A/N: A quick explanation of this soulmate AU: after you meet your soulmate, you become progressively drunker around them, unless you're touching. Being absent from your soulmate for a while will result in a hangover, but eventually you'll return to your normal sober life, unless you meet them again. Confusing? Please bear with me.

If you have an idea for a soulmate AU, please let me know through review and I might write a oneshot for it. I am trying to avoid the ones that I repeatedly see (your soulmate's name tattooed on your arm, a timer counting down until you meet, you get colors when you first touch, etc), but other than that I'm wide open and ready for inspiration! Hit me.

Drunk On You

The universe has a unique sense of humor. Viktor is Russian; he's supposed to be the one who can handle his liquor. But the instant he sees his soulmate for the second time that day, he's a drunken man—giddy and giggling, snapping photos, wondering when it is right to approach and say you are giving me wings. He knows the other man feels it too, even more strongly, his cheeks flushed, his muscles limber and step tottering.

"I'm so drunk," the Japanese man whispers, low and conspiratorial, to the figure skating champion. "But I can- hic—still beat anyone at a dance competition."

There's only champagne here, Viktor wants to laugh, You know who's making you feel this way. His sight is beginning to blur; he feels himself falling deeper into a drunken and lazy stupor until his soulmate's arms find their way around him and the symptoms fall off to a pleasant buzz. He's still drunk enough to feel oddly and deeply flattered by the gyrating request be my coach; still sober enough to know that the flush in his own cheeks is adoration for this sloppy yet genuine man. He laughs and claps in the dance-off, he watches dreamily and with stomach dropping amusement at the pole routine.

They dance, and it's almost too much for his limbs to handle, to say nothing of his heart. Then it's all over, or maybe it's all beginning, and they're stumbling through dim hotel halls with their hands interlinked.

"I won," his soulmate says in shiny eyed wonder.

"I won," Viktor laughs. "But there's always next year."

"No," the man replies seriously, "I won you." Their fingers are interlaced. Viktor feels himself becoming more sober by the minute, but his heart is still glowing with warmth, bubbling up like poured champagne. He leans down to kiss him—just a kiss, no farther, he swears— but a palm presses to the champion's cheek and a smile fills his whole vision. Fingertips are dancing across his silver fringe, and then their foreheads are pressed together, and they're both laughing, still laughing, two drunkards alone with their antics. Isn't this feeling supposed to go away when we touch? Viktor wonders in a daze, but he can't think too hard about it. Everything is warm. Everything is hazy. Everything is sweet.

"Come to my room," he tells him, and his soulmate lets go.

"I can't," is the breezy reply. "I promised I'd call home."

Surely you're joking, Viktor thinks, but it becomes all too real, and he is left empty and alone in a hallway. It feels like standing on a podium; there is no surprise in being by himself, not anymore. The next day, he waits in his room, because all of the skaters know where he's staying, feels his body grow heavy with the drunken need to touch. Yakov forbids him from interviewing; the champion is slurring too badly. He dreams fitfully of the Japanese skater, and eagerly waits.

By the third day, he's still heard nothing from his soulmate, and the hangover begins in earnest. He misses jumps; he holds his head in cold showers, turns off the lights in his house, tries to fill up the soul bond hangover with physical liquor. Nothing works. Surely the Japanese man feels the same; surely he's realized by now how awful their separation will be.

Come back, Viktor wills him desperately.

He doesn't.

The hangover ends, finally, but Viktor's already winning competitions again. What else is there to do? Being sober makes him more of a mess, so in his off time he drinks and plays ridiculous games with Makkachin. How had he been like this for so long?

He watches the video, and the mere sight of his soulmate on screen makes Viktor's stomach flip. It's beautiful, more beautiful than anything he's ever performed in just the expression of it. But the video is something worse than that—it is a love letter, or a siren call, unavoidable in its supposedly innocent admiration. Yakov forbids him from going. Viktor goes.

On his way, he imagines them together, he and this sweetly drunk man. Viktor sees him welcoming him into his home, his hot springs, taking his hand and scolding with soft confidence, I've been waiting. Why didn't you chase me? In response, Viktor would just give him what he'd asked for, what he'd wanted: a coach. The champion is tipsy at the very thought of it, at having that raw talent in that uninhibited body, and having it to himself to form, and loving every moment of it.

His soulmate passes out at the sight of him.

