lavenderprose:

(Who am I kidding. They’re all his favorites. These are just some of them.)

• Viktor is eighteen. It’s the shoot for SKATE that he did after the Turin Olympics. He’s standing in front of the Hermitage, wearing an open parka and a sweater underneath, tight jeans and high boots. The sweater’s folk art-style pattern would be ugly on anybody who isn’t Viktor Nikiforov. His hair is still long, still flies out for what seemed like a mile behind him. His medal is around his neck. He stares down the camera, feet planted, face determined–a man who has just reached the top of the world and plans to stay there. It was one of the first pieces of Viktor merchandise that Yuuri purposefully bought for himself–Viktor’s face looked out at him from the magazine rack in a Kiosk in a train station in Fukuoka and he couldn’t help himself. For a long time, Yuuri thought that the Hermitage background must have been photoshopped in. He thought this, in fact, until Viktor found the magazine in one of the Boxes Under Yuuri’s Bed and informed him that he vividly remembers that photoshoot because it was done at three in the morning during one of the coldest nights on Saint Petersburg record. 
• “The only thing they photoshopped is my lips, because I’m pretty sure they’d already turned blue.”
• When Yuuri is thirteen and hasn’t yet realized that the term “I want to be above Viktor Nikiforov” can have two meanings and he means it both ways, his favorite Viktor photoshoot is attached to an interview that he did about volunteering at a poodle rescue. The image is of Viktor with his hair all frantically knotted up on top of his head, kept in place by five different rubber bands and a lot of hope. His shirt is lime green and bears the logo and name of the rescue organization in question, which Yuuri has been reliably informed is some Russian pun that is the equivalent of something like “PAWSOME POODLE RUFFSCUE.” He is surrounded by a litter of puppies which the description below the photo informs readers are all named after Russian pop stars. He’s busy making faces at the two closest to him and doesn’t notice two others who are paws-and-head first inside a massive bag of puppy chow behind his back. Yuuri still makes involuntary cooing noises whenever he’s shown this image without prior warning.
• The Versace photoshoot Viktor did for the Swimwear/Summer 2013 collection. It’s on a beach. His hair is salted and his eyes are the same exact color as the ocean behind him. He’s on his knees. One hand is planted firm in the sand, behind him gripping a half-handful. The other is on the waistband of his jeans, pulling them down to reveal his hip and a Versace swimsuit. His iliac furrow is stark; the hair below his bellybutton is neat and dark blond. His eyes are half-lidded. He’s shirtless. His nipples are hard. Someone has artfully misted him with water to make it look like sweat, or maybe sea-breeze. Even Viktor telling him that this particular photo was actually done in a studio, on a pile of sand with a beach umbrella stuck in it (And also that the reason his eyes are half-shut is because the fans kept blowing sand into them) cannot ruin this image for Yuuri.
• (”Oh, the pages of this magazine are stuck together!” says Viktor, when he finds it in a Box Under Yuuri’s Bed.
  “AHHHHH,” Yuuri responds. “AHHHH!”)
• A beautiful and melancholy Annie Leibovitz shoot. It’s natural light done in a wash of blue, and Viktor is looking towards the camera with his chin resting on his hand. He’s laying on a bed, or maybe a couch, and it’s foreshortened to where his face is in focus but the rest of his body is just a hazy line until one sees the blurry form of his bare feet just barely in frame. The sweater he’s wearing is large and looks warm. His hair isn’t as styled as it usually is, and one can actually see the darker blonde low-lights that usually get lost in that blinding sea of platinum. His gaze is pensive, maybe even a little lost. The camera is so close to his face that one could count every eyelash if they had the inclination. It’s beautiful, and made something ache inside Yuuri that he’d never actually realized was part of him.
• (”We weren’t even supposed to shoot that day,” Viktor told him once. “She met me in my hotel room a few weeks before it was supposed to happen and she just happened to have her camera with her. We were discussing…I can’t even remember now. Schedules, maybe. I had a headache and I asked her if she minded if I laid down. She said no, she didn’t mind. She asked me if I minded if she took a few pictures and I said I didn’t. She sent me that picture a few days later and I knew it had to be that one.”
  “You look so sad,” Yuuri whispered, their faces inches apart. So close that Yuuri could count every eyelash if he wanted to. 
  “I think I was,” said Viktor, and Yuuri kissed him.)
• A photo that is actually part of a larger spread done in the follow-up to the Sochi Olympics, focusing on Viktor and his prospects with the home-team advantage. He’s crouching down on the ice, forearms stretched out over his knees to keep himself balanced on his blades. He’s looking at something off-camera, attentive, eyes striking. His shirt has a cropped hem, rising up over the jacket he has wrapped around his waist and playing at the line of his spine. His gloves are fingerless. His hair is a little long and it’s pinned back choppily at the crown of his head. The line of his collarbone is exquisite. 
• A unedited photo that wasn’t supposed to make it out into the world but did, accidentally, because some intern momentarily posted it as the header image for an online interview. It was saved to many, many hard drives in the ten minutes it was up. Yuuri, who has an alert for Viktor’s name set on his phone, dropped it into a snowbank when he opened it. The image isn’t really anything remarkable–a shot of Viktor taken from above, laying with his legs crossed a the ankles and smiling. He’s done many shots like it, some even in that exact same pose, and there would be nothing special about it (Except that it’s Viktor Nikiforov–they’re all special to Yuuri) if it weren’t for the fact that wardrobe obviously put Viktor in a pair of jeans that were either one size too small or had been poorly tailored. 
• Or, Yuuri later finds out, were suffering from the fact that Viktor forgot to wear underwear that day. 
  “Yuuri actually got down on his knees and thanked God,” Phichit tells Viktor, very drunk at a party years later.
  “I DROPPED MY PHONE, PHICHIT. I WAS LOOKING FOR MY PHONE.”
  “HIS DICK,” Phichit continues, in a bad imitation of Yuuri’s voice and accent. “HIS DICK, PHICHIT. HE’S CIRCUMCISED.”
  
• Viktor, delighted: I always knew something good would come of Dickgate 2014!