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]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Please."

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

Victor can't know that no one is awake.

He can't know that his parents have gone to bed or are still puttering around the Onsen, or even the floor beneath them.

He can't know if there are patrons, two floors beneath and in the actual springs itself or the inn portions, even if those last ones couldn't make it up to here, no matter how the floor seems like it might be translucent and everyone in the building and out might be able to see them. Victor can't actually know what he's claiming. He's been up here the whole time since they got back, too.

But he leaves that one alone, for words that displace and replace and repaint his response entirely, with others that make Yuri's heart clumsy. I just got you back. Like Victor was the one who lost him. Like that's something that's even possible. Like Victor could lose anything. Like he -- but that thought is broken into another hundred pieces when Victor leans back in, even with him twisted to look back.

Victor's burying himself back against Yuri's shoulder and neck. Again. Saying it. Saying it like Yuri had tried to. Making his heart flounder and ache. Those words, gorgeous and perfect, inflection and emotion that internet recording never had, and the way Yuri certainly couldn't have managed to get anywhere near saying as fluidly as Victor says them, quietly, into his shirt.

I missed you.

I need you.

How is he supposed to
have anything to fight that?

How is he supposed to have anything in him but a confused wash, and an ache that he never could define where starts or stops, for himself, or for that idea. That it even might be true. That Victor is holding on to him and saying that. Saying stay with me and I just got you back and I miss you, I need you.

A small, strained whisper in the furthest back of his head still asking wasn't this all supposed to change Victor's mind? Or bring him to his senses, and Yuri doesn't want that. That thought. That idea, when Victor is this close, and Victor keeps finding more words that stuff himself like balloons and lights into the small cavity of Yuri's chest, and the even smaller space of his mess of a heart.

But he doesn't want that.

He doesn't want Victor to want him to be anywhere else. (Right?)

He can't lift his arms above the tightened ring of Victor's arms around him, to put his arms around Victor. Or, or something. But he can move them slightly, even awkwardly turned, to slide on arm, after a pause and press forward of movement, into movement, around Victor leaning into him. Leaning his head against the side and back of Victor's buried against him. A tumble of feelings at odds with any of the rest of his world, any world he's known.

[fivetimechamp]

He's not doing a very good job of making sure he does what Yuri needs, instead of just what he wants, and it makes him huff a sigh into Yuri's shirt collar. Is he the coach right now? Should he be?

A coach would shut the laptop and order Yuri to bed, with strict reminders about not setting an alarm for tomorrow. A coach would already have walked through the mistakes Yuri made in his free skate, and made notes for what to touch on once training starts back up again the day after tomorrow. A coach wouldn't be so desperate for Yuri's company that he'd threaten Yuri's peace of mind and sleep only to relieve his own.

(He's never been just a coach, though, has he?
Has only ever been just Victor, instead.)

Yuri's shifting against him, squirming to twist in his arms; not away, but toward. An arm slipping around him. Cheek and jaw resting, hesitant at first and then firmly, against his hair, and Victor wants to sigh again, a great shaky release of breath that won't relieve any of this pressure no matter how big it is. "You don't have to."

He should at least say that. Should offer it. He can't and wouldn't want to make Yuri stay here, if Yuri's going to worry the whole time and not sleep and resent Victor for asking him to do something he's not comfortable with. Another mistake in a week full of Victor's mistakes, all of which should be making Yuri think twice about getting involved with him, shouldn't they?

But Yuri's here, turning towards him. Victor's arms loosening enough to let him move, if he wants to, to wind up more like sitting across his lap instead of just in it, Yuri's side against his chest, instead of his back. If he wants to.

(He wonders if he'll be able to sleep, exhaustion or no, if Yuri decides to take the out he's been given.)

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't know how this happened.

He doesn't know how this keeps happening.

Victor. Victor. Who loves every new story about every new accessory for every passing holiday, and who doesn't run out of steam before trying all the most interesting dishes at any new, or even a restaurant they've been to many times. Who has absolutely no problem being so blunt the blades on his shoes are dull in comparison to how exactingly Victor tells him what's wrong, with his skating, with his own personality, all without warning.

Victor. That, and those, and every other thing. Who isn't. Doesn't. Has his face buried in Yuri's shoulder, Yuri's neck, talking into his shirt and his skin both. Just four words. They could get lost entirely in the space between Yuri's collar bone and the curve of his jaw up to his ear, but when has he ever managed to forget anything about Victor? Was there really ever a time before Victor?

