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

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri? is in his mouth to ask, when Yuri is silent, and silent, and silent. Staring at their hands, before beginning to curl in on himself like he's about to cry, like there's a terrible pain in his stomach. Shoulders collapsing, head tucking forward, and his name is in Victor's mouth with a worried edge to the two familiar syllables, before it's replaced by what?

Also placed on his tongue like a marble, balancing there, before becoming a cannonball and rolling down Victor's throat, crushing everything in its path and landing in his gut. A reflex that's almost followed by did you say? because for a second he doesn't think he heard Yuri.

And then he doesn't think he heard Yuri right.

Yuri doesn't speak Russian. He's picked up a few words here and there, but he's not up to more than the most basic of phrases. It isn't possible that he's speaking it now.

Just like it's not possible he said that, right now. Here, in the car. With Victor driving. A phrase he'd have no reason to know, to have at the ready without having his phone and a translator app out and at the ready.

Which means it might actually be a dream, this car ride. If Yuri's suddenly speaking Russian, it has to be a dream, right? He's still asleep, dreaming of their reunion, dreaming of a way where it would be possible for Yuri to know that, to say it, to say it here, now. Barely above a whisper, but the car is quiet with the music even low, and Victor's almost positive that none of this is real after all. No Maccachin, no Yuri, just him alone, dreaming of the two living things he loves the most in this world.

But his arm is getting a little strained from having his hand pulled towards the passenger seat, and it's all so detailed for a dream: the cars passing by, the ads on the radio in between the songs, and Yuri.

Yuri, trying to pull in on himself like he's embarrassed, like he doesn't want Victor to hear, but if this is real, and he did say that ––

That bowling ball in his stomach suddenly dousing itself with petrol and lighting itself on fire, sending a gout of heat burning through Victor's system, blushing up his throat and into his cheeks and along his arm until it feels like Yuri has to feel like the hand held between his is on fire.

Yuri. Saying that. Saying that in Russian, which means Yuri must have looked it up, must have memorized it, must have had it there, something he's been wanting to say. Now mumbling it into the dark, but giving it life, giving it sound, giving it to Victor, and the only reason Victor doesn't pull off the road right this second in order to gather Yuri into his arms is the fact that there's no shoulder here to pull onto.

It's in his voice, though. He can hear it. This utter feeling of being washed away, and away, and away.

(It's everything he's been feeling ever since he left the Star Hotel.)

Hand tightening into a grip that's probably too hard, but he doesn't know how to gentle it, doesn't know how to stop this love from being so painful, how else to express the way it feels like Yuri has cracked his chest right open and it's Victor's idiotic, selfish, unworthy, helpless heart cradled there instead of his hand.

His voice gone suspiciously thick and low, and what is there to say, when all he wants to do is show?

But he has to. Say this. Yuri's being so brave. Even four words a struggle, that sounded almost reluctant, while Victor's feel like they can't ever actually mean anything like what he needs them too. "I need you with me, too."

[theglassheart]

Victor's hand suddenly tightens painfully in his hand and Yuri can't help that his face snaps that direction, even as his shoulders tense and raise a little more, eyes going wider and more than a little frightened. Certain he was absolutely right. More right than he'd known. More right than he could have imagined.

He did it wrong again. Wrong like yesterday. He shouldn't have ever said, ever assumed, ever overstepped, dared, tried, electric and absolute, shooting through his nerve endings, up his arm, when there's a spasm of pain in the hand Victor's fingers laced into it. Confusing the hand over both of theirs woven together, torn between gripping Victor's hand, in surprise, and starting to pull away, some birthing combination of fear and shame.

(Confusing his aching stumbling heart,

for that unwavering truth,
even not right.)

But Victor is driving, and Victor is looking at him, through that driving, and Victor's words are ...

Yuri's mouth wobbles. Lips pressing and shifting. Like he can't quite parse his own reaction. Too loud. Too silent. Too physical for translable thought or even emotion. That he could try to hide behind the direct translation. Behind the repetition of the three words, instead of four, that Victor said in the parking lot. When Yuri hadn't been on top of it enough to more than be desperately glad Victor was there and still-shocked Victor was kissing him.

Except he knows that's not only it. That's not why he picked it.

That's not why his ears have gone warm, or his neck.
That's not why it feels like there's a spotlight on him.
That's not why he has no words in his mouth.

That's not why it feels too big, and too wrong, and painfully like crashing into a wall
(why his mind reminds him, Victor doesn't mean it, need him, like that)

Me watching you on tv won't be so different
from watching you at the rink, after all, Victor said.

Too.

Only yesterday morning.

It hurts. His hand. His heart. His head. His memory. Yesterday. (He won, but he lost.) Not an erasure or exact equality of what yesterday felt like it, but a completely permanent, over layered echo, of at least half of it washing over him all over again. Here. Now. Still. Since the second he saw Victor's face through the glass. Here. Now. In the car, not wanting to let go of Victor's hand, not understanding why his hand is throbbing, feeling embarrassed, feeling bare, but desperate not to let go still.

All he can do is stare at their hands. It feels feeble. It feels weak.

It feels like the only reason he knows he and this are real.

[fivetimechamp]

His hand is probably too tight and he loosens it, when Yuri's flinches in response, the other beginning to lift away.

Victor doesn't want that. He doesn't want Yuri to take his hand away, or to flinch, or to be tucked in on himself like he's still waiting for a hammer to fall. It's too dim in the car for Victor to see his face clearly, and he can only sneak glances in between watching the road and beginning the first of the turns they'll take to get back home. "Where did you even learn that?"

How, why. He has a pretty vivid imagination, but he doesn't have the first clue how Yuri could know that phrase. That particular one, which is more than the sum of its parts. Not the direct translation, if Yuri was looking for a way to say I missed you, as some sort of, what. Gift? Offering? Attempt at stepping into some small part of the world Victor lived in before he had any idea what he was missing?

