Chapter Text
“The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs out flower petals when they suffer from unrequited feelings. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals…”
When Yuuri Katsuki is eight years old, the worlds of dance and ice collide and call to him, ceaselessly echoing through his thoughts every second of the day. All he can imagine in his future is a life of skating. He can see the picture of his life so clearly in his mind- there’s the blue sky above, there’s black-winged gulls cawing in the mornings. There’s katsudon for dinner and there’s ice beneath his feet.
He doesn’t imagine he could need anything more than this, and lets Yuuko patiently guide him in learning to skate, lets Minako-sensei teach him to jump and spin flawlessly. He’s young, he’s clumsy, and no one but his two teachers seem to believe that he’s serious about his ambitions.
Yuuri isn’t going to let that stop him. He’ll become the best figure skater in town, in all of Japan, and then meet the world with a spin and a perfectly executed step sequence.
In this small, beautiful bubble of time and space, Yuuri is allowed to thrive and grow, surpassing everyone’s expectations. His natural talent for skating is bolstered by his desire to simply move on the ice, and his dreams are lovingly nurtured by Yuuko and Minako.
Someday, the bubble will pop. The reality of Yuuri’s lacklustre talent will become apparent to him, but the effort he puts in now- truly and naively believing that he can be the best simply by trying his hardest- will propel him to keep going. The innocence of a child, unsullied by rankings and competitions and technical scores, is what lets him grin and laugh as he lands his first proper jump on the ice, Yuuko cheering enthusiastically as he wavers but doesn’t fall. Doesn’t put his hand down on the slick, scratched up surface beneath his skates.
At eight years old, Yuuri Katsuki feels limitless.
When Yuuri Katsuki is twelve years old, Yuuko falls in love with competitive skating. She is entranced by the practiced, perfected movements of the professionals on the ice. She begins frantically ordering subscriptions to sports magazines, learning their training regimens and routines to try out with Yuuri, following their social media and buying posters.
Everything begins to ache, his muscles starting to clearly develop, baby fat dropping from his cheeks, voice cracking along with his self-esteem as Takeshi laughs at him ceaselessly for trying to manage his now awkward limbs. Movements that used to be easy are suddenly difficult again, his muscle memory sabotaging him as well as it had supported him before. The endless energy he had as a child- to spin and slide across the ice, to burst into jolts of speed and race Yuuko to the other side of the rink, to dance and propel himself upwards against gravity into a jump- is fading quickly, leaving Yuuri wheezing after simple practices and defeated after long, long days struggling to perfect a jump.
School is getting difficult, homework piling on and interfering with his skating practice. If he wants any hope at all of completing his schoolwork every day and doing well in class, he has to sacrifice hours of sleep and rest. Every hour, every second, every moment is busy with something or the other, and the surging reality that it will only get harder from here makes him break a little.
The future doesn’t seem quite so bright as it did four years ago. The sky is still above his head, but he can’t see a sun, can’t see anything at all, his eyes blurring with tears constantly. The stars, the clouds, and the moon pool into a dark void, like a stunning array of colours being mixed into a meaningless black, the vibrancy lost so quickly and fluidly it’s hard to believe there was ever a rainbow there in the first place.
There’s a swirling feeling in the pit of his stomach, a beacon of nervous tension, constantly sparking throughout his body. It’s making him sleep even less and eat far too much, the heavenly golden sauce of his mother’s katsudon all too appealing, Yuuko’s diets for fitness seeming bland in comparison.
He falls on the ice, over and over again, and bruises cobweb out over his pale, chubby form. He stares at them in the mirror. He likes to imagine the awful anxious feeling constantly running through his veins appears like this- the dark webs are the visible sign of his racing, fearful, hesitant mind, weathered down by the bleakness he can see beyond his glasses. He falls on the ice, and he blames the panic sitting heavy in his stomach.
Gradually, overwhelmingly, Yuuri succumbs to the pressure, feels himself losing his footing. The grounding and base of his dreams that had seemed so secure is fading beneath his toes, and he’s losing his balance, ready to fall. It would be so much easier to quit. He could relax for once.
