Category: Uncategorized

His mother, of all people, notices first. She brings it up during the weekly phone call – a warm day, if you look at temperatures from a Russian perspective, so Yuuri is bundled up in just enough layers while taking a walk by the rink. You’re not wearing the gloves I sent you, she accuses him gently. There’s no worry to be found in her voice, and Yuuri almost asks, but – well.

“It seems that someone else got you a pair,” his mother says. He can hear her smile from thousands of miles away.

“Oh,” he says. “Well. Yes.”

It’s true. He does wear gloves, and they’re not his mother’s. The first day he spent in Russia, tired to his bones and feeling strangely small from the jetlag, a certain someone had taken him for a walk. Just like the one he was on phoning his mother. “I can’t have you freezing,” Yuuri had been told, and two wonderfully soft gloves had been slipped over his hands.

Yuuri doesn’t tell his mother that the gloves were only the first gift of many. He thinks she may have his suspicions after the first few twitter pictures show him on the rink, by his coach’s side or smiling nervously at a press conference, his fingers clenched together or spread out elegantly in black gloves.

A few months later, Yuuri is quite certain that she knows. It causes him a bit of anxiety and a ruined day of training, but a tiny text from his father solves that: Introduce him properly next time.

He does. After all, the media went into a frenzy when he’d stopped wearing his famous gloves. Could be because Viktor’s hand had taken on warming his fingers now, but Yuuri can’t be bothered to care, as long as nobody makes them let go.

Dear father, Viktor writes, I have become a coach. The young man is from Japan and is ordinary in all the things you once called exceptional about me, and he has a soul in himself that you thought you could train out of me. He isn’t a natural. He hasn’t conquered the ice before he learned how to read. He’s not me, and I couldn’t be happier about that, because that means that he isn’t anything like you either.

Mama, Yuuri texts, Russia is so cold! I can’t believe I’m here. Yuri is scary, but Viktor says I’ll get used to him. They’re the only ones who speak my language. I’m studying English every day after training. I miss all of you so much. Please watch me on tv in two months.

Dear mother, Viktor writes, I won’t make it to the funeral. I’m sure he wanted it this way. If you really wish to speak to me, you know where you can find me. But if you hope to find a “caring wife or at least a pretty girlfriend” by my side, don’t come at all. I have no intention, possibility or desire to change who I was born as. I skate and I don’t love women. You can’t take those parts away from me.

Papa, Yuuri says in the video chat, I’m so glad to see you. You look healthy, I’m glad. Is everyone alright? Yes, they’re treating me well, it’s incredible. Viktor is very kind. He’s beautiful on the ice, even more so in person. What? I’m not. No, it’s not like that. He doesn’t even look at me like – like that. …love you too.

My brother, Viktor says on the phone, it’s been so – I didn’t think you’d ever – yes, I heard, of course I heard. Mother called me. I wasn’t there… you neither? Ah. Congratulations. Twins, that is incredible. I’ll come see them sometime. Thank you. We… yes. I’ll clear my schedule. You can stay at my place, of course. You want to meet Yuuri? Why would you – oh. …is it that obvious? What, on tv even? I didn’t think they were filming the coaches that much during competitions. Well. It’s true. No, not yet, but I’ll go see him later. Yes, I’ll tell him. …I think so, yes.

My family, Yuuri says and turns to Viktor just as the landscape outside the train window begins to slow down, is going to be terribly curious, but you know that. My father will pat your shoulder and try to feed you all kinds of things, mama will threaten you a bit and Minako, well, she’s likely drunk already and will stare a lot. But they said they can’t wait to have you home again.

Yes, Viktor thinks, watching the light dance over Yuuri’s glasses and past his dark-wide eyes, I think I can believe that.

you want to know my climate. i have none. you demand insight to my core temperature and my core temper. they have no average. “where,” you slam your fist down, “are the records of your tides, who keeps the collection of your common sediments, which museum holds the species of your soul?”
and i say: nowhere, nobody, none.
because i am weather above the ocean and my storms cannot be predicted. you will find me in the lightless depths of waters that gave life millions of years ago, where rules are crushed under tons of air and salt. my tracks lead into the atmosphere where climate is an unknown name and clouds sing another hymn every day.
i won’t be measured in your steady units. my body may be rain-smoothed stone, but you cannot guess the earthquakes of my actions with your questions.
i have and always will be made of seasons and water, of air and soil and if i still – if i rest – it’s only to because my summer has ended to invoke autumn in me.

“I can’t do this.” Kageyama digs his nails into the palms of his hands until the skin goes pale. Hajime has to pry his grip apart before he really hurts himself. It’s been years, but he can’t stop feeling responsible. And proud, too, always that.

“Look.” Hajime puts both of Kageyama’s hands into one of his, runs a hand through his hair, patient until Kageyama manages to glance at him.

