{ The China Cup GPF Qualifier, FS } November 7-8, 2014 - Shanghai, China

[theglassheart]

If Yuri thought the night before this one never ended, he was wrong. It's this newest night that feels like it never ends. Oppressive, pressing, darkness, digging into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears, while Victor breathed heavy and easy in the adjoining bed. Yuri had tried to sleep. Turning this way, turning that way, staring at the backs of his eyelids toward the ceiling, pressing his face into his pillow. He tried and tried and tried (and most of all found himself trying not to let his breathing race so fast it might wake Victor).

The evening had been bearable, if not entirely enjoyable or unenjoyable. Less stressful than the one before it, if only marginally, while Phichit and Victor drug him from place to place. Too late for museums or anything with middaytime, there had been rather quick tours through the Yu Garden, the Oriental Pearl Tower, and the Jade Buddha Temple, and in the cases of closed doors, pictures with their iconic buildings. As well as everything else that looked interesting between them.

It took forever, and then it was just over.

He'd enjoyed some of it, but none of it stuck for long.
Not even the late calls from his family and Yuu-san had.

Not with the Free Skate looming. Not with every single person he was skating with gunning for where he was standing, and every person watching wondering if he could somehow pull out o f himself the miraculous performance that had seemed to come from almost nowhere. Like it hadn't even belonged to him. How many times had he performed Eros and it'd never been that?

How badly would it be when (if - when) tomorrow couldn't match it?
What would they say about him, then? What would they say about Victor, then?

Yuri would fall asleep only to startle awake what could only have been seconds later, nerves sharpening with each new jolt, until it felt like ice was splintering more and stabbing up harder through every part of his veins, until each second asleep seemed to only contain the certainty he would fall, he would fail, he would forget. He could never reach whatever he'd touched for that brief two minutes and eighteen seconds.

It'd been a fluke. He'd only dreamed it. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't sleep.
Every minute in that dark reaching, but, also, clutching his pillow.
Eyelids clenched tight, or eyes open, staring at the other bed.


Over and over, he counted his breaths down.
Over and over, he repeated that he had and he could.
Over and over, he told himself this was all in his head.

Over and over, he slipped right back as soon as it finished.




That morning comes at all only changes the color of the sky.

Breakfast is a blur, piling food into himself, like maybe it would give him any solidness. Weigh him to the seat, to the ground, to reality. It should be impossible, but his head feels even heavier than his body. Hot water had shaken some tension from his skin, but none at all from his mind. It hadn't mattered whether he was in the bed, in the shower, in a booth, at a table.

His foot tapped under the table, all the way up to his knee and thigh, and in the moments he could make himself stop, his fingers drum against the side of his thigh or the seat instead. Desperate to try and keep it from Victor's sight, when Victor won't stop looking at him, smiling like that, talking about how Eros was perfect, and what he should do as soon as they arrived at practice.

How would he look when he realized Yuri couldn't reproduce what he done. Couldn't even look at the things that compounded to get him there. Words Victor'd said, but entirely in a different way than he'd said them. That Yuri'd blown them out of proportion and reality out there, during Eros. What would he do if Yuri couldn't place at all?

What would he do when everyone no longer was cheering his name as the reason Yuri had done so well? When there would only be that gut-wrenching pity on every face and Victor's name was smeared with his failures the same as his already was? Why was he even going to put himself through that? Why was Yuri?





Practice is a comedy of uncertainty.
He doesn't even want to return to the wall and Victor during it.

His feet hardly feel like they belong to his body, and thinking about love doesn't produce his love, his family, Hasetsu, or Victor, it brings up more and more knots in his guts. It tears up the ice under him with images of last year, of every fall, of every day spent in his bed, avoid being awake, avoiding the rink, Celestino, Phichit. The flip of what that could -- will -- look like again.

Except at home. Except with his parents, and Minako, and Yuu-san, and his family.

Their sad faces, their disappointment, as Victor's back went vanishing away in the background of his loss.

Even the ease of his long earned and long loved turns seems to be slipping from him when his focus won't pull itself together. At full speed it makes it a fumble of something he hasn't fumbled in half his life, even if he doesn't fall. It's better the next time, and gone the third, but it still there. He can do this. He can. He's done it how many hundreds and thousands of times.

It makes him sloppy. It makes him reckless. It makes him stubborn. It makes him hesitate.

It ends all too soon. The alarm sounding for them to come in, and he trails in.

Comments

[fivetimechamp]

Even for Yuri, Yuri's been quiet today.

Quiet, and sluggish, too: taking longer in the shower and longer to get dressed and longer at breakfast, and now, on the ice, it looks like he's moving through molasses, and Victor bets he knows why. Yuri isn't used to being in first place or being the one to beat, and all of last night's euphoria has been sucked right out of him.

Not just him, either: the other skaters are all focused on their own practices and short, intent conversations with their coaches. Last night had been a celebratory mood, but this morning, it all seems to have soured. Everyone has remembered that they're here to compete, and that only half of them can make the podium, but only one can catch that gold medal they all want so much.

It's harder to determine who the real threat will be for the free skate: Chris could certainly pull ahead, and so could Georgi, if he's on, but Victor's wondering about Leo de Iglesia and Phichit Chulanont, both of whom had flawless short programs yesterday and would be gunning for the gold to prove themselves, just like Yuri is.