What is he even supposed to say? How is he supposed to even form words? His parents? His house. Victor, and Victor's room, and Victor's bed. He's already here, in all of them, Victor wrapped around him. A new curve of the confused spiral he's in the middle of as Victor's arms suddenly start to loosen all around him again and Yuri's not ready -- for Victor to let go, for Victor to take another step further away and back from you don't have to even -- his heart tumbling as he turns maybe a little too quickly.

One knee staying bent and getting shoved more at Victor's leg, or aimed for under it. Or maybe through it. It's hard to know when all Yuri knows is turning, at least one leg tossing over Victor's, while one stays trapped and shoved under, and throwing his other arm around Victor. All a series of no no no no no that bashes against the back of his teeth and the inside of his ribs, without a first answer, but absolutely desperate not to be out of time.

Not to be let go. Even if this is probably the most awkward, backward, attempt anyone has ever made throwing themselves on Victor. He probably is. Definitely is. It's warm in his face, when what comes tumbling out is, "I missed you. Even if it was only--" But that stops, mortified even at that half started little. It's not the same words as earlier. It's not the same clarity of the feelings of that night, how hard it hit his heart, naming it the first second he saw that definition, and somehow it's even harder, like this, wrong, sliding back down into his throat like a rock.

In the language they both know and have used so long, because it's the island in the middle. Not Victor's, or his, but Victor's and his all the same, too. Especially this year, with Victor dropping into the lives here where English is not always as regularly spoken. But it's all there is. All he can say, trying not to highlight the stupidity of such a short time. So few days. Unraveling like that.

Unraveled. His lips press together at the image, but he doesn't pull away.

"I--" Fell apart. Almost couldn't find himself on the ice, at first. Lost, but won. Hugged everyone. But no one was Victor, no one felt right, no one else could fill up or take away that overwhelming, unmoored, unsteadied, part of him that: "-- missed you."

[fivetimechamp]

He'd meant to give Yuri more space, more leeway, to keep him from feeling trapped, but no sooner do his arms loosen than Yuri's twisting further, a leg going over Victor's and his other arm going around Victor's neck, cheek pressing into Victor's hair as worried words fall out. Saying I missed you, and had Yuri said that, before, without saying it in Russian? He'd found those words somehow, picked them for the same reason Victor would have.

Sometimes it feels like everything they say to each other has too many levels of meanings, all the way down, like shells glittering underwater. Easy to see, hard to grasp.

It's a balm to hear it now, anyway. Even if it was only a few days, even if they should be able to handle being apart that long, even if it's selfish. Even if he's still questioning his decision to leave at all.

(Over by the couch, Maccachin shifts and snuffles, and he's not sure it was the wrong decision, either.)

Maybe before Shanghai, he could have handled this better, before he knew that holding Yuri and kissing Yuri and having Yuri fall asleep next to him was an option, something he could actually ask for and have. Before Shanghai, this was all just him, because Yuri had changed his mind.

All he knows now is that he's not sure he could take it again. "I'm glad you're back."

Finally lifting his face from Yuri's neck and shoulder, to look up at him with a smile. Yuri's cheeks are pink and he looks uncertain but determined, one of his cutest and most irresistible expressions. How, exactly, has Victor managed to keep from tackling him in all the time he's been back? There were people at the airport, and then Victor had been impatient to get home and here, but now they are here and it seems silly to keep waiting when Yuri's in his arms and not leaving, even though Victor said he didn't have to stay.

Leaning up to kiss him is really the only option Victor has left.

[theglassheart]

It feels stupid, and foolish, and messy. Emotional, beyond what should be let out, which is already beyond what he should be feeling. After he already threw himself at Victor, into Victor's arms, in the airport. Which can't have been within the last two hours, it feels foggy and an ocean away, cloud cover between him and there, then. Nothing feels entirely right, and Yuri's arms tighten slightly on Victor because of it.

He already said it twice. Once more than necessary, and it's still there in his mouth.
Not better. Still pressing to get out, even while still not actually enough. Not right.

He's only the more right -- that it's not right, that it's not enough -- when Victor raises his head, and he's the kind of beautiful that never stops taking the whole universe captive, and Yuri is barely a blip beside the size of that universal reach. You'd think Yuri would know that by now, but his heart still shivers, shudders, wobbling confused like it forgot how to walk and is trying to explode everywhere all at once. A new layer on all the mess inside of his chest.

