Title: From Eros to Agape
Author: Lainx (CuchyLainx on AO3)
Rating: K+
Warnings: No warning
Summary: On a lazy summer night in Hasetsu, a
story is told and future unfolds.
Link to A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536993
They sat in the dining-area of the inn,
lingering after a well-deserved dinner and dessert. This was a regular
occurrence for them in summer, when everyone was finally able to catch a break
from their everyday, hectic lives.
“Tell me, have I ever told you the story of the
Seducer and his fair, fair Lady?”
There were a few chuckles and a prominent sigh.
“Yes, Papa, you did. You’ve told us a thousand
times already!” a rather grumpy and childish voice complained.
“Shh Natyusha shh! I wanted to hear it again!”
“Now now.”
Another voice came, definitely more adult and more
placating than the last.
“I’m pretty sure Papa can compromise for you
two” it declared.
“Mmh, maybe so, Otou-san.”
“When will you two ever stop flirting. That’s
becoming utterly ridiculous, I mean, how ol-“
“Hopefully never~!” – “Yura-oji, stop, they’re
in love!”
Some grumbles originated from said-Yura-oji, but
then silence settled again.
“Otou-san is right. I do have another story I’m pretty sure you’ve never heard before, my
loves.”
“But Papa, I wanted to hear the Seducer’s story…”
“Well, Masha, have you ever wondered what
happened to the Seducer after the end of his story?”
“Yes, of course! He and the Fair Lady got
M-A-R-R-I-E-D!”
“Oh? What makes you think so?”
“Papa,” answered the first voice. “You always
end that story with the gift of that “glorious and victorious gold relic”. That
is not hard to guess.”
“…”
“You grow up too quickly.”
“And thus Victor did realize he was getting,
indeed, so ooool-“
“Stop teasing, Yura…”
The deep voice was altogether commanding and
amused.
“Beka-oji is right. Let Papa go on.”
“Thank you so much for your support, solnyshko”
came the dramatic answer.
There is a brief moment when the two men just
smile at each other, before the oldest turns back to his audience. Five
beautiful people are – with more or less success – settling in to listen to him
speak. The remnants of their dinner are still sitting on the low table near
them – it would be cleared up later. All of the adults, minus one, whose arms
and lap are already heavily occupied, are now nursing hot cups of tea.
Delicious smells drift from the kitchens, where late meals are getting fixed
for unexpected guests. The noises from the TV are lulled, almost non-existent,
and the nightly song of the crickets is reaching them through the opened
double-doors at the other end of the room.
Victor knows, objectively, that he must have
had better, more exciting nights in his life. But his chest, gorged with
affection, refuses to let him think otherwise; he has never felt happier than
in this quiet moment with his family. He knows that he has told himself this
exact same thing the day prior, and that he will probably be thinking this
tomorrow as well.
As an arm slides behind his back, and he leans
into the warmth besides him, he can’t help but smile as he opens his mouth.
Tonight, he wants to tell a story on which he had been prettily busily working
on.
“Once the
Seducer had secured the eternal love of his Fair Lady through the gold gift,
people started to whisper. Of course, they said, the Seducer would soon drop
his title, right? After all, what need had the world of a Seducer who could not
even fill his role, for he was so obviously bound to another?
“But oh, how wrong was
the world. The Seducer had fallen prey to his own traps, but his Lady would not
settle for him to lose his colours. If anything, she felt even more besotted-“
“What’s besotted Papa?”
“It means “very in love”, dear”, her Otou-san
answered hastily.
“Right so. So, the Lady felt even more “very in
love” with her Seducer, seeing how beautiful, how breath-taking, how incredible–“
“Come on, come on, we get it old man!”
“Be nice, Yura.”
“- how absolutely marvellous his – I mean, her –
Seducer was being in his dances. She felt inspired by him. She wanted to meet
him where he was.”
“That’s so romantic, Papa.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What did the Lady do then, Papa?”
“Well, you see, the Lady had also been a great
dancer, once upon a time. And, as much as she fell for every show of seduction
from her fiancé, she knew that she, too, could seduce him.”
“So…she started dancing with a bunch of women
too?”
The sceptic question from his oldest made
Victor smile.
“Something like that” he said while grinning
even more largely. “She tried to capture the hearts of her audience, and, of
course, most importantly, the one of her Seducer –“
“- aaand, she failed.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call a bronze at Worlds “failing”,
Yura, but whatever”, he icily answered his protégé who retaliated by sticking
his tongue out.
“He’s messing with you, Vitya, he doesn’t mean
it” Yuuri appeased him with a playful lilt to his voice.
“Yeah, don’t listen to Yura-oji, Papa, continue
your story!”
“At least some
people in this house do love me!” he fake-cried, before resuming his narrative.
“The
Seducer and the Lady had a lot of fun trying to keep seducing each other,
dances after dances. However, since they constantly had to dance their way
through the world, this life they had chosen for themselves was very tiring.
After a year, they were both so tired that they were worried the flame they had
carried between them all this time would fade away…”
“Oh, no, no, that’s terrible!”
“Beka-oji is right, Papa! How could they let
that happen?!”
“Well,” Victor chuckled, “of course they were
not going to let that happen. Listen.”
