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]

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.

[theglassheart]

It's hard to entirely look at Victor head on after that first good, and especially at the warmth trying to push itself into his already and still flushed cheeks when Victor mirrors back his own words. Not just repeating that he'd wanted Yuri to stay, had asked Yuri to stay, but mirroring Yuri's own words about not wanting him to leave, and it should all be the same.

But it still all gets warm under his breast bone, and the bottoms of his glasses, and it's only a small glance back up and over to make sure at those words, like the sun was rising too hard, too fast right under his skin. A strange echo, and one that some still feels insanely impossible, even if Victor asked first, if Victor has just been kissing him. When it all feels like a strange, dizzy spin -- and one no one else might understand in the slightest -- but at least Victor is looking at the bed and not him.

Making Yuri take a second to catch up with where Victor had gone.

His words making this gargantuan leap from not wanting Yuri to leave to talk to going downstairs right after.

It takes a blink and a second to realize Victor's talking about the half-eaten piroz-katsu, half-forgotten on the bed. Reminding him, somewhere in the far back, ripple of his thoughts of his almost-entirely forgotten phone, and how it's probably still on Yurio's page. There really isn't that much time to think about it, though, before Victor's arms are sliding around his middle and he looks up not quite, but almost confused.

This face here. The one looking at him. All soft edges, and this beautiful, soft smile. This is why no one on the whole Earth would deny Victor something if they were under the receipt of this kind of look. It takes the warmth all muddled splatter in his chest and makes it a rope that is suddenly knotted all around his heart, making it stumble and flutter like he'd never known what his feet or gravity or the ground were for in the first place.

Not that getting past that is any much less confused. Victor asking about leaving, while wrapping his arms tighter on Yuri's waist. It seems the least sensible thing to go along with the question, but he doesn't want to point that out either. Doesn't want Victor to let go any more than he wants to leave, even if both are logically what should be done, too. Yuri nods, even if Victor leaving seems like the anthesis to letting himself get away with this.

But it stays at a silent nod, leaning in toward Victor's soft smile more than pulling away, more divesting himself from Victor's lap, still taking in this pleased and all too perfect expression on Victor's face, lest he open his mouth and somehow let his mouth change his mind, take it back, all of it, before Victor can even leave to come back.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri nods, but he doesn't move away and Victor doesn't, either, looking up into Yuri's face with a smile that's almost certainly more smug than it ought to be, but he feels so vindicated. It's not just him, none of this is. Not anymore.

Somehow. After having changed somewhere along the line without him realizing it. Sometime between the beach and Shanghai, well after he'd given up, Yuri somehow started wanting him back. He doesn't understand it, can't put his finger on it, but there isn't a thing he owns in this world that he wouldn't give up just to make sure he can keep it.

The shy way Yuri looks down at him like this. His agreement, qualified or no. Yuri who doesn't want to leave yet, even if he thinks he should, ought to, as if Victor can imagine caring about what's appropriate or polite or expected in a moment like this. Yuri who agrees that Victor should go put the pirozhok away, but who isn't moving. Yuri who has been caught more than once over the last week, breathless and uncertain but unwilling to let go.

How could he ever be expected to give this up?

Or to keep himself from leaning up to kiss Yuri again, chaste and gentle, before laughing. "One of us has to move, Yuri, so I can go and then we can go to bed. But you aren't making it easy on me."

All his life, he's had ironclad willpower when it comes to what he should do, what was best for training, for his career. That all seems to have gone out the window now, but he can't quite bring himself to care. "Maybe I should see how quickly I can make it downstairs and back up again."

[theglassheart]

Yuri can't defend how anything in the slightest is supposed to make sense when Victor is looking up at him radiant, and unremorseful, and unwavering, under his originally slightly untidy, and now slightly even more mussed, by Yuri's hands, somehow, hair. It's only exponentially less anything like sensible when Victor goes about tipping himself upward, kissing him, again. Making Yuri's brain sputter into a puff at the touch of his lips.

Soft, short, and then turned into nothing more than Victor's laugh that gets stuck in Yuri's teeth and his chest and that ache that sparked right as the kiss ended instead of just beginning and the soft sound started. All of it dazing, and not entirely comforting, it touches a note somewhere deep down, maybe always, being laughed at, floundering for the reason. Even though Victor is still smiling up at him, and then teasing him.

About. Oh.

Yuri's hands suddenly pulled back -- pushed back, off of shoulders he couldn't remember when his arms had found, or fingers had left hair, but he finds them all the same, pushes back. Because -- "Sorry." -- and it should be impossible to feel like he could blush more, he'd like to not have reasons to keep staying this warm, but -- Victor is right, and he's an idiot. "Sorry." He's all but sitting on Victor and not even in an easy, straight forward position.