His hair doesn't look any less like it's supposed to, but his eyes are still that stunningly beautiful refracting blue, and his smile. Victor's smile, even small and quiet, only for this second, for those words. It only makes everything sharper, clearer, that ache still in there, with no exit or name or right words for it. Everything feeling only amplified by being in the middle of feeling it and having to meet Victor's eyes at the same second.

Yuri isn't sure if it says something that even if he's not quite expecting it, that the moment Victor moves forward, he does know, down as deep as his bones, that Victor is about to kiss him. Only long enough really to be very aware of the exact second Victor's lips touch his and the very real, and intensely embarrassing way, a whimper escapes up his throat and out of his mouth at the contact.

But not even that, while not gone and not forgotten and not respectable, can stop the way Yuri sinks down into Victor, into Victor kissing him. Into the way everything that's been threatening to, explodes, again, in his heart and his stomach, coming out in the way his fingers tighten around the back and opposite side of Victor's neck, where his hand had been resting.

[fivetimechamp]

There's still tinny music and commentary coming from his laptop, somewhere by his feet, but he has no idea who it's for, who's skating, who's announcing. None of it matters. It barely mattered before, but it certainly can't now, with the sound Yuri makes that sinks directly into Victor's tense stomach and make it tighten even further.

That sound, his hand tightening, his whole body shifting and trying to get closer, but there's no good way to do that like this. It's not like in Shanghai, when Victor dragged Yuri into his lap and could pull him up flush against his chest and stomach. They might have fit like spoons before, but this twist is making that impossible.

Everyone is so tired. Too tired and too sore from missing each other, and even though there's the flicker of an idea –– it wouldn't take much, just shifting his weight, just pushing forward, for Yuri's back to hit the mattress and all this tangled-up space to suddenly lay itself out in beautiful clear lines –– it all feels too delicate still, and he's exhausted deep into his bones in a way he never was during competitions. It's only been a little over a week and they've barely had time to talk about any of this, let alone push the boundaries of it, and tonight's not the time. He doesn't want Yuri unsure and uncomfortable and slowly trying to come to terms with what he wants or doesn't want, he wants Yuri just like this.

Tucked against him. Making that tiny sound. Trying to get closer. Kissing him back.

Palms sliding up Yuri's back and ribs, legs shifting underneath and around him to give him more room. He's so tired it seems like all it will take are these few touches to set his head spinning, leave him drunk and dazed.

Yuri shouldn't still be wanting to kiss him, should he? Victor left. As a coach, as ...this... he should have stayed with Yuri to support and advise and help him, and somehow Yuri is still here and he's forgiven.

He doesn't understand it, but he understands that sound all too well: it's the one his own heart is making over and over again, and whatever he's thinking about being too tired, blood is quickening and so is his pulse and it's too easy to let some of his worries and desperation drive this kiss, his hands, the way he's tugging Yuri towards him.

[theglassheart]

Whatever Yuri might think about his own weakness and inability to keep everything orderly, in its places, react properly, Victor doesn't stop to chastise him, or worse, to laugh at him for that uncontrolled sound. Victor doesn't stop at all. Victor's mouth doesn't lift from his, and his hands come to life over Yuri's back, confusing his impulses between the need to keep pressing into this kiss or the one that wants to push into those hands.

Victor makes that a little easier when he doesn't relent, but the hands on his back only pull him closer to Victor. Like none of this is close enough for Victor, and nothing Yuri's done or said is so bad he should be sent away, stopped, left alone (again, again, again) and Yuri's everything feels like it's there. It understands that. Which only makes it needier, more desperate, more quickly frustrated when it's nearly impossible to move in some ways, like this, semi-backward, semi-sideways.

As much as his body can move and bend in ways much of the world can't still at his same age,
he can't actually force his side muscles or his spine to just remove themselves so he can kiss Victor better.

He doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to second guess it, even as it's happening in his head, questions, too many questions, concern and calling attention to anything that changes anything even slightly enough to draw the focus to whatever he's doing, change, still has the gal to not find anything, everything this already is enough (enough, enough). Pushing up slightly on the knee collapsed under him, and one hand with purchase on Victor's shoulder, trying to turn just a little more still toward Victor and away from everything else.