Viktor is a quick learn, and despite his position as coach he spends most of his first week doing that. He also spends most of his first week as a sloppy, half drunken man, because despite the intoxication that he knows swept over his body immediately at the sight of the other skater in the onsen, his student is averse to touching.

His soulmate is quiet. Shy. Every touch of Viktor, even ones just to dissipate the soulmate induced drunken mist clouding his mind, are met with tense rejection and fleeing. He runs his fingers gently over his student's skin—rejection. He invades his personal space abruptly—rejection. He waits, not touching, until his vision is blurring and gravity is heavy upon him and his mind comes up with the brilliant idea that they should have a sleepover—rejection!

"Why can't we sleep together?" He nearly slurs, his knuckles barely rapping the door, missing it every few knocks. "Yuuuuuri."

"No!" Comes the wail from the other side of the door.

Pure frustration. The legend begins to wonder if his soulmate cares at all—if perhaps the boy was enthralled by the idea of having Viktor Nikiforov wrapped desperately around his finger as his soulmate but never intending to be in an actual relationship with him. Then he secretly watches the Japanese skater move in anxious, dazed circles on the ice late into the night, and his heart swells, and Viktor rejects that idea.

So he's tried everything. Or most everything. Finally, he tries patience, which has never been his strong suit. Yuuri will come around eventually—he has to. He can't afford to be drunk and stumbling on the ice, which he will be if he and Viktor don't share a skinship.

Yuuri does far more than just come around. He accepts touches—he initiates touches. When they talk about his life, about his time in Detroit, Yuuri is flushing and quiet but earnest when he answers. Being far away makes Viktor slur, but being close still makes Yuuri stutter. And they are breathlessly close as time goes on.

The night after he's kissed him at the cup of China, Yuuri is timid—at least until he's got his coach cornered in their hotel room. Viktor is feeling sickening drunk after having kept his hands to himself following their public display, but the nausea settles when his glowing Yuuri takes his face between two calloused palms and kisses him again.

"I'm not fun," his soulmate warns fretfully. "I'm not—I'm not like you, Viktor, are you okay with that?"

They're touching everywhere. Viktor knows he's supposed to be sober, but somehow his impulse control his nowhere to be found.

"Don't be any other way," he whispers, and they're kissing again, and Viktor is using his tongue in a manner that would definitely not be appropriate for a live television broadcast.

In the morning, his twitter feed is awash in the news.

'THE HUG at the cup of China!' He snorts at that one. The next headline is better.

'Legend Viktor Nikiforov and student kiss on the ice!'

The last headline makes him smile more than any other.

'Nikiforov, playboy extraordinaire and long without attachments, chooses student over soulmate!'

He wants to correct them with a giddy laugh, but firstly he wants to share this with Yuuri, and with a flick of his wrist he shows his sleepy soulmate the dramatic article on his phone screen.

"Look," he exclaims with near glee. "Look at how ridiculous they're being." It must be too early, because Yuuri's eyes glaze and he rolls over in bed. Viktor can't have that—he lightly smacks at the body beneath the covers and smothers the Japanese skater's dark hair in kisses. I'm so drunk, Viktor thinks in amazement, I'm so drunk off of him. "Wake up, we have a flight to catch." Yuuri intakes a shaking breath, trembling so much that Viktor almost questions it aloud, before he rolls his limber frame from beneath the sheets and is padding off to the bathroom.

Yuuri changes after the cup of China, and Viktor is definitely not complaining. There's a somber seriousness to almost everything he does, moreso than his typically strained behavior, and when Yuuri invades his room in the middle of the night a week after the cup of China, Viktor is pleasantly surprised. They talk for a few hours, starting out with amusingly trite comments and deepening into an affectionate exchange of ideas. Viktor holds his skater's hand, circles his thumb over the scarred palm, sways back and forth as he chats with the joy of time spent together while Yuuri watches with a small half smile. A comforting silence has fallen over the inn, and Viktor is sure all of Yuuri's family is fast asleep in bed.

"Do you often have trouble sleeping?" It's a gentle question, one Viktor forgets how he's stumbled across, but the Japanese man shrugs and nods.

"Everything tenses up, and my mind races, and sometimes it's just too much. Do you?"

