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'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.

[theglassheart]

He's never sure if he's feeling it or seeing it more, sometimes when Victor does these things.

A vertigo of momentary uncertainty if this is the real world and really happening. He's long since accepted that Victor is here, Victor is training him, and that's a real thing. There are weeks and months, hard days and harder nights. Grueling work and even the outings Victor drags him on, here and there and everywhere Yuri might never have gone.

But this thing. This one right here. Where fingers find his hand and draw it away from being not far from his own shoulder. The way Victor presses his lips to that hand, soft, specific (again, the second time since he stepped off the plane). The way Victor tucks his hand against Victor's cheek, holding it between that cheek and his fingers, like it is precious. Like it could be lost, and thus can't be. Making it seem so much less like it's his, connected to him, about him. Somehow.

His fingers are there, he could wiggle them and his fingertips would shift in his own vision. He knows that. Knows it is his hand. But he doesn't -- not even while his heart pounds a touch faster watching Victor, watching it -- move at all, like moving those fingers might break the image. Like it was made in glass and might shatter. Or an image, caught on the reflection of water that could be scattered and diluted with the smallest touch, rippling it away.

Victor's voice, and the words that come with it, tug his gaze upward the little space between his hand and Victor's own eyes. The soft, but certain way he says that he always wants to be there. Placing it into a tug-of-war with those minutes after Yuri hung up the phone that morning. Alone, in that so empty room. Staring at his knees. Unable to move at first. Feeling his heart tearing more and more. With that. With this.

The way Victor doesn't look away from him. Saying it with the same voice, same certainty.
Even when it means everything it hadn't. The reverse of what he'd held on to, even if he shouldn't have.

Beautiful and earnest, even through the gentled exhaustion, is the way he looks now. Still compelling and overwhelming. All of it bits that aren't in the other, when Victor was too far away to see. To touch. To even hear right, when all he could do was hear it. He wants this more than that, even if his mental fingers are sticky with it and he was a too tight grip on it in his head still. An acceptance of time in that constantly repeated to himself. For days. Until this. I always want to be with you.

Yuri can't point to exactly where it comes from, only that it's happening when it's happening. That he moves, trying to get closer, not caring about the pile of legs, and the bed, and the forgotten laptop. He scoots a lot closer up Victor's lap, and there's a moment, a hesitation before he brings up the hand that's been dormant and just as forgotten in his laptop. It hesitates for just a second before touching Victor's other cheek, like the ripples will happen or he'll wake up in the airplane, all of it still just exhausted, stressed dreams.

One of his hands held by Victor with the back against a cheek. The other brushing fingertips and then a palm with aching slowness against the other cheek. He wants this to be real, more than anything else inside of him. He wants to believe that this part is truer than the other part. He wants to remember this more, but even more he wants to be in right now, when Victor's skin is soft beneath his, and not think about beyond this second, this touch, Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

He's really not sure he'll ever get used to Yuri touching him.

Certainly not when it seems like Yuri will never get used to it, every new attempt another foray into personal bravery for him. It's obvious in the nervous way he watches Victor, and his own hand, as it carefully lifts. Slow, like he thinks he might startle Victor away, as if Victor hasn't stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped doing anything other than sitting here careful and still and not going anywhere.

His legs shift as Yuri moves, and there's a crinkling sound as one shin meets that paper bag still on the comforter top, but it's hardly a priority. Even the pirozhok that must still be sitting on top of it, that should really be put in a refrigerator if it isn't going to be eaten right now, is nothing he's thinking too hard about. Not when Yuri's fingers are brushing his cheek, and then his palm is cupping it, and Victor's held breath comes in a painful tug, a breath like he forgot how to breathe, and his body, unwilling to let him simply asphyxiate, is sharply reminding him.

It doesn't matter. Air. Anything. Anything but the way Yuri, all solemn dark eyes and uncertain mouth, is looking down at him right now. Hand cradling his head.

