{ 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]

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.

[fivetimechamp]

Victor hears only three things.

The first: His own breath, scraping in and out of his lungs, accompanying the thunder of his pulse in his ears, so loud it nearly drowns out both of the only other sounds in this room. Even if it doesn't, everything feels delayed, all his reactions slower than usual, like he's existing underwater.

The second: Yuri's voice, gasping out his name, and his own rusted-out laugh hearing it. It sounds half scandalized and half turned on and goes directly to his gut, burning a smoking path along the way, and he doesn't care. Can't. Not with Yuri saying his name like that. Not with Yuri's fingers sinking into his hair, and his arm and legs tightening around him, but it's when he's shifting to tip them both over that he hears that third, final sound.

The faint clatter of plates and silverware that have been disturbed.

It makes him freeze, mouth leaving Yuri's throat to glance foggily over his shoulder to see the tray that's still there, somehow, because the universe hasn't been kind enough to remove it from that spot on the bed between them and the pillows. Just there. In his way. Looking, he thinks, a little more primly judgmental than is strictly necessary for a few porcelain bowls and tea cups.

Which makes him draw his head back to find Yuri's face and try to catch his breath, ears ringing and chest burning, and this is a problem, because he can't do anything without moving the tray, and he can't move the tray without letting go of Yuri.

He wonders, briefly, how badly this would all go if he just opted for the floor, instead.

[theglassheart]

Victor laughs, and it vibrates through his skin, ripples in the explosion of heat that has become his neck, under Victor's mouth. Victor's mouth that is sucking at the skin there, and Yuri never even had the time to question whether this one was, also, odd, because everything turned upside down. Everything was only heat, and his body shuddering against Victor, only that lightning of the faint scrape of teeth, exploding suddenly, when his head, and his skin, and his mouth had only had Victor's name left.

Victor's name that Victor was now laughing at. Laughing into his skin, getting even that muddy, and mingled, and Yuri can't tell if he's embarrassed, because everything is racing. His fingers clutching a little more at that sound, at the faint uncertainty even on fire, if that was wrong. What was or wasn't, when he can't even keep it firmly enough in his fingers, it's like it's slippery and bouncing, keeps having to be caught, failing under Victor.

At least until Victor suddenly freezes. Making Yuri's heart lurch.

Making Yuri's eyes blink a dazed open, unfocused, like he'd been staring at the sun, and not either the back of his eyes or unseeing at some other point in front of him. Nothing feels like it's coming together -- his heart rocketing, still? again?, his breaths heavy and fast, his whole body still trembling -- nothing enough to be helpful, except another wave of that spiked dread. Especially when Victor is looking behind him, and all Yuri can feel is breathless.

All Yuri can feel is the sudden whining squeal of a thought that says it's unfair Victor can think -- and even more can think about something more than him, when nothing nothing else is Victor, and the world feels smaller in his skin, in his own head, in his own thoughts, in this room, coming down from nothing but Victor -- when he shifted from Victor looking over his shoulder to looking over Victor's shoulder, as well.

Not enough time to give into the bubble trying to push up his chest, before Victor looks back at him, and Yuri feels dwarfed again. His fingers aren't anywhere near Victor's cheeks now, but he wants to run a finger over the skin that looks flushed at the very tops of his cheek, the faint moisture shining on his lips, and all of that is only the half-second that takes him to Victor's eyes.

How had he ever thought he knew how bright Victor's eyes got before now? How had he ever been sure?

There was nothing like this. So bright, and glassy, like Victor's a little unfocused (and maybe a little is better than none?) but that thing is still pushing up his windpipe and there's a strange kind of smile coasting the corners of his mouth among his still too fast breaths and the heat everywhere (and the disturbing want to close his eyes and just still be back there, before remembeing), making it all a little too floated for severity. "We forgot again."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's breathless and there's a grin tugging at his mouth, but Victor just gives a beleaguered sigh, and leans to set his forehead against Yuri's collarbone, his hand sliding up from Yuri's hip to his chest, sulking. "Why won't it just go away?"

It's a stupid thing to complain about, he knows, petty and ridiculous, but he feels petty, and there's nothing so ridiculous about being annoyed with the fact that there continues to be something in his way. The tray, of course, but, more than that, some semblance of responsibility. He's still the coach here, after all, and that means he has to make sure Yuri is taking care of himself, or take care of Yuri for himself if he forgets to or simply opts not to, and he could be wrong, but he's pretty certain what he's been doing for the last few minutes is likely frowned upon.

