{ 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]

It's not even sharp, that order, but Victor stills into silence like he's been smacked, head tipping towards the teacup in his lap just enough so his eyes are shaded by the fine silver fall of his bangs, his light chatter gone as if he'd swallowed it, or like he'd been playing some recording that was suddenly cut off, and he remains silent as Yuri keeps going, the only indication he even hears those words the way his shoulders tighten, and then fall.

If Yuri's not doing well, he is a disaster equivalent to at least the Hindenburg, floating blithely along before suddenly bursting into flame and ruin when he least expects it. Case in point: he doesn't even know what to do or say to improve this situation. He'd thoughtlessly suggested a date, Yuri had panicked and slid into a fumble of words in Japanese, and all but threw up a stop light in his face, but now he's ... what is this, annoyed? Angry? Exasperated? When Victor tries to make it better.

So what can he do? Is there anything, that isn't taking the coward's way out and simply tossing himself out the window?

The tip of one index finger rubbing along the edge of the teacup in an idle tic. "You're doing fine."

It's not a lie: Yuri may be confusing him, and this may not be going exactly how he thought it would, but that's his fault, not Yuri's, and his shoulders lift again, abortively. "You don't have to apologize for not wanting something."

Him. Right? Is that what he's saying? It has to be, if he's going to do his absolute best. And if he's going to face that, well, then, he should face it looking Yuri in the eye, too, shouldn't he? Even if it feels like lifting a reluctant weight, even if he's nervous about what he might see there. That tip of his index finger shifting from a rub to a tap-tap-tap-tap he doesn't even notice is happening, and a wry puff of breath from his nose. "You looked horrified at the very thought."

Horrified, startled, surprised into flustered Japanese. None of that looking anything like Yuri thought it would be a good idea, the memory of it, perfectly fresh from only a few moments ago, cramping his stomach painfully. "Should I keep pushing for something you don't like or want? I'm just trying to ..."

It's all escaping him, when with anyone else, he'd be throwing his most charming apologies and winning smiles their way, but Yuri's nearly glaring, and he mostly just feels uncertain. "... not make you so uncomfortable."

It's not a thought he can really handle. Yuri uncomfortable with him. Yuri afraid of him, like he said he wasn't. Yuri looking pale and terrified at even the thought of an innocent outing, doing something they both love, coincidentally in public. "It's my mistake, Yuri, not yours."

Which may be the only thing he feels really clear on, in this precise moment, but that does at least settle his shoulders a little more firmly, even if his finger is still tapping at the teacup.

[theglassheart]

Victor goes still in a way that surprises Yuri. Maybe it shouldn't after the way he'd gone still in the garage. Both when he'd been crying and then when he'd started shouting. Even if these words are so much quieter. Even if they had been firm. Had been an argument in themselves for the sound to be heard and stop having things thrown at him as though it might make him forget what came before.

He doesn't know what Victor's face is, though. When he's looking at his cup, and his expression is obscured by his hair.
(For just a second, Yuri remembers that pained face, that hoarse whisper of his name, brushing Victor's face clear.)

He's not doing fine, regardless of what Victor says, and for a moment it's so frustrating he doesn't even know what to do with himself. That wasn't stuttering, and sputtering, and apparently getting incoherent. How did things seem to be fine and then they suddenly veered, until they found themselves here. Dinner had been so well, and now he just didn't want anything. He was perturbed at the cart top and food even being there still.

Perturbed at everything. At his ignorance and how every part of him screamed for and against every single thing happening to him tonight. About the embarrassed feeling of being told he looked horrified. Victor's voice soft, like he was trying to inform about himself. As though he could have missed his own shock. When he goes right on to asking about pushing for something Yuri does or doesn't like, or want, and Yuri isn't even certain that's fair.

Because he has no clue here, what he likes yet, what he wants yet -- that isn't this careful, netral face on Victor, explaining things to him like he was a child. He doesn't want that, and he isn't. Even if felt like it. He still wasn't. It was frustrating to the extreme to want to defend not knowing, except Victor changes the word again, the one that's in Yuri's head and Yuri's hands.

