It should be against the rules for profs to schedule midterms during fifty minute time slots. Yuuri taps his pencil against the section of paper where he’s supposed to be proving or disproving the sequential compactness of the topographical space X given the set of conditions he’d just spent working out in the previous problem… which he may or may not have done correctly. His paper stares back at him, woefully blank.

Well, not blank, really. He’s written and erased a dozen lines of logical flailing enough times now that the residual pencil marks betray the fact that he has no idea what he’s doing. At this point, even if he manages to stumble onto some vague approximation of the intended reasoning, Feltsman will know it’s a fluke.

He can just imagine what Feltsman will say if he shows up at his office hours asking for advice.

“You want my advice, Katsuki? Change your major. You’re not cut out for this.”

He glances at the clock. Fuck. He’s been staring at this problem for ten minutes. That’s twenty percent of the total allotted time for the exam. There may only be two problems left after this one, but there’s no guarantee he’ll get through those without any more delays. Given an exam with twice as many questions and twice as much time to complete, he’d have no trouble. It’s just impossible to focus when he’s panicking about how much time he just wasted… panicking.

Ughhhhhhhh—

He jerks his head up at the sound of chair legs screeching against the classroom floor. Of course Victor Nikiforov is already finished, twenty minutes to spare.

Victor stands up, tossing his head and managing to get his gorgeous silver hair out of his eyes for all of three seconds. He lifts his bag off the back of his chair and shrugs it over his shoulder. Professor Feltsman gives a stern nod as Victor hands him his completed exam. A nod from Feltsman is equivalent to a cheer and a hug from anyone else.

Yuuri sighs heavily and turns his eyes back to his own exam, hunching over and curling his arms around it protectively. He really doesn’t need Victor glancing down and seeing its sad state as he passes him on his way out.

“So… how was your exam?” Phichit glances away from the café’s board game shelf and raises an eyebrow at Yuuri. He sips his boba, blinking innocently.

Yuuri grimaces. Phichit had managed to last thirty minutes without asking. A week would maybe have been long enough for Yuuri to get over how brutally demoralizing it had been. And after just half an hour…?

“Too soon, Phichit. I’m still pretending the entire field of topology just doesn’t exist.” Yuuri crouches down, tilting his head to read the sideways-stacked game boxes.

Phichit huffs. “Come on, I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think. You come out of every exam saying you think you failed, and then you end up with like, a B plus, or whatever.”

Yuuri pulls out Catan and 7 Wonders from the shelf and stands. “That’s just because they ended up grading on a curve, though.”

Phichit grabs one more game for the pile he has precariously balanced on one arm and starts heading towards their corner.

“So, won’t they just do that again?”

Yuuri sets his games on the table and drops down onto the couch. “Not this time,” he says, sliding a hand down his face. “Because Victor Nikiforov is in the class. I don’t think they’ll curve it if someone gets a perfect grade to begin with.”

Phichit makes a face. “That sucks, I guess?”

“I’m in three classes with him this semester, you know,” Yuuri says, groaning and dropping his head back. At least they secured the spot with the comfortable couch, this time.

“Well, he takes, what, like… seven, eight? — courses at a time, doesn’t he?” Phichit says, shrugging. “It makes sense that there would be some overlap. Pigeonhole principle, or whatever.”

Yuuri blinks as hands drop onto the couch to either side of his head and a figure looms over him.

“Hi, Chris,” he says — he only sounds slightly pouty, really, despite Phichit having gone ahead and applied reason to his situation instead of wallowing with him.

“Yuuri’s got three classes with Victor Nikiforov this semester,” Phichit supplies, oh-so-helpfully.

“Oooh,” Chris purrs. “Lucky.” He comes around to the front of the couch and seats himself next to Yuuri, angling towards him. “Does he sit next to you?”

Yuuri frowns. “Not lucky,” he says, ignoring the question (it’s hard enough already to focus in class — that would make it impossible). “He brings the class average up too much when I need everyone else almost failing with me if I’m going to have any chance of graduating.”

“Worth it,” Chris says, smirking, and Yuuri rolls his eyes.

Just because Victor is ridiculously hot doesn’t mean having extra chances to stare dreamily is worth losing his chances to get into grad school.

“So you’re in topology with him?” Chris says, more seriously. “He just posted something about the exam a little while ago.”

Yuuri nods. “What did he say?” Probably that it had been too easy and he’d finished twenty minutes early.

