勝生 勇利, Katsuki Yūri (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theglassheart) wrote2017-03-26 12:16 pm
theglassheart) wrote2017-03-26 12:16 pm
November 16, 2014 - Fukuoka to Hasetsu
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,
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.
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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.
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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."
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"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
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.
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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."
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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"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.
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He can't know that his parents have gone to bed or are still puttering around the Onsen, or even the floor beneath them.
He can't know if there are patrons, two floors beneath and in the actual springs itself or the inn portions, even if those last ones couldn't make it up to here, no matter how the floor seems like it might be translucent and everyone in the building and out might be able to see them. Victor can't actually know what he's claiming. He's been up here the whole time since they got back, too.
But he leaves that one alone, for words that displace and replace and repaint his response entirely, with others that make Yuri's heart clumsy. I just got you back. Like Victor was the one who lost him. Like that's something that's even possible. Like Victor could lose anything. Like he -- but that thought is broken into another hundred pieces when Victor leans back in, even with him twisted to look back.
Victor's burying himself back against Yuri's shoulder and neck. Again. Saying it. Saying it like Yuri had tried to. Making his heart flounder and ache. Those words, gorgeous and perfect, inflection and emotion that internet recording never had, and the way Yuri certainly couldn't have managed to get anywhere near saying as fluidly as Victor says them, quietly, into his shirt.
I missed you.
have anything to fight that?
How is he supposed to have anything in him but a confused wash, and an ache that he never could define where starts or stops, for himself, or for that idea. That it even might be true. That Victor is holding on to him and saying that. Saying stay with me and I just got you back and I miss you, I need you.
A small, strained whisper in the furthest back of his head still asking wasn't this all supposed to change Victor's mind? Or bring him to his senses, and Yuri doesn't want that. That thought. That idea, when Victor is this close, and Victor keeps finding more words that stuff himself like balloons and lights into the small cavity of Yuri's chest, and the even smaller space of his mess of a heart.
But he doesn't want that.
He doesn't want Victor to want him to be anywhere else. (Right?)
He can't lift his arms above the tightened ring of Victor's arms around him, to put his arms around Victor. Or, or something. But he can move them slightly, even awkwardly turned, to slide on arm, after a pause and press forward of movement, into movement, around Victor leaning into him. Leaning his head against the side and back of Victor's buried against him. A tumble of feelings at odds with any of the rest of his world, any world he's known.
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He's not doing a very good job of making sure he does what Yuri needs, instead of just what he wants, and it makes him huff a sigh into Yuri's shirt collar. Is he the coach right now? Should he be?
A coach would shut the laptop and order Yuri to bed, with strict reminders about not setting an alarm for tomorrow. A coach would already have walked through the mistakes Yuri made in his free skate, and made notes for what to touch on once training starts back up again the day after tomorrow. A coach wouldn't be so desperate for Yuri's company that he'd threaten Yuri's peace of mind and sleep only to relieve his own.
(He's never been just a coach, though, has he?
Has only ever been just Victor, instead.)
Yuri's shifting against him, squirming to twist in his arms; not away, but toward. An arm slipping around him. Cheek and jaw resting, hesitant at first and then firmly, against his hair, and Victor wants to sigh again, a great shaky release of breath that won't relieve any of this pressure no matter how big it is. "You don't have to."
He should at least say that. Should offer it. He can't and wouldn't want to make Yuri stay here, if Yuri's going to worry the whole time and not sleep and resent Victor for asking him to do something he's not comfortable with. Another mistake in a week full of Victor's mistakes, all of which should be making Yuri think twice about getting involved with him, shouldn't they?
But Yuri's here, turning towards him. Victor's arms loosening enough to let him move, if he wants to, to wind up more like sitting across his lap instead of just in it, Yuri's side against his chest, instead of his back. If he wants to.
(He wonders if he'll be able to sleep, exhaustion or no, if Yuri decides to take the out he's been given.)
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He doesn't know how this keeps happening.
Victor. Victor. Who loves every new story about every new accessory for every passing holiday, and who doesn't run out of steam before trying all the most interesting dishes at any new, or even a restaurant they've been to many times. Who has absolutely no problem being so blunt the blades on his shoes are dull in comparison to how exactingly Victor tells him what's wrong, with his skating, with his own personality, all without warning.
Victor. That, and those, and every other thing. Who isn't. Doesn't. Has his face buried in Yuri's shoulder, Yuri's neck, talking into his shirt and his skin both. Just four words. They could get lost entirely in the space between Yuri's collar bone and the curve of his jaw up to his ear, but when has he ever managed to forget anything about Victor? Was there really ever a time before Victor?