Minako snaps at him for messing up a simple form, for eating too much, for looking far too chubby despite constantly exercising. He jams his toe against the ice trying to do a triple axel, and Yuuko looks down at him pityingly when he says he’s fine, when he tries to stand up and try again only to fall and get a bloody nose as well. He fails a quiz in english, and is so lost in the class he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. Ballet, skating, and school, it’s all too much.
It would be so much easier to quit.
Yuuko asks him to watch a competition with her, able to stream it on the television at the rink. She’s so excited. He couldn’t possibly say no.
Silver hair flashes across the screen, a lithe body filling out a sexy black outfit, the gemstones glittering beautifully as the skater dominates the ice. He makes it look easy, like jumps are only a mechanism to allow him to fly, like he chose to come back to everyone else’s level rather than gravity forcing him to. He makes it look like spins are only there to let him become a whirlwind for a moment, a devastating force of nature, free and spiraling infinitely. He makes it look like skating is fun, and Yuuri finds himself itching, fidgeting, eager to try again.
Viktor Nikiforov enters his world like a hurricane, picking Yuuri up and carrying him along without even knowing he’s doing so.
Yuuri lands a triple axel for the first time in weeks that day, feeling his lack of weight in midair, feeling dizzy and tired and excited. Viktor Nikiforov is somewhere out there, and Yuuri wants to meet him. Yuuri wants to hug him, and talk to him, and see his hair in person, watch it flow and shine in the light.
But... he has to be good enough in skating to reach Viktor first. A triple axel isn’t enough- the twelve year olds in the Junior Grand Prix can do so much more, be so much better than Yuuri.
Yuuko cuts out a picture of Viktor from her magazines to give to him when he asks, absolutely and utterly delighted that Yuuri’s determined again. Yuuri frames it on his desk, even though it’s not an actual poster, not an actual picture Yuuri took himself. It’s Viktor; for Yuuri, that’s enough.
The darkness of his future is chased away by sparkling blue eyes and an uplifting breeze, and Yuuri can see the sky ahead of him again. All he can think is that it doesn’t quite compare to the colour of Viktor’s eyes.
Yuuri works on duplicating Viktor’s routines with Yuuko, imagining what it would feel like to be so graceful and elegant, closing his eyes and hearing his heartbeat in his ears as the image of Viktor skating replays in his mind. Sometimes, he likes to pretend that Viktor is coaching him instead of Yuuko. He imagines Viktor directing Yuuri on his own routines and gently rearranging his limbs, laughing softly when Yuuri messes up, encouraging him to stand up again.
He gets a poodle, enchanted by Viktor’s own, wanting to feel the soft fur under his fingertips and hug something warm when he feels too much prickling energy under his own skin, anything to help the fidgeting. Vicchan is adorable, full of life and energy, pulling Yuuri along no matter what. Yuuri loves him so much it almost drowns out the pressure sometimes, loves his dog more than he ever expected he would.
He has a reason to fight now, a reason to keep going when it gets tough. Yuuri is going to treasure that, cradle it close to his chest and protect it.
Vicchan and Viktor. They help to lift the weight.
Yuuri whispers thanks into Vicchan’s fur every night, and can’t wait for the chance to tell Viktor the same.
At age twelve, Yuuri finds his motivation.
When Yuuri Katsuki is sixteen, people start to cough up flower petals at school. Irises, crocuses, roses, lilies, cherry blossoms; the hallways are a sea of floral, a mosaic of soft pink and brilliant red, creamy white and vivid purple. Hiccuped leaves float to the surface, bright green or fading brown, spots of contrast in the ever-shifting tapestry of the floor.
All Yuuri can see is silver and blue, covering his room walls, reflecting in the ice below his skates, the colour of the sky and the clouds, the fog over the indigo ocean during winter. It’s every shade of blue, all at once, light shifting it from soft eggshell to the sky at night, always gorgeous, always seeking out Yuuri’s attention, always finding it. It’s a warm silver, silky and molten, looking like the most precious thing Yuuri could ever touch in his life, lengthy and fluid and ever-shifting.
Yuuri doesn’t think much about the flower petals. He only steps on them, letting them stir beneath his feet, feeling vaguely sorry for the people who coughed them up. His head is full of skating, full of competitions and success and failure. Yuuri doesn’t have time for love, doesn’t have time for much of anything else. His classmates mostly ignore him, only occasionally asking him about his skating, and he’s content to be ignored. School is difficult enough to keep up with as is, he doesn’t need to worry about the people there as well.
