{ 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

[theglassheart]

It's only in certain seconds he even seems to remember there's silence in the room when they've stopped talking, and it only seems to come to him disjointedly. Only for seconds. (Like the pain. Like the moving. Even, like his silver medal.) There a second, even important while there, but then gone. Just gone. Like his ears are only something working, able to work, able to even be paid attention to, when it's not solely for hearing the next words or sound Victor makes.

Like his usual hyper-awareness of everything around him, everything with everyone,
everything that had, everything that could possibly go the worst it possibly could go,
it's all is caught in a white out. Comes, vividly, back and, then, vanishes just as fast.

Caught at the softness of Victor's lips, and the spider-like cracks of an equally impossible ache in his chest, when they part and aren't touching. That exists no longer than indrawn breath before it vanishes as Victor shakes against him. Victor. Shaking. Victor? Victor. Shaking just enough he can feel it under his hands, against his chest. Victor. Staring up at him with eyes so bright it seems as ill-advised to stare into them as the sun, as certain to blot out everything else until there isn't an else. Until he's all there is.

(Would anything really be different, then?

How long has it already only been Victor and Victor and Victor?)

Yuri's shifted for a second in surprise at the touch to his cheek -- the surprise of inattentiveness, even while just staring at Victor's face, nearly making him shy back, before he corrected back into it with a sag of relief-- his eyes almost closing, half-closing, everything in his chest re-orienting the paths of faint heat and soft tingling those knuckles drug over and up his cheek. To barely glance his temple, his ear, before Victor's hand turned and fingertips pressed into his hair, as Yuri couldn't quite figure out more than a faint sigh out his nose, and leaning into it.

[fivetimechamp]

Without the gel, Yuri's hair falls over his forehead in shaggy, unstudied bangs, and his glasses block off his eyes. This t-shirt is soft, but doesn't fit especially well, and the room smells like the food they'd just been eating.

None of this the sleek seduction of Eros, and yet for some reason, it feels like the only thing Victor has ever wanted.

This shy Japanese boy in his lap, head tipping into his touch, after spending nearly two years being totally unaffected by every one of Victor's charms and attempts in a way no one they were ever directed at has, and he wants to know when that changed. Was it just tonight? Has this been here the whole time? Or was it sometime in between? He wants to ask it all, has a million and one questions about what Yuri's feeling, how he's feeling, why he's feeling it, when it all shifted and turned into this.

Where that outburst from the garage came from, and yesterday's demand for Victor's full attention before he hit the ice. He wants to know it all and more.

(How much of this wait was because he never called, or came to Japan, until just this last spring?)

How did he go from running away from Victor's touch to leaning into it, eyes gone half-lidded and dopey, like a touch-starved cat? "When did this happen?"

How. Why. How long could he have had this, if he'd just known?

He is all wonder and wistfulness, even as his fingers tug lightly through Yuri's hair and run along his scalp. "I thought you didn't want me like this."

It's only a little bit of a falsehood. He had thought it, and then he didn't, and then there was nothing but copious proof that Yuri didn't, and now there's this, and he would really like to know just how right or wrong he has been this whole time.

Not that it matters, really. Now, with Yuri in his arms, looking at him with this intent focus, wrapped around him, it barely seems like a wait at all.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's eyes open in something like suspect confusion, though more at the second set of words than the first. As though Yuri had made some conscious decision to not want Victor -- as though anyone in the world ever could. This, again, making him think about Victor's reference earlier. About offering it on the beach, and that tangles, confusedly, against the warmth of Victor's fingers against his scalp, running through his hair -- and how does that feel so good?

So good he doesn't want to think about confusing, complicated questions. He wants to close his eyes more, and pray that Victor won't stop touching him. Making ripples of warm relaxation skip out across the skin radiating from those touches. Across his scalp, down his neck, seeming to get everywhere.

But even against the whine of want to fall into the warmth, to just close his too heavy eyelids, he can't forget the question.

The first one. The second is literally impossible. No one, certainly not Yuri, could not have wanted Victor. Case in point with Yuri's brain melting at this lightest touch, mind struggling valiantly to be able to speak to Victor, or at least think about things Victor had said, while Victor's hands tried to melt his brain into an early spring puddle.


(It's still not the same, either. Not if he argues everyone had wanted Victor.
If he was somewhere in the blur of everyone. It's not this. It's not the same as this at all.

Even if, and the if is so pressed and insane, Victor had been serious -- and it has to be insane, right? Because if he was serious about that, was he also serious about offering to be Yuri's Father? Brother? Friend? And Boyfriend? All in once? And if so, then didn't that make all of them equally still untrue? -- even then, it wouldn't be this. It wouldn't be everything this year had been. Everything they'd become. How much more Victor had become.

More than just Victor, and exactly that. A more that defied words but filled his whole heart now.)


That. That he can at least answer to. Even if it's not much of a first few words.

He can make himself open his eyes, and hope it doesn't sound incredibly stupid to whisper, "I don't know."

