a silver splendour, a flame

They flew for hours and Viktor lost track of time, surrounded by the vibrant hum that was Yuuri’s magic, tongues of brilliance that made the rise and fall of the sun almost wholly irrelevant. At this pace all doubts that they wouldn’t make it to Hasetsuil left Viktor’s mind; Yuuri’s determination was wondrous to behold, and he thought briefly of his brother, who’d traveled onwards with the revelers to complete the wheel:

Yura, we’re on our way.

Thanks, idiot. I got that part. Yuri must have felt it, too, the restoration of their bond, differently, no doubt, but there nonetheless. A sparkling indication of life. A promise of springtime. Then there was a pause, telling, and Yuri’s thoughts shifted once more: … he’s really alright, Vitya?

He’s wonderful, Viktor promised, because it was true; Yuuri was warm and tangible and positively sparking with an exuberance he’d never had a chance to witness before, resurrected like this, awash in a power that was too big for him to understand and a love that he knew was also infinite. See you soon.

First the mountains sloped downwards into folds of forests, and then plains, and Vicchan banked sharply to sweep along the coast, darting low over the waves just long enough for Viktor to feel the sometimes-spray of salt and sea against his face. For a long time this was enough, observing the changing beauty of the landscape, idly tuned into the surface-level precision of Yuuri’s thoughts as he directed his eagle to soar and the way his whole being seemed to shake with happiness, with life, with:

It’s joy, Vitya. Yuuri’s new smile, the mischievous one, was pure danger when thrown over a shoulder as his curls waved in the wind, and Viktor bent over his shoulder to steal a kiss kept entirely too short by the reality of their flight.

Joy.

He closed his eyes to study it better, to let it unfurl like a banner planted in his own chest. That was Yuuri’s territory, all of it, and here it was now, blossoming anew: tangible proof of that planted flag.

He ought to have been tired but he wasn’t. This ought to have been impossible, but the eagle showed no signs of stopping and the excess magic that leapt and danced and sparked from Yuuri’s fingers had not yet diminished, hungry for an object, unpredictable as wildfire, too strong to simply bring into submission …

This is how you and Seung-gil came to us, out in the desert.

“Mm.” A half-confirmation. “That was harder.”

“Why?”

For a moment there was no answer, and then Yuuri reached for Viktor’s hands, resting firmly against his abdomen. Because it’s not good for him, he thought back finally, and with care that only reflected their circumstances: the height of the bird, the race towards Hasetsu, he lifted one hand to his lips, kissed the base of Viktor’s palm. Life magic was as dangerous for Seung-gil as water magic was for Yuuri, as fire and heat was for Viktor, and he couldn’t manage the perfect twining of it that their bond shimmered with, too disparate and too distant, like oil and water. “Because he isn’t you.”

It was touching in a remarkably serious way, but Viktor felt too good to be solemn. Are you saying you’re motivated? He teased, nuzzling into Yuuri’s neck, and stilled entirely when the halfling’s thoughts took a decidedly — and purposefully — wanton turn. There was deep intimacy there in every abstract detail, a perfect retelling of the flutter of lashes, the scrape of fingernails, the hitching of a breath. He couldn’t see, not fully, Yuuri’s smile, but he felt the sparkling of it across their bond, too deliberate and too promising to ignore.

Viktor shivered, and leaned further into Yuuri’s back, let his hands wander. “You’re torturing me.”

It is entirely beyond me to bring you harm, I assure you.

“Wait.” On the horizon was Hasetsuil, off in the distance, nothing more than a shadowy outline in the dark. It remained distant, little more than looming probability, but Viktor could see it nonetheless, recognized the shape of the mound overlooking the sea, and that meant they were close, meant —

Meant that somewhere on the coast was the exact place they’d first met. He pressed his lips to the bare skin of Yuuri’s neck, the kiss wet and lingering, and this time it was Yuuri who wavered, whose resolve to fly onwards flickered like the tip of a candle. “Let’s walk the rest of the way.”

“Why?”

