and Takeshi…" Yuuri starts, stops, and starts again. "They somehow always knew. Neither of them can remember when they first met, and they always—there was a connection there." He isn't quite looking at Viktor's face. His eyes are fixed at a point just past Viktor's head, possibly his ear. "I remember her telling me that she'd never known anyone who…understood her the way he does. They've always been exactly what each other needed. I was jealous of them when I was young, because I'd never had a friend like that, but when I got older, I realized…well." He sighs and returns his eyes to the kids zooming around on the ice. Yura has caught up to Loop and has her under the arms. She's screaming what Viktor thinks might be Faster! as he streaks across the rink. Viktor thinks about how Yura is closer in age to the triplets than he is to Viktor, and feels very old for a moment.

"They were going to wait until they knew, of course. But these things…sometimes, these things happen. They were young, and maybe reckless but they loved each other. You know—you know how it is. And after all that, they did turn out to be mates. They switched when the triplets were…four? Takeshi had barely reached transferring age, but it was a couple years ago now. They got married after. Legally, that is. They'd been calling each other husband and wife for years." Yuuri casts him a brief glance, full of some emotion. "It's—not legal. In Japan. To marry someone who isn't your soul mate."

"Not in Russia, either," Viktor murmurs. He isn't surprised that their conservative home countries share such antiquated laws.

"Yuuko told me she doesn't regret it," Yuuri tells him. Lutz and Axel shriek as Yura gains on them. "Even though people weren't…always kind to her. She doesn't regret it. How could she? They're her children."

Yuuko calls to her daughters, and they all three groan but begin slowly skating towards the exit closest to their mother. Viktor thinks she may have told them to come eat their lunch, or else that they have to get off the ice so practice can resume. Yura is panting against the boards, trying not to look like he's just had the time of his life. Viktor watches them, three little figures in pastels, and asks Yuuri, "Did you believe they were soul mates?"

Yuuri shrugs. "I had no reason not to."

"So do you believe that someone can…recognize their soul mate before they transfer?"

"Hmm…I believe…" Yuuri rises from the bench, tugs up his sweatpants in the back. Viktor's skin mourns the loss of Yuuri's warmth pressing against his side. Yuuri looks down at him, hair falling into his eyes, expression so earnest. "I believe that when you're connected to another person so closely that you share a soul, it's stupid to think that you wouldn't feel it. How can you not recognize part of yourself when they're standing right in front of you?"

"That's…I…yes." Viktor tries to untie his tongue, mouth suddenly arid. "You—I think you would know, yes."

Yuuri walks away and skates onto the ice and Viktor's soul screams after him, Do you know? Can you see me? I'm here, I'm here.

Yura leaves Japan as suddenly as he came and Viktor will only admit to himself that he misses the kid. He provided a buffer zone between Yuuri's panicky energy and Viktor's constant internalized pining, a source of liveliness, something that reminded Viktor of home and at the same time of all the reasons why he left. In his absence, Yura leaves a certain determination in both Viktor and Yuuri. Yuuri has gotten a taste of what he'll be up against, and Viktor is resolved to take Yuuri straight to the top.

It's over all of this that they form a bond. Yuuri doesn't have the raw natural talent and (almost arrogant) confidence of Yura, but what he does have is something that might be even better. Skill, discipline and stamina coupled with the driving need to prove himself and triumph above his own failures. Viktor watches him grow bolder before his very eyes, throwing himself with abandon into his newly-learned quad Salchows.

In the midst of it all, Yuuri starts laughing; starts having fun. Viktor's heart doesn't know what to do with itself, aside from melt into a puddle daily. This usually happens around the time that Viktor is staring up at his dark ceiling while clutching a pillow, wallowing in emotion and his own raging hormones like some teenager.

"Even I don't act like that," Yura had grumbled at him in disgust when he was still in Japan, watching Viktor languish. "And I'm actually fifteen. God, Viktor. Grow up."

"I hate it when you talk in Russian in front of me," Yuuri said mildly from across the room, neck-deep in Viktor's old skating outfits. That, in fact, had been the reason for Viktor's episode of the vapors. "It's rude."

"Viktor's an idiot," Yura snapped back—in Japanese, just to be pissy. Oddly enough, it was one of the only things he'd bothered to learn in Yuuri's mother tongue.

Yuuri looked up over his glasses and said, "Yes, and?"

"YUURI," Viktor screamed as he slid off the sofa. "YUURI, I'M DYING."

"How sad," Yuuri murmured, and continued sifting through layers of Lycra and organza.

As regionals approach, they stay at the Ice Castle later and later. Yuuri on Ice is coming together beautifully and Eros gets better daily, but Yuuri still needs an exhibition skate. Viktor is determined to see Yuuri on the podium at every possible competition in the coming season, and he will need an exhibition skate that echoes those ambitions. Something that says My name is Yuuri Katsuki, I am Japan's top figure skater. Look at me, I am beautiful.

"Something with that Viktor Nikiforov je ne sais quoi," Yuuri says, totally deadpan, but Viktor can tell he's being teased. Yuuri has started teasing him. Viktor pouts at him externally and, internally, is alive.

"I'll choreograph one from scratch," Viktor suggests at first. Viktor at all times has bits and pieces of no less than three routines floating around in his head. It would be easy to combine them into something pretty, something meant to woo a crowd and garner applause; something artistic for artistry's sake. "It may have to wait until after regionals, but it can be done."

Yuuri makes a noise; one of those nebulous sounds that somehow translate to entire concepts amongst native Japanese speakers. Viktor is familiar enough at this point to know this as a refusal, although he isn't sure if this is a Japanese-specific thing or a Yuuri-specific thing.

"I would rather focus my time on perfecting Eros and my free skate," he says, after noticing the irritated furrow of Viktor's brow. "Not that I don't appreciate the offer, but I would rather have good competition programs than a shiny new exhibition skate."

"Perhaps one of your competition skates from last year, then? You know them well."

Yuuri's refusal comes even faster. "I'd rather leave that portion of my career behind me.'

Viktor can understand the motivation there. It doesn't change the fact that Yuuri is waltzing into competition season with gold medal aspirations and no exhibition skate to speak of.

The solution comes in the eleventh hour, less than two weeks before they leave for Okayama. Viktor leaves Yuuri to warm up and comes back ten minutes later to find him skating the beginning step sequence of Stammi Vicino. It's easy to recognize his own routine, especially given that he had seen Yuuri skate it before. It's even easier to recognize it as the only logical option for Yuuri's exhibition skate.

Yuuri stops as soon as he notices Viktor standing against the boards—skidding to a halt just before Viktor knows there should have been a lutz. His voice echoes across the cavernous rink along with the scraping of his skates, "Sorry, I was—it was just—"

This is one of the many points at which Viktor has to hold in the confession constantly pressing against the back of his lips. How could this beautiful man not know that seeing him skate this program makes Viktor's heart pound madly with adoration? How could it not be beating a tattoo across his chest for all to see, I love Yuuri Katsuki, written in English and Cyrillic and Kanji and perhaps every other alphabet known to man?

"That's it," Viktor tells him. "That's your exhibition skate."

"Are you sure—"

"Positive."

Of course, Viktor is aware that having Yuuri skate his own routine, even as an exhibition skate, will be just a little bit like stamping PROPERTY OF VIKTOR NIKIFOROV across Yuuri's forehead in red ink. But once the thought enters his mind, it's there for good. The idea of it, of Yuuri skating the routine that Viktor has come to think of as his own soul's lament, is a deeply intoxicating one. Nothing Viktor does can dislodge it, and Yuuri never utters a single protest.

At the end of every practice, he and Yuuri go through the steps of Stammi Vicino several times. It's familiar but odd at the same time, to be dancing his own routine next to another person, teaching him the choreography. Given Yuuri's practice of the routine last season, and simply by virtue of it being his exhibition skate, it's by far the routine that needs the least rehearsal. It becomes a way to wind down after practice. They go through the step sequence, they take the jumps as doubles instead of triples and quads. It all goes leisurely. It feels good. Watching Yuuri dance his routine day after day is good; so good.

(Viktor starts having very pleasant dreams wherein he and Yuuri dance Stammi Vicino side-by-side before retiring to the locker room. In these dreams, Viktor kneels before Yuuri in a shadowy row of lockers and presses lips to stomach, lips to hips, lips to—

He wakes up aching, frustrated, lonely.)

"That was good," Viktor tells him when the sun no longer filters in through the windows, when both he and Yuuri have sweat at their collars and down their backs, when Yuuri is standing at center ice with his arms crossed over his heaving chest and the last strains of Stammi Vicino are fading. Yuuri relaxes from his stance and watches Viktor skate towards him from his observation perch at one end of the rink. A bead of sweat drips down his cheek like a tear. For one swooping, intense moment, Viktor wants to lick it off so badly that his mouth waters.

He reins himself in, of course, and says, "That was good, but let me show you something. Then we're done for the day." Not that there is much day left. The sun has been gone for hours; Hiroko has probably wrapped their dinner up and put it in the fridge again.

Yuuri straightens himself out and nods, turning an attentive gaze to Viktor even as his breath is still coming in exhilarated bursts. One of the various ways in which his determination to improve manifests is a hyper-focused attentiveness to direction. Viktor wonders if this is what Yakov always meant when he threw his arms about and cried, "Could you dedicate even half of your attention to this, Vitya?"

"Let's go back to the crossovers before the camel," Viktor says, and takes up a spot next to Yuuri so he knows that Viktor intends to go through it with him. "Get into the sit-spin as always, I'll tell you what to do from there."

