#vicchan

Victor is giddy, and it’s entirely to blame on the nervous way Yuuri’s just asked him to join him in his room to talk about something.

Why request they have this discussion behind a closed door, when their days are spent near exclusively together from their trips to and from the rink, to the hours they spend training on the ice? What topic could Yuuri want to bring up that requests complete and total privacy, especially now that Yurio’s not here to battle for Victor’s attention anymore and Yuuri and him have grown closer to one another than they were before?

Victor thinks he knows.

He thinks he knows, and he has to stop himself from running up the stairs after Yuuri because, this is it. It’s happening.

Yuuri closes the door to his room behind him with shaky hands, and gestures for Victor to sit on his bed while he goes to the chair at his desk.

“So,” Yuuri starts, rubbing his hands together and looking anywhere but at his coach. “There’s something I’d like to confess.”

Oh, God.

Victor’s heart is going to burst out of his ribcage any second.

“I’m sorry it took me this long, but it’s something you should know,” Yuuri goes on, tone filled with an odd mix of determination and doubt. “And I think I’m ready to talk about it.”

“Finally,” Victor breathes out.

He freezes when he realizes that actually slipped out, and Yuuri frowns and aborts his movement to reach for something on the desk beside him.

“What?”

“I said, I’m listening,” Victor lies smoothly.

It’s not really a lie, anyway; he really is trying to listen to something he’s been waiting to hear ever since he stepped foot in Yuuri’s childhood home all those weeks ago, even though his loud and getting louder heartbeat now nearly covers the low sound of Yuuri’s voice in his ears.

“Alright,” Yuuri buys it easily, and clears his throat. “This is going to sound weird, and for that I apologize in advance.”

Oh, God, Victor thinks with a smile, what a terribly, adorably Yuuri-like preamble to a love confession.

“Victor,” the younger skater picks up, before taking a deep, shuddering breath that feels like torture to Victor’s flayed nerves, “I… Ugh. I don’t even know how to phrase it,” Yuuri mumbles to himself, and Victor is this close to tearing out the hair he’s so afraid to lose.

His heart is pounding in his chest, sweat is starting to coat his palms, and his breathing is growing shallow; like he’s just broke his own free skate world-record all over again. He feels suspended in time, like he’s in the middle of a quad flip that started in Yuuri’s frightened, worry-filled eyes and awaits permission to land on the lower lip he keeps biting on, and Victor hasn’t felt this much anticipation since the very first time he sat in the Olympics kiss and cry as the jury deliberated on his score.

“Okay, here it is,” Yuuri starts again, looking at Victor as sharply as he did before he skated Eros during his and Yurio’s face off. “Victor,” he says with conviction, and Victor is hit with the realization that this is truly it, he’s going to say it, he’s really going to– “I named my dog after you.”

“Me too,” Victor blurts out, the words rolling off his tongue before he can even process he’d planned on saying them.

Except, wait.

What?

“What?” Yuuri asks aloud, eyebrows knitted in confusion again.

“Sorry, I mean, who?” Victor lies again, decidedly less smoothly this time.

It somehow works, and Yuuri’s gaze only lingers for a second longer on his before he reaches back and grabs a framed photo from his desk, one he doesn’t show Victor right away.

“My dog,” he says again, so much quieter Victor leans forward in his seat so he doesn’t miss it. “I named him after you.”

And, crushed false hopes aside –for now, because Victor knows he’ll definitely have to deal with that pain later– he is truly confused now.

“You have a dog?”

It’s a stupid question, one Victor knows the answer to because he’s been living in this house for weeks now. One he wouldn’t have asked if he was a little less self-absorbed and a little more tactful, he thinks to himself when Yuuri’s wet eyes flinch back up to his; if he hadn’t been so lost in his own selfish hopes he missed the obvious grief lacing Yuuri’s words –one that resonates loudly with his next ones.

“I had one.”

He hands over the picture Victor reverently accepts, and he finds himself looking down at a much younger Yuuri frozen mid-laugh, hugging a mini-Makkachin to his chest as the puppy enthusiastically kisses his rounded, childish face.

“He passed away last year,” Yuuri continues, barely above a whisper, eyes glued to his dog’s immortalized silhouette. “It happened right before the GPF, so suddenly I didn’t have time to come home and say goodbye.”

Victor barely hears himself gasp and doesn’t think before he reaches out to grab Yuuri’s hand; a stray tear escaping the younger skater just in time to land over their entwining fingers. The awkward smile Yuuri gives him wobbles as he wipes at his face with the back of his free hand, and Victor’s heart seizes at the raw pain that attempt at a mask fails to conceal.

