#phichuuriweek

He grabbed one on his way to the small hallway, staring as he saw Yuuri still standing outside the apartment, dripping murky water from head to toe.

In a heroic effort, Phichit neither laughed nor took out his phone to take a picture.

“Oh, Yuuri.” He handed him the towel, then rummaged for a rag for his roommate to stand on. “What happened?”

“Big puddle. Large truck.” 

Phichit clicked his tongue in sympathy, pulled Yuuri inside and shut the door behind him.

“You look frozen, too. Go take a shower, I’ll take care of your clothes.”

Yuuri gave him a small smile.

“Thanks, you’re the best.”

“I know.” Phichit beamed and ushered him towards the tiny bathroom.

After hanging Yuuri’s clothes up to dry and unpacking his bag, grimacing at the state of a couple of notebooks, but glad that his friends hadn’t had any textbooks with him, Phichit went back into the kitchen and continued with making soup.

Eventually, he heard the bathroom door open, the low thud of wet footsteps, and then Yuuri’s bedroom door fall shut. He gave him another five minutes, before he went over and knocked.

Yuuri was sitting on the tiny, threadbare couch, wrapped in a blanket, still looking utterly woebegone, squinting at Phichit, glasses beside him on the small dresser.

“Hot cocoa. Lactose-free.” Phichit sat down next to him and handed him the mug, and for a moment Yuuri looked like he’d burst into tears. 

“You’re a life-saver,” he croaked.

“How long did you have to walk like that?”

Yuuri sniffed and took a small sip of cocoa.

“Ten minutes or so? Felt much longer.”

“You poor thing.” Phichit put an arm around him and Yuuri sighed.

“You can laugh if you want. I know it’s funny, when it isn’t you.”

“I’d never!” Phichit protested, though he smiled slightly. “I’m making soup, by the way.”

“Thai soup?” Yuuri’s eyes lit up.

Phichit chuckled.

“Yes, Thai soup.” 

“This day is getting better after all.” He drank some more cocoa, then set the cup aside. “You are the best roommate ever, Chuchu.”

Phichit grinned.

“And you have got a cocoa mustache.” He reached out without even thinking about it, and brushed his thumb over the corner of Yuuri’s mouth. He saw Yuuri’s eyes widen for a second, a faint blush creeping over his face, eyes fixed on Phichit, who was still cupping Yuuri’s face. He couldn’t make sense of the sudden change in atmosphere for a moment, though his heart was beating much too hard. 

Yuuri gulped. 

“I...”

Phichit didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t planned on any of this, even though it had been on his mind for weeks. Nevertheless, he bent forward slowly until he was very close to Yuuri, still holding his gaze. 

Then Yuuri closed his eyes and lifted his chin slightly, and there was nothing else for Phichit to do but to lean in, licking at the corner of Yuuri’s mouth, before pressing his lips to Yuuri’s, tasting chocolate on his friend’s open mouth. 

Yuuri’s arms were around him a moment later, pulling him close, and Phichit practically crawled onto his lap, their kisses slowly gaining heat and depth, Yuuri’s tongue exploring his mouth, running along his teeth, sliding against Phichit’s tongue.

“Yuuri,” he gasped, when they finally broke apart for air, both hands cupping his friend’s face. “Gosh, Yuuri.” He laughed. “I’ve wanted to do this for weeks.”

“You certainly know how to warm a guy up,” Yuuri said, his shy, crooked smile endearing, and Phichit kissed his nose. “I guess being doused in cold, dirty water wasn’t so bad after all.”

“Hmm, maybe, but you don’t have to do it again just to get me to kiss you, alright?”

Yuuri chuckled, then pulled him into another kiss.

In St Petersburg, Victor pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to cling onto his patience. “Look, Yuuri, it just really bugs me okay,” he said, calmer than he felt. “Can you please just help me with the dishes now.”

It wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. It was tiny and stupid and Victor had just suddenly snapped because it was the hundredth time in a row, and there was only so much irritation he could take.

The dinner plates were stacked in the sink, used pan still on the stove from making dinner. Sure, there wasn’t much washing to do and it wasn’t exactly a huge mess; but it was in a place where it shouldn’t be, ruining the perfect image of Victor’s immaculate kitchen just by existing. He knew Yuuri would do the dishes eventually tonight, but Victor just wanted the mess gone. Every second it was there plucked on his nerves like a guitar string.

