{ 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]

Victor doesn't back away and he doesn't take his word back. Not either of them, in English or Russian. Not that he's entirely certain it's the same, just that it's not taken back either. It's not the first phrases of Russian to get swallowed in this room, into silence or sound or something wholly more ... physical. Especially not when Yuri can feels his cheeks heating for Victor correcting his, apparently, incredibly obvious knowledge to the contrary.

When his forehead settles against Yuri's and his eyes are even closer, making Yuri's heart ache fiercely against the bonds keeping it there in his chest only. He can't imagine that anything could make Victor into a fool -- but that's a lie as much as it is the truth, when dozens of moments slide through, of Victor in Japan, nowhere near the ice, a barrage of faces, antics, whines, wheedling, laughing, being sillier than a child -- none of it really sticking, because Victor hasn't stopped talking.

Has started kissing his face, his skin, making Yuri shiver and his fingers tighten, while he starts intoning a list.

Like helping Yuri to know he had body parts was going to help. Even though the whole part where his skin was giving a soft swell of surprised warmth every place his lips landed, isn't hurting the shorting out between his ability to form those thoughts. The impossibility to not list toward each touch. He can guess well enough the point of the list, but he's not sure it helps him to understand at all.

Not certain there's a way to translate words in clear English,
or an idea that translates just as fine in either of his,
to anything that makes sense in his brain.

That Victor thinks his skating is beautiful on the ice is something he'd come to grudgingly accept, then recognize, then almost hunger for the approval and celebratory sight of. He knows. It's the only reason this whole year even happened. That Victor saw all of this in him, still there. Somehow. That he came and made it flourish into something so much more.

But that Victor thinks that about him. Him. Just him. Sitting here. That seems ludicrous, even when it's splintering on the lips against his skin. Falling apart, with all denial and logic, when Victor is kissing his lips, again, and his whole body presses toward that on an instinct it can't be possible to have ingrained so soon, can it?

"Yes," Yuri says, quietly, like it's a recitation that he had heard, memorized. Both times. Whether he believed it or not, he'd never have forgotten it. It'd gotten looped into his dreams, and Eros the first time already, and if he hadn't been busy with so much else last night, it probably would have been there, too. He couldn't even imagine what his head might do with all of this now.

[fivetimechamp]

"Then you should be more trusting of me."

Teasing, while his fingers slip along Yuri's skin and into his hair and he can savor the way it slides between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger. Soft, silky. A little coarser than his own.

Teasing because he knows Yuri trusts him, even if Yuri doesn't always believe him. "How could you not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?"

Not knowingly. Not ever about anything big. Not ever about anything that meant something. Even keeping this to himself wasn't really a lie: his offers had been rejected, but they didn't vanish from existence simply because Yuri decided he didn't want them. Maybe the closest he's ever come to a lie being what he said in the garage today, and even that was a half-truth: if Yuri had failed, it would have been his failure as a coach. Yuri has all the tools he needs to succeed, it's Victor's job to make sure he can use them, to make sure he's in a good enough place, to make sure he's whole and happy and healthy and ready.

(But he never would have resigned. Not now. Not when they're so close. He said he'd help Yuri win the Grand Prix Final, and he meant it.)

He's still fun to tease, though, like this, and also in the way Victor leans closer, barely a breath away from kissing him again, with a sly smile and eyes sparkling even under their heavy lashes, under the fringe of his bangs that's covering half his vision with a silvery mist. "Oh, I'm hurt."

[theglassheart]

"No, you aren't." It's out of his mouth, again, before he's thought it out. A habit of response, that would sound more exasperated if he could breathe in something more than the soft breath from Victor's own words on his lips. It makes his chest tighten and everything inside of it churn, even when his brain doesn't need to overthink it to know that answer.

Victor isn't hurt. Victor is laughing at him. Teasing him. Again. One of the three most familiar faces Victor has. The first being the face he makes while critiquing every bit of skating Yuri does of his programs. The second, that had only really returned with his public coaching debut and his suits Yuri had never even seen the like of, swam between a sort of -- distant?-- cordiality and an absolute glow of perfect showmanship with anyone who saw him, like they'd always been the best of friends.

This was the one he'd gotten used to even before the second came. The laughing one. The teasing one. The one that wanted Yuri, or anyone it was settled on -- but Yuri, by inundation and proximity, most -- to come play with him. To be in love with and delighted by whatever new thing had stolen his heart, his focus, his attention.

Most of the time is was exasperating.

Except somewhere, somewhen, maybe in the early summer he realized as much as it made him roll his eyes -- with the infinite patient, or universal pleas, for when it would end, whether it was exuberant shouting and being drug along like Victor was the tide, or pouting and childish whining -- he'd all but started smiling at it, too. Started thinking of it less as insane and more as just a thing Victor did, part of who he was.