Or. Well. He was. Before he was pushing Victor back at the same time as himself and plopping on to the bed. All ungainliness, that has him fixing the tilt of his glasses again, catching his weight, along with the new ground, on one hand, and trying not to wince at Victor's words. Not about going and coming back fast. About the fact he's going downstairs. Which is where he has to go. To get to the fridge. Which is downstairs. But, so is his parents' room, and Mari's.

It's the wrong sudden sort of panic to think maybe not how quickly, but maybe don't wake up anyone and don't say anything, as though it might not be possible to see that triumph on him, as though anyone could ever keep Victor from speaking his mind without a win to propel him more. When it had involved even more of Yuri more than a week ago, and people neither of them even knew, or ever would likely, and these were his parents, and his sister, all of whom Victor liked, and they liked him, and it's really the wrong things to say, "Okay,"

When he's already fretting a little that quickly might not be quickly enough if one of them is awake and up right now already. Because neither of those is even polite. Or appropriate. They might even be insulting. Especially if they came out of his mouth as fast as they were shooting about his head, now that he had pulled away.

(And. And. Victor hadn't done anything like that since that morning either, had he? At least not that Yuri knew of? Right?)

[fivetimechamp]

It's hard to remember how miserable he was in this same room, in this same bed, only last night, when Yuri is awkwardly shifting, forcing Victor to let him go and apologizing for something that isn't even his fault. That's Yuri, though: forever serious, only recognizing teasing when it's pointed out to him. Victor will have to remember that Yuri has a tendency to take him, if not literally, then certainly at face value –– but it's nothing to worry about right now, watching amused and affectionate as Yuri slithers unceremoniously off his lap and onto the bed. "I'll be quick."

Promised lightly, as he's moving, himself, reaching for the pirozhok and pushing it back into its crumpled paper bag, now gone limp with many wrinkles and folds. His legs and feet are tingling from the sudden rush of blood back into their veins, and they feel a little fuzzy as they hit the floor and he stands, paper bag in hand, but he centers himself easily enough. It's a few quick steps from there around the bed to lean in and press a kiss to Yuri's cheek, just in front of his ear, so he does. How can he be expected to leave without a kiss goodbye?

(Even if it is only for a few moments.)

Maccahin, across the floor, had lifted his head at the first signs of movement. Always ready for a walk and some companionship, he levers himself off his dog bed and trots pertly over, following Victor's quick footsteps with absolute loyalty and surety. Just hearing those dulled claws click quietly against the floor makes something that had felt kicked and sore in Victor's chest sooth itself, and his free hand comes to rest on the poodle's head before he makes his way downstairs.

The little inn at night is just as companionable and welcoming as during the day, though silent and sleepy. He tries to move as quietly and quickly as he can, familiar now after long months here, enough to not depend on the room lights. He doesn't have to feel his way around in the dark, and the fridge light, when he opens the door, makes him blink as if he'd been doused with ice water.

In goes the pirozhok, and he turns back toward the stairs, only just barely holding back from running up them, his mission now accomplished.

All there is now is to close his door, hit the lights, move his laptop, and everything he's been wishing for over the last few days will be in his grasp.

[theglassheart]

It shouldn't feel like he's left alone on a small island. Not when Victor is still there, within feet of him, standing and putting the food back in the bag. Especially not when Victor leans in and places a kiss on his cheek, before walking away with Maccachin in his wake. There one second and gone the next, leaving Yuri swallowing uncertainly down a dry, dry throat, eyes flicking around the room and still returning to the door.

Victor said quickly, but Yuri doubts it's going to be anything like taking the stairs and the floor beneath them at a run, and it's left Yuri sitting there on the not (but-sort-of) island of Victor's bed. Self-consciousness catching him like a hit to the ice, when the air all seems to leave your chest and your lungs can't entirely remember how to pull it back in yet through the impact. Why had had he said yes? Said? Implied? Agreed? Admitted he didn't want to leave?

And what if someone happened to make it up here, bypassing Victor entirely while he was in the kitchen and found him here? It wasn't the first time he'd fallen asleep on Victor's bed, no, but those were different. Those were days that had been long with practice and overwhelming with exhaustion, and, eventually, he'd been woken and made it back to his own bed. This wasn't the same. None of this was the same.

He was exhausted, but Victor wasn't going to send him away in twenty or thirty minutes. Or an hour. And he wasn't going to fall asleep on top of Victor's bed. Like he was this very second. Not asleep, but currently still on top of. He was going to be in it. With Victor. In his sleep clothes. The door still a slim yawning mouth of darkness looking at him everytime his eyes slingshot back to it, checking the boxes again. No Victor. No anyone else. It can't have been more than seconds, maybe the most of a minute.