"I don't feel different," follows, in soft, almost deep earnestness, even when he looks clouded, catches himself, and negates, just as quickly. Like it's the worst and wrong thing. And it is. Untrue, too. "I mean. I do." He did, sitting up, pulling away from that hand to look more at Victor. "Obviously. This is all--" The touching. The kissing. This being curled up in Victor's lap.

This every rush and catch and explosion under his skin, like Victor had given his body more life in two hours than it had ever had under his own touch even once in all his life. (The only comparison that came even swimming up was that of skating, and even it wasn't the same. That was him outward, and this pressed in.)

"Different." Beat. "New." And nice. Better than nice. Better than whatever better than nice was.

But wasn't the point. There's a small flush, ducking his head. His mouth and his head rambling. "Obviously."

"But I--" And the words is not good enough. Gums in his teeth. He means a different thing, but it's the same self-addressing word in English. Not his skin, but still him. Everything under. Everything inside. The him deep in. No 内, or 拙者, or こっち. "--don't feel different." Except he just said this, and then that he did. The same word. "This doesn't. I--" It breaks off with a decided frown, for,

"Pronouns," grumbled in guilty, aggravated, consternation, scrunching up his face.

The feeling was there, in his chest, only burning brighter for looking at it

(overwhelming certainty of Victor, of what Victor was, Victor meant, how he felt about Victor, always did, always had, grown together, hand in hand, through the whole process of their work through the spring and summer and fall, from that day on the beach, the reason he'd crumbled into Victor crushing him into his chest across the room being the same reason he'd screamed at him in the garage, and done the quad flip, and gone flying toward the gate, had to defy pain and gravity and kiss Victor minutes ago, and isn't that even more unsettling?

If maybe it isn't a change of feelings for him? If he doesn't know when, and really,
when did this happen, then? When did it start and how long has it been going on?)

but the words weren't right.

[fivetimechamp]

His hands drops from Yuri's hair to his shoulder when Yuri sits back, but that's as far as Yuri goes, so Victor focuses on trying to follow along as Yuri starts and stops and contradicts himself. Trying not to smile too much at that last grumbled toss of his hands in the air, because there isn't a right word. Searching for some subtlety in Japanese that doesn't exist in the English they both have to use, and winding up confusing both.

Different, but not different. New, but not new. This is different and new. (Obviously.) For Yuri, who has never so much as kissed someone before. Who has probably never been this physically close to someone before, maybe the same way Victor has never been this close to anyone before, in any way and every way it counts.

It's probably as much of an answer as it isn't. It changed, but it didn't. Either Yuri doesn't have the words, or he doesn't know, or it's some combination of both, but does it really matter? He wants to know, but does it really matter? He has Yuri here now. Like this. Looking at him like that, and leaning heavy into his touch, and that's enough, more than. He doesn't really need to try and dissect it all right now, or trace the patten of how they got here, does he?

But the last time he tried to give Yuri an out, he was scolded, told don't do that, so he should ... what. Find some response. Maybe look for something that will convince Yuri it's all right if he doesn't know, or even if this is too brand new to clarify.

It's still here, and that's the important thing. "Different, and not different."

Maybe not as sudden as he'd thought, but not as long-lived as he'd wondered. Which explains this last eight months, maybe, but not the banquet.

Unless it does, and he was right back then, and Yuri just didn't care at all.

But that all feels so long ago, and he leans to press a light kiss to one side of Yuri's neck, and then the other, smiling against his skin and when he pulls back to watch Yuri's face again. "Language is clumsy."

Easier to do this. Easier to find it on the ice.

[theglassheart]

He needs two different words for I, and two different words for feeling, meanings that are as different as night and day, differentiated from themselves, without lessening each the other, or contradicting each other, and as much as he presses his mind for any of the more complicated English, some further vocabulary that must exist from in those thick endless dictionaries, it persists in eluding him.

The cloud of it taking up more and more space in him, with no way to be expressed. The clould of it usurping so much more of him, defying so much more of him, when he has to wonder how long not that he's loved Victor but ... been possibly in love with Victor?

Did that make him more like everyone else in the world, having tried not to be? Or did even that allusion seem patently like a lie, even inside of him, while Victor repeated his words carefully. Not understanding entirely either. And it's not, is it? It can't be the entire same as everyone. The same as everyone who ever got to be this close to him, to have him anywhere nearby this long? Making it impossible not to?

That when Victor is kissing, softly, one side of his neck and then other, how impossible it must be truly for anyone. Not just the idea of a set-aside decades inspiration and obsession, whether that had ever worked. But the more. The things you'd couldn't miss about Victor this close-up. The everything that made up his every day and every night. Things only Yuri could manage to miss changing everything inside his own body.

There's a small sigh, in something like defeat, without being over long or over deep at Victor's last words, especially when mixed with the whole way Victor's lips touching his throat still made him shiver and shift, shoulders pulling and then pressing out again, straight through it. Even gentle and quick and right back to before him again.

It doesn't feel enough. To not have the right words. The right answer. Even inside him.