The computer. The open door. The world. The weekend behind him.
Just for a minute. Can't he have just this for a minute. Just Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's still shifting, pushing, twisting in his arms, and they're starting to get tied up in a way that's only going to make this harder instead of easier. Yuri's leg is heavy across his, and Yuri's knee is on the mattress as he tries to push up, and maybe Victor should have just gone along with that heady whimsy of earlier.

The thought that this could be so much better if he just pulled them both over, if he pushed up from the headboard and pillow and forward, moving Yuri back, going for a different sort of gravity.

He still doesn't, because the reasons why he hadn't still haven't changed, but he does lean his head back to catch his breath and stare up at Yuri with heavy eyes. All of this feels so hard, why does it feel so hard?

Why hasn't getting Yuri back here solved it all?

Maybe because it was never about not having Yuri. He was the one who got on that plane in Moscow, not Yuri. Yuri just came home, he would have come back here anyway.

And they were supposed to skate under the fairy lights at Red Square tonight.

His hands slide to Yuri's hips, trying to support or guide him, whichever way he ends up, while applause breaks out on the laptop. (It must be over soon, surely?) Watching Yuri's face, eyes dipping to his mouth and the pulse in his throat and back up again, and it certainly doesn't look like Yuri wants to leave, but that just brings him back to what he was thinking before, doesn't it? "I'm sorry."

He's said it plenty of times, but each time seems even further away from what it should mean, how it should feel. Making him try again. "I shouldn't have left you alone. I should have known we have to stay together."

[theglassheart]

Yuri manages not to disgrace himself with this kiss ending for him the same way it started. Maybe it doesn't come out of his mouth, but the noise, or more the feeling that had gotten everywhere and turned into a sound when Victor kissed him, it's still the same feeling that fills him as Victor pulls away. When no part of him wants to stop kissing Victor and, somehow, it's still the same part of him feeling dizzily unbalanced by those kisses, and even more by the face looking up at him.

No one could say no to this face. It seems impossible. Like Yuuri might dissolve into droplets on the air and blow away if Victor so much as whispered a wish of it. He wants to tip his head in and rest his forehead against Victor's forehead, or Victor's temple, or, maybe his cheek. He wants to lift his closest hand, the one on Victor's shoulder, and let his fingers touch Victor's face, trace his features, like somehow there was ever a doubt they weren't the same.

Perfect. No matter where he'd gone or what he'd done. The same way it's been for decades.

The temptation and tremulously fearful doubt it spurs up, gutters flat when Victor starts talking, and Yuri blinks.

Looking down at Victor's mouth and Victor's eyes, but not like he had only seconds earlier. It's a completely different thing slipping into his expression. This confusion, like what's before him is utterly foreign, like he can't quite believe those words just happened. That Victor just said them. That Victor has no problem with the audacity of phrasing, or.

Or.

Or the idea that it might not be heart-stopping, or -stabbing, to hear.

That he's not even certain he knows how to parse it, and he's already baffled that Victor can say it like it's a given, or like he already had an idea it might be. I should have known could have gone so many ways. It could have been meant for a hundred different things, to be said in a hundred different ways, but we have to stay together was not in them. He doesn't even know if it's what happened, how he did, once Victor was gone. Falling apart and barely pulling it together.

Or something else. (This?)

He doesn't know what to do with that.

He doesn't even know how to feel what it makes him feel.

Maybe it's cowardly, and maybe his fingers tighten just a little on Victor's shoulder, even when he answers the only part he has any idea how to. "You had to." There's a helpless kind of shrug, as his grip lessens just as absently, looking over his shoulder and off the bed. "Maccachin--" Was hurt, was possibly dying ... wasn't even lying there watching them, so much as curled up, head down, a pile of fluff breathing great, huffy breaths, so very much alive.

"I would have come back if I could." If he hadn't been in the same place he was last time.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri looks at Maccachin and repeats himself, that Victor had to. The same thing he pushed at Victor in the hallway outside the rink, with people looking on in confusion. Victor wouldn't expect anything else: unlike him, Yuri isn't a selfish person. He'd pushed Victor to leave because he knew it would break Victor's heart not to be there, here, with Maccachin, and because he really would have come back if he could. He loves Maccachin, too.

Leaving Victor to study the line of his jaw and the winter-pale skin of his cheek, as Yuri watches Maccachin sleep. Was summer, and sunshine, and the tan Yuri managed to find that Victor never could really that far away? It seems like another lifetime ago, those long sunlit days by the water, under the sun, wandering around the town as lights came switching on. Even spending most of their time in the rink didn't keep the summer warmth from slipping under their skin.