Yuri, speaking Russian. With a poor accent, of course, and pronunciation, but definitively Russian, all the same, and Victor can't help but smile, as bewildered as he is touched, glancing over, sure the whole world could see what it is he's feeling, splashed across his face. Warmth and affection, surprised delight, and the particular brand of absolute faith that only belongs to Yuri. "How could you say that to me when I have to drive, Yuri?"

When he can't just barrel directly into Yuri, the way Yuri flung himself at Victor earlier. Can't tackle him. Can't hug him, or kiss him, or whisper how long he's felt the same way into Yuri's ear. Can't reward that small act of courage and affection with all the fanfare it deserves. Can't wrap his arms around Yuri and promise they'll never have to be that far apart again, if he can ever help it.

He never wants to be without Yuri. Not today. Not ever.

But that doesn't make him any less fondly amused at Yuri's poor timing, even as his heart is bursting. "There's no way I can properly respond without crashing the car, and I promised to get you home."

[theglassheart]

Victor's grip relents, but only enough for Yuri's fingers to throb faintly in confused memory more than actuality, and not enough for Yuri to let go. Victor's fingers staying curled through his, holding on to his hand firmly, and Yuri feels both grateful and confused, himself. Which only blurs itself straight into Victor having (what Victor always has) a ready, endless supply of questions and comments, when Yuri spends all his mind on only a handful of words (the same).

It's wrong that he almost appreciates and hates the car, and his absolute lack of anything even remotely like making that seem good (smooth? cool? beautiful? meaningful?). Anything that didn't seem desperate, or embarrassing. That didn't require the top half of him to feel too hot under his jacket. Wanting to rub at face, but not wanting to call any more attention to himself. When there's nowhere to shift or run to. No space to move even a foot or two in this seat.

Especially not when Victor asks where he ever learned that, and how much he shouldn't say it, right?
That it hadn't even been twelve hours from Victor leaving before he was looking up those words.
When he was supposed to be sleeping. Because Victor told him to go to sleep.


Told him to dream of Victor. Instead, not following any of his instructions.


But Victor's not done with one question because he's never done with the one question. Or one statement. Or one anything, at anytime, anywhere. He wants to know where, and then he moves on to how, and commentary on the car, which makes Yuri look at his edges a little more. The door on one side, and the gear shift middle between them. The floor board and its mat under his tennis shoes.

Again. Nothing impressive. Nothing good enough ... or worthwhile.
Nor enough anywhere to hide himself, or what he'd said under it.

He doesn't even know what to make of Victor's tone.
The normal amusement for Yuri's antics again.

"It can wait," is eventually what his mouth decides to settle for. Because it could. It wasn't like the having to say it, where suddenly it felt like there was absolutely no way to wait until ten seconds, rather like being ill, before it had to come out. Victor didn't have to properly respond. What was a proper response was even supposed to be, what did that mean.

Victor didn't have to respond at all. Victor could just forget Yuri'd blurted it out at his legs.

It could just die here in the car, and never be brought up again, or talked about. Ever. That was good, too.

[fivetimechamp]

It can wait, Yuri says, like waiting is an easy thing to do, like waiting hasn't been what Victor's done for the better part of two days (and eight months, and two years). Like the concept of being here in the car for another forty minutes, unable to reach over to Yuri and wrap him in a hug, or kiss him, or get him to say that again, low and under cover of darkness, centimeters instead of the width of a car away, isn't as torturous as sitting in the airport waiting for the plane to come in had been. "I hate waiting."

They've both waited long enough, haven't they? It makes the distance between here and where they can finally just curl up together to watch the exhibition, where he can finally have Yuri right here, in his arms again, seem just as vast as the distance between Hastetsu and Moscow. He knows it's a selfish, childish reaction, but he's too tired and aches too much for discipline right now. Discipline he doesn't want or even need. He's spent his whole life being disciplined, focused on a single thing, giving everything he has to it: time, body, heart, soul. More time in the rink than out of it. Twenty years of it.

Just for tonight, he doesn't want to have to push himself to be better. He just wants to be Victor.

But wants and wishes won't change the distance that's slowly ticking down as they drive through the night, so he has to settle for looking over at Yuri when he can, each time a new confirmation that he's back and they're back together, and isn't that what's really important. "You should get some rest, if we're going to stay up to watch the exhibition, Yuri. I'll wake you up when we're home."

[theglassheart]

He knows Victor can be impatient, to the point of wheedling in many different, less surprising now than months ago, ways, but Yuri isn't positive he has a clue what Victor would do if they weren't in the car. If they were stationary and closer than the space of the car, this divide that one second feels unbearable and the next like it's so small it's suffocating him. If they were somewhere else, without the car entirely.

The parking lot, when Victor had said he missed Yuri and Yuri hadn't even had the grace to think of responding.
The airport, where Yuri had found it possible to -- demand? plead? -- that Victor stay with him to the end, but not this.

Home? Home feels like the car, too. Unbearably too far away, and suffocatingly too close. His feelings merged into his exhaustion, merged into the weight his disappointment for yesterday, merged into his wariness about hoping even a breath about a month from now, merged with the confusing, painful relief of how close Victor is, merged into that aching swell everytime Maccachin huffs a deep breath from the seat behind them.

It's all there. All mixed up and shaken, shaking, already, when Victor tells him to sleep. Like it's somewhere else to be gone from here, from Victor, from that wrongly put too right thing, said in the wrong place, probably the absolute wrong way. Except he knows that's wrong. Too. Even when his hand tightens in the wrong emotion, the wrong reaction. That's not what Victor said. He said to sleep, so Yuri could wake up at home, so Yuri would be awake could watch the Exhibition. Yurio.

It echoes somewhere else, in that mess.

He left you here alone, and I couldn't --

Come home.
I miss you.
Please.