[fivetimechamp]

Whatever answer Yuri was searching for, he doesn't seem to find it, just sighs like he can see whatever it is, but it's just out of reach, and probably Victor shouldn't find that so endearing, but he does. Like he finds that shiver that scuttles across Yuri's skin endearing, and that pink flush on his cheeks, and the haphazard way his hair is drying, and the fact that he's still wearing his glasses, and he can't help feeling that language is a blunt and clumsy tool, too, because it's the only word he can think of to describe this sensation. Endearing. Cute, even, although Yuri might hate that. The fact that Yuri can be this adorable, tripping over words and growing slowly braver with touches that are still clumsy but as determined as any attempt at a jump or step sequence, when only yesterday he was melting the ice with Eros, and today ––

Victor doesn't know how one person can be so many things. It's endlessly fascinating, in a way that would probably make Yuri blush even harder and mumble even more incomprehensibly, which would in turn only charm Victor even further, so not matter what he does, he's doomed.

All of these last months making things even worse, until he'd lost the reins on it completely. If he'd known, if it had been like this back home in St. Petersburg, how could he have ever survived? Even Stay Close to Me doesn't seem right anymore, isn't enough. He's not sure there's a close that's close enough.

But this is a start. This is the best possible way to sit, even if Yuri is heavier than he looks and there's still a tray sitting precariously on the mattress over there that he'll have to keep in mind or risk destroying when he forgets.

Which he will, because Yuri is on his lap and Yuri keeps making those addictive sounds and touching him, and Victor is only human. "Well, it's this way now." The backs of his fingers finding Yuri's cheek and jaw, and how impossible is it that he can, that he's allowed, that it's wanted? He hopes the novelty never wears off. "That's all that matters."

[theglassheart]

It still doesn't feel enough even when Victor amends his words as thought to say it doesn't matter if Yuri doesn't have the words, if Yuri doesn't know the answer, or can't, or won't, give it to Victor. It doesn't feel enough, but the problem with that words is that it jumbles. It jumbles on Victor still touching him. Not stopping no matter how unqualified he keeps proving he is for even single conversations this evening, amid this, about this.

He feels more like an ignorant idiot, like a naive child, like he's slamming a wall -- and Victor still does that.

Reaches up, as though it's the easiest thing in the world, and brushes the backs of his fingers, again, against Yuri's cheek, and jaw. Softer skin, but just as gentle a touch as only a minute ago, with his knuckles instead, and Yuri's chest aches. Impossible feelings and impossible want pushing up everywhere in him. To be beautiful. To be as effortlessly eloquent as that deserves. As Victor does.

That even not being it, he still presses toward it. Like it isn't even a thought, a decision. Victor touches him and the whole world reorients to him instead of anything Yuri was doing or thinking. Victor's fingers stroke his skin and he's already leaned into the touch before he's even registering, entirely, the soft feel of those fingers, the trail of tingling warmth they make. When he wants that to be true. Victor's words. More than the pitfalls that seem to spring up everywhere once he's spotted one.

Making him give a small nod of his head and try to just look down and meet Victor's eyes again.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri keeps listing towards every tiny touch in a way that makes Victor feel like the one losing his footing. It's impossibly charming, and it makes that ache in his chest tighten a few more turns every time it happens. Yuri, who not that long ago would have bolted across the room, and potentially directly through the wall to the hallway without bothering with opening the door first and using it as intended, leaning into his hand. His touch. Him.

"You look lost in thought."

He does, but it's only part of whatever this look on Yuri's face is, and the rest is nothing he thinks he should poke or prod at too sharply, when this whole evening has been a balancing act of hauling himself back from pushing for too much, too fast, while Yuri slingshots between something like panic and that sudden boldness that made him push up into Victor a few moments ago, stealing his hands and his head and his kisses.

So he shouldn't poke, or prod. Not when Yuri can't find the right words to say when this changed, or even if it changed, and looked so annoyed with himself for the lack of correct vocabulary.

But he does coax. Does put his head to one side to smile winsome and warm, while his hand settles against Yuri's neck, and the other traces down to the small of Yuri's back. "What are you thinking about?"

[theglassheart]

He wonders how it would be possible not to.

At least as much as it seems like it is, impossible to hold a single thought.


Especially with a finger pressed to it. All at once there are absolutely no thoughts and a crescendo of so many whispers, faintly panicked like a patch of darkness with a floodlight on it. Even though Victor has been looking at him this whole time. Close as close can be, when Victor has drug him into his lap (he's in Victor's lap, all but pressed to Victor's chest, while Victor's hands wander over his skin freely).

Victor, who wants to know what he's thinking, when everything he can think comes in rushes and bursts as the sensations under his skin. When there' still that faint frustration for not being able to express this right, and answer Victor's question from seconds ago, as though English truly has betrayed him. Language is clumsy. His feet would know it, if he was on ice right now.

It would be a tremulous glide, sliding into a lunge, hands pulling down, with the face turned up, eyes closed, toward the sun.
Except. Then he'd have to close his eyes. Except then he'd have to let go. Except then it all seem so much more a dream.

