Yuri isn't sure exactly what Victor is talking about, something about his performance, and everyone is laughing. Victor with them. Something clunking in Yuri's chest, with the perfect square of his shoulders, and movement of his hair as he shifts. Before Victor is turning toward him, and that smile is.

It's. It's just blinding, and that awkward thing in his stomach vanishes, because his everything in him gives a hot jolt, twisting, turning. Like his lungs fall out of his body, when Victor is staring at him, calling out his name in a delight like Victor just remembered he existed, or had been waiting forever.

Like he hadn't been utterly enamored in the attention around him seconds ago.

Shooting a tendril of spiking cold into that muddled, crescendo of warmth.
Why. Why, then. Why had. He could never compare with any of this.


The thought cuts through, burning cold, razor sharp.


(How hadn't he gotten to that earlier, too?)


Before Victor was staring at him, asking this question, light and bright. Before he's blinking behind his glasses, feeling suddenly bereft of air and gravity, in a completely different way. A completely familiar way. More familiar than anything that came before it. An ache cracking, breaking and freezing, around his thoughts, around that wide, brilliant smile still beaming away at him, like he was just another piece of Victor's adoring world.

Making him nod, a little too much, no more than a single word pushing up, "Yes."