It's not the right place for that either if Yuri even has a clue what to do with those words now any more than he had in the desperate uncertainty of listening to them come out suddenly. Least expected, absolutely unprocessable, from the sidewalk, on the ground, in the snow, throbbing in a sudden unexpected pain, holding a birthday present. He doesn't know how he'd say that. Explain.

He doesn't hold it against Victor for going. He told Victor to go.
He would never have expected anyone else to try.

(No one else is Victor.
When did that happen?

Victor.

Yurio?)

His hand doesn't let go, and it fledgling even when it settles certainly and sticky with inevitably, his other hand over the top of Victor's and he puts his head back against the seat rest, nodding, more than saying anything. He knows what Victor meant, even if his head slips and slides. That he's here now. That Yuri can try to sleep. Can stop trying to hold on so hard. Not certain when it got so confusing, or when he got so exhausted. How to even explain to himself how this all still feels a little like falling from too high too fast.



But still not being willing to let go.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't say anything, but after a while, he nods, and leans his head back against the seat, while Victor glances over to smile at him, encouraging. Giving the hand in his a squeeze that's nothing like the surprised grip of earlier: just a reminder. "I promise I'll be right here the whole time."

If he has anything to say about it –– and he does –– he won't leave Yuri's side again. Be my coach until I retire, that's what Yuri said, that's what he asked, and that's what it means, isn't it?

( stammi vicino )

Everything he'd never really understood until this last year. How did anyone think he had skated that program with any amount of truth? He had no idea what it really meant. To be in love. To fear loss. To want to stay near someone, always. Even in that last year, heartbroken and furious, he hadn't gotten it quite right. He'd known it even then, known there was something missing, that anger wasn't the only thing he should be feeling, that despair wasn't it, either, but he hadn't known what it was. The missing thing. What he searched for and couldn't find in the hours upon hours of practice, as Yakov's frown sank in deeper lines around his mouth and between his brows, as he withdrew further and further.

(What was it missing? Maybe it was never meant to just be him,

alone,

at all.)

None of that is anything he can say now, in the car, driving home. Maybe none of it is anything he can say at all until after food has been had, or greetings given, and the exhibition watched. Maybe all of it needs to wait, the way the apology that keeps bubbling into his throat has to wait, until cover of darkness, when there are no distractions and nothing standing in the way of simple honesty. When he can reach out to touch Yuri, and not just wind their fingers together. When he can underline it all with so much more than words.

But they aren't there yet, and he doesn't want to keep Yuri awake, so he stays quiet, letting the road unwind beneath their wheels, letting the gentle hum of the engine fill the car instead of all the words that are clouding up his head.

He isn't a patient man. But soon, he won't have to think soon. It'll be now, and he can say everything he couldn't before: over the phone, at the airport, in the car.

But not yet.

[theglassheart]

The pressure on his hand is gentle, and against his own feelings and better judgment he still can't keep his eyes from looking to Victor. His heart, along with his stomach, from contracting at the words he says, and even more the faint smile that graces his face even in the passing street lights, that throw him into light and then dark too drastically, but never enough to erase Yuri's seeing it.

I promise, he said, and he'd squeezed Yuri's hand. Still not pulling away, and it probably can't be comfortable. He probably still needs his hand to drive, and it's probably unwaveringly selfish that Yuri still doesn't want to let go of Victor's hand, even thinking those things. Wants to hold on to his hand, and those words, until Victor needs to pull away.


Falling asleep is not as simple as quietly letting out the breath held hostage in his chest for too long and closing his eyes. The car is moving, and the lights flash brighter and dimmer as the approach them and leave them behind. It's not as simple a command as stand, move, get in the car. Every muscle is a little too wound. But the music is playing softly, and Yuri tries to focus on that.

His thoughts don't absolutely leave him alone. They don't on a good day, and after the last three, and all of the dramatic tilts, and so little sleep, so little sleep for what must be almost a week, over a week, it feels like anything he had for walls has become a sieve every thought has stretched the holes of wider and wider. Without really realizing it, every now and again, his thumb brushes over the side of the back of Victor's hand. Once, twice. Maybe three times. Before stopping. Soft, but just fast enough to not really be a thought.

To be more than a movement that usually would only involve his own hand. Maybe his pants. He doesn't really realize it. Any more than he doesn't really realize the warm skin under it, the solidness of Victor is better than either of the other two, too. Makes it easier to breathe. Easier to try and press it back, blur it around him, to the sound of the soft music, if he can't make it stop. Keep breathing. Counting street lights. Keeps watching his eyelashes get closer, slower, before he blinks.

He doesn't really feel it when he falls asleep -- when the hold of his shoulders and the hold of Victor's hand in his, slips heavy and boneless -- only knows one second he was watching Victor through half-closed eyes, propped open defiantly against a seconds confusion and loss of him the last time his eyes closed . . .

. . . and the next there wasn't anything at all.

[fivetimechamp]

It's quiet in the car. The music and the sound of the engine are nothing but white noise. He can't tell the difference between songs, isn't paying attention to melodies or lyrics. It's on just loud enough to be a soothing background noise, as the world rolls past the windows and they get closer and closer to home. Close enough, after twenty minutes, to smell salt in the air. Close enough to start thinking about what to do when they finally get there. Yuri will want to put his luggage in his room, and they'll both want to change into pyjamas, and then he'll have to find the livestream. Possibly he should do that first, and let it try to connect, since it might take a little while to catch up.

And then they'll watch Yurio. And after that ...

He looks over at the brush of Yuri's thumb against his hand, the pathetic little jolt his heart gives each time it happens, but Yuri is drifting, drifting, and finally gone , when Victor looks over next. Eyelashes a shadowed smudge against his cheeks, breathing soft and even, dropping off as thoroughly as Maccachin, there in the back seat. Who will probably want to join them while they watch the exhibition.