What is he even supposed to say? How is he supposed to even form words? His parents? His house. Victor, and Victor's room, and Victor's bed. He's already here, in all of them, Victor wrapped around him. A new curve of the confused spiral he's in the middle of as Victor's arms suddenly start to loosen all around him again and Yuri's not ready -- for Victor to let go, for Victor to take another step further away and back from you don't have to even -- his heart tumbling as he turns maybe a little too quickly.
One knee staying bent and getting shoved more at Victor's leg, or aimed for under it. Or maybe through it. It's hard to know when all Yuri knows is turning, at least one leg tossing over Victor's, while one stays trapped and shoved under, and throwing his other arm around Victor. All a series of no no no no no that bashes against the back of his teeth and the inside of his ribs, without a first answer, but absolutely desperate not to be out of time.
Not to be let go. Even if this is probably the most awkward, backward, attempt anyone has ever made throwing themselves on Victor. He probably is. Definitely is. It's warm in his face, when what comes tumbling out is, "I missed you. Even if it was only--" But that stops, mortified even at that half started little. It's not the same words as earlier. It's not the same clarity of the feelings of that night, how hard it hit his heart, naming it the first second he saw that definition, and somehow it's even harder, like this, wrong, sliding back down into his throat like a rock.
In the language they both know and have used so long, because it's the island in the middle. Not Victor's, or his, but Victor's and his all the same, too. Especially this year, with Victor dropping into the lives here where English is not always as regularly spoken. But it's all there is. All he can say, trying not to highlight the stupidity of such a short time. So few days. Unraveling like that.
Unraveled. His lips press together at the image, but he doesn't pull away.
"I--" Fell apart. Almost couldn't find himself on the ice, at first. Lost, but won. Hugged everyone. But no one was Victor, no one felt right, no one else could fill up or take away that overwhelming, unmoored, unsteadied, part of him that: "-- missed you."
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He'd meant to give Yuri more space, more leeway, to keep him from feeling trapped, but no sooner do his arms loosen than Yuri's twisting further, a leg going over Victor's and his other arm going around Victor's neck, cheek pressing into Victor's hair as worried words fall out. Saying I missed you, and had Yuri said that, before, without saying it in Russian? He'd found those words somehow, picked them for the same reason Victor would have.
Sometimes it feels like everything they say to each other has too many levels of meanings, all the way down, like shells glittering underwater. Easy to see, hard to grasp.
It's a balm to hear it now, anyway. Even if it was only a few days, even if they should be able to handle being apart that long, even if it's selfish. Even if he's still questioning his decision to leave at all.
(Over by the couch, Maccachin shifts and snuffles, and he's not sure it was the wrong decision, either.)
Maybe before Shanghai, he could have handled this better, before he knew that holding Yuri and kissing Yuri and having Yuri fall asleep next to him was an option, something he could actually ask for and have. Before Shanghai, this was all just him, because Yuri had changed his mind.
All he knows now is that he's not sure he could take it again. "I'm glad you're back."
Finally lifting his face from Yuri's neck and shoulder, to look up at him with a smile. Yuri's cheeks are pink and he looks uncertain but determined, one of his cutest and most irresistible expressions. How, exactly, has Victor managed to keep from tackling him in all the time he's been back? There were people at the airport, and then Victor had been impatient to get home and here, but now they are here and it seems silly to keep waiting when Yuri's in his arms and not leaving, even though Victor said he didn't have to stay.
Leaning up to kiss him is really the only option Victor has left.
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It feels stupid, and foolish, and messy. Emotional, beyond what should be let out, which is already beyond what he should be feeling. After he already threw himself at Victor, into Victor's arms, in the airport. Which can't have been within the last two hours, it feels foggy and an ocean away, cloud cover between him and there, then. Nothing feels entirely right, and Yuri's arms tighten slightly on Victor because of it.
He already said it twice. Once more than necessary, and it's still there in his mouth.
Not better. Still pressing to get out, even while still not actually enough. Not right.
He's only the more right -- that it's not right, that it's not enough -- when Victor raises his head, and he's the kind of beautiful that never stops taking the whole universe captive, and Yuri is barely a blip beside the size of that universal reach. You'd think Yuri would know that by now, but his heart still shivers, shudders, wobbling confused like it forgot how to walk and is trying to explode everywhere all at once. A new layer on all the mess inside of his chest.