Viktor didn’t bother to censor his thoughts, grinning broadly into the wind as Yuuri directed the eagle to dive in response, all breathless, brilliant laughter.

There were few things — no, there was nothing — more beautiful than Yuuri was, looking up at him from the sand, surrounded by the creep of seafoam and tides, lips swollen from kisses, one foot tracing the back of Viktor’s calf. I met you here, remember?

Yuuri who had the strength now, reborn awash in power like this, to roll them over, whose body was firm muscle under Viktor’s hands, no longer sharp edges of skeletal bone, ribs he could count or hipbones that bruised. Yuuri who was, nonetheless, utterly distracted watching the tangle of Viktor’s platinum hair in the sand swirling among the steady lap of waves creeping further and further up on the shore. You’re going to make us late, he ground out, but the words were at odds with the way he leaned down and bit, without any delicacy whatsoever, into the hollow of Viktor’s throat.

Late for — “Yuuri — !!” Viktor didn’t need to see himself to imagine the half-circle of a fresh bruise.

Late for the parade we’re going to lead at Imbolc, Yuuri thought, soothing out the sear of his bite with a softer, gentler kiss, letting his hands wander to Viktor’s belt, to loosen it and dip below the waistline of the prince’s trousers with deft, dangerous fingers that still sparked with magic and left imprints of heat on all of Viktor’s skin. There was something else there, too, something about the mark he’d just left, was still kissing, even now. It felt heady and possessive, whatever it was, this inkling of: the whole world is going to know that you’re mine.

Gods, Viktor was lost in it.

“Better hurry, then —“ Viktor muttered in response, little more than a hiss through clenched teeth, arching upwards to rid himself of his tunic. Cold water lapped at his ankles, but Yuuri was so warm and he’d missed this, missed them. Yuuri said nothing else; his lips had found Viktor’s chest and were trailing steadily downwards, though he gave off the impression of listening before he looked up with smoldering, molten eyes.

Oh, he purred, and Viktor knew this time that it was his heartbeat being inspected, his racing pulse:

Yuuri smirked at him, used his own words against him: “… This is going to be entirely too much fun.”

They stumbled into Hasetsuil just an hour before dawn, laughing and shaking and such a mess, and Viktor recognized the huddle of the Katsuki family, everyone but Mari politely ignoring the sandy tangles of his own hair or the pink, tell-tale blemishes across Yuuri’s throat.

Yuuri who even now still blushed subtly, even if he’d started it; who licked his lips nervously and then chuckled, breathless, at Viktor’s answering stare.

“Glad to see the little shit got you here safely,” Mari remarked tonelessly, though there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes and the tanuki familiar dart in clever loops between their feet, ecstatic at this morning reunion. Then they were surrounded, as he once had been, by soft arms and Katsuki-clan warmth, swept into a family hug that was strength and kindness in equal measures. The family bond between them all had settled once more as though it had never been broken, and she elbowed Viktor pointedly:

I owe dad now, though. We had a bet.

What bet? Yuuri wanted to know, and he turned red as an apple when his mother answered:

Your sister was convinced you wouldn’t be here until after the morning, she remarked, demurely, and pat Viktor on the shoulder while Yuuri sputtered, leaning up to kiss the High Prince’s cheek. Your father and I took a higher view on the topic of restraint.

Tch, look at them. Mari scoffed. Restraint?

I knew you wouldn’t want to miss the dancing, echoed Toshiya mildly, still smiling his warm smile, though his eyes danced the way Yuuri’s did, and the family resemblance between father and son was suddenly perfectly clear. For too long he’d thought Yuuri took after Hiroko, kind and sweet; now he saw the other side too, the promise of mayhem that might gleam the way Yuuri’s eyes did, if properly encouraged.

Viktor’s laugh chased away any notion of shame; he threw his arms around Hiroko, this round little woman who’d given him the love of his life. The prince picked her up and swept her around in a circle. I missed you, mama, he thought, fondly, and grinned unrepentantly in Mari’s direction: you too, sister-mine.

“Want me to wake up Yurio?”