Chris shrugs. “I don’t remember. You can read it yourself, no? Aren’t you friends with him?”

“He added me, sure, but he does that with everyone in his classes, I think — we’re not really friends.” Yuuri shifts in his seat. Exchanging basic greetings with someone a handful of times barely even counts as being acquainted with someone, let alone being friends with them. “He just does it to be nice.”

Phichit and Chris exchange a look. Yuuri tightens his mouth and studies the menu intently. He hasn’t picked a tea flavor yet. Someone like Victor Nikiforov has no reason to actually want to be friends with someone like him.

“Oh, Twilight Imperium,” Chris says, picking up one of Phichit’s selections from the table, and Yuuri sighs, relieved — they’ve moved on to a better subject, finally. “I’ve been meaning to play.”

...Wait.

“Phichit, you pulled out a six hour game?” Yuuri levels a flat look at him. “I still have that set theory assignment to finish. I can do two hours, tops.”

“Fiiiiine,” Phichit whines. “But we are going to play it one of these days.”

He tosses onto his left side, willing his eyes to stay closed. He’s supposed to be sleeping — sleeping. He can finish the assignment tomorrow.

What if he tries to prove the contrapositive instead? He flips his pillow over. No, he tried that already. But he could maybe take that approach with one of the conditions he needs to be true… He tosses onto his stomach, resting his head on his arms. That might work, actually. And maybe induction for the other.

He resists the urge to get up and start working on it at… he picks up his phone, and the screen illuminates his room — 3:17 AM. Anything put down on paper after 2 AM is liable to turn out to be gibberish in the morning.

Victor probably finished this problem ages ago. He’d probably completed his last proof — with his uncannily beautiful penmanship that looks like a font — and smiled to himself. Leaned back in his desk chair, stretched his arms, and then turned his gaze on Yuuri waiting for him on the bed—

No, no, no. He’s not going to let himself trade one mental distraction with another (much less appropriate!) one. He needs to sleep, not creepily fantasize about his poor, unsuspecting Adonis of a classmate.

He’ll just browse mindlessly on his phone until he falls asleep involuntarily. That’ll work.

He scrolls for a while — Chris’s post, gloating about his victory, earlier. Phichit’s photo of his boba. Victor—

Oh, yeah. Chris had mentioned that he’d posted about the exam. Yuuri squints at his phone — blurry words aren’t good enough when he doesn’t already know what they say.

Victor Nikiforov I hope whatever I just wrote down on Feltsman’s exam made sense! You never know, when sleep deprivation is involved! #so tired #need caffeine #can the cute boy in half my classes bring me coffee plz #lol I need to sleep #delete later

Yuuri lets his phone rest on his chest, sighing. There’s no way he’s the cute boy Victor’s talking about, but maybe one day he can bring him some coffee anyway, and they’d chat, and Victor would take pity on him and offer to tutor him in exchange for Yuuri’s continuing to provide him with caffeine.

He lifts his phone again— oh, shit. The little red heart under Victor’s post is red. He must have accidentally pressed it somehow. Should he un-like it? Victor will get the notification either way, won’t he? It'll look weird if he un-likes it. It’s totally legitimate for him to have liked it, anyway; he took the same exam, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the #cute boy—

His phone buzzes, and a notification banner appears at the top of the screen.

VN: Hi, Yuuri! I didn’t think anyone else would still be awake!

Yuuri stares. Victor is messaging him. Victor is messaging him. Victor is messaging him.

VN: Sorry, you’re probably trying to sleep anyway

Yuuri shakes himself. It would be rude to just… not reply, right?

YK: it’s okay

YK: I’m awake, brain won’t let me stop thinking in circles about the set theory assignment anyway

Great. Let Victor know just how much he’s struggling with this program.

VN: Oh, yeah? How much more do you have to do?

Well, the truth isn’t actually all that bad, in this case. Set theory manages to make sense to him most of the time, really.

YK: I just have to do the last proof

YK: I think I know what to do, actually, I just have a policy against trying to write down mathematical reasoning between the hours of 2 and 7 AM

YK: my almost-asleep or barely-awake brain can’t really be trusted to tell valid reasoning from nonsense

He has to stop rambling.

VN: That’s probably wise. I should follow your advice and put it away

Huh. So Victor doesn’t get all of his assignments done at least three days in advance.

VN: How was today’s exam for you?