He doesn't want to close his eyes. Doesn't want to let go just yet. Not while Victor is still looking at him like this, and Victor is still touching him in a way that seems foreign and fragile and careful as the best ballet performance. This way Victor has never touched him, and Victor has touched him quite a lot. So much more than anyone else in his entire life probably together and years combined, and he wants more of it.

He wants to be able to explain what he couldn't seconds ago.

This feeling inside of him that Victor asked for. That is everywhere. Pressing toward Victor's hands, toward Victor's body, toward that soft awe and surprise in Victor's face, that he had worked so hard at earned everytime he got their programs right in practice, every time Victor carelessly shared it in the exploits of his exuberant tourism.

That are his right now ... for no extra reasons which can be pointed to. Just him. It's just focused on him.

He doesn't stop. Victor doesn't stop. His fingers drop to curl at Yuri's neck, still for a moment, for the feeling before the thought of the friction of the earlier touch stopping to rouse, but before it can even become a thought Victor's other hand is moving. Is trailing down his back, making things light up there instead. Making his shiver, shift, sit up straighter as muscles suddenly come to life under those fingers, seem to exist more in the trail of fingertips ands palm than any of the lasting pains of the day.

There is so much he could say, and so little he wants to say, and it keeps coming back to seconds ago. To that question. Which turns something determined at the press of his mouth. He's done so many harder things that seemed impossible. Training under Victor. Returning to the Grand Prix after his failure. Earning a silver medal at his first qualifier. If he's still shivering, shifting as muscles answer Victor's fingers more than a plea to hold still, he still tries.

His hands tighten just faintly on Victor's shoulders, and how strange is that Victor can do all of this at once.

Not just talking and touching him, but this, too. This under Yuri's hands.
Pulling him apart and anchoring him all at one.

"There are more than dozen ways to refer to yourself in Japanese."

[fivetimechamp]

"Oh?"

Yuri looks so determined that he can't, but Victor wants to fawn all over this adorable wrinkle in his forehead and the firmed corners of his mouth. It's just so cute, this focus on getting it right, on finding whatever answer it is he thinks Victor is requiring, or whatever answer he's requiring of himself. "That's a lot."

Not that he can talk about the complications of the Japanese language, when Russian is notoriously difficult ... even, occasionally for native speakers, but Japanese does seem to have an extreme amount of rules and specificity. He's not certain why it's coming up right now, but at least he feels he can safely comment on the complicated nature of Japanese. What little he's picked up from living in Hasetsu has been specific to both situation and person, and he won't pretend he has anything more than a child's grasp of grammar and meaning. The honorifics still confuse him, and so do the variations on seemingly simple terms.

Referring to yourself, for example.

But he can listen attentively when Yuri is trying to make a point about it, or with it, because he is has always been a superlatively polite person, and also because he finds it genuinely interesting, if unexpected.

(Though he does hope it connects somewhere to something he understands.)

[theglassheart]

It's so very roundabout, the point. The explanation. But there is a point, even if he's only still cobbling how to get from right here to there. Even when it feels convoluted, and like a lot of translations like it's already going to change what he means. But he has to try.

"Not all of them are appropriate." Obvious winnowing away of that pile that English didn't have, and even Victor seems distantly surprised about, even in that expression that he thought was questioning why that was his thought. How it connected to anything right before. "As a man. To a situation."

A barely there pause. "This situation."

He'd meant more about there being specific ones that were more professionally, and other more personal, but even at that, this situation -- this situation was far more ... intimate than most of those counts even. This. Him sitting here on Victor's lap, this close, hands on each other. The kissing.

The next hesitation actually is.

But Yuri lets go of one of Victor's shoulders, pulling back his arm, to lay that hand over Victor's on his neck. It's silly, he knows. That he's already touching so much of Victor it shouldn't make him pause, even while still in Victor's lap, in the curl of his arm, to touch a different part of Victor. On purpose. While thinking about it.

"This--" There's a faint pressure of his fingers on the hand there, and he can feel it. The pressure on his skin. "--one is fine in both." Even if it makes him sort of blush, the wrong meaning touching his head. He means the word earlier. The I foundered in his sudden disagreement with his own mouth. When he started, before he tried to separate them.

He lifts his hand a second later, dropping it even further, to place it sideways across the center of his own chest. "This would be different."

[fivetimechamp]

He's not sure he understands. This ... what? In both what? This reference Yuri is making to himself? In both ... situations? If this situation one of them, what's the other? It's difficult to follow, but he's not sure now is the time to ask clarifying questions. Not when Yuri's hand is careful on top of his, sending a wave of warmth scudding up his forearm and down along his back, and he looks so serious.

Solemn, maybe. Earnest. Like if Victor took any of this too lightly, he'd crack right in half and clam up, never to speak again, never to touch Victor with this so careful, so gentle hand, cool fingers and soft skin. Saying this. Hand over Victor's hand. Meaning ... maybe ... Victor touching him? The situation that made this touch possible?

There's a pause that makes him wonder if he's supposed to respond, if he should know what to say, or ask, or do, and he's racking his brain before Yuri's hand lifts again, and lands on his own chest, over his heart. This.