His hair doesn't look any less like it's supposed to, but his eyes are still that stunningly beautiful refracting blue, and his smile. Victor's smile, even small and quiet, only for this second, for those words. It only makes everything sharper, clearer, that ache still in there, with no exit or name or right words for it. Everything feeling only amplified by being in the middle of feeling it and having to meet Victor's eyes at the same second.
Yuri isn't sure if it says something that even if he's not quite expecting it, that the moment Victor moves forward, he does know, down as deep as his bones, that Victor is about to kiss him. Only long enough really to be very aware of the exact second Victor's lips touch his and the very real, and intensely embarrassing way, a whimper escapes up his throat and out of his mouth at the contact.
But not even that, while not gone and not forgotten and not respectable, can stop the way Yuri sinks down into Victor, into Victor kissing him. Into the way everything that's been threatening to, explodes, again, in his heart and his stomach, coming out in the way his fingers tighten around the back and opposite side of Victor's neck, where his hand had been resting.
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There's still tinny music and commentary coming from his laptop, somewhere by his feet, but he has no idea who it's for, who's skating, who's announcing. None of it matters. It barely mattered before, but it certainly can't now, with the sound Yuri makes that sinks directly into Victor's tense stomach and make it tighten even further.
That sound, his hand tightening, his whole body shifting and trying to get closer, but there's no good way to do that like this. It's not like in Shanghai, when Victor dragged Yuri into his lap and could pull him up flush against his chest and stomach. They might have fit like spoons before, but this twist is making that impossible.
Everyone is so tired. Too tired and too sore from missing each other, and even though there's the flicker of an idea –– it wouldn't take much, just shifting his weight, just pushing forward, for Yuri's back to hit the mattress and all this tangled-up space to suddenly lay itself out in beautiful clear lines –– it all feels too delicate still, and he's exhausted deep into his bones in a way he never was during competitions. It's only been a little over a week and they've barely had time to talk about any of this, let alone push the boundaries of it, and tonight's not the time. He doesn't want Yuri unsure and uncomfortable and slowly trying to come to terms with what he wants or doesn't want, he wants Yuri just like this.
Tucked against him. Making that tiny sound. Trying to get closer. Kissing him back.
Palms sliding up Yuri's back and ribs, legs shifting underneath and around him to give him more room. He's so tired it seems like all it will take are these few touches to set his head spinning, leave him drunk and dazed.
Yuri shouldn't still be wanting to kiss him, should he? Victor left. As a coach, as ...this... he should have stayed with Yuri to support and advise and help him, and somehow Yuri is still here and he's forgiven.
He doesn't understand it, but he understands that sound all too well: it's the one his own heart is making over and over again, and whatever he's thinking about being too tired, blood is quickening and so is his pulse and it's too easy to let some of his worries and desperation drive this kiss, his hands, the way he's tugging Yuri towards him.
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Whatever Yuri might think about his own weakness and inability to keep everything orderly, in its places, react properly, Victor doesn't stop to chastise him, or worse, to laugh at him for that uncontrolled sound. Victor doesn't stop at all. Victor's mouth doesn't lift from his, and his hands come to life over Yuri's back, confusing his impulses between the need to keep pressing into this kiss or the one that wants to push into those hands.
Victor makes that a little easier when he doesn't relent, but the hands on his back only pull him closer to Victor. Like none of this is close enough for Victor, and nothing Yuri's done or said is so bad he should be sent away, stopped, left alone (again, again, again) and Yuri's everything feels like it's there. It understands that. Which only makes it needier, more desperate, more quickly frustrated when it's nearly impossible to move in some ways, like this, semi-backward, semi-sideways.
As much as his body can move and bend in ways much of the world can't still at his same age,
he can't actually force his side muscles or his spine to just remove themselves so he can kiss Victor better.
He doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to second guess it, even as it's happening in his head, questions, too many questions, concern and calling attention to anything that changes anything even slightly enough to draw the focus to whatever he's doing, change, still has the gal to not find anything, everything this already is enough (enough, enough). Pushing up slightly on the knee collapsed under him, and one hand with purchase on Victor's shoulder, trying to turn just a little more still toward Victor and away from everything else.
The computer. The open door. The world. The weekend behind him.
Just for a minute. Can't he have just this for a minute. Just Victor.
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Yuri's still shifting, pushing, twisting in his arms, and they're starting to get tied up in a way that's only going to make this harder instead of easier. Yuri's leg is heavy across his, and Yuri's knee is on the mattress as he tries to push up, and maybe Victor should have just gone along with that heady whimsy of earlier.