Not like, not want. It becomes mistake, and the words tumble like they can't not:

"It's only a mistake if you didn't mean it." Cautiously. Like maybe Victor has changed it already. That's what Victor is trying to tell him. That it was obviously too much. Too soon. He wasn't ready. It shouldn't exist. Horrified, comes back, and he tries not to cringe or sigh because of it. He was probably the only person on the planet who would have that reaction to Victor, of all people, suggesting a date. What was he, defective?

He doesn't know, but he presses on anyway. Just needing. Having. To know.

"Did you?" Yuri was looking at him carefully. "Not mean it?"


Somehow he thinks it would make so much more sense if Victor would just say yes, or laugh at him finally.
That every time he doesn't, every time he smiles, says these things, kisses him, everything changes more.

[fivetimechamp]

What is this expression on Yuri's face? It's some combination of frustration and determination that looks more like his stubborn need to get something right an hour after Victor is already exhausted and wants to call it a day. He looks like he wants to logic his way to the bottom of this, but Victor's not sure there's such a thing as logic involved. If there was, he'd probably still be back in Russia right now and Yuri would have simply slipped into quiet retirement. Victor's not even certain there should be a place for logic here. It's cold, uncaring stuff, nothing at all like the way he feels more him when Yuri's looking at him with happiness or affection or even fond exasperation in his face.

And he hates this cautious tone, too, almost as much as he hates the question it's backing, enough that his negation fairly bursts out of him. "Of course I meant it."

This feels more like a few hours ago in the garage than like any other time they try to work something out or come to an understanding, and he supposes it's probably because the stakes are higher now than they ever were before. If they can't figure this out, what happens to them?

But he knows the answer to this question like he knows his own face in the mirror, even as he's horrified at the thought that Yuri might think he's somehow joking, as if this would be an appropriate thing to tease about. "I wouldn't joke about that, not with you."

He's never joked about any of this with Yuri before, has always been as sincere as he knows how to be, as honest as possible, and the thought that maybe Yuri might think otherwise flummoxes him so completely it leaves him wondering what else Yuri might have thought he didn't mean.

Isn't it a sort of normal thing to ask, when you want to be with someone?

[theglassheart]

Of course, I meant it, with just the barest sting of something that feels like just a hint of exasperation at the question. Or maybe it's impatience with the fact Yuri could even question it. Question him. What he means. When Victor had been apologizing and calling it a mistake, because of Yuri, only seconds before.

A mistake to have spoken. A mistake to have said he wanted to go there. Be there. Together. Skating together under the low lights of some place that Victor loves. Victor calling it a mistake, all of it, like Yuri wasn't the one of them being extraordinarily dense and overwhelmingly out of proportion. About everything outside of breathing and sitting.

It's a scary thing, making any statement that sounds declarative. Choosing a feeling that's anything like declarative. On a good day. About anything. This even more so. This, even while Victor says these things without seeming to think about them, and then takes offense to Yuri's absolute and idiotic unpreparedness for everything Victor defends as sincere, as insulting to have questioned. It's a scary thing, and no one else on the planet would have that problem.

That fear. Make Victor look like these things. Staring at his cup hidden.

Staring at him, with all the lights of that memory, that place he'd wanted to share, blown out, too.

It's scary, and stupid, but he stills says quickly. "I'd very much like to go see this rink, then." Except that's not all, is it? That still hides behind everything that's simple. It fits even the second thing he'd said. Restating it. Making it normal. Making it like any other trip. He tries to add, "With you."

But that's the same, isn't it? Still not right. Because even in the latter he would have gone with Victor.
He swallows down something is a bubble of fear, and worthlessness, and unworthiness, and sheer scrambling idiocy.
(Between the logic that says none of this could ever, and a slightly sick reach for those lights that had, just for a second.)

It's softer, so much infinitely softer, like maybe he can out run the words, not get them caught in his skin, not remember for all his life he said this, implied, took this step out toward something that shouldn't even be, that people might laugh at to hear him even imply was asked of him, no less that he'd acted like a child because of it, like it's not stupid and he's scared, and they aren't a for granted mistake, that isn't a mistake (like him?), because Victor said.

Victor who is looking at him, and Yuri can't quite figure out where to look. Victor, or his cup.
Repeats, "With you." Pushes, trying to clarify. "I'd like to go skate with you, there. If you still."