(He's going to have to work at this balance a lot more than he initially thought, probably.)

He should have made sure Yuri ate enough. That the painkillers are kicking in. Gotten more ice, if it's needed. Set out the food cart and the dry-cleaning, and given strict orders to go to bed early tonight and get rest, since he hadn't slept today, or last night, either.

He probably shouldn't be still wanting, when he pulls back to look up into Yuri's face, to flip them both over, and damn the tray, and damn the responsibilities, because Yuri's face is pink and his eyes are bright and his hair has dried in a soft, rumpled mess that Victor wants to run his fingers through. "I should take care of that."

The tray. Which would, at least, give them the whole bed, and not just this bottom half of it, and that's an appealing thought, but his hands still tighten on Yuri as if they're against the entire idea, and he can't blame them.

The breath he puffs out is an annoyed one. Everything is going so well: why do they keep hitting these stumbling blocks? Why can't the real world be as perfectly choreographed as their programs?

Not to mention the very real danger of Yuri coming to his senses if Victor lets him go, if there's too much space, too much time, too many minutes without Victor being able to kiss him or drag him in or make him yell because he's been hauled onto Victor's lap.

(Again.)

"But I don't want to let you go."

[theglassheart]

Victor does nearly the exact same thing he'd done before. He doesn't kiss Yuri, but sags against him, buries his head into Yuri's shoulder, while Yuri is still blinking at the world and Victor, and the tray beyond, and trying to parse the tone of his own voice just used. Until Victor is whining softly into his shoulder, a beleaguered childish sound that is so familiar Yuri's can place it to a million times and days before now.

Except ... not too, right? Not when Victor is pulling back and his eyes are sweeping across Yuri's face, seeing, what, Yuri can't begin to guess anymore than he can really begin to fathom how any of this is real, is happening, while it's happening. That it's somehow been happening inside of Victor ( ... for ... awhile?). Or himself. For however long that is, and, or true it is.

The last words are, again, too. The same. New, but the same as earlier. Catching under Yuri's breastbone like a patch of silly ice, when those ribs are still preoccupied doing the job of catching his falling-floating heart trying to unwind, again. None of it really holding, because Victor is curling around him, closer, more ... tighter?, and he doesn't quite remember when his fingers ended up burried in Victor's hair, but it's so soft and he doesn't, but he's almost as tempted to laugh as he is to pat Victor's head. Or shoulder.

He's not sure he has a clue what's happening, or who he's become in the last ... while.

But between the whined complaint and the quiet reason, under the dizzy drunken bee buzzing that is cooling on his skin, still rumbling on in his skin, Yuri feels -- what is that? Amusement? Patient exasperation? Relief? Fondness? -- at Victor sounding like Victor, over something absolutely trivial. While tightening his arms around Yuri, like he's afraid Yuri will vanish. Or wants to be holding him more? The way that catches like a slippery patch, too, in clearing thoughts.

Yuri's mouth quirks, giving something easily logical, the way he might any other time like it, even if it isn't entirely in from out of breath still. "It's not that far away."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri is being logical, and Victor doesn't like it, aware he's being laughed at, mouth and eyes both flattening. "You say that now."

All dire portentousness, in a tone that sounds like a wagging finger. "But it'll feel far away when you have to get off of me so I can put it back in the hallway."

Yuri will rue his easy common sense, is what he's saying.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing, though, to get a little space. He's realizing it when there's faint pressure against his skull, and it turns out Yuri's fingers are still woven in his hair, and Yuri's legs are still wrapped around him, and they're already probably pushing further past a first kiss than he should really allow for tonight. He wonders what happened to the bag of ice, which is probably melted by now, but which would still be a useful shock to his system if he were to pour it over himself or stick his head into it.

He has to cool down, he has to slow down. The thought that bubbles to the surface as he's laying his head back on Yuri's shoulder, nose nudging his neck, and then mouth placing a few soft kisses there, like reminders. "We should probably slow down, anyway."

He should. Should remember what he's dealing with, here, how fragile it all is, how new. What's a novelty for him is a brand new world for Yuri. Was he really just thinking about flipping Yuri onto his back, onto the bed? Did he imagine that would somehow be a good thing to do, that Yuri would simply go along with it the way Victor would expect someone who'd done all this before might?