Now it feels like Moscow's winter chill won't ever be warmed away. "You shouldn't have had to choose."

Between staying and going. "Between having me there or not."

It shouldn't have been an option. "A coach should stay with his skater."

But ––
This?
Whatever this is?

What are the rules for this?

Lips pressing together, even as he lifts one hand off Yuri's hip, to reach and trace a curve over his ear, fingertips brushing lightly through his hair. "I never even said thank you for telling me to go and making the decision for me."

[theglassheart]

Maybe it's simpler, that he can tell as Victor keeps talking, how he meant what he just said. As his coach.

Not certain if Yuri wanted it to mean that, or more than that, or if he was even up to anything like an opinion, an understanding of the confusing feelings it had stumbled on to him, or if it was simply more things metaphorically being pushed into the basket of them he'd found himself holding waiting to be translated later. Whenever he could. If he ever could.

Yuri had looked back from the sight of Maccachin sleeping on the pillow, when Victor started talking, but it was harder to keep Victor entirely in sight once Victor's hand reached up and it was following by the tingling friction of warmth against the curve of his ear, and into his hair, nearly making his eyes close as his heart tried to tumble forward into his ribs. "You don't have to."

He doesn't need to be thanked. Not even when he's tipping toward Victor's hand.
Voice. Everything he is. Eveything about Victor finally, finally, finally real again.

Doesn't want. This was all. And he'd, "I wouldn't have --"
Made him stay? Asked him to? Held it against him?

Not even in the middle of that first night, when sleep seemed impossible and the sudden empty lack of Victor in the world just as impossible? Not even right before he stepped out onto the ice for his Free Skate, when he could barely see straight and thinking straight was already long left behind? He didn't know if it was right, or wrong. It wasn't unheard of. But Yurio said it was wrong. While Yakov, apparently, hadn't thought it was, since he facilitated it, too.

Discordance meets without harmony thinking about Yakov's face after Yuri hugged him, and Victor's voice, once he'd thrown himself toward Yakov, speaking only Russian, in that tone that Yuri wants to make a dream and not something he can just almost remember perfectly still.

[fivetimechamp]

"I know I don't need to. I want to."

Yuri isn't good at being thanked, at ever feeling whatever he did or does is worth it or requires it. Even now, after so many months together, he still doesn't think of himself as important. Not the way Victor does. Not the way Victor knows he is. "And I'm glad I could be here with Maccachin. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to be back in Moscow with you."

It's a decision he don't know if he could have made, quite honestly. If Yuri hadn't pushed him to leave, if Yakov hadn't been right there, what would he have done?

His fingers slip into Yuri's hair, before tracing back over that same line again, this time with his thumb resting gently at the edge of Yuri's cheekbone. Somewhere near the middle of the bed, his livestream has gone dead. The exhibition is over. For them, at least, there's nothing more to think about than the Grand Prix Final, only a month away. "I don't want you to have to miss me."

Any other day and he'd be pleased and a little smug to know that Yuri would miss him if he weren't here, because any other day it would be academic, a harmless fantasy. Just something to amuse himself with, imagining Yuri, usually so the opposite of demonstrative, pine for him. Even if it's only a shadow of what he went through over the last nearly two years, until Shanghai, it would have been a pleasant thought.

In reality, it's quite the opposite.

Maccachin will simply have to stay away from the steamed buns, because Victor isn't at all sure he could do it again.

[theglassheart]

It feels a little like being chastised even when it isn't. He knows the voice Victor uses then, the disdained sharpness that is not as calm or easy as the tone he has right now. The one that makes Yuri follow along, and want to. That makes him not look away even when it feels like his heart stumbles through what couldn't have been more than three or four sentences, five at the most. Not an either-or, not that Yuri any disillusions about what is more important if it is an or, but it's not for this second.

Not when Victor clarifies it's both. Both of those things at once. Maccachin somewhere in danger, and Yuri, left alone, behind, to face the rest of everything. Both. Both, the way Yuri hadn't let himself, except in the furthest back of his head, and almost only when alone, apart. Not a single word of it had been spoken. Not to Victor on the phone, or in the text messages. Not to Yurio on either of the nights. Not even firmly inside Victor's arms, against Victor's chest, in the airport.

Yuri wasn't even certain he had a way to put it into words,
could ever have even implied both, at the same time,
without being ashamed of it.