"Sometimes," Viktor admits. "Mostly I just forget and it becomes late. Usually I'm too exhausted from practice to stay up, but every once in a while I get nervous and sleepless about other things." His student is processing this information slowly, and Viktor's heart flutters. "I think my soulmate could help, though." He tightens his grip on Yuuri's hand, only to be met with a look from the younger that Viktor clearly recognizes but hasn't seen in weeks—rejection. "What-" he begins, feeling betrayed, but Yuuri's lips are on him, all over, and the black haired man suddenly has him pinned to the bed. Eros, is all Viktor can think, and he appreciates how sober he is so that he's not numb to the delicious friction of Yuuri moving against him, of teeth nipping the skin of his neck. His soulmate's hands are working smoothly on his robe's tie, the hand formerly holding his sliding up his chest to rest atop his heart. Viktor hears words, can't understand them, but knows they are in breathless, rapid Japanese, and he opens his lips to respond in his own frantic Russian I love you, I love you, I love you—

"Don't talk, please," Yuuri interrupts, and it's a strange sort of agony that comes over his face. "Just—don't, Viktor."

"Why?" He struggles to sit up but his soulmate pushes him back down with a fierce desperation.

"I'm trying—" the Japanese man breaks off, bites his lip, ducks his head. Viktor just stares at him, baffled. "You're mine," he says finally, lowly, "You promised to keep your eyes on me."

"I am," the champion tells him, and wonders what he's done wrong. Brown eyes meet his icy blue, and despite the warmth of color Viktor sees a distinct lack of passionate heat, sees only a different emotion that is hard to grasp. The eyes close. Viktor is cut off.

It's hard to process when Yuuri is sucking at his collarbone. "I think we should talk—" Viktor tries to interject, but the Japanese skater's hand dips low, searching across his body, and his hips rock against his will. "Yuuri, I'm worried about—" His student's hand finds what it's looking for and his mind is going blank in a searing blaze of white delight. Habit catches him, and he catches Yuuri's lips and invades them. Maybe he doesn't want to talk, Viktor thinks in a confused rush, He's never been a huge fan of it. He can feel himself letting go, falling into the delicious movements, hoping that he can show Yuuri things he knows his beloved has never experienced before.

He kisses his soulmate's cheeks, and is surprised to find that they're wet. Suddenly his Yuuri's reckless movements against him mean nothing.

"Why are you crying?"

The emotion in his eyes is misery. It's loss. Viktor recognizes it suddenly, knows it, and it breaks his heart.

"Of course I'm crying," the younger chokes out. "You're going to leave me."

"Never, дорогой," Viktor insists, even if he doesn't understand what his student is saying. Yuuri is anxious, and whatever is tearing him up is beyond Viktor at this point. "Is this about what I said at the Cup of China? You know I didn't mean that. I think you need sleep. It's been a long week." He pats the mattress beside him, and Yuuri's eyes dart there and back, before settling into grim determination.

"I'm going to my room."

Then Yuuri is gone, and the alcohol of the soulbond burns through his veins all night. It sits rankling in his stomach, and his mind flickers through things hazily and irrationally and with heated anger. Yuuri means well, means well always because he is a wonderful man, but Viktor is exhausted with trying to understand him, trying to reach him. He intends to have a long talk with him in the morning.

In the morning, it's like the fight never even happened. Yuuri lets him touch, and touches him back without any of the desperation of the previous night. The legend reasons that anxiety over competition must have gotten the better of him, just for a while. In two days, the conversation falls away and the Rostelecom cup looms on the horizon.

During the Rostelecom cup, Yuuri tells him to go home and be with his dying dog.

Viktor cannot express how much this means, how much it means to know that Yuuri will be half drunk and miserable throughout his free skate just so that Viktor can see his beloved Makkachin. The desire to tell him no, to insist that he stays, is powerful. But the insistent love Yuuri feels is powerful too.

"You have to go," the skater proclaims with no room for argument. They buy the champion's ticket home together, entwined on the bed, Yuuri clicking through the airport webpage while Viktor's heart trembles and wonders how on earth he will ever deserve this man. He buries his face into his skater's neck, pushes closer and closer, touches him until he has to go catch his cab, hopes that somehow the soul bond will be merciful.

It is not merciful to him. By the time he returns home from the vet with Makkachin the following day to watch Yuuri on the screen at the Rostelecom cup, he can barely stand. When Yuuri takes the ice, he feels fear sink into him. Yuuri will stumble—Yuuri will fall, because I left him to suffer through this alone. I will have ruined things for him, and he'll never forgive me.

Then Yuuri skates. He does not skate well, but he skates. And he enters the Grand Prix.