Yuri thinks it's a feat of will (the kind that would blow away in the breeze if Victor so much as did lean in and kiss him again; because as much as he doesn't know how to believe, he wants ... so much. This. Victor. To believe it. Even for just a second.) that he manages to keep his gaze up and add on like he hadn't stopped. "And you're in the way from laying down."

[fivetimechamp]

"Ah!"

Mouth dropping open in theatrical hurt, hand retreating from Yuri's hair to his own chest, like he's been struck, and he gives Yuri a betrayed look. "When did you get so cool?"

It's all part of the game, of course: Yuri has no more wounded him than he thinks Yuri really wants him to move away, but it's the accepted line, the next step in this little dance, this thing that's hovering right on the smoking line between game and inferno.

He could push it over. Not tip, or nudge, or ease: push. Lean into Yuri and burn those words right out of his mouth, that coolness, that disaffected patronizing affection like Victor is just a toddler tugging at his sleeve for attention. He could flip this table over and set it on fire, in a manner of seconds.

If he wanted to, he could. But there's something to be said for keeping the game going. "If you really want me out of the way ..."

Accompanied by a heavy, heartfelt sigh, as he starts shifting to give Yuri room. "Who am I to say no?"

[theglassheart]

That is even less real hurt, real shock. He can compare it today so easily now. The look on Victor's face when he started crying. The look on Victor's face when he started and then kept on yelling, while still crying. Those were shocked, if nothing like hurt. They gave birth to the conflicted, heavy silence Victor had held the whole rest of the time until he skated.

Not this artful wounding that read like a play, with Victor's hand to his heart and his betrayed look one shade away from anything. From smiling and laughing, again, or from falling into the bed in a despairing demonstration of how he'd been pierced to the core and was going to die from a handful of words suddenly.

The sigh does almost make Yuri roll his eyes, maybe he even gets close, if there's a tug at one side of his mouth he can't stop. He doesn't know when that started, tonight and in the last year. The ever unending proof that Yuri could never have been unaffected by Victor, or so much time with Victor, any of the acts he puts on. Predictable or not. Even if suddenly in this place where Yuri's never been.

With Victor this close, and the faint shiver that comes when Victor isn't touching him and is moving away, giving the Yuri the chance to reclaim the ice pack fallen to the bed covers by his hip more than on it, and finally stretch out his legs. Even with the heart still thudding along in his chest steadily unsteady when he can take in a breath of air that isn't Victor (and not really be certain he wants that ... just as much as it's relieving, reorienting, too).

These movements all with small glances in Victor's direction, the small distance between them, while his mind has to ask (still flushed, still making sure he isn't vanishing, isn't going somewhere, anywhere else for having let go) when did he become so stupidly fond of this man and his antics? As much as his skating, and who he was?

How far back did that go? Had it been the same thing as this always and he'd just called it that?
Or was it, that this had been one of the steps that brought him to this time and feeling?

Was it both? Was that even possible?


When the whole world of possible seemed to have a different definition as he laid down again (trying to not feel it like ice cubes gathering in his stomach), stealing back the same self-pillow he had once already, with the faint curve of a smile still there. Watching for what Victor might do or say next.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri makes good on his promise by finally listening to Victor's advice and stretching out, all slim long limbs and soft sleep clothes against the white hotel comforter, reaching for a pillow and tucking it under his head, with a faint and faintly self-conscious hint of a smile tucking the corner of his lips. Watching Victor like he thinks Victor might make some sudden move, or suddenly disappear, or up and decide to switch gears altogether and shift from ... this ... to some other, surprising mode.

He still looks like he thinks Victor's going to pull the rug out from under him at any second, laugh and reveal a hidden camera with a flourish. Like he thinks Victor's going to say it was all a joke, or a prank, and leave him here with his stomach in his hands, the only one out on this limb, alone.

(As if Victor could ever leave Yuri alone. As if he hasn't been here, right here, for longer than he'd normally care to admit.)

So he waits until Yuri has settled, ice pack against his hip, dark hair a muddle of shadow against the crisp pillow, before stretching out next to him. It's difficult not to be fascinated by the way his toes stretch past Yuri's, or how, when he reaches to put his hand over Yuri's on the ice pack, his is larger, fingers longer, than the one beneath his palm. His own palm is warm against his cheek and jaw when he rests his head on his hand to look down at Yuri, next to him, beneath him, his arm loose across Yuri's stomach, thumb tracing idle lines across the back of Yuri's hand.

Everything he's wanted, more times than he could count even if he wanted to, and everything that was never going to happen, everything he expected to remain a fantasy. Something just out of reach, when he closed his eyes at night, and imagined a warm weight beside him, steady breathing, a fondly quirking smile and sleep-soaked, myopic eyes. It's so familiar he can feel the ache of longing gnawing at his breastbone, even when he can feel Yuri right here, living and breathing, warm and solid, in front of him. "Yuri, can I ask you something?"