But Yuri's fingers are in his hair, and he moves his head against them like he's searching for the right spots for them to touch, and Yuri's shirt is soft under his cheek, and Yuri's throat is right there, and he's having some real trouble thinking that anything even not that far away could ever beat already being this close.

[theglassheart]

Victor is still pouting, even with that slant and flattening of eyes, that looks so familiar. It is absolutely nothing like the stony distance that fills his face, his eyes, when Victor actually is disappointed in him. When his words become even more blunt than the bluntness that Yuri has had to get used to because of him, and the divide between them yawns frozen and clear.





The rest -- the rest is so confusing Yuri can feel himself hold still.

The words seeming to freeze in his chest, throat, mouth, even when his heart wobbles confused, suddenly softly pained even as Victor's leaning back into his shoulder. Nose brushing his skin. Soft kisses placed like stamps against his skin. Reinventing disorientation as a feeling. When Victor wants to slow down? To stop? While still not actually stopping touching him?

When Yuri has no clue what that means, and he's. Maybe he does. Maybe when his skin is still shivering, even if his body isn't. When his skin feels like it's aching against the softness of Victor's mouth, that wasn't anything like soft, right there, barely a minute back. When the memory of that makes a true shiver shift his shoulders.

Everything blister bright, chilling and shrinking in retrospect, and still there in every beat of his heart (every breath Victor looses against his shoulder, so easily permeating to his skin). Victor that he's crosslegged curled around, like, like. Like a tree limb. Like a dance pole. Victor, who keeps, and then he keeps -- Victor, who is -- and maybe Victor is right -- or maybe Victor just doesn't -- Except he's said -- and then just said.

Conflicted, bouncing, ricocheting, confusion filling his chest more with each new passing second. We should slow down. Stop. Victor not letting go, but starting to turn his head against Yuri's neck and shoulder, and fingers, maybe like he's having a slow motion, silent argument with all of them, while Yuri stares at the gleaming tray with its abandoned tea cups and plates and food.

Everything feeling suddenly precarious (and he hates that, he always hates that), suddenly disjointed and strings that felt warm, certain, unnoticed, snap by snap slipping, disconnecting. When the only thing that really makes sense is to uncross his legs, a little stiff for the pain he knows will come, and try to let go, pull his hand away.

At least do the things that Victor's first point and the tray needed: him to move.

[fivetimechamp]

Even though he knows it's needed, he doesn't want Yuri to move, so when Yuri stills against him, and then starts carefully moving his legs, fingers releasing from his hair, Victor only makes an unhappy noise and presses his forehead in closer, before looking back up at Yuri like he's been betrayed.

Except Yuri's not smiling anymore, like he's amused and sort of exasperated by Victor's histrionics but finds them a little cute as well, and whatever teasing complaint Victor was about to lodge gets wiped out in a blink. "What's wrong?"

Because it looks wrong. Not annoyed at having to move, not rolling his eyes at Victor who can never understand why everything can't just always go his way. Wrong. Wrong like the way he looked in the elevator, when Victor teased him about kissing him on the street and Yuri thought he was apologizing for the part about the kissing itself, and not the one about being on the street.

In short: not what he wants to see when Yuri had previously just been wrapped around him and gasping out his name, or laughing at how glum he is at the very prospect of moving and letting go. He's not sure what prompted it, but whatever it was, it's become his new priority.

The tray can wait a few more minutes. "Yuri?"

[theglassheart]

Victor grumbles his displeasure and pushes in even more to Yuri's shoulder and neck, warmth pressing into tired muscles, and his hands have taken on that strange weightlessness again, moved from Victor's hair and Victor's shoulder. Almost like now that they'd found some purchase on Victor they were weightless and confused on just how to return to him, or where to, with Victor pressed to his front, in the way of his own lap.

But it vanishes entirely when Victor looks up and his expression shifts from that same beleaguered complaining to sudden, clear concern, and Yuri feels even worse in less than the second it takes that expression to flick on, before Victor is even asking the question that cements that something has gone wrong with Yuri's own face.

Which only makes everything ratchet in his head so much faster. He did this. Again. Without meaning. And he was just trying to. He had to move to accomplish what had to be, that they kept forgetting, that Victor was saying shouldn't be. That this is in the way. This needs to stop for that. He can't crawl under a bed already on the floor. With Victor and the tray on it.

