It's real, he'd said. Real today. Real tomorrow. Real when they both wake up and Victor still feels this way, even if every other part of this has been a dream, after all.

Even if he's not sure he could have ever dreamed this. Yuri's fingers digging desperate into his hair, and Yuri's head falling back to give him room to roam up and down along his throat and neck, finding the racing beat of his pulse and pulling at it, wanting more of it, wanting all of it. Everything he can have, because Yuri was right, before, too, he's selfish. Always has been. Has spent his life in a world where people cheer his name and want to know every detail of his life: what his apartment is like, why he has a poodle, why he cut his hair, why he skates what he does. He's never been asked to think about anyone else as anything other than competition.

So maybe it's not all that unusual that, when he finally did find someone else to care about, he had years of attention to give. Decades of missing out on putting someone else first, on paying attention to the smallest of signs that they were unhappy. Never knowing the desperate need to be able to do something, anything, to help. He had no idea it was possible to love someone so much that to hear them struggling to breathe felt like being unable to pull air into his own lungs.

Maybe that's why he pulls back, a little, just far enough to look into Yuri's face, shifting one arm out to move his hand from Yuri's shoulderblade to the back of his head, thumb running over the soft skin and hair just behind his ear, that spot no one would ever have a need to touch in the course of a regular day, that would go unnoticed and unloved.

Not today. He'd adore every ignored inch he can find, if he could.

But first, swallowing his own rasping breath, to lean down and kiss Yuri as gently as he can, feeling restraint shake like a dog on a leash. "Breathe, Yuri."

There's no rush here. He's waited this long; he can keep waiting as long as he needs to.