[theglassheart]

There's a heaviness to this laying down. He can feel it. In his head, and his skin. That exhaustion, like the pain, that he keeps feeling and, then, forgetting for a long pause because of all of this. It's like bricks and too much wet sand and hooks all at once, but not together. Victor doesn't drag on his whining complaint of being slighted even a beat longer. It evaporates into nothingness on blue eyes that watch him, before Victor settles in front of him, again. Lays down there, stretches out his hand and lays it over Yuri's over the ice pack.

Everything orienting between the way Victor is studying him from where he's laying, and the friction of the thumb brushing back and forth on Yuri's skin. After the last minutes, again it feels so foreign to be touching so little of Victor. Which, in turn, feels foreign and a little strange, to be noting that, with any kind of feeling, when it had never been this much, for this long, or like this ever before now. With anyone. Victor's thumb just continuing to traces formless lines as his head wandered, dragging his heart behind it.

The question makes Yuri's stomach clench unintentionally. Victor's been asking questions off and on this whole time, most of which Yuri has seemed to fail terribly at putting the words together for into any sense, and this time it's something that needs actual permission? Did that make it worse? Could he even say no? He couldn't really imagine Victor wanting to know, or even just wanting, something could be much stopped.

His was not the best mind to ask how bad something could be. It balloon on its own. Already.

Yuri's mouth turned with a press of lips, but there was a small nod. "Okay."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri gives him a wary look, but Victor only shakes his bangs out of his face and settles a little more comfortably next to him, as if this was a twin bed with no room that's forcing them to share what little space exists, rather than the wide queen they're actually on.

He doesn't care. He's spent the last eight months keeping space between them, and if he doesn't have to anymore, he isn't going to keep it up now.

(Except there was that one moment when that space had vanished, and he still doesn't know why, or how it happened.)

"You were here, yesterday morning."

When he woke up. Giving Victor the surprise of his life to turn over and find Yuri curled there, under the sheets and blanket, a tuft of dark hair poking up from rumpled bedclothes. Glasses off, fully clothed, and so adorably sleepy when he sat up and rubbed his eyes that Victor had forgotten all about asking why this was happening and skipped straight to being mystified but delighted about it.

And then Yuri had gotten up to shower, and they'd had the short program, and it had just never come up again.

Until now. "Why?"

If they hadn't had this. If this was so new. If it was such a surprise to Yuri. If there's never been anything like it before ...

Why was Yuri in his bed, only two days ago? And how could he have forgotten how it happened?

[theglassheart]

The first thought is idiotic by the time it's fully thought through. That, of course, he was here, yesterday morning, because yesterday morning was the first day of the China Cup, and it wasn't like there was anywhere else he could be, and that Victor knew that, planned that, and must have meant something. Oh. Right here. Oh, that hits him like a brick. Feeling stupid, only long enough to let the confusion bubble in.

"You don't remember?" Not at all? Victor might have asked that yesterday morning, but he couldn't remember much more than hating Victor for not being hungover, and the fact he still looked ready for a photo shoot while doing it, and having kept Yuri awake, on this sharp, burning edge for half the night, and possibly had been asleep through half of that, too, because Yuri, again, was an idiot. It'd all blurred into the morning, and Yuri running away to his shower and then breakfast downstairs, with other people, in public, as fast as he could, once Victor wasn't cuffed to him.

But he'd sort of assumed Victor might have been teasing him, or that maybe it didn't matter to Victor. Because it was nothing. Even though the balls of thoughts in his head were bouncing faster now. Repeating words said, in the dark, into his skin. (Words that had invaded and bolstered Eros.) Words Victor had said again tonight, in the light of the room, to his face.

It still makes his statement come out instead like a prompting question, "You wouldn't let me go anywhere else?"

Why did he have to feel embarrassed, warming, at the thought, the memory of that, just putting the words together?

[fivetimechamp]

The first question takes him a bit by surprise, but he at least as the grace to look a little abashed when he shakes his head. If he remembered, he wouldn't be asking, but the whole night is a blur: he remembers the restaurant, the food, and walking back with his arm around Yuri's shoulders, but the rest ...

Which only makes Yuri's second question more worrying. "What do you mean?"

He wouldn't? He wouldn't? That's not right, he'd spent so long making sure that was exactly the thing he didn't do. Everything he wanted to do, and couldn't, until just now.

Not two night ago. Not eight months ago. Not until today.

(He'd thought about it. Dreamed about it, even. Planned out how he would and could, when he could no longer keep himself from thinking about it at all.

But he didn't.

... Did he?)

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't certain he'd expected Victor to shake his head. Not truly. Even if Yuri was well enough aware he'd drunk a lot. That it had been enough that it had sent Celestino crashing into the table, looking passed out, and somehow Yuri expected. Had he? Really? Somehow? Even when Victor couldn't walk or stand well, but he'd managed to keep talking. To keep sounding like himself. Even drunk. Then, woken up rosy, the weekend coming at them too hard to look back long.