Yuuri does so, gathering momentum with his crossovers and transitioning into the camel position, which Viktor follows him in, before kicking himself up into the air and landing in a spit spin. Viktor lands beside him and uses the momentum to circle him, watching his form, making sure he doesn't wobble. Viktor is rather confident in his ability to perform this part of the routine at this point, and generally has no complaints; it's the part that comes after which caught his attention.

"Alright," Viktor says, "come out of it. Slowly. This part is gentle. Do you remember how the music slows?"

"Yes," Yuuri says, slowing his spin and rising from it. Viktor watches his gaze fix on the empty bleachers. Yuuri learned this routine by copying Viktor from recordings on YouTube; Viktor has seen the videos, and they do indeed seem to suggest that he is focusing his attention on the bleachers, his fans, pointing at them in homage. It wasn't the crowd he was staring at.

"Pause," Viktor murmurs, and Yuuri holds the pose. Viktor tucks in close behind him and raises his hand just slightly, then presses a hand to his jaw to raise his gaze to the rafters. "The lyrics, do you know what they say here?"

"This story will vanish after tonight like the stars," Yuuri whispers.

"Yes," Viktor murmurs. He presses his hands to Yuuri's belly and back, adjusts his posture to almost impossible straightness; reaching, straining. "So where should we look, Yuuri?"

"The sky," Yuuri says. "The stars."

"Yes." The sweet and soft skin at the back of Yuuri's neck is so close. Viktor could tilt his head and—but no, it's not his place. Yuuri allows him this close as a coach, as someone he trusts himself with. Viktor takes in a deep breath and murmurs, "And now spin."

They turn, still pressed close, Viktor's hand still pressed to Yuuri's warm stomach where he can feel lean muscle working with the movements they make. They come to a stop for a beat, and Viktor hears the music in his head as vividly as if it were playing over the speaker; it harmonizes with the sound of Yuuri's breath and the quiet scrape of their skates on the ice.

"And you stop," Viktor whispers, and feels a shiver go up Yuuri's back. It must tickle, his breath ruffling Yuuri's hair. "And you bow your head, and you think…I ache for you. When will you come into my life? And then…" He pulls away from Yuuri, takes up a place at his side again. He and Yuuri bring their arms up in unison, stroking forward twice on one foot. "Stroke, stroke…reach up." This, too, they do in unison. "And then…spread eagle." He takes the outside, mirroring Yuuri as he takes the inside. It carries on for much longer than it should, Viktor finding himself entranced by Yuuri's eyes, those cinnamon-hued pools at the bottom of which lie the soul Viktor pines for.

They come to a natural stop, their momentum wearing out. Yuuri's breath is loud, his tongue pink when it slides between his lips to wet them. His fringe is clinging to his forehead and the smell of him is one that broadcasts their long day, but it isn't off-putting. Warm skin, masculine sweat, the smell of his hair. Viktor's pants are loose, his prick is heavy between his thighs, and it's been so long since he was touched.

"Did that feel good?" Viktor asks, and tries not to think about saying those words under very different circumstances. Yuuri's hair would still be damp and Yuuri's chest would still be heaving, but there would be far fewer clothes involved and Viktor would be mouthing that question against Yuuri's bare shoulder, or along his stomach, or into the thickness of his thigh.

"Yeah," Yuuri says, jerking his head in a nod. "Yeah, that was—that feels good. Feels right. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Viktor makes himself pull away, flips the hair out of his eyes and offers a smile. "Good work! We're done for the day. Let's go home." He turns around and makes for the boards.

"Viktor—" Before he can even get started, Yuuri's hand is in his. He allows himself to be turned back around—is powerless to stop it, really, when Yuuri's hand is both soft and firm, tugging ever so insistently. He turns and raises his eyebrows, feels Yuuri's palm warm against his own, Yuuri's smaller and thicker fingers. He hears Yuuri swallow and watches his lips move to say, "I—do you—what made you—why did you choose this song? I was just…um, I was just wondering."

Viktor smiles down at their linked hands, feeling sad and aroused and confused all at the same time. "At the time, I chose it because it was beautiful. And sad. And I've skated to beautiful and sad things for as long as I can remember. But since then, it's…taken on new meaning for me."

"Oh?" Yuuri whispers. He hasn't let Viktor's hand drop.

"I started choreographing with this song over a year ago, before I turned twenty-six, and there was still a chance that—well." He shrugs, offers a chagrined smile. "It was before I realized that…I might be waiting for quite awhile."

He doesn't even have to say it. There isn't a single adult person on the planet who wouldn't understand the nuances of Stammi Vicino, and of what Viktor has just said. Everyone knows the pain, the anticipation, the heartache of waiting.

It's terrifying. It's exhilarating.

Yuuri Katsuki, who Viktor knows for a fact is having transference dreams more nights than not, whispers, "Or maybe you won't," and Viktor allows himself, for just one second, to hope.

In Okayama, Viktor watches Yuuri hurdling towards him with arms outstretched, tears and blood on his face and knows that he will kiss Yuuri Katsuki if he takes him in his arms at this moment. Knows it with the same certainty that he knows his name is Viktor Nikiforov, knows it like his soul will someday know another's. Viktor has just watched Yuuri slam face-first into a board, get immediately back up and finish a free skate that is an ode to his own skating career with his hand over his heart, pointing straight at Viktor. He has no other choice than to side step Yuuri's arms, laughing some halfhearted explanation about his nosebleed. He immediately regrets it when Yuuri fails to catch himself and trips over the edge of the boards, faceplanting for the second time in as many minutes.

"Yuuri!" he cries, hunching over to help his skater straighten up. "Yuuri, I'm so sorry—I didn't realize you were—"

"It's okay," Yuuri says, and Viktor thinks he's crying—there is a certain watery, nasal quality to his voice—until he turns over and Viktor realizes he's laughing. He swipes at Viktor's hands and cries, "I'm fine! Oh my God, you're such a jerk!"

"I'm sorry!" Viktor says again, laughing this time, and grabs both of Yuuri's hands to tug him to his feet.

The medics descend to examine Yuuri's nose and ensure all cartilage is still where it should be. The judges wait until Yuuri has been given a wad of gauze for his nostrils to announce his scores. By that point Viktor has reigned it in firmly enough that he lets himself wrap his arms around Yuuri's body, still hot from exertion. Yuuri's temple is sweaty and a little gross when Viktor rests his own cool forehead there and nuzzles into him, but Viktor can't care.

They are swept up in giving autographs, Minako and Takashi, the medal ceremony. It seems like the next time they are able to breathe is on the train home, slumped against windows and each other.

"Do you know I'm proud of you?" Viktor whispers into the quiet and still air of the dark train. Says it like some people say Do you know I love you? Says it that way because it's what he's saying, really. It's what he's saying in the only way he can, because chances are that Yuuri is someone else's, and he won't take Yuuri away from the person who's meant to be his.

"Thank you," Yuuri whispers, and looks up from Viktor's shoulder. There is such a soft, gentle expression on his face that Viktor is afraid for a moment because he almost does it. He almost tilts his head and lets himself kiss Yuuri Katsuki, consequences be damned, and almost commits one of the biggest social faux pas known the human race in the middle of a public train.

Then, almost exactly a month later, he does it anyway. He makes Yuuri cry, hears Yuuri scream Just stay close to me!, and then watches him jump a quadruple flip at the end of his free skate, his very own ode to love. It's almost an out-of-body experience, the act of running along the boards until he reaches the gate and flinging himself at Yuuri, barely having the forethought to bring his arms up to cradle that precious head from hitting the ice. There will be bruises on both his forearms later, but he doesn't care now and he won't care then.

Yuuri's lips are soft and vanilla-flavored from Viktor's expensive lip balm. Viktor wants to spend the rest of his life gently applying lip balm to Yuuri's lips in dry ice rinks, and also licking it off later in dark bedrooms and under warm showerheads and reclining together on overstuffed couches.

"That was the only thing I could think of to surprise you as much as you surprised me," says Viktor, who has dedicated his life to surprising people. Part of him hopes that Yuuri meant it that way; as the only fitting declaration of love for a man whose drive to surprise had been his defining characteristic for so long.

Viktor's new defining characteristic is, dangerously enough, loving Yuuri Katsuki.

"Really?" Yuuri whispers, and his lips finally stretch into that sweet smile. "Well, it worked."

Viktor wants to kiss him again—wants it so bad that it burns in his throat like a sob—but there is a minor uproar happening around them and a pair of security guards are looking at him from the boards. Their faces say remove yourselves or be removed. Viktor doesn't have the best track record with the ISU and he would rather not be banned from the floor before the season really even starts, so he gets up and helps Yuuri off as well. There is an official on the mic now, switching between Chinese and English to say, "Please quiet down—the judges are deliberating to determine if a penalty for raucous behavior will be awarded to Yuuri Katsuki."

In the end, Yuuri gets a small reduction for the scene caused but still scores high enough for the podium. Viktor doesn't see Yuuri between the final scores being announced and Yuuri ascending the risers to stand next to Phichit with his silver medal raised high. There are as many cameras on the podium as there are on his own face, and he doesn't deign any of them with a look. He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Yuuri.