“Yurio?”

“Your brother. He’s here with that banshee you’re friends with —“

For a moment, Viktor considered this new nickname Mari had tossed upon his baby brother and decided it was satisfactory. He entertained the idea of waking him up, too, in his present state; took plenty of amusement in imagining his younger brother’s screams of gross as though he didn’t tend to be swept into Otabek’s orbit, as though there had been no quiet kisses or soft touches or stoic companionship, of the sort that Viktor personally didn’t understand but refused to pretend had escaped his notice.

They were going to take longer, him and Beka. Years. Viktor didn’t have that kind of patience.

“Send him off to Minako to get cleaned up,” Yuuri remarked, looking warmly on this perfect circle they made together: his family, his husband, chattering idly about the other prince of the household, the furious, blinding light of his brother-in-law. Brother, he corrected himself. Viktor had used all the words he might’ve used for his own parents, without qualification, as naturally and easily as breathing. Yuuri couldn’t imagine it quite yet for Lilia, wasn’t sure there’d ever be a day when he’d think it of Yakov, but there it was nonetheless: that irrevocable knitting they’d made, making vows back in the middle of harvest season. Looking down at his own still-glowing hands, he wondered: perhaps it was possible to come apart at the seams from so much love.

Or perhaps not. It kept growing bigger and still he held on to absorb it, perhaps not as radiant as Viktor was when he got the right sort of light in his eyes, but warm and so, so content.

“It was his idea to get into such a mess.”

“You started it,” Viktor reminded him pointedly, and Yuuri glanced back at him again, all smoldering eyes, as he looked from head-to-toe, appraised. He threw his head back and laughed when a blush crept over the high, regal lines of Viktor’s nose, relished this little power: the only person on all the earth who could fluster the prince of fortune himself.

I intend to finish it, too.

“Gods,” breathed Viktor, cerulean eyes wide in an unabashed stare. “Please do.”

“I am getting you out of here,” Mari decided promptly. “You’re not having sex on our doorstep.”

“Spoilsport,” Yuuri muttered through a sharp, answering grin, and it fell to his sister to lead his sputtering husband away, because dawn was inching closer by the minute.

- - -

Minako took one look at Viktor, standing in her doorway, and burst out laughing. “Gods, look at you,” she exclaimed, with an all-knowing smirk that wasn’t as piercing as Lilia’s, but sometimes seemed to be made of the same stuff. Here stood Yakov’s boy, still drying off, clothes marred by sand, throat radiating a tell-tale crescent bruise.

All that power and here he stood, brought to his knees lovesick by a Hasetsuil halfling. “… the universe has grown just, Prince Viktor.”

Viktor was too happy to argue, merely gestured up at the tangles in his hair, then down at the disarray of his clothes. “My husband,” he said, grinning around the words, “insists that you can fix this.”

“It’s a tall order,” speculated Minako, tapping her chin. “I guess someone has to try.” In the end, she attacked his hair with brutal precision, sent someone from her household to fetch robes and flowers.

“Ouch.”

“That’s what you get,” she sniffed, finally satisfied with the last tangle, “for not inviting me to my own pupil’s wedding.” The words were barbed but held no real sting; underneath them he detected understanding, respect even. Minako had been the first to recognize Yuuri’s familiar; she knew what they’d just been through. The elder mage of Hasetsuil pat Viktor’s head a moment afterwards, satisfied with her work. “Leave it down,” she told him, forgoing the customary braids. “He’ll like that.”

After that was the matter of getting dressed. I apologize for the time I let Christophe do this to you, Viktor thought, and detected the shimmer of Yuuri’s laughter.

What’s she doing?

We just finished combing my hair. A flutter of jealousy danced across their bond, pronounced, melodramatic. Viktor chuckled in spite of himself, until:

I just saw your idiot husband, Yura thought pointedly, his consciousness still a little drowsy, tangled in sleep. What in the name of the ancients did you do to him?