“I-I’m sorry.” Yuuri trembled in the kitchen in front of him, tears practically pricking in the corners of his eyes and fingers picking at each other nervously in front of him. “It’s just that when I lived with Phichit, we always did the dishes later and I guess that’s what I’m used to so I just - I didn’t think - I’m sorry! I… I’m sorry ...”

Dammit, Yuuri was crying again. He cried a lot. Victor hadn’t been prepared for how much Yuuri cried - even in his sleep! Tiny beads of moisture leaked from his eyes when he was tired, tickling the skin on the back of Victor’s shoulder when they were curled up in bed in a way that had him leaping out of the sheets at the sensitive feeling. He hadn’t meant to make Yuuri cry for real when he’d asked about it, but somehow he had.

And he was running out of reassuring words.

Especially when Yuuri mentioned his old room mate every five minutes.

Victor’s jaw tensed, a nerve jumping subtly. “You’re not living with Phichit,” he said stiffly. “You’re living with me.”

Yuuri clenched his fists at his sides, digging his thumb nails into the inside of his palms to distract himself from the heat pricking behind his eyes and the tightness in his chest. The tone of Victor’s voice said it all. He wasn’t going to comfort Yuuri tonight. He didn’t have the patience. The thought just made Yuuri’s breath hitch even more though, praying more than anything that he could just blink and be anywhere else in that moment.

Like Bangkok.

His teeth snagged his lip at the thought, biting back the unexpected ache in the left side of his chest. The more he thought about it though, grey eyes and black hair swimming in his mind… yes, he thought with a trembling lip. Bangkok. It lingered in his mind long after Victor’s lecture, feeling about as tall as an ant by the time the Russian was done with him.

Victor slunk off to the bedroom when he was, taking Makkachin with him. Yuuri stayed hunched on the couch in the front room though, face illuminated by the dull glow of his phone as the natural light started to crawl away.

He didn’t remember living with someone being so hard. Back in Detroit it had been practically effortless. The only arguments he’d remembered from Detroit were when Yuuri had beat Phichit at a video game, Phichit had playfully tackled him in victory, and spilled Yuuri’s dark soda on his favourite white shirt, and… no, that had ended up being a laugh, not a fight. They just didn’t fight. Not like he and Victor. Everything had just worked, clicked together on instinct.

Somehow Detroit felt more like home than Victor’s St Petersburg apartment did. He almost wished he could go back. Almost.

The picture of him and Phichit in their old dorm glowed happily from the wallpaper of Yuuri’s iPhone, happy smiles beaming from behind his apps until Yuuri clicked open Instagram. Phichit’s smiling selfie grinned back at him, the Bangkok rink over his shoulder.

Yuuri tapped the like button, wishing he could see that smile without the pixels.

Instagram was suddenly the last thing Phichit wanted to see as the new notification buzzed on his phone, bent ridiculously over the boards around the edge of the rink to read it. His feed was drowned in Yuuri Katsuki. Yuuri cooking; Yuuri sleeping; Yuuri smiling; Yuuri reading; Yuuri not even aware his picture was being taken as he pinched a roll of chub around his middle and pulled a dissatisfied face. It wasn’t the subject of the pictures that bothered Phichit though. Yuuri was his favourite thing.

But Yuuri in Victor Nikiforov’s St Petersburg apartment, half the world away… not so much.

He’d known it was inevitable - Yuuri and Victor were engaged for heaven’s sake! - but knowing it still didn’t quite prepare him for the reality.

Phichit missed him.

A lot.

More than he expected.

The Bangkok rink was busy behind him and Phichit was just waiting for the yell from Celestino for him to drop his phone and get back to work, but Phichit just couldn’t help himself. He hated the pictures - and loved them. Every single one. Because they had Yuuri, just in the wrong place.

It hurt more than he knew it should, teeth snagging on his lower lip to hold back whatever was welling in his chest. Whatever it was, it burned.

A new picture buzzed onto his feed from v-nikiforov. Yuuri. Again. Blushing bright red as Victor nuzzled the tip of his nose into the side of his cheek, eyes scrunched up in embarrassment - no doubt, half a second before Yuuri buried his face in his hands. A smile twitched over Phichit’s lips. He remembered the warmth that radiated off of a flustered Yuuri, the cutest thing he’d ever seen.

His thumb hovered over the heart button on the Instagram app, his gaze lingering on the adorable plump of Yuuri’s cheeks. He couldn’t bring himself to press the button though.

