Art Gallery (Yuri!!! On Ice, M)

[Sawyer]

“Look at you!” Viktor marvels at his boyfriend with a fond grin. “You look so handsome in a suit. I never get to see you all cleaned up like this! Oh, hang on a moment, Yuuri, your tie is crooked.”

 

The switch in his tone is almost comedic, but Yuuri knows he means well. “Thank you,” Yuuri says as Viktor moves in to straighten him up, readjusting his tie and tugging on the handkerchief sticking out of his pocket so that it stands up nice and crisp against his chest. “Sorry, I just don’t… really, uh, do this a lot.”

 

“Then it’s a good thing I’m here to polish you up.”

 

“It’s always a good thing when you’re here,” Yuuri replies. Viktor smiles at that and brushes the back of his hand against Yuuri’s cheek. “You picked out this suit, didn’t you…?”

 

“Yes, I thought the pantone would look nice on you. And I was right!” Viktor checks his watch and starts to usher Yuuri out the door, signaling that their car is waiting outside.

 

With a competition coming up, Yuuri’s been spending extra hours practicing at the rink, and by the time Viktor allows him to break for the day, he’s utterly exhausted. The last thing he wants to do is pull his sore limbs into a nice suit and spend his evening trying as hard as he can to understand a variety of international artists’ interpretations of winter sports, only to come out empty-handed and have to think on the spot when somebody important asks for his opinion.

 

Not that he’s ungrateful, or anything. It’s an honor to be invited to something like this, and Viktor had told him earlier that it was great exposure for him as well as an act of diplomatic kindness. Yuuri is, by now, a respected athlete, and part of his title comes with what sort of feels like an obligation to attend events like these.

 

But really? Today?

 

During the short ride to the gallery, Viktor assures Yuuri that it won’t be so bad. A lot of the attendees are rich and clueless benefactors who pretend to know a lot more about art than they actually do, and oftentimes he’s found that they tend to agree with the critique of whoever says the biggest words.

 

The gallery itself is very, very weird, Yuuri discovers before he even steps inside. First of all, it’s being held in somebody’s house – well, mansion, technically, probably – and the house itself is set up in a way Yuuri’s never seen before, with statues and sculptures all around the front yard and a couple of overgrown, flowering shrubs.

 

“Have you been here before?” Yuuri asks once they step inside the foyer and hand their coats off to the doorman. The interior is decorated warmly, with wood floors and ornate rugs and yellow lamps accenting the furniture.

 

“Not to this location, no,” Viktor answers, then turns to the woman handling the guestbook and tells her his name, gesturing for Yuuri to follow suit.

 

The array of hanging plants in the gratuitous gallery space is giving Yuuri hay fever flashbacks, but even he knows that houseplants are generally non-allergenic for just that reason – they exist to sit in people’s homes. He squints up at them still, and then hurries to catch up with Viktor, who has already wandered into a corner to stare at an abstract painting of what looks like a snake.

 

“Yuuri, what do you think of this one?” he asks. He’s standing with his legs apart, one hand in his pocket and the other on his chin as though he’s contemplative.

 

Yuuri isn’t even pretending. “What is it?” he responds.

 

“You can’t tell?” There’s humor in Viktor’s voice, like maybe he doesn’t really understand it either, and then he lifts his hand a few inches until it’s hovering just underneath his nose, and Yuuri goes on high alert. “It’s obviously… Hh! … Haht’NGTchsh! GhKtssChh!”

 

Without even thinking about it, Yuuri hovers his hand above Viktor’s back as he sneezes, tense as Viktor keeps his face buried into his forearm waiting for the third one.

 

“EH’TSScHue!”

 

“Bless you.” Yuuri rubs Viktor’s back just briefly, feeling a little shameless about how eager he is to touch him now.

 

“Thank you,” Viktor says. “Ah-ah, don’t get any ideas, Yuuri; we are in public, you know.”

 

“Wh—! Oh my god, I swear, I wasn’t—”

 

“I think it’s supposed to be a shoelace,” Viktor interrupts calmly, then chuckles before he sniffles again. “You know, ski boots, ice skates. You can see the aglet here.” He points to a pastel rectangle near the top of the page.

