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]

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."

[theglassheart]

Even as Victor says it, Yuri wants to argue it or give some defense. That he's fine.

It's a foolish and childish snap reaction in his head, a whined denial, especially when his body chooses that second to yawn, and he has to quickly tip his face down, chin tucking in, while raising a hand to cover it, so he isn't yawning straight into Victor's face. It's not that he isn't tired, and doesn't know he is or isn't aware how much sleep he hasn't had, and what all he's been doing before all the pieces of this compounded the already epic stress of competing, of trying for one last good season.

It's that he doesn't want to be tired. Not now that Victor is real and here. Not now that there aren't silences longer than a minute or two, before that silence is filled with Victor's voice. Not when Victor is half wrapped around him, so physically present and pressed against him, it feels like the rest of the world has dimmed and faded out entirely around them. It doesn't make him less tired. There are no saving graces to that.

Even when he wants to revolt against his eyebrows, and that traitorous yawn, and prop up his eyelids with anything it might take. To be able to not have to close his eyes. To be continually confronted and comforted by the reality that Victor actually is there. Right in front of him. Curled around him.

There is no defense. There is no denial. Most of it is -- as his body ebbs back from that rush of heat and need and want -- a sleepy, sticky, stricken need to hold on. To not have Victor pull all the way away yet, even as his heart rate continues to thud heavy but incrementally slower with each of the seeping, spreading dark seconds that Victor's finger brushes against his skin before disappearing into his hair, soft there. Fingers parting his hair and fingertips against his scalp, soft and warm, setting off an unexpected pang in his chest.

Pushing that filling, nebulous and swirling cloud inside him, up toward his throat. Shoving at his soft pallet, his tongue, and his lips blurt out embarrassingly unchecked things like don't let go as though Victor might pull back away entirely in any second and please still be here in the morning as though he might be just a dream and I missed you so much, even though he's already said that, too, if in a different way.

Still there, truer and bigger than three words or three languages feel like they can properly explain. Than his heart can even.

What he decides might be just as foolhardy as his early rebuttal, even only in his head, was foolish. Pressing himself to that choice, the movement, before his heart can even start pounding or the second thoughts become the fifth or tenth. He curls inward, in that dark, closer still to Victor. Stomach twisting to a nervous knot at the forwardness of it, but not stopping, until his forehead can find Victor's shoulder and chest, arm slipping further across Victor's back.

Not wanting just Victor's other pillow yet, or just the other side of Victor's bed.
Not wanting anything that isn't mostly Victor on every side of him.

Real, no matter which way he moves, or breathes, or thinks.

Real, until either Victor lets go or his waking mind does.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuro only yawns, jaw-cracking and adorable, and tucks himself closer, his forehead butting into Victors shoulder and chest, arm slung over Victor's back, curling into him as if Victor is some sort of stuffed animal, or pillow.

Which is just about perfect, isn't it? Yuri, wanting to be wrapped up in him. Yuri, who even now hardly touches Victor first, or much at all, even if he's reluctantly come around to being moved about like a doll when Victor needs to fix his form. It's a little like the times Yuri kisses him first: a thrill of surprise, followed by a swelling warmth of happiness. It's such a simple thing,Yuri reaching for him, touching him, curling against him –– but for so long it had seemed like it would never happen.

And yet, here they are. Folded into each other like so many sheets, their combined body heat filling the bedding and turning the slight winter chill of the room into a warm hideaway. Yuri breathing deep and slow under Victor's arm, his hair silky under Victor's fingers as they slowly stroke along his skull. Yuri, bare moments, in all likelihood, from sleep.

Victor almost wishes he weren't so exhausted himself, so as to be able to enjoy it a little longer.

His eyes are grainy, though, and he can't keep them open, even to watch Yuri or prove to himself that it really is over for now, that Yuri is back and so is Maccachin and they have almost a month before Barcelona. They slide closed despite himself, the darkness of the room nearly as heavy as the blanket itself, warm and solid, coaxing him to relax, and he finally can. Maccachin a warm weight by his feet, Yuri a warm bundle in his arms, against his chest.