He'll be happy Yuri's home. He's in Yuri's bed in the mornings nearly as often as he's in Victor's.

But that thought only reminds him of having to give Yuri up almost as soon as they get home, and it's a sick clenching grip in his stomach. A violent, kneejerk negation.

He only just got Yuri back. How can he be expected to let him go, even for a night?

When it's so sweet to watch him sleep. He looks exhausted, even now: skin so translucent under his eyes that the dark shadows look like bruises. Hair mussed and rumpled. Face drawn and tired.

But here. Home. Back with Victor, where he's supposed to be. Resting, like he needs to.

It's almost enough to make him want to keep driving, instead of turning into the driveway at the onsen and coming to a gentle stop. Untangling his fingers, finally, from Yuri's, while Maccachin gets up in the back and noses at the door to be let out.

Lifting his hand to brush some hair out of Yuri's face, voice gentle. "Yuri, wake up. We're home."

[theglassheart]

There are fingers brushing against his face, against his hair, and he shifts, squirms, away from it.

Soft, almost ticklish soft, and absolutely wrong about those words. About waking up.

When being awake enough to hear those words is enough to make Yuri's eyes, gritty and squeezing, before a blink open, want to argue he wasn't asleep. It didn't feel like sleep, but it felt so heavy to be opening his eyes and he remembered not being even half way, and he wrinkled his brow, reaching up to push up his glasses and rub at his eyes, before looking out the window, at the very familiar, very correct lights and shape of his home, and then back to Victor slowly.

Victor who said we're home. We're. Home. We. Home. The both of them. Home. Like this was Victor's home. His muddled, fuzzy brain and muddy, fuzzed heart felt such a pang of longing for that to be true, even as he was trying to make his eyes focus better. But that wasn't helping. Because the only thing coming into focus in front of him was Victor.

Victor in the shadows of the car, and the night. Victor, and Victor's perfect face. Victor who looked tired (because it was late, because he was driving, he was driving Yuri home) and his hair ... almost looked flat, like it was tired, too, even though Yuri had given up on thinking any part of it was human aside from the parts Victor fretted over. It's a strange thought, and it plucks at the edge of his mouth, cobbling the whisper of a smile, even when all he can think is how beautiful Victor is.

Even like this. So beautiful. It's messy everywhere in his head, his lungs, his heart.

It's so less than connected to try to say something like, "Sorry. I shouldn't have slept the whole way."

[fivetimechamp]

Even without waking up in the same bed, he's seen Yuri barely awake and blinking sleep out of his eyes on plenty of occasions, and he still isn't over it. How could he be? Yuri's hair is all flattened on one side and rumpled on the other, and his eyes are bleary and slow, and that tiny reminder of a smile is so sweet it makes Victor's heart want to burst. "I told you to."

Sleep. Said he'd wake Yuri up once they were home, and they are, but he's still sitting here, hand curved against Yuri's head, thumb running gently over his temple, just off the corner of his eyebrow. "I'm sorry to have to wake you up, but you'll be able to go back to sleep again soon. Once the exhibition is done."

He knows well enough now not to argue that Yuri should just go to bed and watch the exhibition tomorrow, but he almost wants to anyway. Yuri looks barely awake, not at all like he'll be able to make it upstairs without just collapsing. He loves to sleep almost as much as he loves to eat, and he deserves both for today and tomorrow.

He's pretty sure that saying so would have Yuri snapping awake more quickly than he'd want, though, so he refrains. "I don't know if your parents are up, but if they are, I'm sure they'll want to welcome you home before they go to bed."

Which means they should get out of the car, and Victor should absolutely lean back and unbuckle his seatbelt to let Maccachin out and get Yuri's luggage.

Not lean forward to kiss Yuri's forehead, but that's what he does anyway. "Welcome home, Yuri."

[theglassheart]

It's really rather unfair. Not that everything about Victor since the moment he appeared -- in Japan, and in the world, one the ice and on the Ice Palace tv, where Yuri first saw him -- hasn't been unfair, but this feel like a sum of everything meeting at a peak. A perfect, fuzzy, watercolor, midnight peak of everything rolled into one blob and popping like a soapy bubble that escaped the wash tub, and Yuri's consciousness, when Victor's lips settle with such gentleness against his forehead.

When Victor says that word, again. Home, and his name.

And all Yuri wants to do is push forward. It's his only thought, through a breath out his nose.

He just wants to shift, and test the idea of letting his head find Victor's shoulder. Or his forehead. Against Victor's shoulder, or his chest, or his neck. To be able to feel Victor breathing or his heart beating. To close his eyes and be left with only those things in the world. He thinks maybe he could be fine with only those things in the world. Something beating out Real, real now. Without the faint longing of the absence when Victor had stopped.

Yuri rubbed his face, again, wrinkling his nose and resetting his glasses. He tried pushing back those possibly pathetic thoughts and looking back out the window at Yu-Topia. His family was in there, and try as he might want suddenly to not feel his thoughts coming together, picking up force and speed with every passing second, they saw it, too. They watched him make it, and not make it. One medal for two weekends, and no end until December still.

"Okay," is not exactly the do you think they are up? questioning himself, Victor, and the lights in windows.
But the Onsen had people at all hours due to its nature. The lights didn't mean they were his family's.


But, most of him doubted he would make it from the door to a bedroom without someone there.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri is adorable, rubbing at his face and fixing his glasses, and all Victor wants to do is kiss him again, cuddle him against the car seat, and demand to hear those words again. The ones Yuri shouldn't know. Has no reason to know. Somehow had on the tip of his tongue, even badly pronounced, shy, stumbling.

He wants to be there, already, but they have to deal with physical space, first, which is about as frustrating as it always is. He has to lean back and reach to unbuckle his seat belt, and open the car door into a biting burst of winter air. "I'll get your luggage."