Another week later, air whistled sharply in and out of Yuuri’s lungs, blinking up at the ceiling through the water welling in his eyes. Every gasp breathed down the phone line to Thailand.

“I don’t know what I did...”

He honestly didn’t. He couldn’t remember if he’d forgotten to crack the bathroom window open after his shower, or left the toothpaste on the side instead of in the cup, or put the TV remote on the wrong side of the table because Victor normally liked it on the right hand side, but Yuuri -

The heels of his palms pressed into his eyes and he took a deep breath. It was shaky. Salty. The wetness of his tears clung to his lips, chapping his already dry mouth.

Victor had gone.

There hadn’t even been much of a fight this time; Victor had just snapped something irritably at Yuuri while the blood pounded too loudly in Yuuri’s ears to hear what he was being said to him, grabbed Makkachin’s lead and left the apartment with an unnecessary slam of the door. It had made Yuuri shudder, chill crawling down his spine.

The sad thing was though, the apartment didn’t feel any different without Victor in it. He wanted to say it felt cold and empty, and Yuuri felt too alone without Victor there with him...only, he felt like that all the time. If anything, it was better being truly alone. He didn’t have to walk on eggshells so much, counting down the time until he inevitably did something wrong that broke Victor’s sanctuary. He always did something wrong, after all.

He lay spread eagle on the bed, limbs stretched out in a way that he could never feel free to do when Victor was around. Phichit wouldn’t have minded, Yuuri couldn’t help thinking. A few crinkles in the sheets wouldn’t even get a second look in their old college dorm.

In Victor’s perfect apartment though…

Yuuri’s teeth snagged his lower lip, blinking up at the light hanging from the ceiling. It looked startlingly similar to the one from his college dorm.

He missed being with Phichit. He missed the way they lived in sync, one cooking while one cleaned. He missed the way they slotted into their favourite places in the bed, draped casually over one another in an effort to keep them both comfortable. He missed being smiled at. He missed being teased about his posters of Victor and the way Phichit would kiss his pout away like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Maybe there was a reason idols were kept on a pedestal. A reason why they were supposed to be unreachable. Close up, the magic faded away. The cracks in the picture showed.

Hot tears rolled down Yuuri’s cheeks, pooling irritatingly in his ears and wetting the iPhone screen against the side of his face. Teeth snagged his bottom lip. He could feel words swelling in his chest, words that he knew he should bite down, keep to himself since he was in Victor’s apartment and to say them aloud to Phichit in the way he meant them would just be - “I miss you.”

The words rolled around in Phichit’s head, Yuuri’s voice whispering to him long after the phone call ended. His hand stayed by his ear though, phone bowing in his loose grip. It was wrong. It was so, so wrong since Yuuri was with Victor and Phichit was in Thailand, but it was how he felt and -

…. Phichit missed Yuuri too.

Yuuri blinked, but all he saw was a blur. Tears blurred the rest of the world around him and blood pounded in his ears, drowning out everything else. Where was he?

He wasn’t even sure.

Out - that much he could tell. He wasn’t in the apartment anymore. Voices mulled around him, dull and crowded; too many to make out any specific conversations. Bodies moved around him, blurred figures paying him no heed as he stood gulping down his tears in the middle of… where? The distant strained whine of an engine droned in his ears and Yuuri gasped. The airport? He’d come to the airport?

His face dropped into his hands, smudging the delicate trail of his tears messily over the rest of his face. He couldn’t believe this was where he’d brought himself.

A voice louder than the others spoke out over the building suddenly, feminine tone echoing slightly. Russian . Yuuri didn’t understand Russian. He didn’t understand a lot of things. This whole country was a mystery to him, even the man he moved here for.

Victor had shouted at him.

Sure, he knew he and Victor did little things that annoyed each other. Yuuri knew that. But Victor had never shouted before. It had been loud, and blunt, and thoughtless, red blotching over the Russian’s face and down his neck as Victor had just lost it back at the apartment. Even Makkachin had bolted, whining from Victor’s bedroom - no, their bedroom.

Only it didn’t feel like theirs. It felt like Victor’s and Yuuri was just a nuisance, putting things out of place and struggling to shake his old habits.  

Yuuri’s fingers were shaking as they pulled his phone out of his coat pocket, dialing the number he knew from muscle memory more than anything else. He glanced down at the screen, tears splashing down onto the lens of his glasses. If he couldn’t see squat before, he certainly couldn’t now. His breath hitched at the dialing tone, holding the phone to his ear and lifting his eyes back to the shapes blurring around him.