He doesn't know if he's more surprised that he is surprised at the answer, or at the sudden way the rest of his words seemed to shift Victor's expression. This sudden edge of something he's not even positive should be, has reasons, but it looks like ... concern? Like Victor is worried about what he doesn't know suddenly? Not that were was anything to worry about that night now, with it done and gone (both of the nights of this weekend and skates the days following, done and gone now), but when did that even start, what he knew and didn't know?

If his fingers weren't still on his hip, soaking the chill of ice through the towel, and the tingle of Victor's thumb running over the thin skin on the top, he thinks he'd -- or at least he might -- reach out and touch Victor's face. Dispell whatever it is that pinches his features and this expression in just enough to not look right to him anymore.

Instead, it just gets trapped in his chest, while he just rubs his cheek and chin against the pillow. "What do you remember?"

[fivetimechamp]

His thumb pauses in its slow track up and down the back of Yuri's hand, before it lifts and sinks into his hair with the rest of his fingers as he tries to think back. "Not much."

They arrived here already a little late in the evening, and he was hungry and tired and impatient to get some food, impatient to get away from the reporters, impatient to get Yuri to himself. "I remember we went to get hot pot."

And that Yakov didn't come. More than that: Yakov said Victor made him feel sick, that he was playing pretend-coach, and maybe that hit a little harder than it should have.

(He knows he's been drinking too much, occasionally, these last few months. But what else can he do? There's no other release, no other way to numb it all, no other path for this energy to take.) "We got some food, and I had that rice wine." That image is still clear, but all he really remembers is Yuri's dejected face across the table, and the steaming food between them. He doesn't recall what the restaurant looked like, or what happened after. He thinks he remembers it being unbearably hot, but it's winter here in Shanghai, so that can't be right.

And then, nothing. There's a slight, frustrated lift of his shoulders, hand slipping further back through his hair like he might be able to grip the memory and tug it out of his unhelpful head. "We walked back here together. That's all."

And now Yuri's saying ... saying ...

Ice crystals growing in his stomach, making him feel sick, almost like the hangover he didn't have yesterday morning decided to wait until now to strike. "I didn't do anything, did I?" It's a horrifying thought, that maybe he had. Tried something with Yuri that Yuri didn't want. Forced ... anything. The very thought makes him feel lower than pond scum. "I didn't ––"

But he doesn't know how to ask it, how much he should despise himself, how truly low a person he really is. What words are there to ask if he tried to make Yuri do anything that he knew Yuri didn't want? It all comes in a rushing, desperate tumble, searching for absolution he no longer knows if he deserves.

"To you, I didn't do anything to you, did I?"

[theglassheart]

The flicker of concern in those glassy blue eyes flares into something like actual dread, edged with what seems all too much like it might be horror waiting in the wings, dying the things it touches inward, as Victor, who could manage any conversation with anyone, anywhere, at any time, suddenly seemed to be uncertain how to even phrase the questions he wanted to and then was asking Yuri.

If he'd done anything to Yuri. Like that. Which was a no, right? When you got down to it? Realistically.

"No." If it sounds a little like a question, it's more at Yuri's own mind than the startling need written bright and unavoidable as the full moon, rippling on the sea. "Not like that." He didn't. Hadn't. Not really. (Right?) "After we got back, you basically--" His mouth pressed.

What was a good word, or picture, for that even, aside from the one in his head? With Victor curled up around his whole body, arm around him, hand on his stomach, his chest, his heart, circling a wrist, head on his shoulder, head on his chest, lips against his neck, cheek and forehead to his shoulder, his neck, against his head, his shoulder. The rusting, sleep bare, needing note of stay, that might be more his imagination than memory.

Clearer in his mind than he expects, making his gaze drop. "--made me your pillow and then fell asleep on me."
Not and then letting go even after that. Not and how every single word had burned against Yuri's skin unbidden. Forbidden.

The two he said were it, if extremely basic. But then so was Yuri's skin, suddenly heated at every touch, and Yuri's head, given he still had no clue how long he lay there, stiff as a board, heart pounding, and more awake than he'd seemed until that moment then, in his entire life (if that bar had been severely heightened by tonight, again), not even knowing Victor had fallen asleep.

Even if Victor had several times stopped him, barely even awake for all Yuri could guess, anytime he'd tried to leave after that point.

"You were still pretty out of it then." That much was true, and that walk with Victor had felt dizzying, even in a straight line. "And about half the things you were saying by then were in Russian." This with something not quite to a shrug, but the verbal equivalent of one. Like it was expected. Of his live-in Russian Coach ... Victor ... tonight, yesterday, the day before, multiple days. His first, truest language.

Most of the time he explained if Yuri couldn't make some context jump, and even when he could, often.

But Victor had been very drunk and that changed a good number of things. Hadn't it.

[fivetimechamp]

He's watching Yuri closely, heart dropping when Yuri's eyes do, but the explanation that comes is simple enough, and there isn't anything that looks like Yuri when he's hedging. "My pillow, huh?"

