November 16, 2014 - Fukuoka to Hasetsu

[theglassheart]

The flights end up late, and it feels like he's chasing the ghost of a glimmer of light, one that he's already lost sight of, again, across an entire world of night. Leaving in the dark of Russia's night, and the windows never brighten. Even as hours and hours pass. He doesn't think he'll sleep, but he ends up sleeping in fits and starts anyway.

He didn't sleep well the night before, or the night before that. Which isn't all the unusual. Not during competition. But he wasn't forced by Victor to try to sleep during the middle of the day, and he didn't try to catch even a few hours sleep before his flight. He didn't touch the beds except to put his suitcase on it and fold things next to it.

Adding to those, his performance drained everything that was left in him.



He still dreamt shoddily. He dreamt he never made it.
He dreamed they recounted the numbers and he was too far under.
He dreamed and blurred the skate at Rostelecom with his one at his last Grand Prix Finale.

When he was luckiest, he dreamed of nothing. He simply slipped into that ebony, endless black. An embrace of pure exhaustion that didn't feel like sleep, and left him feeling more exhausted, more run over, but at least it didn't startle him awake in the middle of a panic, heart racing, eyes stinging, clutching the armrests, unable to catch his breath at first.

When he can't sleep, he stares unfocused out the window. Or at the barely there shape of his reflection in the double-paned glass of the window. Has the strangest, exhausted snippets of conversations. With Yakov, and Yurio, and Victor, so many times Victor. That start with words they've said, or might say, and ripple out from there.



Anxiety, and exhaustion, and too much waiting again, even more than before the skate. Unable to move from this spot. He looks at his phone more than he should, because he can't convince himself to let go of it most of the time, but he doesn't bother Victor. He's sleeping, he convinces himself several times. And when he might not be, with Maccachin, finally, he tells himself in others. Mostly he tells himself, he'll be there soon, closing the phone. Over and over. He can wait. He's made it this long.

There's so much time to wait, so much to say and he has no one else but himself to say it to. Which had always been true before, too, except now it isn't. Now he has so many things he needs to say to Victor. Victor, who still hasn't started lecturing him, and the longer that goes on, the more he starts to fret that is what is waiting for him in Fukuoka. Like skating to Victor at the side of the rink and it starting. Maybe when he walks in, then it'll start.



It makes his stomach tighten, even when he wants that if that's what it takes. If it'll put Victor back in front of him, he'll listen to the entire thing from beginning to end now. His stomach growls, after his exhausted anxiousness chases that tail for the next half hour, playing different tracks of that lecture, in the airport, with all of those people watching, and leaves him staring at the call button. Thinking about calling for another snack. Or another sealed meal, if he could.

(He's not going to eat the last Pirozh-katsu, long since cold, but wrapped up carefully in its brown paper bag, waiting in his backpack in front of his feet. It may have been given to him, a birthday present or congratulations, to be shared with Yurio, but that one, the very last one, isn't for him.)



What feels like an infinity of hours later still, the announcement overhead starting,
as the wifi finally picks up again, Yuri finally opens his phone, and starts typing,

We just landed.

Comments

[theglassheart]

The new couple on the ice start their routine, weaving in and out of that spotlight and the darkness around it. The dizzying difficulty of that and how much it takes away from focus and spacial gaging, but how little it matters for this. For the Gala. For the performance that is just the celebration of having made it, and those specifically requested to join it.

It's harder to feel, even if he remembers, that he was in one only a week ago. Harder to feel, after this weekend, that he'll be in the next one. Even if he wants it. He does. (He'd wanted this one, too.)

Yuri's eyes still track to Victor, head turning a little more each time he talks, to see Victor's face next to his. (He's so beautiful.) The profile of it and his mouth moving, as he speaks. (He's still real.) The soft settled first word coming from Victor being the one Yuri had almost used. Or settled on a second too late to fix what he'd used. That alone made his chest warm with a strange, stronger thump distracting him and maybe just very barely the top of his cheeks while Victor just goes on without noticing, without really calling him out on it, even if his heart feels like he did.

He has to swallow a little harder to get to: "Maybe."

It's uncertain, even when Yuri does truly hope that it's happened. The idea of it making him squint a little more at the screen, even when he knows it's hopeless and he'd never be able to recognize a person he's never met in an audience barely clear enough to seen as a blob of shadowed people with almost all the arena lights off.

"He made it to the las--oh." It catches under foot, in his thoughts, from the conversation in the bar booths to the conversation in the snow, about his Grandfather and everything from there out. "Oh!"

Yuri stillness is broken by absolutely everything but that suddenly. His hand on Victor's arm tugging it, harder, with an actual grip, this time up off of him. His body. Both of his hands prying off both of Victor's arms. As Yuri's already pushing up from sitting, trying to get him legs under him, with a glance at the screen for how much time he has while he's already trying to launch himself toward scrambling, ungracefully, off one side of the bed.

[fivetimechamp]

There's only a moment of thinking that Yuri told the truth and Victor could believe it before it turns out to be a lie. Yuri scrambling out of his arms, pushing at them and putting Victor's idle thought about how he would let go if Yuri asked for it to the test -- but he does let go, shifting to try and get his leg out of the way even as Yuri's climbing over it and pelting toward the door. "Yuri?"

It's too sudden for him to be anything but surprised, but it takes only seconds for everything else to sink in, cold teeth gnawing into his stomach. "What -- ?"


He doesn't even know what to ask. "What's wrong?"

