aiko's otter den

from a compass rose - Katsuki Yuuri is never checking his phone again. He likes his past right where it is. Too bad it doesn’t give a hoot.

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3. Knocks and Aches

Date: 02/26/13 Time: 12:19

“My name’s Makiko and I’m seven!” Her little voice declared from the apparent comfort of Maki’s lap. He’d always found it boney himself, but Yuuri supposed it would be different if that was your parent. His dad’s lap had been great for that reason.

Yuuri twitched, trying to reconcile all these realities in front of him at the same time. Then he gave up and repeated the words he had said to Yuuko’s children the first time they had been old enough to meet him and remember his name. “Nice to meet you. My name is Katsuki Yuuri and I’m old.”

Maki let out a snort and Makiko waggled a finger over her juice. “You are not old! I know who you are. Your husband is old!”

Yuuri felt all of the tension seep out of his shoulders as he laughed out right. Maki gently prodded her daughter in the forehead. “Viktor Nikiforov is not old. His hair is only naturally grey. Don’t insult people like that.”

“Don’t worry,” Yuuri managed to wheeze out after a moment. “He thinks the same thing. It’s the nature of the business.”

Maki chuckled a little. “Indeed, it seems like it.” She paused. “That was actually how I got your phone number.”

Yuuri sobered. “I was wondering how you got that.”

“Most of that was your parents.” Maki sat back and Makiko crawled off and out of sight, likely to go and play. “I was curious and called them for advice once in a while and eventually found the courage to get your phone numbers. You were the first one I called.”

“You probably should have called Takeshi and Yuuko first,” he told her, failing not to smile at the look of mulish awkwardness on her face. He knew that sensation so well. “They have triplets, they would have sent you all the help and themselves.”

Maki raised a single eyebrow and that was all the answer Yuuri needed.

His friends were also nosey busybodies, Youtube was a good example of that. Yuuko meant well, though, usually.

“So what caused you to call anyway, aside from reconnecting?” He forced himself to say it, to ruin the mood she had started them out with.

Her face grew thoughtful, then old. “Let me start at the beginning. I just… I wanted Bakumon back.”

Oh shit. “What… what did you do?” All he could think of was Daigo, a bloody mess, hiding from her. Hiding from his own daughter, who had to be that little girl’s father. But it would only make sense that Maki did something because that was what she did. She solved problems, or tried to. She always tried to solve everyone’s problems. But sometimes she was just plain wrong.

Maki took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I tried to reboot the world.”

Yuuri turned that over in his head. “I think I’m going to need more detail than that…”

She looked almost like she had aged ten years. “I figured you might.”

And so she told him, pausing only to adjust Makiko on her knee as the little girl started to fall asleep, snoring quietly until she was in a proper angle. Yuuri listened with only his water bottle and some food he had snuck from the hotel breakfast this morning but he barely touched it, watching the hollow lines in her ace seem to deepen so.

“I can’t… I just… it hasn’t stopped.” Yuuri wanted to feel anger, disappointment. He wanted to lash out at her so much, but he knew himself. What good would that do her, almost eight years later? “Homeostasis hasn’t figured out this is—”

“I don’t think Homeostasis can do anything.” Maki sipped at what he assumed was ice water. “She’s got world after world to look after and considering this one wasn’t even created by her… which brings me to my main point in calling you initially.”

She steepled her fingers and it was in that practiced way that Yuuri was sure she had used on her coworkers so many times and in so many ways it was uncannily like his middle school teachers. “Even before the reboot I caused, I have had suspicions about the beasts. They were sealed away so easily in 1998 by the dark masters and were kept that way.”

Yuuri swallowed. “Were they really?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Sealed away after 1998 I mean? Do you know that for sure?”

Maki shifted in her seat. “I can’t be certain. That was what that Gennai manifestation told me.”

“And he was so helpful before that.” Yuuri flinched at himself, watching the child’s brows knit. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Because his only memory of Gennai was a projection, a hollow, a dismissive figure.

“No, it’s… I understand.” She brushed the girl’s hair back down. “But I have to believe it was the case. Your partners… they loved you.”

Yuuri made a face. “If that was the case, wouldn’t they have said goodbye?”

Maki snorted. “I wonder about that myself.”

Yuuri almost laughed. Almost. “I wish you had done it.”

“So do I. but in a way, I did.” Maki regarded him thoughtfully over her cup once more. “His egg is coming to you, Yuuri. And to the others as well.”

---

Viktor Nikiforov was a man who was used to secrets. He didn’t exactly anticipate them, mind you, but celebrities learned to keep much of their lives private, much of their time out of the spotlight out of the spotlight.

Still, he had learned, in a relationship, a truly loving and good one, communication was essential. Which was hard with Yuuri, he knew. Yuuri was… not complicated exactly. Humans, on their own, were complex individuals. Yuuri was… fragmented. It was like his childhood, just as self-inflicted, just as delicate and complicated.

Viktor almost laughed out loud. Everyone would be very… uncomfortable with those words. As he had to remain untouchable, unbreakable, someone who had yet to be conquered.

If it was that easy, everyone would be that way, he supposed.