In the moment between the ceremony and the presser, Viktor pulls Yuuri into a less-trafficked corner and says, "Say whatever you want if they ask. I'll back you up. If you want to say we're soul mates, I'll go along with it. If you want to say it was just a—a lapse of judgment I'll go along with it. If you want to tell them I went crazy and tackled you—"

"Vitya," Yuuri whispers, and the rest of Viktor's words, along with his breath and heart, lodge in his throat. Yuuri turns his face up to Viktor's, raises a hand and presses it to Viktor's cheek. He feels Yuuri's thumb against his bottom lip and remembers a moment, not very long ago, when he had done the same to Yuuri. He understands now, why Yuuri's pupils had grown so large and his breath so fast. "What did you mean it as?"

Viktor breathes out shakily and whispers, "An offer. To be yours. For as long as you'll have me." Please keep me. Please let me stand by your side until I can't anymore. Please let me kiss you and lay beside you at night, at least until you find the person who was made to do those things for you—and then, maybe, you'll just let me help you keep winning. And smiling.

Yuuri gasps, like he somehow hadn't expected that answer. Viktor hears the wet sound of him swallowing, feels his thumb slide away to be replaced by his lips. They taste just like the first time. Yuuri's fingers grip into his shoulder, his body shakes. Viktor soothes a hand up his waist and feels his own muscles shudder. Yuuri creates an inch of space into which he whispers, "Yeah, that's—" Kisses him again. "That's good. I—yes. Mmm-hmm." His lips are going to be too red at the presser. His mouth tastes clean.

"My coach is a very affectionate person," Yuuri says when the question is inevitably asked roughly six seconds into the presser. Mr. Katsuki, is Viktor Nikiforov your soul mate? "From certain angles, it may have looked like…more than it was. Viktor was…excited. He was congratulating me. That's all."

By some miracle, not a single press agency is able to locate a camera angle at which Viktor's arms or one of their heads was not blocking the actual kiss. Nobody is able to refute the idea that it was merely a hug.

"Do you think there's a possibility…" Yuuri whispers, tracing his fingers down Viktor's stomach. He's wearing Viktor's shirt and nothing else; Viktor is letting the bed sheet preserve his own modesty. They showered together earlier. Yuuri is an ethereal creature of moonlight with damp hair, a lovebite on his throat and thick eyelashes. He stops his thought to press a kiss to Viktor's shoulder, then resumes. "Do you think there's a possibility that we're soul mates?"

"Anything is possible," Viktor whispers. Yuuri's arm is covered in soft black peach fuzz through which Viktor now swirls his fingers. "I've never felt anything…anything close to what I feel for you for anyone else. That has to count for something."

Yuuri braces his chin on Viktor's chest, and it digs in just a little too hard when he speaks, but Viktor doesn't move him. Just stares into large eyes gone almost-black in the blue of night as Yuuri whispers, "Are we horrible people? Does it make me a bad person if I say that I…want you more than I've ever wanted my soul mate?"

"You have me," Viktor tells him. "For as long as you want me, you'll have me."

Yuuri, beautiful Yuuri who has decade-old posters of Viktor on the walls of his childhood bedroom and who was so worried about making Viktor uncomfortable with hero-worship in their first months that he had Viktor almost convinced he didn't like him, looks at Viktor through the darkness of a room that smells like citrus-scented hotel toiletries and sex and says, "I'm afraid I'm a selfish person, because I want you forever."

Viktor kisses him. Rolls over onto Yuuri and rucks his own shirt up over Yuuri's hips, brings those powerful thighs to wrap around his waist and buries his face in Yuuri's neck. Yuuri scratches his nails down Viktor's back, leaving marks Viktor hopes never fade.

Mari Katsuki picks them up at the airport in the family's ten-year-old silver Corolla. The car smells like menthol cigarettes and the not-unpleasant sulfurous odor that follows the Katsuki family around even outside the Onsen. Viktor has come into a great affinity for that smell; it reminds him of tucking his nose into the collar of Yuuri's wool coat, and more importantly of Yuuri himself.

The car ride is awkward with the knowledge of what's changed since they left for China. Minako takes the front seat and talks in quiet, furtive Japanese with Mari, her reading glasses on and her hair piled atop her head. Viktor sits in the back seat opposite Mari, where he's convinced it's safest for him at the moment. Yuuri is staring out the window with his thumbnail between his teeth, anxious and unsure. Viktor remembers how confident and sexy he'd looked with his glasses off, flat on his back in their hotel room in Beijing, then immediately expels the thought from his brain.

They drop Minako off at her apartment and watch as she skitters up the steps to greet her wife, who's leaning out the door in a bathrobe with the yellow glow of the kitchen backlighting her. Viktor has only met her an handful of times; enough times to know that she is also a dancer, speaks fluent French, and knows Lilia in some nebulous way that she refuses to explain. Minako waves from the doorway and Mari says, "One of you had better get in the front seat; I'm not a chauffeur."

Yuuri opens the door and almost falls out of it. Viktor watches him round the car and get into the seat in front of him; he slides his hand between the seat and the car door to pat Yuuri's hip in reassurance.

They are quiet on entering Yu-Topia, it being well past the hour when most of the guests retire to their rooms for sleep.

"Mom and Dad are asleep," Mari says as they shuffle into the family area of the inn, voice hushed.

"It's fine, I'll talk to them in the morning." Yuuri's knuckles are white around the handle of his suitcase. He glances between Mari and Viktor and mumbles, "Okay, well…goodnight then, nee-chan,"

Mari lets Yuuri go, but stops Viktor before he can follow him through the hallway. She takes his elbow and says, "Can I talk to you for a minute?" in a way that can't be refused, and Viktor swings back around with a nod for Yuuri to keep going.

They wait until the sound of a door opening and closing sounds in the faint distance. Mari crosses her arms in front of herself, eyes sharp from behind a pair of glasses she usually doesn't wear. Viktor wonders if she realizes just how much of her face she shares with her brother; same eyes, same nose, same eyebrows.

"Are you and Yuuri soul mates?" she asks, blunt as ever. Viktor appreciates that she is one of the only people in his life who's very forthright with what they want from him. As much as he loves Yuuri—and he loves him, with all his heart and soul he loves him—it sometimes feels like navigating a minefield when it comes to avoiding saying something that triggers one of Yuuri's many 'Complete Shutdown' switches.

Viktor looks down at his own knotted fingers and says, "We didn't switch, no."

There is a beat of silence, then Mari says, "That's not the question I asked."

Viktor's gaze shoots up to Mari's face once again, and her expression hasn't shifted. It's still severe, in its own way, but what Viktor had interpreted as being disapproving might instead be an expression of concern, maybe even confusion.

"We think we may be." Viktor speaks slowly; chooses his words very carefully. There are so many ways he could say the wrong thing here. "I'm old enough to be the reciprocating partner, and Yuuri's been having transference dreams…he may transfer any day now. We won't know until he does it. But I…"

"You love him," Mari says, nodding. Her body language becomes more open all at once, apparently satisfied with Viktor's response. "I know. And he loves you. From the moment he saw you…he didn't even know you, and you changed his life. Things like that don't just happen for no reason. I have to believe that." She looks down, brows furrowed at the floor in a way that is almost startlingly reminiscent of her brother, nods again. "Yeah, I have to."

"He changed my life, too," Viktor tells her. It's something he's never actually vocalized to another human. Something he's whispered into poodle-ears countless times, He saved me, Makkachin, I'm sure of it, but has never had the gall to actually say into ears that can understand. "I was…lost, I guess, before he found me. He stumbled right into my arms—literally, I caught him, and…just like that, I was changed. I love him so much. I'll do whatever it takes to keep him happy, and if—even if he transfers tomorrow, and it's not me he switches with, I'll still love him. Even if it means letting him go, I won't stop loving him. I don't think I could if I tried."

Mari's eyes are soft in a way Viktor has never seen when she looks at him, tilts her head and softly says, "I hope it's you. For both of your sakes, I hope it's you he wakes up to. Hearing the way you talk about him…it's what he deserves. He's such a gentle and kind person, and he deserves someone who thinks the sun rises on him."

Viktor nods, a jerky and quiet movement. "I do. I really do."

They separate after a moment, once they've both gathered themselves and Mari has nodded at him and Viktor has resisted the urge to hug her because even Viktor knows that it's Not What's Done. He shuffles to his bedroom, suitcase picked an inch or so off the ground so that the sound of it rolling won't disturb the guests. He wonders when he started thinking of himself as separate from the guests. Perhaps around the first time that Hiroko told him it was okay for him to call her mama.

Yuuri is sitting against the head of Viktor's large bed, one foot under his leg and the other foot swinging a few inches from the floor. Viktor is momentarily surprised, but not necessarily phased. He thinks they probably would have ended up sleeping in the same bed tonight, one way or another. If anything, Yuuri has saved one of them a late night trip through the Onsen by just planting himself where he already knows he's welcome.

"Hi," Yuuri says softly, almost like he's unsure of himself. He's taken off all but his undershirt and boxers. Only one light has been turned on. Makkachin is lounging beside Yuuri, head on this thigh; they both look ready for sleep. Viktor realizes, again, that this is a sight he wants to see every day.

"Hey," Viktor replies. He leaves his suitcase by the door, kisses Yuuri's forehead to assure him of his welcome, and begins his own bedtime preparations.

"What did you talk about?" Yuuri mumbles, trepidation heavy in his voice. His eyes trail Viktor as he takes off his coat and keeps going until he's in the same state of undress as Yuuri. There is a warm, quiet intimacy to being watched undressing in a completely sexless context. He likes it; Yuuri's warm and sleepy gaze on him as he gets ready to sleep in a bed they share.