Every possible answer was lewd; Viktor redirected his attention back to the robes Lilia was holding up to him to check sizes, and decided that in this case, it was better not to reply. Eventually she snapped her fingers, evidently inspired, and helped him into robes that were the color of olives, handpainted along one side of the silk with a sprig of white camellias, one of a few winter flowers. “The Katsuki house uses this shade of green,” Minako informed him, when he turned questioning eyes her direction. “You married in,” she said, though he hadn’t needed the reminder, and reached for several nearby sprigs of helleborus in mixed variety: white and soft rose and mauve. “Might as well look the part.”

- - -

Imbolc, 1018 II Age

Nothing could have prepared him for Yuuri, though, to come to Minako’s house leading his whole family, Yuri, and Otabek, wearing a similar robe of his own in an unexpectedly bright shade of blue, a compliment to summer oceans or Viktor’s eyes, except for the burst of fireworks that had been painted by some artist hand in gold across his shoulders. Atop his dark curls rested a flower crown of witch hazel, the delicate, strange flowers arrayed around his head like a string of sunbeams, each one its own delicate, radiant burst.

So appropriate for sunrise.

It made the golden embers still stirring in his eyes that much more tempting, right up until Yuri’s fist hit him soundly between the shoulders. “Quit staring, Vitya, we’ve got things to —“ the sentence came to a sudden stop, and Viktor simply raised an eyebrow at his younger brother’s twitchy stare, tilted his chin upwards a little bit more as though there wasn’t a splotch of angry purple, right there in the hollow of his throat. “— what is that —”

The corner of Yuuri’s mouth twitched, privately amused, and he projected a certain sort of pride in his work into their bond. Viktor barely resisted the urge to kiss him, right at the edge of that playful half-smile. Then the halfling was pushing a basket of flower petals into his hands, the very picture of innocence. “You heard your brother. We’ve got things to do.”

As they walked out together he could’ve sworn he heard Yuri lean over and ask Mari, suspiciously: is he always like this?

Mari was decidedly unhelpful: I think this year he’s worse.

Yuuri took up Viktor’s free hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed the first knuckle. “I like the flowers,” he murmured, and let go to sweep his fingers through the cascading waterfall of Viktor’s platinum hair, preoccupied by its shine and its softness, careful to avoid the petals Minako had threaded through. “They look nice.”

- - -

Viktor had never danced so much, so fully; had not laughed so loudly or so often. For a moment and a moment only a hundred different stares, all belonging to Hasetsuil natives who’d been unaware of their courtship, lingered on Yuuri and Viktor as they led the parade of flowers with Minako. Then he’d promptly forgotten them all because music was playing, and Yuuri’s magic was curling around him again, tendrils of gold that were impossibly rejuvenating, made Viktor immediately forget that he hadn’t slept in days and that by all rights he should’ve been utterly exhausted, spent.

There was a sweet flower cordial that the Hasetsuil folk made and drank, and it was addictive, left him intoxicated (embarrassing, Yura shouted, but he nonetheless let Viktor sweep him into a chain of revelers dancing around the springtime bonfires, and his brother’s smile was brighter when he turned on the next lap and did the same to Otabek, whose stoic face registered both surprise and pleasure before he could manage to shut either down). He and Yuuri were not particularly caught up in each other as the festival ran onwards: this love kept bursting outwards, gathered others up into its radiance. Viktor danced with Mari more times than he could count, and led the Katsukis sunwise around Hasetsuil’s sacred wells; Yuuri challenged his brother-in-law to a repeat of the dance-off, beat him soundly while Viktor watched, approving, from a distance; then helped the blonde prince back for another round of drinks.

His husband once attempted to introduce him properly to Minako, evidently trying to make up for lost time, but by late afternoon was too drunk and giddy to manage it properly: “’s my Vitya,” Yuuri had purred, which was adorable, but also left Viktor glancing off to the West, trying to approximate the hours remaining until sundown. “Husband. Love him,” Yuuri stressed to Minako, who merely refilled all of their drinks and raised a glass.

Viktor had the sense that Minako did not need many reasons to propose a toast. “Cheers,” she said, and then Yuuri was holding up his glass for Viktor to drink from, helping himself to Viktor’s instead.