Right, Hajime thinks when he has to tilt his chin up, taller than me. “You’ll do fine,” he says out loud. “Don’t be afraid. He won’t reject you.”

“But what if he does? What if he doesn’t like me after all this time?”

Hajime sighs and wonders why he can feel a familiar hint of fondness in his chest. “If an ordinary guy like me can confess to a brilliant madman and stay his boyfriend for five years and counting, then a genius like you can ask Hinata out already.”

Kageyama swallows hard. He nods.

A week later, a text arrives on Hajime’s phone. It says: One day and counting.

bubblline:

a certain birthday child asked for iwaoi and who am I to deny this request

Happy Birthday @moami for a great and happy new year in your life

This is so beautiful, Annie! Just like your art always is. They’re wonderful, look at those happy faces and all the fluff. (Didn’t expect anything less romantic from you – rot me with that sweetness.) And of course you know that I adore winter and need cold things. Brilliant! Thank you so, so much, you are a great friend.

Looking at the issue from all sides, Kuroo is about five percent disappointed in himself. If one examines the whole situation, that is far more than expected. The rest of his brain capacity is taken up by overheated whirring and wildly spinning coils at the moment, so he refuses to be blamed for his lack of investment in scolding himself.

“Kuro,” Kenma says. He’s still sitting there on Kuroo’s bed, one hand in his hair to push it up the side of his head, thumb gently nudging his earlobe forward.

Kuroo swallows.

“Are you deaf?”

He’s not, but it’s damn near close. Stupid heartbeat so loud in his ears. “No. I, uhm. It’s.” Be cool, fuck, remember how to do that still? “When did you get it?”

“Yesterday. It barely hurt.” Kenma doesn’t even flinch when Kuroo reaches to touch, but his lip twitches a bit. “Careful though.”

“‘Course.” So this is his life now, Kuroo thinks while he runs his fingertip over the silver stud resting in the flesh of Kenma’s ear. “Other side too?”

“Would look stupid otherwise.” A yawn. Kenma rubs a hand over his eyes, then winds away from Kuroo’s touch and drapes himself over his lap. The familiar shiver of warmth down his spine is one of the few things Kuroo knows better than his own face. Together with Kenma’s, his hands, the feeling of ground below his feet and, well, okay, that mouth against his own.

He waits (patient, of course, always for him) until Kenma has arranged himself. His strategy seems to be going for cuddling tonight, Kuroo deduces from the rough nudge against his fingers, Kenma’s forehead prodding until Kuroo threads a hand into the peach soft hair of his neck.

“Why now?” They only have a few nights. Then, it’s university for him again, and that last year for Kenma.

“Dunno,” Kenma mumbles into his leg.

“Liar.”

“Mhm.”

“Tell me. Please?” They all think that Kenma’s the one to get what he wants, no matter how ridiculous. It’s like that most of the time, but oh, not always. Kuroo leans down, kisses the hair that smells dark-sweet of sweat, this afternoon’s pie, grass and lemonade from earlier, their sheets and skin rubbing on another until it’s pink.

Kenma is quiet for a while. His fingers play with the hem of Kuroo’s pajama, tickles along the hair on his knee. The moon’s all the light for them.

A breath exhales against his leg. “I can’t get real piercings yet. I have to wait until school is over and I’m at university. It’s all I have until then. Not enough, but… but I’ll take it. I can wait.” He looks up at Kuroo, pale in the night with old kisses glinting dark over his neck and red on his mouth, a curved smile. “Can you?”

Kuroo wants to love him until they wither away.

“Yeah. ‘course.”

There are countless stories about lovers being separated by magic, but what if instead of falling apart, they grew too close?

Imagine.

A wizard that traveled the lands, selling their art to those who need it for just enough to make a living with it. Their power without comparison. Nobody knew how they did it, what their secret it. It was too much strength for one, and the rumours spoke of dark contracts or monsters inside.

Only when their apprentice, a young one that was still learning and endlessly curious in their character, asked the one question: “Master, how are you so strong?” Then, the wizard said:

“It is a story that you have heard a million times. My magic came through lost love and the power that it gave.”

“Oh,” said the apprentice, shocked how their admired master could do such a thing. “You sacrificed someone to gain something.”

“Not quite.” And the wizard began to spread out a story of a human so beloved that nothing they shared felt close enough. No breath could be taken too near, no hand held for enough hours to feel two pulses as one. The apprentice sat still and with a wildly beating heart when the wizard stood and bared their back, shoulders to waist, and cruel eldritch lines slither across skin that was filled with old scars.

“We wished to be closer than anyone.”

The wizard’s face was white in the night, and their eyes carried the same darkness that curled in the shape of a human figure over their back. A whimper rose in the apprentice’s throat. The shape on their master’s back shifted, black tearing open until skin twisted in the hollow mouth of a thing that could have been human millenia ago.

“Oh, our wish was granted. Closer than anyone, that we are. Nothing is closer than making one out of two.”