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ebenroot · 5 years

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but i can make you move, babe (pt. 4)

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The key to ‘Asshole City’ is apparently one (1) text sent to a Chad Worthington of the USV Hockey Team. Yuuri doesn’t even remember who Chad Worthington is. He has the name listed in his contacts as ‘Chad - History’, and even that isn’t enough to jog Yuuri’s memory of the guy that he has to ‘accompany’ into Cold Stone with five more of his bros.

“Yuuri! Oh man, I thought for a second you might have lost my number or something! It’s great to see you!” Chad says excitedly, big green eyes sparkling like a puppy coming to its master. He opens up his arms for a hug as Yuuri goes in for a handshake.

Across the parking lot and watching from the window of Hasetsu Creamery, Minako facepalms.

An awkward fumbling of limbs and hands later, the seven of them make their way inside. The two tables inside are vacant, thank God, but there are two customers ahead of them in line. Chad’s Bros immediately monopolize all available seating, manspreading and continuing their rousing discussion on what their goalie did last weekend with a tub of butter and three pool noodles.

Yuuri knows his part in this ruse as Chad gets his Bros order. He needs to be difficult. He needs to be catty. He needs to be dissatisfied with his ice cream and nitpick anything and everything. Which will then - according to Minako - sway Chad into demanding that Yuuri be satisfied and stir shit up in the process.

Yuuri is one-thousand percent certain this is the worst plan Minako has come up with.

The two customers ahead of them pay for their ice cream and leave, and it isn’t Victor that’s behind the counter this time around, but some other guy with blue eyes and a big smile that just seems to get bigger once Chad and Yuuri step up to place their order.

“Chad? Bro, what’s up?!” the guy greets with no indoor voice whatsoever. Uh oh.

Chad beams, reach a hand out over the top of the display case to fist bump the guy. “JJ! Bro! You work here?”

The guy - JJ, an apparent friend and fuck, this plan gotten significantly harder - gives a wry grin and shrugs.

“Something to get some money on the side, you know? I gotta keep my lady happy. Wanna buy her some nice things and need some extra cash outside of my music career,” JJ explains. “What can I get for you, Bro?”

Chad turns to Yuuri, his smile bashful and a little bit lopsided. “What do you want? My treat.”

Yuuri blinks. “…Uh…uhhhh…you go first.”

He steps back and away, making it look like he’s surveying the menu when in actuality, he’s wondering how fast can he just run out the door, out the parking lot, and down the street without screaming. Chad doesn’t seem to notice though. He nods and starts up conversation with JJ, the interior of the Cold Stone immediately filling with the friendly chimes of ‘bro’ and ‘dude’ and ‘man’.

The probability of fucking out of there is at least eighty-two percent. Chad isn’t paying attention, the Bros are wrapped up in their own little conversation, and there isn’t anyone blocking the door that Yuuri is inconspicuously inching towards. Sure, Minako will get angry at him, and he’ll probably invite a flurry of text messages from Chad asking where did he go and if he’s alright and ‘do you want to go out again just the two of us my treat pretty please??’. But the door is right there. And Yuuri is so close.

He clears his throat. “I’m going to just step out a bit,” Yuuri says, but he speaks his words very very quietly, so only his conscience can acknowledge that he isn’t being a total asshole by giving Chad and the Bros a heads up before ditching. He’s just taking a breather! Outside! And never coming back! It’s okay!!

Yuuri turns fast on his heel and starts for the door with the speed of a baby goat about to headbutt itself out of prison. Which is to say, he starts for the door with his head down and feet moving too quickly for him to realize that the front door has opened with the sound of the door chime, and someone is in the doorway for him to ram head-on in the chest.

“Woah woah woah,” Victor’s voice floats into Yuuri’s ear, and that is the last thing Yuuri wants to hear right now (and maybe, actually, kinda the only thing he wants to hear right now). Hands go onto Yuuri’s waist to steady him, stopping him from trying to power through Victor’s body in a desperate attempt to flee. Victor’s hands sit big on Yuuri’s waist. His chest is big too, and there’s a smell in his uniform that doesn’t smell like ice cream, but of cinnamon and allspice and the cinders of a fire slowly smoldering, all woody and warm and making Yuuri’s head spin because whywhywhy are you hot and smell so nice???

“Uh, you know each other?” Yuuri manages to hear JJ ask. And in his daze, he realizes that neither Victor or him have moved from standing in the doorway. Victor still has the door open behind him, but now his hands have moved from Yuuri’s waist to have his arms wrapped around Yuuri, holding him close. To Yuuri’s mild realization - and subsequent horror (and also??? delight????) - he too has his arms wrapped around Victor’s waist, and his face is smashed right between Victor’s pecs, inhaling his scent like an absolute creep.

Victor laughs, head cocked to the side. “Uh, sorta?”

Yuuri reels his head back as well as his hands, stumbling backwards only to run right into Chad. Strong hands move to hold his waist and steady him, Chad’s chest moving to press against Yuuri’s back.

“You okay?” he asks, concern dripping off his tongue as he blinks those sad puppy eyes at Yuuri. Yuuri turns to Victor, then Chad, then JJ and the bros. He lets another ‘uhhhh’ fall from his lips and wriggles out of Chad’s touch, vaguely gesturing towards the door.

“Just - air. I need air. Five minutes.” He bumps into Victor again, who has yet to remove himself from the doorway and who is giving Yuuri a coy half-smirk that is making him feel things.

