Author's note:

Madam Facilier has returned! But I'm in a bit of a writer's block regarding my Fairy Tail fanfics. Plus I had this headcanon that I just had to write, so here it is!

"Come on! All six of us—wait, make that seven. Is that all of us? Yes? Okay, then!"

Phichit had to move his arm several times just to get all six of the skaters plus Viktor into the shot. The coaches stood in the background, but Viktor was never one to stay in the sidelines. Which was why he slung an arm over Yūri's shoulders and smiled as Phichit took the selfie.

As he lowered his phone, a voice called from the edge of the rink. "Excuse me! Can I get a photo of all of you?"

All eyes went to a snappily dressed young man with dark brown hair holding a camera up to his face. "Sure!" Despite the many times Yūri had a camera pointed towards him today, it was a special occasion. He'd just won silver in his first assignment. What was the harm in another photo?

Even from where they were on the ice, Yūri could still hear the shutter go off several times. "Yá yà," the photographer said as he lowered his camera.

Guang Hong tilted his head. The man at the edge of the rink said something that the youngest skater knew belonged to the Chinese language, but he couldn't understand what was said.

Yūri's ears twitched. He vaguely recognized that phrase, and he was reminded of his days as a student in Detroit. But without his glasses, there was no way to be sure of who the man was.

"No way…" Phichit, on the other, moved away from where he stood with Leo and Guang Hong to get a better look at the photographer. A grin creeped onto the Thai skater's face when he saw the man's face. "Long!" Phichit spun towards the other skaters, many of them confused and only one surprised. "Yūri, it's—"

"H-He Long!" Yūri stammered. Phichit skated forward and dragged the Japanese man away from Viktor. Yūri could hear the other skaters following them from a distance.

"What are you doing here?" Yūri asked once he and Phichit reached the barrier. It came out more blunt than he expected, and Yūri feared he sounded rude. "I-I mean, it's great to see you, but I was wondering—"

An arm slipped around his waist, making Yūri jolt as Chris leaned closer to him. "Yūri, how can you be so mean? Why don't you tell us who your friend is?" The Swiss skater purred, his hand creeping lower and lower—

Viktor's hand grabbed Chris', smiling eerily behind Yūri's head at the Swiss man. "Where are you going?"

"Um…" Yūri was oblivious to the staring match behind him. "Viktor," he said, causing the older men to withdraw the smiles and look at the photographer. "This is He Long. He was one of my classmates when I was in college in Detroit."

He received blank stares from Phichit and He Long. "What?"

"Yūri…you're forgetting the most important detail," Phichit muttered.

"Wha—gah!" Yūri panicked when he noticed the gloomy aura around He Long, who fiddled with his camera.

"I see…so all I'll ever be to you is a classmate to be forgotten. Maybe I should stop designing for you…" The Chinese man murmured in despair.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't want you to have your hands full if I told them—!"

"Oh?" Now Viktor was interested, leaning forward until his head was almost between Yūri and the moping He Long. "Who is he to you, Yūri? An ex-lover?"

"V-Viktor!"

The photographer straightened his posture and greeted the other skaters with a smile. "He Long Yuan," the man said as though he hadn't been moping just seconds ago. "I'm Yūri and Phichit's costume designer."

There was no way He Long was just a classmate or a costume designer to Yūri.

One) The man was flamboyant. Not by personality, but by his dress sense. He Long seemed to favor expensive clothes à la mode, if his peacoat was anything to go by. He also oozed style that drew all eyes towards him. He Long certainly carried himself with class. Viktor was certain the man could pull off the seductive mood of On Love: Eros with ease if he was a skater.

Which was why Viktor thought that two) Yūri had some other kind of history with He Long. What else could explain why his student was so uncomfortable as they sat at a table in a banquet room—of all places—with Chris, Phichit, He Long, and Guang Hong at a restaurant?

Georgi wouldn't come—or maybe he wanted to, but Yakov was ripping into him. Leo was supposed to join them later, but Guang Hong didn't look lonely. He got along just fine with the older Chinese male as they chatted in their native language. But one of them must have said something wrong because they stopped talking and looked at each other oddly.

"I don't understand you," Guang Hong finally said with furrowed eyebrows.

"Nether do I," He Long replied. The Chinese males continued to stare at each other until the older one snapped his fingers. "Where do you come from?"

"Beijing."

"I'm from Shanghai."

Guang Hong made an "oh", nodding in understanding. The others looked on until the youngest skater took notice of them. "China has a standard language, but there are several dialects that depend on the region of the country."

"But are there similarities?" Phichit asked.

"Some," Guang Hong said. "I can speak a dialect of Mandarin, but He Long speaks a dialect of Chinese that's totally different from it. We can't understand each other at all."

"Ah…" Yūri looked deep in thought until he turned to Chris. "Isn't French the same way?"

"Oui, my friend." The Swiss man draped an arm over Yūri's shoulders. "But enough about languages. Tell us how you met He Long, Yūri. I'm dying to know."

"Da, Yūri." The Russian leaned closer to his student, eager to hear the story.

"W-well, He Long is a fashion design major," Yūri began. So that explained the young man's appearance. "He graduated at the same time I did."

"But how did you meet him?" Viktor corrected.

Yūri fidgeted in his seat, taking in a deep breath before letting it out. "...He was in my acting class."

This made Chris and Viktor pull away from Yūri, stunned. "You took acting?" Of all the things Viktor was still learning about Yūri, this took the cake so far.

