Work Text:
Yuri returns from the bathroom to find Yuuri hunched over in his chair and typing away furiously on his phone.
“Katsudon.”
Yuuri’s head snaps up. “Okay, I know what you’re going to say,” he says, because Yuri has had this same conversation with him three times over the course of the past hour. “But his heart monitor started beeping faster and I got worried but I didn’t want to bother a nurse in case I was being silly, so-”
Yuri snatches the phone out of his hand and looks at it. On the screen is some Japanese website. He can’t read it for shit, but he can pretty much guess the contents of the page based on the helpful little picture of a man clutching his chest in the top right corner of it.
He groans. “For the last time, he’s not having a fucking heart attack, Katsudon.”
“I know that!” Yuuri takes the phone back, frowning down uncertainly at the webpage. After a moment’s hesitation and a pointed prod in the side from Yuri, he closes it. “I was just… checking.”
Yuuri has been “just checking” various websites for advice since Viktor had gone into surgery. Every few minutes he’ll look up at Yuri, make a face like he kind of wants to throw up, and then get right back to scrolling. Yuri had thought it was funny at first, but after having to talk Yuuri out of calling the doctor to book an MRI for Viktor because he’d somehow stumbled on a page about brain cancer while looking for threads about possible appendectomy complications, he’s beginning to find it annoying.
He’d thought Katsudon would simmer down now that Viktor was out of surgery, but no. Apparently he’s just graduated to heart disease.
His own phone trills in his pocket. Yuuri blinks up at him and the two make eye contact and reach something of an impasse. Yuri squints. Yuuri presses his lips together. Then, sullenly, he puts his phone down on the bedside table.
Yuri thumbs his lockscreen open to find a text from Mila. It reads, how’s babysitting duty??
He eyes Yuuri again. Now that he’s without anything for his hands to do, he’s taken to wringing them together and staring worriedly at Viktor, who sleeps on, utterly oblivious.
well, he replies, if viktor doesn’t wake up in the next five min I’m pretty sure katsudon’s going to give himself a stress aneurysm
and i’m about two seconds from throwing his phone out the window
but other than that it’s been whatever
His phone pings almost immediately. xa xa sounds like a good time
you have to admit though, it’s cute how much he cares
Yuri glances up to find Yuuri brushing the hair from Viktor’s eyes and sighing like a lovesick idiot. Viktor makes a face in his sleep, turning into Yuuri’s touch. Yuri swallows a gag.
it’s obnoxious you mean
they’re literally both gross and one of them isn’t even CONSCIOUS
Mila sends a string of sparkly heart emojis. Then, oh also yakov wants to know how viktor is
Yuri rolls his eyes and tries to find a good angle to take a picture of Viktor that’ll look as unflattering as possible. If everyone is so determined to worry about the idiot despite the fact that the surgery was perfectly safe (but Yurio, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Yuuri whispers in his head, what about this comprehensive list of things that can go horribly, horribly wrong that I found on a forum written by a bunch of paranoid hypochondriacs in their 40s-), he’s determined to give them something to worry about.
The plan falls apart quickly, though. Viktor is infuriatingly photogenic, even after getting his appendix ripped out. It doesn’t help that Yuuri is also in the frame, staring at him like he’s a sleeping god or something.
Yuri frowns and sends the picture anyway. like I said, he’s not dead
unfortunately, he adds as an afterthought.
thanks!!
he also wants to know how yuuri is
besides the stress aneurysm thing
Of course he does. Yakov likes Yuuri for some weird reason, despite the fact that he’s technically a rival skater training right under the old man’s nose. In fact, if Yuri had to hazard a guess, he’d say that Yakov’s probably more worried about Yuuri right now than he is about Viktor. His main concern with Viktor is just how long he’s going to be out of practice to recover.
he’s fine, Yuri replies. he’s just being annoying
yakov wants to know if he’s been eating
oh my god just text him yourself
Wait, no. He glances up at Yuuri’s phone, which is still on the bedside table. actually don’t do that, if he picks up his phone he’ll start freaking himself out again
aw yura, you DO care
what no
he’s giving me a headache
i don’t give a shit about him i don’t even want to be here
georgi and i volunteered to go with him instead, you know
and yet………….
Yuri scowls, cheeks pinking. shut the fuck up, hag
He receives several sly face emojis in response, followed by another string of hearts. Yuri sends her knives, and is about to get creative with his death threats after receiving a kissy face when there’s movement from the bed.
Viktor moans. Yuri looks up right in time to see him wake up.
“Wh…?” His eyes are hazy and glassy as they roll around the room. They eventually settle on Yuuri, of course, because Viktor’s shameless like that. A grin stretches across his face, slow and lazy. “Hi.”
“Viktor!” Yuuri scrambles onto his feet. “You’re awake!” He doesn’t seem quite sure what to do with himself, fluttering between Viktor and the door like a drunk, confused bird. “I should call the nurse.”