He swallowed and looked down at the bed, again. Then, the door. Then, the bed again. Or, more specifically, the covers under him. Because he should probably get under them, right? Except then it would almost impossible for it to look like anything other than it was if anyone else got up here, wouldn't it? Except Victor had told him to get comfortable, too. It tugged and tore in different directions, as his eyes finally found his phone.

Everything still tight in his chest, not yet having moved, as he picked it up. It's a single press of a button, more franatic distracting habit than curiosity, and it was still on the blank white message screen with Yurio's username at the top and the three symbols flanking the "Write a message..." box at the bottom. Nothing at all in between. Yuri looked toward the door, again. For Victor. For his mother. Dister. Then, back down again at the blank box, with a different kind of sigh.

He'd forgotten. Maybe wanted to forget. Not Yurio. But the weekend. Maybe been unable to remember, or think, when Victor declared Yuri should stay. Before Victor was kissing him, and he was forgetting what air and ice and gravity was, too. When all he wanted to remember in the world was Victor. (When he wasn't sure he was done with that grasping, wanting feeling, needing to fill up all the weekend's holes still lurking inside of him.) It wasn't like he could forget the last few days. It wasn't like he could make any real sense of them either. Or even wanted to spend time pulling it apart.

Maccachin was alive, and in good enough health to be home.
Victor was here. Victor wanted him to stay the night.
Yuri lost, but was still going to the Grand Prix.

But that wasn't everything, the blank screen said to him.

He's still uncertain. He wants to be right. That somewhere in that crowd of thousands was Yurio's grandfather. Especially while sitting right here. When he'd been wrapped up in Victor's arms, with Victor's chin on his shoulder. But it's the idea that if he wasn't that makes it impossible to close the application of the accusing empty white window and go back to fretting about just getting under the blanket before Victor got back. If there was no one there, like the first night.

Like Yurio had explained about why he was angry and turned the beginning of Agape into ruthlessness.
Like Yurio who had still drug Yuri off to Milliways full of that feeling, and while having clipped his own score.

Yuri lifted a hand and fretted (eyes drifting to the door and back again fast), before raising a hand to type Made it home in time to watch the Gala. Reading it, empty and conflicted about this, too, before remembering and adding to the same line: Victor said to tell you that you looked good. It looks stilted. It looks bare. It looks nothing like enough. But he has no clue what else to say. Not really. It wasn't like having conversations face to face with Yurio was any easier.

Yuu-chan would know. But he wouldn't see her until tomorrow, or the next day, and it'll be too late if no one is there today. It wasn't enough, he's not enough if the other is true, too, but Yuri had no clue what was or would be (except his grandfather, the way no one who wasn't Victor was Victor), and so he hit sent. Staring at it for a few seconds longer, before he did close the app, at about the same time as he could hear the top of the stairs being cleared.

[fivetimechamp]

He can't actually run back up the stairs or towards the room, even if Maccachin is trotting along ahead of him: Yuri isn't wrong that they probably shouldn't advertise him staying in Victor's room tonight, no matter how unlikely Victor might think some sort of judgement might be. If nothing else, it's more polite to try and keep from waking up his hosts in the middle of the night, so he tries his best to be stealthy, even if it takes nearly all his willpower to keep from hurtling through the doorway and back onto the bed at the sight of Yuri still sitting there.

He looks awkward, but then, Yuri often does, adorably so: hair rumpled, sleep clothes loose, and Victor can't help but smile, even as he's issuing a warning. "I'm going to turn the lights out, Yuri."

But not before closing the door first. It's not really a promise of privacy –– not like the hotel doors were –– but it does give the impression of being back in a world all their own again, and that makes it even easier to hit the light switch on the wall. There's still a desk lamp burning, but he has to put his laptop back, anyway, so he crosses to pick it up from the mattress and deposit it under the light before turning that off, too, and waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark, enough to keep from tripping over something on the floor: clothes, or Maccachin.

He hasn't ever before, but there's a first time for everything.

What it really means is that he can finally take the few steps back to his bed and tug the covers back on one side, to slip beneath them, but that's not enough, either.

Nothing is until he can find wherever Yuri is, at whatever stage of getting into bed he is, and drag him back against Victor's chest, and into a deep, contented breath and a heavy sigh out into the dark and the pillow.

[theglassheart]

The relief feels almost like a wave breaking on him when Victor walks back through the door. Still himself, still here, still in his sleep clothes, still alone save for Maccachin. Victor smiles in a calm, cool way Yuri can't help envying against his inability to think he looks anything like. Tonight. This weekend. Ever. It's almost absolute, except that Yuri thought there was a flicker of something else right before that smile lit Victor's lips.