VN: Well, yesterday’s, I guess

Yuuri grimaces. He can’t lie about it. It will be too obvious when he inevitably fails and gets kicked out of school.

YK: not great, really

YK: I’m not the strongest operator when it comes to topology

Yuuri drops a hand over his face. Oh, god. No — no stupid math puns in the middle of the night with Victor Nikiforov.

He peeks at his phone screen through his fingers.

VN: Hahaha!!!

VN: Wait wait

VN: I’m laughing at your joke, not your difficulty with the exam

Yuuri snorts.

YK: lol it’s okay, I understood

VN: Your topology seems pretty *fine* to me though

What.

YK: oh my god

VN: Sorry, that was terrible

VN: I didn’t even mean to hit send

Yuuri presses a hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh and wake up Phichit in the next room.

VN: Do you want to meet up tomorrow (today) and you can help me catch up on this set theory assignment and I’ll help you figure out what you’re struggling with in topology?

Uhhhhhhhh—

VN: Or another day if tomorrow-today doesn’t work for you?

Yuuri’s blinks until his brain reboots itself.

Okay, that’s definitely not a fair exchange of knowledge, since he most definitely needs way more help with topology than Victor needs with set theory.

But it could make the difference between passing and failing.

YK: That sounds good, actually

YK: Meet me at the boba place at 4?

His heart thuds loud in his ears. Here’s where Victor replies with something like haha, just kidding, why would you think I could ever need your help?

His phone buzzes again, and he cracks one eye open, as if being ridiculed won’t hurt as much if he can’t see the words clearly.

VN: AM or PM?

VN: Haha, sorry, I’ll stop being dumb

VN: See you this afternoon! Looking forward to it!

Oh. Okay… maybe Victor is being sincere? Maybe Victor is just yet another person he’s managed to trick into thinking he belongs at this school, in this program. Victor probably thinks Yuuri is like any of their classmates and could actually be a useful study partner.

YK: me too, see you then

He just needs to get through one study session without letting on that he’s a fraud of a mathematician.

Yuuri gets his boba order at 3:35, almost exactly half a day after agreeing to meet with Victor, and almost half an hour before they’re supposed to meet.

He just wanted to secure the good couch. That’s all, that’s why he’s so early.

He drops his bag at one end of the couch and sits at the other. Ignores the dirty looks thrown his way by the group of three who’d ordered just after him. It is a bit of a jerk move to take up the whole couch by himself, but Victor will be here in a half hour or so. Hopefully he will be, anyway.

Yuuri sips at his drink and leafs through the last few topology assignments he’d received back, all with large, red numbers scrawled across the front, putting his mediocrity on clear display for anyone who happens to glance over.

The bells on the door jingle and Victor walks in at 3:45. Victor scans the room, pulling off his scarf, and Yuuri’s stomach sinks — does he even know him by sight? Maybe that’s why Victor had arrived early, in hopes that Yuuri would get here second and recognize him, avoiding this situation. Yuuri chews his boba faster, and swallows a little too soon for comfort.

“Victor?” he calls, willing his voice not to shake. “It’s me, over here. Yuuri Katsuki,” he adds, not awkward at all.

Victor’s eyes lock onto him and his whole face lights up. “Yuuri, hi! I didn’t see you there.”

He smiles weakly.

Victor walks over to the register, lifting his eyes to examine the menu. Yuuri pulls his backpack off the couch and puts it at his feet, making room for Victor at the far end of the couch.

Victor sets his drink — strawberry milk tea? — down on the table and sits down right beside him.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Victor says, breathlessly, looking right at him with those way, way too blue eyes.

“Um,” Yuuri says, like an intelligent person. “You’re welcome.”

“This set theory course is killing me, honestly,” Victor says, voice low, eyes darting around the café. “I’ve been falling more and more behind all semester.”

Yuuri frowns, slightly. It’s the only course he hasn’t been falling behind in. And Victor has a much better excuse, really. “Well, it’s pretty impressive if that’s the only course you’re having trouble with,” Yuuri says, closely examining the way his mechanical pencil pushes the lead out. “I heard you’re taking, like, eight courses?”

“Seven,” Victor corrects, as if that’s any more sane.

Yuuri laughs and shakes his head. “That’s crazy. I didn’t know it was even possible to register for that many courses in one semester.”

Victor shrugs, glancing away. “I had to get special permission.”