“For the
longest time, the Lady had dreamt of meeting the perfect person for her. Years
had passed and her dreams of love and family were, well, still nothing but
dreams. But when her Seducer had burst into her life, he had lit a new hope in
her. That’s why she decided, after this tiring year, to move from her palace to
his own, and she resolved to teach others to dance in her place.”
“What did the Seducer do then, Papa?”
“Hmm… It was a bit harder for the Seducer for,
you see, he has been thoroughly (that means “very”, dear) seduced by his Lady as
well.
“He was
very sad to see her settle for not dancing anymore, but as long as his Lady
promised to dance with him every now and then, and most of all every summer, he
would keep smiling, too. They would even invite their friends to dance at their
palace!
“And so they kept
their waltz of seduction for several more years, until, one day…”
“What happened? Did one of them die?” a rather
upset-looking little girl interrupted him.
“What? No, no god of course not, Masha! It’s a happy story, no one dies there, what the…”
“I think I can finish Papa’s story” Yuuri
intervened quickly.
“One day,
the Lady admitted she felt rather lonely in that big palace of hers. Her love
had been employed for seduction for so long! And now it yearned to be used for
something else. So she talked it out endlessly with her Seducer until, finally,
three little dancers came to live with them in their home. One of them would,
surprisingly, love dancing in the same way her parents did – the other two had
their unique, beautiful and promising way of doing it. The heart of the Seducer
had never felt so full, and so he, too, decided to stop dancing, except for
friends, arts, and his beautiful children.”
“Did he ever regret it?”
Yuuri shuffled closer to his husband, his eyes
fixed on the face of their oldest child. Of course, she was starting to realise
just how big, exactly, her parents had been in the athletic world. In a few
years, it would hit even harder for Masha, who was the one involved in skating.
“Never,” he asserted strongly. “Even if he had
taken a long time to understand it, this life filled with love and family is what
made sense to him.”
Satisfied, the children were soon coaxed into
going to bed. Yuuri did not know who moaned the more about it between Victor or
his actual children (and he would have to have a word with him about it,
again), but in the end he had Natyusha and Masha’s hands in his and were
leading them to the two beds set in his old room, while Otabek followed them,
carrying an already snoozing Hideyoshi to Mari’s room.
He had no idea why Hide-chan had taken such a
liking to the small and serious man, but he wasn’t complaining. Despite his
name, the kid could be a handful, especially since he was in this glorious
phase of childhood in which every action prompted a heart-wrenching “no!” from
him.
Well, not that either Victor or he would be
moved. They had already survived two of them, after all.
“You always take Victor’s stories so seriously,
Beka,” Yuuri tease while the made their way downstairs, where Victor and Yuuri
would surely been helping Mari and her friend clearing the aftermath of a busy
night at the onsen.
“He has a way of telling them. Also, Hide-chan
always gets so into it…”
“If I remember well, you already did that
before he came in, though.”
“Then, Masha.”
Otabek blushed a little, before closing his
mouth for good. Yuuri smiled privately but did not comment on it. After all, if
he had any say in the matter himself, these stories were pretty good.
They entered the dining-room, where Yuri was,
predictably enough, sprawled out after clearing the table, halfway to sleep
already. Yuuri could hear Victor’s voice in the kitchens, probably chatting
with his sister-in-law.
“Another kid to put to bed?”
“Fuck you, Beka. The old ass did not drill you almost to the bone for hours today.
So much for ‘come to vacations in Hasetsu it’ll be fun and the kids miss you.’ ”
Yuri grumbled in return.
“You know how he gets” Yuuri amended. “Summer
does not mean slacking up, especially not with him.”
“Easy for you to say, everyone knows you just
had to flaunt your ass to get him to bed if you wanted to catch a break-“
Yuuri should be past embarrassment at this
point. So what if it was a well-known fact in the skating world that he liked
to bed his husband to escape anxiety and utter tiredness?
As Victor’s arm came creeping around him and
Yuri’s poor face slowly turned to a rosy-colour, he realised he probably should
not have said that aloud. Even more so when Otabek and Mari, who was standing
in the kitchen entryway, simultaneously commented “TMI!” – “But you were always
stressed out.”.
Victor’s boisterous laugh warmed his neck, and
suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore.
“Let’s get to bed, you” his husband suggested,
well-aware of the lack of Yuuri’s filter when tired.
After bidding everyone goodnight, and checking –
“One last time, I promise” – on their slumbering children – “Hide-chan sleeps just
like you, have you ever noticed that?” –, they made their way to their room,
where they got ready for the night.
He knew Victor would most likely fall asleep
almost immediately, and they both knew Yuuri would probably keep browsing the
Internet for at least an hour instead of sleeping, but that did not deter them
from crawling under their thin covers and cuddling, as much as the summer
night-air allowed them.
“So…no regret, right?” Victor mumbled against
Yuuri’s naked chest.
“No regret,” he confirmed.
And as Victor easily fell into sleep, Yuuri
slowly closed his eyes and kissed his husband’s thinning hair.
“How could I ever regret this life with you,
silly,” he fondly murmured in Japanese.
He smiled widely while holding him even
tighter.
“Silly Victor.”
Plume de Lynx 