Not to compare himself.

Not to even consider comparing himself when not in any danger.
Not even when he'd been terrified he might ruin everything all over again.



Which wasn't the same as not missing Victor even though Maccachin and his family needed him, was it?


Every touch against his skin is wearing away at the edges of him, like water running up against sand, and pulling more of it, more of him, away, with every brush of Victor's fingertips. It would be so easy to close his eyes and just lean his whole head into that hand, or to lean forward into Victor again. Except they are in the middle of talking, too. Yuri's mouth presses and releases a few times, before he finally gets to, with something a muddle, quiet voice, that isn't entirely evenly. "I don't miss you now?"

It's not entirely true. He knows that when he's saying it, maybe more than he did before he said it. But.

He, also, knows it's truer than it isn't. Truer right now than it was a day ago. Or two. He is not missing Victor now the way he did the night he kept waking up, or the morning Victor called, or worse, right after the call. After what Victor had said. About this all being the same for him, when Yuri couldn't help but feel like everything he'd come to consider normal had gone.

With one call and one cab and one plane, it was more clear than ever how much everything had changed for him.
Not even just from wherever he'd been the year before in Detroit, or the one before when was still skating, but ever.




It's more ... that he knows what it is to miss Victor now.

How terrible it is in reality, and not theory. For Victor to be just gone. For Victor to be there one moment, and all of him, his person and all of his things, to be completely missing the next. Never to return to a place. He knows what it's going to be like when that gets here, and he never lets himself forget how soon it is going to happen, or that it'll never have this on the other side of it to soften it.

[fivetimechamp]

"No?"

Of course, it makes sense. Yuri shouldn't be missing him, because Victor's right here, and their separation is over. How could he miss someone he's curled directly against? How could he miss someone he's sitting here, talking to?

Why does Victor still feel it, like the ghost of a broken bone long since healed? "I still do."

Miss Yuri. Even with Yuri's hair under his fingertips, even when Yuri is within reach, easy to touch. It doesn't make sense and he can't explain it, but it feels almost as if this is a dream he'll wake up from, only to find his bed empty and Yuri gone.

He doesn't understand it. He doesn't know how to fix it. All he knows is that he never wants to feel the way he has in the last few days ever again.

There's so much he wants to do. He wants to run his hands over Yuri's shoulders and along his ribs and back and waist, wants to kiss him, wants to drag him down to the mattress and refuse to let him up, keep him here while Yuri laughs at him for being foolish and dramatic.

he doesn't want this, whatever this look is on Yuri's face, that seems more resigned than relieved, as if having one taste of being apart has reminded Yuri to pull back from him, to expect the worst. He'd said he never wanted to hurt Yuri, and he had, only days after saying so, only days after Yuri had confidently stated that he would never.

But he still doesn't like this expression that looks like Yuri is already bracing himself for the next time it comes. "I just don't want it to happen again. I don't think I could take it."

Being away from Yuri. Being separated. Having to watch the free skate through the tv screen instead of from the side of the ice. "I always want to be right there with you when you skate."

[theglassheart]

He doesn't expect Victor to disagree.

Victor questioning him, what he says, what he does, that happens regularly enough not to blink at it except when fluster, but not agreeing, and not even just saying he doesn't ... saying he still misses Yuri, right now. While they are right here. While Victor is this close, with his hand against the side of Yuri's head, with Yuri more than not still an ungraceful, uncentered pile mostly in his lap. He's not expecting it. He's not even sure his heart knows how to hold the idea. How Victor keeps saying things he's not sure anyone in the world really says, until Victor has now.

The reaction is as confusing as a number of the other things Victor's said tonight. If it was anything more than sounds dissipated into the air, Yuri would collect it and corral it. The words and these feelings. The hiccup of surprise. The bruise of relief. The strange possessive warmth. The guilt for not making it better, and for liking a little. That Victor missed him. Even a little.

Even if he doesn't need to miss him right now.
Even if there's nowhere else Yuri could go.
Would go. Wanted to be.


He has to wonder if his heart knows how to take any of this, when Victor goes on, adding more to it than the already overwhelming admission that he's missing Yuri, right here, right now. Adding to it that he doesn't think he could take it happening again, and it just seems to put even more oomph behind every feeling that had roused it's head for his first one. Along with the one where it will, won't it? When they're done. Done, for real.