Just a for a second as Victor rounded the door from the hallway.
Just before his eyes found Yuri. Right here, where he'd left him.

But maybe he's just reaching for that to be there, too? Maybe?

The shred of nerves tries to dissipate with the light, as it turns off and Yuri's hands clutch his phone on one side and his knee, through sleep pants on the other. But it's not dark yet. Only dim, as Victor comes for his things and Yuuri realizes he should move. Even if he looks back at the door for a second again (again, again). Absolutely insubstantial. Nothing like the hotel. Nothing like a lock. Nothing really stopping anyone from opening it. His parents still right below him.

But the desk light goes off next, leaving Yuri confused for a second at the actual darkness, and aware of his own foolishness about still not having moved. Still having his phone clutched in a hand, and nowhere to really put it, and no cord to charge it. Plus, his glasses. How none of this feels thought out, smart, sensibly explainable. Still, he manages to shift and get his legs and middle under the blanket as Victor is tugging it, his too fast heart probably the loudest thing in this room.

Yuri leans off this side of the bed, patting the floor with his fingers and finding a place to set his phone and his glasses for the night. He tucks them both just slightly under the bed so he can't step on them, either in the middle of the night or in the morning. Then, turns back into the bed, one arm curling up under the pillow between it and his head, blinking at the darkened shadow shapes and the fuzz of his own vision to be able to find Victor not far from him.

[fivetimechamp]

He can hear Yuri shifting in the dark, and feel the mattress moving with his weight, but when Yuri settles, it's on the other side of the bed, and that's not good enough for Victor. "Yuri..."

A wheedle, a complaint, a coax, even as he's shifting, a hand under the covers reaching for the pocket of warmth he can already feel. "You're too far away."

Still. Still. After days, and thousands of miles, and too many planes and trains and cars and interruptions, somehow Yuri is still too far away from him, even lying here in the same bed, in the friendly dark, with nothing ahead of them except a long night stretching into a long morning. (Whatever Yuri says, Victor isn't waking him up before Yuri's own body does, and Yuri sleeps in even on days when he'd gotten plenty of rest for days on end.)

He's scootching forward and following his hand under the sheet until it finds Yuri's waist and Victor's arm can slide over it, tightening and tugging. "Come here."

Closer. Close enough that Victor can fall asleep with his mouth in Yuri's hair and Yuri's back breathing against his chest and Yuri's side gently rising and falling under his arm. Close enough that Victor won't have to wake up at any point tonight and remind himself that Yuri is several countries and thousands of miles away.

There's a shuffle on the floor, and then a mighty dip of the bed down by his feet: Maccachin, seeing the mattress shift and sway, must have been feeling left out, because he tromps out a circle down between their ankles and settles with a bone-melting suddeness and a heavy huff of breath. He must be tired, too: the last few days have been as tough on him as they have been on Victor or Yuri.

Yuri, who Victor at least has in his grip now, encouraging him to move closer, to slip in under Victor's arm. "You're more comfortable than any pillow. I need you to sleep."

[theglassheart]

His name sounds louder in the dark.

Loud enough that his heart leaps into the base of his throat, and he swears that single use of his name, already sliding into other words, can't possibly have been quiet enough not to be heard through walls that aren't so much paper-thin as just not nearly as thick as any of their recent ones. Bringing to mind too many, and not enough to even be counted anywhere near many, nights last week. Nearby, even a bed away, with whispered goodnights and morning plans in the dark (and this; this, too, more than once).

Yuri mouth had already been open to say something -- Yuri doesn't even know what specifically, about the walls, or being quieter, or something on the string of his panic -- but then Victor's fingers landed on his side stealing it away, with the flutter of muscles that tightened in surprise. Even as Victor was still talking, telling him to Come here, while Victor was already tugging his body one way and bringing himself to the middle of the bed, too.

So that Yuri's awareness seemed to go straight from Victor's hand, to Victor right there inches away. Then, even less.

His heart, the eternal traitor in any part of this equation where he tried to be sensible. Beating like a drum at that spot at the bottom of his throat, refusing to really let any air in, and act as propulsion for a snap of movement he can't even say he saw coming. This necessary overwhelmed close, but not close enough that Victor was half-complaining, half-wining, mostly-fixing for himself, that seemed to suddenly strike a deep, dark, tried to be ignored note in Yuri, too. It went without warning.

A little awkward in the dark, but all a thrust of movement forward, burying himself into the front of Victor.

Not quite. It wasn't. It was ... half like hugging someone, even with one of his arms pressed under him, his other arms slipped up against Victor's side, or maybe it was part of his back, without even checking in with Yuri's head. Like the rest of him, not doing that. When he can't keep that thought long.