[theglassheart]

There's an ungainly near-fall between himself, his-knee-that-wasn't-his-foot, and one hand getting off the bed. More force in the propulsive need of movement than exacting choice in where his feet or hands or self were going -- aside from toward the door. But he manages it, as Victor's hands slip away and Victor's voice is a question.

But he might not have enough time to explain it first. Not if Victor was right, if it was next, and that means his socked semi-skidding, not quite tripping, slightly hopped, dash, around the coffee table, doesn't come to anything like a stop until his hand is on the thin frame of the door, and Victor's questions, unanswered are gaining speed and more words, and the wrong (tone? sound?) ... everything?

He looks back, taking in Victor's wide open -- cut open? Is it that one more than the other? -- look of both shock and concern suddenly blown all over his always perfect features. (Or is that ... fear?) It can't -- isn't -- shouldn't ever -- not for Yuri. Because of him. Not after just going what can't be twenty feet. It makes him almost want to go stumbling back to Victor and Victor's bed. Do whatever it could to take that away. Whatever it is. Whether he's wrong or right. But.

There's none of that time. Still. No time.

Yuri points at Victor, eyes not leaving him, even when the clock is ticking down the back of his head into his spine, and he pushes as much certainty, as much force as possible into each of his words. "I'll be right back. Don't move."

Before he's then out the door, and dashing to his own room. Everything piled on his bag when he got undressed gets shoved, with even less ceremony than the earlier lack of it, around his bag, that he jerks upright. Pulling at the zipper, and digging in for the brown paper bag.

[fivetimechamp]

He's pushed up into a half-undone knot, one knee fallen to the bed, along with his hip, that hand on the mattress holding him up while he tries to decide if he's going to get up and follow Yuri, or not.

(Was it really fine?)

Before he can come to some sort of conclusive decision, though, Yuri pauses, one hand on the door jamb and the other pointing at him like he's aiming a spear, and tells him not to move. He'll be right back.

Before he's gone, in a confusion of footsteps that disappear down the hall in the direction of Yuri's room, only to be followed by rummaging sounds that do nothing to clarify Victor's confusion, even if the worry begins to slowly dissipate. If Yuri will be right back –– if Yuri doesn't want him to move –– then maybe whatever it was that had Yuri scrambling away from him and off the bed didn't have anything to do with how he was being held or what Victor was saying during it.

Even if Victor can't imagine what else it could have been.
Even if Yuri being back in his own room, where he'll be later tonight –– because that's where he sleeps and they've always lived through sleeping in separate rooms before –– means Yuri is out of sight again, and it runs ice through Victor's veins, slowly squeezing his stomach.


Uncertain if he should ignore Yuri's command and go follow him, find out what it was that made him run, get the truth if it turned out to be Victor after all.

Unwilling, and still too startled, to disobey, even as every second Yuri's gone ticks with agonizing slowness into his chest, counting down to the second when he won't be able to take it anymore. "What are you doing?"

[theglassheart]

His fingers catch in the brown paper, not shuffled too far from the top front. He had been trying to keep it in one piece, without breaking it or smashing it too badly for the care and travel. As soon as it's in hand Yuri is headed back into the hallway. Two steps put him already in Victor's doorway, even as he considers the hall corner to the stairs, and the family kitchen beneath them.

It's been the better part of a day since he got them, but he doesn't even really know how short or how long to warm it up, does he? And they hadn't even been warm when Yurio gave them to him (it's almost your birthday, right?), and he'd still loved it then, right? And that might be too long, if Victor's guess is right and Yurio is up next. Even if he told Victor to yell down if Yurio came on, he might have to wait for it to finish, and then he'd miss parts of it.

Plus. He might ruin it. What did he know of Russian food except how to point to what he wanted and then eat it?

A second, two, maybe three's thoughts, before he turns back into the room, and Victor, and the back of the laptop that is still not playing Angel of the Fire Festival yet. Victor's face still doesn't look calm either and it makes his steps back a little faster than the pause in the hallway, if not as much a mad dash as getting out of the room and into his own had been. It's a little more awkward figuring out how to crawl, using only one hand and his knees once he reaches the bed.

"Here." He held out the bag to Victor, while -- after one maybe too obvious pause considering staying where he was or the spot he'd originally sat down on the bed next to Victor or whether he was brave enough, before -- working on getting himself back to the spot that he'd so quickly left from. Hoping it's not an imposition after running off now.

[fivetimechamp]

There's no response from Yuri, and Victor would be a liar if he said he wasn't thinking about throwing Yuri's order to the wind and following him. Yuri isn't the one who gives orders, after all, he's the one who listens –– but it's enough of a surprise that Victor can't quite seem to get a grip on it. Yuri telling him to stay put. Yuri running off, saying he'd be back.

Yuri now walking quickly back through the door, to a swell of painful relief that rushes like water through a crack into Victor's chest, only to hold out a brown paper bag. Nondescript, of the sort a parent might use to pack a lunch for their child, now wrinkled and softened. Was it in his bag? "What's ––"

Which is about all he has time to say, the beginning of a question tripping up his tongue, before Yuri, errand now apparently complete, is crawling back onto the bed and directly back into his lap, the way Maccachin returns to a warm divot made in a blanket or his bed.

Yuri. Pushing himself straight back into the space he'd left, between Victor's legs and against Victor's stomach and chest, as Victor's hands hover in surprise, one open and uncertain, the other gripping the bag that had been handed to him, and whatever it is that's inside. "Are you ––"

What's he even asking? He has no idea what to make of the last few moments. Every time he opens his mouth, it's like trying to start a car that's run out of fuel, settling finally for: "What is this?"