The thought that this could be so much better if he just pulled them both over, if he pushed up from the headboard and pillow and forward, moving Yuri back, going for a different sort of gravity.
He still doesn't, because the reasons why he hadn't still haven't changed, but he does lean his head back to catch his breath and stare up at Yuri with heavy eyes. All of this feels so hard, why does it feel so hard?
Why hasn't getting Yuri back here solved it all?
Maybe because it was never about not having Yuri. He was the one who got on that plane in Moscow, not Yuri. Yuri just came home, he would have come back here anyway.
And they were supposed to skate under the fairy lights at Red Square tonight.
His hands slide to Yuri's hips, trying to support or guide him, whichever way he ends up, while applause breaks out on the laptop. (It must be over soon, surely?) Watching Yuri's face, eyes dipping to his mouth and the pulse in his throat and back up again, and it certainly doesn't look like Yuri wants to leave, but that just brings him back to what he was thinking before, doesn't it? "I'm sorry."
He's said it plenty of times, but each time seems even further away from what it should mean, how it should feel. Making him try again. "I shouldn't have left you alone. I should have known we have to stay together."
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No one could say no to this face. It seems impossible. Like Yuuri might dissolve into droplets on the air and blow away if Victor so much as whispered a wish of it. He wants to tip his head in and rest his forehead against Victor's forehead, or Victor's temple, or, maybe his cheek. He wants to lift his closest hand, the one on Victor's shoulder, and let his fingers touch Victor's face, trace his features, like somehow there was ever a doubt they weren't the same.
Perfect. No matter where he'd gone or what he'd done. The same way it's been for decades.
The temptation and tremulously fearful doubt it spurs up, gutters flat when Victor starts talking, and Yuri blinks.
Looking down at Victor's mouth and Victor's eyes, but not like he had only seconds earlier. It's a completely different thing slipping into his expression. This confusion, like what's before him is utterly foreign, like he can't quite believe those words just happened. That Victor just said them. That Victor has no problem with the audacity of phrasing, or.
Or.
Or the idea that it might not be heart-stopping, or -stabbing, to hear.
That he's not even certain he knows how to parse it, and he's already baffled that Victor can say it like it's a given, or like he already had an idea it might be. I should have known could have gone so many ways. It could have been meant for a hundred different things, to be said in a hundred different ways, but we have to stay together was not in them. He doesn't even know if it's what happened, how he did, once Victor was gone. Falling apart and barely pulling it together.
Or something else. (This?)
He doesn't know what to do with that.
He doesn't even know how to feel what it makes him feel.
Maybe it's cowardly, and maybe his fingers tighten just a little on Victor's shoulder, even when he answers the only part he has any idea how to. "You had to." There's a helpless kind of shrug, as his grip lessens just as absently, looking over his shoulder and off the bed. "Maccachin--" Was hurt, was possibly dying ... wasn't even lying there watching them, so much as curled up, head down, a pile of fluff breathing great, huffy breaths, so very much alive.
"I would have come back if I could." If he hadn't been in the same place he was last time.
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Yuri looks at Maccachin and repeats himself, that Victor had to. The same thing he pushed at Victor in the hallway outside the rink, with people looking on in confusion. Victor wouldn't expect anything else: unlike him, Yuri isn't a selfish person. He'd pushed Victor to leave because he knew it would break Victor's heart not to be there, here, with Maccachin, and because he really would have come back if he could. He loves Maccachin, too.
Leaving Victor to study the line of his jaw and the winter-pale skin of his cheek, as Yuri watches Maccachin sleep. Was summer, and sunshine, and the tan Yuri managed to find that Victor never could really that far away? It seems like another lifetime ago, those long sunlit days by the water, under the sun, wandering around the town as lights came switching on. Even spending most of their time in the rink didn't keep the summer warmth from slipping under their skin.
Now it feels like Moscow's winter chill won't ever be warmed away. "You shouldn't have had to choose."
Between staying and going. "Between having me there or not."
It shouldn't have been an option. "A coach should stay with his skater."
But ––
This?
Whatever this is?
Lips pressing together, even as he lifts one hand off Yuri's hip, to reach and trace a curve over his ear, fingertips brushing lightly through his hair. "I never even said thank you for telling me to go and making the decision for me."
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Not certain if Yuri wanted it to mean that, or more than that, or if he was even up to anything like an opinion, an understanding of the confusing feelings it had stumbled on to him, or if it was simply more things metaphorically being pushed into the basket of them he'd found himself holding waiting to be translated later. Whenever he could. If he ever could.