Not when Victor's shirt is skin warm against all of his face, and that warm, but cool scent, that is all Victor, and still reminds Yuri so much of ice somehow, is suddenly on every breath in, and Yuri doesn't want to let go even when there's a shrill alarm in his head trying to rouse itself. But, he doesn't want to let go. Pull back. Not yet. Not here in the dark. Not even when there's suddenly the drop of Maccachin between their legs, making this possibly a little more awkward. But that doesn't seem to phase Victor in the slightest who goes right on talking.

There's a noise that might have meant to be neutrally dubious at Victor's last words, Victor saying he needed Yuri to sleep, but it's hard to say what really makes it out and what stays utterly muffled right into the center of Victor's chest with the rest of Yuri's mouth.

[fivetimechamp]

There's a faint concern that perhaps Yuri's reluctance to stay would translate into actually keeping as far away from Victor as possible while still being in the same bed, but it's melted away quickly when Yuri, after a brief pause, pushes forward to meet him. Arm slipping over Victor's side, and Yuri's face nuzzling into his chest and shirt, thick soft hair beneath Victor's mouth and brushing his chin, and it's perfect. Finally, for the first time in days, he feels like he fits somewhere, and that somewhere is right here, tucked against and half around Yuri, with Maccachin a warm breathing weight against his ankle.

HIs eyes are already sliding shut, and it takes him a second to realize that Yuri is saying something, sleep a sneaky cat burglar trying to pull the shades down. "Did you say something?"

Yuri hasn't said much. He rarely does, until he's put under too much pressure, and then even when he snaps and starts speaking too loudly, too quickly, too passionately, it's far less than anyone else would say. Even after being apart for so long, he hasn't said all that much tonight –– but what he has said has included some bombshells. Be my coach until I retire, without even adding a please to make it a request instead of a demand until he'd realized he should have had it in there to begin with.

(More like that first time he asked Victor to be his coach than like anything else he's said in the entire eight months since Victor's been here.)

That he missed Victor, too. That.

A reminder going off like gently ringing bells in Victor's head, and he's already smiling at the thought, even as he pulls back just enough to let Yuri speak, to try and look down towards him, a pale oval in the dark. "Say it again."

But that's confusing, isn't it? He has to clarify: "Not what you just said. What you said before. In the car."

He wants to hear it as often as he can, now that the option is out there.

[theglassheart]

He hadn't, of course. Said anything. He'd made a noise that he shouldn't, for a thought he probably shouldn't have even let out, and even more increasingly -- as Victor curled around him, as he could feel Victor's heart against part of his forehead and cheek, and Victor's chest expand both against his face and under his arm -- he didn't want to have to put it into words. Not again, or not now.

That second's reaction where he didn't think Victor needed him to sleep. Victor who could fall asleep on tatami mats, or a plane, who said he napped during the competition days when everyone else in the world was pacing, stretching, practicing their arms, and trying not to do anything like panic. The idea had escaped as a preposterous sound against Victor's newest topic to embellish and exaggerate.

Except --

(and this reminder, as though he's been anywhere, at all, all night to forget, even for a second)

-- Victor has looked exhausted since he arrived, hasn't he? Hadn't he thought before he even threw himself into Victor's arms at the airport? Hadn't he thought it in the car, and even in this room at least once or twice. That Victor seemed tired, from the pale hair on the top of his head, all through way through how he moved. He had. Yuri had thought it, and Victor had looked it, and, maybe, if Yuri's hand tightens a little on Victor's shirt it's at the striking idea of it being him, too.

Maccachin was the larger part of that, but Maccachin had been good for the last day, and still he hadn't slept through that? Even though Yuri's mother would have doted on Victor and understood entirely if Victor had slept this whole day after worrying with him, beside them, here or at the vet, until they knew everything was alright. It was a wave, confused and cold and warm, splashing over his skin, making him hold on to Victor, making him want to curl in even closer.

This idea that he was any part of Victor's last few nights once he was gone.

The way Victor had been. Wrapped up in every other stress.
But an aching absence, more present than seemed possible.

Yuri looked up confused when Victor pulled back, taking the warmth of his shirt and his skin, putting space between where Yuri had been and Victor's chest had. It had him looking up and blinking, through eyes that hadn't been in the slightest open a second ago. Victor's three words creasing the line of his mouth where he wished he could sigh and it was headed more toward a frown. He didn't want to explain --

But Victor's follow-up flat foots Yuri's thoughts entirely, making him swallow hard at the fast, hard reminder of the car. The car where he hadn't said a lot, because he'd slept more than been awake on that drive. He knows even before he can ask the question what he means, that Victor means the one thing he probably mangled most of all. Saying those few words across a car, nothing like any dream or plan or idea Yuri had turned over in his hotel bed, or in the snow.