A this that is easy to recognize, even if Victor still isn't sure what the difference is meant to be, but he knows this. This feeling in his own chest expanding, trying to crack through ribs to reach Yuri's hand, to say I know, I know, me too. This sharp and sweet and too painful thing that has kept him up and pulled him down and dragged him halfway across the world because it could never be satisfied.

He doesn't know if Yuri means love or if Yuri means heart or if Yuri means the secret inner workings of themselves, that makes them themselves, that they mine for programs and carve out onto the ice and offer up to the love and judgment and hands of the people watching them ––

But maybe it doesn't matter.

His own hand lifting from Yuri's neck a moment later, to land over the hand on Yuri's chest, longer fingers wrapping lightly around Yuri's palm. "Is this ––"

Index finger tapping on Yuri's chest, light. "–– the one you mean?"

[theglassheart]

His heart rate escalates when Victor's hand curls around his. Even without the rush that's been getting everywhere, sticky and snapping with lightning, each time before now. For a moment he swears it's just furiously trying to escape him. That if he looked down at his hand -- at Victor's hand over his hand -- he'd catch the vibration of his so suddenly very real, very hard, heartbeat making the cloth of his shirt move even.

"We have different words for it." Words that were, also, other words, but had nuances and were this, too. "They're--"
Except he doesn't want to say that anymore, even when his mouth is saying it. Because he's not sure it matters.

Not when Victor's fingers are wrapped around his hand, and Victor is tapping his chest light, but like a small brand, like Yuri's shirt and Yuri's hand are maybe not even there. Skipping steps, and translations, and explanations. Making his heart race with something that is fear and more, so much more, so many other bigger things. Pulling his words out of his hands, just by Victor putting his hand on him.

When his fingers curved under to try and wrap around Victor's fingertips, and the urge to pull him in, pull him closer makes no sense. There is no closer than the centimeters to his chest. There is no closer than how close they are already sitting. Victor's already so close, and too close, and not close enough all at once, when Yuri nods, caught in the urge that says closer still.

Because he had meant this. At the beginning, and then, again, at the end.

Because he still meant every part of it he hadn't gotten to say, because it was wrong inspecific.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers wrap around his hand and he nods, without finishing his sentence, and Victor still thinks they might be having two different conversations, but he's not sure they aren't heading towards the same conclusion.

Either way, his smile turns gentle, palm warm and steady over the back of Yuri's hand, the both of them protective over Yuri's heart. "Different, but not different?"

That's not how it worked for him. There was nothing, and then there was everything, and his whole world turned on an instant and on a single touch, a single glance, a single hour. One of thousands. Millions. And even though things have changed since then, since this spring, he's not sure it would count as feeling the same, but different, regardless of how he references himself.

But maybe not. There's a slight wistful tinge to the corners of his smile, even as his fingers tuck themselves under Yuri's, and his thumb runs along the back of Yuri's wrist. "I don't know if I completely understand."

He doesn't. But. "But I know this."

Tapping on Yuri's chest again, because he can't lean down to place a kiss there, over the I that Yuri meant, that doesn't fit into English and probably wouldn't into Russian, either. To him, the self is all once complicated organism, inner and outer, superficial and complex, mundane and sublime. He's always found his feelings as friends, or sometimes as hurtful enemies, but always recognizable, always familiar.

(Even if he hasn't always wanted to accept it right away.)

But he knows the sensation. The feeling of a separate self, a wayward idealist living in his chest and masquerading as his heart. And he knows the words are difficult to find, even in the tongue he grew up with.

[theglassheart]

"No," It's soft, but certain, at the newest tap to his sternum. Something like a whisper, but it isn't a whisper. Soft. Quiet-soft, but certain, too. Maybe that part is the part that's most uncertain. The certainty of the certainty. The fact the fear isn't in that single word, or the way his head shakes just as sure as it had nodded a second.

His fingers tighten, the same way it feels like his ribs do, because he could just agree. He could roll along. He could say nothing and follow Victor. Follow the soft expression on his face, and the soft brush of one of Victor's fingers having found his wrist. Brushing back and forth, so soft and distracting, over his pulse.

"This part doesn't feel different." Not just the words, and not him unchanged, but not new.

How he felt about Victor. That it wasn't some magical shift and switch. Every touch was new. Every reaction. But. Under it. He still wanted to make Victor proud, to show Victor he'd been worth all his sacrifices. He could feel the way he still found Victor exasperating, surprising, impatient, annoying, beyond the highest bar of inspiring, incomparable, beautiful and smart as he was forgetful and arrogant, affectionate, safe, trustable, over-excitable. "It -- I still feels like I did."

"Before." Before this room. Before Victor kissed him. Before this morning and two days ago.

He's not sure how far before reaches to. Which day, where, it started.
How long he's possibly been pushing it back. Drowning it.

He knows when it wasn't, back when he couldn't let Victor in, couldn't dream Victor would ever want to see the real him, but he's here, now, and it's everywhere all around him, in every thought, every feeling, like it's always been right there, all around him, inside of him, for so long it's like it's just been waiting for him to catch up and open his eyes.