"I'm not…sure I can explain it," Viktor says slowly. He turns off the light and lifts the blankets, crawling under them and pressing his cold feet underneath Makkachin's reassuring weight. Yuuri lifts his own blankets and settles against Viktor, warm and lovely. Viktor's eyes are so tired that it almost hurts to finally close them. His lips find Yuuri's sightlessly in the dark. "She isn't angry, though. I don't think your parents probably are either. I think…I think they understand."

"Mmm." Yuuri's breathing evens out quickly, his weight going rapidly limp against Viktor's. Viktor snakes an arm over his waist and presses his nose into soft hair.

"Yuuri?" he says softly after a moment.

Yuuri stirs again. "Hmm?"

"Does Mari have a soul mate? I mean, has she switched yet?" Mari, Viktor has come to understand, is nearing thirty. Viktor doesn't know what he will do if thirty appears on the horizon and he hasn't undergone his transference yet.

"Oh, yes," Yuuri murmurs. "Ai. A doctoral student at Fukuoka University. They don't see much of each other, but they're…well. They both know what they want from life, let's just say. When they switched, they agreed that they would each do what it was they wanted to do and let their paths align later in life."

"Huh," Viktor mumbles, his breath making Yuuri's hair sway. "That's…"

"Mari is very independent," Yuuri says. "And from what I understand, so is Ai. But they're both very loving, as well. Mari says that it's nice, just to know there's someone out there who…loves and supports you, even in a quiet way. Someone meant for you, even if you can't be with them right now." Yuuri's hand is soft, trailing sleepily up and down his arm. "I think they'll be very good together someday. But right now, it's not what they want. Who is anyone else to tell them that's wrong?"

"Well said, darling," Viktor says after a moment, when he thinks Yuuri may have already fallen asleep. "Well said."

After Mari's call—the words Makkachin and Emergency and We're not sure he'll make it still chasing themselves around his head—they scramble to find Viktor the first flight they can out of Moscow for anywhere in Japan. It's twenty minutes of six figure skaters and three coaches standing in a circle and searching through listings on Google, Delta, Aeroflot. Ultimately, it is a Japan Airlines flight leaving at three in the morning for Tokyo that is booked. Viktor, knowing he won't be able to sleep for even the few hours between booking the flight and heading to the airport, hunkers down against the headboard with a silenced laptop playing a movie with captions and Yuuri's fitfully sleeping head on a pillow next to his hip.

"You need to sleep," Viktor told him after they found the flight, returned to their hotel room and ate a meal from room service. "You're still competing tomorrow. I'll wake you up before I leave for the airport."

"Alright," Yuuri whispered, something very sad in his eyes that Viktor never wanted to see again.

Viktor knows that it will not be any easier for Yuuri if Makkachin should pass. He's already made a deal with himself that, should the worst happen, Yuuri won't hear about it until after the free skate. All the same, it's reassuring to know he won't be alone in his grief, if it should come to that. That he may, in fact, never have to be alone again. Just having his lover's sleeping body so close to him is comforting in the dark and slow hours that pass between Mari's call and his flight back to Japan.

Yuuri startles awake shortly after midnight. His breath goes erratic all at once, and his body flinches so severely that Viktor jumps as well. When he looks down at Yuuri's face, wild brown eyes stare up at him almost unseeingly. It takes almost a full minute for Yuuri's vision to clear, for his eyes to focus on Viktor's face. Viktor watches him, knowing Yuuri is forcing himself to calm down and knowing that he should be doing something to reassure him, but unable to find the words in this moment where nothing feels right.

"What time is it?" Yuuri whispers, foggy, turning his body over to tuck his face against Viktor's hip.

"About midnight," Viktor replies. He whispers his fingers through Yuuri's hair and murmurs, "Are you crying?"

"No," Yuuri says, and then immediately afterward, "Yes," because he won't lie to Viktor, not even about something so simple. He tucks his face closer. "I, um…it was just that dream again. It's fine. I—I'll be fine."

"Oh, Kitten," Viktor whispers, sympathetic but drained of almost all empathy. It's all with his dog, his baby, hundreds of miles away and alone and scared.

Over the last month, Yuuri has been having transference dreams—or, rather, transference dream, because it's always the same one, the seagulls by the sea—with ever-increasing frequency. He has them now whenever he sleeps; sometimes twice or thrice a night. It would be profoundly stressful for anybody, let alone an athlete in the midst of a competition.

Any day now, Yuuri is going to transfer and one of two things will happen. Either Viktor will wake up in Yuuri's body, or Viktor will wake up next to a stranger in his lover's body and be forced to explain the situation while Yuuri wakes up somewhere, alone, and tries to get his bearings in a body that isn't Viktor's. The latter is infinitely more statistically likely than the former, but that doesn't stop him from hoping. The taste of it is both sweet and bitter on the back of his tongue at all times.

"If it's midnight," Yuuri says, "Then you should get going."

"Yes," Viktor says after a moment, and rises to gather his things. Yuuri swings his legs out of bed, fumbles his glasses onto his face and pulls his Team Japan jacket on over the old and thin practice shirt of Viktor's he now wears to bed most nights. His sweatpants are still on; he shoves his feet into his shoes as Viktor ties his own scarf, and they leave down the hall together.

"I'll call when I get to Tokyo," Viktor says as they wait for the taxi. The concierge told them a driver would arrive within ten minutes. "And again when I get to Fukuoka."

"Mari says she'll call if anything changes," Yuuri says to his own feet.

Viktor, whose phone holds a text conversation in which Mari agreed not to tell Yuuri if Makkachin dies, nods and doesn't respond to that. Instead, he wraps his arms around Yuuri's shoulders and says, "If you need anything, just ask Yakov. If you're in trouble, hug him, and he'll help you." And then, softer, against that part of Yuuri's head he likes to kiss at night, murmurs, "I'm so sorry, Yuuri. Even if I'm not here, I'll always be with you in spirit."

Yuuri's hands fist into the back of his jacket. "I'll bring you and Makkachin a medal. I promise."

"Just bring us yourself," Viktor says, and it comes out a chuckle even as tears prick his eyes. "That's all we need."

He wants to say it so badly, I love you; you're my entire world; I'll get through this with you at my side because I love you, but he can't. Not like this. He can't bear the idea of his first real love-words to Yuuri being laced with so much sadness. So he kisses Yuuri, right on the spot where his lips rest when they sleep, and squeezes him once more before stepping out into the powdery Russian snow.

It is 14:00 in Moscow and 19:00 in Fukuoka when Viktor exits the airport and gets into Mari Katsuki's car. The men's free skate won't start for another three hours, and Viktor hasn't slept in almost thirty hours. It feels at once like the same day of the short program, and like a week has gone by. He slumps in the front seat of the Corolla and stares without focus through the windshield for almost a full minute before he moves to put his seatbelt on. Mari has already started moving the car into the correct lane to get them back out onto the freeway.

"He's out of surgery," Mari says after a moment, her hands poised on the steering wheel at a seven and five position, tapping out an impatient rhythm as she waits for someone to let her over. Viktor has rode in a car with Yuuri driving exactly once and watched him hold the steering wheel the exact same way. Viktor wonders who taught the Katsuki siblings to drive. "The vet said that it doesn't necessarily mean he's out of the woods, but if he comes off the anesthesia alright, he should make a full recovery."

It isn't a guarantee, but it's more than Viktor was expecting. There was some amount of certainty in his mind that he would get in the car and Mari would tell him that Makkachin had passed while he was in the air, or else that his condition had worsened and they couldn't do anything more for him. That Viktor had essentially arrived back in Japan just in time to see his baby die. Being told the opposite has an immediate and powerful relaxing effect on him; he feels himself slump against the door of the car, feels the grief that has been stinging the back of his throat for hours finally loosen into something softer, more gentle. A tear gathers under his eye and he swipes it onto his thumb.

"Thank God," he says in some language. He swipes his hair back from his face, and it's so oily that it mostly just stays there. He tries to sniff the wateriness out of his voice and is only marginally successful, but something tells him that Mari won't judge him. "What—um…what did the bill come to? Did they make you pay up front? I'll reimburse you."

"It's fine," Mari says, shaking her head. "We covered it. The vet is a family friend. She used to be Vicchan's vet, and she knows—she knows how special Makkachin is to Yuuri. And all of us."

"Mari, no. I won't—he's my responsibility." Viktor doesn't want to say I have more money than your family does, and I know it. Doesn't want to say it, but knows it's true. It's there in the way Toshiya and Hiroko sometimes stare at their accounting books with stress in their eyes; it's there in the way Yuuri takes such good care of his clothes and equipment, like he knows it won't be easy to replace them. It's here in this car, with its worn upholstery and decade-old manufacture date and broken radio.

"No," Mari says. "No, he—he was my responsibility. You trusted me with him."

Mari's eyes go red-rimmed the same way Yuuri's do before he cries. Viktor, all at once, understands.

("He ran out in front of a car," Yuuri told him when Viktor finally asked what happened to Vicchan after months of seeing pictures of a sweet little poodle. Yuuri's voice was hushed, his knee was pressing against Viktor's leg, and Viktor wanted to kiss it better, this hurt that followed Yuuri around like his own little rain cloud. "My sister was walking him and he just—saw something that excited him, and she dropped the leash, and he—"

"Oh no," Viktor whispered.

"She blames herself, I think," Yuuri said softly. "I don't blame her—she did everything she could. But I think…yeah, I think she's very hard on herself about it.")

"Mari?" Viktor murmurs. "Honey, I don't blame you."