He tries to reach for something in the sudden, all too familiar, tangle, and ends up with a raise and drop of his shoulders that is more a question than an answer, and so much less than either when it defaults. "You wanted to move the tray."

[fivetimechamp]

That's why he moved, but not why his face looks like this. At least, Victor is pretty sure that's the case. "That's not what I mean."

The tray isn't going anywhere, and it hadn't seemed like Yuri was interested in going anywhere, either, and he had only been complaining about having to move, without actually doing it, and then something else happened, and now Yuri has this face.

"You look ..."

What is this, this expression, this face on Yuri's face? Worried? Unsettled? Unhappy? "...like you're thinking about something else."

Related? Unrelated? Something small enough that Victor didn't notice, but big enough that Yuri did.

Which could be anything, considering. Considering what he was just thinking, about how he's used to this, and Yuri isn't. Have there always been this many pitfalls? Or is it really just that Yuri wants him to let go so he can move?

He doesn't know, and the only way to find out is to ask. "Did I do something?"

[theglassheart]

"No!" it shoots out of him, horrified at hearing the question. "No, no, no, you didn't do anything."

Only just not flailing his hands like airplanes to stop that assumption.

As though Victor could, would. Victor, staring at him all canny and straight on, not looking away, and Yuri's heart is not helping. It's just stumbling into a run inside of him and making him want to look anywhere else. Why doesn't that ever stop? Why can't he?

Victor couldn't, wouldn't get any of this wrong. Isn't.

If anyone could manage to get any or all of this wrong it's only Yuri.

[fivetimechamp]

It's not that Victor doesn't believe him, mostly. He doesn't think Yuri would lie directly to his face, like this, right now, but it does feel a little like all the other times he's gotten something wrong: when he first arrived, on the beach, only a few hours ago in the garage.

He wonders if all of this will end with Yuri shouting at him again. That wouldn't be ideal, but at least Yuri was honest, finally said everything that had been bothering him.

(I've been wondering if you secretly want to quit!)

He should probably address that, too, at some point, but that isn't this problem, is it?

Is Yuri just stressed and tired from the day, too overwhelmed to be rational? Is he worried again that Victor will push him too far, or expect too much? There's a faint push at the corner of Victor's mouth that isn't a frown, but is shadowed by a faint line drawing itself between his brows. "Are you okay with all of this? Is it too much?"

If it is, would a break maybe be a good idea, for both of them?

[theglassheart]

Is he -- what? Is he okay with all of this? With this thing suddenly in his hands -- but not his hands-hands, that have finally found his lap, between his stomach and thighs, and the black of Victor's shirt, Victor under it -- that everyone else in the world would be appalled Victor could even be made to ask that by him. If Victor is okay, if Victor is too much.

Which of those answers, to the second question,

bouncing so fast and so hand on every floor and wall in his head, is even the worse answer.

That no, it's not too much, because it can't be, because it's Victor, and it doesn't make sense that it's happening, but he doesn't want to let go, even when he has already. Or yes, because shamefully he doesn't know how to do, be, say a single thing that is expected of him. Doesn't seem to be able to hold anything straight, aside from when he can't think at all.

Which is a little terrifying to acknowledge. Some absolute loss of control, of himself. Even if it was with Victor. Even if he trusted Victor. Trusting Victor wasn't the problem. (Even if maybe it was, too. How much of a fool is he?) His shoulders just settle low with a too long held breath quiet out his nose. "I'm okay. It's okay."

[fivetimechamp]

The question is not whether Yuri is lying –– even Victor, for whom deep study of the emotional foibles of anyone other than himself is rare, can tell that –– but whether Yuri even knows he's lying.

Which maybe means Victor isn't asking the right questions, and maybe means Victor should stop asking him anything at all about it, and just let Yuri come to whatever conclusion he's currently working on, staring down at his hands while his shoulders slump. "Okay."

He won't let his skepticism seep through to his voice or face –– that would be worse, wouldn't it? –– so just keeps his eyes steady and his expression soft. "Then hold on."