In his hand. In his bed. (Yuri, who'd yelped in surprise earlier, and not even been able to relax, settling himself in Victor's lap like a dog.

Yuri, who even after a week and a half, hardly ever reaches out to touch him, but is currently settling himself against Victor's stomach and chest.)

He has no idea what's happening on the screen right now, too busy trying to discern what's happening right here.

[theglassheart]

He's still not entirely certain about this latest choice still (too big, too reaching, too something, something, something else, twists his stomach, selfconciously) and in that his cheeks are a pinkening at the top, but in not helping that, so is the strange amusement that starts cluttering up at the top of his chest, pressing warmth into his face in a completely different way.

When Victor can't seem to get to the end of a question -- but hasn't put a hand on Yuri's arm or his shoulder to stop him, which might mean this is okay (even if he, also, isn't touching Yuri now ... which might mean it isn't? ) -- and his stricken confusion has turned into something more like befuddlement.

Yuri can't even explain to himself how when he feels his mouth curve into a smile more than feels like he chooses it. He turns a little more in this position, when -- there's really not room to is there? But he still turns the upper part of his body so he can look at Victor's face and the way he's frozen, holding the bag and staring at Yuri.

Victor rarely looks this confused or surprised about anything. He can't help the slippery feeling of something like accomplishment flopping in and out of himself. There's a nearly affectionate side tip of Yuri's head, looking from Victor to the bag and back to Victor. It's something almost amusingly brushing the ghost of shy fingertips between both logic and teasing when Yuri says the obvious. "You'd know if you open it."

Hoping Victor likes it. Hoping it's still good. Hoping it made it.
Fretting whether he should have taken a second to check in the bedroom.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri twists to look at him, with that expression –– that pert expression, one Victor's unused to seeing on his face, and it's as surprising as anything else. Yuri teasing him.

Not that he hasn't seen it before, Yuri pert and amused. Yuri has certainly teased him plenty of times, about everything from his excitement about trying something new to getting a word or term in Japanese laughably wrong to this, now. Victor like a fish flopping on land, trying to figure out how to move and talk and think like he normally does.

But Yuri's settled now, and that's beginning to settle him, too. There's no evidence that Yuri's about to run back off again, or even move anywhere else. He'd come right back here, hadn't he? Back to Victor's lap. Back to the circle of his legs and arms. Allowing Victor to carefully, cautiously, lean back towards him, legs shifting closer, arms enclosing so he can roll the bag open between two hands. It has the added benefit of curling him back around Yuri, chin going back to Yuri's shoulder, as Victor tips the bag's contents into one hand, pausing with bemusement before crumpling the brown paper. "Pirozhok?"

That's what this is, isn't it? Small but hefty, a gloss of egg wash and the scent of yeast, and there's no reason for Yuri to have brought this back, is there? "Why did you give me this?"

Why not eat it on the way back? Unless he thought Victor might want it, a small token of Russia to have now that he's left again, but Victor has never mentioned pirozhki as one of his particular favorites.

He's so bewildered he doesn't even notice when the pairs on the screen finishes and the livestream breaks for a commercial.

[theglassheart]

A slow flame of delight goes licking itself into life in the center of Yuri's chest and the top of his stomach as Victor seems to slowly head toward unstuck. Victor shifts closer to him, not quite hesitantly, but there's almost something like that to it. Almost enough Yuri thinks he should say something (apologize?), but then Victor's arms are around him, thighs framing his legs, emptying the bag between the two of his hands, over Yuri's lap, while Victor's head settles back on Yuri's shoulder to see over the one and into the other.

Yuri's relieved, a full breath draining out his nose, when it falls into Victor's hands still very much in one piece.

A little worn, but not broken. Victor's question is the same one that had come out of Yuri's own mouth when he first opened the bag full of the not yet named pirozh-katsu, but the comparison really does stop there. From the winter of Moscow, to warm and quiet of Yu-Topia. From the snow and the cemented feet apart, to Victor wrapped right around him, doing this all but through Yuri.

Even the quiet way Yuri says, "Try it."
Solicitous, and not screamed, with swearing.


But he thinks Yurio must have felt some similar spark to the nebulous anticipation making Yuri's heart beat faster.

[fivetimechamp]

On the screen, someone is shilling a sports drink Victor doesn't recognize, but it's all just background noise, when Yuri is still being elusive and amused, even tucked right back here against Victor's chest and stomach. He's half-turned, twisting at the waist to try and see Victor's face, and really Victor would rather take advantage of this new angle to kiss Yuri than to try a pirozhok brought all the way from Moscow ––

But there's this light of anticipation gleaming in Yuri's eyes, and that's not something he sees all that often. It ought to be indulged, shouldn't it?

Yuri teasing. Yuri please and excited. Yuri curled in his lap, pushing his way back there without having to be asked or pulled.

Leaving Victor to smile, bemused but settling back down from the concerned surprise of earlier. "Okay, Yuri." What's wrong with trying it, after all?

It's not going to be quite right, he knows, when he bites into it: the crust is cold and chewy, not hot and fresh and crackly, but there's something else unexpected, that makes him frown as he chews, before he pulls the pirozhok away and peers into it. "This filling is strange."