Victor's hand releasing the one he's held to his cheek, so Yuri can turn that one, too, if he wants, Victor's own fingers trailing to come to a rest at the delicate bones of that wrist. If it were anyone else, he'd swear he's seconds away from being kisser –– but Yuri is still never quite sure about that yet, is he? If he can, should.

When there hasn't been a single moment over the last eight months, or two years, when Victor would push him away or tell him not to.

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't know when the room went silent, not exactly, only that Victor takes what sounds like a faintly pained gasp after long enough that the sound defines the silence. Burns the edges of it. Tenses the muscles across the back of Yuri's shoulders, and makes the skin raise at the back of his throat.

It's not enough to have just that, to hold that much, because Victor shifts the next second and Yuri almost apologizes as Victor's fingers release the hand they'd been holding. It's on his tongue to let fall out more than a little panicked at what he might have done that he shouldn't, except Victor's hand doesn't leave. His fingers curl gently over the skin and bones of Yuri's wrist.

The small, fast beat of his blood beating there, so close to the surface, while he swallows, looking back.

He should have something -- a word, a sentence, an explanation -- but he doesn't. He turns the hand Victor had taken over, trying not to feel frightened by both the sheer simplicity and still absolute impossibility of that he's doing this. That finished with that next smallest shift, Victor's face is framed between his hands, and Victor is letting him. Victor. Staring up the very short distance between, with unwavering focus, on just him, in a way that decimates any words Yuri might have had.

Decimates his air. Sense. Rational direction. Breaks it down to the raw, tired, ache buried inside.

He's not sure there's a way he could put it into words, if he convinced his lungs or throat or mouth to work. That he knows any kind of proper response for I always want to be with you, or could ever dare the admission that it's, of course, easier to believe the other. A million times over even. That he hadn't questioned. Hadn't thought to question not questioning it. He's used to feeling, and thinking, so many things that whole world tells him that he shouldn't be. That they aren't. Haven't. Don't. Why wouldn't it just be him?

The way he's not even sure that is it entirely.

A good portion, maybe even a terrifying
and shamefully large portion of it,

but maybe not all of it either.

When his eyes are tracking too many times over the space of Victor's face -- perfect cut features and palest skin, under his fingers -- and he wants to believe (find a way to believe, keep, deserve) these newest words, the same way he was willing to believe those. Because Victor said it.

Because he doesn't question that Victor will tell him the truth, more often than not with a caustic clarity that even America and the internet didn't prepare him for. About himself, about his skating, about everything. Because he doesn't coddle Yuri's weakness even when he finds himself helpless to do anything about them, not even when he finds himself continuously tripping over newer and newer parts of it.

[fivetimechamp]

He's not used to looking up at Yuri, on a daily basis. Yuri is shorter than him, slighter than him, and it's rare that they're in a position that would leave Victor staring up into his face –– although less rare than it used to be, a fact of which Victor is continually and breathlessly grateful.

But it is new, this perspective. Always demanding a little bit of recalibration, the way it had that very first time Victor blinked up into Yuri's face, framed by the golden and diffused light of the banquet hall and hotel ballroom. The first time he ever had a thought about who Katsukie Yuri was aside from just another would-be competitor, a rival for Victor's throne and crown. How could he have known then that this was the clearest way to see Yuri's solemn brown eyes, to watch the way his shaggy hair falls over his forehead and glasses?

He wants to move, to push up and steal this kiss that's breathing between them, paused and uncertain, but he can't. Not yet. He, occasionally, has to let Yuri come to him instead, doesn't he? Not just to push and push and push, take and take and take. Not make those words true. That man thinks only of himself!

Be better than that. Himself. His base instincts and desires. Skating is all about the elevation of those feelings, this want, isn't it? Taking love and making it theatrical. Something larger than it could ever be.

That was what he'd always thought, before he fell in love.