[fivetimechamp]

It might still not be the right thing to say, he supposes. Even if Yuri asks for the truth, there's no guarantee that he'll want to hear it, as evidenced by how he's been flip-flopping all evening –– but Yuri asked for the truth, and there's no way Victor won't give him anything he asks for that's within Victor's power to give. Even if it's to back off, again, the way Yuri asked him to all those months ago.

The first response as confusing as the others. That Yuri would like to go see it, the outdoor rink Victor talked about, before, quickly, clarifying that he would like to go with Victor. Which is nice, but it's like that amused, innocent response he first gave ––

We skate together everyday

–– like there isn't some sort of distinction, although Victor supposes he should be happy that Yuri wants to do anything with him at all, considering how badly he keeps managing this, before there are those soft, but determined words, and Yuri's staring at his cup with a rising flush of pink on his cheeks that Victor doesn't understand.

Maybe he doesn't understand any of this. Why Yuri looked so startled, why it had been so unthinkable, why he'd resorted to rambling in Japanese in his surprise, if he wanted to, if he thought it would be nice, if, if, if. Leaving Victor uncertain for a second about whether or not he'd accidentally manipulated this, made Yuri agree out of some misplaced desire to make him feel better instead of saying what he really wants, but he doesn't think Yuri would lie to him. Not to save his feelings. Not on something important. "Really?"

One day, maybe he'll be able to halt the birth of giddy, stupid hope every time it blinks awake in his chest and head, but each time it does, it clears away all the cobwebs and rationale and all he can think of is how much he wants it to be true.

It makes him feel like a stumbling newborn calf, trying to butt its head into the right spots to find air and water and food, missing over and over again but continually hopeful he'll get it right eventually. "You're not just saying that, are you? You really want to go?"

[theglassheart]

Yuri is not even sure he understand how anyone could just say those words. To anyone, but especially to Victor. It makes him feel barer, more at risk than anything short of that moment before Victor came all but running across the room to crush Yuri into his chest and arms and shoulder. It's scary enough to just have said it.

For Victor not to be saying it is, he does, they are or will.
That everything that pops out suddenly is a question.

When he thinks he wanted (needed?) to have heard something else, other than an uncertainty (that sounds like him?) when he can't even imagine the existence of people that could say this to just lie. That makes even less sense. That anyone could. That Victor thinks someone could. Yuri could.

That anything more than all of this might make Yuri even attempt to say that.
(About Victor. About them. About Victor, of all people in the world, asking him on a date.)


Yuri is torn, first shaking his head and then nodding.

Because one question is a no, and the other, the other is starting to spangle something new, tendril warm, hazy light, like those imagined suspended lights, giving birth to other, newer concerns (what does that mean, how does, what is he supposed to do, wear, say, what is he supposed to know for that that he doesn't). But it doesn't stop the faint warmth in his cheeks, or the way he's torn between wanting to look down at his lap, but can't, can't because he has to look at Victor.

Has to say, "Yes," if, if, if - "If you haven't changed your mind."
How often those words keep happening in this room tonight.

[fivetimechamp]

He doesn't know what it looks like, but it feels like a light breaks all across him, drenching his head and face and shoulders. Not a thin, tentative dawn sort of light: the brash, bold, liquid gold of brilliant afternoon cutting through a fog of cloud and a haze of drizzling rain.

Or it feels like being dropped into a vat of champagne, bubbles popping everywhere in his ears and head and chest. He doesn't know, only knows that Yuri is watching him with that odd and determined look on his face, like he's going to get this right or die trying, and that Victor is too far away. Whatever instinct lets him put down his cup and shove the tray of food to one side is his last rational one, but it's all one motion: tray pushed aside, crockery and utensils and teapot clattering in complaint, and a push forward onto his knees to lean across the space and wrap his arms around Yuri's neck in pure delight. "Really?"

Really, really? Not just saying it to make him feel better, not just wanting to go with him, but with him, just like Victor always thought was impossible, and he can't stop grinning. "You're going to love it! We'll have so much fun."

That last qualification getting brushed aside with all the dismissiveness it deserves. "Of course I haven't, why would I? I can't wait."