Yuri doesn't want that here, right now. Sitting between them. Pulling him back. He wants to give into that ache in his chest that just wants to reach out. That justs wants to touch Victor's face, even the side of his head like Victor is touching his, wants to pull him back in close, right against him. Wants to say a thousand words, or even ten, to soften the signs of Victor's honesty in his expression. Drag back his careless smile, and his flippant, flirty, bluntness that, also, makes it hard to talk and breathe.

It's not his face -- now when Yuri feels like every muscle around his sternum tenses toward cement, dragging inward toward a void, for movement, like a pane of glass trembling and threatening to shatter -- but he reaches up, slowly, to find Victor's forearm, of the hand in his hair. "You will be."

He would. For so many days still. Even if it was so many fewer coming than had gone, there was still so much to do, to practice and to decide. He'd be skating most of the days of the next month, with Victor at the boards or right beside him. Where Yuri needed him, too. He did. He knew that even more now, too. It was different. Without Victor there, everything was different. He needed Victor there. With him.

[fivetimechamp]

He can sometimes be more intense than is comfortable for people, can remember with perfect clarity Yakov's reserved expression and faint aura of weariness as he realized that Victor at twenty-five was no less excitable and overly passionate than Victor at fifteen. He knows people get taken aback, aren't sure what to do or say, sometimes find it laughable.

Yuri sometimes has. Laughed at him. When he'd been as thrilled during a trip to a ramen stand in September as he was to have his first katsudon back in April or see the parade floats, Yuri had laughed at him, amused, if also a little bewildered. But fond. Never with annoyance or disdain.

And now, he doesn't laugh, either, even though what Victor's saying is patently impossible, even if it feels like the clearest truth he's ever known, to still miss someone who is right here, in his lap, even as Victor's fingers trail down along Yuri's neck to rest his hand at the crook where his neck curves into his shoulder. Full of too many things he doesn't know how to say or express, when he's not on the ice, when he doesn't know how much touch Yuri's comfortable with.

While Yuri reassures him, his hand landing lightly on Victor's arm and making Victor smile, faintly. It's true: Yuri had asked Victor to be his coach until he retired, and that means Victor will get his wish, will get to stay by Yuri's side. He'll be here to coach and encourage and push, and to take Yuri's hand and kiss him and hold him afterwards, too. Nothing ended. Nothing broke. He still has everything he's been so desperate for over the last two years. "Good."

It's not enough. There isn't a good that's good enough for this feeling, the one that's so aching and sore and keeps reaching out for Yuri as if it could somehow coax him into laying his hand over Victor's chest, over his heart, to convince him it's all real. "I forgot how empty a room like this can feel."

Without Yuri in it with him. As empty as the Sports Palace's cathedral-like rink, arching ceiling and echoing space, where not even Stammi Vicini was big enough to fill it.

This is so much bigger than that.

"Having to only watch you on tv instead of being able to be there made it that much worse."

[theglassheart]

Yuri's eyelids flicker, eyelashes almost touching several times.

Small shivers running down the skin of his neck with Victor's fingers, chasing themselves down past his shoulders into the still sore muscles of his back. Tingling snaps of electricity that fade off the way waves do, sliding back into the ocean like the water hadn't seconds ago been under your toes. It makes his fingers tighten barely, on his lap and Victor's arm, and his shoulders shift. There's not a lot of Victor to lean into with a hand, but maybe his body tries a little anyway.

Yuri understands too well about the space. He'd slept as much as he could, but then he hadn't touched the beds, again, after waking up the next morning, and even the night before last -- or two, or one, whichever, however that's counted, the last one in Moscow -- he'd checked out early and stood in the snow, rather than spend his last hours in that room he'd gotten with Victor and was suddenly only his.

It's familiar until everything pauses, like Yuri's heart skips an entire beat, maybe several, at Victor's last words. Dark eyes looking at him with uncertainty. Or maybe it's not uncertainty. Maybe it's something more like a very still and solemn wariness. Searching his face, even as Yuri says, "You said that wasn't a problem."

Except that's not true. He didn't say it wasn't a problem.
He'd said it wouldn't be different. Being there, or not being there.

Yuri's not sure he thought out those words. Had even thought to think about asking himself the question. Any question. About whether it's a lie or the truth. Whether he wants to break it already, a second after being said, when he could just choose to keep it, no matter what it is. Both of them, sitting side by side in his head.