Yuri had looked back from the sight of Maccachin sleeping on the pillow, when Victor started talking, but it was harder to keep Victor entirely in sight once Victor's hand reached up and it was following by the tingling friction of warmth against the curve of his ear, and into his hair, nearly making his eyes close as his heart tried to tumble forward into his ribs. "You don't have to."
He doesn't need to be thanked. Not even when he's tipping toward Victor's hand.
Voice. Everything he is. Eveything about Victor finally, finally, finally real again.
Doesn't want. This was all. And he'd, "I wouldn't have --"
Made him stay? Asked him to? Held it against him?
Not even in the middle of that first night, when sleep seemed impossible and the sudden empty lack of Victor in the world just as impossible? Not even right before he stepped out onto the ice for his Free Skate, when he could barely see straight and thinking straight was already long left behind? He didn't know if it was right, or wrong. It wasn't unheard of. But Yurio said it was wrong. While Yakov, apparently, hadn't thought it was, since he facilitated it, too.
Discordance meets without harmony thinking about Yakov's face after Yuri hugged him, and Victor's voice, once he'd thrown himself toward Yakov, speaking only Russian, in that tone that Yuri wants to make a dream and not something he can just almost remember perfectly still.
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"I know I don't need to. I want to."
Yuri isn't good at being thanked, at ever feeling whatever he did or does is worth it or requires it. Even now, after so many months together, he still doesn't think of himself as important. Not the way Victor does. Not the way Victor knows he is. "And I'm glad I could be here with Maccachin. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to be back in Moscow with you."
It's a decision he don't know if he could have made, quite honestly. If Yuri hadn't pushed him to leave, if Yakov hadn't been right there, what would he have done?
His fingers slip into Yuri's hair, before tracing back over that same line again, this time with his thumb resting gently at the edge of Yuri's cheekbone. Somewhere near the middle of the bed, his livestream has gone dead. The exhibition is over. For them, at least, there's nothing more to think about than the Grand Prix Final, only a month away. "I don't want you to have to miss me."
Any other day and he'd be pleased and a little smug to know that Yuri would miss him if he weren't here, because any other day it would be academic, a harmless fantasy. Just something to amuse himself with, imagining Yuri, usually so the opposite of demonstrative, pine for him. Even if it's only a shadow of what he went through over the last nearly two years, until Shanghai, it would have been a pleasant thought.
In reality, it's quite the opposite.
Maccachin will simply have to stay away from the steamed buns, because Victor isn't at all sure he could do it again.
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Not when Victor clarifies it's both. Both of those things at once. Maccachin somewhere in danger, and Yuri, left alone, behind, to face the rest of everything. Both. Both, the way Yuri hadn't let himself, except in the furthest back of his head, and almost only when alone, apart. Not a single word of it had been spoken. Not to Victor on the phone, or in the text messages. Not to Yurio on either of the nights. Not even firmly inside Victor's arms, against Victor's chest, in the airport.
Yuri wasn't even certain he had a way to put it into words,
could ever have even implied both, at the same time,
without being ashamed of it.
Not to compare himself.
Not to even consider comparing himself when not in any danger.
Not even when he'd been terrified he might ruin everything all over again.
Which wasn't the same as not missing Victor even though Maccachin and his family needed him, was it?
Every touch against his skin is wearing away at the edges of him, like water running up against sand, and pulling more of it, more of him, away, with every brush of Victor's fingertips. It would be so easy to close his eyes and just lean his whole head into that hand, or to lean forward into Victor again. Except they are in the middle of talking, too. Yuri's mouth presses and releases a few times, before he finally gets to, with something a muddle, quiet voice, that isn't entirely evenly. "I don't miss you now?"
It's not entirely true. He knows that when he's saying it, maybe more than he did before he said it. But.
He, also, knows it's truer than it isn't. Truer right now than it was a day ago. Or two. He is not missing Victor now the way he did the night he kept waking up, or the morning Victor called, or worse, right after the call. After what Victor had said. About this all being the same for him, when Yuri couldn't help but feel like everything he'd come to consider normal had gone.
With one call and one cab and one plane, it was more clear than ever how much everything had changed for him.
Not even just from wherever he'd been the year before in Detroit, or the one before when was still skating, but ever.
It's more ... that he knows what it is to miss Victor now.
How terrible it is in reality, and not theory. For Victor to be just gone. For Victor to be there one moment, and all of him, his person and all of his things, to be completely missing the next. Never to return to a place. He knows what it's going to be like when that gets here, and he never lets himself forget how soon it is going to happen, or that it'll never have this on the other side of it to soften it.
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