 

“What about this one?” Yuuri walks a few feet to the left toward a ceramic sculpture of what looks like a bowl of soup, with tiny figurines of people skating on top of it, like some sort of ice rink dinner. Yuuri looks back once he realizes that Viktor didn’t follow, just in time to see him double over once more.

 

“Ht’KDZzcshhih!” He straightens up and excuses himself to the woman viewing the painting next to him, and Yuuri is weak in the knees all over again. Viktor normally does his best to restrain them when they’re in public, especially in a formal setting like this, but that one had sounded like it was forcing its way out of him, strong and fast and itchy.

 

Trying his best to clear his head, he gestures to the soup-sculpture once Viktor comes closer and says, “I don’t think I would eat this.”

 

“No?” Viktor asks. He sniffles again. “But would you skate on it?”

 

“Would you skate on it?” Yuuri replies.

 

“I would skate on anything,” Viktor says. “They all look like they’re having a good time, though.” He rubs fiercely at his nose and frowns just before a smartly dressed woman approaches the two of them, holding a clipboard in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

 

“Mr. Nikiforov! Mr. Katsuki,” she addresses with a nod, standing stiff and tall next to Viktor. Yuuri straightens up to match her posture. “My name is Mira. I’m in charge of handling affairs here. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. Are you liking the exhibit so far?”

 

“Oh, we only just got here,” Yuuri answers. “But it’s an honor to be invited. I’ve never been to a gallery like this before.”

 

“Yes! It’s very interesting, isn’t it? The curators both live upstairs, but they like to use the whole first floor as a gallery – it’s certainly grand enough! I’ve been working here for years and they’re both very nice people,” Mira tells them.

 

“Excuse me,” Viktor says suddenly, breathlessly, and in a moment it becomes apparent why he’s been letting Yuuri do all of the talking. He turns away from Mira and swivels his torso slightly more toward Yuuri, probably out of politeness instead of with Yuuri’s favor in mind. “EhgtKtSSsh! Ah’HH’ETSSCHih!”

 

“Bless you!” Mira beats Yuuri to it. “I saw you sneezing earlier, too; I hope you’re not getting sick from the seasons changing like this.” Yuuri can’t believe she just said – God, if he had said something like that to Viktor before he knew him – well – God – what kind of bravery –

 

“No, no, not with Yuuri’s competition so close,” Viktor answers diplomatically.

 

“Oh, that’s right! Have you been able to find any time for recreation between practices?”

 

Mira proceeds to make small talk with them for the next few minutes, and Yuuri feels like he’s squeezing his brain in a vice grip to get himself to focus on the affairs manager instead of on the way Viktor keeps sniffling between sentences and twitching his hands like he wants to bring them up to scrub at his face, occasionally giving in and swiping very, very briefly against the right side of his nose. It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.

 

Eventually, Mira is called away to help greet a group of newly-arrived benefactors, and Viktor clears his throat a couple of times after saying goodbye to her.

 

“Mm. Maybe I am getting sick after all,” he says to no one. Yuuri is right there, of course, but he’s preoccupied with pretending to stare at a framed collection of sketches while he tries to keep a straight face.

 

“That doesn’t sound right,” Yuuri says. “It came on too fast, and in the wrong order. Your throat doesn’t hurt, right?”

 

“Yuuri, you’re so observant,” Viktor praises, and Yuuri remembers that, oh yeah, most people probably don’t pay that close of attention to things like this. “No, it doesn’t hurt. It does itch, though.”

 

“Maybe you’re, uh…” Yuuri clears his own throat, his mouth suddenly dry. “Maybe you’re allergic to something here?”

 

Viktor sniffles again and considers this. “I’m only allergic to cats,” he says, and then, “why are you making that face?”

 

What does he mean Why? “You didn’t think to tell me that when I told you about…?”

 

“About…?” Viktor parrots, blinking. Does he seriously not realize? “Oh! Oh, I don’t know, I guess it slipped my mind!”

 

Yuuri doesn’t totally get it, because how does something like that slip anyone’s mind? But he supposes that people who wouldn’t list sneezing as a really amazing and, uh, really inconvenient special interest are generally not as perceptive about all the different mechanics and situations and overall details that it involves.

 

Besides, things seem to slip Viktor’s mind more often than not.

 

“I don’t think there are any cats in the gallery, though,” Viktor adds.

 

Yuuri shrugs. “It is somebody’s house.”

