Notes

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Yuuri Katsuki clutches his fist against his chest, just short of crushing his phone in his grasp. His mother just called. She's just informed him that Vicchan, his toy poodle, the dog he's loved in absence of another for almost all his life, has just passed away. His head is absouloutely pounding against his skull, fat tears pouring from his eyes. He can't breathe. He can't think. There's no way he can do the presentation now. No way he can bring the story of his Vicchan to the stage and let his entire community theorize and rip it apart. Not now. Not today.
Yuuri returns to his hotel room and turns his cell phone off. The wild thumping of his heart, blood rushing in his ears, and sick feeling in his gut make him think that he ought to have gone on stage anyway.
_
He dreams of Vicchan. Not his dog Vicchan, of course. Yuuri dreams of the one, single, sparkling moment in his life- the one that he would write off as a childhood fever dream, had he not caught on film- the moment that would set off a set of infinate and unending chain of surprises. Marvelous, terrible, and great surprises that would open Yuuri's mind, tax his system, and show him an entirely new view on life. That Vicchan.
_
Yuuri Katsuki traces his finger along the softened edges of an old Polaroid. The depicted image is blurry, shaky, and, Yuuri's internal Mari supplies, "potato quality." This dingy and battered photo means the world to Yuuri. The colors, hazy, misty, and opalescant give way to the splash of pure, shimmering silver in the center.
Yuuri's heart squeezes tight in his chest, fingers not daring to shake for fear of damaging his treasure. It had already been through so much. Too much, he thinks, frowning. His eyes still sting from crying. He's too dehydrated to cry any more.
In his pocket, his phone chips out a familiar tune, and Yuuri remembers where he is.
"O-oh," he mutters to himself, stroking his thumbs across the corners of the photograph. He's holed himself up in a bathroom stall in the Sochi International Airport while he waits for his airplaine home. Well- not home, home, but back to Detroit, where he will return to his classes, and his roommate, and his basic cryptid hunting.