He stays awkwardly silent as Yuuri forces calm breaths through aborted sobs, wishing he wasn't so bad with people crying in front of him, and tries to imagine what it could have felt like to try and compete under those circumstances –and finds himself at a loss, because he simply can’t.

He looks down at the picture again, and says the first, stupid thing that comes to him.

“He looks just like Makkachin.”

But Yuuri chuckles, honest if a little wet, and Victor looks up to find him looking undeterred by that silly observation.

“That was the point, yeah,” he says. “I, uh, I kind of had a crush on you back then. I was so obsessed with everything you did, I begged my parents to adopt a dog that looked like yours, and then I went and named him after you.”

Had a crush, Victor’s brain notes. Past tense.

He pushes the thought to the back of his mind for later. This isn’t what Victor expected at all, but it is a show of trust above everything Yuuri’s allowed himself since he got here, a crack in the walls he’s seemed so intent on building between him and his coach until now.

“This sounds dumb, doesn’t it? And creepy, I’m sure. I’m so sorry,” Yuuri’s ranting away, hiding his face in his free hand.

Ah, Yuuri.

Gentle, innocent –as long as there’s no pole dance involved, at least– lovely Yuuri; if he only knew what creepy means to Victor after so many years in the spotlight, and how far this is from it.

“No, it’s not,” Victor says, surprised by the roughness of his own voice. “In fact, I think it’s sweet.”

A deep brown eye peeks curiously from behind Yuuri’s fingers, and Victor doesn’t miss the blush that covers his student’s cheeks.

“You do?”

“Yes, I do,” he says, emphasizing his words by squeezing Yuuri’s fingers in his. “Besides, it’s not surprising that you looked up to me,” he rephrases, mindful not to make Yuuri even more uncomfortable and switching to the overconfident, Victor Nikiforov signature tone as he goes on, “considering your choice of a career. I’ve been the reigning champion in our field for the past decade or so, after all.”

That trick gets him a knowing eye roll, and another, clearer chuckle that Victor joins in with his own.

“I must say, Victor is an odd name for a dog,” he still dares to point out.

“Vicchan, actually,” Yuuri corrects softly.

Victor’s memory jolts at the name, and he suddenly understands why Yuuri brought this up in the first place.

A few days ago as he was greeting Hiroko in the morning, she had addressed him with that name, and an uncharacteristically clumsy Mari had dropped some towels to the floor, looking up sharply at her mother. Yuuri had distracted Victor from the sudden awkwardness by dragging him to breakfast and the rink faster than his polite nature usually allowed, and Victor, after asking twice, didn’t push more when Yuuri seemed so intent to move on from whatever had happened.

“That’s a kind of nickname–”

“Yeah, honorifics, right?” Victor guesses, having grown used to those between the Katsuki family members themselves.

Yuuri nods.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. My mother just naturally called you that, and it brought back memories…”

His voice trails off, and it becomes even more abundantly clear to Victor that, no matter how much Makka’s breed obviously influenced a younger Yuuri’s choice, Vicchan was so much more than just a whim of his for the entire family.

“That’s okay,” Victor picks up. “I'm sure we can find another nickname that's less bothersome.”

They did change Yuri’s name to Yurio, after all. And as desperate and pathetic as it sounds, Victor doesn’t care what he’s called, as long as he’s allowed to stay by Yuuri’s side.

“No, I talked it over with Mari, and we don’t really mind,” Yuuri retorts quickly. “Besides, I don’t think my mother will be able to help herself anyway. Victor is… kind of a mouthful.”

There’s a glint of playfulness in his eyes then that reminds Victor of the man who took his hand and danced with him in Sochi, and he fakes an offended gasp.

“What? No, it’s not!”

“It is, to her,” Yuuri insists, less teasing now. “Not everyone’s a polyglot here.”

Victor hums in acknowledgment, his thumb tracing random, hopefully comforting patterns over Yuuri’s, and Yuuri nods to the picture in Victor’s other hand.

“Anyway, I just wanted you to understand the full story. I hope I didn’t make it too weird.”

And God, Yuuri’s inability to believe his coach’s reassurances is as endearingly frustrating off the ice as it is on it, Victor reflects with a sigh.

“You didn’t,” he insists, and ignores the hint of doubt that remains in Yuuri’s gaze then. “If anything, I’m honored to be named after him, like he was after me.”

Yuuri looks up at him, startled eyes thinly veiled by renewed tears. Victor smiles tentatively, and Yuuri replies with a sincere, bittersweet one that only makes Victor fall deeper in love with him.