Or should be. Right now, he doesn't look up to fighting a wet piece of tissue paper, let alone a pack of competitive elite athletes. His skin is too pale, and there are dark circles under his eyes, and every movement looks painful and slow and exhausted, as Victor watches him, chin in hand, considering. "Yuri, you haven't slept, have you?"

He had slept just fine, even if there had been a moment or two of idle curiosity about just how he'd wound up with Yuri in his bed this morning, but he'd pulled that pillow into his chest and buried his face in it and been asleep in about two seconds flat, well pleased with the events of the day and Yuri's performance and confident that today would go just as well.

But maybe he should have stayed up, and tried to talk Yuri down from whatever was worrying him. Too late now, but there's still time to fix it: simply being tired is to be expected, and easily rectified.

[theglassheart]

Victor's expression is already something unreadable when he's taking his turn at the gate to wipe off his accumulated ice, hook his skate guards and pull on his jacket over his practice shirt. It's a pregnant sort of pause that feels too big, feels like everyone is looking just outside of his vision, everyone knows. The lecture of everything he did wrong, and why was he messing up even things children got right, suddenly, had to be coming.

Victor had to know. Had to realize. What Yuri'd been dreading and doubting all night, what had been shackled to his feet since he had to stand up again, what every single step must have already given away. It's everywhere on his shoulders and the cloud of his thoughts when he looks up at Victor studying him, hand against his chin.

Patience he doesn't have killing whatever was left of Yuri's nerves, wanting it to just start already
(And never to start, he didn't know how to stop it, he'd tried, he meant to do well,

he didn't want to fail Victor, didn't want to fail at all, he just -- ).


The words, when they come, aren't a lecture, but a question.
Surprising him, and shooting him off into left field denial.

"I-I-I did!" Hands flailing around him, as though to ward off the assumption this had anything to do with the sleep he had or hadn't gotten. Mostly hadn't. But he couldn't say that. And he had slept, hadn't he? Some? Because he'd woken up a handful of times, so he must have slept some, even if it was not enough. "A little bit, anyway."

[fivetimechamp]

"Hmmmm."

If he sounds skeptical, it's because he is. He'd say Yuri looks like a zombie, but that might be an insult to zombies. What's going on with him today? He looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here, when here is where he's worked so hard to be.

Victor's finger taps against his lips, before he decides. "Go change into your shoes so we can go back to the hotel."

For lunch, but more importantly, for the room upstairs where he can draw the blinds and slap a sleep mask on Yuri's face and have him make up at least a few of the hours he'd missed and that he'll need during the free skate tonight.

[theglassheart]

Is it that bad? Was he that bad? So bad Victor is going to say absolutely nothing, except to put on his shoes so they can go back to the hotel? So bad that it can't be said in front of or nearby all the other skaters and coaches in their own huddles, or breaking off toward the locker rooms still talking?

There's nothing to do but agree, but obey.

Yuri's shoulders can't slump because they aren't up to begin with.

But he goes. Back to the locker room, avoiding looking at any of the other skaters, even and especially Phichit, who tries to catch his eyes at least once, maybe twice, and changes out of his skates and back into his shoes. Wiping off his skates diligently of every fleck of water with a towel, before putting on the soakers. Loosening the laces and pulling the tongue free and wiping out his skate guards, before placing them all carefully into his bag.

An autopilot so trained in that needed little focus.

Then, he returned back to Victor.


He doesn't know if it'll start on the way back, or if this is going to wait until they get all the way back in their room. If Victor is already regretting his choice to even be here, with Yuri, to have started this whole thing. He wished just walking out of the building would feel better, but it just made him stuff his free hand in his pocket and eye the sky, the foreground, and then the cement, where his shoes were moving.

One, two. One, two. One, two. Any moment now.

[fivetimechamp]

He's lost in thought while Yuri's gone, going over everything he'd just seen on the ice and comparing it to yesterday, to yesterday's practice, to the one before, to the Southern Regional Championships, to Onsen on Ice. Trying to call to mind every foible of Yuri's personality and all his many worries, to figure out which is to blame for his current exhaustion, his inability to sleep, the lack of focus during practice.

It's not unlike the weeks after he'd won Onsen on Ice, maybe, when he'd avoided Victor and the rink entirely as much as possible, seemed preoccupied when he was there, spent most of his time in his room when he wasn't. Picked at his food, looked tired all the time. But that was before they'd reached a sort of understanding, and Victor backed off to function solely as coach: before they'd built Yuri on Ice, before Yuri had found the courage to open up little by little. To Victor. To the composer of his music. On the ice, in front of everyone.

That was sparked because he'd thought that, having won, the pressure built into something panicked and desperate in his head, like Victor might change his mind and leave if Yuri couldn't replicate his success or learn what Victor was trying to teach him. It's certainly possible something similar is going through his head now, and in the text screen on his phone, Minako agrees, tiny black text spelling out he's not used to being the one to beat, and Victor thinks that's likely, too.

Mixed with a sleepless night, it's no wonder Yuri is looking downhearted, so once he appears from the locker room, Victor slips on a mild expression and chats lightly on their way back to the hotel. It's important to keep a positive attitude, and give Yuri something to hold onto, right?

"Are you hungry, Yuri? Let's get some lunch, and then I think we should just go back to the room until it's time to go back. We already went sightseeing, and you could use some rest if you didn't sleep last night."