Change his mind? If Yuri hasn't? If Yuri is saying yes, and meaning it, because he wants to, if Yuri kisses him back and teases him for being a fool and holds onto him anyway? "It's all I want."

Well. Maybe not all, but in the grand scheme of things, everything he wants falls into this category, doesn't it, of being with Yuri, with Yuri, the way he hadn't realized he'd wanted all those months in St. Petersburg, trying to figure out why he couldn't stop thinking about a Japanese boy he barely knew.

[theglassheart]

Everything happens so very fast.
Yuri is beginning to think that is the pattern.

This is true of this again. The way Victor's chest rises, posture shifts, spreads wider, face clears as simple as someone took a blown up car wiper and had suddenly brandished it across his face. Then, Victor is shoving the tray aside and Yuri should feel startled (right?), worried (about the tray? about it falling? the mess being made, if does and doesn't? About the sudden, predictable launch of movement?). Then, Victor has thrown his arms around Yuri's neck and everything is Victor curled around him.

There's still a teacup in his hands, and it doesn't come. Even though he waits a second for it to come. The other part of the pattern. The panic. That confusion. It doesn't come. It's a strange warmness. In his face. In his chest. Something strangely ... happy? Bursting up under that touch. (He's going on a date with Victor in Moscow. Apparently. In a week.) Under Victor's sudden burst of this newest touching, his voice so close to Yuri's ear, and so very, also ... happy? (That he said yes.)

Victor's burble of excited words.

Victor saying, this is all he wants?
Yuri? Saying yes? Taking Yuri on a date?

He's only got one hand, with the cup, but the fingers of his free hand still end up against Victor's side, partially curled to his back, somewhere short of his shoulder. When he's both crushed into and leaning into Victor, a little shy of the whole fluttering first now thing, getting everywhere in his chest, pushing out and out and out, like nothing else is allowed to take this second anymore, but grateful, strangely, for this moment of Victor's over abundance of, well, everything.

Apparently, that's sort of part of the pattern, too. His part.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't say anything else, but his hand comes up to Victor's back and he doesn't pull or push away, either, and Victor keeps being surprised by that and grateful for it in the same second.

(It had been so confusing, bordering on hurtful, those first few weeks, like his touch was a lit match that did nothing but burn.) "I'm glad." For Yuri agreeing. That Yuri is letting Victor hold onto him, one hand at the back of his head with fingers sinking into soft dark hair, the other at his shoulder, while Victor beams into his neck and ear and jaw. "You had me worried for a second."

That he'd managed to push Yuri too far again, and Yuri had refound all those lines he'd drawn around them months ago, remembered why he wanted them in the first place, but now, he's saying yes, and Victor wasn't wrong to say it after all. Even if he could have handled it better, probably.

A thought which makes him pull back so he can kiss first one cheek, and then his mouth, and then the other, and then Yuri's ear, full of exuberant affection. "I'm sorry I'm so bad at this, gomen, gomen. I really want to do it right."

As apologetic as the words are, there's only relieved laughter in his voice, all his hesitation sailed directly out the window into the glittering Shanghai night with Yuri's agreement, and when he pulls back, eyes warm and half-lidded and smiling, with his hands cupping Yuri's face, delight bubbling up in a never-ending spring. "I'll try to do better next time, okay?"

[theglassheart]

Worried. He worried Victor?

Yuri isn't even sure which of those words even makes sense, which to stress the question of more, but he doesn't have long to think about it, because the next second Victor pulls back and suddenly is kissing him, in that same rapid fire suddenness. His cheek and his mouth and his other cheek, and Yuri's face is scrunching up, unable to not, the warmth trying hard to bubble straight up his throat. Almost a laugh, trying to escape especially when Victor just lands another of these fast, giddy kisses on his ear, like somehow he can't just stop at both of his cheeks, and his mouth.

Before he pulls back, again, but not far, hands on Yuri's cheeks, face, again, instead of his shoulders, and Victor does. He looks so happy. It's undeniably happy. His face, so close to Yuri's face. His eyes, are so bright and shining in a way Yuri almost wants to reach out and touch, brush his fingers along, like he could it. Just for a second. This (impossibly impossible, but shining) thing in Victor's eyes staring at him.