[fivetimechamp]

No, Yuri says, and it takes a second before the impact of that single word fully registers. No, this hasn't changed. No, this part doesn't feel different.

So Yuri's felt like this ... here, in the center of himself ... for how long?

Since the start? Victor's not sure he believes that, entirely, given what did and didn't happen over that first year and a half, or even when he first came to Hasetsu. Yuri hadn't looked like his heart was giving him any trouble then, except in the sense that it might have been dismayed by the amount of physical labor it suddenly had to do.

Even if there were some times when Victor caught him looking over, a strange and uncertain look on his face. Something that went along with I've always looked up to you and I didn't want you to see my shortcomings, but not this. Not the way Yuri was just pushed against him, or how he's settled on Victor now, or how his cheeks keep going pink but his eyes are shining, the way they sometimes do when he can't find the words but is filled with something, an idea he can't describe or wants to keep close to himself.

But he's saying it isn't different. This. And Victor's trying to understand, because Yuri is trying to tell him something. Answer that question that feels unimportant now, even if it felt so all-consuming only moments ago, and probably will again later, when Yuri isn't right here, physical proof that things have changed. "What does?"

If this isn't different. But he'd said something was, too.

[theglassheart]

Maddeningly, having reached what he wanted to, it feels like the understanding of it is murky and mired at the best. Nonexistent at worst. Like it holds for all of a second before Victor asks another question, a different one, to the opposite of it, like maybe that wasn't the answer, and certainly not with the same feeling or expression from seconds ago.

It's almost disorienting how fast it all can become frustration. Disappointment.
(But at least he's well versed in that shift? Those feelings. Their weight.)

That he'd gotten there, back there, and it seemed almost right, except that now it looked like it'd gotten lost on the way there, too. Or maybe it never made sense when he did finally try to say it. Or maybe it made as little sense to say as it was to try and question the inside of his head, his feelings, as though someone else was ever going to find the questions and echo back a clear answer up for him.

He wants to sigh. He's not sure there is another way, if he arleady managed to bungle this one up, and the first one, when it was freshest and most direct, and least understood. Language is clumsy, and it feels like the answer is all over him, in his skin as well as on top of it, and somehow he still didn't get it right.

[fivetimechamp]

Different, but not different. (Obviously.) But the wrong question. (Just as obviously.) Yuri looking the way Yuri looks when he's hit the ice for the fifth time instead of landing clean on the correct edge to circle back and away in a graceful arc. Yuri looking the way Yuri looks when he's as annoyed at himself, or more, for failing to deliver than at Victor for pushing him.

But they aren't on the ice now, even if this all might be easier to interpret if they were. Easier to say, easier to understand. He's not sure it's only the fault of English: he's not sure he has words in any language that perfectly detail what he's felt, what he feels, what this is and has been. Love and loss and longing and lust, infatuation, anger. Frustration. Everything that fed into Stay Close to Me and Eros and even Agape, but was never fully realized or defined through any of them.

Closer, though. Perhaps.

So his fingers let go of Yuri's, only to trace down over the back of his hand, and slip up underneath his palm, to take their place directly over Yuri's steadily beating heart, while Victor's smile turns soft, face tipping up. "Show me."

Different, nut not different. Something without words to say. How Yuri's felt, how he feels, how it's changed since before. Since Victor kissed him, or since Victor dragged him onto his lap, or since the quad flip, or since whenever it shifted and became this, instead of that.

Easier to show than to tell, and he's already waited long enough. "Kiss me."

[theglassheart]

There's an all too clear moment of panic -- not wild, but desolate.

When the last thing he feels is worthy of touching Victor, trying to convey this thing he's already messed up more than he should, and how could it be any different, how could he ever be allowed anything more if he cannot even manage less. While at the same time, some part of his brain, even awash in those feelings, recognize the words as a directive. Not exactly command, but not the same as

You can touch me if you want.
But you don't have to.
It's on his lips to argue, to say something, he doesn't even know. Something that had been determined and found itself instead despairing. Even if it only ends up being one or two words. Except. Except Victor is staring at him so close, and so clear. Victor who has pushed his hand under Yuri's, as though he could reach it through Yuri's skin instead of Yuri's words. Like he might curl his hand, not around Yuri's fingers, but Yuri's feelings.

All those feelings that were already his, without ever letting Yuri know. That they were this, too. That somewhere along the way this happened, too. All of them caught up in Victor's eyes, and Victor's decree, and Victor's fingers against his chest. Already failed and still not forsaken. Victor who he shouldn't be allowed to touch, and everything about Victor saying he stole Victor's heart, he seduced Victor, Victor loves him, like this ... makes no sense. It feels impossible. All of it, again.

Just as impossible as how it all presses up just as strongly. Every feeling under that hand, straining toward Victor's fingers, Victor's eyes, and his mouth, when Yuri's drop even further to them. Like it's all louder for the failure of not coming out at all right. Like it's wilder for that sadness, stronger for being trapped inside of him even now.

When he raises his other hand and his fingertips touch Victor's cheek so very gently, hold them just pressed there a second, before smoothing back, letting more and more of the whole of his fingers slide back and settle across Victor's cheek. Not allowed, and somehow allowed. Not different at all, and absolutely different.

