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]

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.)