But first, Maccachin: bounding out the door into the fresh snow as if he'd never been sick a day in his life. He kicks up the white powder and snuffles some onto his nose before trotting around the car to disappear on his way towards Yuri and the front door, the last thing Victor sees of him a wagging stub of tail and snow-covered paws. "Bring Maccachin in with you."

As if Yuri has a choice, really.

But Victor can take a moment, as the winter chill kisses his exposed throat and cheeks and hands, a little breeze that smells like snow ruffling his hair like affectionate fingers, before he's opening the trunk to grab Yuri's luggage and pull it out. It's heavy and unwieldy in the snow leading up to the front door, but he's pulled luggage through drifted snow more times than he cares to count, and, anyway, it's the last time for a while. They're home. That's what that spill of yellow light on the fresh snow means, that's what the excited voices lifting from just past the open door mean.

This isn't his family, and it isn't his house, and it isn't even his country, the one he just left, but somehow, the bubble of warmth that feels like it envelops him as he steps inside and shuts the door behind him doesn't feel like it's just from the heat from the house.

[theglassheart]

He's got this. He does.

Victor's going for his seat belt and Yuri stares at his house thinking it. It's his family. It's not a few thousand screaming audience members. It's only his family. Only the only people he's wanted to make sure were proud of him, that he was doing right by the name and sacrifices of, for two decades. Victor's door opens and Yuri can't sit there much longer, so he pushes his own door open, making a face at the cold air that finds his still sleep-warm skin. Self.

Even with the chill wind slipping in his scarf, down his back with cold fingertips that make his skin prickle under two layers and a coat, he appreciates the milder edge of the winter's he's been exposed to this year. Here, Bejing, Moscow. Cold, and cold and snowy, biting in their own ways, but none of them have the century's record breaking opposite that his last winter had. He wonders if it's the same, again, this year over there.

He misses it; he doesn't miss it much at all.

A different world, a different life, a different, well, everything.

Maccachin butts his now snow-speckled head and body against Yuri's own legs, investigating his progress, and Yuri mumbles, with no ability to be more than amused by the poodle excitement, "I'm coming, I'm coming."

Yuri drags his backpack from the floor, tugging it back over his shoulders, and snapping it across his chest, while Maccachin is dancing back a few feet, and before springing forward, again. All easy delight, and rambunctious movement, as though Maccachin was going to help Yuri be excited about this by sheer will and personal excitement. Yuri simultaneously wishes that was him, and wishes he could sleep standing up just seeing it.

Victor comes round, with his bag -- Victor keeps doing that, that thing where Victor keeps getting his bag, his things, him -- and Yuri falls in step with him. Feet stomping on the light dustings of snow that managed to fall on the walks since it was shoveled this morning. He'll be back to helping take care of that in the mornings. Just a week's blip away, like a vacation, during which nothing like a vacation took place.

He's tired in his skin and he can feel the wire in my chest, razor sharp and too tight, right before the door opens and he steps through. No way to avoid it, even when at the last second he'd wondered, for the millionth time in his life, how impossible was it really to scale the wall and enter through his window, like so much snow on the breeze, accumulated soundlessly on the sills all around them. But he can't and the door is open, spilling light and warmth out.

Maccachin dashing in ahead of them, no one needing to tell him anything.
Shaking snow off everywhere, and looking back at them expectantly excited.

The voices of people come from a few different places as Yuri dutifully scuff-shoes off the little snow he's gathered between the car and the door on the mats just inside. One hand on his thigh, leaning to brush a sticking chunk from the otherside of his left shoe, when his name get's boisterously tossed out from across the room. His father's head peering out through a kitchen window not far off, smiling his subtle smile, sounding pleased even in his easy reserve and stilted English.

"Yuri! Welcome home." It's an effort at inclusion, even if it's probably less thought about these months later.
Victor has changed a lot of little things around here, and not all of them are Yuri's skating.

Yuri's thank you is quiet and more respectfully automatic than thought about.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's parents kindly use English when he's around, as much as possible, and, just like it has so many other times, it makes him smile again tonight.

Him, slipping off his snow-dusted shoes and leaving them here by the door; them making sure he can understand even when they're speaking to Yuri. "Home at last."

It hasn't really been that long since they left for Shanghai, but it feels like at least a hundred years has passed, while the onsen sat here in a bubble of unchanging time. It's warm and comfortable and cozy and if they weren't both so tired, Victor would suggest starting off this homecoming with a soak in the hot spring where this all started. Right now, though, he thinks they'd both fall asleep and drown without even noticing, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. "Yuri, I'll take your luggage up to your room while you catch up."

Spoken as he's shedding his coat and scarf, while Maccachin licks at his fingers and then trots off to find his food and water pausing to greet Yuri's parents with a nudge of his nose and a wag of his tail. Victor wonders if his laugh sounds as relieved as it feels. "Maccachin is happy to be back, too."

He hauls Yuri's luggage up the half-step onto the floor and sets the roller again, before heading off towards the stairs with a brief wave and a smile for Yuri's parents. They're likely to turn in soon, too, only staying up to welcome Yuri safely back home. Everyone can take more time to catch up and talk tomorrow, once they've all had some sleep. Soon the little house will be quiet and dark, and he and Yuri can just watch the exhibition in peace before joining the rest of the household in the sleep all of them have been missing for the last few days.

Wheeling the luggage down the hall, he glances towards his own room, where he'll be in just a few moments, trying to connect to the livestream. It feels strange to be back, even if he's been here now for a night on his own: in the short time away, he'd gotten used to sharing a room with Yuri, not worrying about anyone else who might be around.

Strange to think, as he's dropping the luggage off in Yuri's room, that now they're back together, they'll be apart again.

[theglassheart]

Victor divests himself with an ease that Yuri envies from a distance, that suitcase, handle curled over by Victor's hand, trundling behind Victor in a way that Yuri can't yet. Follow Victor. Feel how Victor's fingers felt laced in his before he fell asleep. It makes his hands tighten, before he's turning back to his father just as his mother is coming round the cashier's desk, carrying a pile of fresh-folded towels.