It's...rice? And pork, with some sort of breading, probably once crispy, now soggy, and ––

"Eh?" His eyes go wide and blinking, and he looks at Yuri with astonishment. "Katsudon?"

Not really, not with the right flavors or textures –– although it was probably closer when it was fresher –– but it is unmistakably a Russian take on Yuri's favorite food. "Where did you get this?"

[theglassheart]

It's the true surprise, when Victor finally figures it out, that's the best.

Almost blinding, dragging Yuri's mouth into a full unchecked smile, even if he ducks his head and looks up through his lashes, just to see it, just to be the courier between where this all started and sharing his own surprise and delight at receiving them with Victor. Getting to see Victor filled with the same absolutely unprepared recognition.

It doesn't seem like there is anything else in the world, not of merit, when Victor's blue eyes are wide and he's suddenly looking so completely focused at Yuri, engaged in a way they hadn't been seconds ago, humoring Yuri but more by patient politeness than interest. "Yurio--"

Except that's true, with being exactly true. "His grandfather made them." How and why, he's still not entirely sure, other than that Yurio must have truly loved his mother's katsudon. "He--" There's a small pause, and the faintest small bob of his head, with a sort of floating shrug, like it might still be half more question than certainties, like the whole of the last day and a half feels sometimes now. "He gave them to me."

Another slightly small beat. "For my birthday." Sort of? Offhandly?
With that thrown in there as he'd thrown the bag on top of Yuri in the snow?

He still needed to tell his mother in the morning. To make a list of what all his mother used.

[fivetimechamp]

"Yurio?"

His surprise is mixing with faint wariness, a bitter tinge in all the bemusement. His last few run-ins with Yurio have been unpleasant in the extreme ––

(I would rather eat ground glass than spend it with you and the pig)

–– and as much vitriol had been thrown his way, even more had been tossed, careless and cruel, at an absent Yuri.

(if you think you're going to beat me in my own home, you can take that thought and go fuck yourself with it.
You and the pig and that Canadian prick,
all of you)

Yurio, who had turned in a suicidally aggressive free skate and scraped out a new personal best. For whom performing in Moscow was always going to be fraught, but ended up being a source of tension for everyone around him, as well.

(See you in Moscow,
Coach Nikiforov)

There's no reason for Yurio to have shared this with Yuri, and, by extension, with Victor.
Yurio, as far as Victor can tell, hates them both.

It's why Victor couldn't understand why Yuri even considered staying in Moscow for half a day longer, long enough to see Yurio's exhibition. He'd asked if Yuri thought Yurio would do the same for him, but that answer is obvious, isn't it?

Wasn't it?

He opens his mouth to continue, but the screen flickers, and he glances at it, feeling a strange sense of inevitability at the newest figure. "Oh, Yurio!"

[yuri_plisetsky]

The main livestream camera steadily tracks Yuri as he takes to the ice. Even though the sound quality is not the best, it's possible to hear the crowd's cheering. After the explosive free skate he'd delivered to them yesterday, it's hardly surprising that the Rostelecom Cup audience would be more than a little curious to see what new stunt he might pull here, where there's no need to be concerned about what the judges might think.

Expectations notwithstanding, even Yuri Plisetsky knows that an exhibition program should be about enjoyment, not about point-scoring. And while The Angel of the Fire Festival is lighter and less driving in tempo than the Allegro Appassionato, it is still possessed of a certain breathless, whirling rhythm. So naturally, Lilia Baranovskaya has taken advantage of both the piece and the performer -- specifically, the performer's disconcerting flexibility -- to choreograph an exhibition skate full of fire and freedom, worthy of the Bolshoi's bold artistry and well suited to the Russian Fairy's notoriously inflammable temperament.

For a pair of older male skaters who know exactly how far their own bodies can bend, it might be difficult not to wince at least slightly when Yuri does something that seems to require a different number (or configuration) of vertebrae than either of them currently possess. Of particular note is a layback spin where he bends over backwards until his torso is parallel to the ice and his arms appear to rise and fall like flames dancing in a bonfire, a shimmering intensity that builds with the increasing speed of his spin as he lowers his free leg from its attitude position. Of the handful of jumps in it, the only quad among them is Yuri's beloved quad salchow, but it comes close to the end of the performance, part of the lead-up to a final spin combination that segues from the dizzying head-first dip of an illusion spin into the intricate twist of layover camel, rising from there into the demanding full-body stretch of a Biellmann, and finishing in a pose that makes him look like he's about to take flight and leave the earth behind him entirely.

In the midst of the cheers and applause from the delighted Russian audience, Yuri takes his bows, breathing hard from the exertion but nowhere near the point of collapse he'd been at when he'd completed the Allegro the previous day. Yet as he prepares to leave the ice, he pauses for a second and tilts his head to look up, away from the camera, his gaze fixed on something out in the tiers of seats in the darkness beyond. And whatever he seems to see there is enough to soften his expression, his usual fierce resolve (and some disappointment, still, for failing to carry off the gold medal here in Moscow) giving way to a hint of an actual smile.

It's a far cry from the snarling viciousness he'd flung at Viktor Nikiforov in the hotel lobby a few days earlier.

It's a pale echo of the unguarded happiness he'd shared with Yuuri Katsuki on a snow-caked street less than twenty-four hours before.

And then it's gone, as he turns and pushes off to make way for the next skater. But there's momentum beyond the movement itself, impatient and demanding. Calling his competitors onward to Barcelona, and the Grand Prix Final.