Makkachin let out a soft boof of encouragement as he nosed his fluffy face onto Viktor’s left knee. Viktor chuckled before he could stop himself. “Wanted your spot back, did you?” He stroked the curly, fluffy head. “Don’t worry, my knee is yours whenever you want… except when I’m sleeping of course.”

Makkachin, completely unable to interpret human words in any comprehensible standard, merely let out another excitable bark instead and wagged his tail.

“Ohhh,” Viktor gushed with a beaming smile. “You are such a good boy, Makkachin~!” He began to toy with his pet’s ears until the exasperated pup leaped onto the bed and knocked him over.

“Careful, darling, careful!” he shouted as he fell back, head smacking the pillow. “We aren’t as young as we used to be, now are we?”

Makkachin made a doggy sound for laughter and Viktor went down with them, still managing a smile.

But on the inside, he wondered.

As long as Yuuri communicated with him soon, it would be fine. If not, he did have drastic measures to fall back on.

Namely, Phichit Chulanont, who was somewhere downstairs, likely browsing the gift shop. Not to mention Yuri, who was so cute when you ruined his plans for the day.

Triumph glowing in his eyes, Viktor sat up with Makkachin and set to work.

He didn’t see his phone glow, nor hear it beep in a manner that he would have would cute and childish. Yuuri, however, would have found it ominous.

---

The text from Viktor startled Yuuri, pulling him away from the now less miserable conversation topics that Maki had. There were now chosen ones all over the world and they kept appearing, like sudden gusts of wind.

“They’re appearing to infants now,” she had been saying when the vibration shook his leg. “It’s like having twins only one can eat the table.”

Yuuri had snorted. “Yuuko’s triplets could eat the table if it was made of ice.”

“I don’t want to know,” Maki fired back and Yuuri laughed. Quietly of course, this was still a library. But it was still funny.

“She’s happier now,” he heard somewhere behind him. Daigo, who probably had an expression that fused bitterness and joy and pain. “Without me. She’s… smiling more. She’s always smiled more when you were there.”

Yuuri glanced at Maki again, who took another long sip of juice. She’d lost her taste for alcohol after her daughter was born. Her eyes were heavy with some weight, her shoulders a little too slumped, skin waxy, hair healthy. From a distance, he supposed she would look fine.

In lieu of saying anything like that, however, he checked his texts instead. There were three. One was from Phichit with a hamster cage in his hand. He’d bought another one, the poor things. He wanted to ask where Phichit kept them all because even though they had lived together and he had seen them, it was apparent that they came from nowhere and were created from nothing.

He thought the scenery looked familiar but ultimately dismissed it. St Petersburg made Michigan weather on its own seem like a tropical island, and that left Thailand as an awkward position. Hence why once competitions were over and done, he skedaddled out. He had figured his friend would take the first flight out. But may he couldn’t have. So Yuuri sent back a few cheerful emojis and went back to it. That always pacified him temporarily.

Next was an email from his fans, sharing photos and begging for information. That didn’t happen because he had no reason for it to. So delete. Next.

Viktor. Calling him back to the hotel, nothing about their next skate practice, wanting free time before Yakov Feltsman got a hold of them. It would be at least a week, six days now, burying the media storm of hellfire and brimstone that came from being a same-sex (possibly, VIktor had yet to say and there were things you just didn’t push with a person who was comfortable enough in his own skin as it was right now.

“I’m being called back,” he told her with a small smile. Well, he thought it was but Maki had a look that told him it was much more soppy and exuberant than he meant.

“I’m being called to bed,” she replied, taking pity on his soul and the blush rising so quick to his face it looked ready to blow his scalp off. “Or rather, I’m calling it.”

Yuuri couldn’t contain his snort. “So much for you being a night owl.”

He paused, expecting… something, he didn’t know what, but all he got was a small, brilliant grin. “Adulthood bites,” she told him, and he heard that little girl all over again, proclaiming how terrible and dumb being a kid was. “I’ll call Takeshi and Yuuko tomorrow.”

It warmed his heart to say goodbye so long as she looked like that.

The call ended and Yuuri packed up his things. It was almost peaceful.

Then there was a sob in the back corner. And there was Daigo, curled up. Not the adult this time, no, instead it was stepping back a couple decades and staring at a clean red shirt and jean shorts, ruined by the dirt of grime of too many wears and not enough washes. He sat in the corner, as Yuuri knew most children smart enough to do when they thought they were in trouble. And Yuuri also knew that Daigo had spent a lot of time in a corner or out of sight.

“She’s happy,” He heard the child say and his voice was still disproportionately deep and adult. All that was wrong was the sniffling. He didn’t have to do that. It broke Yuuri’s heart and agitated it all at the same time.

“She’s happy without me,” Yuuri heard and the bitter angry feeling chilled with the guilt. Because hadn’t he thought the same thing? Hadn’t he assumed he was the same with Viktor? And hadn’t he been wrong?

“Is she?” he asked and he bit his tongue on the rest of it. Because that hadn’t been the voice of a happy woman. That had been the voice of a surviving one and they weren’t the same, damn it not even close to the same.

“She didn’t sound that way to me.”

Daigo was gone when he looked again.

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