It's worlds apart from those first few seconds in the airport.

It's not the same as the end of April, not even two weeks compared to five years, but still they don't fall on each other, not the way Yuri had gone running straight into Victor. Forgetting himself. Forgetting the world. His mother's hands are clasped in front of her stomach over the towels and her eyes are shining, she's smiling, bouncing on her toes when she speaks, but there's a respectful distance between them, and his father stays in the kitchen window.

Yuri can't help but think his parents might not have approved of that scene either.
(They definitely wouldn't appreciate, or understand, him hugging all those people before it.)

His mother says what she had, they had, a number of people cheering still in the background, when she left the normal post-skate message that ended every competition day. That they're proud of him, everyone is, everyone watched, the Onsen was full and he must be excited, to be going on to the Finale, and Yuri mumbles something like yes not certain what to say, feel ( ... it's not entirely untrue ... ), how long he should stand here (while, also, wondering if Victor or Minako or someone else had talked about the Finale enough for them to remember the right name for it a day after still).

She follows it up, hands pressing, toes and hair bouncing just slightly, with a comment about how he must be tired, rather like a question, though his father refrain of not quite, nearly, the same words isn't. It's more like an agreement-answer. He doesn't argue, doesn't even get to agreeing before she's asking if he'd like her to make anything for him. A pork cutlet bowl.

He tries not to wince or shift back, shaking his head, and there are words, but they might be more like marbles he can't collect right. He can hear the skip-stutter in his own words. He doesn't -- still doesn't really want more. Not as anything more than this urge for something to hold on to, something to focus his hands and his mouth at, and there's already a plan for what comes next. Victor already agreed and he's mentioned it a few times. Not forgotten. (... like him?)

(And he didn't. Win.

He just didn't lose.

It's not the same thing.

Not to him.)

His father reminds, stoic and certain, from the window that he has been flying for a long time, that sleep will do him better and they can all celebrate tomorrow, and his mother's mother smile is soft, unperturbed for this possibility, too, reminding him only that everything is still where it was when he left, in both of the kitchens, if he changes his mind.

In the middle of the night, is unspoken.

But so is that 'in the middle of the night' is a time Yuri is awake often enough, too.

There's another thank you, before his mother shoos him off with a smile and subtle gesture of fingers toward the stairs. He doesn't really know how many minutes that was. Too few to feel too many. He loves his parents. He's conflicted about everything before now. Before today. Before last night. All of yesterday, and how to feel like he earned what he still has. Even if he had found himself out there.

He earned every point that painted his life and his future into a miracle-fluke last chance to prove himself.

Yuri is only up the first set of stairs, passing the second floor, and heading for the third, the murmur of the downstairs fading into the silence of their private areas, and only his socked feet, when something pangs harder in his chest. At the quiet. At the emptiness. Nothing and no one but him. Even when he knows that's not true, his chest tightens.

It's not like the options are many, or he doesn't know where he'll probably be,
but hitting the next landing a bit faster, Yuuri still calls out, "Victor?"

[fivetimechamp]

He isn't in Yuri's room all that often, and he doesn't stay long now –– only long enough to glance around at the neat bed, the empty walls. It all seems a little bare and not as welcoming as it could be: nothing in this room seems to reflect Yuri or his tastes or passions at all.

Probably he'd cleaned all that out when he moved to Detroit, reasoning that he wouldn't be here to enjoy his things. And it isn't as if Victor's own apartment is all that personalized. It's sleek and clean and sophisticated, certainly, but warm? Approachable? Comfortable?

He'd never really thought about it before.

His own room here, the adapted banquet room that was the only thing available, is the complete opposite. It's big for this house, but small for him, and it's more cozy than cool, but he has made it his. The bed sheets and blanket, his laptop, pictures and postcards. The bed Maccachin usually ignores in favor of the foot of his own. His clothes, his things.

It feels like home, and it has ever since that first night, sleeping on a mat on the floor surrounded by boxes.

He's tugging his shirt up over his head to replace it with a soft black sleep shirt when Yuri's voice comes floating down the hallway, and his response is a little muffled. "In here."

This shirt was clean this morning, but it somehow feels as worn out and tired as he does, as he drops it into his laundry basket. "Go get changed for bed. I'll set up the livestream and we can watch it together in here, okay?"

Yuri's bed is too small for the both of them, and Victor desperately needs for this to be both of them. Yuri, finally close enough to hold and touch and kiss, to wrap his arms around. Finally back together, when it's been made blindingly clear to him that no other situation will ever be livable again.

Looking over to see if Yuri is in the doorway, or passed straight along to go to his room. "Yurio should be on soon."

[theglassheart]

It almost sounds as though Victor's voice is coming from under water. A familiar sounding mumble, but distant and distorted. It doesn't take more than a seconds time in the doorway to Victor's room to note why. Only one second to see why. Only one second to watch the here-and-then-gone pale sliver of Victor's skin evaporate as a dark shirt gets pulled down and his shining silvery hair, and then, head pops out the top.

Yuri thinks somewhere distantly it means something that he doesn't feel like tripping over his feet, holding still for seeing it, or telling himself he's seen it a hundred times. Not doing more than standing in the hallway, shortly outside of the doorway. He doesn't feel any of those, or if he does they aren't making it far enough up for him to touch them yet.

Mostly only that he'd like to lean on the wall.
(Or somewhere closer to Victor. Or Victor, himself?)

He is still standing there when Victor looks at him, and he realizes he was maybe supposed to have moved on already. To be following his instructions, especially at the last words, like a reminder of a short window on it all. There's a nod, maybe two, slow and slight, almost like Yuri's only using part of his head for it, and a quiet, "Okay."