(Not much longer now, and he'll be home, too.
But home's right here, when you know that the right person is watching you.)

[theglassheart]

The question of continued surprise isn't so surprising. The sudden shout of Yurio's name a second after, is. It takes a blink to realize Victor is looking to the side of his face now, and Yuri turns his own head to follow Victor's gaze, to the inevitable. Yurio sliding out onto the ice, weaving in and out of the traveling spotlight. A splash of color, neither white nor red and black, on a slip of a boy, so much smaller on the screen than he was in real life. (Than he was in Yuri's head even.)

Yuri doesn't shift back to where he was when this started. Before the brown bag dash, back to couple at the beginning. He turns forward, but he stays where he is. The flush ( ... safe?) foundation that is Victor right behind his shoulders, chest raising in breaths against Yuri's back, when he tucks his head just slightly, to the side, against Victor's, leaning more than is intentional back into rather than out from. Watching the screen.

He's seen this routine before. After Skate Canada, after he'd watching JJ's and Emil's, completing it with Yurio's. It fits the not-quite-forgotten, but-not-entirely-memorable, watch of it during the week before he was headed to China. Yuri's not sure he really was watching it that time. Yuri's not sure what he's looking for in it now. Everything still quiets down and tenses up, inside of him, for it.

The relation of the two musical pieces picked is obvious, but so is the call and echo of the pieces, and so are the fingerprints on the moves. There's more aggression than grace in them, but aggression to the point just short of disaster had won him yesterday and Moscow, hadn't it? It was here, too. That breathless streaking speed, that turned it into sharpness rather than grace. Same as it was that speed that put him more in the shadow than the spotlight, making it chase him, distracting the eye.

It showed the bones of the artistry that made it, and the age of the six-month skills Yurio had new under his new teacher. He wonders what Minako thinks of it, sees in this. In Yurio's other programs. Yuri thinks, if he doesn't psyche himself out long before getting there, he'll ask her tomorrow, or sometime later this week. When he's back in her studio half the day, too. Whenever he's done avoiding meeting her eyes and listening to what he should have done better yesterday.


But it's the end that makes Yuri's heart tighten just a second (and his fingers curve, clutching softly, in parallel response on whatever it is they've fallen on since he last was thinking of them) in a way no part of the skating did. When Yurio looks to the crowd, off behind him, where the camera can't see and the darkness of the dim arena is too hard to parse anything but audience, and Yuri hopes even without certainty. For one small thing that is large enough to be everything, even in the murky din all around this -- whatever t h i s is ; was ; for one day, yesterday -- in Yuri's head.



Maybe especially when he's right here.

In Victor's bed, In Victor's lap, with Victor's breaths expanding Victor's chest against his back and something suspiciously faint like Victor's heartbeat is softly pelting away against his left shoulder blade. Sometimes one small thing -- one person ; the right person ; being there -- is bigger, and better, than anything else that could be named. Or given. Or earned. Or explained.

[fivetimechamp]

For a heart-stopping moment, he thinks Yuri's about to push back away again, that for some obtuse reason he decided to crawl into Victor's lap just to give him the pirozhok and was always planning to move somewhere else to watch Yurio skate ––

But then he relaxes back against Victor's chest, head tipping towards Victor's chin, and relief breaks through him like a popped water balloon.

How long has he wanted this? Longer than the last week, certainly. Longer than the last eight months. So long now he's almost forgotten what it was like not to want Yuri in his arms, leaning against him as if he were just another piece of furniture, head settled against his like this isn't the same Yuri who ran at Victor's touch only months ago, or who has barely reached out to touch Victor on his own whim even in the last week.

Now here, settled and easy, watching the exhibition with interest, while Victor tries not to just watch him.

(He'd promised they would watch Yurio together, but there's still a bitter, confused wrinkle in his chest when he thinks about the last words they spoke to each other, the way Yurio ripped away from him to stalk off both times.

Maybe he gave Yuri a birthday present, but that doesn't mean Victor's forgotten the things he said.)

It's lovely, of course –– full of the aggressive energy and cool precision that the Bolshoi are known for. Matching Yurio with Lilia Baranovskaya was a stroke of genius, the kind Yakov pulled seemingly out of thin air without aplomb. Nobody knows his skaters better: their strengths, their weaknesses, what it will take to mine the pure talent and forge it into something far stronger and more beautiful.

(He can still feel the hand that had come, after a pause, to his back.)

Neither of them speak while Yurio performs, and it's easy to see how he medaled. Even last year, impatient to get to his Senior level, Yuri Plisetsky had been several notches above anyone foolhardy enough to compete with him, and he's only gotten better under Lilia's stern tutelage.

(And maybe ––

possibly ––

from being here, too.)

He doesn't know what Yurio is looking for in the crowd at the end of the program, but he's distracted from trying to figure it out by Yuri's hand sliding to wrap around the forearm he's got wrapped around Yuri's waist, slim fingers squeezing like he needs some sort of reassurance that Victor's real.

Maybe it's the same sort of way Victor needs to know all this is.

Wrapping both arms around Yuri's middle now, and leaning his head against Yuri's, the pirozhok for the moment forgotten to the side. "He looks good."

[theglassheart]

"He always does."

It's a comment without hesitation, but also without compliment exactly.

It's a singular fact, above the rise of opinion, but never above the rise of personal comparison or the demons therein. (The loitering uncertainty.) He's one of six people to have attained a place at the Grand Prix Finale. He's one of four going there with two medals earned from the qualifiers. (Another thing Yuri wasn't.) Good was never going to be questionable. He'd still been good in the short program after he stopped being ... hurt, more than focused.