The Victor everyone reveres,
for his grace and genius and gorgeousness,
perfect features pale under his so small hand.

The Victor, beyond that image, every image, that Yuri hasn't had to share with anyone, in the same way, this whole year, everything that is everything, that makes him laugh and cry and try, had made him terrified to fail, and, also, need to bury himself against.

These things he can't imagine how he'll mke it past letting go of him so very soon, not after realizing this, too. But even that is too far away to think of more than a pained list of his heart because he doesn't know how he ever didn't do it the first second. Any more than he couldn't help it minutes ago. He leans down and places his lips soft, soft as his fingers had been on his cheek, against Victor's.

[fivetimechamp]

For a moment, he thinks it's the wrong thing –– too much of a push, too much of a request –– and that he should have let Yuri come to him again on his own time, but he's not sure he believes it. Not when Yuri looks so lost in his own head, frustrated and defeated. Not when this is the first time Yuri's ever had to try and explain this, a feeling that defies explanation or qualification. Not when Yuri needs to know that it's okay, that he can, that Victor wants him to, wants his touch and his kiss and every stumbling word and every attempt at answering that question.

But Yuri holds still for a moment, so for that moment he thinks maybe it was the wrong thing, but then Yuri's hand lifts, and fingertips ghost carefully across his cheek, making his heart hitch and his breath shake, eyes intent on Yuri's face.

(Yuri, touching him. Even by request. Yuri touching him of his own accord. His own choice. Because he wants to.

How is he supposed to be able to survive this?)

His own hand tightening on Yuri's chest, fingers knotting in that simple, soft shirt, while his breath has gone shallow and his heart has started racing, and by the time Yuri leans to place a kiss against his mouth, he's dizzy with it, can't stop the small sound that feels like it tears a short wound somewhere behind his ribs. Can't stop his fingers fisting in Yuri's shirt, can't stop the vibration trembling through his body trying to keep himself stable, steady, trying to keep this kiss gentle when all he wants is to blow the hinges off and allow the white-out that's threatening at the edge of his thoughts to wash in and sweep him away.

But he shouldn't. Shouldn't. Shouldn't, he tells himself, firm. Needs to let this be Yuri, for Yuri, about Yuri, should let Yuri direct this kiss that he asked for and that Yuri gifted.

His fingers and his heart don't seem to get the message, or the arm that he has around Yuri's waist that tightens reflexively, or the air he can't seem to get enough of to think clearly, but he can try. To kiss him soft and slow, to haul himself back from the brink. Hasn't he already done enough, tonight, without pushing this too far, too?

[theglassheart]

There's a small sound that comes up, and Victor is kissing him back the second his lips touch Victor's, like maybe Victor's only been waiting for that, had only managed to not start without him, and it gets lodged somewhere in Yuri's head. A question that doesn't form enough to be a question, that holds on to that sound, and even without begin asked, repeats, like an answer in everything else.

The sudden way his shirt gets tight, as Victor's fingers ball toward a fist under his hand, with his shirt in them. Victor arm around his waist pulling them closer, pressing against sore muscles, while erasing any of the inches and centimeters and shadows that had come between them since Victor decided they should move from their knees. Pushing them back flush together, all but from the arms between, and that hand gripping his shirt.

Victor who is shivering under his fingers, under his lips, and how is that even possible. Even in an ocean of impossible things. Except that he is. Except that somehow, beyond all sense Yuri has, it makes something in his chest groan, the unsticking of a rusty, unused door, shoving at everything else, everything that is just in the way between itself and Victor. Fingers tightening against Victor's cheek, and jaw, pulling his closer, kissing him more.

Impossible, impossible, impossible, he can't even explain anything, and all he wants is more of this. Victor.

To get lost right here in the sudden tension of his shirt, and that sound Victor made, and the words that are hooked in his skin as much as Victor is, because he doesn't. He doesn't want more of a second ago, and he doesn't want to make sense. It feels like it was all in his arms second ago, and he doesn't care about any of it. Putting it in order. Language. Talking. Breathing.

Anything that isn't kissing Victor suddenly, surely, wanting to press him into that hand, into that shake, into his mouth.
Hand leaving the back of Victor's, of himself, needing more, wrapping around Victor's neck, the bottom of his head.
Because it's not close enough. Nothing is, and nothing matters like pressing into that need and Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

All of his best intentions keep getting thrown out the window, and he might care more about that if Yuri's hand wasn't tightening against his cheek and jaw, and if Yuri wasn't lifting the other to grip at the back of his head and pull him closer, kiss him harder, but they are. It is. He is.

Turning that sound into something more like a whimper when he gives up, fingers uncurling from Yuri's shirt to circle both arms around his ribcage and push forward, up, as much as he can, even if his back is sore and his core is complaining, unused to being forced to hold even just himself upright without something to lean against.