Mari nods, face crumpled, and rests her elbow on the car door with her fingers pressed to her trembling chin. "I know," she whispers. She sniffs, and it's an ugly sound; a heart-wrenching sound. Viktor wants to hug her, or at least pat her shoulder, and he doesn't know how he's supposed to comfort these wonderful and emotional people who have tumbled into his life when everything he knows about comforting is something he can't do for them. "I know," she says, "but—but I blame myself."

Viktor says, "Pull over," and Mari doesn't even question him; she pulls onto the shoulder and puts the car in park. Viktor lets her cry for a moment, even cries himself, then he pulls himself together and leans over the consol and says, "I'm going to hug you now, if that's alright. Can I hug you, Mari?"

He waits for her head to bob in permission before wrapping his arms around her. She's smaller than Yuuri, but somehow less delicate, and stiff against him in the way he remembers Yuuri being what feels like a lifetime ago. He gives her a firm squeeze and pats her back, blinking her hair away from his eyes until he pulls away. Mari is quiet for a moment, hands folded in her lap and eyes trained somewhere through the windshield. Viktor puts his seatbelt back on and rubs the moisture from his face.

"Thank you," she says finally, putting the car in drive. She looks over her shoulder to merge back into traffic, and Viktor smiles, tired, at the back of her head.

Mari takes him to the animal hospital. The vet on call is apparently the woman who owns the practice. She's somewhere in the area of sixty, even shorter than Hiroko but much more severe in appearance; her silver hair is pulled up tight on top of her head and her glasses are horn-rimmed. Her nametag is in Kanji and Viktor momentarily scrambles because what's the correct honorific, but she introduces herself in sharply punctuated English as Doctor Hattori. She and Viktor both bow and shake hands.

"Makkachin has woken up from anesthesia and is eating and drinking well," she tells him as she leads both he and Mari back into the kennel area. Viktor smiles at every dog they pass; a little black terrier, a Shih-Tzu bobbling up and down on his dog bed; a very large mastiff who raises his head to breathe boof in their direction. "He's restless, which is good; it means he's alert and that moving doesn't hurt him. I want to keep him through the night, just in case any…complications should arise. If all goes well, he'll be released in the morning." Makkachin is in the last kennel of the row, curled up on a cot in the corner. He's sleeping on his favorite blanket, which means Mari had either brought him here wrapped in it, or brought it to him later as a comfort item. Either way, the thoughtfulness of the gesture makes Viktor's heart hurt. He still isn't used to people caring so much about him and what's his.

He's realizing now that, if Yuuri truly is his soul mate, his little family won't be growing by only one. It will be growing by at least four, maybe even five or six or a dozen. The Katsukis, the Nishigoris, the Okukawas. And Viktor and Makkachin Nikiforov.

Makkachin wakes up at their entrance; he sees Viktor and immediately starts whining for him, and Viktor falls onto the cot and pulls both Makkachin and blanket into his lap. Makkachin licks at his face and squirms in his arms; there's a bandage wrapped around his throat.

"Hello, there's my baby," Viktor coos at him in Russian, sliding his hand up and down Makkachin's belly, kissing his ears. "Oh, my baby boy—hello, hello, I missed you so much. Makkachin, Makka-baby, my puppy-baby."

"The incision is small," Doctor Hattori tells them, patting Makkachin's curls as he settles against Viktor's shoulder, "but he does have several stitches. We can't put an E-collar on him, for obvious reasons, so he'll have to be monitored to make sure he doesn't scratch at them. I'm recommending a soft diet for at least the next few weeks, until the stitches are removed. Considering his age, it may be wise to switch him to a soft diet permanently—once something like this happens once, it runs the risk of happening again, and it'll be harder to fix the next time."

Viktor nods, tucking Makkachin's muzzle under his chin and running a hand the full length of his back. "He eats grain-free anyway. I can put his food in a blender or something, if I need to."

Doctor Hattori nods, eyes soft behind her austere glasses. "You obviously take very good care of him, Nikiforov-san. He's incredibly healthy and spry for his age and breed. Many dogs his age wouldn't have done so well with this sort of surgery, but…I see no reason why your Makkachin wouldn't be around for many years to come."

"Thank you," Viktor says softly, feeling a tear leak down his cheek and along his lips. He licks it away, tastes salt. "For everything."

Doctor Hattori nods and bows slightly, stepping out of the kennel to speak with Mari. Viktor presses his face to Makkachin's neck and almost falls asleep, the relief hitting him all at once. Somehow, he makes himself stand up and exit the kennel, although not before kissing Makkachin once, twice, thrice more and assuring him that he will be coming home in the morning. Makkachin, unable to understand, makes mournful noises as Viktor walks away. It almost breaks his heart all over again.

He is welcomed back to Yu-Topia with smiles from Toshiya and Hiroko, already sat in front of the live stream with Minako and the Nishigoris. Viktor drags his baggage to his room and reemerges to claim the seat left for him next to Takashi. Hiroko places a teacup and a bowl of something meaty and hearty in front of him and says, "Welcome home, Vicchan."

Home, Viktor thinks over and over again as he feeds his starved stomach and watches Yuuri's figure, small on a computer screen and hundreds of miles away, skate onto the ice for the group practice. When did this become home? When did the generous elder Katsukis and the calm Mari and the lovely, beautiful, kind Yuuri become his family? When did his definition of family switch from distant and unpleasant to warm, welcoming, goofy?

He falls asleep on the tatami shortly after Yuuri's skate. Hiroko wakes him up an hour or so later, shaking his shoulder gently and speaking in simple, soft Japanese.

"Vicchan," she says. "Wake up. You'll catch a cold if you sleep on the floor."

"Oh." He opens his eyes and regards her drowsily. "Sorry, Mama."

She smiles. "Don't apologize. You'd be more comfortable in bed, don't you think?"

"Yes," Viktor mumbles. He rises off the floor, back protesting, and stands up with a hand from Hiroko. They shuffle to the bedroom together, and Viktor lets her pull back the blankets for him and then cover him with them, once he's in bed. His body wants to fall immediately back asleep as soon as he's horizontal, but Hiroko is talking as she settles the blankets around him—she's tucking him in, he'll realize later; when was the last time he was tucked in? Has he ever been tucked in?—and he forces himself to listen.

"It's funny," she says, pulling the thick quilt up over his shoulders. He doesn't understand every word she says, but it's enough to know what she's saying. "Yuuri used to fall asleep in front of the television watching you. Viktor Nikiforov would want you to go to bed on time, I'd say. Now I'm putting Viktor Nikiforov to bed after watching Yuuri skate! Life works in mysterious ways."

"Yes," Viktor says, then recalls himself from the edge of sleep long enough to open his eyes again. "Oh. Mama? Yuuri goes to Grand Prix, yes? He scored enough?"

Hiroko smiles and pats Viktor's elbow. "Yes. They announced that he would be going forward just before I woke you up."

"Oh," Viktor mumbles, pressing his face against the pillow. His entire body feels totally strung out, like a piece of taffy pulled apart and draped over the mattress. "I should…call him."

"In the morning," Hiroko tells him in the kind of gentle but commanding tone that is unique to mothers. She straightens up and says, "Goodnight, Vicchan," before turning off the lights and leaving the room.

Viktor is asleep before her footsteps fade.

The smell of his lover is one that Viktor recognizes immediately; the smell of the Onsen combined with Yuuri's unique skin-smell, a fresh-scented bodywash and occasionally a musky cologne. It coils contentment in Viktor's belly and sometimes, in the early morning, turns him on. He rolls over on waking and gets a deep lungful, luxuriating in the feeling of smooth sheets against his bare legs. He reaches for Yuuri and doesn't find him, sighs and retracts his hand to trail it over his face.

It doesn't feel like his face. He freezes, fingers splayed over his mouth and nose, and opens his eyes slowly. Last night, he fell asleep in Hasetsu. He remembers that now. He fell asleep in Japan, and maybe there is some of Yuuri's scent pressed into a pillow or into the comforter from sharing that bed so often the last few weeks, but he should not be surrounded by it. He's drowning in Yuuri-scent, and it's exquisite. But this is not Hasetsu, and his nose is smaller than it should be, and his eyes are not in the right place.

His eyes also cannot see.

With shaking hands, Viktor reaches to the nightstand and palms for a pair of glasses he knows must be there. He finds them and unfolds them carefully, clumsily setting them on his face in an unpracticed movement.

The room comes into focus. It's familiar; the hotel room he left Yuuri in last night (Two nights ago?). Yuuri's luggage is lonely, sitting against the wall without Viktor's next to it; the Yuuri on Ice costume is hanging off the doorknob on a hanger, Yuuri's phone with its poodle case is charging on the nightstand, and Yuuri's open computer is on sleep mode on the other side of the bed. The alarm clock tells him that it's just past four o'clock in the morning, which makes it almost eleven hours since he fell asleep in Japan.

The realization of what has happened hits him all at once. He's transferred. One of the most pivotal moments of his life—it's arrived. Not only that, but it is Yuuri Katsuki's body in which he sits—Viktor knows these hands, this nose, these thighs that are revealed when he slowly pulls the blankets back. Yuuri's body feels small, powerful. He carries tension in his shoulders and in his lower back. His feet ache in a way that Viktor's haven't in over six months. His hair is just now getting long enough that it sways into his gaze occasionally—a flash of black when he moves his head. Viktor gingerly turns his legs out of bed and stands up. Yuuri's center of gravity is lower than his own—walking in his body requires Viktor to shift his weight further forward than he's used to. He stumbles into the bathroom, where he turns on the light.