[theglassheart]

Victor's voice is light and conversational. The opposite of everything he expects. Making him glance toward Victor. Victor's shoulder. The side of Victor's face, where he looks it, too. Light and breezy, and Yuri's heart can't decide whether it's floundering or falling. Trying -- trying -- to find something in that bare second he looks.

(For the too familiar press of his mouth. The slant of his eyebrows.
That ruthless bluntness about the things he didn't like and disappointed him.)

"I'm okay." Is the furthest thing from the truth, but he can't imagine sleep wants to come to him anymore now. Not even when his eyes feel dry and tired and his body is a sack of bricks hanging on his bones. He wanted to sleep all of last night, first to rest, then to escape his own head, and that hadn't helped in the slightest either way. "Lunch sounds good."

It sounded like something to fill the time.

More time to sit. More time to think. He needed to stop. Had to get his fingers around this. He had to try. Before whatever Victor would say. After. Now, and later. There were only so many hours until his skate (and yet so many hours). He would go last, because of coming in First. Granted with seeing everything. Seeing exactly what he had to overcome, what margin to beat anything.

(To even get close enough to place in third.)

There's an urge to close his eyes, but he's walking. He needs them open.
He doesn't want this whole day to be like all of last night. He doesn't.

[fivetimechamp]

Lunch might sound good, but it isn't. Yuri's still hunched away from him, like he thinks Victor's going to start slinging needles his way, and if anything, he manages to say even less.

At least he eats something.

It's a temptation to just talk about yesterday, and what to look forward to tonight, and what to make sure he does or doesn't do, but Yuri knows everything he has to do, and Victor's not sure focusing on the free skate is really going to help the situation that much. It could just send Yuri into an even more severe spiral, since there isn't time to work on the things he's been having trouble with in practice. It's do or die, on the day of, and even if there were more time to practice, Victor wouldn't allow it. The last thing Yuri needs right now is to work his quad Salchow to death and exhaust himself even further.

He probably shouldn't watch the other performances first, either. Victor doesn't want him trying to change the jump composition mid-performance again and messing it up, so it'll be better if he doesn't know what he's up against.

The program is solid. It's technically advanced, and artistically beautiful. It can stand on its own two feet.

But not if Yuri can't, and so, when they're finished, Victor pushes back from the table and reaches to grab Yuri's arm and march him towards the elevators, smiling but firm. "Come on, Yuri. You can't go out there totally exhausted when you have such a long program to skate. No arguing!"

Shoving him into the elevator and pushing their floor number, and leaning back with his arms crossed. "You already looked tired at practice today and we need to make sure you're at your best tonight."

The room is still quiet, and he strides across to close the drapes and make it dark, too, still chatting. "Normally you land those jumps just fine, and everything else looked sloppy, too." Turning to point to Yuri's bed, the other hand on his hip.

There's a sleep mask in his bag: he crosses the room to dig it out, and toss it Yuri's way. "Get undressed. Use this, and get in bed. That's not a request."

[theglassheart]

Yuri actually does want to argue. Though that is too aggressive of a word for it. He wants to flail and promise that Victor doesn't need to worry about it, that he's fine. (But, also, maybe to just hide under or behind any table, desk, or large enough plant they pass, too.) He is exhausted. That isn't a lie. Victor's not wrong.

But even that douses like the light in the room -- vanishing under Victor's firm hands and tugging of the curtains closed -- when Victor's words finally actually encompass what he knew was coming all along, and somehow hadn't gotten after skating or in the restaurant. He doesn't know why Victor waited until now.

It's not like Victor to be patient. Or subtle.

Yuri doesn't argue any more than he usually would have. There's a faint wince, jaw firming, at the words about his jump, but they aren't wrong, and he divests himself of the jacket he'd been carrying, and his clothes next. A pile not far from his shoes. He'll need all of it back before they leave, and it makes no sense to fold it away in his suitcase.

He's down to his briefs, and he's caught the eye mask, but it's in his fingers, and he can't help himself finally, "Victor, I really don't think this is--" Going to help? Going to happen? He doesn't know what he needs, but he doesn't think it's this.

[fivetimechamp]

"Didn't I say this wasn't a conversation? You have to be on tonight, and worrying about it won't help, but this will."

Well, he said it wasn't a request, but it's the same basic idea, right? And anyway, Yuri's doing what he said, even if he's doing it slowly, so Victor can grab his arm and toss him bodily onto the bare mattress before flinging the sheet on top of him like a garnish. He doesn't stop there, though: Yuri's being reluctant enough that Victor suspects he's only waiting for the door to close and Victor to be down the hall to get up and worry some more.

Well, there's one way to make sure that doesn't happen, and that's to settle himself right at Yuri's side, head propped on the palm of one hand, the other patting the sheet over Yuri's stomach affectionately. "Nap until this evening's event starts. It'll be fine."

The nap, and the event itself. Everything will be fine. Yuri will be fine. They'll get through this just like they have everything leading up to it. "I always slept in until the last minute before competitions, too." In the hours and minutes when more practice wouldn't help, but more rest would.

His own eyes sliding closed, because the room is warm and dark and he's tired, too, and Yuri is right there, all wrapped in his sheet and looking adorably confused, and it's really just sheer gravity that pulls him down, arm and leg across that body, ear landing right over the center of Yuri's chest, where his heart is thudding strong and steady and just a little faster than it should.