“Oh, well, did you want to pick out a flavor or-“

“Just, I’ll just have whatever you’re having, okay?” The night air bites at Yuuri’s cheeks as he stumbles out the door, and he doesn’t hear anything - not the words that are coming from Chad’s mouth nor the incoherent bullshit that’s coming from his own - as he wanders down the sidewalk to plant himself in front of a massage parlor. Across the way, he sees Minako in Hasetsu Creamery’s window, face pressed against the glass, staring in Yuuri’s general direction. He bets if he were closer, he’d see her making a ‘what the fuck are you doing get your ass back in there!’ expression. So, he turns around and pretends that he doesn’t see her at all.

The door to Cold Stone jingles its bell as it opens once more, and it is just Yuuri’s fucking luck that Victor is strolling over towards him, hands in the pockets of his jackets and the night air breezing through his fringe. He’s got his apron tied around his waist, chocolate already smudged and stained against the red fabric. It’s not fair to look so hot with chocolate all over yourself, Yuuri thinks with a frown. He gets chocolate and various other flavors all over him when he’s working and doesn’t look nearly as hot as Victor does, more so looking like a slob that fell into an ice cream vat.

“I just realized that I forgot something in my car,” Victor loudly announces, and Yuuri isn’t sure if Victor is talking to him or is talking to himself very loudly. Either way, the car that Yuuri is standing by unlocks itself, and Victor casually moves past Yuuri to open the passenger door and start digging through his glove compartment for something. Yuuri watches him, not having anything better to do and conveniently forgetting about fleeing the parking lot.

Victor takes a while before he comes out of his car with a small tin clutched in his grasp. He locks his car back and approaches Yuuri, sheepishly grinning as he shows off the metal tin. “Can’t go wrong with fresh minty breath during work,” he says, striking up conversation and doing so with an awkward grin. He offers them forward. “You want some?”

Yuuri thinks aloud, ’not really’, but his hands are already taking the tin, popping it open, and tossing two mints into his mouth, so there’s that.

“So, uh,” Victor rocks from his heels to his toes, “was that your boyfriend in there?”

Yuuri nearly chokes on the mints in his mouth before he pops another one. “Chad? No. No, I don’t even know him. Complete stranger. I don’t have a boyfriend. Totally single, and by single, I mean…without boyfriend,” Yuuri rambles, and he pops another mint.

“Oh, I see.” There’s something that sounds like…relief?? in Victor’s voice. Yuuri doesn’t think too hard on it. He just pops another mint.

Victor wanders in closer, smile soft on his lips. “I guess since you're single, and I’m single, we could maybe, you know, hang out? As a pair or singles?”

Fuck, Yuuri’s heart is beating so loud right now! Also, his mouth is burning! He stuffs his face with five more mints, and also starts nodding his head even though he has literally no idea what Victor is even saying right now. In fact, Yuuri is only able to pick up on maybe only a few words Victor is saying: something about a ‘quaint bistro downtown’, ‘them’, ’Friday night’, and ‘tiramisu’. Yuuri’s sure Victor didn’t say his message in that particular order, and maybe there’s some words that are omitted. Victor’s lips are still moving, but all Yuuri can hear is his own inner monologue of ‘fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck’.

“So, do you want to?” Victor asks, earnestly smiling as a chuckle rises from his throat. Yuuri starts laughing too; half-dissolved mints falling from his mouth as he does so. He doesn’t even know what he’s laughing about. He doesn’t?? he doesn’t even know what they’re talking about??? Should he keep laughing? No, what if he stops and then doesn’t know what to say and just plunge them both into an awkward silence? But has he been laughing for too long?? He’s been laughing for too long, oh god.

Aloud in his head, Yuuri counts to three and stops laughing. To his relief, that doesn’t plunge the two of them into an awkward silence, because that’s the time Chad decides to waltz out of Cold Stone with a cup of ice cream messily dripping over his fingers and down his wrist.

“Hey! Yuuri!” Chad greets, inserting himself not so casually in the space between Victor and Yuuri with a smile on his lips that looks drawn a bit too tight. “Just thought I should check up on you, you know? Make sure you’re okay? Are you feeling alright? Do you want to sit down inside maybe?”

Yuuri starts shoving mints into his mouth again. The burn returns.

“I - you know - uh - I forgot something in my car, in my roommate’s car. My roommate at home. Which is where I’m going now,” Yuuri says, mouthful of peppermint pills.

“H-Home?” Chad has the audacity to look like a kicked puppy, offering the melting ice cream forward. “But, I thought, well I got us an ice cream to share-“

“I’m - I’m lactose intolerant.” It’s a lie. It’s a damn dirty lie. Chad knows it’s a damn dirty lie too, and the quirk of Victor’s eyebrow suggests Victor thinks the same thought. But Yuuri is already backing away from the both of them, moving between the cars backwards. He’s half hoping he doesn’t get struck by a car in his distraction, and also kinda sorta hoping he will so it’ll get himself out of this awkward situation faster.

“I - Brian has some pills maybe?” Chad suggests, still hopeful anyways and still offering the fucking ice cream to Yuuri like its a wedding ring. Please don’t leave me, his eyes say, it’s peanut butter banana with marshmallows.

“I have…things…to do…elsewhere.” Fuck it. Yuuri turns around and runs. If Chad calls out to him, or even if Victor had said something to make Yuuri stop and come back, Yuuri doesn’t hear a single thing. He darts across the parking lot, circles around the back of Hasetsu Creamery to where he’s parked next to the backdoor that Minako comes barging out of.

“No,” Yuuri says before Minako can barrage him with questions and general ‘what are you doing?!?!?!’ rationality, throwing open his car door and sliding into the driver’s seat to start his ignition. “No, no no no no. Never again. Never again.”

#writings #yuri on ice #victuri #i forgot i never posted this

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