Victor who wants thinks he's bad at this and to get this right, who looks like he would in any other day, on any other trip, not be able to hold still, when he makes this face, needs to see and touch and try everything. Who is looking at Yuri while saying that. Before Yuri is blushing a little, shoulders raising, but not pulling away, not stopping touching Victor, when he says next time and he tries not to let it tumble, strange, surprised or baffled in his stomach too hard.

Victor is already at next time? That there's going to be a next time,
before they even get to Moscow and that rink? He doesn't want to think long on it yet.

He finds himself nodding, finds himself pulled along by the light in Victor's eyes, and the giddy swoop of the kisses, saying, "Okay."

Then, maybe as shy as it wants to be certain. "Me, too. I'll try to be ... better."

He could try. If this was what Victor wanted.
(What he wanted, and Victor, and they.)

Yuri lets go, then, but not for anything more than switching his tea cup from one hand to the other, and to glance in that direction (where, oh, good, the tray is still flat, if not entirely soundly balanced in its entirtey). He leans toward it, not loosing himself from Victor's hands, and letting his far hand counterbalance against Victor's other side, to just puts his cup down finally. Before turning back to Victor, free hand floating for a second, almost reaching up to curl at his bicep, before ending up gently, almost like the butterfly of a question, lightly at the other side of Victor's waist.

[fivetimechamp]

It's so cute, the way Yuri scrunches up his face, and makes that sound like he can't decide if he's laughing or squeaking, how his shoulders lift like he's trying to fend off Victor's ticklish kisses, but without any real attempt to get away, and it's like drinking straight vodka. Goes to his head as swiftly and as completely, and all he wants to do is make it happen again, coax out that laugh until Yuri is sparkling and happy and relaxed and can't remember that he had ever even doubted Victor's sincerity.

Even if it's absurd to think that Yuri could somehow be better, when just Yuri is all Victor has wanted for so long he can't remember what it was like before he wanted it. When all he cared about was the next competition, the next medal, the next program, always something new, always searching for the next surprise. it seems like such an empty existence now, to think back on it.

(Remembers how he'd scoffed at himself that night in the ballroom, sure it couldn't possibly be love, because love at first sight was a fairy tale, and not even a good one.)

"I don't have much practice with this," he confesses, still fond, still smiling, and leans to kiss Yuri's nose, hoping for that same addictive crinkle of his features, and has he gone insane, maybe? Why on earth does he find that so irresistible? "You'll have to be patient with me."

When he is, as he's prone to doing, throwing caution to the wind and hurling himself headlong into the fray, too impatient to wait, too unpracticed to know how to do it right, but if Yuri doesn't mind, if Yuri likes him enough to remind him not to go too fast, maybe he can ––

But that thought gets wrecked on the slight shift of Yuri's weight, and he watches as that teacup changes hands, before one lands light as a feather against his side, and the cup is placed on the tray along with the rest of the dinner he'd honestly managed to forget even existed, entirely, in the last half a minute. Not that he's sure anything exists except that hand that's now free, fingers careful and shy, that float for a minute near his elbow while Victor's breath catches and his heart stumbles, and then makes a suicidal dash against his ribs to try and meet that hand where it is.

(How is it possible to feel something that isn't even touching him?)

Except it doesn't stay there. Drifts down, pauses, before deciding to be brave and settling at his waist, so lightly he almost doesn't feel it, might not at all, if his nerves weren't screaming news of it all the way up his skin, his spine.

Making that caught breath shake out, hard and vulnerable, when he shivers. Forehead lightly bumping Yuri's, as his eyes close, before they open again to find his, even if he can't remember what it was he was saying at all.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's nose is kissed in the first pang of something that actually is drops of cold that he desperately doesn't want, but can't be shaken when Victor goes on. Asking him for patience, before pressing close again. Until he's got his eyes closed, breathing out heavily, and Yuri is staring. Unmoving. Suddenly confused, and he doesn't want to be. So very much.

Wants to dig his fingers into Victor's side and his waist, still that faint flush of barely held boldness. They only just stopped disagreeing, and agreed on something, hadn't they? Why? Why was it the next words to come out of his mouth, making it so Yuri suddenly felt like every warmth was fading away just as soon as it had finally come back?