Nothing exciting, or declarative, or special.

Overwhelmed with Victor back, and overwhelming in his head, and a mess, squeaked out.
Looking back, no matter his intentions, it seemed even that had gone exactly like most things he tried.

It's already out, though. It's the only thought between Yuri's tensing muscles and warming face. He already said that. Victor already heard it, knows he said it. But. Even beyond that. With the lingering want to already not be even these half inches from where he'd been pressed a minute ago, just the reminder of those words, of that idea makes him swallow, a little harder and dryer than expected even.

At least it's dark? Yuri's gaze kept moving between Victor's face formed in the shadows and the pillow beside his head.
It feels foolish, to try and own those words. It feels more true, than earlier, than the car, the airport, the hotel bed.

Like it paints who he is in the dark, more than the shape of his skin. Or the distance he's come.
Like it leaves him exposed and unprotected, even more in this darkness of Victor's room.

But it would be futile not to respond, wouldn't it? It was already said.

Yuri swallows. Once. Twice. Pulling a breath in his nose, that seems so much slower than the pace picking up in his own chest, as his gaze start upward, drop down, and drift upward toward the end again. "Мне тебя не хватает"

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri hadn't really meant to say it before, he thinks. It had popped out of him almost reflexively, the way his foot would kick if a doctor tapped on his knee with a rubber hammer. None of which is surprising –– Yuri is prone to sudden bursts of declarative speech, in the same way he declared his theme for the season or his desire to train every sort of jump Victor could teach him.

What was surprising was how he knew it. How he knew to say that, instead of the more direct translation. How –– why –– those words found their way onto his tongue, even mispronounced, even awkward and stumbling.

It doesn't make sense.
It makes as much sense as Yuri asking him to come here and be his coach.

It makes as much sense as Victor deciding to do just that.

He's patient while Yuri looks up at him, the details of his features lost in the dark, all the fine lines of his face and graceful curves of his cheek and chin and throat, leaving him barely anything but a slightly lighter oval blur in the dark, but Victor's eyes will adjust soon enough, and if they don't, well --

He'll probably be asleep by then, anyway. He can feel it chewing at him, the exhaustion, nibbling at his determination to stay awake for this, as Yuri braces himself, and his voice comes carefully through the dark.

Words that don't sound quite right. Everything that sounds more perfect than anything Victor has ever heard before.

(Has he ever truly been needed, before? He's been wanted for the greater part of his life, but needed, that's a different story.

Nobody's ever needed him, except perhaps Maccachin. And never like this.)

Words he hadn't been able to react to in the car, but he can here. No road or other cars to distract him, no seatbelt holding him back, no astonishment keeping him from moving, breathing, thinking.

Only Yuri, close enough that Victor can feel how his embarrassed warmth is swelling through the sheet and blanket, can feel the grip Yuri still has on his shirt, blunting fingertips from digging into his back.

All of which means he can shift down enough to find Yuri's mouth with his, and slip arms around him, and roll in towards him, slow and dedicated and with absolute precision, kissing Yuri the way he should have at the airport, in the hotel at Moscow, in the car when those words first came spilling out.

"Я тоже тебя люблю," the only thing that he can say, when he finally has to say something at all.

[theglassheart]

There's a pause. It might be even called a gentle silence, save for how nothing feels gentle in those seconds inside Yuri's head. When there aren't windows to look out, or his lap to look down at, and he wants to either shove the words back in his unworthy, grasping mouth and the under the deepest rock he can find, or find some excuse for why that isn't the real why, isn't that he didn't even make it ten hours alone before he was looking up words to say he missed Victor.

It feels bare and shameful and more than a little childish in the empty darkness, and the sprint of his heart only makes it feel truer, sadder, and more real. Another weakness he can't stop and didn't know was there until Victor was gone and it was in Victor's place. His lips press and tremble, feeling the straggering fast growing desperation to put something else out there. Anything else. To not be that. That absolutely clear, and true, thing.

But, then, Victor moves, and it isn't to pull further away. Or to speak.

He's shifting, but before Yuri can really do more than fear nameless, unnumbered possibilities Victor's lips press against his and there are arms pulling him back close again, and it feels like his heart might just explode in his chest, again, in a completely different and new way, again, touched so against that truth. He doesn't know how or why that's the answer, and not a question or a joke, but he can't stop himself either.

