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 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."

[theglassheart]

Victor says those word with the same easy, unbrookable correctness of most everything he says. Like it's an indefatigable truth. Following it with another kiss that shivers through Yuri's skin and blood, even though his heart has stopped trying to have a coronary right there, in Victor's arms, since he's gotten to be stationary nearly a minute now.

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it wasn't what a coach should do. But it was the only thing Yuri could have thought that Victor would, or should, do. The worst thing he could think of happening to Victor now. It hadn't been about him. At least not him now, or then, then a day and a half ago. Him, in Russia. It'd been about Victor.

Maybe even what Yuri could bear to see happen to Victor. Not for him. Never for him. Never at all. Maybe he'd -- had he been willing to sacrifice his chance for that? For Victor? Before Victor asked Yakov? Had he just not thought about it, really, what it might cost him, personally? (What it had [?] cost him?) Only Victor and where Victor had to be, while the rest didn't matter, even as Victor had argued it?

Even as the arguing only made Yuri more certain Victor was wrong and he was right?


It's Victor's voice beside his ear that makes Yuri blink, uncertain he'd been focused on anything in front of him, having to find the computer screen. The couple on it. The way they were smiling. (When had the girl left?) There's a faint hum of agreement from Yuri, watching them skate around the all too familiar darkened rink of ads and screaming fans. Even with the pressure of seeing the familiar rink, like a bruise, they do look happy.

But they won. They don't have a reason not to look happy, do they?

[fivetimechamp]

There's a small noncommittal sound from Yuri, but Victor's watching the screen. The way their hands meet and separate again. How even when they're half the rink from each other, each step is perfectly synchronized.

How delighted they seem to be in the purity of movement. "We were supposed to be skating together tonight, weren't we?"

The date he'd wanted to go on. Skating under the fairy lights at the Red Square, in the snow or under the stars. He was supposed to share some of what Russia has to offer with Yuri, as if he could in some small way begin to pay him back for all those times Yuri shared his life, his world, with Victor. "Another thing to be sorry for."

Not just because he made a promise that he broke almost immediately, but for missing out on it. On seeing Yuri there, skating just for the fun of it, without worrying about how many quads he needs or whether he's getting his footwork right. Just moving for the sake of moving.

(The way he did on the dance floor that night.)

He's sorry not to be able to skate hand in hand with Yuri the way the couple on the screen are, not to dance across the ice together, not to take a few moments for themselves, steal them from the road to the Grand Prix Final.

They'll skate together soon –– tomorrow, maybe –– but like he said before: not like that. "I wish you could have had a chance to see more of Moscow. I'm sorry we didn't get to have more time there together."

The ice dancers are coming to a close, and he takes a deep breath, chest pushing against Yuri's back, and relaxes, arms loosening around Yuri's waist just enough to keep from making muscles ache. He's here and he's not going anywhere, isn't trying to get Victor to let him go or struggling to get back to his side instead of here, where Victor can wrap around him like ivy around a tree.

None of it seems to be helping that ache, though. The one he'd thought would vanish when he saw Yuri again, the way it had that first night he arrived here, washed away in a flood of confident certainty.

Instead, it only seems to get more and more sore, like a healing cut he can't help putting pressure on, blood welling a little more every time he tries to patch it up.

Maybe it's an ache he doesn't want to go away. Maybe that's what love really is: just a never-ending and desperate need to be closer than he ever is or could ever be. "Are you comfortable enough?"

He doesn't want Yuri to move, but Yuri isn't exactly relaxing, either. It's all right: they'll find some way that works.

As long as he doesn't have to let go to get there.

[theglassheart]

If Yuri thought he'd prepared most of the things he thought he'd need for tonight's conversations with Victor, even if it was all building castles with runny, unsticking sand, almost none of which he's needed, he hadn't prepared himself for the innocuity of how a single question could make him feel. Like Victor had taken that arm around him, and instead plunged his hand right into Yuri's chest. Curled those long, thin, fine fingers around Yuri's heart. Maybe even a little too hard.

It's taken out whatever breath in or out he'd been on, before Victor even got to the second apology.
His voice is soft. Still right next to Yuri's ear. And. It's impossible to explain that feeling that hits him.