He doesn't want. Victor had just said.

He was. Wants.

It this is real, supposed to be, going to be real, why Victor would say.

"Victor." It's reluctant as it is soft because he's so close, Victor just opening his eyes, looking so bright and dazed-pleased still, and because. Yuri doesn't want to say it. Doesn't want to break this. At all, or want to do it, or Victor to. Again. Always him. This second that feels already confused and like it's slipping from his fingers even when Victor hasn't. Victor doesn't look like.

Except. As maybe unreal as it being him might be.

It's not Yuri who knows that's wrong. (A clear lie.)
The whole worlds knows it. Well known, even.

"You've already been with other people."

[fivetimechamp]

"Hmm?"

Is a little dopey, still drunk on the rush of Yuri touching him, Yuri touching him, Yuri choosing to reach out and ––

But it gets a little derailed when Yuri goes on, and Victor's hands move from his jaw to settle against the sides of his neck, just at the curve where his shoulders meet his collarbone. Thumbs light but steady against the corded muscle there.

(Yuri is so much stronger than he thinks he is; he knows the muscle under that soft, fair skin is more like steel now than like the pudge that had been there when he first came to Hasetsu.)

Listening, head tipping slightly like a bird considering a dropped seed, because Yuri's not wrong, but that's not what he meant, either. "Not like this." Riding on the faint huff of a wry breath, because all the times he might have thought he was in love before –– and they exist, Yuri's right about that, he's had his fair share of sweethearts and lovers, even if none of them lasted very long –– it was nowhere near this.

Picking him up like a whirlwind, and sending him to Japan, and as much as he might protest that he really had no choice, he knows that's a lie.

(Somewhere in his head is Yakov's voice echoing around a rink: You say that as if we ever get to choose. We don't. We choose only what we do about it. And that is the story, happy or not.

Once again, Yakov was right.)

But Yuri is still watching him, and Victor is shaking his head, just a little, not to argue, but against the very idea that he's ever experienced anything like this with anyone he'd ever been with before. "Not like you."

[theglassheart]

Victor's hands drift down, fingers and palm slides across the sensitive under his jaw, and then even more of it, down the column of his neck, to settle there. In that space that leaves those hands against his neck, against his shoulders, thumbs running the muscle there.

It makes him tremble, the combination of this touch on his even thinner shirt and the look on Victor's face, even before he gets to the beginning of a defense that almost confuses Yuri more. That can't be true. Can it?

Unless Victor means that no one else in those interludes was ever like him? Ever knew nothing at all, made everything such a muddle at every set of words, every touch, and couldn't give just give Victor everything at a single word? That that is what makes all of this new? All of it something Victor has never had to handle.

His stomach curls in on itself, even while he just wants to reach out and stroke his fingers against this expression still on Victor's face. This impossible look that doesn't look troubled by the trial of having to reinvent everything he's ever known, ever had easily, for Yuri.

But he hasn't moved. Victor hasn't.

Making Yuri sigh, and actually, push it into words.
Because if they are being honest, and Yuri said he'd do better.

"Because no one else ever had no clue what they were doing."

[fivetimechamp]

"No."

It's immediate, and so is the way his hands firm, and he leans to touch his forehead to Yuri's with a soft smile, before pulling back far enough to see his whole face and make sure Yuri is paying attention. It's not even fundamentally true: there were certainly times he was with people who didn't know what they were doing. There were times he was that person, himself, when he wasn't all that far off from Yuri's age.

But that could never be what he meant. That's not the because.

Because he never loved anyone else to move across the world for them.

Because he never loved anyone else more than his medals, his career, or himself.

Because Yuri stole his heart and his mind and his senses and refused to give them back, even when it was clear he didn't feel the same way. "I never felt like this about anyone before. I didn't know I could."

Not always happy. Sometimes furious, and frightened, and frustrated. Months and months of trying to work it out of himself, with practice and physical exhaustion and a few occasional and ill-advised rendezvous that only left him feeling more restless and unsatisfied as ever.

He's aware, on a dim level, that he should try not to push too much at Yuri at once, that he should try to keep from scaring Yuri away, but he said he was going to try and do better, didn't he? Prove to Yuri he means what he says. That this is as new and thrilling and terrifying for him, in many ways, as it is for Yuri himself. "You stole my heart." Better. But not complete. "You seduced me."