Before his right arm goes to bracket Yuri's lower back, while the other hand drops to the bed to help push himself up, turning almost like he'd just been picturing, but the other direction, away from the pillows and the tray, to flip them. At least this time he has the presence of mind not to just drop Yuri onto sore muscles and his bruised hip –– one foot finds the floor and braces him against their combined weight and momentum, so he can deposit Yuri safely down, and still be in range to flick a smile up from under his fallen bangs, and lean his forehead against Yuri's. "Please excuse me for just a moment, while I tidy up."

[theglassheart]

Yuri's eyes, and his shoulders shoot up fast at those words. Hold on. A momentary flash of fear so startlingly pure Yuri feels almost gutted on the clarity of it, like a skate blade slammed into and through the soft of his stomach, so hard he can't even hold on to it completely. Keep it in his stomach, in his hands, before suddenly the whole world is shift-swinging around him. He is.

Victor is putting him down, backward, on the bed, coming down right after him, and Yuri's eyes go wide, hands up. One hand trying to find the bed, gravity, sanity, even when his heart has lodged against his soft pallet like a brick, and his other hand is trying to, he doesn't know, ward off and grab on to Victor at the same time. A shattering terror, twined with a searing, snap of scalding want, both inescapably a rollercoaster suddenly everywhere.


But Victor doesn't lower himself down on Yuri. Doesn't kiss him.
(Doesn't even drop him flat. Just lays him on the bed. Careful.)

Just smiles, with their foreheads touching, and says. ... that.


He doesn't know what's more dizzying. Relief. Disappointment. Victor's eyes, while he's still just as impossibly smiling. Smiling now, about doing the things he'd complained about. Smiling now, even though Yuri's sure he just made a fool of himself again. How he's supposed to be certain of, or understand, anything is beyond him.

He blinks, behind his frames, at the nearness of those too bright, so blue eyes (and even that ache they leave in the mess the rest has left of his chest) and nods, even if it's a second or two late. "Okay."

[fivetimechamp]

Perfect execution, solid landing, high artistic merit, not to mention an unexpected move: +3 GOE, easily, and he grins, satisfied.

"Okay."

Yuri's blinking at him from behind his glasses, but at least whatever it was that had him looking like a turtle that wanted to pull its head into its shell and hide from the world is no longer camped on his face, so Victor chances it, leans in just enough to kiss him once before he straightens.

But not a perfunctory one. Not there and gone. His free hand lifting to Yuri's jaw, this kiss sweet and lingering, because he's still in no rush to actually pull away, even if he does, eventually. Pulls back, and eyes that tray that's been such a source of annoyance for him tonight. "You didn't want anything else, did you?"

Offering the tray after he picks it up, like an especially poor waiter who just wants his guests to leave so he can close up shop, but it's not like there's much left. Yuri was hungry and ate most of his meal, and there are only a couple of dumplings and sad, cold vegetables left to be had.

Still, he offers, before putting the tray back on the cart, and taking a moment to look around for the –– "Oh, there it is."

The tag for the dry cleaning bag that he'd dropped when Yuri got out of the shower. Its string gets looped around the hangar neck of the bag, which he zips up and throws over one forearm, like a jacket he got tired of wearing, before looking back at Yuri. "Do you need any more ice, Yuri? I can go get some while I'm up."

Translation: he'd really rather not have to get up again, once he's finished here.

[theglassheart]

Victor is grinning, too self-satisfied for anyone's good ever, and Yuri almost wants to follow along out of sheer reflective response, whether it turned out as amusement or disgruntled censure, but it doesn't really make it to his face. Not either. Which might not matter, because then Victor's fingers find the side of his face and Victor is kissing him. Soft and slow, and Yuri's attention can only focus on so many things at once.

Between Victor kissing him and the all too present bed (under every part of his body) the rest just folds. His heart and his head a dizzy set of waves that drifts and floats down toward something almost like bare calm, that burbled warmth, against the sweetness of this kiss, and then tips over like a wave, his fingers on the bed at little tense against the comforter, as though watching for the slide they haven't managed not to slip down yet, repeating Victor's solemn endless complaint.

About not wanting to let go of Yuri. Of both times, forgotten. Of both time, just forgetting and curling into him.

And now he's -- among too many things in his head, trying not to look flushed and jittery at his own thoughts. Which just makes Victor's first question go to all the wrong places. Too fast, too hot, too many images that make him try to swallow his tongue and stop breathing all at once. Like the whole of this thing had become some one-time offer, and he either had to sink or swim.