Hanahaki disease isn’t really as dangerous as they tell everyone in younger grades, anyways. Yuuri’s never heard of someone dying from it in Japan in at least ten years- that would have to be an extreme case, a love held protected by it’s owner and unreciprocated to it’s target for at least five years. It isn’t hard to recognize after all, sunflower petals falling from someone’s lips as they cough, golden yellow fluttering to the ground to settle amongst the other flowers. Simply another love unreturned.
If it gets really bad, there are procedures for removing the creeping vines in the lungs, though those have… unpleasant side effects.
Yuuri couldn’t fathom being able to go through on a surgery like that, knowing that feelings will be ripped out right along with the invisible roots travelling through one’s body, pulled out as easily as a weed that has to be plucked for new growth. To feel nothing at all for someone seems impossible to Yuuri. There are so many people in his life he couldn’t give up, so many people who are important to him. Even people he’s never actually met.
Figure skating was Viktor Nikiforov’s gift to Yuuri, along with ambition and motivation, along with so many other things. Too many for Yuuri to ever thank him all for. Figure skating is calming, refreshing, relaxing, the ultimate cure for the black hole of anxiety perpetually sitting in his stomach. He can draw figure eights, mindlessly practice step sequences, jump and fall and have no one laugh at him. But Yuuri is good at figure skating, after all those hard hours of practice with Yuuko.
Yuuri can win at figure skating, he finds out. Local competitions are stressful and exciting, making his heart pound and mind race, yet somehow he always does well in them. He’s nowhere near good enough for professional, of course, but Yuuri finds that he likes to win, likes to stand on top of a podium and clutch a medal to his chest. It’s a lot better than losing.
When Viktor Nikiforov shows up for the Grand Prix Final with his hair cut short, almost twenty-one years old, glorious and youthful and strong, Yuuri is just barely seventeen. He mourns the loss of Viktor’s silky, flowing hair quietly, shifting through his posters and pictures of Viktor- admiring the way it tosses as Viktor spins on the ice, the lift in it as he jumps. Yuuri’s dreamt of touching that silver-spun hair even once in his life for four years, but now it seems much more unobtainable- he’d have to practically be touching Viktor’s head. Yuuri knows he would never have the courage for that, could never be close enough to his idol to do something like that.
Viktor’s magnificent, ethereal gray cloud of hair is gone, but Yuuri likes the new shorter cut as well, the way Viktor’s bangs flop casually and perfectly over his eyes. How his slender neck is bare to the cameras, adam’s apple bobbing gently as Viktor swallows. Viktor’s shoulders look more filled out now, the extra hair not slimming him down at all anymore.
Yuuri would probably like Viktor still if he cut all his hair off and skated bald, though.
The exact moment this thought occurs, Yuuri is seized by a violent coughing fit. He hacks and splutters, chest heaving, unable to catch his breath until it’s over. Taking a sip of tea to wash down the ache in his throat, Yuuri turns back to his laptop, blinking away tears from the corner of his eyes and wondering faintly if he’s getting sick from the cold.
Two days later, his mother will discover a single azure blue rose petal slowly drying up on the floor of Yuuri’s room, and think nothing of it as she tosses it out the window.
At age seventeen, Yuuri Katsuki realizes the depth of his love for Viktor Nikiforov, and begins to suffer for it.
When Yuuri Katsuki is twenty, he abjectly refuses the surgery to cure his disease. His feelings for Viktor are so strongly linked to his love for figure skating, to his motivation, that he’s afraid that removing his love of Viktor will simultaneously devour and extinguish his love for the ice.
Quietly, kindly, everyone in his life accepts this, even as the disease fills his lungs and makes him cough, entire blue roses spilling out of his throat late at night, bloody hacking fits yielding entire branches of a flowering rose bush- nothing about the sickness makes any sense, and it’s painful and suffocating, leaving Yuuri’s airways scratched beyond belief, his mouth constantly torn up with thorns.
