#vituri

We look like we belong And once I've got you it's a fact Baby, there's no turning back

"I want to believe,"

“Why pink?” Victor finally asks after two months of dating. Yuuri is sleepy enough that he hadn’t protested when Victor had shifted him into his lap, didn’t jerk away or splutter in embarrassment as Victor started carding his fingers through soft, cotton candy hair. It’s pale, and he knows Yuuri will have to re-dye it soon.

“Hmm?” Yuuri’s cheek shifts against Victor’s thigh, and he has to focus on the feeling of bark pressing against his back through his t-shirt. It was almost, dare he say it, a nuzzle.

Victor pushes Yuuri’s hair from his face. His eyes are closed—it’s Hell Week, and everyone, everywhere, is pulling all-nighters left and right to prepare. Victor knows it’s been especially trying on Yuuri with his job, and also knows that Yuuri can’t afford to cut back his hours to compensate for the added schoolwork.

He extends a petal pink strand between his fingers and kisses it.

“Why did you dye your hair pink?” Victor asks again. Yuuri’s roots are starting to grow in, a natural dark brown color. They’re hardly visible, especially from far away, but Victor is close enough that he could bend down and press his nose to Yuuri’s scalp, so he can see the stubborn beginnings of regrowth.

“Mmmm. I like the color,” Yuuri murmurs, voice soft and sleepy. It, combined with the gentle wind rustling the tree above them, makes Victor feel like a nap himself. “And...” Yuuri pauses, and Victor waits for the telltale sign of walls. Of Yuuri’s shoulders tensing, of the stuttering stops and starts, the sudden obvious switch of topic. He can feel Yuuri breathing deeply, every inhale making his shoulder press against Victor’s leg, and drags the pads of his fingers across the crown of Yuuri’s head and waits.

“I... I think I wanted to stop feeling invisible.” It’s a quiet admission, almost carried away by the spring breeze. “I wanted people to see me.”

It is a constant revelation for Victor that the Yuuri he sees, and the Yuuri that Yuuri sees, are apparently different people. That when Yuuri looks in the mirror, the man he sees is not the one that has launched a thousand crushes and that has the campus café with lines out the door so long as he’s the one behind the bar.

That maybe the only person who doesn’t see Yuuri is Yuuri himself.