The phone clicked after four rings. “ Yuuri ?”

Just hearing his voice sent shock waves through Yuuri, sucking in a shuddering breath and scrunching his eyes shut. They were pretty useless at that point anyway.

“Phichit?” he choked back. He could barely stand to say the words, every one sticking in his throat liked barbed wire. There was no point lying to himself though, let alone Phichit - he was at the airport for heaven’s sake! It didn’t get much worse than that. “I-I think it’s over.”

Saying aloud made it real. Too real. Yuuri’s teeth crashed down on his lip harder than ever and he tasted the metallic tang of blood pooling slowly against his tongue. More tears welled in his eyes, spilling over his cheeks and dripping messily off his chin. He didn’t care. Nobody was bothering to pay any attention to the crying boy in the airport anyway. He wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten here…

“ Oh, Yuuri…”

Yuuri ran a hand over his face, rubbing his sore eyes under his glasses. He’d done a lot of crying the last couple of days, all leading to the inevitable crescendo.

“What happened?”

A humourless chuckle broke through Yuuri’s lips, tasting the salt of his tears on his lips. He wasn’t sure he could say what happened.

So many of his and Victor’s fights had been confusing for him, flat out not understanding what Victor’s problem was half the time. Even when Victor told him what he’d done, he still didn’t get how those little things he did could upset the Russian so much. Then came the snapping, and the ranting, and then English went out of the window as Victor raved in his mother tongue instead. When the latter had started to become more common in their arguments, Yuuri had realised Victor was giving up. He knew Yuuri didn’t know Russian. He knew Yuuri couldn’t understand what he was saying - Victor didn’t switch back to English though. Sharing the problem was irrelevant when you had no intention of trying to fix it.

Something caved in Yuuri’s chest at the realisation, shoulders hunching over. The worst bit was he wasn’t even that upset about Victor. If he was honest with himself, he was more upset about the fact that he was alone. Really alone.

The last argument he remembered was from the kitchen, Yuuri walking back in as he heard his ringtone sing out and finding Victor holding his phone in his hand, face white. It had been a strange blend of shocked and angry. A furious flush had bloomed over his pale cheeks, darkening dangerously with every ongoing beat of Phichit’s assigned ringtone. Somehow, Yuuri knew Victor had been looking at the phone long before it had starting ringing. Perhaps he had seen the call log, and the one name that flooded his call history nearly every day.

Yuuri could hardly tell Phichit that though. He just couldn’t say it. How could he even say it? ‘ My boyfriend broke up with me because he was jealous of how much I talk to you and the unspoken thing we have between us. Help?’ . He groaned just thinking about it - only it jumped into a hiccup, more tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“I’m at the airport.” he said instead, swallowing the thick lump in his throat. What was he going to do now? He couldn’t just run… could he? “I can’t believe it…”

“Yuuri, it’s okay. I’m here.”

Yuuri’s lip started to quiver again. It suddenly dawned on him that he had left his boyfriend, in a country that was alien to him and - damn, he didn’t even have his wallet with him. Fingers combed roughly through his tangled hair, fighting off the waves of panic starting to build. “I know- y-you’re always there for me, but-” but you’re half the world away, Yuuri finished in his head.

“No, Yuuri, I’m… I’m here .”

A frown nudged into Yuuri’s brow, breath hitching. He blinked. “What?”

“Turn around.”

Yuuri’s blood chilled.

He turned slowly on his heels, phone glued to his ear…until his arm dropped limply down to his side, numb fingers barely holding onto his iPhone. Even through the smudge on his glasses and the blur of tears, he’d recognise that mop of black hair and shimmering grey eyes anywhere.

Yuuri stepped forward - and broke into a run the second his trainers hit the floor. A broken sound choked from him when Phichit did the same, arms open wide. They crashed in a tangle of limbs, arms hugging, fingers grasping and faces burying into shoulders to anchor the other in place like they might disappear if they let go. It was impossible… but Phichit was here.

Yuuri’s phone clattered to the floor with an alarming crack, but he suddenly didn’t care. Phichit was more important than the phone. And Phichit was here - in Russia! For him…

Fingers cradled the back of his skull as he sobbed into his best friend’s shoulder, letting all the longing, all the pain and pining finally bubble forth to the surface. It was messy, and pathetic, and embarrassing. And Yuuri didn’t care.

It was Phichit.

They were together again.