His mouth presses, embarrassed at the idea he'd given himself away by the few words. That it shouldn't have bothered him either if he was better at all of these things he never is. At whatever he was supposed to be better of this part. That part. That it had stuck, like a burr under his skin, a splinter embedded in it, a tear somewhere too far under to see or know how to close. At least until he'd finally been able to see and touch and hear Victor again.

[fivetimechamp]

"What else could I have said?"

He'd wanted that lie to roll off his tongue as convincingly as possible. In some respects, he supposes it might have been true –– he could no more help Yuri from the side of the rink than he could from in front of the television –– but it isn't about whether or not he can step onto the ice and rush to Yuri's side if he's needed, is it?

(He doesn't know if he would have been fine if Yakov hadn't been with him for a competition because Yakov always was, but he thinks so. It wouldn't have felt like this, like part of his soul and body was torn away, left behind when the plane left Moscow.)

He'd had to try, hadn't he? To keep Yuri's spirits up, not keep from saying things like it won't be the same not to be there because that wouldn't have been helpful. Still, he's a little surprised Yuri didn't see through what he'd felt had to be an obvious lie, a thin veneer of ostensible truth he barely felt like a layer of tissue over everything it was trying to hide. And yet Yuri looks taken aback, with a faint flush of embarrassed pink high on his cheeks. Had he really been thinking about that? Worrying about it, what it might mean?

That question pulls Victor out of his own thoughts to study Yuri a little more carefully: the pressed mouth, the blush, the way his eyes are searching Victor's face like he's looking for the truth. It certainly looks like Yuri is having to reassess something he'd been certain of, and that makes Victor frown, a faint line drawing between his eyebrows. "Of course it was a problem, Yuri. It could never be the same without being there, you know that. I just ... didn't want you to worry about it."

[theglassheart]

You know that, Victor says, starting to frown, and Yuri's knows he didn't, isn't sure even hearing it, that he does.

Which makes it even stupider, doesn't it?

Having said that out loud, having given that obviously, he didn't, that he hadn't, at least not entirely, not enough to not need to make that point, contradicting Victor's words, shouldn't have said, when he could have been silent and it could have passed without making a show out of his newest foolishness. Of holding on to whatever he could still have, whatever Victor had to give him, or not give him, said was true for him, or not true for him, even from so very far away, and losing his direction without Victor nearby.

Except, skate. Except, win.

Except he hadn't had those until it was almost too late, had he?

"Oh," is quiet. It's own kind of abashed note of being corrected, like a child, or a student, his still in that respect, too.

Not that Yuri's certain his voice needs to give the heat flushing warmer in his face any help at this point. For believing, for not knowing, or not questioning, not jumping to it like it was a conclusion. A basic lie, to pretend everything was okay. Like Victor wasn't gone. Like Maccachin wasn't hurt, possibly dying. Like Yuri wasn't alone.

Even the idea that one sentence from anyone, even Victor, could stop Yuri or Yuri's head from worrying then.
Even Victor present hadn't helped in China until after he'd ended up yelling and crying. That even from winning.

Why couldn't he do any of this well? Gracefully? Sanely? Like everyone else?

[fivetimechamp]

Oh, says Yuri, like he really hadn't thought of that and probably Victor should feel terrible that he worried, but it's difficult when he finds Yuri's abashed expression so adorable right now. "Yes," he confirms, free hand dropping to find the one Yuri left curved on his forearm, bringing it up so he can kiss it and then tuck his cheek against the back of it. Yuri's hand, in his. Pressing Yuri's hand to his lips, and his own cheek. Yuri right here, a pile in his lap. Yuri who had leaned against him like he was a sofa or headboard while they watched the skaters.

Yuri who somehow thought Victor would be alright with just watching him on television. "I always want to be with you. Didn't I come here for you to begin with?"

Yuri might have been the one to skate Stammi Vicino and leave it as a message online, but Victor was the one who flew out to Japan and declared he was staying, that he'd decided to take Yuri's invitation even if it was a year and a half late, that he finally had the answer to that request Yuri had pushed at him so earnestly that night in Sochi.

Maybe trying to lie was the wrong thing to do, but the more he thinks about the last few days, he doesn't know what any of the right choices might have been. Maybe there were none, maybe this was a time when no matter what he did, it would have been the wrong thing.

It worked out. Maccachin alive and well, Yuri on the way to the Grand Prix Final, both of them back together here in Hasetsu. Even if Yuri hasn't said if he'll stay tonight, there is very little more Victor could ask for.