He doesn't know one way or the other. About Yurio's grandfather.

He probably wouldn't get an answer if he asked. He definitely wouldn't if it was a no.

Yuri frets a moment, as the camera cuts from Yurio's exit, to the girl skating on to taking his place. There's a blink of surprise when Yuri recognizes that face, too -- the girl who had congratulated him, right before he hugged her. Crispino's sister. He hadn't even heard that she placed. He felt even worse for Crispino for that. To medal, and yet not place, and for his sister to still place. There's a crinkle to Yuri's brow and press to his lips. Guilt and selfishness, and both barely a transitory distraction.

Her music starts and so does she, beautifully as well, while Yuri's gaze, along with his attention, slipped from the screen with an idea, looking down. Hands lifting for a second -- but, no. They were empty. He'd run into the other room and come back and -- where was it? He'd come with it originally. He was sure he had. He spotted his phone, finally, to a side, dropped in a muddle of blanket he'd crawled over earlier, and wiggled slightly lopsided in the hold Victor's arms (...and when exactly had that?) to grab it.

It's only the tap of three or four buttons to pull Instagram up, scroll a short distance to Yurio's name in someone else's slightly blurred still photo from the same just-seen skate, already screaming, to bring up his page, tag Message

but then sit there.

Staring at the blank empty window.
Hands frozen there, fingers unmoving.

He knows Yuuko-san and Yurio talk. Have. For months. Since they left. But they haven't. They don't. It's not that he'd argue Yurio likes him now. If this weekend hadn't happened. If Makkachin hadn't. If Victor hadn't. If 'He left you here alone, and I couldn't --' wasn't still hanging there, unfinished. Along with the brown bag. The green tea. The sidewalk. The swearing. And Yuri, staring at the blank screen.

[fivetimechamp]

Just as he's beginning to think Yuri has decided he wants to be here, right here, tucked up against Victor, he squirms and that sense of delighted certainty goes flipping out the window, and Victor is torn between loosening (or even letting go, horror of horrors) his arms and bodily hauling Yuri back again, wrapping legs as well as arms around him so he has to stop moving. Why does he keep moving?

Hasn't it been long enough, haven't they been good enough, haven't they been through enough over the last few days? All he'd wanted was to be here –– right here –– almost from the moment he left Moscow in a rush and a panic. "Yuri."

It comes out as plaintive as any of Maccachin's whines, watching someone eat a cone of ice cream or a pile of food that they are selfishly not sharing, and his arms do end up tightening, head pressing against Yuri's shoulder and the back of his neck. "Stop moving."

He does come back, is already coming back when Victor tugs at him, but he's looking at his phone, and his mind is a million miles away. He hasn't even explained that pirozhok he'd handed over so unceremoniously, and he hasn't just settled back against Victor, either. Surely after being away so long and having such a long and tiring week, he'd want to just lie back and relax, right?

Except he still isn't, and Victor pouts over his shoulder, mouth twisting slightly as he watches what Yuri's doing on the phone. Everything he feels about Yurio is so reluctant, tied up in annoyance and confusion and stung pride. Anger on Yuri's behalf, sadness on his own.

After all, they were rinkmates, once. "If you write something, tell him I say he looked good."

[theglassheart]

What starts as a wave of exasperation, turns with curve and surge Yuri isn't expecting.

He'd never planned to move than a few tipping inches to one side and one of his legs to grab his phone, never even to leave where he was sitting for more than to grab it, but what happens in the flick of the few seconds it takes to wrap his hand around his forgotten phone and tip back and into it, isn't what happened earlier.

Instead of letting go of him, Victor's arms tighten like a seat belt. Instead of his name turned question, it's almost pleading. A whine as Victor's face and forehead bury into his shoulder, and his neck, causing Yuri to shiver and almost drop the phone in his hand. His heart swelling in his chest with an overwhelmed wave of warmth. Suddenly not sure he ever wants Victor's grip to lessen from vice-tight, or Victor to pull back. From being pressed right into him. (From refusing to even let him move a few inches?) From Victor chastising him for even the ghost of the assumption of appearing to leave again.

"Okay." He nods, a little fast, a lot without air. Maybe because it's easier than the blank screen. Victor is easier than the blank screen. (Victor is easier than trying to put words together; than the voices in his head telling him he's definitely wrong; than Yurio; Yurio's constant barrage of sharpness; the memories of only yesterday.) He swallows, looking over at Victor and his shoulder, more than the inside of his own head. "Okay. Not moving. No more moving."

It's more careful than it was earlier, but Yuri leans back, even though he hardly needs to with the hold Victor has on his middle. But he still does. Like maybe it'll help. Even if it's a precarious shift, being thought of and done, even when his eyes drift back to the phone in his hand, the empty message box, and then up again, heart a little too fast, in a circuit, to the Italian Girl, Crispino, skating on the screen of Victor's laptop.

Just as she does an incredibly difficult triple lutz, followed by a triple loop and the entire crowd goes mad for it, and her.

[fivetimechamp]

Okay, says Yuri, but Victor just holds on, suspicious of being humored, until it becomes clear Yuri really means it. The not moving. The no more moving. Agreed upon with a breathless rush of words that Victor finds personally, thoroughly, vindicating.