[theglassheart]

Getting thrust toward the bed, eyemask firmly over his eyes, is a litte more freefall than he's already prepared for. Even without his glasses at least he had some sense of depth perception. With the mask there's nothing blackness with the faintest edge cuts while he's falling, hitting the bed with a bounce, and having something he can only tell with his hands on it, is the sheet, is disorienting enough to silence everything else in the shriek of itself.

He's really even barely caught his breath for that, when suddenly Victor's voice is right next to him again, and there's a hand patting stomach, bare all but for the thin sheet, sending his heart straight to the top of his throat and heat into his cheeks. Confused increase of weight has his eyes feeling wide enough to hit the edges of the mask and keep stretching, heat shooting into his face.

Because Victor goes from just close by to suddenly collapsing on him.
His head. His body. An arm. A leg. Everything familiar in a blinding flash.
Heavyweight that had nothing like polite pressure. Familiar that, even.

Because a desperate tilt of his head, for the slit under the mask, turns up silver-grey hair.

"Victor!" It's a startled panic looking for any sense. For how to make him move. "Did you set the alarm?"

They had to be able to get up at the right time! At the other end of however long this was supposed to last, and he didn't even have his phone, or know if Victor had his, or did anything. How much worse it could be if he just disqualified on not even being there when it was his time.

(Could he?

No. No, no, no, no.
He didn't. Hadn't. Wouldn't.
Even he wasn't that weak.)

[fivetimechamp]

It's not that he's ignoring Yuri, or that it isn't a good question –– it's just that he's already asleep.

Gone like someone swung a pillowcase of bricks at his head, without preamble or warning. In his defense, it might be impossible to do otherwise: even quick against his ear, Yuri's heartbeat is steady and soothing to listen to, and the rise and fall of his chest is hypnotizing, and the small noises of his body working are so quiet and reassuring that Victor never really had a chance.

(Not that he ever did. With any of this.)

Yuri warm and comfortable underneath him. Yuri, who blew the roof off the rink last night, and only needs to remember who he is and what he can do tonight to do the same thing. Yuri, who Victor had to learn to love in a totally new and different and terrifying way, who is letting him lie here like a blanket, and even if Yuri isn't touching Victor, he isn't stopping Victor from touching all of him.

When that's more satisfying than he could ever have imagined a year ago. All of this has been. Is. So much more than he dreamed even possible.

Sending him off to sleep with a smile on his lips and the peace of pure, unbreakable certainty quieting his mind, until there's nothing at all except his soft snores, and the heavy weight of his head on Yuri's chest.

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't answer, and doesn't answer, and doesn't answer.

There's only the steady in and out of his breath (that blows pretty much straight through the sheet, against Yuri's bare skin, making it impossible for his mind to quiet or his face to cool, once he's struck by the realization, and by the goosebumps from the feeling of it). He lays there, uncertain in the extreme if Victor is just ignoring him, another part of this isn't a conversation, like if he just doesn't respond Yuri will get the hint and sleep sooner.

Victor hasn't seemed to have learned anything from the sleep Yuri didn't get for hours two days ago, because Yuri lays there, uncertain of anything about time under the sleep mask, except the darkness caused by it, the weight of Victor laying on him, and the sound of Victor's soft breath. Even softer snores. Anytime he so much as twitched or moved the smallest bit. The strange fact that Yuri can feel, and can't not feel, Victor's heart beating against his ribs and stomach.

The contemplation of Yuri moving is a short conversation with himself in that darkness. It's not like the other time. It's not like Victor's hand is just on him, or even like he's just curled up some part of Yuri's back or his shoulder. Victor is actually pressed across him, weighing him to the bed. Making shifting a nonpossibility on basically ever level. Which only makes every part of his body itch to move, fingers and toes, ankles and knees, and shoulders.

So it takes a while. Disjointed and trapped, under Victor, before he realizes that his own personal combination of panic and exhaustion isn't waning. Not once he can breathe. Not once he's given up moving, and given up that he can't see at all. Save the slightest sliver, that's only Victor's hair or his hair and forehead. He lays there inside, staring up at cloth imposed darkness. Time passing without marks, making it both impossibly slow and incredibly fast.

It's not that he doesn't try. He's stuck. He's exhausted in his skin. He's so tired of his own mind.

But trying to plead, to will, to throw himself at the mercy of the darkness does nothing, and more nothing, and even more of it.

Leaving it to his head to move in every single direction that his body can't. To replay and pick apart, every single expression Victor made from the moment Victor woke up, every single word Victor'd said since Victor woke up, since Yuri stepped off the practice ice, every time he should have asked but couldn't make himself. The constant reminding note. Eros was perfect. His jumps were horrible. His movements had been sloppy. Trying to decipher every word he hadn't said from the ones he had. His disappointment.

It's excruciatingly painful to be stuck, then. Not to want to be up. To move the exhausted, sleep-failing, lump of his body, and start practicing Yuri on Ice on the hotel room floor. Down the hallway. Even though everyone out there would probably give him the same non-descript look Victor had given him after his practice of it. But time was tick, tick, ticking, and night was getting closer, it had to be, he wasn't lucky enough for time to stop altogether.

He needed to be ready. He needed to not be a wreck.

He needed the day to start over, and for any second of sleep to find him.

[fivetimechamp]

If he dreams about anything, he doesn't remember it: all he knows is he's closing his eyes and listening to the sound of Yuri's heart beating and the rush of his blood and breath, and then his eyes are opening again in the gloom. It could be any time, but he's never needed an alarm for this, and when he shifts, making a sleepy noise, and lifts his head up off Yuri's chest to blink at the clock, he's right: they have just about an hour before they need to be at the rink, which gives them plenty of time to get changed and make their way over.