On the way home from the airport together, his vision and mind finally clear from the intoxication of the soul bond with their fingers laced together, he tries to make conversation with his Yuuri.

"I've thought this before," he says, "But I'm amazed by your tolerance. I guess it has to do with your stamina."

"What?" Yuuri's gaze is mild and warm, still satisfied by their reunion in the airport. Their cab driver turns up the Japanese radio over the sound of their accented English.

"The soul bond," Viktor explains, feeling foolish. "I mean the soul bond. You were still graceful out on the ice—I'm Russian, we're supposed to have good tolerance, and even I could hardly walk to the couch to lay down and watch you on television while I was in Japan."

Yuuri abruptly makes searing eye contact and doesn't break it.

"What," he repeats tonelessly. Viktor feels helpless, almost embarrassed.

"Oh," he admits hesitantly, "Maybe it's just particularly bad for me?"

"You know my history." He looks the other way out the dark window. History? Viktor thinks. Does he mean the banquet? He was still graceful, still pole dancing, even though I know he had to be drunk out of his mind off of our first meeting. He was drunk, just by the look of him. I suppose skating isn't that different. "Of course my soulbond wouldn't affect me." His grip on Viktor's hand tightens. "And I won't let it, even if it does come. I know what I want." A gold medal, Viktor thinks to himself, pleased. So driven.

They continue on in silence for a while. Yuuri's hand is so soft, so warm, and he finds himself playing with it on the long drive back to Hasetsu. Pinky, he thinks, wiggling it and watching Yuuri's face flush in the dark of the car. Thumb. Index finger—his nails are long. He is assaulted by an image of them curling into his back, and he has to dismiss it and calm himself. Middle finger. Like he would ever use it, this polite Japanese man. He pauses at the last. Ring finger. It's empty. Too empty.

The decision is made by the time they fall into his bed back at Hasetsu and fall asleep, still holding each other.

Yuuri's gone running when he wakes in the morning, so he settles with chatting lazily with Mari at the breakfast table. He knows his soulmate must have woken up early, because he's already dropping his chopsticks with breathless laughter as he eats.

"Sorry," he apologizes as he knocks over the centerpiece, "My soulbond is unforgiving. I hardly remember how to walk straight, anymore." He's struck by sudden, eager curiosity. "What was Yuuri like, when he came home to Hasetsu? Was his hangover awful?"

Mari eyes him with wary surprise as Hiroko bustles off to the kitchen. "He never mentioned anything," she replies slowly. For some reason, Viktor feels he's invaded foreign space for the first time since arriving in Japan.

"What about you? Have you met your soulmate? How drunk do you get?" He asks cheerfully, and realizes just as quickly it's a mistake. His mouth is too large, too careless, and he longs for Yuuri to soften him and his blows. Mari shuffles the plates.

"I was too excited when I met my soulmate," she admits, "And now he won't really interact, maybe because of it. We see each other every once in a while, and it's just…" she shifts and stares off into a corner. "Alcohol is a depressant, too, you know." Viktor feels his heart jump into his throat. He's never considered it, never let it come into his head. His soulbond's intoxication has always been a high for him, always. "I have to admit that we're all scared of Yuuri finding his soulmate—terrified that his mind won't handle the intoxication well if they spend too long apart, because he's an anxious guy and sometimes when he drank with us as a teenager, he'd panic rather than be a fun drunk. Luckily, I think his tolerance is pretty high. Still, as I'm sure you know, he panics a lot." She eyes him from the side. "You're saying he met his soulmate?"

He hadn't told them? Why? Was he embarrassed? Yuuri was excruciatingly private, even with people he loved. Viktor settles for nodding, and Mari takes in a deep breath.

"Well," she muses, "He was very upset when he came back. We all thought it was about his career, and I think that's all he talked about with mom, but I suppose..."

His career? Viktor is hit with a sickening realization that makes his head spin more than it already has been in the past hour.

Alcohol is a depressant, too, you know.

He stumbles to his feet. Yuuri, he has to find Yuuri.

Yuuri, who for the first several months of them knowing each other treated him like his foot was halfway out the door at all times. Yuuri, who is miserably odd and possessive at the mere mention of the word soulmate. Yuuri, who panics and lives in his own mind and is underconfident, who's still so smooth in movement when drunk that it's almost impossible to believe that he is. Yuuri, who's never verbally acknowledged that they are bonded at the core of them.