But there's something else happening here, too, he thinks. It's not just that Yuri's uncertain about taking that last step, although he seems to be thinking about it. There's uncertainty there, too, in his face, his eyes, the faint wrinkle of his forehead, like he doesn't know if he can believe what he hears. If Victor's telling the truth, when Victor can't think of a world in which it could be a lie. He wants to be with Yuri, right here. By his side. Always.

He'd already spent too much time fighting it to have recognized it as anything else.

"I won't leave you alone again."

Not on the ice. Not by the boards. Not for a competition. Not for anything, ever, if there's anything at all in his power to keep it from happening.

Eyes tracking across Yuri's face, and down, to his mouth, before sliding back up again, trying to convey the magnitude of all this. How certain he is. How he couldn't imagine wanting anything else.

[theglassheart]

That one is the most untrue of them all.

Victor will leave, and Victor will leave him alone,

And all the things in this room -- that Yuri doesn't look to see, because he doesn't look away from the frame of Victor's face in his hands, those dazzling eyes and the fall of his hair just slightly more to the side looking up, almost uncovering his other eye entirely, too, almost -- will all go, too, and then this room will be empty, like the hotel was empty, like Yuri's whole world suddenly was,

And it is terrifying. Somewhere else. Somewhere not close enough. He knows he should be able to feel that clearer. But he can't. Not when Victor's eyes are making this impossible circuit between his eyes and his mouth, and Yuri knows -- okay, Yuri knows, at this point -- that he probably should just kiss Victor. That anyone else in the world would just kiss Victor. Maybe just kiss anyone looking at them like this. Stop thinking. Stop stressing.

Just stop. Just kiss Victor. The most eligible person on the planet. For the world, if not for himself.
But he can't. He can't and his thumb strokes a little against Victor's cheek when his own lips press firmer.

Because something else is happening. Somewhere he can't point to. Behind his breast bone and so deep inside of him there's no physical spot for it. Something almost too familiarly stubborn and defiant, and maybe even to a point stupid. Because. He's not promised Gold in Barcelona, but he wants it, but he's going to try his hardest for it, right? And either way, after whatever happens, happens, his skating career will end.

The better part of a year with no promise of glory,

Just the promise to try, to fight, to be brave, to not look back.

Could he be brave like that, here, too? Here, with Victor's earnest expression under his fingers, and the strange exhausted feeling like he just wants to throw his arms around Victor and burry into him until the lines between them vanish. Like maybe December could vanish. But it can't. But it won't. (Like Barcelona won't when the panic and the spirals come and they have to get on the plane and the scores are flashing.) But.

Maybe.

Maybe it's not about that either.

Maybe he could just be brave? He could just pick this, too, pick Victor, pick whatever that is, and becomes, and breaks down to, in the words he can never find, and even less manages to say right, and accept everything that is, at it is, everything as it's given to him, everything that he could have or be offered, until then, and try to only worry about the then (of the emptiness and absence, of the hotel, and January) when then comes?

Just be here. Just give what he can of his all. (Just love Victor.
Just not regret any of this time when it's gone and he didn't do enough now.)
And maybe until then Victor won't ever leave him. Yuri could believe that much, easily, couldn't he?

Maybe that's enough, Yuri thinks. Yuri hopes it even, for one or two long seconds, as his fingers slide back from Victor's cheeks, to his ears and his hair. But his lips are just touching Victor's when it feels wildly, suddenly, so clear, that it could never be truly enough. Never enough-enough. Not to not want more, want everything, want the world where it was even a choice. Want Victor to mean it forever.

[fivetimechamp]

There's a long moment where Yuri just looks at him, mouth firming slightly, and Victor wants to ask what? What is it, in his head? What's he thinking that has him looking so serious, why's he watching Victor instead of leaning in for that invitation, stealing the breath right out of Victor's lungs, making Victor remember that he's here again and everything is fine.

They made it to the Grand Prix Final. Maccachin is fine. They're back together again, and Yuri has a real shot at the gold Victor promised him all those months ago. Why are they even talking about the possibility of being apart again? It won't happen. It isn't happening now. When they've both wanted this for the last few days, why not just give in to it?