Yuuri will hold the blue roses he coughs up, cradle them in his palms, letting moonlight spill over them from his window. When the sun rises, he puts them in water, letting them truly grow in the world. He imagines making a flower crown with them someday and giving it to Viktor. Inevitably, they fall apart, petals gently crinkling up on his desk... turning brown and brittle before his eyes. Celestino hates seeing the flowers, bitterly reminded of his student’s fatal weakness, but Phichit adores them.
“They’re sweet, aren’t they?” Phichit responds cheerfully when Yuuri asks why he likes them so much, tilting his head to the side in confusion, like the answer is obvious. “Like every inch of you, from your mind to your body, is crying out to be noticed by your love, is ready to give him something beautiful in exchange for his love. It’s tragically romantic!”
It makes Yuuri blush and laugh all at once, glad he has a friend here in Detroit, glad that friend is Phichit. The Thai skater is young and carefree, supportive and kind, only ever wanting the best for Yuuri. He pushes Yuuri out of his comfort zone while somehow managing to make him feel comfortable doing it, but also knows when to stop pushing as well. Most of all, Phichit is so, so ready to compete, so eager to practice skating and win for his country. He’s inspiring, bursting with life and colour, easily passing it along to everyone he meets.
If only he would stop stealing all of Yuuri’s cereal, he’d be Yuuri’s best friend. As it is, Vicchan holds that role, awaiting him at home along with his mother’s delicious katsudon.
Yuuri can’t wait to see Vicchan again, can’t wait to taste his mother’s cooking, can’t wait to sleep in his own bed again. Detroit is wonderful, with Phichit by his side, but it isn’t home.
College is going to take an extra year because of skating. He’s got two more years here, at least.
Hanahaki disease develops over the course of five years.
Yuuri’s going to die in two years.
He can’t wait to go home, and skate with Yuuko once more, and listen to the seagulls in the morning. Even if it’s just for one second, one moment, it will be enough. Vicchan, his mother and father, Yuuko and Minako. So many people he has to thank, so many people he has to say goodbye too.
Detroit is wonderful, but it’s not where he wants to die.
“Does it bother you?” Phichit asks one day, voice quiet and gentle. ‘The King and the Skater’ is playing for the second time that night, the lights dimmed and popcorn bowl long since empty. Yuuri blinks at the teen, trying to parse his meaning, watching the white, pervasive light from the TV dance over his dark hair and flicker in the depths of his brown eyes. “Knowing you’re going to die for your love.”
Yuuri sits for a long time, pretending to watch the movie, Phichit doing the same. He’s thought about it before, of course he has. He never expected to have to explain his feelings to a seventeen year old who’s never felt the delicate and cruel touch of an impossible love before, though.
“Dying for Viktor is just the price of loving Viktor,” Yuuri says finally, voice as calm as a still pond, eyes focussed on a narrow point in the distance, something only he can see. Phichit watches him in wonder, enthralled by the sight of someone so absolutely certain of something. Certain of his own love. Yuuri doesn’t blink. “...Talking to Viktor for the first time and feeling nothing no matter what he says would be worse than death. The feelings I have now… I want to protect them. Even if they end up destroying me.”
The declaration rings out into the apartment, and Phichit nods slowly, turning back to the movie. He’d never seen his roommate so determined before. The silence is thick between them, the tension as hard as a block of butter left out in freezing temperatures. Yuuri continues to stare into the distance, and Phichit hums in thought.
“Yuuri, your blue roses are beautiful. I’ve always admired them, and the other day I was wondering what they really meant,” Phichit muses, fluttering his eyelashes slightly as he casts his gaze over at the current bouquet on the kitchen counter- half of them wilting, some dead, some fresh and fragrant. “Did you know that blue roses symbolize prosperity and love to those who look for it?”
Yuuri looks over at Phichit, abruptly nervous and unsure, gaze settling on the bounty of royal blue flowers, barely visible in the dark of their apartment. “So… I should go looking for Viktor?”
Phichit only hums again, possibly in agreement, but mostly mysteriously, and Yuuri hiccups. A single sky blue petal falls into his lap, settling atop the cozy blanket he’s wrapped up in.
Viktor is twenty-four now, already a legend and his lore only growing with every move he makes. Every illustrious title and award in figure skating, every record that is available for him to test, is being rewritten and snatched up by his powerful, graceful skating. He’s stunning, blinding, intimidatingly shiny as he stands on the ice, golden skates gleaming in the light, eyes glowing turquoise one second, then cerulean, then the colour of the sea at midnight. He’s captivating, alluring, enchanting as ever.