The way he uses his thigh, and hip, and arm, each caught under him, against the bed, to push himself up just a little bit more, pressing inward and upward to kiss Victor. Like it is the only thing left in the world and the gnawing dark. It feels different, too. Fragile and tenuous; specific and slow. Like a map of those words he just said, of every throb of them since he first read and heard it. Of being alone, and pushing forward, no matter how badly. Of the feeling of being able to fall asleep in car, because Victor was there, and to wake up again, because Victor was there.

It feels painful -- and Yuri's not sure he ever understood how painful this all could be. Not painful like broken bones or the inability to breathe. Painful the way his muscles and bruises are every morning. Tokens of the only stepping stones on the only path. Painful in the way where Victor is here, is right here, inches and not countries away, and he's right here, in the forbidden space of Victor's bed, and all he wants to do is push closer, as though none of this is.

To find a way to pull Victor completely around him. Until all the space is gone.
As if their skin could give way and they could be even closer than that.

He doesn't know how -- he doesn't have a way -- to put any of that into words, but he has to blink the unexpected, but savagely suddenly, sting from his eyes when the kiss stops and Victor's whispered Russian words are of the few he's figured out well enough. He doesn't have any (words) and for two second he thinks he might burst into the tears he hasn't in days, not for Victor gone, or the fear of Maccachin, not even for lose-winning, and all he can do is push himself back against Victor.

Into his arms, and his head, and his shoulder, and his chest, and his body.
Knees knocking Victor's legs and his own arm coiling tighter.

[fivetimechamp]

He supposes he might, at some point, get used to this, or take it for granted. Yuri, tipping towards him, and kissing him back, Yuri's hand on his back, Yuri's mouth on his.

It's possible. But he doesn't think it's likely.

Not when even bone-deep exhaustion and the need for sleep isn't quelling the shiver of his nerves when Yuri's pushing into his kiss and kissing him back, rolling towards him until Victor's arm is tight around his ribcage and they're pressed together almost as close as is possible in this cocoon of sheets and blankets.

(Maccachin, annoyed at the shifting feet, has stalked to a corner of the bed and floppied down again, out of the way, allowing Victor's leg to snake its way over Yuri's, as if he's doing his best impression of a jungle python, wrapping him up with every inch Victor has.)

He can't imagine being used to, expecting, taking for granted the way Yuri pushes back into him and Victor has to kiss him again, already knowing he'll have to stop soon or risk not sleeping for another night because the fire sitting deep in his belly will refuse to burn itself out.

(Even sharing a bed in those hotels, they haven't, he hasn't, Yuri certainly hasn't, but Victor's never been a monk and his willpower is at a low ebb from the strain of the last few days.)

There's the temptation to run his hand up under the back of Yuri's shirt, hungry for bare skin and immediate body heat, but he'd never be able to pull away enough to sleep if he did, so he lets it slide the other direction, instead, up into Yuri's hair, while Victor places kiss after kiss against his mouth.

Too many to count. Not enough to make up for not kissing Yuri before he left.

[theglassheart]

It goes to his head, and through it.

It has every time before, but it's even truer right now.

All of it goes to his head. Goes through his head. Scatters and clatters and rolls off in every other direction. Disjoints everything and Yuri's brain can't scramble itself toward any sensible direction, or sense, or even collection of words' thought, against each new, and next, kiss from Victor. Until it's not thoughts, thoughts are washed out for impressions and feeling.

The softness of Victor's lips. The warmth of his mouth. The solidness of the thigh and calf muscles in the leg that claims his. The almost tickle of the fingers that thread up into his hair, and the pressure of fingertips, together, and yet almost entirely unconnected from each other while he can't collate.

A second ago he'd nearly wished for Victor to be everywhere and it was almost as if a breath later he was there, wresting everything left in Yuri's hand and Yuri's head from him, as he put himself there, like a price, like a promise. Kiss, by kiss, by kiss, by touch, by touch. That Yuri doesn't have enough time to catalog no less the time to question and doubt and defend and question again. Not when his mouth moved beyond his control, to meet every new kiss. His heart trying to reach out of his chest and up his throat to each.

Disjointed and absolute darkness like ink clouding up the whole world in front of him, making touch louder than sight ever seemed when he could see things coming. Making his grip in Victor's shirt a little harder, like Victor might dilute and blow away in that darkness, or maybe because he won't, because he's real and really here, and Yuri doesn't know how not to know that because he is both suddenly, and not a dream, not anything like a dream, after not.

All of it tears a sound from his chest. Something helpless, and wordless, and breathless. Soft and high, so much closer to a whimper than a sigh. Uncatered and uncurated feeling like the darkness was erasing all his solid edges away from being able to hide it inside his head, inside his skin, draining them completely away, even when all of his skin seems more present under Victor's touch than it has since he stepped off the ice, looking for something no one else could have been.

