#shemakesmeforget

Before Viktor Nikiforov meets the man who is already, by law, his husband, he sets up some ground rules. Viktor knows how to play a role, knows that success in all things requires a firm hand and plenty of responsibility.

Viktor was an athlete, before he led a corporation whose stockholders feared was growing old, feeble. Outdated. He was an athlete, and he understands what sacrifice and duty can achieve. If the stockholders and his father want him to give up life and love, again, by marrying into and merging with a Japanese corporation who have wonderful resources but anxious, restrained management... he’ll do it.

After all, the only man he’s interested in won’t deign to make contact-- hasn’t, not for years, and Viktor knows it’s foolish to hold on. It doesn’t stop him from writing rule #3.

1. Each party will participate in weekly ‘date night,’ to maintain civility and foster friendship, for the good of the company.

2. Each party will respect each others’ personal space and property; our bedrooms and belongings will be left untouched by the other party.

3. Each party will be allowed one extramarital affair at a time. More would present too much risk of discovery. All partners will be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. One week ‘vacation’ per year will be allowed for the sake of this affair.

There are more rules, Viktor will recall when he tells the story later, but these are the three that are his downfall. Viktor prepares for lovelessness, in his marriage.

His wedding to one of the Katsuki conglomerate’s heirs was meant to be a public, boisterous event in Russia-- a networking opportunity.

“No,” says Katsuki Hiroko. “If he joins our family, he comes to Hasetsu.”

Viktor goes, with very little hope in his heart. He still brings his dog-- who has a wedding ceremony without a dog?-- and his rules, the defenses he can manage.

Neither help. Makkachin, the light of his life, sleeps in Yuuri’s bedroom the first night. His rules-- his rules are read in a hallway, the door to Yuuri’s room barely cracked, Yuuri’s amber eyes glazing with an overwhelmed frustration.

He is also, unfortunately, the Yuuri that Viktor has been longing for. It should be easy, to take the rules back, to rip them into a hundred pieces, to let them disintegrate into watery swirls of ink in the onsen waters.

Shoulders hunched, Yuuri signs on the dotted line. Right next to the signature a past Viktor had congratulated himself on signing with a flourish. Past Viktor was just as foolish as the one in the present.

When Viktor gets him back into their new apartment in Russia, the rules don’t need onsen waters to disintegrate.

They’re demolished in order: rule one works, for a week or two, at least until Viktor and Yuuri begin to edge into two date-nights each week-- three. Four. Viktor has a company to run-- Yuuri has a company to run. They should be busy. They shouldn’t have the time, for walks where they don’t hold hands, dinners where they don’t play footsie, movie nights on the couch where Viktor wants so badly to kiss but they never do. 

“But it’s date night,” Viktor says, quietly, into the phone on a Tuesday evening, when Yuuri reveals that a coworker has asked him out for a round of drinks. It was date night on Monday, and Sunday. Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening, too. All Yuuri, all the time, never enough.

Viktor wouldn’t blame his husband, for trying to escape this excess.

“I,” Yuuri says, and his voice wavers, “Viktor, I’m on my way home. He’ll understand. Next time, we’ll all go out together.”

After that, rule number 2 doesn’t stand a chance.

Viktor had already tried to break rule 2, because Viktor was a rebel. Even when Viktor was the one setting his own constraints, Viktor was a rebel. He’d just wanted in Yuuri’s room to sit and bask, to figure out why blue was Yuuri’s favorite color, swathed in a room of it and all the things Yuuri loved. Pictures of Hasetsu, of his dog. Pictures of--

“Is that me?” All the lights are off, but Viktor remembers this picture. Graduating with his finance degree, top of his class, memorialized by the newspaper article the picture has been cut from. He remembers graduation-- remembers the graduation party his department had thrown, the man a year younger who had also attended. A man at the top of his own class, but whose first start-up had just gone bankrupt.

“No,” Yuuri says, and when Viktor reaches for it, “Vitya, please. Vitya, rule 2, I’m invoking rule 2.” Viktor is wrapped up in Yuuri’s sheets. Viktor is wearing their university’s T-shirt, and they’re both pretending it’s the one that belongs to him, even though it smells like Yuuri. Rule 2-- don’t touch each others’ belongings, don’t enter each others’ bedrooms-- is demolished, but Yuuri clings to it, and Viktor...

Viktor fears rule 3. 

They’re legally married, and in an unspoken way, so much more. But rule 3 still exists, and Yuuri could always choose to use it. 

Viktor’s salary would make a king weep. He still notices, when several thousand dollars go missing from their ridiculously large bank account. It’s not like Yuuri to be lavish.

But, oh. Tracing the purchase is easy: they’re plane tickets, from Russia to Barcelona. A stay at a grand hotel, complete with a spa and a pool.

The trip spans exactly one week.

Viktor thinks of rule number 3, and tries not to squeeze Makkachin too tightly, a mimic of his constricting lungs. There’s bound to be another explanation, he tries futilely to convince himself.