"You didn't tell your coach, Yūri?" Phichit exclaimed.

"I wanted to get my nerves under control," Yūri explained nervously under Viktor's inquiring gaze.

"It didn't seem to work, did it?" Chris noted, examining the Japanese skater's face as if it would tell him Yūri's secrets.

"Oh, it did," Phichit said, tapping his phone screen before scrolling up. "But not in the way Yūri wanted."

"He's no ham actor," He Long added. "Anyone with eyes could tell Yūri was the professor's favorite student."

"I wasn't that good!" Yūri insisted.

He Long stared at Yūri with wide amber eyes, clearly in disbelief. "Not that good? Yūri, when the professor found out you weren't going into acting, he begged on his hands and knees for you to change your mind!"

"He asked me to consider it!"

"You didn't even rehearse your role for the midterm and you got an A on the whole thing! How did you even do that?!"

"I just aced the written test, that's all!"

"Actually, it wasn't," Phichit said to Chris, Viktor, and Guang Hong. All of them sat back and listened to the two debate Yūri's "terrible" acting skills. "Everyone had to pick a role for the acting portion of the midterm exam. If they didn't do it, the highest grade possible would have been a D. For his midterm, Yūri had to act like an arrogant douche."

Yūri, arrogant? He did tend to become more distant and self-centered during competitions. But Viktor had a hard time envisioning a Yūri as arrogant as last year's bronze medalist at the Grand Prix Final. Jean-Jacques Leroy tended to rub off on people the wrong way.

Viktor's face must have betrayed his thoughts, if Phichit's next words were anything to go by. "I don't know how he did it either. Yūri had so much trouble with that role because he doesn't have a single mean bone in him."

"—and our final, when we all had to put on The Hunchback of...Notre...Dame..." He Long's voice trailed off, drawing the attention back to the former classmates. Yūri was doing his best to avoid He Long's eyes. He didn't need to: He Long had lowered his head and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

"It certainly got quiet," Chris said cheerily. "Now what were you saying about The Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

Yūri flushed red and sunk into his seat. He Long looked at the ceiling and whistled. They looked incredibly reluctant to share, but Phichit gaped in realization. "Oh...Oh!" he gasped before scrolling through his camera roll furiously. "How could I forget The Hunchback of Notre Dame!"

"Do you know their secret, Phichit?" Chris, being seated directly opposite of the Thai skater, leaned forward.

Phichit let out a laugh that clearly told Yūri he was up to no good. "At the very beginning of the class, their professor told them they all had to be in a play as part of their final grade. They took acting in the summer, so it didn't get in the way of competitions," he added when Chris gave him a questioning look. Once he found what he was looking for, Phichit handed his phone to Chris. "Here you go."

Viktor had to crane his neck to see what Chris was looking at. It must have been good to make the Swiss whistle appreciatively. When Chris handed off the phone to Viktor, the Russian nearly did a double-take at what met his eyes.

No, it wasn't the knight—who could only have been He Long—who caught his attention. Viktor's eyes were on the dark-haired actor on stage with the knight. His shirt was slightly loose and unlaced, meant to show off his chest, while a hip scarf was tied at the waist and a pair of pants came down to mid-calf. The actor's hair, tied back in a low ponytail, was artfully arranged to give him an untamed look. The overall look was androgynous but seductive as well, much like the costume Yūri wore for Eros.

"That was one of the scenes where He Long was on stage with Yūri," Viktor could hear Phichit say.

"You were a gypsy, Yūri?" Chris asked the young man sitting between himself and Viktor.

"Not just any gypsy," the Thai skater said proudly. "Yūri was Esmeralda."

"What?"

"I wasn't really Esmeralda!" Yūri squeaked.

"Now that you mention it, you're right." Phichit held his chin like a wise man. "He Long, what did the producer say he wanted to do?"

"His exact words," He Long began in a low voice, his eyes still on the ceiling, "were 'Fuck it, The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes gay'."

Chris guffawed while Guang Hong blushed at the obscene word that left the older Chinese male's mouth. "So what did you end up calling him?" Viktor asked. The suspense was killing him—how could they be so cruel?!

"Our producer was obsessed with Greek history and mythology," Yūri groaned.

"He was also a genius," Phichit laughed. "He Long was Phoebus, so Esmeralda became Eros."

Yūri could feel Viktor's eyes boring into him. He didn't need to look at his coach to know that he had that sickeningly sweet smile that hid how annoyed he really was. "Yūri~" The Russian drawled. "Why didn't you ever bring this up whenever you practiced Eros?"

"I-It's not something I like to talk about," the Japanese man mumbled.

"But Yūri~!"

"He's really embarrassed about it, Viktor," the Thai skater explained. "During the middle of the play, Yūri had to kiss He Long."

"What?!"

Author's note:

He Long is the OC I created to be Yūri and Phichit's costume designer. As mentioned above, Yūri met him during his summer acting class. Phichit, on the other hand, had a tentative friendship with He Long in the beginning.

While He Long and Guang Hong both speak Chinese, they're most comfortable using their local dialects than the standard. Because China is a huge country, there are different dialects of Chinese depending where you are. I like to believe that Guang Hong speaks a Mandarin Chinese dialect that's used in Beijing. He Long, on the other hand, speaks a Chinese dialect called Wu, also known as "Shanghainese". For example:

Yá yà—"Thank you" in the Wu—Shanghainese—dialect.

Xiè xie—"Thank you" in the Mandarin dialect.

Also, follow me on tumblr! My tumblr handle is madamfacilier!