#sunwrites

It’s Yuuri who greets him, running to the door and hugging him viciously as soon as the iron door is out of their way. He jumps into the other boy’s arms without thinking and breathes hurriedly as snow piles slowly over their hot heads.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t pick you up at the airport.” He says and Minako, who did pick him up and came on the train with Victor, chuckles loudly.

“It’s no problem, Yuuri. I’m here now.” In the past months, Victor’s voice left his whining tone behind and dropped several octaves lower. He doesn’t sound like a child anymore, Yuuri hears certain strength and resilience on him. It’s rich, sweet and powerful. It fits Victor and messes horribly with Yuuri’s gut.

When they talked over grainy video calls, he didn’t sound this mature, this real and Yuuri felt his knees give in at the sound of soft maturity coming from Victor’s throat.

He lets go of him and bows at Victor before reaching for the suitcases when Victor pulls his hand in his own direction.

“It’s okay, I got it.” He says, thinking Victor doesn’t want him to take his luggage.

“Yuuri.” It is then when he lifts his head up, almost gasping when he sees Victor’s silver locks gone and a much, much shorter and fashionable haircut instead. It looks sleek, still soft but also sharp. It's short on the sides and at the back of his head, very short. The top’s longer with a fringe falling in front of his face, almost covering up one eye. It’s hot.

Last time Yuuri saw Victor his long hair was still brushing his shoulders, the streaks of silver perfectly silky in a way that could only be described as luscious, as it had always been. But now its got edge, it’s masculine, too masculine, and Yuuri realizes Victor is not just a pretty baby boy now. Victor turned into a full-blown sex icon with nothing but a decent haircut.

Yuuri yelps. He can’t think like that.

“You look like a model~” He tries to sound teasing, but his voice is rough and small at the same time. Victor blushes.

“Is it horrible?” His complaints are proven to be annoying when even that heady voice can’t make him sound less like a child, and Yuuri feels like laughing. “You hate it!”

‘I hate that I can’t tell you what I really think about it’, Yuuri wants to say but he shakes his head,

“I don’t!” He swears. “It’s pretty, it suits you, you look older. But good older. Not old older.” He scrunches up his nose and Victor lets out a relieved laugh.

“I thought you’d kill me.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. What he is immune to, though, it’s Victor’s excessive dramatism.

“I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other chances in the future, Vitya.” He huffs, sarcastic, and now he grabs his friend’s suitcase.

“Cheeky ~” Victor laughs, amusedly, and follows Yuuri with his backpack still behind him. Minako is following them closely, muttering something to herself.

He sits beside her, on the edge of the mattress. It is frustrating, the idea of spending another day lying flat, watching the ceiling, when he’s been kind enough to take time out of his day to see her. It's childish. It's foolish. She knows her limits better than this, and she does it anyway.

“Young master,” she says, pushing herself up by the heels of her hands, and the world—

“Peko—”

spins.

She doesn’t understand that she’s falling until it’s finished. Until she’s stabilized, somehow, against something warm and steady and solid, against—

He sways, with the weight of catching her. Her forehead is braced against his shoulder, nearly into the crook of his neck.

Her stomach feels like so many trembling leaves, clinging to the far end of a tree branch.

“Hey,” he says, soft and urgent, when she struggles to lift herself back up again. “Hey, hey, hey.” His hands slide up against her shoulders, and then jump away again. “Don’t— You don’t gotta force it. Okay? Just…”

The room is still shifting around her; she realizes only belatedly that her left hand is twisted in the hem of his shirt. She closes her eyes, and gulps down air to steady herself enough to let go. “I’m sorry.”

The apology upsets him. It always does; he goes tense in his neck and shoulders, the way he always has. She braces herself for his reaction: for his anger, and his indignation.

“It’s fine,” he says instead. “I don’t… I’m not mad, or anything.” He’s breathing slowly and deliberately. She can feel each one in the careful rise and fall of his chest. “You- You can stay like that.” He coughs, and she feels that, too. “I mean, if- if it helps. If you want.”

There is so much that she has missed.

It’s overwhelming. The emotions crowd her throat, too many to identify all at once. She closes her eyes, she breathes, and everything is still spinning, spinning, spinning.

“Yes,” she breathes against his collar, when she can manage it.