It's crazy that he only makes it a few steps beyond the door, walking into his own room, before he doesn't like the fact there are walls between him and seeing Victor -- and he can't really even hear anything from that room in here, currently -- and it shouldn't be like this, should it? While Victor's only two floors away. While Victor's only one wall away. It's his head playing new tricks on him, in his exhaustion and stress, right?

He does what he's supposed to. Skinning himself out of his coat, that he should have left down stairs, and the clothes under it, leaving everything in a pile on his backpack on his bed, that Yuri doesn't look in or the suitcase left by his bed. He rummages in the drawers that have everything else of his he couldn't pack and wouldn't need. Easy enough to find sleep clothes, from folded piles with the look like he never left them, and pull some on.

Thin, but winter-warm, sleep pants. An everyday average blue shirt.

Yuri dug his phone out of the pile on his bed, but left the pile for later, heading out the door and back toward Victor's open doorway as soon as his fingers had curled around it. It's nonchalant, everywhere but in the middle of his chest, when he walks into that room finally. In the middle of his chest is both relief, and something nothing at all like relief.

Just slightly tenser, close, but not close enough. Distantly aware.
Of his house, his family, of too much time right behind him.

Of Victor close, but not. At least visible. "Find it?"

[fivetimechamp]

Even though he'd been the one telling Yuri to go, Victor very nearly follows him as he leaves the door, as if pulled by some invisible string, that same feeling of restless anxiety washing over him that he'd ignored coming up the stairs, looking at Yuri's empty room, waiting for the sound of his step in the hall. If the glass wall at the airport had been interminable, this is worse: not being able to see Yuri, even if Victor can hear him. Knows, intellectually, that Yuri is right there, changing for bed, setting his things down.

Knows it will only be moments, and scant ones at that, before he's right back here, and that he'll expect Victor to be finding the livestream, exactly as Victor promised he would, and so Victor ought to do that. Stop looking at the door, and finish getting changed, himself, and find the livestream.

He's cross-legged at the top of the bed, pillows tucked against the small of his back, face bathed in the intent blue light of his laptop screen, when Yuri comes back. Relaxing him even without anything changing, except that worried, wanting thing in his chest that loves to tie itself up into knots whenever Yuri isn't right next to him. "Just about."

It takes him a moment to log in, but then the video screen pops up, a small wheel buffering in the middle, and he pushes the computer back while pushing himself to the side, looking up at Yuri with an inviting smile. "Over here, Yuri."

One hand patting the covers next to him, even as Maccachin wanders in from behind Yuri and makes for his little bed, walking around and around in a tight circle only to flop with a contented, heavy sigh onto the cushion.

"I think we may have missed the first one, but Yurio wouldn't be up right away."

[theglassheart]

It all feels a little surreal. In the right way, but surreal, too. Victor in his casual clothes, sitting on his bed, with the laptop in front of him. The huff from Maccachin settling on the floor somewhere nearby. (Though Yuri does drag his gaze from the bed and Victor on it, just yet, to see where that is precisely.)

Victor had patted the bed, calling him over, and for a second it seemed so familiar. A second of place. Out of time. Repeated dozens of times in the last most of a year. Before they ever left for China, and a week and half away for the first time vever. This was normal. This was what normal looked like. This was what normal had looked like -- before they left, before things had happened, before things had been said. Done.

Before Yuri'd ever felt the need to look toward the door, to find himself plagued by the sudden and, also, the too sharply surreal thought of his parents or his sister walking in to get something, anything, from the storage room, as he sat down on Victor's bed. Near Victor. It's not as if the sofas aren't optionable, so much as that they haven't been used in months. Not like this.

Even if he looks, Yuri doesn't want to be away. Across a room. Concerned. Suddenly. About that. Here. Even as it sinks fingers into a side of his head, Yuri scoots close enough their thighs just aren't quite touching, letting his hands rest on the blanket as he squints on the screen and an unfamiliar girl currently skating.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri sits, but he’s still sitting too far away, and there’s no reason Victor can think of for it. The room is dim with the light of a single table lamp, and the house is quiet, and finally, for the first time in days, there’s nothing between them. No countries, no walls, no need to be appropriate or hold back, no gear shift, no bulky winter jackets. Just them.

And Yuri’s not even touching him.

That’s not how this goes. Even before they left for Shanghai, Yuri hadn’t been this careful around him, hadn’t gauged his distance perfectly to make sure no part of him is touching any part of Victor, hadn’t been tense and uncomfortable when clambering onto this bed to talk about the programs or watch videos or listen to music or make and go over notes. And everything since then…

Victor has never been a patient man, and over the last few days, he’s hit his limit. If there were a reason –– but there’s not, there’s only them, so his arm snakes out to wrap around Yuri’s waist as he pushes back towards the headrest and tugs Yuri towards him. Towards his shoulder, chest, lap –– wherever Yuri ends up, as long as Victor can wrap his arms around him and not let go. “Don’t sit so far away.”

Plaintive, muffled into the curve of Yuri’s neck once Victor can haul him close enough for it, close enough to wrap one arm around Yuri’s front and the other around his back and wonder if maybe he might be able to get Yuri to sit in front of him and lean back so Victor can feel like his legs are getting involved, too. “I missed you."

[theglassheart]

Yuri's studying the figure of the girl under the glaring single spotlight, about to admit in the asking who she is that he can't remember at all, when suddenly arms circle his waist and he's being pulled back, with a garbled squeak of shocked-surprise.

The surprise comes from the movement, but there's a good deal of warmth that slams him everywhere at the sudden reminder of how close Victor's hands and sudden belting arms are. Can be. Could have been. Once were. His touch only the thinnest layer of a shirt from Yuri's skin suddenly breaking apart the savored spell of seconds that was them hugging or touching through coats in the airport.