Yuuri’s surely not the only one in love with him, hopelessly trapped in Viktor’s hurricane, drawn in by his magnetic pull. There must be thousands upon thousands of teenagers with blue roses crawling up their throats, idolizing the same person, craving his touch and praise.
Viktor wouldn’t care about someone like him, a dime dozen in his legion of fans. Yuuri doesn’t have to look for him to know that.
At age twenty, Yuuri Katsuki is somewhat at peace with the knowledge that he is not special, and he loves Viktor Nikiforov anyways.
When Yuuri Katsuki is twenty-two, he is supposed to die.
After it’s announced that he’s qualified for the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri rushes to the bathroom, avoiding other figure skaters and media, vines reaching for air from his lungs, flowers pouring out of his mouth- a cascade of thorns and brambles that bring blood along with them, the usual blue petals splattered with thick, dark splotches of liquid, his lips splitting and cracking of dryness as he heaves into the trash can, trying to ignore the people staring at him as they wash their hands. He knows he’s a spectacle, still in his skating costume and silver medal hung around his neck, on his hands and knees because of a disease that’s supposed to have already killed him.
He certainly feels dead. Every logical thought process should have led to him being in a hospital in Hasetsu right now, led him to getting the flowers weeded out of his lungs, led to him quitting figure skating a long time ago. But Yuuri can’t. He’s worked so hard for this, for so long, been supported by so many people along the way.
He’s finally qualified for the Grand Prix Final, and Viktor is going to be there. Yuuri might finally be able to thank him properly, before the thorns and flowers fill his airway, rendering him unable to breath. Already, his air is constricted, quick and wheezing inhales of air all he can manage. Every gasp outwards tastes like roses on his tongue, cloying and sweet and suffocating, and Yuuri despises it as much as he once savoured it.
“Yuuri!” Minako screeches, barrelling into the men’s bathroom without a second thought, crashing to her knees in front of him, hands immediately flying to his shoulders- steadying Yuuri, far more carefully than they appear to anyone else- and Yuuri can barely see her. His glasses are missing, but everything is spinning too, his wheezing not helping things. “Are you alright?!”
Yuuri’s not really alright- he’s a dead man walking. He nods anyway and forces himself to stand. Viktor is still waiting for him. Yuuri still needs to thank him. There’s so much more than he still needs to do. He can’t die yet.
He hasn’t even had a chance to see if his love could ever be answered yet.
At age twenty-three, Yuuri Katsuki suffers a violent attack of the Hanahaki disease during his free skate in the Grand Prix Final, fainting of asphyxiation on the ice and being forced to stop from illness, collapsing into a beautiful, beckoning bed of blue roses and silver thorns.
Within an hour, he is awake again and Yuri Plisetsky is scorching, blistering heat, a volcano exploding before Yuuri’s eyes, the lava burning everything it touches; the junior skater is appalled at him for daring to skate with such an illness, scolding him to retire before he pushes himself to death on the ice. Celestino agrees quietly once the boy has left, suggesting Yuuri go home to his family and enjoy his last few days.
They don’t know who Yuuri’s in love with. They don’t know who Yuuri’s been waiting for. They can’t understand why he has to keep pushing himself.
He pulls himself out of the stiff makeshift bed, barely able to breath through the brambles of the thicket in his throat and feeling unnaturally hot. Yuuri changes into his normal clothes, discarding his Free Skate costume with disgust and a dark sort of humour, unable to think about skating, unable to comprehend how badly he’s failed to do everything he was hoping to do here. His vision is still blurring before his eyes, even with his glasses on, head burning, burning, lights flickering before his eyes. Yuuri doesn’t care. He starts looking, desperate, wanting to see Viktor so terribly badly that every second step he’s coughing up a flower petal, every inch of him yearning for something that he knows he can’t have.
The trip through the rink is lost to him, time becoming a rushing river around him, moving seamlessly from a slow, warm soup that lets him slip through it easily to a crashing, roaring rapid, shaking him up and throwing him around. Yuuri can’t breathe, and he can feel himself sway with every step. It doesn’t matter. He keeps walking, looking for something, clutching at walls, at people, anything he needs to stay upright and moving.
