#katsuki hiroko

Queen Hiroko of Hasetsu, with her heirs Princess Mari and Prince Yuuri. Accompanied by Prince Yuuri's consort, Victor.

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My piece for the Uchi edition of @yoihomezine! Featuring the Katsukis, who I love very very much ... Minako and Viktor are honorary Katsukis okay I won't hear otherwise.

Decided to put Minako as the focus instead of Yuuri here, because I ... I think the Katsukis/Hasetsu is very much home/family for her, what with her coming back there to settle down after her international career. It's clearly an important place for her, where her people are. And she deserves the love! The focus!

A short fic for day twenty-three of the YOI 20+ Club’s Daily Art Challenge.

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Note: Victor learns about snack pineapples.

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Just before they step out the door to go to the beach, Hiroko slips a handful of very small and oddly round pineapples into the cooler Yuuri is carrying.

“For stamina,” she explains, waving them off.

The beach is a twenty minute walk from the onsen. Makkachin is panting within seconds. Yuuri is shading himself with the beach umbrella and keeps trying to get Victor to walk under it as well, and for some reason it’s so cute that Victor has to actively stop himself from making little excited noises every time Yuuri scoots closer and gives him his ‘I’m worried about your pasty skin getting burned’ look, which happens quite frequently.

To distract himself, he points at the cooler. “Did your mother really just give us whole pineapples?” he asks.

“Oh. Yeah. The vitamin C is supposed to be good for fatigue. So you can stay outside for longer.”

“Does your mother want us to stay away?” Victor asks.

“Well,” Yuuri scrunches his face as he peers out from under the umbrella, “You do tend to mope when it gets hot in the afternoons.”

“Yuuri! You wound me!” Victor teases. Victor is not the least bit wounded. He’s self-aware enough to know exactly how much moping he does on hot days, which is plenty, and he can’t bring himself to be even slightly embarrassed about it.  

He sometimes worries he’s being too much, but Yuuri asked him to just be himself, and it turns out that just Victor greatly enjoys teasing Yuuri.

Yuuri doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’ll live,” Yuuri huffs, looking away with a small smile.

Victor glances at him. “Yuuri, I’ve changed my mind, I want to walk under the umbrella, too.”

Yuuri bites his lip to hold back a smile, rolls his eyes, and lifts the umbrella a little higher so Victor can fit underneath.

Later, when they’re resting under the shade of the umbrella, sea salt crusting their hair and sand sticking to their damp skin, Yuuri pulls one of the little pineapples out of the cooler.

Victor narrows his eyes at it. The only pineapple he’s ever tasted has been tough, pale-yellow, and either tasteless or so tart it hurts his teeth. Little chunks thrown into fruit salads at the hotels he’s stayed in during competitions, or optimistically purchased from a St. Petersburg supermarket.

Yuuri pulls out a paring knife, cuts off the bottom of the pineapple, and then just... peels off a section with his fingers. It pulls away from the stem in a perfect triangle.

“What?” Victor gasps before he can stop himself.  

Yuuri laughs, holds out the pineapple. “It’s a snack pineapple. They grow them in Okinawa. This is how you’re supposed to eat them.”

Victor mimics Yuuri’s motion, grabbing the rind and pulling away a little chunk of pineapple. He takes a bite.

It’s sweet, really sweet. Just tart enough to make his mouth water. And so juicy. It’s one of the most delicious things Victor has ever tasted.

“Is this what pineapple is supposed to taste like?” he says wonderingly.

“I know!” Yuuri agrees, “I couldn’t eat pineapple at all when I lived in Detroit, it was too sad. This is one of the good things about being home.“

Victor finishes his piece and takes another. He has to suck the juice away before biting into it to stop the juice from running down his chin.

“So you like it?” Yuuri asks.

“Yuuri, this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Victor says, completely seriously.

“You say that about everything you try here,” Yuuri points out.

“But I mean it this time.”

“You meant it about katsudon, too. And natto,” Yuuri adds, grimacing, “How you can rate those equally is beyond me.”

“How do I put this?” Victor muses, grabbing another chunk of pineapple. Still perfectly sweet-tart. Still delicious. “I guess, before I came here, I thought I knew what I liked. But I had no idea how much I was missing. It’s hard to compare anything here to what I used to eat, let alone rank any of it. It’s like ranking infinities. Technically possible, but why bother? They’re all bigger than anything we can understand.”  

“Victor, are you really using a mathematical theory to explain why natto and katsudon are on the same level?” Yuuri deadpans.

Victor finishes chewing, swallows. “Well, after you spend your entire life thinking you know how the story ends, only to find out you’d only read the first chapter, please come back to me and tell me, honestly, that everything you eat after that isn’t the best, most amazing, most perfect thing you’ve ever tasted.”

Victor catches himself too late. That had been… quite a bit more dramatic than Victor had intended it to be. He chances a look at Yuuri, who is wearing an undefinable expression.

He pulls another piece from the snack pineapple and offers it to Yuuri. “Sorry. Ignore me,” he says.

Yuuri accepts the pineapple chunk and chews contemplatively, staring out at the waves. Victor watches him.

“Is it okay if I don’t?” Yuuri finally asks, still looking at the water.

“Oh,” Victor replies, taken aback. “Sure. If you want.”

Yuuri turns and looks at him intently, like he’s seeing Victor for the first time. Then he smiles.