“Dance with me,” he insisted again, with hands that had been dangerously prone to wandering before and were only getting worse now. Viktor was in no mood to encourage propriety. Their next kiss was deep and unhurried, sweet as spring, thorough.

Get a room, Yura practically shouted, across the bond that now included Yuuri, for the benefit of them both. Yuuri’s lips twitched against Viktor’s mouth, and he broke away long enough to glance around for the scowling blonde, offered a perfectly polite smile:

Don’t you have a ban side to see about somewhere?

Viktor had never seen his brother turn so red.

His feet should have ached. His body should have been begging for rest. Still, Yuuri swept him back into the crowds once again, circled the fires, was ecstatic, exuberant energy and life, more life, the intoxication of it, an addiction in purest form. The halfling waited until after the sun had set over the plains to pull them apart from the crowd, people who’d be finishing up the evening’s feast, who would likely stay until the fires had burned out and the stars twinkled clearly overhead.

For the first time all day the phoenix flew ahead of them, twirling in scarlet spirals that trailed sparks and flame, and Vitya released the stag to give chase, glancing over as Yuuri nudged him in the ribs with a challenge in his sparkling eyes before taking off on foot:

Come and get me, Vitya.

Is that how it’s going to be?

Are you complaining, husband?

“No,” he promised, and darted down the streets, carried by life and luck back to the Katsuki house, where love was waiting.

Even Viktor wasn’t sure who caught who first, perhaps Yuuri, pulling him into a bedroom, perhaps himself, pinning the fire magus to the wall with a fierce kiss. “You,” he growled, fingers scrambling to untie robes, to skim the strong plane of Yuuri’s chest, “have been torturing me all day.” Days, he corrected, thinking of their improbable flight from Mosciren, of Yuuri’s flawless memory and his tendency to flood their bond with memories of moments that ranged from startlingly intimate to soft and companionable, like the way they’d once read together in the Ast Petyriel library, or what it had been like, that first night at solstice …

“I would never,” Yuuri protested, mumbling the words against Viktor’s neck, and at the wave of Viktor’s incredulity he laughed softly, skimming fond fingers over the silk camellias painted onto Viktor’s jacket. “Maybe a little,” he added, eyes dancing with mirth, pushing Viktor back enough to navigate them back into bed, to straddle Viktor’s hips as he shrugged out of blue silk. “I couldn’t resist. Do you know what it’s like, to be wanted so badly?”

“Yes,” Viktor replied pointedly, with an answering smirk and a purposeful underscoring of the emotions that darted back and forth across their bond. “I have a very good idea.”

Yuuri visibly shivered, pupils dilated in the dim of twilight, and he swept his hands one more time over Viktor’s olive robe. Minako did well, he thought, looking down at Viktor with such fondness that his breath caught. She made you look like one of us.

I am one of you, Viktor reminded him, sitting up to claim another kiss. They’d made vows.You did that.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting for so long,” Yuuri murmured against his mouth, with breathtaking sincerity; the sort that could’ve broken hearts, except that Viktor’s heart was safe from such things, ensconced with the person he’d given it to. It was an apology for more than just these past days of mischief, he knew; for the cold of winter, for a Yule spent alone.

“I read your letters.”

Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat, and his hands froze against Viktor’s ribs. “Did you like them?”

“Mm, better.” Viktor’s answering smile was soft in the dark. “I loved them.”

I love you, Yuuri thought in response, simple instinct, and then he’d summoned back that fey look Viktor was beginning to get addicted to, and the subtlety of his smirk. “Still. It’s been a long time.” He was so sensual like this, so assured, awash in magic and in desire, cherished.

He spoke with such certainty, too. “I’d like to make it up to you now.” The innocent smile was decidedly out of place; Viktor recognized the wanton bend of his thoughts, followed them to their logical conclusion as Yuuri helped him out of the robe, finally, and swept fingers under his chin. “Is that alright?”

Viktor let his answer be his kiss.

Perfectly.