The lights above are too bright, overpowering his vision. His head pounds, blood rushing in his ears. Where is he? Everything smells like roses, nothing is recognizable. Sweat is dripping off his nose, but he can’t remember when he started sweating. It hits the floor quietly, serenely, steadily. Yuuri has to keep walking.
Yuuri doesn’t know how long he spends walking. All he knows is that he finds him.
He’s with Yuri Plisetsky, on their way out of the building on the drift of a cold breeze, luggage in toe, while Yuuri stands there, falling apart in their wake, gripping the wall with weak fingers to hold himself up.
It’s a miracle of sorts.
Yuuri doesn’t know where he is, or who the people around him are. No one is trying to stop him, and that’s enough. Every colour he sees is too vibrant for his thrashing brain, every light source is too dim to view anything by while also being overwhelming. Yuuri can’t hear a thing. His knees wobble beneath him, and his feet don’t feel like they’re there anymore.
Viktor Nikiforov is really there, really breathing in front of him, somewhere in front of him, some impossible distance before Yuuri. If there are people between them, Yuuri doesn’t know, only able to see one thing. He’s far more handsome in real life than in television, and this one fact is stunningly clear in Yuuri’s head, even as his own appearance becomes some vaguely forgotten memory in his head. Another drop of sweat hits the floor, just barely audible to Yuuri’s ears. Viktor’s just listening to Yakov yell at Yuri, waiting patiently, but it’s the best thing Yuuri’s seen in a while, seen in forever.
Yuuri opens his mouth to call out, to let Viktor hear him, and he can’t. He can barely breathe, let alone hold a conversation, thorns digging into his tongue and a sudden cough letting a shower of blue petals flutter to the ground, weak and meaningless. Silently, devastatingly, Yuuri Katsuki watches the Russian skaters go, watches the red and white of Viktor’s uniform blur into the distance.
At age twenty-three, Yuuri Katsuki falls to his knees, unable to hold himself up, and lets himself succumb to the darkness.
He expects to never wake up again, for this to be it. Yuuri will never return to Hasetsu again, will never see his mother or taste her cooking again, will never pet Vicchan or be able to see Yuuko and Takeshi’s kids grow up.
Yuuri, faintly, peripherally, is sad about this.
All he can do now is beg internally, cry out in his mind, pray for Viktor to please return to him. Just come back to Yuuri’s side. Stay close to him.
Don’t abandon him in his final moments. That’s the cruelest fate of all.
Thoughts spin out wildly, crashing into one another, softly fading out of existence, everything plunging into darkness.
Yuuri doesn’t remember a moment after that.
When Yuuri Katsuki is twenty-three, he wakes up the next morning, feeling haggard and muscles aching, and watches the sun rise from his hotel window. The sky is a stunning array of chilling blue and bright orange, infused with splashes of violet, a faint bay of fog hovering over the Russian city.
Yuuri hopes this isn’t a dream, but he wouldn’t mind if it was one. It’s gorgeous.
Delicately, he slips out of his bed, snug in his pyjamas, and fumbles with the balcony lock until it pops open, letting his bare feet hit the damp, freezing floor of the stone balcony without thought. The sea is far away, but it’s turquoise and glimmering in the dawn light. It reminds Yuuri of home, of running by the seawall and inhaling the purely refreshing scent of the sea, salt mixing with the clearest air Yuuri’s ever felt.
Yuuri takes a deep breath.
It smells like rain, like fresh winds and cold weather.
It smells like freedom and life.
He can taste tears on his lips, vaguely aware he is crying, but nothing smells like roses for the first time in five years and his lungs aren’t constricting or fighting him. The morning sunrise is so utterly perfect, it’s like it’s the first one he’s ever seen.
No other morning will ever compare to this one.
The sun feels warm on his skin. The breeze tousles his messy hair. Yuuri laughs, and can hear it carry into the city, can feel it slide over his tongue. Nothing about this makes any sense, but Yuuri doesn’t care.
Somehow, inexplicably, at age twenty-three, Yuuri Katsuki is cured of Hanahaki disease, and he can breathe.
He’s alive.