He sits up with a sigh, and rubs at his eyes, shakes Yuri's shoulder with his hand as it drops. "Yuri, time to get up. There's time for you to shower, if you want."

He wants one. The only problem with afternoon naps is they leave him feeling flushed and sluggish, and his next yawn is jaw-crackingly huge as he stretches, and gets up off the edge of the mattress to go open the drapes again. Some water –– hot or cold, he doesn't care –– and something to drink, and he'll be ready to go again, ready for that suit hanging waiting in the closet, ready for the free skate.

Hopefully Yuri will be, too.

[theglassheart]

He's somewhere around the fourth or fifth bend of this course, certain Victor will wake up this time and tell him it's all no use. Everything he came to do (they came to do), everything he tried to training into Yuri (which Yuri tried his best to learn), it's all for nothing. He won't even have to wait until after the free skate to hear it.

Except Victor shifts on him, with a low mumble, that vibrates into Yuri's ribs and his shoulder, before Victor is leaning up, before he finally slides off to one side, and his hand finds Yuri's shoulder to shake it. Victor's voice quiet, but insistent, against the shake. Because he was supposed to be asleep. That Victor pushes up gives him -- makes him? -- reach up for the sleep mask finally, eyes fluttering at the light of the room, and the sudden outpouring of it into the room.

Victor barely looks touched by his sleep, and Yuri is beginning to hate that. Somewhere in a sick pit in his stomach. Even in the semi-painful light, Victor's hair barely mussed, while Yuri's probably still looks like something slept in his hair during all those hours better than he did with any of that time inside of his own head. He looked at the clock, squinting for better focus, before wondering at how much, and how little, time had passed.

Hands finally free to move, Yuri pushed himself to sit upright, one foot tucked under a thigh.

"Yeah." The light is still a little disorienting after so long in darkness, and he's rubbing his eyes. "Okay."

Then, half folding the cloth in his hand, for all the good its imprisonment had done him. He held out the sleep mask, "Here."

[fivetimechamp]

He takes the mask back and tucks it away, and uses Yuri's time in the shower to lay out everything they'll need: Yuri's costume, the bag with all his equipment, some bottles of water, the tissue box. His own shower he keeps to a bare minimum: enough to wash the sweat from his nap off his skin, enough to refresh him, enough to swish the stale taste of sleep from his mouth. Hair brushed in its usual part, but it'll dry on the way. The gray three piece suit that he bought last year for the Worlds banquet, and that has seen more duty in the last month and a half than in the year before it.

Shoes, polished. Gloves in the pocket of his coat. And Yuri.

Who still looks tired, but Victor can't tell if that's because he's still sleepy from the nap, or because he didn't manage to sleep after all, but there's no time to get into it: they have to go.

(Frustrating to be going last. To have so much time to warm up, and too much time to think. All that time for Yuri's mind to play tricks on him, if Victor can't keep him focused.

But at least it's only five skaters ahead. It could be worse.)

The air in Shanghai in November is brisk, and it wakes him up even further, but his mind is already racing ahead, considering the routine, the competition, Yuri's weariness. He's not concerned about the latter as much as he perhaps should be: Yuri's stamina and stubbornness should power him through those four minutes and change even if there's nothing left of him to give by the end of it.

Once he's on the ice. Once it matters.

"We have lots of time once we're there to warm up, so take it nice and slow, okay?"

[theglassheart]

Time is time is time. He gets showered and combs his hair back while Victor is showering. The room silent, except for the water falling in the shower on the other side of the door. Victor's already prepped his stuff, and he has nothing really to do but comb his hair back and wait for Victor.

Who, unlike every other thought for more minutes or hours than even seems sane to himself, seems just as calm and prepared and absolutely nothing like Yuri's head had blown him up to be. Because he isn't. (He isn't.) Barely more minutes, scattershot, too fast, too slow, and Victor's done, Victor's ready, and they are leaving the room, and the hotel. Taking the walk back to the Oriental Sports Center.

The chill of the air makes him at least feel the skin on his neck and his ears more than the mostly nothing, while he watched the building getting closer and closer, more details standing out on every part of it. The next time he was outside of it would be the other side of the whole men's free skate competition. The whole answer of whether he'd never see it again, or be back tomorrow.

A divergence of direction and doors so that they don't have to deal with the fans still pouring into the building for their seats.

Inside he listens, as much out of obedience as it is out of simply having nothing better to tell himself, but he doesn't start warming up immediately. He's going to have the better part of nearly an hour to wait even after they get started. Which is soon, but still isn't now. It's easier to find something else. A chair that isn't very in the way, and then that's not really working, so maybe if he gets himself some water before they call for the warm-up to start.

Something to calm the churning in his stomach while he goes over what he should do for his warm up.
Trying to focus. (Which jumps need the most focus.) Trying. (Which step sequence to focus on after this morning).

But he ends up distracted when his fingers make it impossible to actually open the bottle of water in his hand,
uncertain if it's just stuck or if it's that he's actually shaking too hard to grip it properly and make it open.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's got his earbuds in, sitting off to the side, and that should be normal. Would be, if he didn't seem to be losing an argument with his water bottle.