[fivetimechamp]

That sound is the thing that brings him back to himself. First sparking a deep and necessary need to go chasing it again, to hear it almost as often as he hears the shallow breaths they're both taking, or instead of any words Yuri might be able to pull together. He doesn't want words, he just wants that.

Tugged out of Yuri's throat without thought or embarrassment, because Yuri wants him, like Yuri hasn't ever wanted anybody.

Except Yuri's never wanted anybody before, and Yuri has no idea what Victor would do with, for, that sound if he could, and it's still not tonight. The right time to push for more, to give in to the incessant heat hammering at the back of his skull. Not here in this room, when Yuri was already worried about his parents and his sister, and Yuri's exhausted and so is Victor. Not with Maccachin a warm weight near their feet, and not enough hours of sleep in the last few days for either of them.

Not in barely the second week they've had this at all.
(No matter how willing Yuri might have seemed that night at the banquet.)

All of it forcing Victor to slow himself down, like he's grabbed himself by the scruff of the neck, and throttle this kiss back down to something he can control, making them shorter and softer until he can pull back enough to try and see Yuri's face, blurred in the dark, while his heart hammers and shouts at him to keep going.

Find skin under his fingers. A pulse under his mouth.

(A better man than him wouldn't have let it get this far to begin with, probably.)

His thumb tracing along Yuri's cheek, while he tries to catch his breath, lick his lip, smile. "I shouldn't be keeping you up, Yuri."

It's not a very responsible thing for a coach to do, but then, he's not at all sure this falls anywhere within his coaching duties.

[theglassheart]

Victor is pulling away. Yuri's not certain when he realized it. Probably after it had already started, or after some punctuation that made each kiss Victor hadn't stopped dropping on him, softer, smaller, shorter, faster. Until it was barely more than the breath of anticipation met with empty air instead of a kiss and the need to let his eyes roll open again.

His lips and his limbs somehow with the exact same ache and a throb. The same overblown, and unexpected, want for more and not less. For that unnamed rush, pulsing with every beat of his blood, in every part of his body, some more than others, even when the late stumbling sticky-fingered concern of the same things trip after it, like ripples, caused only after the first drop of water hits a pond.

Victor's voice filling up that caustic dark swimming in front of his eyes and settling shadow-depths into Victor's face not far away, while Yuri's throat tried to relearn how to swallow even as it did it. Everything snapping a second later to a soft stroke down his cheek, unexpected and snap sudden relocating almost all feeling in his body. He doesn't know if it is the darkness, or the exhaustion, or the weekend, or just Victor. (Or all of it.)

Only that it's everything. Only that he wants more. Only that he's supposed to be answering. Each of them like a wave. Each of them the only thing. Each of them rolling up and back and up again. It's hard to parse anything together out of the rush and roar of his head, the press of heat sinking away inward from his lips, the warmth of every part of Victor pressed against him, and what comes out is a little wandering. "You said you needed me to sleep."

It's only out a second when he knows that's not helpfully clear. That he'd meant Victor had wanted him over here so Victor could sleep, and he'd moved, and this had all ... but at the same time, it sounds entirely like he just repeated that Victor needed Yuri, himself, to sleep. It makes him crinkle his nose, but words are short, and his breath is only beginning not to be, and he can't stop himself from shifting toward the touch on his cheek, even if it mostly closes his eyelids, again, as he does.

[fivetimechamp]

"I do."

He can't help but be amused, in a gentle and affectionate sort of way, because Yuri is often so literal. He's used to being blunt, and being taken at his word, but Yuri takes it to a whole new level –– sometimes.

Other times he doesn't believe Victor at all, and only looks abashed when told he'd been denying the truth, thinking it too ridiculous or impossible to be real.

But he isn't wrong, here. Victor had said that ––

( I need you with me )

–– and he'd meant it. Trying to sleep on the plane, or during the last few nights, has been near impossible, a word he normally never allows. Before Yuri, he'd never met a problem he couldn't work his way through, by luck or hard practice or strategy or the sheer force of his personal charisma, but Yuri has had him foxed every step of the way, from that first night to this one. Never quite sure he's doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. Questioning himself for the first time in decades.

Needing someone else there, other than Maccachin, to sleep.

Yuri's shifting tiredly against his hand, and Victor knows that if he lets this moment pass, if he doesn't lean in to kiss Yuri again, they'll both be asleep in minutes, if not seconds. It's a desperately appealing thought, and still, he considers breaking it.

–– But that would mean hauling himself back from the brink again, so he only smiles, and settle his head a little more deeply into the pillow, and lets his thumb trace Yuri's temple and into the thick mess of his hair in a gentle sweep. "Now I can. And you should, too."