Taking a second, but leaning back almost to where he was before, so Victor's arms can relax and he can sit back, himself, against the headboard and pillow to give Yuri a comfortable slope to lean against. On the laptop screen, Sala Crispino is finishing up her exhibition, but Victor isn't paying attention: he already has plenty to focus on. For example:

Yuri, and the way Yuri's back and ribs and chest and stomach expand with each breath, making Victor's arms drift gently up and down. The faint but steady beat of his heart, thudding through his back and against Victor's chest. His travel-rumpled hair, smudged at the edge of Victor's vision, when he lifts his head again, only to press his cheek against Yuri's temple. Feeling like a sigh. Or maybe like there are words trying to clamber over one another, up from his chest and out his throat.

How is it possible that in getting everything he'd been wishing for, that ache has gone nowhere, has only sharpened?

All of everything running into each other. Apologies for leaving, discussin of Yuri's free skate, questions about how he's doing, what he wants, needs, expects, hopes for, tangling into a knot in his throat he doesn't know how to untangle, so he asks: "do you want to keep watching?" instead.

They watched Yurio. He has no interest in watching, who is it, JJ? take to the ice again, and while he might look up the routines from the ice dancers or the other ladies, he's happy enough to shut the laptop off.

Maybe all the lights, too.

(Now that Yuri's home, maybe they can both finally get some sleep.)

[theglassheart]

Victor's arms don't loosen like he expects they will, and Yuri can't explain how that somehow feels ... perfect. Solid, just the edge of hardness that's a lingering warning, but more than that. Just. Just solid. Just Victor holding on to him. Just him being here. Really here. Steady. Weighted. Like he's not allowed to fade away, drift away, shift, float off the bed. Be anywhere else, but right here. Why is it that makes it feel easier to breathe?

He knows he's home. He knows Victor is here. He does. (Doesn't he?) He does right now.

Even as Victor's arms do finally relax and he leans back against the back of the bed instead of still straight into Yuri's back, like a wall, or the body of an octopus, or the back of a chair. Still around him, but relaxing by parts, and pulling back to there, too. Leaving Yuri's heart to stumble steps is disoriented confusion, like it hadn't been his breath that caught in that hold, but all of his blood, maybe all of his self.

Yuri scoots a little more backward, not exactly looking back or to the side, not certain he could explain, or keep himself from blushing, not certain he wants to be any further away than he had been seconds ago. Than Victor had made them, made himself. Even if it was only supposed to be as a punishment for thinking Yuri was about to tumble off the bed on another mission. His fingers tighten on the only half-forgotten phone in his hand when Victor's cheek presses the side of his face.

Maybe more than half, when Victor's voice drifts quietly from that spot, not far above his ear and Yuri has more of urge to turn and bury his face -- in Victor's shoulder, Victor's neck, into Victor's arms the right direction -- than try to work his way through the confused muddle of something he's not sure what he's supposed to do about. Knows even what to do with. Wants to. It's a small question though.

(A lot simpler, and less stressful, than constructing a first-ever sentence.)

"We can?" Yuri answers, but the two words are more question than demand, and his shrug is mostly half-hearted.

He'll have to watch JJ at some point, but he doesn't really care about watching JJ now. He didn't have to watch JJ. There wasn't a need for that tonight. Like Yurio. Like staying if Yurio's grandfather couldn't come. Like feeling defensive at Victor's response on the phone, and guilty at the same second for coming home, even if Yurio knew it before he said it. It wasn't like that snarl of snapping ends, with too many teeth.

He'd have to do it sometime this week. Watch JJ from Canada, and whatever stops he might be hiding.
JJ Leroy, with his two gold medals, from Canada and Russia, who was the biggest contender for the Finale.

But it wasn't necessary.

[fivetimechamp]

He shifts backwards, but so does Yuri, following him until he's flat against Victor's chest again, and Victor's arms can firm around him again. Leaving Yuri's head resting against his collarbone and shoulder, low enough Victor's cheek is in his hair and at his temple, and his mouth is at Yuri's ear. Last week, after that night in Shanghai, or even only a few days ago, he'd be taking advantage of this position to run the edge of his teeth delicately along the shell of Yuri's ear, or mouthing his way down the line of Yuri's neck, but tonight feels different.

Calmer. Sweeter? The only heat rising a slow and steady welling of gratitude in his chest. (All of this could have ended so differently, and so badly, for both of them.)

"Didn't I say you should get to bed right after you watched Yurio?"

Yuri's ear is right there, so his voice is pitched low, barely making its way out of his chest, where he can feel it vibrate against Yuri's back. And isn't that a novelty, too? "You need to get some rest."

So does he. So does Maccachin. All of them could use a good night's sleep, uninterrupted and uncurtailed by alarms or morning workouts. There's plenty to talk about, but they can do that in the quiet of a darkened room, can't they? He's not sure it's necessary to have the rest of the exhibition on. Exhibition skates are fun, but they're hardly indicative of what Yuri's rivals can actually do, and will never appear in competition. Thus, they're not worth staying up for.

At least, not tonight. "Aren't you tired?"

[theglassheart]

Yuri is nodding, even before he gets to saying, "A little."
At the same time as he's thinking he's always tired.

Except that is an over-embellishment, even in his head, because of how tired he is, and he knows it. Maybe it's more than a little. Maybe it's more than a lot. Maybe it's only been second after Panic and Despair for a day and half, and before that it was just mixed with Panic, for days. For maybe a week. Maybe two now. Maybe it's a little less of an embellishment.