He'd barely spoken at all on the way over here. Hadn't seemed to be listening. Didn't respond when people called his name, or tried to get his attention, and now Victor's watching him with a fixed and exasperated smile, resting his elbow on the arm around his own stomach, tapping at his cheek with one gloved finger, until it becomes too much.

Suddenly swooping in, hearing Yuri's surprised gasp like he'd forgotten Victor was even there, and Victor would honestly be surprised if that weren't the case. "Yuri, were you unable to take a nap?"

He looks terrible. Face drawn and pale, deep bruised circles under his eyes. Even his jacket looks like it isn't fitting right, and the hands around the water bottle he was trying and failing to open are trembling, and Victor doesn't know if he should hug him or shake him in exasperation.

His negation is such an obvious lie that Victor just rolls straight past it, not even deigning to acknowledge its existence. "I forbid you from doing jumps in the six-minute warm-up." The last thing Yuri needs while in this fragile state is to flub a jump and lose all confidence, and he looks so tired Victor's not even sure he'll be able to stand up under his own power, let alone practice jumps that he normally has no trouble with. "That's an order from your coach, Yuri."

[theglassheart]

That single word stays with him, even once his skates are on and his badge is off. Over and over, it repeats. In the click of the gate opening. In the sound of others stepping out. The first glide of his own skates, chill air rushing through his hair and flipping about his collar. It only builds with each turn about the ring, warming up in a handful of laps.

Forbid.

I forbid.

I forbid you.

When he only has six minutes, and it matters. Those six minutes. Because even if everything feels bogged down, it's only six minutes. It matters because he needs to go back over every part that didn't work this morning. It matters because he won't have another chance to warm-up out on the ice in his skates. It matters because he needs to make sure he's ready. It matters because it has to be perfect in an hour. It matters because holding back and floundering is all he's been doing, all his head wants, and that has to stop, he has to make it.

(It matters because when he slams the ice, smacking his side, and then his back, and then his other side, and then his front, all in the space of a second, still caught up in the momentum of the spin, even right down into the ice, he can't help but think those words first when he catches traction enough to push back up. That maybe Victor had known all along. That he couldn't do it, and he shouldn't even try, or try to pretend, he could.)

He'd done all of it yesterday. Somehow. When yesterday felt a million years behind him somehow. Impossible. Untouchable. Something that only ascribed itself to his name and his likeness, but wasn't him at all. Like the rest of him didn't seem to belong to himself anymore. He circles the rest. Some of it is step work. Some of it is nothing but his feet moving forward and forward and forward.

He doesn't try another jump after that. He doesn't try for any of the quads. He doesn't even do his triple axel.

When the announcement comes, it's not soon enough, and but it's, also, that everything is suddenly too very much right then. As soon as the ice clears the first person will be sent out, and it'll all start. No stopping the rapid descent of everything that is only coming faster and faster now. He's as reluctant to come off, and he is glad this part is over, even more worried about what's to come. All of it, circling, circling, circling, as he takes the skate guards from Victor's hands without even looking up.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's the type to get nervous easily, that's never been a secret, but it means that he can often blow things out of proportion. If he misses a jump in the practice and loses even more confidence, it might affect the free skate later ––

Which is what is running through Victor's mind when he sees Yuri take to the air, only to crash on the ice and slide towards the wall, exactly as Victor worried might happen. He's not sure if he should be more annoyed that Yuri disobeyed a direct order, or relieved that Yuri at least had enough spirit to give it a shot, but either way it's frustrating and he has a sudden pang of sympathy for all time times he'd ignored Yakov's orders and done what he thought was best without considering their longterm effect.

Not that it will help Yuri for him to be annoyed, he looks downhearted enough when he comes to the gate to collect his skate guards and water bottle, so Victor doesn't chastise him, only asks "Did you hurt yourself?" and when it's clear that Yuri's fine, shrugs it off, and starts walking them back towards the warm-up space and green room. Yuri's shoulders are slumped and he says nothing, but Victor is still pushing for positive, talking like it meant nothing. "Well, it's common for skaters to nail something they flubbed during practice!"

It's about the only encouraging thing he can think to say, when he's getting nothing from Yuri and he's not sure how to crack this shell. Is it just exhaustion? Is it nerves? The flubbed jump? The pressure of being first? He'd never felt this way, so it's difficult to pinpoint just exactly how to keep this gray mood from snowballing further.

But it's not so bad, right? Perhaps if he just brushes it off, Yuri will latch onto that and start focusing on what he can do isn't of what he didn't, so his laugh is breezy and bright, even when Yuri mumbles an apology he can barely hear. "Well, just continue warming up, nice and easy."

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't start lecturing him for not listening, for crashing his jump after being forbidden to even try.

Instead, he asks if Yuri is even alright in soft concern, and it's even worse. Sympathy for failure. Pity. He doesn't know why he doesn't. (He does.) Point it out. (Snap at him.) Yell at him. (Like every time he's never held back, wanting Yuri's best.) But he doesn't. (It still happens, phantoms in Yuri's head, for them both. A second Victor at his other shoulder.)

Victor just shepherds him away from the ice and the audience, back to those familiar back hallways that all blend into one. Where Phichit is dancing his moves down a hallway, and the others are having long last-minute discussions with their coaches, or grabbing mat's or foam rolls, dropping to stretch out whatever they'd learned still needed more flexibility in those few minutes. He doesn't. He considers it. For a handful of seconds. But he doesn't.