Maybe that's not so bad. He sidles up to the thought like a man on a building ledge, eying it like it might be an open window he can slip back through to safety. Not that he really thought –– even drunk he doesn't think he would try anything –– but it's nice to know he hadn't violated Yuri's trust without even being aware of what he was doing.

(And Yuri is very comfortable, and nice to hold. He can well imagine not wanting to let go if he didn't have to.)

"Russian?" It isn't that it doesn't make sense –– it does, he still slips back into it sometimes even while sober, when he's very excited or distracted or especially angry –– but there's something in the way Yuri says it, a little wry, that makes him curious. "I hope I didn't say anything too strange."

That drunk, who knows what he might have said or confessed to? Anything. Everything. All the things he's set aside because he wasn't supposed to be thinking them or wanting them at all.

At least Yuri doesn't seem too put out by it all. That's probably a good sign, even if he can't quite seem to relax again, yet.

[theglassheart]

There's a faint mmm of agreement at the repetition of the words he'd settled for describing it but nothing else comes of that there, in glancing down and back up. Lying down he feels heavier, as though his body was gaining exponents, like his shoulder and hip beneath him, the throbbing of his muscles and joints, are knitting together with the blankets and the bed beneath them. It really had before that to when he'd last slept well or, if being honest, at all, hadn't it?

Two days, with two skates (and this morning, and a silver medal, and this). It was amazing his eyes were open still.
They burned a little at the thought, like just letting him know they had been, but he still didn't want to close them yet.

Didn't want to stop looking at the odd patch of black shirt his eyes had found, or Victor's face when he glanced back up. This would all seem so very much more like a too colorful, too realistic and all too fabricated fantasy if he closed his eyes on Victor again. Like the all too warm, too gold, too black, too hot flashes from the night they're discussing. Even as Victor is running through Yuri's all too few words for so many hours. To ask that.

Making Yuri's cheeks pink a touch, because he does remember (even as it might not be entirely orderly after these two days, some of it was burned, and now, with this) and maybe it's a little more honest than his last words to answer this one with, "Not after tonight."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri looks exhausted.

It's the first thing he notices when Yuri finally looks back up at him, meets his eyes, and Victor can see clearly the dark circles stamped into the pale, delicate skin just below his eyes, the slight glassiness to his eyes themselves beneath his lenses. He needs some good rest tonight, at the very least.

That blush, though ... that has nothing to do with being tired, and everything to do with something Yuri is remembering clearly that Victor can't recall at all, and he's torn between frowning at the words or smiling at the pink flush on Yuri's cheeks. (It's just so cute, he's so rumpled and sleepy and adorable, how did he ever survive this?) "Not after tonight?"

That could mean, well. Almost anything. But tonight, he'd declared his feelings. Tonight, he'd made those confessions. So, the other night, did he ... ??

He needs some clarification. "What do you mean?"

[theglassheart]

It takes Yuri only to the space of Victor's next short question, to realize that might not have been the best response. Except. It'd been an honest one, hadn't it? He didn't want his first impulse to be to lie or hide the answers to the question Victor was asking, did he? It was just that the whole thing had seemed so improper to remember. Obviously wrong. Obviously his own impropriety and shame by ages more than Victor's.

The Victor had just been drunk, which made everything Yuri thought or felt, while sober, even more, his own fault. How was he even supposed to explain that without explaining that? Or. He couldn't stop remembering he was. Right here. They both were. Right here. Again. Except not like that. All the things said tonight. Crazy things. But not with a single drop of alcohol. That had at least helped as the reason or excuse. Even a paltry shield was still that.

This was all so very bare and anytime he had to look at it again, without one ...

"You were pretty drunk, and--" Yuri said, thinking maybe too hard, eyebrows pushed together and fingers pressing on his ice pack. "--a lot of what you were saying wasn't in any normal order, like a conversation. You'd jump topics about as often as languages." The main consistency of the later half being only, that all of it was poured straight into Yuri's skin. Well.

And.

"And I think --" No. Not quite. "--I thought maybe you'd forgotten I was there. A few times."
But that's still not quite. Trying again. "Or that I was the person you were talking to at all."

He could still picture those seconds of shocked and stung bleeding remorse. Victor apologizing. Again and again.
Coming to his senses, seeming to suddenly see Yuri, there in front of him, suddenly apologizing again, each new time.

[fivetimechamp]

It's not that he doesn't believe Yuri, precisely. He always believes Yuri, because Yuri has never, to his knowledge, outright lied to him in this whole time they've been together. Avoided certain truths, sometimes, perhaps, but opted for flat falsehoods? The very idea goes against the core of Yuri's character.

So his skepticism has nothing to do with thinking Yuri is lying. Skepticism may not even be the right word: he's not sure what might be, when his eyes are softening, and his fingers are untangling from his own hair to reach and trace along Yuri's jaw, as delicate as if they were trying not to crush a flower's fragile petals. "I don't think I could ever forget I was talking to you."