Neither the words or the thought change the fact his reaction has nothing on that. His reaction is caught up in the dominoes of everything Victor just said, because Victor did say that, didn't he? Even if it makes Yuri's heart founder and tense, like it'd dropped into its own tight spin. Makes him want to reach up and grip his hands over Victor's arms around him, because it doesn't make sense that not even half a minute later--

"But." His voice is the edge of a tremble, pressing. "Didn't you just say not to move?"

Maybe it's childish. Maybe it's an excuse. Maybe it's exhaustion. Maybe it's jet lag. Maybe it's competition burn out.

Maybe it's the phone still in his hand, and the laptop still playing, and that somewhere there's part of piroshki on Victor's bed somewhere, and everything of Yuri's is still on his own bed, needing to be pushed onto the floor next to it. Everything feels disjointed. Started, stopping, hanging, frozen, not yet on to the next stop. Maybe it's all of it, all at once, but he still doesn't really want Victor to let go any more than he already did a minute ago.

[fivetimechamp]

"No moving," he reiterates, eyes closing and head dropping heavy against Yuri's. He's pleased that Yuri has grasped the concept, even if he doesn't know why Yuri would bring it up just now. He could probably fall asleep just like this and not even notice until his back hurt enough the next morning to wake him up/

They both need to sleep, but Yuri doesn't need to leave for them to do it.

He hadn't quite let himself think about that before, but he thinks about it now: how Yuri stayed next to him that night in Shanghai (and the one before, that he can't remember), how big and quiet this room seemed last night when he couldn't sleep without Maccachin's weight at his feet or Yuri warm and breathing soft and even next to him.

It's selfish. It's possibly inappropriate. It's entirely likely Yuri's parents and sister will be aghast, appalled, disapproving.

But he doesn't want Yuri to go. "Just stay here."

It sounds easier than it is to say. This isn't a hotel in Shanghai or Moscow where no one will notice or care or ever know who stays in what bed with what company, but he's not sure he cares. Not tonight. Not after the last few days. Not when there's so much to talk over, or say, that he doesn't know how to haul out into the light still on in this room, no matter how dim it might be.

Yuri leaned back into him. Yuri crawled back into his lap.

Yuri doesn't want to leave him, either, does he?

Arms tightening, a quiet, heartfelt request muffled into the crook of Yuri's neck. "Stay with me tonight.

"Please."

[theglassheart]

Victor isn't making sense. From one thing, to the other, and back to the first. When neither of those work at the same time and Victor is saying them, softly, stacking them, like decrees, only further confusing Yuri. Which isn't always a new thing, and it's definitely not, like this, during the last short while, but it's a little distracting from the sense or not sense making, when Victor is leaning his head into Yuri's.

The soft brush of Victor's skin and silky hair, against his neck, the far back side of his face he's never really thought of as existing until Victor's brushing against it. Even just passing it by, while whispering soft words, that start near his ear, but then sink, with Victor's head, into his shoulder, and, with an alarming sharp start, his heart.

"Victor!" The word slaps out of his mouth before the thought has done more than slap itself from his ears into his head, moving without thinking. Not up, but twisting within the tightened grip of Victor's arms, twisting enough to be able to see Victor's face, and for Victor to see his own, eyes gone wide with shock and surprise, perhaps, even in equal enough measure. This was -- he wanted -- here? -- but they were -- here, his home -- this wasn't -- there were -- his family was here --

There's a too fast, moment, when Yuri looks over his shoulder toward the half-open door, like somehow everyone in the building, his family, and even all the nights' patrons, must have been able to hear Victor's words, no matter how soft the whisper. Or the sudden race of Yuri's own heart. The one that started with those words, but refused to stop, only goes on escalating, in a wholly secondary way, while looking at Victor's face. Beautiful and worn, soft without the earlier concern or confusion.

The traitored muffle of a second echo, inside that too big surprise -- request? -- when he doesn't know how he hasn't been looking at Victor, instead of anything else, this whole time. Why he hasn't kissed Victor since back in Fukuoka. Something in his chest wheeling into painful birth and existence at the disastrous idea taking root through Victor's nonchalant impropriety, about the idea of not having to let go.

Not having to go away. Not having to be alone, alone, alone, alone, again. Not even for a few hours.

[fivetimechamp]

"Why not?"

Yuri is looking at him with undisguised shock, as if this is some impossible thing, as if it isn't something people do all the time. "Nobody's awake."

Nobody would care is what he wants to say, but doesn't, because they might. He supposes it's a possibility, slim though he thinks it is. Of all the people who might disapprove or dislike, he doesn't think Yuri's parents are among them, but that's an assumption based on knowing them only for a few short months.

But they're on the other side of the house, and nobody ever comes this way but him and Yuri anyway, mostly, and he's too tired to care what the world might think, right now. The world, or Yuri's parents, or anyone else who thinks they have a say in how he feels or what they do. "I only just got you back."

He doesn't want to give Yuri up again. Not so soon. Not after only a few hours, not when it's such a small thing, really, in the scheme of things, just spending the night here. It's not as if Yuri's comfortable with anything else yet, and honestly they're both so tired Victor doesn't think anything would happen even if he were.

There's no good reason, but there's every reason, when his arms tighten and he leans past Yuri's aghast face to rest his forehead in the crook of Yuri's neck, voice quiet. "Мне тебя не хватает."

False, on one level. He can't possibly still be missing Yuri, can he?
With Yuri right here?
In his arms?

And the truest thing he knows right now, on another.