He drifts toward the area with the tv's, where there is a crowd of people in a hush, watching the miniature Guang-Hong is sliding across the ice. His movements like that of a sword-wielder. Soft and sharp in turns. It's beautiful. Not perfect, but beautiful. He lands all of his first-half jumps -- even this boy who was in last place the night before, doing better than Yuri could, in first, fifteen minutes ago -- and Yuri can't watch this. He can't. He can't.

He reaches out and turns off the tv by the button on the top, that is far too broad, and there's a moment's reprieve, the space of seconds long, before he can still here the music, clenching his ribs, his lungs, he's going to be sick, even as he's looking to his side. Where Guang-Hong is still, on another tv, higher up, and he's already three or four strides toward it, reaching for that power button, too, because he can't, he can't. Not even when there are voices suddenly murmuring worriedly and others asking who turned it off, why, fading to an irritated confusion on him, and there are people whose eyes he can't meet. So many people.

Can't look at them any more than he can't look at Victor. Five more. Five. And even the last place looks better than his warmup.

Yuri finds himself a chair, but even momentary silence (before someone does flip a tv, and then the second one, back on), none of it helps. He can't keep his breaths inside his chest. (He shouldn't have touched the tv's.) He can't look over, and he can't stop hearing the commentary as it happens. (He buries his face in his hands, everything, everything, everything still moving, still color, still the flash of everyone else in color and perfect movement around him, still the impact of slamming into the ice.)

The rumble of applause sings through the whole building and he can't stop it. Everything is moving. His whole body. The darkness doesn't help. Sitting doesn't help. He's shaking. He can't hold his foot still. He can't sit here, or he'll just fly apart. Digging in his pockets for his earbuds, and turning anything else on. Something to drown out the room. Drown out the people. Drown out the applause and the music to start shortly.

That's .... that's almost better. Marginally. Barely. For seconds. It does drown out everything, even without words. Drops his shoulders from frozen rigor. He can't stop his eyes from lingering back toward the crowds and the tv's. But no. No, he has to distract himself. Anything else. He should move further away. He should warm-up. Victor said to warm-up. He had to warm-up. He had little more than half an hour at the best outset. Half an hour and he'd have to go out there again.

[fivetimechamp]

More than a few heads turn, as Yuri gets up to switch off the televisions mid-way through Guang-hong's performance, and more than a few of those then turn towards him, but he couldn't care less about anyone in the room right now, annoyed or worried or not. Not when Yuri seems to be spiraling directly into a fullblown panic attack.

Hunched in a chair, holding his head in his hands and staring at his jiggling knee, unable to stop his foot from bouncing, or maybe not even aware that it is, and he knew Yuri got anxious, knew that he choked during his last Grand Prix run and fell into a gloom he couldn't escape, binge-eating and depressed, feeling like he was fighting alone. But all that's changed, hasn't it? He has his family, Minako, Victor. Even Yurio and the other skaters: everyone wants to see Yuri do well this year, finally meet his potential and show them all what he can really do. It isn't two years ago, and he isn't going to crash and burn.

Well, not if Victor can help it, anyway.

Pushing himself out of his train of thought and dropping his finger from where it had been tapping his mouth, to head over to Yuri and put a hand on his shoulder. "Yuri, don't sit down. I want you to go stretch out so you don't get cold and stiffen up."

Looking around before he spots Yuri's mat, rolled up near the rest of his equipment, and giving Yuri's shoulder a gentle push towards it. "There's some space over there –– "

Away from the televisions, where he can listen to his music and focus on stretching. "–– Go use it. You need to loosen up and stay warm."

[theglassheart]

Yuri nearly jumps at the touch, and sags because of it, even as every alarm bell in his skin is still going off over over and over, a shattering pierce, beyond realization. He could say it's because his music is drowning out everything (but it's not, not, not) and he mumbles an apology (he's sorry, he is so sorry, for everything, for himself), that he had no clue if even turns out to be audible or just a vibration in his throat, just for it itself, a strident sharp stab of something like terror slamming his stomach just for the first second he sees Victor's face.

But he pulls out one of his earbuds, even while his system at the speed of light somehow reverses shock for dread, explosion for implosion, blasting outward into a sink hole inward, but all Victor is telling him is what he had been desperately reaching for. He needs to warm-up. His matt is over there. He should take it and go over there, and warm-up. Loosen up. (Figure out how to breathe.)

He goes because he's supposed to, because he has no better idea, because any direction is better than none.
(He doesn't know why Victor cares, why Victor thinks it will matter now, if or why he does. Why he's still here at all.
Maybe he doesn't want to be, any more than Yuri wants to be here anymore. This country, this building, his body, his head.)

Gets down on the floor, on hands that feel numb, and starts stretching out his legs. Trying not to think, not to fall, slide, slip, into the darkness, (but trying at all, feels thinner than paper, thinner than air, thinner than a thought, sliced bare and bleeding), but all he can see is Victor's face above him when he jumped. Victor seeing that he's an absolute mess. That he's come this far and he's never going to even make it out there.

Everything they've ever done is for nothing because Yuri isn't anything more than this. He has never been.
All it well-meant lies that are shattering on the floor in Shanghai, while he can't keep it together. Pull it together.

In a routine order that he knows better than he has to think about (purposeless memorization, for what will be a purposeless attempt at a medal, at the box, at a standing at his ability, but not possiblity), he moves from the mat to the wall. Desperation like a full being clinging to his head. His body, his arms, his hands, and hips as they begin to shift, loosening muscles needed for everything from turns to jumps.