He's almost at the point of asking, when Yuri's hands shift gentle against his cheeks and into his hair, and Yuri is bending towards him finally, finally, and whatever he was just thinking is wiped out of existence when Yuri's mouth brushes his.

His hand dropping from Yuri's wrist to Yuri's waist, the other sliding to Yuri's back, and both of them threatening to just haul Yuri closer, harder, because this kiss is innocent and gentle and Victor thinks he might break on it like water on glass. And he shouldn't. This is all still only a week, a little over, old for Yuri. Yuri who had never even been kissed before. Yuri who still doesn't always react well when Victor loses his head a little, Yuri who gets annoyed when Victor has the presence of mind to pull away and take a breath instead of just burning them both down, damn the consequences.

So he does try, but he can't help shifting forward a little, mouth parting because a tiny sound of longing wrings its way out of him, and that does tighten his hands, pushes him forward even as he's tugging Yuri to meet him because it's been days and it may as well have been years for the way he couldn't stop thinking about this, about him, about everything he's wanted in the last two years that suddenly became a possibility.

He doesn't mean to, but then, he never does.

[theglassheart]

Victor is right there, pressing up gently into him, hand dropping to his waist and the other one finding his back, and Yuri can't quite make his own hands stay still. Sliding further into Victor's hair, until his fingertips are running into each other. He can't tell if he's cradling the back of Victor's head, through that soft, silky, silver hair, because he's pushing in, pushing Victor back or if his hands are trying to pull Victor up closer, more into Yuri. Is it one? Is it both? Is that possible?

Yuri doesn't know. Isn't sure it matters in the slightest. Doesn't know if he has the capacity to think about it, when Victor's hands are gentle and still on his body, but Victor's mouth is moving under his. Decimating his thoughts one at time, faster, with each one taken out, a rolling wave. Victor, like the unerring answer to a question, every question. Victor, like the unwavering promise of that soft hiss sound the first moment your skates touch ice. Victor, who --

-- gives this small plaintive sound that feels like it punches something in the center of Yuri in the face, tightening his fingers almost a little desperately, at the same time that Victor's own hands tighten on him, pull him in. His chest bumping into Victor's, and his glasses pressed to his cheeks and nose, but he doesn't want to pull away. Not when it feels like that sound from Victor, that slingshot itself into Yuri's chest, is a mirror to the feelings buried there.

Like a sledgehammer on the door trying to beat them back,
push them down, not get them everywhere. (On Victor.)

But that sound slices through it all, and Victor's hands, Victor's grip, the collision of a tighter closeness, all highlighted on that sound, is a single sliding, burning path. With Victor's mouth under his, opening gently against his, making him follow suit, giving him a surprisingly frantic stab of want to, and regret that he hadn't, shifted even more than he had. To be facing Victor head on, to curl around him, more than like this, more like last weekend. But not enough, not enough to want to do a single thing in the world, with any breath,

any choice that is
to stop kissing Victor now.

Not now that he is again. Finally. Finally.

[fivetimechamp]

It's like some key suddenly gets turned in Yuri, and he comes alive under Victor's hands, against his mouth. Fingers sliding through Victor's hair and melting nerves along the way until he feels like a dripping scoop of ice cream, all befuddled delight torn between tipping his head further into those fingers and pushing against Yuri's weight nudging him backwards. If it were just those fingers sliding along his scalp, he'd probably be out in minutes, if not seconds, but it's not: it's Yuri's lips parting and muscles tensing under Victor's hands at the same time as those fingers tighten in Victor's hair. Glasses bumped askew, and Victor's heart racing, and his breath shortening. None of it quite like the pause in the earth's spin when his toepick catches the ice and sends him hurtling skyward, but it's the closest thing he can think of to this feeling.

Up, and up, and up. Certain that there's no possible way to stick this landing, but throwing himself into it anyway.