So he leans into Yuri, instead, shifting underneath him, hands sliding up his back, his right hand curling over the back of Yuri's right shoulder, fingers at the crook of his neck, left spread wide over his ribs, and he can't actually wrap himself all the way around Yuri, but he wants to, wants to try. Wants to solidify this somehow, ink it into reality, brand it on himself so he can never even imagine it didn't happen, if it ever goes away. If Yuri ever changes his mind.

Not that it seems likely right now, when Yuri's melting into him and he's just trying to soak it up as much as he can, trying to return it without letting go of this deathgrip he has on his self-control that's weakening a little further with every new time Yuri touches him.

He never was very good at denying himself.

[theglassheart]

Victor makes a sound like a whimper, a faint whine against Yuri's lips that sinks into his chest like sharp light, but he doesn't stop. Victor doesn't stop. The next second there are arms pushing around him, hands pushing at the so much softer, much thinner, worn fabric of his sleep shirt, that rises, drags, pushes across his skin with Victor's hands. Making him aware, with a jolt in his stomach, of something about it being so much less stationary, solidly on him, staying, even when Victor's hands are anything but insubstantial through it.

Pushing into his skin, while Victor leans into his body, and Yuri only realizes when a small groan escapes his mouth that it's half Victor and half a surprising stab of pain at his hip, radiating out, because he'd curled around Victor like it wasn't even a thought. Arm tightening, ankles having crossed, and then shins, tightening around Victor without even thinking about it, pressuring all the muscles and his thighs and hips in another new way apparently when he'd tightened them all inward.

Not to mention the sudden burst of realization he's basically wrapped himself around Victor, to get closer or to hold on to Victor trying to do that, or both. All of it. When he doesn't want to care about it hurting, pushes at it, with all the no focus he even has on it, he's done so much more than this after a full day of only falling over and over and over again, if never this, and he's flushing against any want or want not to at the recklessness of himself in even ending up like this.

Of the way, he still doesn't want to let go, even in the shock of it. Or the realization on top of it. When he kisses Victor, again, like maybe he could hide it there, on Victor's mouth, in Victor, and like it's not just asking for more of this madness.

[fivetimechamp]

He's fairly sure Yuri isn't having the same argument with himself that he is. Instead of holding back, Yuri is wrapping himself further around him, thighs tight at his hips and calves pressed against his back in a way that Victor finds deeply unfair, knows is going to be burned into his memory for the middle of the night, for all those fantasies he'd set aside since April and that he'd tried to avoid for so long beforehand.

Yuri, coiled around him. Yuri's legs around his waist and Yuri's arms around his neck and Yuri's mouth hard against his, and Victor is only one man, only human, and whatever he'd tried to emulate in Agape, he'd always known it would be out of his reach.

It's all Eros. Yuri's hands tracing over his hair and the back of his neck instead of through the air, the flush on his cheeks from the heat they're generating, not from exertion, the rasp of his breath from Victor, Victor's kisses and touches, not from tossing himself into the air like gravity was a thing that happened to other people. It makes him groan, a hand dropping to Yuri's side, and then hip, as he's shoving up onto the shin of one leg, the other pushing out to brace himself, and it would be easy. It would be better. So simple, to lever them both up and over, to dump Yuri onto the comforter and follow him down, chase that sound all the way to its source.

When he knows he shouldn't. When Yuri is still only a few dozen kisses away from his very first one, and does he even know what he's doing? What he's doing to Victor?

Who has no thought left after that stern reprimand to himself but to chase his mouth over the corner of Yuri's lip, his jaw, his throat. Trying not to crush him, and forgetting, and tightening his arms all over again before he remembers. Trying to keep these kisses light, and forgetting, and running the edge of his teeth along the cord of muscle and pulling at the skin that flutters with his pulse.

Trying to keep his head, and forgetting, and losing himself over and over again, a little longer every time.

[theglassheart]

Victor starts moving under him, and Yuri's only first reaction is to hold on even tighter, every part of him tightening around Victor. Confused for a cold stab of a second, that he's about to let go, about to leave, except that Victor isn't letting go, isn't moving away from him. His hand still against Yuri's back, settling like a brace over his hip, and something in his chest, in his heart, just tips and sloshes everywhere, like somehow those fingers could make everything better, are trying.

Except as soon as that comes, it's falling away, too, as Victor's mouth shifts away, too. But not away-away. It's the corner of his mouth, and the edge of his jaw, ribs tightening, under it, down against his throat, while Yuri just holds on, because Yuri's air is vanishing.

Is gone. Just gone, when Victor's teeth suddenly drag down his throat, sharp pressure, chasing a chain of lightning through him, and then suddenly it's not that. It's hotter, warmer. Victor is. Victor is. His heart thundering in his chest, spiking into in his ears when his arms are tightening, hands scrabbling for purchase, one set of fingers pushing into Victor's hair, and the other gripping his opposite shoulder. His voice a sudden, hoarse, straining, sound catching in his own ears, with, "Victor."

Yuri doesn't know how he ever didn't realize this was here, inside himself, or ever thought he didn't care. Like this. Couldn't. Shouldn't. Wasn't. That there was anything, anywhere that wasn't already Victor and Victor's. Especially him.