Except that the startled shock of the question and those images has Yuri looking over,

at Victor who is giving a pretty bland look at the tray while he picks it up -- and Victor meant the food, did he want anything else from their dinner -- and shows it off to Yuri, who can only manage shaking his head and not moving, like a word would make it all come pouring out and the only movement screaming out from his legs and hands would be diving for a pillow to die under. When did he even. How. In his own head. What was he even thinking?

Not that Victor needs much of an answer, taking it away, and looking for something on the floor. Ending up with the tray, and then the laundry bag, and Yuri should have thought about his costumes. When had he stopped thinking about everything? Was it, basically, the end of his own program? How long ago did he get off the ice? How long was it until went back on? What all did he need to do before the Gala, and before they left China, that are not this at all?

Victor's next question makes him wrinkle his nose. "It's fine." Not true, but, also, not like he's trying to make it so. More like he doesn't want to think about it, while acknowledging it exists. "Sore, and stiff. Like everything else." Like it would be. He'd never even gone into practicing Quad Salchow's intending to fall. Not that he'd intended to fall earlier. Only known it was beyond impossible that he would land smoothly.

Which was almost the same, except that it made the argument that it wasn't like everything else.

His face scrunched up, maybe like he was admitting a defeat to the logic in his head, more than to Victor. "Maybe."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri looks like he wants to say no, which would probably be another lie, but at the last second, he scrunches up his face cutely and admits that it probably does want the ice, which Victor has to agree with. He's all too familiar with the stiffness and soreness after even a perfect performance, and there isn't a skater out there who doesn't appreciate a hot bath and some ice after a slam like Yuri's. "Okay, then I'll just be a minute."

First, he has to find the ice bag from before, and then he has to search for the room key (on the table by a lamp), and then he has to organize everything so he can hang onto the ice bag and laundry bag while pushing the cart, the room key clutched in one hand because these sweatpants don't have any pockets, and it all feels strangely domestic and normal.

Even if it's actually still strange, for them. This is their first competition away from Hasetsu, and only their third night in this hotel. All his memories of this being normal are from his own competition trips, and even that isn't quite the same: normally, he'd be alone. Normally, he'd be out at this time, with Chris, in all likelihood, hitting the town and enjoying himself, or he'd be lying on that bed alone with ice and a cold beer, watching his own performance to figure out how he could do it better, the next time.

Doing it all for someone else still feels strange, even as it doesn't, and it's the same feeling he gets when he reminds Yuri: "Drink some more water, okay?"

He's never spent this long this focused on someone other than himself. And yet, he can't imagine going back to how it was before. "I'll be right back."

[theglassheart]

Victor loads himself down with more and more, and really what ends up sinking into Yuri's head, while everything else is his own body trying to breathe through all of itself, is that it's odd to be doing nothing. To watch Victor pick up what's almost too much for only one person to be carrying, and not offering to help. It feels lazy, and odd, but Victor doesn't even look over once like he can't believe Yuri isn't helping.

Victor, in fact, doesn't once really look like he needs or even wants it. He just bustles about getting everything.
Making good on his strange, but true, please excuse me for just a moment, while I tidy up.

Everything a little foreign and strange, and if he narrows his eyes a little, it's not sharp.

It's more like he's trying to put Victor into focus. Victor, who is tidying the room, and telling him to drink water, which now that tray and tea is gone from the bed, will require relocating his cup or getting another one from the table or bathroom, and geting up from the bed, and Victor still had gone to trouble of leaving him laid out on his back on the end of his bed instead of sitting, before doing it all.

For no more reason than he could. Is it strange how absolutely unstrange that is?

Yuri made an affirmative enough sound from where he was and nodded at the same time, even if it wasn't apparents he was trying to stop the something like top the dozenth okay from being the only constant word that seemed to be coming out of his mouth. Water wasn't hard, and he probably should. He'd never quite planned to stop drinking the tea until it was gone, but that had gotten away from him, and them both.

But it would be cold, and he'd already said no, Victor laden with everything and vanishing with it, and water was fine.

[fivetimechamp]

The door clicks closed behind him, and he immediately wants to open it again, to take it back. Just like before, there's a sudden horrible image of pushing it open to find Yuri gone, or (worse?) Yuri absolutely unchanged, because everything that happened was a figment of Victor's over-active imagination, months of frustration, and delight with Yuri's performance.

