It feels interminable, and impossible, how suddenly full of people the walkways and then the lines of the airport are. It’s busy, but not slammed, and he knows it, but it doesn’t feel like it. Every extra delay of a few seconds to a few minutes feels like it’s being scored somewhere in his skin. All of it tipping the boat back and forth, back and forth between impatience and reluctance.
Even with his bulky dark jacket, bright mask, and head down, he hears his name more than once, but it isn’t until the customs line that someone taps him on the shoulder, apologizing with a smile that isn’t, and asks for a picture. With the line ropes and dozens of people around them as witnesses, he can’t simply run away. Not even if all he wants is to get to where Victor is waiting and to find whatever is coming to him, them, there.
Victor wouldn’t run away. Victor wouldn't have to think about it.
Yuri can only hope his face looked anything like a smile.
(Not enough to ask the young boy who’d asked for the photo, or his mother who took the photo — or the some half dozen, or more, flashes of other people who drug out phones once they realized what was happening.
Not enough to ask, to know, to possibly have to take another.)
The line’s slowly trickle through their gates and booths, and papers are all checked. He’s getting closer and closer, as people dwindle away on this walk to waiting areas and baggage. He knows there are a lot of thing Victor might have stored up to say about yesterday’s skate, but there are a lot of things Yuri wants to tell him, too. Everything that both came together and fell apart since he had to leave.
Where is he even supposed to start?
How to know what to say first? How to pick?
There’s the bark of a dog someone's brought to the airport to one side of him, through one of the glass walls, and Yuri can’t help that he looks. It’s the definition of unthought and too hopeful and absolutely helpless all at once, and then, in the single slide of his gaze, as Maccachin runs for him and jumps at the glass wall between them — so exuberant, so excited, so far and so near and so very, very alive — everything else is just gone.
His heart giving a painful shot forward, like it was trying to meet Maccachin at that glass wall already, paws and lolling tongue and bright eyes, even as there’s a blind look up, for Victor, Victor who must — who is — right behind him. On the seats closest behind Maccachin, and Yuri gives a small gasp, just seeing Victor there. Collected and graceful — and tired looking? It’s so late, and he should have said he’d meet him at home — raising from his seat as Maccachin looks back at him, too, in that single second.
Yuri can almost hear the familiar whine Maccachin might be giving on the other side of the thick glass in that second, about the thing in his way, because it feels like everything in Yuri's chest compacts to a sound just like it, but at a suddenly decimating volume, shattering everything in his chest, with only one single clear thought: that he has to get to Victor. Now.
The end of the line, and the sliding doors, and Victor Victor Victor, and he just doesn’t care about walking in an orderly fashion, or the several people in front of him, because the next second he’s running, full out, arms pumping, gasping for air against shoving his mask down, not even looking where he’s going for long, because he can’t look away from Victor even just to get to him.
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It feels interminable, and impossible, how suddenly full of people the walkways and then the lines of the airport are. It’s busy, but not slammed, and he knows it, but it doesn’t feel like it. Every extra delay of a few seconds to a few minutes feels like it’s being scored somewhere in his skin. All of it tipping the boat back and forth, back and forth between impatience and reluctance.
Even with his bulky dark jacket, bright mask, and head down, he hears his name more than once, but it isn’t until the customs line that someone taps him on the shoulder, apologizing with a smile that isn’t, and asks for a picture. With the line ropes and dozens of people around them as witnesses, he can’t simply run away. Not even if all he wants is to get to where Victor is waiting and to find whatever is coming to him, them, there.
Victor wouldn’t run away. Victor wouldn't have to think about it.
Yuri can only hope his face looked anything like a smile.
(Not enough to ask the young boy who’d asked for the photo, or his mother who took the photo — or the some half dozen, or more, flashes of other people who drug out phones once they realized what was happening.
Not enough to ask, to know, to possibly have to take another.)
The line’s slowly trickle through their gates and booths, and papers are all checked. He’s getting closer and closer, as people dwindle away on this walk to waiting areas and baggage. He knows there are a lot of thing Victor might have stored up to say about yesterday’s skate, but there are a lot of things Yuri wants to tell him, too. Everything that both came together and fell apart since he had to leave.
Where is he even supposed to start?
How to know what to say first? How to pick?
There’s the bark of a dog someone's brought to the airport to one side of him, through one of the glass walls, and Yuri can’t help that he looks. It’s the definition of unthought and too hopeful and absolutely helpless all at once, and then, in the single slide of his gaze, as Maccachin runs for him and jumps at the glass wall between them — so exuberant, so excited, so far and so near and so very, very alive — everything else is just gone.
His heart giving a painful shot forward, like it was trying to meet Maccachin at that glass wall already, paws and lolling tongue and bright eyes, even as there’s a blind look up, for Victor, Victor who must — who is — right behind him. On the seats closest behind Maccachin, and Yuri gives a small gasp, just seeing Victor there. Collected and graceful — and tired looking? It’s so late, and he should have said he’d meet him at home — raising from his seat as Maccachin looks back at him, too, in that single second.
Yuri can almost hear the familiar whine Maccachin might be giving on the other side of the thick glass in that second, about the thing in his way, because it feels like everything in Yuri's chest compacts to a sound just like it, but at a suddenly decimating volume, shattering everything in his chest, with only one single clear thought: that he has to get to Victor. Now.
The end of the line, and the sliding doors, and Victor Victor Victor, and he just doesn’t care about walking in an orderly fashion, or the several people in front of him, because the next second he’s running, full out, arms pumping, gasping for air against shoving his mask down, not even looking where he’s going for long, because he can’t look away from Victor even just to get to him.