Even drunk out of his mind, he couldn't forget that. It's written too deeply in him, now: soaked into his blood, carved into his bones, seared into his brain, inked across his heart. Every part of himself that never realized it was missing its other half until Yuri wandered into his field of vision, that now would limp, lethally wounded, if Yuri were ever to remove himself. In all honesty, he'd think being drunk would make it even worse, everything he'd spent so long shoving aside, pushing down or away, ignoring, stubbornly reminding himself he couldn't have all suddenly without his conscious self doing the pushing, the ignoring, the silencing.

He might have said any manner of things, but he's absolutely certain he never lost track of who he was saying them to.

[theglassheart]

It's not even a thought. The way Yuri's eyelids flicker three-quarters down, chest aching, when he leans, just a little, without even realizing he's doing that much, into that softest, snowflake falling, wing of a touch. Words aren't always a forte. The things they do. The things that own them. Their actions, and movements, out there on the ice. Even the pieces with words, they aren't singing them. They are, or they hope to be most, the expression of the soul of everything expressed in that music, words or no.

Yuri can feel the weight of his eyelids, heavier, drier, pushing them back up, from the hazy only momentarily mostly dark. Even heavy it's not as good as the sight in front of them. It can't be. From the eyes looking at his from his close, or the fingers trailing along his skin, redefining everything he's ever known about himself, decades obliterated and remade on the softest of fingerpads.

The touch of his lips. His hands. Everywhere. Arms. Laughter. Teasing.
Even this unknowing but somehow still certain and serious solemnity.

He doesn't disbelieve Victor. Which isn't exactly the same as knowing how to belive it either. But believing Victor, even when he can't see where he's walking, is daily part and parcel of his life now. He believes in Victor more than he's believed in anyone in his entire life, his family (and himself) included. Victor's antics, and the faces those antics wear, are many, but he doesn't lie and he hasn't let Yuri fall yet.


"Some of what you said earlier." It's hard to find the words, when the only thought for a long second is the want to just follow those fingers back to the source. This suddenly wanting, suddenly brazen urge to push over toward Victor and just bury his face in Victor's shoulder ... or chest ... or neck. Making him blink away to below his face for a second. Stop gap. For swallowing. Trying to push it into thoughts.

"It wasn't all at once." Maybe it's easier not to look up. He feels foolish. Words grating against the fragile skin on all of this, and he's been so bad at them already. "It was throughout. When we were walking." There's a pause that only gets to a harder to say. "Here." Tries to reform for something collectively easier. Clearer. "It was--" No. It feels frustrating. "Most of them, you were talking about Eros, and the Short Program, the next day. Or I thought you were."

He was. He'd just. No one could blame Yuri for not seeing this, then, too, right?

That Victor was so drunk he'd never remember the night, and so then too drunk to think straight.

Or maybe everyone else in the world would have jumped at it, like they would never have needed to be kissed three times before realizing they should be kissing Victor Nikiforov of all people back, or have ever considered whether it meant things it didn't. There were those who probably wouldn't have cared one way or the other against Victor's hands, and Victor's mouth. Whether he was too drunk, and whether it mattered if it mattered at all by dawn, or tomorrow, or in a week. (Or at the end of December.)

Somehow he doesn't like that thought. It's a small cold knot in his stomach searching that face at the thought. Not the thought about other people -- not that he loves that -- that part has been as obvious in the long term of his being Victor's fan, decades before he was Victor's student, and his skater (... and his whatever this is). It's the other part that knots. The other side of the equation entirely. Or the middle of it.

He doesn't like the idea of anyone who doesn't also appreciate the rest of it.
The equally annoying and endearing columns of his daily life. Of Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

He wonders if his heart will ever stop listing with the angle of Yuri's head when he leans a little into that feather-light touch, thinks: probably not. It would be like no longer falling towards Earth if he tripped, or no longer floating to the surface after diving into a pool: it's been a fundamental physical law to him for so long he can't imagine how the world could work without it. He can't resist it anymore than he can resist shifting to lean a little closer, eyes soft on Yuri's face, even as Yuri is glancing down and away, and trying to find words.

The things he said that night, that are sounding more and more like maybe he was just being honest for the first time since arriving in Hasetsu. Being mistaken for talking about Eros, which is a reasonable assumption to make, if Yuri wasn't going to leap straight to the actual conclusion. Eros is Yuri, and how he feels about Yuri, and what Yuri did to him. Choreographed straight from memory, with all the longing and desire and fire he could put into it. His own undoing, that he rewatches now almost every day, helps Yuri perfect, gives him all the tools he needs to make sure Victor never recovers.

Maybe he hated himself a little, with it. Taunting himself with everything he couldn't have. Making it more effective, and thus more destructive, throwing himself on the fire to stoke it because if Yuri seduced him, Yuri could seduce anyone and everyone. He's said that more times than he can count. He always thought Yuri understood. Eros was never a made-up fairy tale. Where else could it have come from?

But Yuri is still picking words, while Victor leans a little nearer, hand lifting and turning to trace knuckles over Yuri's cheek until his fingers slip over the shell of his ear, tuck a few strands of silk hair back behind it. "What do you think now?"