With a faint nostalgia to his laugh: he'd never stood a chance. "Like a fairy tale. Like ... what is it, любовь с первого взгляда."

The pad of his thumbs tracing skin, careful and warm. Eyes soft, even as he's holding Yuri's. "Love at first sight."

No one has ever done that, before. He didn't even know it was possible.

[theglassheart]

For a very long stretch, there is nothing. Or everything.
The only second to compare it to never happened in this the room.

Exists only in a shock so bald, it slammed the ice, with a kiss that rattled (the world) bones.

It's like that, when Yuri has nowhere to fall. Not when he's never so much as pushed off of sitting on the bed, even for all that Victor is on his knees. Not when Victor's hands are warm and smooth against his neck, his shoulders, thumbs brushing over skin and shirt cloth alike. Never stopping. The touching. The not-falling. The words that keep coming out of Victor's mouth.

That fall first with abject shock, and then even more so with alarming familiarity.

Ones trapped in the dark. Trapped in a stumbling walk, and hotel walls. Trapped in a patch of skin, against the back of his neck where knuckles and fingers brush carelessly, that burns to be remembered so clearly. Words in the dark, behind the wall of himself, so untrue, unmeant, and still they left him burned and burning in speech and memory. Words in the light, now, said, while Victor stares at him in such a peerless pleasure, to be saying them, no cent of hesitation or pause, except searching for English, and Yuri can't remember if he's ever seen this expression Victor has before. Like this.

While Victor talks about this as though it is absolutely none of the even hazy, helpfully grounding, assumptions Yuri has held on to. Since that moment on the ice. On the sidewalk. In the elevator. In this room. Taking all the struts and columns and gravity and air, again.

Making it so, even though he isn't standing, isn't falling, his fingers reflexively tighten, one against Victor's side, all thin soft fabric and muscle, and the other over soft fabric, and the synch of elastic, and the gentle curve of a hip bone so very solid under both. When those become the only certainties. He isn't falling, and Victor is solid under his fingers, and Victor's fingers are on his, and Victor is saying -- Victor looks ... so beautiful like this.

Even in the whispers of logic, or confusion, of the ramping he has no word for it, they are thin as smoke in air, not enough to be enough to even be heard, and they have none of the solidness of those few things left. On the baffled shock, refusing to be fought, taking no prisoners, whiting out everything between his ears, with only room to leave that beaming fond sincerity and something else, something even warmer, even brighter in Victor's eyes.

When the only word that even manages to stumble out, ends up,
sounding half like it's not even sure it exists or was even chosen, "Me?"

Barely a whisper, as though maybe Victor has forgotten which of them is a fairytale brought to life.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers grip his side, and his hip, but it's not hard or scared. It seems more like a reflex, like he'd pushed Yuri back and he needs to figure out how to stay upright, but though his eyes are wide and surprised, there's none of the startled fluster of only a few moments ago.

Only that one word, that's less disbelieving as it is searching for clarification, which Victor can give without hesitation. "You."

Katsuki Yuri, who he'd barely known until last April, which hadn't stopped him from nearly driving himself mad through the months beforehand. Yuri, his skater and student. His friend and companion.

Who, it turned out, is far more lovable than he'd had any preparation for, when he'd been expecting just another infatuation. He'd arrived thinking he'd find the demon from the dance floor, or the romantic from his Stay Close to Me, but he'd found just Yuri instead, and far from being disappointed or having the scales fall from his eyes, it had only gotten worse. Day after day, learning about him, getting to know him, earning his trust, earning his smiles and laughter and even his annoyance, his shouted disagreements.

The real Yuri. Turned from fantasy to reality in front of his eyes, and refusing to give up even the slightest inch of his hold on Victor's heart and mind.

He's never had anything like this before.

[theglassheart]

It doesn't make sense, but maybe that doesn't matter at this moment. When Victor doesn't even hesitate, doesn't even think about it. Yuri barely able to have truly registered that word had escaped from him, like a mirror against the words that had swirled around him, and all Victor says, is the simple, so very certain, yes the second right after.

Yes, Yuri.