He's so tired that his nerves feel fuzzed at the edges, and even Yuri's touch lacks its usual sharp immediacy, but that only makes it more dreamlike and wrenching than usual, doesn't it? With this sensation that it might not be real, in the same way none of his dreams after Sochi were real, the same way nothing, even practice until he was dead with exhaustion and his feet throbbed and his muscles threatened to tear, felt real. Something he could never manage to explain to Yakov, even if he'd ever thought to try. He doesn't know how much more real it gets than Yuri's weight warm and solid against him, in his arms, Yuri's mouth on his, Yuri's hands in his hair, but he doesn't know how to hold onto it, grasp it, make sure. Make really sure that he won't just blink awake with a pillow clutched against his chest and Maccachin whining to go out into the dim blue morning of a St. Petersburg winter.

There's really nothing to do other than pretend that it is, is there? Even in those dreams, he'd wanted to make the most of them, and he shifts now to draw Yuri against his chest, while his back hits the headboard. It's not quite comfortable, and it's not quite the best possible way to settle against each other, but the ache in his spine is something he can hold onto as unlikely to happen in a dream, and so is the pause he has to take to breathe, before pushing back for another kiss. There's a rustle of paper near his knee, and the quiet sounds of the mattress and bed from shifting, and Maccachin snoring, and Yuri ––

Yuri's breath fast and shallow, and the thundering in his ears that he thinks must be his own heartbeat, even if he can't tell if it's one heart racing against these held seconds, or two.

[theglassheart]

This is not like the kiss in the car, with too much of the car, like too much of the world, still in the way, and it's not like the day Victor left, the day Victor didn't kiss him at all, when the day went from brilliant to terrible, from rousing success to certain terror ...

... and it's not like the day before that either, when kissing was still new (the way it still was now, even, a slightly fumbling, slightly fuzzy, almost a little frantic, yet more necessary than air, thing) but the world was languid and the only concerns were possible idiotic embarrassment via knowing nothing, and, of course, that every second bringing him closer to Free Skate the next day.

He hadn't hugged Victor goodbye. Twice. He hadn't even thought to think about kissing Victor goodbye. Twice.
He'd convinced himself, a hundred times, a million, that all of this would be gone whenever he found Victor again.
That Maccachin might be dead and gone, and it would go. That he hadn't placed, and it would all go.


But.

It's still here.

Victor's fingers digging into the battered, worn fabric of his t-shirt, and Victor's breath growing fast on between their lips. Or maybe it's both, because his chest is aching. Which could be his heart trying to crash through the front, or his lungs not getting enough air, or getting too much. But Yuri can't focus on that. Being pulled further in and further back and further down, in, and in, and in, to Victor, and Victor's arms, and Victor's bed even more, with that small bump at coming to rest on the back of it again.

The whole of which, even as a thought, might make him flush more if his face hadn't already gone warm before this second, if it didn't remind him of something else. Because of it. And when he has to pause, they do, when air has to be demanded of them, Yuri wrinkles his nose a little, pulling back one of his hands to reset his glass and looking over his shoulder.

Even if he knows what he'll see, the same as he's started saying it before getting there. "We need to close the door."

Even if he's a little chagrin about the sound of his own voice. About that we. About the fact it's an answers, isn't it, for the question he hadn't answered? For one he knows he probably shouldn't be giving, even by that much. About the fact his tone sounds as winded, slightly rougher, and reluctant as he feels to let go of anything, to follow any rules, to do what he must, should.

Anything that isn't being near Victor until he can't be anymore.

[fivetimechamp]

He takes the chance while Yuri's looking away to lick at his bottom lip and try to catch his own breath, but all thoughts of centering himself go flying directly out of his head at what comes out of Yuri's mouth. "We do?"

His delight is impossible to hide, and not at all dimmed by Yuri's wry tone or the reluctance in his voice. Yuri said we. Yuri said close the door, with both of them behind it. Yuri is staying.

At least, that's what it sounds like. "You'll stay?"

