It feels right in a way that cuts through skin and muscle and bone. The way exhaustion, right at the edge of breaking, after tracing figures all night for his head and then all day for his routines or jumps, feels right, on the razor of passing out. Victor’s chest against his chest, while Yuri’s heart races. Victor’s head tucked down against his head, while Yuri stays buried against him. Victor’s voice, saying his name, soft and drawn out, and Yuri’s eyes burn with that truth.
With every painful, somehow perfectly right, part of it.
He’d hugged almost all of his competitors, and one of them’s sister and none of them were this. This thing that makes him feel suddenly boneless and suddenly shored up all at once. That makes part of him tremble and another almost wants to whimper at his name, like that, the way only Victor says it. Like that. Like another syllable might break the dam Yuri’s tried to ignore, tried to keep from obliterating everything, for so long, and like not getting another syllable might actually kill him.
Victor goes on, while Yuri’s fingers don’t release the coat, but he has to open his eyes (has to see all the people both looking at them and very specifically not-looking-at-them) as Victor starts where Yuri knew he would. With yesterday. How is it that some part of him, even ready, even prepared, doesn’t want to talk about this. Not yet. Not this soon. Not in this second, where everything in him feels slices open, from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.
When he has to let go of this abandon to both acknowledge he’s making an improper scene, going on touching Victor like this, and at the same time has to actually collect his thoughts enough to think at all. To admit the same. All of this time, all of the time while Victor was gone, he never stopped thinking about Victor and what they are doing. It’s soft, muddled, against the fabric of Victor’s familiar coat. “Me, too.”
Yuri has to steel himself, has to clench his eyes against the burning in them, swallowing down the rebellious slicing burn that swells in his chest, like he’s thrown himself into the boards, riled against overwhelming need to speak before Victor can. To not wait. To not just listen. To tell him first. Before he can say anything. Start his lecture. Tell Yuri he's changing anything because of all of this, Maccahin and Moscow.
Against the pain, against the swell of just enough to be absolutely too much in his head, in his chest, in the world, Yuri’s hands lift to Victor shoulders and Yuri pushes Victor back, with all his strength, instead of just stepping back himself.
Even as it all gets messy looking at Victor’s face.
(He didn’t make it but he did.
Maccachin is alive, here, snuffling at his shoes.
They were supposed to be skating tonight, somewhere fairy lights hung from the sky, not here, in an airport, having these words.
He wasn’t supposed to come home with nothing. No medal, and a five-hundredth-of-a-point technicality.
But he’d found Victor. Out there, too. Even when Victor was gone.
Inside him. On the ice. Which had to mean something.
It did. It had to.)
“Be my coach until I retire.” It fires out of his mouth, even as some part of him feels the lightning strike of a devastatingly too near awareness in it. If this is only two days, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever make it at the end of these two months. Not anymore. Which drives the flare of even greater desperation and need that fuels the word he can’t stop. “Please!”
He needed Victor, needed every second and minute, until that happened.
Мне тебя не хватает, it rings, again, shrill in his ears.
no subject
It feels right in a way that cuts through skin and muscle and bone. The way exhaustion, right at the edge of breaking, after tracing figures all night for his head and then all day for his routines or jumps, feels right, on the razor of passing out. Victor’s chest against his chest, while Yuri’s heart races. Victor’s head tucked down against his head, while Yuri stays buried against him. Victor’s voice, saying his name, soft and drawn out, and Yuri’s eyes burn with that truth.
With every painful, somehow perfectly right, part of it.
He’d hugged almost all of his competitors, and one of them’s sister and none of them were this. This thing that makes him feel suddenly boneless and suddenly shored up all at once. That makes part of him tremble and another almost wants to whimper at his name, like that, the way only Victor says it. Like that. Like another syllable might break the dam Yuri’s tried to ignore, tried to keep from obliterating everything, for so long, and like not getting another syllable might actually kill him.
Victor goes on, while Yuri’s fingers don’t release the coat, but he has to open his eyes (has to see all the people both looking at them and very specifically not-looking-at-them) as Victor starts where Yuri knew he would. With yesterday. How is it that some part of him, even ready, even prepared, doesn’t want to talk about this. Not yet. Not this soon. Not in this second, where everything in him feels slices open, from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.
When he has to let go of this abandon to both acknowledge he’s making an improper scene, going on touching Victor like this, and at the same time has to actually collect his thoughts enough to think at all. To admit the same. All of this time, all of the time while Victor was gone, he never stopped thinking about Victor and what they are doing. It’s soft, muddled, against the fabric of Victor’s familiar coat. “Me, too.”
Yuri has to steel himself, has to clench his eyes against the burning in them, swallowing down the rebellious slicing burn that swells in his chest, like he’s thrown himself into the boards, riled against overwhelming need to speak before Victor can. To not wait. To not just listen. To tell him first. Before he can say anything. Start his lecture. Tell Yuri he's changing anything because of all of this, Maccahin and Moscow.
Against the pain, against the swell of just enough to be absolutely too much in his head, in his chest, in the world, Yuri’s hands lift to Victor shoulders and Yuri pushes Victor back, with all his strength, instead of just stepping back himself.
Even as it all gets messy looking at Victor’s face.
(He didn’t make it but he did.
somewhere fairy lights hung from the sky,
not here, in an airport, having these words.
No medal, and a five-hundredth-of-a-point technicality.
But he’d found Victor. Out there, too.
Even when Victor was gone.
Inside him. On the ice.
Which had to mean something.
It did. It had to.)
“Be my coach until I retire.” It fires out of his mouth, even as some part of him feels the lightning strike of a devastatingly too near awareness in it. If this is only two days, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever make it at the end of these two months. Not anymore. Which drives the flare of even greater desperation and need that fuels the word he can’t stop. “Please!”
He needed Victor, needed every second and minute, until that happened.
it rings, again, shrill in his ears.