#brambledown

Hopefully sure?

(Not sure.

The season ends, life picks up a routine and a rhythm, and Yuuri still feels like pieces of himself are out of alignment.

Victor still notices.)

They’re out walking Makkachin at dusk on a spring day when Yuuri says, “It’s—” and then stops, not sure how to continue, how to describe something that’s more feeling than anything, and even then, a feeling he can’t quite nail down.

Victor reaches into the space between them and takes Yuuri’s hand, lacing their fingers securely, and waits. He’s been getting better at that. At waiting Yuuri out until the feelings and thoughts have nowhere else to go but out.

“You can’t really see the stars here,” Yuuri finally says, keeping his voice light.

“Ah, well, the sun hasn’t set quite yet,” Victor teases, just as light, not addressing what Yuuri’s really saying. That you can’t really see the stars here like you can in Hasetsu. “But it should, by the time we reach the waterfront.” He gives Yuuri’s hand a squeeze, and Yuuri gives him a soft, thankful smile as they continue their walk.

Yuuri has spent a lot of time along the St. Petersburg coast since the harsh winter has bled into spring. Most times, it’s with Victor, but there are days when he’s drawn to it, all on his own, cheeks pink from the wind sweeping in over the waves as his eyes track the seagulls, making him feel less at odds with himself (even if only until the sting of the sea leaves the back of his throat). Now, with Makkachin pressed against his knee and Victor’s hand warm and assuring in his, Yuuri breathes in open air and tastes salt as he watches stars flicker into existence.

Victor keeps watching him—long, slow, considering looks that give Yuuri a strange sense of safety. And he remembers, all that time ago, Victor letting himself be vulnerable on a beach very far away from the one he had always known, and it gives Yuuri the courage to stop pretending. To let the smile slip from his face as he stares at the darkening horizon, and yearn.

Victor shuffles them closer together, kisses his temple, squeezes his hand, and let’s him.

*

“I thought we could go and spend a few weeks with your family before we start working on next season,” Victor is saying, holding plane tickets and smiling in that way that curls around Yuuri’s heart and squeezes. But Yuuri’s eyes keep flicking behind him. “Stay at the onsen.” Around him. “See how much the triplets have grown.” Above him.

There are a thousand things that Yuuri could say, but his tongue stays lame in his mouth as he looks up at the ceiling, and he can feel the heavy, telltale pressure of tears pushing against his eyes.

“Victor...” He swallows, looking back at his fiancé, completely unable to articulate the rapid, overwhelming spread of emotion that’s suddenly overtaken him past a few clumsy tears. Victor is there immediately, catching them on the edge of his finger as he cups Yuuri’s cheek, smiling careful and hesitant and real.

“You can’t really see the stars in St. Petersburg,” Victor says, only days after Yuuri had admitted it to him. “Much to my frustration, that is not something I have the power to fix, my Yuuri.” Yuuri giggles, the sound breathy and wet and fond. “But I thought, until we’re back in Hasetsu, we could have our own stars.”

From any other mouth, from any other person, it would be the worst, cheesiest thing in the world. But this is Victor, and as sappily romantic as he is, Yuuri loves him and loves him for it. Loves that when Yuuri misses the stars, Victor accepts that he can’t erase decades of light pollution to make them visible but does not accept defeat. Yuuri misses the stars, he misses home, so Victor strings up faerie lights like they can be stars, and Yuuri loves him.

He can’t speak, laughs instead even as he keeps crying, and Victor kisses his forehead and murmurs soft, quiet things in Russian that Yuuri only understands pieces of.

They leave the lights on late into the night, until Victor mournfully admits that he can’t fall asleep and Yuuri turns them off without hesitation. He can see the glow, when he closes his eyes, and they might not be the stars of Hasetsu, or even the stars of St. Petersburg, but they’re their stars. His and Victor’s. They can’t erase how much he misses Japan, or his family, but they can ease the ache, make it that much more bearable to live with.

So yeah, okay, Levi’s been looking forward to looking around and seeing Eren’s possessions all mixed in with his. Wants to reach into a kitchen cabinet and grab a mug and have it be one of the stupid, kitschy, novelty ones that Eren loves so much and not one of the generic, buy-in-a-set-of-8 slate grey ones his mother got him as a housewarming gift over a decade ago.

Except… It’s taking a lot longer than Levi expected. Eren dutifully moves all of his things in, stacks them in the cleared out extra bedroom, and proceeds to… Not unpack. The space that Levi made in his closet for Eren’s things stays empty. The boring mugs he’d moved to the top shelf are now a pain in the ass to retrieve because there is no Snoopy mug staring at him from a conveniently reachable place. When he gets home from work, there is nothing to signify that someone else lives there. Sure, Eren’s shoes are neatly lined up by the door and he’s generally lounging on the couch playing video games, but he’d done that stuff before they actually lived together.

It’s almost like Eren thinks he’s going to take it back.

(…it’s exactly like Eren thinks he’s going to take it back, the fucking brat.)

Like Levi would have asked him if it’s not something he had thought through, thoroughly, for weeks. As if it’s not something he wants more than he’s willing to admit, even to himself. It reminds Levi, frustratingly, of himself, and how he’d spent the first six months of their relationship waiting for Eren to break-up with him. Except he hadn’t, obviously, because here they are, now, and all it had taken really was… Well, time.

So Levi gives Eren time. And, eventually, things do start to change. Eren has to wash his clothes and when Levi helps him put them away, he purposefully puts Eren’s folded jeans into a drawer and hangs his jacket in the closet. They don’t talk about it, but soon there are less boxes in the guest room and all of Eren’s clothes are in Levi’s—in their closet and dressers.

Eren’s gaming equipment comes out piece by piece, as he needs and uses it, overpowering Levi’s not-quite-large-enough media unit until he’s reminding Eren that they cleared out the guest room for a reason and they go out and buy him a proper desk. After the desk there’s several shelving units for all his games and guides that Levi dutifully organizes, and a chair, and then Eren is unpacking lights and streaming equipment and the room becomes more what it’s supposed to be and less a place to store towers of boxes.

It’s a trickle, slow and steady, until two months later Levi does open his cabinet and see a mug shaped like a Hulk fist right in front of him (but makes his tea in a UCSB one, instead). When he walks through the door, there’s a Link figurine holding up his old poetry anthologies from college and Eren napping on the couch under his old Pokéball comforter.

And then all the boxes are gone, and Levi comes home one night to find Eren standing barefoot on their bed, pins held carefully between his teeth, securing strands of twinkly lights around the edge of the entire room. When he sees Levi, his eyes go wide, and he’s letting the pins fall into his open palm and saying, “I took a shower and moved all the pillows before I did anything.”

Then he says, “If you hate it, we can take them down.”

And he’s staring at Levi, one hand held out placatingly, but Levi is looking more at the very last box, open on the floor, with the very last of Eren’s possessions—the special ones, the ones that mean the most, the ones Eren had been waiting to mix in with Levi’s things because he’d still been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He remembers the lights from Eren’s bedroom in his apartment. Levi hadn’t really understood the point, but he’d also never really stayed over at Eren’s old apartment (see: had three roommates) and therefore never really saw them in action. But… He knows that they make Eren happy. That he’d said something about seeing hipster bedroom pictures online and trying to imitate them. That it made his sometimes mundane life seem a little more magical.

“Let me change my socks,” Levi says, loosening his tie. “I’ll help.”

That night, when Eren falls asleep, hands curled in the small space between his and Levi’s bodies, Levi looks at him and the way the small, twinkling lights dance across his eyelashes, the apples of his cheeks, his bare shoulder, and finds aching warmth rather than any kind of regret.