There he is. Yuuri Katsuki, precious wide eyes and tangled black hair. Wearing Viktor's old practice shirt again. Viktor shuffles towards the mirror and reaches out a hand, traces the shape of Yuuri's mouth in the mirror. A mouth he has kissed hundreds of times. He moistens his lips, dragging his tongue across them, and it's at once familiar and completely, utterly foreign.

"Oh my God," he breathes into the silent bathroom. It echoes back at him briefly, Russian words in Yuuri's voice. Odd. It makes him wonder what it might sound like to hear his own voice speaking fluent Japanese.

It's this thought that sends him stumbling back into the bedroom. Yuuri either has already or is going to wake up in Viktor's body—confused and possibly anxious. Viktor needs to know if he's okay. This is his soul mate, his soul mate. In the tradition of Viktor's people, they are now officially engaged. Viktor has a rabid need to know how he fares, half a world away and waking up in his family home with silver hair and long fingers.

The phone almost goes through to voicemail. Even when it's picked up, it isn't his own voice that greets him. He abruptly remembers leaving his phone in the family room the night before when Mari answers.

"Yuuri, isn't it the middle of the night in Russia?" she asks, and Viktor has to scramble to parse what she's said because it was in Japanese and so quick that his barely-conversational knowledge of the language stutters.

"Mari," he says, "It's Viktor." Yuuri's voice comes more from his nose than Viktor's does; as he gets used to it, Viktor has to resist the urge to sneeze.

"What's Viktor?" she asks, tone immediately becoming one of confusion. Likely just as much at his words as at the language he said them in. "He's still asleep. Do you want me to wake him up? Why are we speaking in English?"

"I mean—" Viktor sighs, tries to palm his own forehead in frustration and instead nearly punches himself in the eye. "Ow. I mean—it's me. I'm Viktor. I—we—Mari, we switched."

"You—oh my God. Oh my God—" It's the least calm Viktor has ever heard Mari. Her voice goes distant for a moment and she yells something away from the receiver, something containing the word Mom! and more ejaculations of shock. She comes back to the receiver and says, too loudly, "Viktor?"

"Yes, I'm here," he quickly answers, and finds himself a place to sit because standing around in Yuuri's body is making him a little dizzy. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten up so quickly. Nobody ever trains you for this. They all know it's going to happen someday, and yet nobody ever knows what to do when it does. Viktor thinks it's ridiculous. "You said Yuuri hasn't woken up yet? Someone should go sit with him. He'll be disorientated when he wakes up. It might make him anxious; I don't want him to have an attack."

"Should we wake him up?" asks Mari. There's a kind of barely-contained excitement in her tone, like a child before a fieldtrip or anybody on the morning of a wedding. It's a tone of joy and hope and, at the same time, almost paralyzing uncertainty. Everything is bright and new and something good, something big, something wonderful is going to happen but the whole thing is shrouded in a thin veil of anxiety. Bated breath and trembling fingers. Viktor knows he would see his heart—Yuuri's heart, oh God—beating visibly against his chest if he looked down.

"No, just let him—let him wake up naturally, I think that's best. If someone wakes him up he'll—he might be even more confused." Viktor presses his sweaty palm to his thigh—Yuuri's bare thigh, the left one still bearing a faint mark in the shape of Viktor's mouth from days ago. "Mari? I don't know how these things work in Japan. Yuuri and I, we never talked about it because—we didn't want to jinx it, I guess. Is there something that needs to happen, that I need to…I don't know, do?"

"Just come home," Mari says. "Just come home, and we'll figure things out on our end. It'll be weird with—with Yuuri here, instead of his soul—instead of you, because that's…that doesn't usually happen. But we'll figure it out."

"Okay," Viktor breathes. "Alright. Thank you. I—thank you so much. For everything. I'm glad that he can—that he can be with you while this happens. Not many people get to go through this with their own families, and I—there's nobody else I'd rather have him with."

"We're not just his family, Viktor," Mari says. "Come home, okay? We'll be waiting for you. He'll be waiting for you."

Viktor feels tears in his eyes and a happy, overwhelmed weight in his chest.

After hanging up, he stumbles around the room, gathering Yuuri's things. They aren't splayed quite so widely as Viktor's things usually end up being, but he still takes a few laps around the place to ensure that he has everything he needs. Yuuri's team Japan jacket is comforting around his shoulders in a way that his own Russia jacket must be to Yuuri when he wears it—Viktor wishes that his broad shoulders weren't such an obstacle to wearing Yuuri's clothes.

He pads down the hall before leaving, knocks on the door he knows to be Yakov's and continues knocking until the man answers. From living with him in his boyhood, Viktor knows that waking Yakov up in the middle of the night is a risky endeavor, but the situation is unique and, besides, it's not like Yakov can make him run three sets of suicides as retribution anymore.

Yakov is surprised upon seeing him. "Katsuki?" he grumbles, squinting. It's odd, constantly forgetting and then being reminded that Viktor isn't in his own body. It's even odder how drastically Yakov's demeanor changes when he stills and says, "Is it Makkachin?"

"Uh, no," Viktor says, "Makkachin is—he's fine."

"You speak Russian?" Yakov mutters, relaxing.

"Yes? I mean—no, it's—I'm Viktor. Yuuri and I switched. I just wanted to let you know that—what happened, because I need to leave for the airport. I, um…yeah."

Maybe, sometime in the coming weeks, Viktor will call his mother and let her know what's happened. He thinks she'll probably be pleased, but not enough to come visit, and not enough to attend whatever wedding will happen afterwards. Viktor hasn't had extended contact with his mother since he was nine years old, and he's mostly come to terms with that. He's also come to terms with the fact that the man standing before him is the closest thing to a father he's ever had, and even though he's not entirely sure Yakov likes him very much sometimes, it still feels just a little like this is what he's supposed to be doing. That this might be what it would be like, if he had a father to tell.

"Oh," Yakov says. He clears his throat and shuffles his feet, reaches out a hand and pats Viktor's shoulder, gingerly, like he thinks Viktor might combust if he does it too firmly. Viktor remembers Yakov slapping the back of his head for backtalk only months ago, but also knows that this is Yuuri's body. Yuuri's body is unfamiliar to Yakov, and also inexplicably fragile-looking for how strong it is. "Congratulations, Ka—er, Vitya. I'm very happy for you."

Viktor smiles. "Thank you."

Yakov clears his throat again. "Do you…need anything? You have enough money to get back to Japan? Will you have a problem getting back on Yuuri's passport? I don't exactly…know how these things work. When Lilia and I switched, we were living within ten miles of each other."

"It's fine," Viktor assures. "Yuuri and I already had a flight back for this morning. I'm going to see if I can get an earlier flight out, but…it's fine. There's precedent for these sorts of things now."

"Good. Good." Yakov nods, looks at his own feet again. "Er…yes, that's good. Well then, I'll…good, good. Shall I tell…everyone? Yura and such?"

"Only if you record it," Viktor chuckles. "Yura will be beside himself. Georgi might weep."

Yakov barks a short spurt of laughter that, despite its gruffness, is genuine. "I think I'll leave the videotaping to Mila…she seems fond enough of it." Yakov meets Viktor's eyes finally—it's strange, being eyelevel with him again after outgrowing him more than ten years ago. "I…"

There is a feminine noise from within the room. Viktor's eyes snap to the shadowy hallway behind Yakov's back, and soon enough a figure in a soft yellow robe emerges. Lilia, glasses on her nose and makeup off. Viktor hasn't seen her this way since he was a boy living in her and Yakov's guest room.

She used to hum Swan Lake to him when he had nightmares.

"Katsuki," she says softly, eyebrow raised. She looks older like this, standing behind Yakov with her narrow shoulders wrapped in a robe, her hair down. But somehow softer. Not so severe; kinder.

"No, it's…" Yakov scratches the back of his head. "It's Vitya, Lilya. He and Katsuki…"

"Ah, I see." Lilia's other eyebrow crawls up her forehead. Her lips, just slightly, quirk. "It's about time. Congratulations. The wedding will be soon?"

Viktor chuckles. It's easy, sometimes, to forget that these two are from such a different time. Soul mates still married within the week, when they were young. Maybe it changed when the Soviet Union fell, or maybe when the world started becoming a bigger place. Maybe it's the same thing.

"I don't know about that," Viktor says softly. "But consider yourselves invited, when it does happen."

"Of course," Lilia demurs, sets a hand on Yakov's elbow and, even though Yakov's ears are turning alarmingly red before Viktor's very eyes, Lilia is as confident as she's ever been on any stage. Slowly, she says, "That being the case, I believe you're expected somewhere, Vitya. It's very late. Let these old people sleep."

"Alright," Viktor says softly, and nods to them both. He makes to turn, but is stopped by Yakov. He grabs Viktor's wrist and pulls him in, wrapping him in a hug. It's stiff, and unpracticed, but Viktor's tactile heart sings. Validation, is what he thinks this feels like. Validation and maybe, possibly, fatherly affection.

"I'm proud of you," Yakov tells his shoulder. "I'm…privileged, to have been the one to see you grow."

Viktor cries then, and Yakov lets him. It's several more minutes before he finally goes back to his own room to gather his luggage.

The flight to Japan is uneventful, tedious as it is to be flying back to Japan for the second time in less than two days. Thankfully, he's flying directly into Fukuoka this time. The only hiccup occurs when a customs officer says something in Japanese and Viktor has to explain in his own faltering Japanese that he is currently in his soul mate's body and does not speak very good Japanese, and does the customs officer perhaps speak English?