 

“No, I would be… HhtGTCHSHHYhn! … sneezing… alotmoreth—AahtCHZSchue! More than this.”

 

“Bless you.”

 

“Thank you.” Viktor sniffles quickly, fiercely. “When Yurio first started skating under Yakov, I was having a real hard time – all that fur on his clothes! Once we figured out what was happening, he became so diligent with the lint roller, always using three or four sheets before he even entered the ring. He was really embarrassed.”

 

Yuuri desperately, desperately wants to know what Viktor meant by a real hard time, overcome with visions of Viktor having to pause a routine to grab onto the railing while he rides out a fit, but because he’s in public and can’t possibly imagine feeling more flustered than he does now, he says, “That’s actually kind of sweet.”

 

“It was,” Viktor agrees. He takes Yuuri’s hand and leads him toward a lavish presentation of refreshments in an area decorated with sparse furniture and snowflakes carved out of wood. “I bet you would have liked to see me during those first few practices, though, hm?”

 

WOW, okay, that’s definitely true and it’s definitely very inappropriate. “Viktor!” he scolds – well, tries to scold, but it comes out sounding more like a whiny complaint. “We’re in public, you can’t just…”

 

Yuuri feels himself blushing and knows that Viktor can tell by the color of his face that he wasn’t wrong about what he said. Viktor confirms this with a telling grin, and Yuuri dazedly follows him into the dining room.

 

 

[Spoo]

For anyone who's interested in knowing, I read this fic while I was out at dinner with a friend (rip, me) and I basically flipped out and blushed my head off at the table.  In other words, IT WAS VERYVERY GOOD. 

Ahhh, Sennnnnn. You're killing me with how you write these two.  Yuuri is the cutest and Victor??? SO RUDE??? Ughhh, his sneezes are to die for. This killed me the most: 

27 minutes ago, Sen Beret said:

There’s humor in Viktor’s voice, like maybe he doesn’t really understand it either, and then he lifts his hand a few inches until it’s hovering just underneath his nose, and Yuuri goes on high alert. “It’s obviously… Hh! … Haht’NGTchsh! GhKtssChh!”

Just the HAND HOVERING like he felt it building beforehand ajsdjfsldsf;  Also, I don't know why but I got really freakin' STUPID when Victor would thank Yuuri for blessing him. UGH. I AM TRASH. 

And you are amazing.  

[Kaze Wo Hiku]

EVERYTHING SPOO SAID PLUS ME GUSHING I HAVE DIED X_X

The setting is amazing, Viktor is sexy, everything is perfect....again dead

[AdrianMarx]

i am dead

[Juto]

AwwwwwwyES!!! I was already treated to this lovely piece on tumblr and I must say I'm in awe  

Allergic Viktor is adorable and I agree... the HAND HOVERING AND THE "THANK YOU" 

*phases out of reality* 

awesome!!! 

[bazzpop00]

This fic has me screaming and blushing like a madman because I just love Viktor sneezing and how the two act around each other

21 hours ago, Sen Beret said:

WOW, okay, that’s definitely true and it’s definitely very inappropriate. “Viktor!” he scolds – well, tries to scold, but it comes out sounding more like a whiny complaint. “We’re in public, you can’t just…”

I can legit FEEL the grin on Viktor's face when Yuuri tries to scold him

[tenderwarrior]

UM! Goodbye! I'm gone! Oh wow, Sen, this was so good! So, so, so good. I don't even watch the show but their banter and the sneezes and the hand hovering before the sneezes and everything. I can't even believe this. It was so good!! This is one of the best fics I've read in a while on here. So good!!

[coffeecream]

On 12/10/2016 at 10:19 AM, Sen Beret said:

Yuuri desperately, desperately wants to know what Viktor meant by a real hard time, overcome with visions of Viktor having to pause a routine to grab onto the railing while he rides out a fit, but because he’s in public and can’t possibly imagine feeling more flustered than he does now, he says, “That’s actually kind of sweet.”

Me too, Yuuri.

meee toooo.

 

On 12/10/2016 at 10:19 AM, Sen Beret said:

“It was,” Viktor agrees. He takes Yuuri’s hand and leads him toward a lavish presentation of refreshments in an area decorated with sparse furniture and snowflakes carved out of wood. “I bet you would have liked to see me during those first few practices, though, hm?”

ded