These Violent Delights {Yuri On Ice}

Chapter 3

He didn't have to wonder anymore. He'd always crawl right back.

Everyone told you the addicts were the smokers, the drinkers, the jittery messes powdering their nose with a credit card in a bathroom stall.

Not you. Never you. No, you just had bad little habits, dismissive indiscretions. You were nothing like those meth-hungry lunatics slicked to the side of the road.

You were worse.

"You're not supposed to be here." Yuuri sounded like the buzz on your skin after a thunderclap.

Victor took a step back.

There was a magnitude to him in a place like this, a holiness Victor had only glimpsed upon in the bedroom. But here, above the clouds, in this labyrinth of desks and glass, suit jackets, pencil skirts, keyboards clacking, it was blown out of proportion.

He ruled the sky.

"I know," Victor felt himself say. But he couldn't hear a word. He was all white noise. "I know, I just - " He swallowed. "I wanted to give you this." Biting his cheek so hard his shoulders shot up, he dug into the pockets of his sweats and grabbed the one thing he never thought he'd end up wanting to keep. With a shaky breath, he placed the key on Yuuri's desk, pressing his fingers to it far too long to seem necessary.

Victor blinked, the memory of seeing it for the first time flashing through his head.

That night...

That strange, perfect night, in the blur of having had one too many drinks, the two of them stumbled out of the cab, and Victor bounded across the sidewalk, twirling to the sound of that street basker strumming on her guitar one block away. The way he sighed into the sky when the rain came tumbling down, the way Yuuri laughed like he didn't know how to stop, the loveliness of him. He made all the lights go out, one by one by one. And he tugged at Victor's hair, so lightly, stopping him mid-twirl to pull him under his umbrella, smiling down. Victor looked up at him the way he looked at the moon. And Yuuri took his hand then, curling the key into his palm, and Victor felt like Yuuri had given him one of his fingers, his toes, a string of hair, a pinch of a thought.

That key in his hand. The sound of the night.

Victor shook his head, trying to blink away the memory.

Yuuri stared at the key on the desk. He wasn't wearing his glasses. His hair slicked back and stiff, the pouches under his eyes. His suit made him look like another piece of furniture in his office: featureless, there out of necessity.

"You could've just left it in my mailbox," Yuuri said.

How? How could he have just left it in a mailbox? Yuuri hadn't given Victor a key to his apartment that night. He'd given him a come-in.

"I know," Victor said under his breath. He felt faded, hardly here, the memory of the last few days like a fever dream. Sitting haze-faced in the back of lecture halls, in the cafeteria, in the library trying to punch himself through essay after essay, every word he'd written floating away.

He hardly remembered coming here either, storming past the security in the lobby, the insistent shouts of the receptionist like a parakeet's, through office after office, people giving him dodgy looks over computer screens and cubicles. He was out of place, standing there in his sweats and a four-day-old hoodie, that ugly taste of not-enough-sleep sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"I know," Victor said again. Maybe he didn't say it at all. Maybe I did want to see you. Maybe I did. I did. I did want to see you. I want to. I want. I want. I want you. No, I don't. I do. Do I? Do I hate you? I do. I can't. Not you.