(But he didn't make it up. It all happened. It would keep happening. Isn't he the one who told Yuri it's real and promised to prove it all over again in the morning?)

All of it good motivation to go about his business as quickly as possible: pushing the food cart to one side of the door, and hanging the dry cleaning bag from the door handle with the note clearly visible, before padding his way down the hallway toward the ice machine for the second time tonight. His bare feet make almost no sound on the hotel carpet, and it makes him smile to himself, this image: Victor Nikiforov, always impeccably dressed, a face that has graced billboards and sold products and been photographed almost as many times as he's walked outside, wandering a hotel hall in an old t-shirt and sweatpants and bare feet.

And not caring at all.

It's comfortable. He's learned to be comfortable over the last few months: comfortable with himself, comfortable with the Katsukis and Minako. Has learned to relax in the hot spring and on the beach, and realized that not every day needs to be pushed a little harder than the day before.

It's almost like he's finally learned how to be a real person, and he finds he enjoys it.





All things that roll through his thoughts as he scoops ice into the plastic bag and seals it back up again, before heading back to the room with the key card flipping impatient between his fingers, and how could the room be this far away? How have they been back only an hour, or less, when it feels like days have passed?

He doesn't know, only knows it's a relief when the door clicks open and he can step inside, blinking in the dimmer light. "Yuri? I'm back."

[theglassheart]

It's not a chore to get up and walk to the bathroom. It's a little annoying to find himself reorienting to the pain again, with the quiet pressing in. He doesn't exactly feel like the silence is smothering him, but he's still not against the idea of putting the pillow over his head. Even once he's off the bed. He can at least carry the feeling of it, and the mental image of it.

He's not going to get to now any more than he did earlier.
(But, maybe, when they go to bed and the lights are out...)

Water. He has a goal. Water. When the cup isn't that hard to find. Still sitting innocent and innocuous beside the bed where it was last left when he'd taken his pills and drained it of the water Victor had originally brought him. It doesn't matter that he's taken the painkillers. It still hurts, which somewhere means it hurts more than it hurts now, but it hurts like it always does, with a dash of angry reminder and coming the promise of more pain, training harder, even mid-qualifiers, on top of it.

He really shouldn't be leaning on the bathroom counter being momentarily glad for the distractions from it. That seems. He doesn't even know. Wrong. Rude. Discourteous. Belittling. Insulting. Especially when he's not the person here who'd have ever. Not for a distraction. Not ever before this night. Which does not play out well as a mirrored thought. His implication. The question of capability, and the inclusion of all too willing subjects, which could be found in the millions and who might not even care then.

He can tell himself that Victor wouldn't, not to him, but maybe it's a stretch and he's filling it drinking more of the water from his cup. Does he really have a clue about any of that. Except that Victor had said. Well. A lot of this, at this point. But those ones stuck, like he's lodged toepicks into Yuri's bones and let them there. Irremovable.

Telling Yuri what Yuri had done to him, as though it wasn't a thing those millions of people, who were very much not Yuri, would have probably actually tried hard to do. Make happen. Not simply be informed they'd done. He wasn't. He hadn't. He didn't. (But Victor said.) He drank more of his water and leaned on the counter with his good side, avoiding the mirror. Maybe a little too long, when the door sounds from not far away and is followed by Victor's voice sliding in to cut the silence of the rooms again.

Yuri finished his current swallow, and said, "In here."

[fivetimechamp]

For a second, Yuri's nowhere to be seen and there's a clenching in his gut –– but then that voice comes from behind the bathroom door and he relaxes, trying not to think about how his heart rate skyrocketed in less than a second, or the way his stomach dropped somewhere toward his hips.

"Okay, the ice is out here for you when you want it."

But it feels strange, now, this room. Even if this is only the third night, and only the first time overall, even if he has far more experience with being alone in a hotel room than with someone, it feels strange to be in it by himself. (Except he's not, Yuri's still here, just behind a closed door that Victor hopes he won't hide behind all night.) To distract himself, he rummages in his trouser pockets in the closet for his phone, but doesn't thumb it on. Someone else might try to play it cool by sitting there, scrolling through their phone when Yuri comes back out, but he doesn't want to play it cool, doesn't want this to feel like any normal night.