Something so overwhelming, that it feels almost numb, at the same time as there's a pressure pushing up and out hard at that thought. At the reminder. Because they were. They were supposed to be in the Red Square. The name he couldn't always remember right when it was going to happen, and now can't seem to misplace when it isn't. Has fallen out of possibility and by that cemented itself maybe more firmly now that it ever would ha.

There's a futile feeling, just to those words, following Victors.
While Yuri watches the effortless beauty of the duo.

His supposed to be skating.
His to see more of Moscow.
His more time there.

The word that beats in broken time in Yuri's chest is none of those. It's a single one. It's not even really a sentence. It's simply -- date. Victor had asked him there on a date, and he had said yes to a date, after having an embarrassingly idiotic overreaction about it being a date, and he'd gotten exicted, even hopeful, about this date and there's a small whisper in his head about how that was supposed to be something he got, he had, so he hadn't, of course, why would he.

Even though Victor's arms are around him right now. Victor's chin is resting on his shoulder right now, watching the computer that is set up because Yuri had insisted on the gala, right now. Victor is apologizing for it, too, among all the thing Victor doesn't need to apologize for. All of which hurts, and none of which is actually Victor's fault. Which just makes it feel more confusing instead of simplified.

Victor asks if Yuri's comfortable and Yuri is not entirely certain he's entirely ready to look at that head on either. It makes him even more aware. Of Victor. Even if he'd just been using the example. Victor, who is currently wrapped around him in way he really wouldn't have before. Or he might have. But not for this long, and now exactly this close. A head on his shoulder and a voice filling up his head.

But. Not this close. Like a living jacket. Not kissing Yuri's skin, and pressing his face into Yuri's shoulder, or neck. Not on Victor's bed. It all makes his eyes shift above the top of the laptop screen, to the door he'd left open, without thinking about it. Definitely not thinking that this was going to be Victor's first decision once he sat down. Maybe he should have guessed. But he hadn't. Didn't have a reason to have known.

"Yes." All of this was still so very up in the air, but Yuri nodded after a second, his arms shifting, slowly, like a consideration. Before they were layered over Victor's around his middle and relaxed at the top of his lap, that Yuri could wrap a hand tentatively around part of Victor's arm and squeeze it ever so softly. "This is ... fine."

Except he's thinking good. Even if it's uncertain. Even if he kind of wishes he had thought to close the door. Even if doesn't really have a clue what to do with the mess in his head, in his chest, of the weekend behind him, being drug into Victor's lap or Victor apologizing. This part. This little part of the whole explosion of everything. Victor this close. Victor not letting go. Victor's voice not stopping talking, even when he can't find anything right to say back or figure out why that's all still so.

It is.

It is good.

Almost worryingly so.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's response doesn't sound certain, but Victor's not sure if he should believe that or the hand that carefully curls around his forearm. Saying don't let go, maybe, even though there's no danger of that. He'd only let go now if Yuri actually told him to, tried to pull away, said no, this isn't comfortable, it's not fine.

If he were angry with Victor the way he probably should be but isn't.

(Is that the missing piece? The thing he keeps waiting for, that just never comes? Yuri told him to go, and Yuri hasn't said anything that sounds like he's changed his mind about what Victor should do, and Yuri asked Victor to stay his coach until he retires --

But he should be angry, shouldn't he? Mere days after saying with absolute certainty that Victor wouldn't hurt him, hurt is exactly what he got.)

But he doesn't say any of that, only slips a hand to wrap gently around Victor's arm, and even if he doesn't settle back, it doesn't seem like he's going to move, or wants to. "Good."

On the screen, the ice dancers are replaced by a pairs couple that must be new to seniors, Victor doesn't know them. "Maybe Yurio will be next."

Probably. They'll end with JJ, and Mickey Crispino may have already gone, so it would make sense for Yurio to be the next to skate. "I wonder if his grandfather made it to watch him."

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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


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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

(Was it really fine?)

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

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

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


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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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


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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

"Yurio?"

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

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

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

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

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

(See you in Moscow,
Coach Nikiforov)

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

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

Wasn't it?

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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


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



Maybe especially when he's right here.

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(And maybe ––

possibly ––

from being here, too.)

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

"He always does."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but then sit there.

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

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