Viktor’s voice is hoarse and dreamy and far away. He keeps staring at Yuuri with a gross look on his face. “Mm, yes, you should do that.”
The nurse has evidently heard Yuuri’s squawking, because he’s there before Yuuri can actually decide whether or not to leave the room. He smiles at Viktor and very calmly informs him that he’s in a hospital, that he just got surgery, and that he may be confused for a little while thanks to the anesthesia. None of this seems to mean anything to Viktor, who just bobs his head up and down and continues to stare at Yuuri instead of the nurse. They also don’t mean anything to Yuuri, whose Russian still sucks ass. The nurse tries to hand him a pack of saltines and he stares at them like they’re nuclear codes.
“He says to give Viktor the crackers and that he’ll be back in a few minutes,” Yuri says, annoyed at having to translate.
“Oh! Yes, of course,” Yuuri says to the nurse in clumsy Russian. “Crackers. Yes.”
The nurse pats him on the arm before leaving, looking sort of sorry for him.
Yuri turns his attention back to Viktor. He’s smiling and humming now. It’s mostly nonsense but some bits sound suspiciously like Katsudon’s Free Skate from last season. Disgusting.
“Viktor,” says Yuuri, fluttering back to Viktor’s side. “Let’s eat a cracker, okay?”
“Anything you say,” Viktor rasps. Yuri gags.
Things get a little more fun when Viktor tries to actually eat the cracker. He paws at it with clumsy hands and only manages to actually grasp it after three tries. When he finally takes a nibble, he groans in pain.
“Ow,” He hiccups. There’s a long silence as he tries to figure out how chewing works. In the end, he swallows the entire piece and takes another sullen bite. “Ow.”
Despite how worried he’d been before, Yuri sees Yuuri smothering a smile. “Are you alright?”
Viktor immediately brightens at the sound of Yuuri’s voice. “I am now,” he coos, and holy shit can he maybe not for two seconds?
Yuri’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He swipes it open to find another text from Mila. yuri?? i think yakov’s serious about the whole eating thing
he says he’ll go to the hospital himself to check if you don’t answer soon
yuri?
Instead of replying, he sends Mila a video he took of Viktor trying to figure out how to hold the cracker. She sends back a chain of crying face emojis and a demand for more blackmail material. As if she had to ask him to keep recording this train wreck.
“Can we sit up?” Viktor is complaining to Yuuri when Yuri turns his camera back on.
“In a minute,” Yuuri says, squeezing Viktor’s hand and ugh. “You keep eating your cracker and I’ll see if they can lift you up, okay?”
“Okay,” Viktor says back, though he makes no move to actually eat the cracker anymore. He’s blinking up at Yuuri again with that stupid look on his face. “Wow… you are eye candy.”
Yuri’s lip curls in disgust. Yuuri turns to him, looking hopelessly confused. “What? What did he say?”
If Katsudon expects him to translate that, he has another thing coming. “He said you’re disgusting.”
Yuuri looks absolutely unphased and unsurprised by Yuri's response. He just turns back to Viktor. “Viktor,” he says in his clumsy Russian. “Can we speak English, please?”
“English?” Viktor echoes. Then, in English, “Oh, right. I speak that.”
“Yes, you do.” Katsudon replies, the words flowing easier now that he’s not butchering Yuri’s mother tongue. He grabs the hand Viktor is holding the cracker in and eases it back towards Viktor’s mouth. “How about we keep eating that cracker, okay?”
Viktor decides to not do that and reaches his free hand towards Yuuri’s face instead. “You’re gorgeous.”
Jesus.
Yuuri’s face turns bright red. “Wh-”
“Did the doctor send you?” When Yuuri doesn’t reply fast enough, since he's still gaping like a fish, he turns to Yuri. “Did the doctor send him? Because wow,” He drops his arm and presses his hand to his chest like the dramatic bastard he is. “You’ve got to be the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh my god,” Yuri groans. “Is he hitting on you?”
“He doesn’t know who I am,” Yuuri says, because obviously the two of them are focusing on two very different aspects of this situation. “Oh, no, maybe I should call the doctor-”
“No, beautiful, don’t go!” Viktor whines.
“The nurse said he’d be confused,” Yuri snaps before Yuuri can go and Viktor can start getting really annoying. “So calm the fuck down and just tell him to stop flirting with you.”
Yuuri blinks at him. “Well, the flirting isn’t really the issue-”
“It is.”
“Come back,” Viktor complains, tugging on Yuuri’s sleeve with the cracker-less hand. Yuuri turns back to him, glances towards the door, and then sits back down. “Yay! I missed you!”
Yuuri smiles despite himself and maybe Yuri should have let him leave. Viktor crying about Yuuri not being there would have been preferable to dealing with the two of them making eyes at each other. “Sorry for worrying you. I’ll be right here with you, okay?”