Which is a shattering thought that only serves for a second, maybe less than a second, a second of a second, before even that is blown away. Because Victor's chest is against an arm and part of his back and Victor's face is pressed into his neck suddenly, hair against his neck, his shoulder, tickling at his skin, hot breath on his skin, mumbling words he can't hear at all, but can feel vibrating as though to reach his bones beneath the skin they're spoken into, and Yuri is shivering hard before he can even realize it's happening to stop it. "Oh --"

Doesn't know when his hands had gone reaching up to grasp Victor's arm on him. Whether it was for something to hold on to when he might be falling backwards, or just this second, while Victor's lips move against his skin, like the faintest press harder could break it open and tip Victor into the center of him, as Yuri's heart is certain it can exit straight through his ribs with a few more good spasms.

Especially as Victor says those three words that keep echoing and it feels like a knife that slices through anything he thought was pressing anything back, keeping him pieced together. Making his grip on the arm around his chest tighten. Nothing in him knowing how not to answer those words. To have not felt that. To still not be sure he hadn't missed Victor more than was even proper. Even correct.

More in the space of two days than he'd ever missed people that had been missing for half a decade.

"I - uh - sorry," falls out of his mouth, helplessly awkward, and a little desperately in search of any word, any response, any thing. It's wrong by the first syllable, making him flush what certainly can't matter since his face already feels hot from surprise (... and ...). He's not sure he's even seeing right now. Not sure there's anything except that thundered skip of his heart and the press of Victor's arms around his body and Victor face against his skin

[fivetimechamp]

He's too busy taking Yuri's hand on his arm as permission and hauling him sidelong and backwards to pay much attention to that apology, but he notes it for further comment once he's finished. For the moment, he's more interested in shifting to get his legs apart, one on either side of Yuri's hips, and dragging Yuri back against his chest and stomach, so Victor can solidly slide both arms around his stomach and curl in, burying his face against Yuri's neck, wrapping around him like an octopus.

It's almost close enough. It's still not close enough. "Why sorry?"

If anyone here should be sorry, it's Victor, and he is. "It was my fault."

Yuri might have told him to go, but he was the one who decided and went. He asked Yakov to take over his skater. He got on the plane. He left Yuri there alone. "I should have stayed with you."

(Even if saying so sparks a pang of negation that reminds him of Maccachin over there, peacefully curled up, maybe already asleep, untroubled by thoughts of guilt or fear or worry.)

On the screen, the ladies' skater finishes up, striking a pose that Victor doesn't see or care about. Not when he's got Yuri here, finally, in his arms, and he can follow that apology the way he wanted to at the airport, shifting from pressing words to pressing kisses against warm skin, arms circled tight around Yuri's middle.

[theglassheart]

Victor moves him, still half-flailing, less because Victor is doing it and more because he doesn't know exactly what Victor is doing, where exactly he's being dragged to, with Victor behind him, but eventually it does stop. Even if that time feels longer it really is only a handful of seconds, before Victor stops.

With Yuri pulled right up against Victor's chest. Victor's legs bracket against his hips and his thighs. Pressed up and crowded against every inch of his backside. Arms wrapped under Yuri's own, holding him in the one place ( ... or tether Victor to him? Except that's not. He wouldn't need.)

"You had to go," mumbles through another shiver, as his mouth doesn't want to remember how to work, while Victor's lips are placing surprising, then, dizzying, soft kisses against the all too thin skin of his neck, making it harder to breathe, harder to think.

Reminding him, only after it's already out and said and coming round to his underwater ears, that he said those words last night, too. To Yurio. Who said nearly the same thing that Victor just did. But in such a different tone. Yurio's had escaped louder, as though it finally couldn't remain trapped inside him anymore.

Victor's was murmured against his skin, before kisses, like ...
Like what? Like an apology? For doing the only thing he could have? Should have?
Like Yuri doesn't know that intimately more than anyone. Like Yuri even has a clue.

Has any idea how to do more than tip toward Victor, and the brush of his head, and hair against the side of Yuri's neck and head. Feeling like maybe, suddenly, he'd never been aware of how gone Victor was. Even with how it'd all gone. How much everything had seemed ... different, empty. It was all mask on top of it, and his skin, or his head, had recorded it inch by inch, and second by second.

Thinking only for a brief flick, even as he doesn't move more than the straining lean--=, about reaching up, up from Victor's arm, to just cup the side of his head, his face, his jaw, and just hold him there, against Yuri's head, here, all around Yuri, and try to superimpose this suddenly over the echoing, aching, complicated, conflicted, wanting, needing all of that.

[fivetimechamp]

"It wasn't what a coach should do."

Except he wasn't really acting in capacity as coach just then, was he? It was more like...

Well, this. More like this. Just the two of them, without worrying who is coach and who is skater, who gives the orders and who obeys. Companions. (Lovers?)

As Yuri's coach, Victor should be the one taking care of him. But how does that work like this? When he's just Victor, and he needs something, too?

If Yuri want him to stay Yuri's coach until he retires, they'll have to figure that out –– but not tonight. He pauses in pressing kisses to the thin, warm skin at the crook of Yuri's neck, and settles his chin there instead, cheek pressing against the side of Yuri's neck, temple against his jaw, while Yuri leans into him. Not quite relaxed, but maybe beginning to get there, as the girl on the screen is replaced first by a series of logos and then the silver-medal ice dancing team. Their exhibition is cheery and sweet, the sort of thing they can't always get away with during competition, but it's charming, fun, light-hearted. He can see why they medaled; they have real chemistry, trust in every synchronized step.

The screen is tiny and the sound isn't great, but he likes this better than watching it on the big television downstairs, or even live. If they were at the rink right now, he wouldn't be able to curl around Yuri like this, as if Yuri were a heat source and he's a half-frozen lizard trying to keep warm.

(Of course, if they were at the rink right now, it would probably be because Yuri medaled and was heading out to skate Stammi Vicino.)

"They look like they're having fun."