“Sorry,” Yuuri says, sheepish. This isn’t what Victor wanted to meet for. “Should we just get to it?”

Victor nods and pulls out the set theory assignment. Collaboration is allowed — encouraged, even — as long as everyone writes up their solutions independently.

The half-written proofs Victor has for most of the problems aren’t too far off of being complete, for the most part. He’s on the right track for most of them, at least. Yuuri recognizes a lot of Victor’s work as approaches he’d tried before realizing the right way to attack the problems.

Yuuri reaches over to tap Victor’s page where ‘Assume the opposite is true’ is written in neat script. Even Victor’s rough work is beautiful.

“I was thinking the same thing, here — proof by contradiction, always a tempting thing way to start, right?” Yuuri tries for a reassuring grin, and Victor smiles back. Yuuri swallows. “But then I realized a direct proof is possible.”

Victor frowns and stares down at his paper.

Yuuri pulls out his notes from class. “If you look back to the lecture on the, uh… the third, I think, when Prof Cialdini went over proving a set exists via ZFC axioms?”

Victor’s eyes light up with understanding, and Yuuri breathes a sigh of relief. He’s helping — not totally useless, after all.

They work through the rest of the assignment, even the final question he’d been stuck on. Explaining things to Victor had helped some things click into place in his own mind.

“This was so helpful, Yuuri, honestly,” Victor says, pushing silvery hair out of his eyes. “I’ve tried tentatively asking a few other people from class if they want to collaborate, but most of them either say they don’t understand it or brush me off entirely.”

“You’re welcome,” Yuuri says, slowly. “I’ve taken a couple of Cialdini’s courses before, in second and third year. I guess I just understand his teaching style pretty well at this point.”

He frowns. Why would anyone brush off Victor’s requests for help?

“I do want to repay you, though — can I help with topology? What are you having trouble understanding?” Victor sits forward, reaching for Yuuri’s stack of old assignments.

Yuuri groans and rubs his face. “It’s pretty bad,” he admits. “I don’t even understand enough to know what I need to ask for help with.”

“Looks like you at least got a passing grade on all of these.” Victor has the stack of paper in his lap, now, flipping through and finding all of Feltsman’s telltale harsh red circles around Yuuri’s errors. When it’s especially bad, there’s a messy scrawl of see me — office hours in the margin.

Yuuri shrugs, uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter, though. I always spend half of my exam time freaking out that I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s only a matter of time before someone figures me out.”

His eyes go wide. He hadn’t meant to say so much. What happened to getting through this study session without letting on his secret?

Victor chuckles. “I feel the same way, sometimes.”

Wait, what? Yuuri raises a skeptical eyebrow. Victor has to be just saying that for his sake. Everyone knows he’s the top performing student in the school.

“Come on, Victor, don’t patronize me,” Yuuri says, and he can’t help that it comes out a little snippy.

Victor blinks, eyes wide and innocent. “I’m not.”

Yuuri folds his arms. “If you were worried you didn’t have what it takes to be here, why would you be getting special permission to take two additional courses than normal?”

Victor bites his lip. “You know, normally when people ask, I give them some bullshit about wanting to finish in fewer semesters to save money. But I have a full scholarship; taking extra courses doesn’t save me a single dollar. Not that I’d need it, anyway.”

Yuuri presses his lips together. How is bragging about a scholarship and being rich supposed to convince him that Victor understands how he feels, exactly?

“Ugh.” Victor covers his face with his hands. “That came out wrong. I sound like an asshole.”

“A bit,” Yuuri says, tilting his head in agreement.

Victor sighs. “I come from a family of tenured professors. Parents, aunts, uncles. All of them — anyone that’s still in touch, anyway.”

Yuuri waits for him to continue.

Victor laughs, and there’s a hint of bitterness. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. But the point is, there is a lot of pressure — not just to do well, but to be the best, and do it under more difficult conditions than everyone else.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says.

“Do you think I want to take seven courses at a time?” Victor shakes his head. “This is the most socializing I’ve done since Frosh Week. I’ve never even played any of those games before.” He gestures at the shelf.

He looks… sad. Really, really sad.

Yuuri swallows. Topology can wait. There’s no assignment this week anyway, because of the midterm.

He touches Victor’s arm, and Victor looks at him, surprised. “Do you want to get dinner?”

Oh, god. What is he doing? No, it’s okay. He’s just being friendly. Victor said he doesn’t get to socialize much, and he’s offering a social outing.