“Okay,” he murmurs. Carefully, hesitantly, his palm curls around the back of her head, and stays there. “Yeah. Okay.”

Peko had stared at it from the other side of the street for a solid fifteen minutes. She says she’s happy just to watch when she sees someone out walking their dog or cat or bird or whatever, but she’s been full of shit about that since they were kids. He knows better.

So he’d flagged the guy down, and here they are.

“May I?” she asks, whisper-soft, holding her hand out.

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy says, with no idea what he’s agreeing to. He steps back to give her room, and the dog’s head whips around a little before it settles again. “Of course.”

“Just,” Fuyuhiko reminds her carefully, “be gentle.”

She nods once, decisive. They’ve talked about this before. 

(She just gets excited, is all. Fuck anybody who wants to give her shit about it. She’s gotten way better the past few months.)

She holds her hand out flat, palm down. Her whole arm is stiff, stuck out at a weird angle from her body, but it’s good progress. She waits, and lets the dog stretch its neck out to sniff her fingers first, cautious. One second, two seconds, three, and he watches her smile faintly when it allows the intrusion into its space.

The guy’s obviously confused. “It’s—” he starts to say, and shuts up when Fuyuhiko glares at him.

Peko touches the tips of her fingers to the top of the dog’s head, smack dab in the middle, between its ears. It’s sort of weird, not really a pet, but she’s trying so, so hard to be gentle. Her eyes get big and round and amazed when she’s able to stroke back from its forehead without it twisting away.

After a few long, silent seconds, the dog tips its head up to her, wet nose dragging against her wrist. She doesn’t flinch, just takes a soft, sharp breath, and cups her palm carefully around the base of its right ear.

“Hello,” she whispers, wondering, and Fuyuhiko decides she’s gonna get as much time as she wants with this, today.

It’s something in the quality of his expression. Saori struggles to categorize it, which is what starts the first bloom of apprehension, low in the pit of her stomach. He is open, ecstatic, enthralled. He makes a demand Saori can’t hear, and then leaps with both feet down the path to where his tool is sitting. He bends to take her by both hands and drag her up to her feet.

(Saori watches.)

He’s only a boy. It’s nothing so dramatic or dangerous that it bears worrying about. At this stage, the girl is hardly different from a stuffed animal: familiar and comforting and essential to him, every day until she isn’t. There will be other girls. He will grow up. One day, he’ll understand better the roles that the people around him play in his life.

(In the meantime, he is smiling, incandescent. Saori watches, her chest tight.)

The tool lets herself be drawn forward a few steps before she remembers herself. She stops, feet planted, and lets her wrist fall out of Fuyuhiko’s grip. He twists around, indignant. Saori can’t hear him from where she’s sitting, but his face molds into the same familiar shapes as his father’s.

The tool isn’t moved. She takes her place at the edge of the garden again, and Natsumi shouts at his back.

(His smile collapses into something frustrated and sad. Saori watches, and her chest does not loosen.)

He will learn.

He waits until he sees Yoshizawa start to go pale before he turns his face away. He reminds himself: don’t do it sharp, do it slow. Like there’s nothing interesting to look at in front of him anymore. Like Natsumi used to do when she wanted to make him feel ignored, to piss him off.

Peko gives it a few seconds, and then she says, “I think we’re finished,” flat and chilly and fucking perfect.

Yoshizawa sputters. He’s halfway through a weak-ass apology by the time Niijima hauls him out of the room by the back of his coat.

Fuyuhiko counts in his head until their footsteps are just echoes, and then he lets his held breath push out through his teeth.

“Fuck.”

Peko smiles in his peripheral vision. She always sits on his good side, where he can see her.

“That was difficult for you,” she says, and she’s not mocking him. She’s not. She’s saying it honestly, so the way his face flushes hot is all on him.

“What a smug fucking asshole,” he snaps, despite himself. He’s better at holding it back now, but he’s still no good at swallowing it down. “Where’s he get off with that shit, huh? He’s lucky I didn’t fucking deck him right here.”

She hums, and her lips purse, the way they do when she agrees with him but is too polite to say so.

He needs to keep his shit together sometimes. That's just the way life is, now. He doesn't have the luxury of being that stupid kid anymore, going off over every little fucking thing.

But when it's her, when it's the two of them, just the two of them— well.