He goes down easy, too tired to argue, and too tired to do anything other than find the pillow and the blanket and settle himself into them, but he doesn't close his eyes the way Victor expects him to, even though it looks like he'll fall asleep any second. Every time his eyes start drooping, he refocuses, mouth tightening in that stubborn line Victor's learned to recognize as 'Yuri doesn't want to do something.'

Except he's not sure why Yuri wouldn't want to just relax and go to sleep. Not unless it's the same reason he doesn't want to close his eyes, and go to sleep: this uncertainty that all of this will have vanished in the night. That maybe it will all look and feel different in the light of day, after Yuri's finally had some rest and some time to distance himself from the competition and time to think and process.

That maybe he'll wake up, and decide he doesn't want this, after all.

It's the only thing Victor can think of, when Yuri's eyes are stubbornly locked on his face, even looking fuzzy and out of focus, more myopic by the second, each blink a little slower and harder, and it's such a strange, luminous feeling. Yuri, not wanting to take his eyes off of Victor, as much as the other way around.

The hand that isn't curled under his own pillow settling back in Yuri's hair again, fingers stroking through it lightly, slow and gentle, while Victor's voice goes low and coaxing. "Go to sleep, Yuri."

His arm looped over Yuri's, the pinky of that hand on the pillow by Yuri's head, long fingers and thumb in his hair, forearm lying close along his neck and back. "I promise nothing will have changed when you wake up."

It hasn't before now. One more night certainly isn't going to be the final straw.