The genuine smile that spreads across Victor’s face is just unfair. “I’d love to, Yuuri,” Victor says, softly.

He stands up and offers Yuuri a hand.

It’s a good thing, too, because the weak feeling in his knees is not giving Yuuri a lot of confidence in his ability to stand independently.

He really should have realized, when there were so many couples at the boba place. When the wait for a table for two at the Luigi’s was over half an hour — he’d suggested they could just go get takeout instead, but Victor had insisted he didn’t mind waiting as long as Yuuri didn’t mind either.

Their exam yesterday had been scheduled for the thirteenth. Which means today…

“Will you two be having the Valentine’s Day special?” Their server asks, when they’re finally seated. She waits, eyebrows raised expectantly, unaware of the panic Yuuri is experiencing internally.

Yuuri stares. Victor looks back and forth between Yuuri and their server. Yuuri fails to make himself indicate one way or another about the food.

“Sure,” Victor says, finally. “That sounds good.” Their server — Sara, says her name tag — strides away to the kitchen.

It’s Valentine’s Day.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” he says, lamely.

Victor’s brows draw together just enough to form a crease between them. “Yes, it is,” he says, slowly. His eyes go wide. “You didn’t know?”

Yuuri rubs his temples. “But— it was just January.” He shakes his head. “How can it be halfway through February already?”

Victor bites his lip — he looks worried. “Is there— um, should you be getting dinner with someone else? Oh, no! And I monopolized you all afternoon, too.”

Oh. Yuuri laughs. “No, there’s nobody — I wouldn’t be that terrible a boyfriend, I think — I’m just not one at all.”

Victor’s head is up, looking for Sara. “We can cancel our order, or just get it to go, if you’re uncomfortable,” he says.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Yuuri says, quickly. “I just didn’t realize.”

Victor’s eyes drop to his, ceasing his search. “So this is…” he pauses, searching Yuuri’s face. “...not a date?”

“Uhhhh,” Yuuri says. Such eloquence. Victor looks… disappointed? “It… can be? Do you want it to be a date?”

Victor glances down. He’s blushing? “I just thought it might be nice? If it was?”

What if it were a date? Would they be dating, then? Would Victor start joining him and Phichit and Chris at the boba place and learn how to play board games? Would Yuuri drop by Victor’s apartment in the morning, picking up coffee because Victor would be tired from his crazy workload—

Victor is looking at him, anxious and hopeful, fidgeting with his hands. Almost like this is more than just an ‘it might be nice’ level of emotional investment. Almost like he’d already liked Yuuri, at least a bit, before he’d messaged him last night/this morning.

Yuuri gapes. “I am the cute boy.”

Well, that’s going to sound really stupid if he just arrived at the wrong conclusion.

Victor covers his face with both hands. “You’re the cute boy,” he says, muffled.

“And I didn’t even buy you coffee,” Yuuri says, faintly.

Victor lowers his head, hands still covering his face, all the way down to the table. “I was going to delete that,” he says, weakly.

“How about tomorrow?” Yuuri asks, his mouth having apparently been possessed by the ghost of Saint Valentine — probably not, says a small, barely functional part of his brain, since the actual Saint Valentine had a lot more to do with converting pagans to Christianity and not much to do with love and romance — and Victor looks up.

“Delete it tomorrow?” Victor blinks at him.

“No, uh.” Yuuri takes a breath. “Can I take you out for coffee tomorrow?”

The food arrives, just then, two bowls of pasta served with the tomato sauce spread into the shape of a heart over the top of each. That’s Luigi’s — super classy, really pulling out all the stops for V-Day.

Sara hands each of them a stuffed poodle wearing a pink shirt dotted with red hearts.

“Normally, ‘the girl’ is supposed to get the dog,” she says, with a shrug. “But that’s a bunch of gendernormative slash heteronormative bullshit, I think. So I’m just giving them to everyone today — don’t tell my manager, okay?”

Victor clutches his poodle to his chest protectively, and Yuuri almost dies on the spot.

“Your secret’s safe with us,” Yuuri says, and Sara cracks a grin.

She moves on to the next table, and Yuuri turns to Victor, who is smiling shyly and fiddling with his fork in his pasta. He still has his poodle cradled in one arm.

“Yes, I’ll go for coffee with you tomorrow,” Victor says, twirling his pasta and blushing. “It’s a date.”