He ends up just plugging it in to the charging cable he'd set up on the side table near the head of the bed, and collapses back onto the bed itself with a sigh, the ice landing next to him on the comforter. It feels good to stretch out, after being so wound up with Yuri's weight on his lap and tension in his back: his knuckles brush the headboard and his toes stretch out past the end of the mattress, but it feels good, and it feels even better when he relaxes to just look up at the ceiling.

Different, and not different. He still doesn't know what changed, or when, or if it did, and even if it doesn't matter, he still wants to. Is wistful for it, the knowledge that there was some point in time when maybe Yuri felt the same way he has over these last few months, despite all evidence to the contrary. Is it really just because Victor kissed him? And if it is ...

How good is that, really?

For someone who has always avoided responsibility, he's a little bewildered to be holding so much of it now. Feeling responsible for Yuri. For his programs. His coaching. His mental and emotional state, as well as his physical one. Everything a coach should worry about, that makes Victor sympathize with every strand of Yakov's lost hair, but then, also ––

His first kiss. His first ... anything else that happens tonight, that Victor is aware he needs to be careful with, in a way he hasn't been since ... ever? And already he's almost lost it more than once.

He's got to do better. This is too important to screw up.

[theglassheart]

Yuri pushed off the counter, with what was left of his water in his hand and a catch somewhere in his center, as Victor existed, talking about the ice pack he'd gone to get on the other side. There's something that isn't quite a sigh, but he rights himself, weight shifting back onto both hips, knees, and ankles. There's a furrow in his expression, but it's whisper brief, before he leans into that, too, before walking to the door and out.

Victor isn't in the tiny makeshift hallway, but it's not like Yuri expected him to stand there waiting, was it?

(Or had he? Was he out of simple questions, with anything like simple yes-no answers now?)

He's not hard to find though, walking just past that small space, and there's Victor flopped down on his bed, stretched the whole length of the now-empty space on one side of his bed. Hands above his head and toes peeking out and over, pale and relaxed, with none of the bruises that come and go weekly with daily and weekly and monthly regularity on Yuri's own amid training.

There's a small pause somewhere, one he doesn't really even recognize he's taken, when he'd gotten halfway and just ended up staring at Victor, lying across Victor's bed, like some red (or gold) line that it wasn't even like shouldn't be crossed, that just stole away his doing more than thinking. More than simply looking at Victor there, stretched out, the long line of him, well defined by even his sleep clothes. Feeling the tick, tick, tick that birthed the scrabble in the back of his mind, his guts. Tightening his finger incrementally on his cup.

The tumble that asks what now?, and both wanted to be back there already and didn't know how to move, and that scoffed at the notion anything in the world was as simple as his brain's bounce back response of just take a few steps and sit down then. In the same place he'd been sitting (or laying) since they got back here. It wasn't like life's straightforward, simplicity helped him in most normal situations, and this had all become something that was nothing and nowhere near normal.

His eyes drag away from Victor -- or maybe tear is the more proper word, because it feels like the pain in his hip, his joints, shoulders, displaces to the action of looking away, just briefly -- and land beside him. Finding the promised ice pack, and at least he can say, "Thank you."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri still has that look on his face.

Maybe not the exact one, but something similar: it's not quite wariness, and it isn't exactly uncertainty. It's something like the held breath before a curtain lifts, or the moment of tension on the ice right before the music starts. Something like expectation. Like he's waiting for something he isn't sure if he should be bracing himself for or not.

Which makes Victor push himself up onto a hip and one elbow, to reach over and pat the spot on the comforter next to the makeshift ice pack, inviting. "Come sit with me?"

Making it a question, instead of an order, because Yuri would probably just follow his commands like he usually does, and Victor doesn't want that. He doesn't want this to be the night he kissed Yuri and kept kissing Yuri and dragged Yuri onto his lap and Yuri just went along with it, without choosing any of it. He doesn't even know what Yuri really wants, because even if they keep falling into these burned-out moments of lost control, Yuri's still only kissed him of his own volition once that Victor can recall.

Seems unsure about touching him. About any of this.

So Victor leaves him room, and just rolls to his side to prop his head on his hand and watch what choice Yuri makes. If he wants to think through all of this, that's fine –– understandable, even. If he wants to talk about it, or not, or even if he wants to call a halt for now ...

Well, it's all fine. Some of those would be better, more pleasant options than others, but Victor can roll along with them, he thinks, as long as Yuri doesn't opt to just run away, instead.