“Yay!” Viktor crows again. He takes another bite of the cracker before something occurs to him. “What’s your name?”
Jesus, he's like a drugged child trying to hold an adult conversation.
“My name is Yuuri,” Yuuri responds with infinitely more patience than Viktor deserves. Vitkor’s face lights up.
“Yuuri,” He parrots. “That’s such a pretty name. You’re so pretty.”
God.
“Thank you.” Yuuri’s smiles like a fucking schoolgirl instead of doing something to stop this nonsense. Yuri hates both of them so, so much.
Viktor reaches towards Yuuri’s face with the cracker hand. “Yuuri, we should do something after this.”
“Oh my god,” Yuri groans.
“We should- we should go somewhere.” The idiot gets so excited about the idea that he clenches his fist, pieces of cracker dropping right into Yuuri’s lap. “It’ll be great.”
“We’re going home after this, Viktor.” He brushes the crumbs off of his legs and rescues the rest of the cracker from Viktor’s hand, depositing it into the garbage can next to the bed. “Maybe we can go out after you feel better, okay?”
Viktor frowns. “Okay,” He says. “But you need to give me your number then so I can call you later.”
Yuuri’s eyes are soft and gooey and gross. “Don’t worry about that. You already have my number.”
Viktor blinks at him. “I do?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” There’s a pause as Viktor thinks this over. “Do I… know you?”
“Yes, you do.” Yuuri brushes the hair out of Viktor’s face. Then – fucking finally – he says, “We’re married.”
The realization dawns on Viktor slowly. It’s like watching a big, stupid sun come out. When it fully hits him, his mouth drops right open. “You’re my husband?”
Yuuri can’t seem to stop smiling. “Yes.”
“Oh my god,” Viktor turns his gaze to the ceiling, big, wide eyes trailing around the room as if looking for an explanation for all of this. When he doesn’t find one, he turns back to Yuuri and looks at him like he hung up the stars. “Really?”
“Yes, Viktor.”
“Oh, wow.” He reaches out for Yuuri again, probably aiming to do something stupidly romantic like cup his face or something but only really succeeding in smooshing Yuuri’s cheek with his palm. “Wow,” and he drags out the “ow” sound for a long, long time. “That’s amazing.”
“You mean awful,” Yuri complains. Viktor’s eyes flick to him before popping wide open.
“Are you our son?”
“Holy shit, no!” He whirls to Yuuri, whose shoulders are shaking with laughter. “Shut the fuck up, Katsudon!”
“We don’t have any kids, Viktor,” Yuuri just barely manages to smother the laughter into a wobbly grin. “We only got married a few months ago.”
Viktor looks overwhelmed. “We’re married?” He repeats, because he’s apparently stuck on that.
The grin softens into a smile. “Yes, we are.” Yuuri scoops up Viktor’s hand and shows him the rings on their fingers. Viktor stares at them.
“Wow,” He says, his voice littler this time.
Yuri tilts his head heavenward and prays for a meteor to strike him down or something. Instead what he gets is a glimpse of the nurse, who is standing in the middle of the doorframe and looking very, very amused.
“I came to check in,” the nurse says. Yuuri jumps a good five feet in the air. “Did he eat?”
Yuuri looks down guiltily at the cracker that’s still in the wrapper on the bedside table and at the garbage can. “Um. Some.”
“That’s fine,” The nurse replies. He’d probably expected Yuuri’s incompetence. “While Mr. Nikiforov recovers from the anesthesia, we can go over out-patient care together.” When Yuuri looks at Yuri in distress, the nurse says, in heavily accented English, “You are taking care of him, yes? I have the procedure.”
“Oh! Of course.” Yuuri stands. Viktor whines and tries to tug him back. “I’ll be in the room, Viktor. I’m just going to talk to the nurse.” Then, as an afterthought, he presses the other cracker into Viktor’s hand. “Eat this in the meantime, okay?”
“Okay,” Viktor says, staring up at Yuuri like he would commit murder right now if Yuuri told him to. He takes a tiny bite of his cracker and says nothing else as Yuuri and the nurse huddle together to go over the forms.
Yuri stops recording now that everything's settled down and tries to decide what to do with the video. If he sends it to Mila, she’ll post it right away, and he wants to be the one to do that. The only question is where. It’s definitely too long to go on Instagram, but is it too long to go on Twitter? Maybe he should trim out the gross parts before he puts it anywhere.
“Keep eating the cracker, old man,” He says when he looks up to find that Viktor has stopped chewing in favor of ogling Yuuri. Yuri hates him. He hates them both. Fiercely.
Viktor doesn’t acknowledge him at all. He keeps staring at Yuuri.
“Wow,” he says to himself quietly, pure wonder on his features. “How did I manage that?”
The corner of Yuri’s mouth quirks up traitorously and he bites his lip to stop its ascent. Not that really it matters. Viktor’s too busy being all gross to notice him smiling.