When sleep does come, it hits suddenly and swift, and he gets almost no warning at all before he's dozing off, sinking deeper and deeper with every slow breath he takes.

[theglassheart]

It takes more than a few seconds for Yuri's shoulders and back to relax entirely down from the assumption Victor will move him anytime now, or move himself. Then, Yuri would retreat to his pillow and sleep, gritty and chasing his every blink, will be the only thing left. Except. Victor doesn't move. At least, more precisely, Victor doesn't move away. Victor never stops moving entirely, especially this close. The rise and fall of his chest and the beat of his steady, slow heart.

The fingers that continue to card, gently, slowly, through his hair, tugging his eyes back closed with the end of near every stroke against his scalp. The slight pause at the edge driving his eyelids to crack back open, hard sticking and unkind, with small starts back to full awakeness from the darkness, from drowning, slow pooling warmth of the touch rippling across all of his head, down his neck and into his shoulders.

It's not immediate, the sleep chasing him down like a wall of already raining bricks, fighting through the malaise of stressed fatigue, from things both planned for that and those that never could have been. The not moving, or being moved, causes question enough, even as quiet and stillness becomes the room, only broken by the sound of Victor or Maccachin breathing. It drags up memories of China, with paralyzed stillness and tortured confused, while Victor was wrapped around him from behind, drunkenly refusing to let him leave.

It seems impossible that was only a little over a week. The Cup's. Maccachin.
It seems all but impossible that he's here now, inside Victor's arms, pressed to his chest.

Yuri doesn't move, doesn't even open his tired eyes, but he listens to the slow, deep, even rhythm of Victor's breath. In, and out. In, and out. There's a world outside the bedroom door, and beyond his home and family, that would all but kill to be right where he is, here in Victor's arms and Victor's bed. Who might make more of either of those, or at least have something more to offer.

But he doesn't want to think of that, of them, yet. Again. Tonight. Not with the rusty hooks of darkness trying to pull him down and down. Not with the slow, steady breathing above his head, and the slow, steady heartbeat pressed itself against one cheek, that he only very barely rubs against Victor as he yawns again. His body trying to tell his mind to get with the program, as though all the rest of him except is ready, is already gone.

There's a soft count in his head -- maybe it was of Victor's breaths, or Victor's heartbeats, or even just seconds, just to make him focus on something that was nothing, that couldn't be chased in a circle, just to lull him to curl into the warm all around him -- but if he was asked later, he wouldn't be able to say if he even made it to ten before sleep came and stole the last of him left.

[yuri_plisetsky]

Later on the following day, Yuuri receives a response to his message: a photograph, and a single line of text.

It's a direct message, not posted to any public account. Because in spite of Yuri's enthusiasm for documenting his life through carefully curated digital pixels, some pictures are not meant for the public eye.

(Some things don't need to be shared, except with people who understand them.)

The picture is angled slightly to take in the widest possible view of a fairly small space. An old kitchen table, covered in baking ingredients and equipment, dominates the frame. The labels may be in Russian, but it's easy to identify bags of flour and rice, a bottle of cooking oil, a container of eggs, a flat parcel wrapped in white butcher paper. Several plates and bowls of different sizes, scattered measuring cups and spoons, and a pair of worn but clean dish towels laid on a wire cooling rack all look ready to be put to use. Just visible behind the table is a cooking range that has seen better days -- or some equivalent of better days, for a block of workers' flats built in the later part of the Soviet era and hardly renovated since then.

The caption beneath the picture is simple. дедка says he's glad you liked them. testing second batch today.

​There's no mention of ​the exhibition, or Viktor, or anything b​ut the work in progress.​

(Some things have to take priority, when you only have one day to make them happen.)