It would be so easy for Yuri to say instead that this wasn't right, that they should cool off on their own, that this is home and not a hotel and he still doesn't really know what they're doing, all of which is true, but he isn't saying that. He isn't leaving. Not yet, anyway, and Victor can feel it shining out of him, for the first time in days, cutting through the exhaustion and the fuzzy uncertainty and the misery of being apart. "Here?"

With me? wants to follow, tripping unbidden out of his mouth, but he manages to swallow it before looking –– he hopes –– too desperate. Still, it echoes around the room almost as clearly as if he'd said it out loud, and off to the side, he can hear Maccachin shifting.

All three of them in this one little room feels like fate, doesn't it? Like it's the way it was always meant to be. Victor, and the two living things he needs most in this world.

[theglassheart]

It should be impossible, but it feels like Victor's words catch even harder in his throat than the realization of his own. The sliding slippery want and the already present guilty about everything he knows he should do. Which should make it harder to look back at Victor, especially with the door opened, but looking back is

b l i n d i n g.

His shoulders still, but Victor's face has gone radiantly bright even as the combination of his own feeling and Victor's sudden look of something mixing hope and delight sends his heart galloping unevenly. He should say no. He should take it back. He's not even certain quite how to breathe ever when Victor looks like this.

And Victor is looking like that
At him. Because he implied... said.

"I should--" He shouldn't is what his head says, even if his mouth stalls on anything that still even agrees he shouldn't have said that, shouldn't be not saying it now. The only taking over his head is the want to reach back out and let his hands frame this expression too. Wants to lean in toward the sudden brilliance of his eyes. Wants to kiss the heart shape his mouth pulls toward when he looks like this.

It makes his inside tremble, his stomach tying itself in knots, dropping his voice softer, uncertain how he can feel both embarrassed about staying and embarrassed about instead saying, "I -- we'll have to get up early." Beat. "Or," there's an awkward little gulp, owning that Victor doesn't actually have to care, Victor, even months later, is still given the grace of being a foreigner.

It finishes awkwardly. "--I should." Blinking, and sure this is probably the least cool thing to say suddenly. "But," slides out next, a little fast, not wanting to sink himself instantly, not wanting to have it pulled away just as suddenly, for not just not caring about his home, his family, the way it's supposed to be, for not being cool enough, for the whole situation here not being what it was a week ago, even days ago. "I could?"

Could stay, if Victor didn't take it back.



Wait.


No.



No, no, a question sounds like he's not even sure, himself,
and it tumbles out of his mouth. Even smaller. "I don't want to leave yet."

[fivetimechamp]

Relief is a cold wave breaking over his skin, momentarily washing away his exhaustion and fuzzy uncertainty. It doesn't matter how shyly Yuri says it, or how many qualifications he adds to it (Victor will be astonished if Yuri wakes up early tomorrow morning, no matter what bed he might be in) –– he said it, and he meant it. "Good."

As uncertain as Yuri is, he's just as sure. There's nothing small or waffling about his opinion on all this. "I don't want you to leave."

Although if Yuri's going to stay, he's right that there are some small things they ought to take care of, first: not least of which is the paper bag that keeps rustling near Victor's knee every time one of them shifts. He looks over at it now, mouth twisting. "I should probably put that in the fridge downstairs, shouldn't I?"

Food in the fridge. Door closed. Lights off. And then, finally ––

Maybe they'll be able to get some sleep.

(He knows he must be tired when that's truly all he wants, even with Yuri staying here with him: sleep, deep and dreamless and rejuvenating. Sleep that they both need. Sleep that neither of them have had for days.

Surely not even Yuri;s parents could begrudge them that.)

He looks back into Yuri's face with a gentle smile, arms slipping around Yuri's waist. "Do you think you can stand two minutes without me? You can get a head start on getting comfortable."

Really, Yuri ought to claim his part of this bed while he can: Maccachin very rarely spends all night on the bed on the floor.