That night is gone. He doesn't remember it, and if Yuri had even caught a glimmer of the truth, he wouldn't know. He would care if that night had gone more like this one, if he'd kissed Yuri and Yuri had let him, only to ignore it all in the morning, but that's not what happened, if he believes Yuri, and he does. He can readily believe that, blind drunk, he was lost in thoughts of wanting Yuri and not having him, and loving Yuri so much it felt like the force pushing the blood around his body and the air in and out of his lungs. He can even believe that half of that was in Russian, considering he's already found a few words tonight he hasn't been able to define correctly.

It's a little embarrassing, but not that much: he doesn't care who knows or what he says, when it's all the purest truth that he knows. It's only embarrassing that he did it, blackout drunk, the night before the Cup of China began, when Yuri really only needed to focus on skating. It's only a little embarrassing that Yuri clearly didn't believe him.

But. Now.

[theglassheart]

What is it to say that with his eyes open, with easy dots and lines, that would clearly draw the exact characters, with several of the same said words, same said sentences, explanations for bits he has to take on faith were somewhere close to the Russian he didn't know and couldn't remember or repeat for the life of him, syllables unyielding that had become burning fire and whispered trailing smoke, in a thick Russian Victor almost never slipped into;

That all of that might make sense, on paper, in the painted line of brush strokes, but that this isn't the same. That just because his eyes open -- and how very hard it is to do that, just keep his eyes open, when Victor is touching him, like this, this soft, talking this soft, shifting closer, touching him more, eyelids trying to drift, his body mooring like a magnet to the closer and closer dip of the mattress as Victor shiftss closer, never second guessing his own movement -- that doesn't make it make actual sense. "That, maybe, you weren't."

That maybe he had meant it. Trying to kiss Yuri in the restaurant, familiarly giddy and not entirely familiarly drunk and then absolutely nothing like familiar apologetic, quiet, still, afraid, ashamed. Phichit's picture flashes into his head for the first time in what must be a day and half. Since his fears what people would have assumed. Victor's blurred, slice of eyes, and Yuri's shocked terror at Victor, flabberghasted betrayal from Phichit for not even helping Yuri, only himself to a selfie of the night's new antics.

He was an idiot, was what he thought. Even while Victor's fingers trailing gentle sparks across his cheek, and small dots against the shell of his ears, where fingertips brushed back his probably-now mess of dry hair. Two things. An idiot, and a mess. And absolutely missed any of this when it first showed up. When Victor first ... whatever this, however it. With several of the same said words etched on his heart, in his eyes, as on the skin at the base of his neck, about him, with no other comparison in sight.

"It probably didn't help that I seemed to frustrate you a lot." The dizzy tilted whirl of that walk home. The shouting in the restaurant. The arguments and stopping on the sidewalk. The sly barbed comments from Victor with edges he couldn't help feeling. The way everything he said, everything he did was only wrong, wrong, wrong. Trying to take care of Victor which seemed to only earn annoyance or wary threat. The occasional compliance after the newest apology. "I don't think I helped much. With anything."

Not in the way he should have, but he'd meant more: "I kept saying all the wrong things."

Like tonight, isn't on his tongue, but it burns in his chest and his mind, behind the semi-closed set of his eyes.

[fivetimechamp]

"I'm sure it wasn't you I was frustrated with."

He's absolutely sure, in fact. Even without remembering that night, or knowing any of the specifics, he's absolutely, one hundred percent, bulletproof in his certainty that if he was frustrated at anyone, it wasn't Yuri. He hasn't been frustrated with Yuri in months: not since he came to Hasetsu, not since that morning on the beach. Frustrated about Yuri, maybe. Frustrated with his feelings, certainly. With himself, on a nearly daily basis.

But not with Yuri. Yuri has been everything Victor imagined he could be and more: has worked as hard as Victor could ever ask, and harder past that. Has a wealth of skill hiding just behind his insecurities and uncertainties that, when uncovered, flourishes into heart-breaking beauty.

More than that. He's funny. Sweet. Sensitive. Serious. Bright, beneath his poor opinion of himself. Victor cherishes those moments spent just sitting or walking or talking together, about anything and everything, feeling like just normal people without the weight of their world settling on their shoulders, as much as he burns when Yuri tosses him that sly glance at the start to Eros, as much as his heart aches during Yuri on Ice.

It's certainly possible, maybe even likely, that he was frustrated the other night. But not that it could have been with Yuri. "It was probably just with myself."

That's familiar, a known quantity. He's memorized that conversation with himself, his better angels and his selfish, petty demons, and he can believe it floated drunkenly to the surface with poor Yuri blaming himself the whole way. That's a thought that deserves apology, and he leans down to press a kiss where his fingers just were, right beneath Yuri's ear, while his hand smooths down the column of his neck, to his shoulder.

Pulling back with a faint smile, lifting a thumb to touch Yuri's temple. "You look tired."