He didn't come here wanting this. He didn't train for this. He didn't put the year behind him for this. But it's here, there, everywhere, all the same. Jamming up his lungs, stopped and starting and screaming every worst thought. He can't even make his breaths stay consistent and slow, even when he's only staring at the wall and his shoes.

[fivetimechamp]

It seems to work for a little while.

At least, through the rest of Guang-hong's routine, and into the start of Chris', when Victor is looking back and forth between the performance on the screen (Chris is on fire today, looking relaxed and confident, and has that been as uncomfortable a thought as it is right now?) and Yuri stretching first on the mat, and then against the wall. He seems focused, at any rate ... or, he does until Victor catches a glimpse of his expression and sees how blank his eyes are, how drawn his face, and realizes that Yuri is trembling.

No. Not trembling. Shaking. Out of fear or adrenaline or nerves or exhaustion, Victor doesn't know, but Chris lands a jump combination that makes the room burst into approving applause, and he can see Yuri's shoulders tightening and lifting under his jacket, followed by a hard shiver, and he comes to a sudden decision, clear and sharp as shattering glass. It's only a few steps to reach for Yuri and grasp him by the scruff of his jacket's collar to drag him off the wall, walking briskly away: from the room, from the televisions, from the competition, from the people crowding up Yuri's space and making it harder for him to breathe. "Yuri, let's warm up in a different spot."

In the end, Yuri will have to fight for those four minutes and change on his own, but until there, Victor can protect him as well as he's able: that's what a coach should do, right? Protect his skater. Comfort him, and lift his confidence. Right now, Yuri is the most fragile Victor's ever seen him, and watching the others skate and listening to the idle chatter in the room will only push him further, so where's the place with the fewest people? Somewhere safe for Yuri to warm up in peace, without pitting himself against every skater to take the ice before he does?

But there seems to be people everywhere they turn, and Victor keeps directing Yuri through other doors, into other hallways, until finally they're in the stairwell, and the only sound is that of their echoing footsteps. Yuri's just following wherever Victor directs him, and that's not good, but they're getting away from people, and that is, and Victor might not know exactly what to do to motivate Yuri now, or snap him out of this spiral, but he can at least give him the space to try and work through it, himself.

That space, it turns out, ends up being the garage below the rink, but it's fine, it's fine. For their purposes, they don't need anything else: all they need is space for Yuri to warm up and breathe in peace, and for that, it's perfect.

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't expecting the sudden jerk from his jacket, and even before he can look back to see if it's from Victor -- even though it has to be, right? -- he's shattered by a different realization. Being drug backward, by that firm, unasking hand, behind him there are three men and a video recorder trained on him. Making his eyes go wider, whiter. Dubious expressions and absolutely nothing else in this direction to be looking at except him. Losing it.

Victor Nikiforov's skater falling to pieces before he could even get on the ice and damage his reputation properly.



And now him, being drug away by Victor, announcing brusquely that they need to go find somewhere else.
He manages to catch his feet, and ends up at Victor's side. Then, under Victor's arms when it finds his shoulder.

Victor, who can't not tell at this point. Victor, who isn't talking and keeps dragging him further and further and further from the area they are all supposed to be in. Victor, who can't want to be here. To be part of this anymore. Victor, who had his arm across Yuri's shoulder, and was still leading him silently, calmly, smoothly away from everything. Their footsteps silent in a stairwell when there finally aren't other people shuffling, dashing, moving things and getting other things done.

Where they end up ... makes no sense. Underground? Under the arena? In a parking garage, surrounded by cars, and dark in every direction except for right where the lights are shining down and throwing shadows in every direction. It makes no sense. None at all. Did Victor bring him down here to talk to him about how this is all over now? Somewhere without people, without cameras to see it. Like waiting until they got to the hotel earlier.

Except Victor'd meant to make him sleep. Hadn't he? Except now it was worse, and Victor had to be able to see that.

Fear and dread and desperation knotted in his stomach, in his throat, all of it lined with confusion. As much as he hated it, and as little as he wanted it, he should be upstairs. He should be where Victor dragged him from. They could be through the first half, and how would he know. How would they know? He hadn't even been close enough to be watching Chris' skate, to have an idea of the score he had ended up with.

Not that he needed clues to how well it was going with the applause and compliments.

He should know, shouldn't have to ask, but he does, foundering, and trying not to, "Victor, what are the current standings?"

[fivetimechamp]

There's an approving roar from above, and Yuri shivers like a cat that's been sprayed with water, looking up at him with huge, panicked eyes, and Victor thinks, Вот дерьмо.

"O-Okay, Yuri."

Smiling and trying his best to stay an even keel, even as he's holding his hands up to try and ward Yuri off at the pass. "First, let's take deep breaths."

Yuri has to calm down, if for no other reason, so that he doesn't have a heart attack or stroke right here in the garage. "Don't worry about it, Chris was only the second to go. Looking at the standings now isn't going to mean anything, okay?"

He has no idea if anything he's saying or doing is getting through, and he doesn't like it down here: it's cold and dim and echo-y and it's maybe the second to worst place for Yuri to warm up. The problem being, of course, that the worst place is where they just came from, with all the building pressure.

(Phichit is up now, he thinks ... that means another ten minutes or so before they have to start heading back up.)

"Go ahead and warm up, I'll keep an eye on the rankings for you. That's part of my job, not yours, remember?"