"I was only welcoming you back to the country," the officer says, a smile coming onto his face. "But apparently that's not the appropriate greeting, huh? How about congratulations, then. It seems you're lucky; your soul mate is very beautiful."

"He is," Viktor replies, and folds Yuuri's passport close to his chest as he shuffles with the crowd towards the baggage claim.

He's surprised when, as he makes his way through the plexigass hallway separating the customs area from the airport proper, a faint barking comes from the other side and then, when he looks up, there's Makkachin. His heartbeat speeds up, because where there's Makkachin there must be a Katsuki nearby. Viktor scans Makkachin for residual signs of his recent trauma. Upon finding none, he lifts his eyes to the crowd. He doesn't have to search for long. His own silver hair makes him obvious in a crowd.

Viktor had never accounted for how odd it would be to see himself from across a room. Even now, he doesn't really think about it; as soon as he sees Yuuri—himself?—he takes off running. Yuuri sees him in the window, a flurry of frantic movement against the backdrop of slower and more lethargic passengers, and does the same. Viktor watches him as they run, less than ten feet from each other and still so far. Finally, after he's jogged what feels like half a mile in a body whose equilibrium still makes very little sense to him, he reaches the sliding doors. Yuuri stands there, at the end of the stanchion line, waiting for him with arms outstretched. Viktor runs into them, all but flings his body.

If he allowed himself to think about it, he would probably feel very strange being held by himself. As it is, thoughts like that are the farthest from his mind. This is Yuuri, no matter whose body he's in and no matter how tall he is. This is Yuuri, and Yuuri is his soul mate.

"It's you," he hears Yuuri whisper, totally awed. "I can't believe it. It's really you. I never—it's you."

"It's me," Viktor agrees, pulling back. He presses hands to his own face, looks into his own eyes and somehow, against all intuition, knows it's Yuuri who's staring back at him. This is what people mean, he supposes, when they say that the eyes are the window to the soul. These are the same ice blue eyes he's been looking at in the mirror for twenty-eight years, and yet they look so different with Yuuri's soul behind them. "It's me, darling. Yes, it's me. What do I do? Do I kiss you now?" Viktor wants to hold Yuuri, wants Yuuri back in his own body purely so that Viktor can wrap his arms around the familiar width of his shoulders, press his nose into that lovely soft hair.

"No—wait, no." Yuuri presses two fingers to Viktor's lips, looking alarmed. "There's a—it's a tradition, that we—it's sort of a ceremony, I guess. We're supposed to have a dinner, with both of our families, but—since it's only my family, we're just…we're having it at the Onsen, and then—okay, well, the families are supposed to leave the mates alone after the meal, and there's some ceremonial toasts in there and such, and then, um…what happens is, the families leave whichever house they had the dinner in and go to the other family's house, and leave the mates to, um. Switch back. In private." Yuuri clears his throat, blushing, looking down at his feet. "Since there's no other family, um…my parents made arrangements to stay with Minako-sensei tonight. And Mari is going to the city to stay with Ai. Um. The guests will still be in the Onsen but they've been told to…be discrete." Yuuri's blush is only growing the longer he talks.

"Yuuri," Viktor says slowly, gripping Yuuri's hand, "Please tell me that the entire town of Hasetsu doesn't think we're consummating our mateship tonight."

"The entire town of Hasetsu doesn't think we're consummating our mateship tonight," Yuuri says lowly, without meeting eyes.

Viktor sighs and presses the back of his hand to his forehead. "Ah…that's what I thought."

"So dramatic," Yuuri murmurs, and when Viktor opens his eyes it's to Yuuri's usual teasing smirk, distorted strangely on his own face. "Control yourself, please. I have an image to uphold."

"Rude," Viktor murmurs, and kisses Yuuri's knuckles; index, middle, ring, pinky. "So rude to your soul mate."

Yuuri's eyes go very, very soft. Viktor knows himself enough to realize that this is the face he makes before he cries; his own version of the red-rimmed eyes and trembling chin of crying Katsukis. He also knows with a deep certainty that if Yuuri cries, there will be no hope for himself either. They will collapse into a pair of puddles on the floor, wailing and running together while Makkachin laps at them in alarm.

Thankfully, Yuuri doesn't cry. At least not then. He doesn't kiss Viktor either, while is understandable even though Viktor wants it with all his being. He's willing to wait for the passage of whatever ceremony is to come; more than willing to respect Yuuri's traditions, the culture that he is being accepted into. Was accepted into long ago.

"Say it again," Yuuri whispers. "I can't believe it, I need you to say it again."

"My soul mate," Viktor whispers. "My darling. My sun, my stars, my Yuuri."

"Oh," Yuuri whispers, and throws himself onto Viktor again, arms tight around his shoulders.

Dinner is not unlike all the other meals that Viktor has eaten with the Katsukis, although there is significantly more of everything. Food, drink, people. Viktor and Yuuri are given the places of honor at the table and are not allowed to serve themselves the entire night. Viktor's plate is never empty, and his cup is never dry. Everyone Viktor knows in Japan seems to be crowded into the room, Katsukis and Nishigoris and Okukawas. The triplets are there at the beginning of the evening but, as the night draws closer to the point at which Viktor and Yuuri will be sent off to the bedroom and the adults will retire to their various lodgings for the night, Yuuko excuses herself to usher them out the door and deliver them into the clutches of some waiting babysitter.

All of the toasts are in Japanese, and the alcohol consumed over the night makes them nigh unintelligible to Viktor's influent ears. There seems to be an order to be honored, because Toshiya goes first—and Viktor sees, then, the resemblance between father and son; the blush of alcohol, the happy squint to the eyes and cheeks, the curve to the lips—and then Hiroko, and finally Mari.

At the end of this, everyone stands and stares at them expectantly. Viktor, who hasn't had a real clue what's been going on all evening, snaps his gaze up to Yuuri's for direction.

"We thank them for the dinner," Yuuri tell him softly, "and tell them that we hope they will enjoy the rest of the evening after we part from them to take our last steps in each other's bodies."

"Ah," says Viktor, who isn't sure how to say any of that in Japanese. The heat in Yuuri's eyes is unmistakable. Viktor wants to be returned to his own body only so it can be torn apart by Yuuri's nails and teeth.

"It's fine," Yuuri assures. "You don't have to say anything."

Viktor thinks a lot might have been lost in translation, because what Yuuri says to their assembled friends and family almost has a ring of poetry to it, the sort of beautiful and delicate words that one only says once in a lifetime; like marriage vows. Viktor grips his hand tightly, listening to Yuuri speak in elegant and flowing Japanese in his own voice.

The gathering responds to Yuuri's speech as one, which more or less confirms Viktor's suspicions.

"They wished us good luck," Yuuri tells him. "They also said…not to trip? It's hard to translate into English."

Viktor nods, turns to the party to say, "Thank you," and bows deep. If this was the wrong thing to do, nobody mentions it. They're all too busy smiling to their ears, probably far too giddy to have a negative reaction to anything at the moment. More than anything, Viktor doesn't think he will ever get used to being so unquestioningly supported. Every single person in this room is so genuinely happy for them.

(In part, this may be due to the alcohol and the opportunity to throw a party. Viktor has been reliably informed by several sources that after Viktor and Yuuri retire, the party will likely continue into the wee hours wherever the rest decide to relocate. If Viktor had been Japanese, or had even just had family to come to this dinner, the two families would spend the night mingling and combining. As it is, Viktor and Yuuri's transference is being used as an excuse for drinking and merrymaking and lovemaking, and Viktor can't think of any better way to celebrate an engagement.)

Yuuri leads him off down the hallway, leaving the party behind them. Their feet are soft on the hardwood, Yuuri's hand is tight on Viktor's. By the time they get to the door of Viktor's banquet room-cum-bedroom, Viktor's heart is beating hard enough that he hears it in his own ears. Yuuri slides the door open softly and they tiptoe onto the tatami. Night-sounds come in through the partially opened windows, and the darkness casts shadows over everything.

As soon as the doors are closed, Yuuri spins around, lifts him up by the thighs and pins him back against the wall. Viktor yelps, surprised, unused to being small enough to be thrown around.

He thinks he likes it.

"Like that," Yuuri whispers, hot, against his neck. "That's how I want to come back. Surrounded by you."

"Oh God," Viktor mewls. He takes Yuuri's face in his hands, along the curve of his jaw, just the way Yuuri loves to touch him when they kiss. "I need you. Kiss me."

"Yes," Yuuri breathes, and presses their open mouths together.

There is a split second in which Viktor only feels the kiss, Yuuri's hands on his thighs, the wall at his back. Time stands still, just for a second, and then everything tilts. It's dizzying, like the world has turned completely on its head. Viktor pulls away, gasping as his head spins, except—does he? His eyes are squeezed shut, he doesn't know which way is up or down or even where his own toes are. The world is white-hot, waves of it coming and coming.

God, don't let Yuuri drop me, a desperate part of his brain yells. It echoes back as, God, don't let me drop Yuuri. For a second, he can feel both his hands on Yuuri's thighs, and also Yuuri's hands on his thighs, can feel both the wall at his back and the cool floor on his feet. Then, finally, it all snaps into place.

Yuuri is panting into his neck, fingers arched into Viktor's shoulder blades, legs clamped around his waist. Viktor drags his mouth along Yuuri's shoulder, kissing, biting. "Oh my God. That felt like…"

"Yeah," Yuuri whimpers. "Yeah, it did." Viktor has scratches on his back, and they make him want to ask if Yuuri actually came, because what just happened felt like the best orgasm of Viktor's life and he doesn't even think it actually was one.