Exhausted, really. Like he can barely keep his eyes open, blinking myopically at Victor even from through his glasses. "You should get some sleep."

Except that reminds him of something, too, and he pauses, thinking back, trying to follow the thread of that thought to ––

A sudden breaking dawn of a smile, brilliant and self-congratulatory. "Did you say you dreamed about me, before?"

[theglassheart]

If Yuri felt stripped bare by the words he was already admitting, while Victor was running his fingers and his hand over (still, still doing it, still not stopping, right this second, the press of a kiss, and then his fingers, again, again, still, when it feels hypnotic and makes him want to sink heavier into his skin and the close of his eyes), the next he feels just as instantly even further stripped stupid.

The heat rising to his cheeks like a sudden, explosive cloud of steam inside him.
One moment sinking, seductive dark and warmth. The next scalding heat and shock.

It does not encourage him to keep his eyes on Victor, though they had snapped open at the sudden surprise, sudden want for denial, sudden remembering he'd said, sudden realization his slip hadn't happily been missed. That weak, stupid admission about Victor not being real here, like this, as a some nights occasion as it was that he was a real presence in Yuri's life and on the ice with Yuri by ever day.

He feels as embarrassed, as ashamed, as chagrin at Victor's arrogant, already winning this, won this, grin. The one he'd seen for a second before his head ducked down, grumbling, as exasperated at himself as Victor, into his teeth and his own chest, "Everyone has dreams of you at some point. You know that."

Even if his cheeks and his chest contradict him, his words. That wasn't how he meant it. He'd meant it like that. That it felt like it might just be dream, because he'd more than simply dreamt of Victor, that was a given, with how much Victor was there and there, he'd meant he'd dreamt of Victor like that sometimes, now, even if was embarrassing, and wrong, and he couldn't help if after some of the longer days, some of things Victor said, and this could all just be another uncontrollable bout of ... that.

Not recognized correctly until he woke up gasping, or in a light sweat, every alive but fading fast.

[fivetimechamp]

"No."

It's drawn-out and delighted: nooooooooo. Victor's smile widening the more embarrassed Yuri looks, the more annoyed he seems with himself for letting it slip. If it was just a normal dream, he wouldn't care, just like Victor doesn't care about anyone else who may or may not be dreaming about him.

Yuri dreamed about him. Yuri dreamed about him in ways that made this, tonight, seem like it might just be another one of those dreams, so Yuri dreamed about being kissed, and touched, and Yuri dreamed it about him. Victor. That's the kind of dream he meant, and that he's trying to pretend wasn't. "That's not the kind of dream you meant! Don't lie, Yuri, that's bad manners."

Halfway between being coaxed and crowed, as he's shifting towards Yuri, without stopping this time, hand going back to his shoulder to oush him towards his back so Victor can beam down directly into his exasperated face. (He shouldn't find this so cute, should he? Yuri's obvious annoyance, loss of patience, aggravation with Victor, but he does, it's like wine, delicious, addicting, and he can't get enough.)

Wheedling as he's putting fingers beneath Yuri's chin to make him look back up. There's no hiding, here, not from this: Victor wants to see it, soak in it, savor it. This unsuspected triumph. "You dream about me. Like this."

Disbelief with a shade of wonder coloring the delight in his voice, even as he's smugly celebrating. When, and how? Why? How did he never know about this, never guess? He wants to know everything. All of it. Every single want Yuri ever had with his name stamped over the top of it.

He'll do his best to fulfill them all.

[theglassheart]

Victor's declaring whine of response is too warm.

Goading. Almost sing-song with the kind of calling on Yuri's evasion that makes it far too delightful, and that was not something he intended to admit. Neither of those. Even if he had, too. It made more sense if this was a dream. That might be far too embarrassing and shaming, too, but he'd basically said that a handful of times.

He wants to sigh, but instead, there's a sudden flailing squeak of surprise (that he's not even certain is entirely truly anymore, not even just tonight, but based on all these months, dragged everywhere by these hands), as he gets pushed back onto the bed by Victor. Both shoulders hitting the bed, the ice pack going tumbling off his hip, maybe even the bed, he doesn't know, and Victor suddenly leaning over him, hand demanding he raises his eyes to meet Victor's there.

Impossibly gorgeous all over again. His heart defeatedly shouting who wouldn't dream of that, too. Blue eyes sharp stars, cold and burning all at once, while his bangs hang slightly away from his pale cheek. The way Yuri's eyes can't help crossing all of it. Those cheekbones and cheeks. His nose. The line of his jaw, that comes down to his chin, and back up to his lips.

He can't get lower, can't look away, hide,
(from Victor's face, the ache exploding)
with those fingers warm under his chin.

This close to this, over and over and over, again. With the things Victor said and the nearness of him, and it blurts out of his mouth, between those spots of fire in his cheeks and tension expanding in his chest, more desperate than he wants to hear reach his own ears, "I didn't mean to."