His surly secretary schedules him a week-long business trip with one of their business partners in Kazakhstan-- Katsuki insisted they needed your loud opinions over there, some stupid HR thing. Viktor’s husband wants him 6,500 kilometers away, when he invokes Rule #3, under the sparkling lights of Barcelona’s early Christmas celebrations.

6,500 kilometers.

He fires off a text-- won’t be home tonight, discussion with Yakov-- only for a phone call to come in. Viktor picks up, because he’s a smitten fool.

“If you need to work, just ignore me,” is Yuuri’s soft plea, “but... it’s date night.” It’s a Wednesday. Viktor goes back to their apartment. Rule 2 and Viktor’s heart are shredded, cremated, buried under heated whispers and a thousand of Viktor’s doubts.

The tickets to Barcelona remain. So does Viktor’s business trip to Kazakhstan. When they cuddle on the couch, Yuuri looks at his phone more often. He begins deleting text messages, taking phone calls in his room, shutting screens on his laptop frantically when Viktor opens the door.

Viktor clings to their arranged marriage, because at least then there’s a possibility of Yuuri coming back. Divorce papers, waiting to strike, peek out from beneath product proposals on the mahogany of Yuuri’s desk-- and then, then Viktor doesn’t even have that.

They still celebrate Yuuri’s birthday. Katsudon steaming on the table, Makkachin in a miniature tie, a briefcase full of bones for her.

“A true businesswoman,” Yuuri declares. “These are the people who stood in her company’s way.” Viktor laughs, and Viktor cries, and they fall asleep all tangled up in his bed, like Yuuri’s not going to spend a week in someone else’s.

On a cold morning in December, Viktor wakes up. Blindly takes the airline e-ticket Yurio had printed for him, Almaty stamped in unfeeling black letters all over the top. Yuuri is already gone-- his closet half-empty, like he’ll be gone for a month. A year. The rest of Viktor’s life.

His chauffeur takes him to the airport, starched and fitted business suits and his work laptop all he brings along. The only light is the possibility of Peruvian coffee, waiting for him at the end of security, bitter but familiar. Viktor makes it to check-in, watches his information scroll across the top of the screen--

Yuri Plisetsky, Seat 3A, IATA-->ALA

Viktor blinks. Reads it again. Yurio may have a disruptive personality, even in his early twenties, but his work is always impeccable. How would he even book a flight with his name, not Viktor’s, it seems impossi--

“Vitya!”

Viktor feels motion sick, and he’s not even airborne yet. It’s one thing to know his husband is flying off to Barcelona for an approved affair. It’s another to have to watch him go.

With a desperation he hopes his shareholders never see, he jams at the screen, waits for Yuri Plisetsky to somehow morph into Viktor Nikiforov. Yuuri finds him anyway, exposed, one hand desperately crushing his passport within the depths of his coat pocket. Please.

Yuuri’s hair is slicked back. He’s wearing a suit, grabs at Viktor’s lapels and drags him into a quick kiss.

“Change in plans,” he asserts, somehow still shy, “okay with you?”

Then Viktor sees Yurio, stalking in Yuuri’s wake, dragging three suitcases with him.

“Give me my ticket,” he demands, screeching their wheels to a stop, hand out. “I’m not missing my flight to visit Otabek while you two have a moment at a check-in kiosk.”

“I--” Yuuri is pulling tickets out of his pocket, and Viktor can’t find his voice, “Yuuri, there’s two tickets?”

Yuuri taps his nose with them, cheeks flushed. “How do you feel about Barcelona, Spain?”

“Us?”

The hardened, determined glint in Yuuri’s eyes is fading, giving way to hesitance. “Yes. If you want to go? A trip, just you and me? You never have a vacation, Vitya.”

Viktor thought he might come back from Kazakhstan to only his beloved dog.

“Yes,” he gasps, “yes, Yuuri, yes, yes--” and doesn’t stop gasping, even when Yurio rolls a suitcase across his dress shoe. Even when they’re buckled in to first class, Yuuri gulping at champagne nervously, their fingers interwoven across the arm of their couples chair, Viktor can’t catch his breath.

“I thought it’d be a nice surprise,” Yuuri admits, “but you look... ahh. Vitya. Please tell me, if this was a bad idea.”

Viktor leans, buries his face in Yuuri’s shoulder. “No. It’s the best surprise. I thought you were going to divorce me. I thought you were implementing Rule 3. I thought...”

Yuuri looks crestfallen. “You’re... you’re still thinking about the endearment contract we signed? You still consider that valid?”

“I want to burn it,” Viktor states firmly. And any divorce papers, too.

Yuuri still hasn’t denied that part, and this is suddenly horribly, heartbreakingly evident. Their flight attendant starts to instruct them on what to do in case of an emergency landing. Viktor squeezes his eyes shut, and wishes as hard as he can.

In a cathedral in Barcelona, Yuuri takes his hand.

“I want our last set of contracts null and void,” he murmurs. “Viktor, I want...”

Viktor wants that, too. Everything.