"You know my history. Of course the soul bond wouldn't affect me."

"It's my fault, I forgot that you'd never had a lover."

Yuuri is on the ice when he finds him, spinning in harried circles.

"Viktor," he says in greeting, and moves to the wall. "Watch me try—"

"Ssstupid," he feels himself slurring. His hand finds Yuuri's arm, and it becomes marginally easier to talk. "You're глупый. дурачить." "You taught me those words," his soulmate says incredulously, mildly offended but mostly surprised, "You've been teaching me Russian for months. Are you really going to use them like I don't understand?" "Well apparently дорогой and моя звезда and Моё золотце haven't gotten across to you," the legend huffs in half-serious fury. Darling. My star. My gold. Yuuri's arm slides from beneath Viktor's grip as he moves backwards easily on the ice, his face flushing and eyes tenderly devastated. "You know what those mean, don't you?" Viktor demands, and then softens. "Don't you, Yuuri?" He grabs Yuuri by the shoulders, leaning out embarrassingly far over the rail, and smoothly reels him back in. "Come back. I want to be fully competent for this conversation. This has gone on long enough."

"What—" Yuuri begins hesitantly, but Viktor's having none of it.

"Soulmate," he hisses. The Japanese skater flinches at the mere mention of it. "You know you've found him."

"I haven't," he's shaking his dark head wildly, "And I'd choose you, Viktor, please let me. Please let me," he finishes, half heartbroken. "I love… I love…" He's breaking off in huffs of frantic breath that solidify in the chill of Ice Castle's air.

"Calm down, моя звезда," he says into the tense silence that follows. "Come off the ice." Viktor meets him at the door, takes his hand, reverently unlaces his skates at the bench.

When Yuuri is in his socks, clutching his head between his hands and resolutely refusing to look at his coach, Viktor lightly pinches at his parted knees with both hands. Yuuri startles, but looks to him. "Viktor," he whispers.

"We should've had this conversation months ago. I was arrogant." He frowns. "And you were under-confident. How on earth did you not notice that we were soulmates? I was a ridiculously giddy drunkard for the first few weeks I was in Hasetsu, before we got physical. I have literally been naked and sprawled across you more times than I can count, Yuuri, what were you thinking?" Those brown eyes are locked onto him, Yuuri's knees locked in their position. "The first few months after the last Grand Prix without you were agony. Yakov was ready to kill me, even if he did understand that I was ridiculously hungover."

"We," Yuuri breathes, "We are?"

"Do you not remember the first time we met?"

"You asked me for a commemorative photo and I left in shame," Yuuri points out. "You had no idea who I was, and I'd utterly failed in competition. I felt sick and unsteady for the rest of the day. I could barely talk to Celestino normally."

"Exactly," Viktor responds pointedly, and Yuuri's jaw drops. "It took me a while, but by the banquet I'd figured it out."

Yuuri flushes. "We could've… at the banquet?"

We could've made love? Да, черт возьми, Viktor thinks to himself, I was already yours, and I'd hardly even talked to you yet. He presses his forehead, frustrated, to Yuuri's knee.

"I've loved you for so long, and you thought… what? That I was playing with you and that my soulmate was somewhere else, with me ignoring them?"

"I knew you loved me," Yuuri replies, biting his lip, "I just thought that it'd end, at some point, and you'd go back to Russia. Go back to your career. To skating. To not having to deal with the soulbond, because your soulmate in Russia would be right there."

"You think my soulmate is in Russia?"

"Well, after the Rostelecom cup!" Yuuri protests. "You acted like coming back to Japan after that was stressing the soulbond!"

"Because I'd left my soulmate for the first time in months," Viktor asserts. "Because I'd left you in Russia."

"Does Yurio know?" The Japanese skater asks suddenly, horrified and color draining from his tan face. "He's going to kill me. I took you from him. I assumed my skating and pure luck did it."

"Oh, Yurio knows." The champion remembers that uncomfortable conversation very well, held in terse Russian on the night of the boy's arrival.

"You are being disgusting," the younger skater had growled after they were apart from Yuuri for less than an hour, "Pull yourself together and don't get drunk off of a PIGGY." There had been one more thing. "And stop flaunting it!"

Flaunting it. He kisses his student's calf, and Yuuri shivers.

"Everyone else thought I was being ridiculously obvious, you know. You're the only one that had no idea."

"My family didn't know," Yuuri halfheartedly protests.