"Alright?" Viktor pants against his cheek; wet, languid, aching.

"Yeah." Yuuri hikes himself further onto Viktor's waist. Viktor stumbles back to avoid overbalancing, and Yuuri whispers, "Take me to bed, Vitenka," frantic against his temple, squirming in a way that's doing things deep inside Viktor.

"Yes, yes." Viktor stumbles to the bed, collapses onto it with Yuuri underneath him. Presses kisses down Yuuri's chest, down his stomach, lifts up his shirt and drags his lips along hot skin, the hair above his waistband. From there, face-down between Yuuri's thighs, the place where Viktor sincerely believes he was always meant to be, he looks up at Yuuri's blushing beauty, griping the pillows with his chest heaving, and says, "Oh my God, you're so gorgeous. I love you."

Yuuri's lips part to release the headiest gasp Viktor's ever heard.

"I love you too," he whispers. "God, I—I love you so much."

Viktor presses his face down and unzips Yuuri's zipper with his teeth, feels Yuuri's foot arch against his back, slowly and deliciously loses his mind.

Viktor wakes up to an empty bed and the blue tinge of pre-dawn twilight peeking through the windows. The sheets next to him are still warm. He slides out of bed and tiptoes across the room to the balcony, where he can see Yuuri's shadowy figure curled on one of the two wooden chairs there. He spends a minute just looking at him, the shadows playing on his face and his hair swaying in the breeze, before sliding open the door just far enough to step out. Barcelona smells sweet, and even in December the temperature is cool enough to stand outside in nothing but sleep pants and bare feet. Yuuri is wearing the shirt that matches the pants. Viktor is glad that he's found someone to make use of all the forsaken shirts in his pajama sets.

"Hey," Viktor says softly, sliding up behind him. "Couldn't sleep?"

"No," Yuuri hums, and hugs his knees closer to himself.

"That’s no good," Viktor murmurs. "You're competing tomorrow, you know." He gingerly sets his hands on Yuuri's shoulders and, when Yuuri doesn't pull away, leans down to rest his chin there. Turns mouth into Yuuri's ear and whispers, "I hate waking up without you."

"I know," Yuuri whispers, and turns his head to press his lips to Viktor's like an apology. "I just, um…I'm sorry about…what I said last night. I don't know. I just can't stand the idea that I'm taking something away from you. Something you love."

"Yuuri." Viktor wheels around to Yuuri's front, kneels before him like a sinner making prayer. "I haven't lost anything since I came to you. The only thing I've done is gained. Family, friends. And not just—just in Japan. Yura talks to me now, and Yakov—I still don't know where things are with Yakov, but they're better than they were. Maybe better than they’ve ever been. I've gained a proper understanding of myself. Yuuri, God, for the first time in my life I—I understand who I am and what I want. Truly understand. And what I want…" He takes Yuuri's hand, lifts it to his lips, kisses, kisses. "What I want is you. To be with you however I can, for however long I can. To build a life with you."

Yuuri bites his lip. "But I—you love skating."

"I love you more."

There's the red eyes. Yuuri's face crumples as his chin begins to wobble. "But I feel so—so bad. I don't—what if, in five years, I haven't amounted to anything and you—you realize that you—wasted all this time on me, the last years of your career—"

"Yuuri." Viktor pulls him down, curls him into his lap, kisses his head. "Oh baby, oh darling. Please don't do this to yourself. What can I do for you? Let me do something for you."

"I don't know," Yuuri whimpers into his neck. "I don't know, I just…want to…sit here. And cry."

"Okay." Viktor kisses his head again. "Alright, you do that."

The sun rises on Barcelona as Viktor holds Yuuri, shielding him from the breeze even as his own back goes very cold. Finally, Yuuri sniffs into his neck and Viktor feels the smallest, gentlest peck against his neck before Yuuri tells him, "I'm sorry I made you cry."

"I'm sorry I said you were selfish," Viktor says in return. "Will you come back to bed with me?"

"Yeah," Yuuri whispers, and lets Viktor lead him back to their makeshift bed, where Viktor has been trying to avoid falling through the crack all weekend. They curl up on their sides, facing the sunrise, and Viktor presses his lips to the nape of Yuuri's neck.

"In Russia, there's a…legend, I guess you would say," Viktor whispers. "Or maybe it's a proverb. Either way, it goes that…the reason soul mates switch, the reason we trade consciousness and live in each other's bodies…is that at the moment your soul mate needs you most, their soul calls out to you so loudly that your soul rushes to their body to be closer. But a body can't have two souls. And so their soul goes to yours, and they stay there until you find each other."

Yuuri sniffs and lifts his face from the pillows to mumble, "I like that. It's a good story."

"I don't know if it's true, though," Viktor says. "Because you…came to me months before we switched. And you saved me, Yuuri Katsuki. Right then and there. You made me realize that I have…so much life left to live. I have never been happier than when I'm at your side, and I want to be at your side for the rest of my life. I understand that…there are some things that love can't fix. That there will be things we don't agree on, things that we'll never agree on. There'll be days where we probably won't be able to stand the sight of each other. But we'll get through it. How could we not? We were made for each other." He shuffles down until his forehead is between Yuuri's shoulders. Sighs there, "We'll talk about our careers after the competition is over. Once the pressure is off. Okay?"

For a moment, Yuuri is just still. Then he nods, slowly, hair sliding along the pillowcase. "Okay. Okay."

Viktor is almost asleep when Yuuri rolls over and hugs his head to his chest, kisses the top of his head. Viktor drapes an arm over his waist and breathes in the smell of him, spins the new weight of his ring on his finger.

There are still a lot of things to be said and a lot of issues to be solved. Viktor doesn't doubt their ability to get through them. He never really did.

Yuuri moves permanently to Saint Petersburg on a Tuesday night. Their new training schedule officially begins in two days, bright and early at the Saint Petersburg Ice Palace, conveniently located a six-minute walk from the front door of Viktor's apartment.

Their apartment.

Viktor stands in the doorway on Yuuri's first morning in Saint Petersburg and just watches him. His Sleeping Beauty. Viktor's bed has never looked so inviting as when three-fourths of the space is being taken up by Yuuri, sleeping like an octopus with limbs spread to the four corners and duvet pulled clean over his head. The floor is cold underneath Viktor's feet and he's holding a lukewarm mug of tea in his hand, and he's never been happier in the middle of a Saint Petersburg winter.

Yuuri seems to finally realize, somewhere beyond his slumber, that someone is staring at him. He flips over in bed, yanking the duvet away from his head as he does so to reveal his face, reddened from the humidity under the blankets and surrounded by a halo of tangled black hair. Yuuri is a beautiful, lovely person. Before nine, he tends to be a lovely, beautiful person with the personality of a bridge troll.

"Is that mine?" Yuuri mumbles, making wild eyes at Viktor's mug.

"Ah, no," Viktor says. He would absolutely offer Yuuri the shirt off his back or the tea in his cup, but he has the feeling that if he handed Yuuri his half-full mug of tea with jam instead of the hot coffee Yuuri is expecting, Yuuri would toss it right back at him. "I'll bring you some. Just a minute." Thankfully, he has had the forethought to brew a pot.

When he returns one minute later, steaming mug of coffee in hand and Makkachin at his heels, Yuuri has thrust back the remaining blankets and sat up in bed. He eyes Viktor blurrily as he stretches taught, arms high above his head and shirt trailing far over his ribs. Viktor crosses the room in three steps and slides himself in behind Yuuri, folded against Yuuri's back, his leg pressed to the bare skin of Yuuri's bum.

"Here," he murmurs, winding his arm around Yuuri's waist to offer him the coffee.

"Thank you," Yuuri grunts, and drinks half of it in one go. After that, he looks down at it and says, "This is really good."

Viktor chooses not to tell him that he probably just drank seven hundred rubles' worth of coffee.

"Have I ever told you," Viktor whispers against his neck, kissing from ear to collarbone, "That you are the most beautiful…sexy…and amazing person in the whole entire world?"

"Yes," Yuuri says slowly, and takes a more reasonable sip of coffee. He turns his head and lets Viktor slide his tongue into his mouth, which tastes like coffee and sleep. Viktor wants every morning for the rest of his life to start this way. Yuuri pushes him back with the handle of his mug against Viktor's chest and murmurs, "If you bring me another one and let me brush my teeth, I'll let you fuck the most amazing person in the world in the shower."

"Yes, yes, yes!" Viktor sings, taking the mug by its rim and leaping out of the room. Makkachin barks, excited at the sudden flurry of activity. Viktor mixes two creams and a sugar into another mug of coffee as he finishes his own tea and giddily tells Makkachin, "I'm going to marry that man, Makkachin. I love him so much."

Makkachin pants at him, and for a moment Viktor has a vivid, poignant flashback of the countless days he spent standing in this kitchen with only this dog and these stark white walls to talk to. It's enough to make him feel all that loneliness, only for a second, before he hears the sink in the bathroom start up. Remembers he has a soul mate now, a drowsy and crabby one who's waiting for him to bring him a cup of coffee and give him a drowsy early-morning orgasm while they waste hot water.

"I heard him, Makkachin," he whispers. "It may not have been when I was supposed to, but I heard him."

"Vitya!" Yuuri calls from the bathroom, muffled like the toothbrush is still in his mouth. "Did you get lost?"

"Only distracted!" Viktor replies, and bounds back into the bedroom.

This is the beginning of the rest of his life.

Take hold of it together; it won't feel so heavy.

-Russian Proverb