"Because they assumed you'd tell them if it were true!" Viktor laughs.

"Phichit did ask," Yuuri admits quietly. "He said I wasn't behaving normally."

"And then you miraculously realized that we were soulmates?" Viktor prompts. "Please tell me the thought at least crossed your mind, even if it didn't stick."

"I told him that I loved you." His voice is hushed. "And that I didn't care about soulmates."

Warmth spreads in the pit of his belly, his world tilting sweetly on its axis. Viktor feels strange, and a conversation he'd had with Yakov flits across his mind.

"No one loves me," he had told his coach. No one even knows me.

"Everyone loves you," the man had replied gruffly. "Did you not hear the cheers when you took the gold? Do you not see their eyes on you?"

"They love the idea of me," he'd said, "My skating forces them to. Until someday, when it won't anymore."

"Your soulmate will love you someday," Yakov said quietly. "That usually works out well." Yakov's love hadn't. When Viktor had been in the depths of his soulmate induced hangover, Yakov had been harsh, because he understood better than anyone else how it felt.

They'll be forced to, Viktor had thought to himself. Us being in love will be expected, because of the bond—us touching will be a necessity. It won't surprise anyone.

Yuuri had still been surprised. Surprised that Viktor had chosen him. Pleasantly surprised that they were soulmates. Surprised that Viktor felt anything through their bond at all, even now.

"You wanted me," he realizes in a hushed voice. "You would have stayed with me, even if it meant turning away from your soulmate and never experiencing the tipsy buzz of being with them? Even if you always thought I was ready to leave you, that I was teasing you with the idea of my soulmate being out there waiting for me? You would have been hungover for me?"

Yuuri doesn't answer. It says everything for him.

"Well," Viktor hums, patting his soulmate's flushing face jovially, "I declare morning practice cancelled."

"I had katsudon yesterday," Yuuri explains, his tone wary, "I should probably exercise."

"Oh, we will, дорогой." He smiles lightly and stands, "In bed."

There are several realizations after that.

"I hugged everyone after the Rostelecom cup," Yuuri is scandalized over dinner a week after their heart to heart, "And I threw up in the airport toilet. I thought it was nerves—I was drunk out of my mind."

"I didn't even talk to Viktor," Yuuri announces cheerfully to the other skaters, and beer is spewing from Viktor's lips.

"You don't remember?"

"You'd had so much champagne," Christophe laughs. "You were absolutely drunk."

"Just a little champagne," Viktor says, still reeling with it, "I saw you with the same empty glass every time I looked over from interviews and conversations."

"A different empty glass every time, maybe," Christophe hints.

"Celestino counted twenty," Phichit pipes in. "He said Yuuri was ridiculously drunk off of it."

"You were actually drunk?" Twenty glasses of champagne, and the soulbond reacting from their first meeting—no wonder Yuuri had seemed so out of it that evening. Suddenly, his demure fiancé dancing on a pole makes so much sense. Suddenly, Yuuri having no idea they are soulmates makes so much more sense.

"What, Viktor, you thought it was just because of you?" Christophe teases. "You're not that special, hmm?"

"I almost took advantage of you," Viktor blurts, horrified, "I tried to take you to my room. Дерьмо! Дерьмо."

"I am interested in this topic," Phichit announces eagerly, "Please continue." His fingers are dancing over his phone.

"SHUT UP!" Yurio screams, slamming his hands on the table. "Shut UP, you disgusting old pervert!" Otabek pats him calmly on the arm, which Viktor stores in his mind for later before he is distracted.

"We talked?" Yuuri's innocent shining eyes are turned on him.

"You tried to have sex with him?" Minako asks, a little too interested. "The first time you met?"

"How unfair," Christophe complains sensuously, "You're such a playboy. Take some responsibility, Viktor."

"I am," the champion skater insists, half serious, and then all eyes are on their rings and the whole restaurant is clapping for them at Phichit's behest.

Viktor expects the soul bond to be more merciful as they age. But even Yuuri leaving to coach for a few hours leaves him flushed and dazed and wanting. His phone rings.

"On the way home," Yuuri huffs across the line. "God, does the bond ever just make you hot? I'm burning up and I'm just trying to walk back."

"I'm drunk," Viktor informs him abruptly. "And naked."

"Oh," comes the strangled noise across the line from his husband.

"See you soon," the skating champion promises, pinching his lips to pass a kissing noise over the phone, "I expect you to help me out."