Yes, Yuri who Victor is saying swept in and seduced him?
Yes, Yuri who made Victor feel something he hadn't before?
Yes, Yuri who Victor somehow fell in love with him on first sight?

Yuri, who doesn't know how any of that can be true, but who doesn't have enough left in him for it to stop there. With that thought. With those questions. Yuri, whose fingers tighten just for a second, like the faintest warning, but there isn't a pause on it, before he's pushing up. Can't be and he doesn't know how that could ever, but suddenly he wants it to. Make sense. Be even one drop worth of true.

But all of that is a quiet roar behind the only thing holding, and that's that Victor is too close, and Victor is looking at him like this, and Victor keeps pressing him, keeps touching his shoulders, pressing his forehead, luminous eyes, and Yuri has to kiss him. He doesn't care if it's clumsy finding his knees, or his fingers finding Victor's face, or shoulder when his knees and his hip give an ugly screech at the force that he propels himself up with, he has to be kissing Victor.

Now, now, now. There's nothing else in him, in the world, in all existence but that truth.

[fivetimechamp]

There's a brief pause, and then, suddenly, Yuri is everywhere.

Scrambling to his knees, hands going to Victor's face and shoulder, while Victor's reflexively fall to his hips to steady him with a wince at the pained jerk Yuri gives, but before he has a chance to ask if Yuri's hip is alright, there are warm fingers on his face and Yuri's still-damp hair brushing across his forehead, and Yuri's kissing him.

It startles a falling chain of dominoes: his hands tighten on Yuri's hips, and then slide to his back to pull him closer, while a surprised sound bubbles out of nowhere, from the back of his throat, deep in his chest, and he slips back, a little, sitting back on his heels as Yuri pushes into him. Out of nowhere. Or, potentially, out of somewhere easy to identify, if he had a little more knowledge of what Yuri looked like right before he kissed someone, but he doesn't. Not even Yuri does, because this is still only a handful past first, for him, which is the thought that shorts everything else out, and leaves him just with delighted surprise and sparking warmth in his chest.

Catching Yuri as well as he can. The soft "O" of surprise his mouth had made right before Yuri's crashed into it growing and growing in his head, instead, because Yuri's kissing him. First. Without Victor saying or doing anything, without Victor even leaning in, or teasing. It makes his heart stutter, makes him want to return it ten, a hundred fold, kiss Yuri back until he can't breathe and can't see from the stars in his eyes. He wants to tackle Yuri to the floor, wants to drag Yuri into his lap, and he never wants it to stop.

When did. How did. Why did it all change, when did Yuri start thinking about this, was it just tonight, today, was it five minutes ago, was it months?

But that just makes him wonder how much time he'd managed to waste, pining away in St. Petersburg or even keeping his peace in Hasetsu, and that's enough to make him kiss Yuri back harder, a hand slipping up along Yuri's back to settle at the back of his neck, fingertips just brushing the edge of his hair.

As wrapped up as he can get, without making a mess of the bed and the tray that is still, annoyingly, next to them.

[theglassheart]

There's a second, here and gone, that Yuri has long enough to question.

If it's not right, he shouldn't have, this was the wrong moment, choice, as Victor's hands find his hips, careful cupping hands, like they are trying to take the weight of his body off his body, like Victor can feel the unforgiving spasms of pain right through his sleep pants, at the same time as Victor makes this confused noise against his mouth, swaying backwards in his swing up. Just long enough for the question marks to form, and metaphoric sweat to bead Yuri's temple, before Victor's hands tighten suddenly on his hips.

Both of them complaining at the sudden grip, even if one is so much the louder, before Victor is kissing him back, and everything explodes outward instead. A delighted, dizzy swoop of rippling triumph, when Victor pulls him in even closer, kisses him back, that he can only compare to the perfect landing of a jump. To the overwrought excitement when he'd come flinging himself at the gate earlier. To the podium in the spotlight, that tugs that question out of his spine, while Victor's hands are slipping up his back, finding his shoulders, his neck.

( You got me.

Isn't that almost as good? )

When Yuri is certain for a blistering, bold, second that nothing in the world is almost as good as Victor. That nothing in the world will ever compare or even brush the touch of how good Victor is. How good, how impossible, how everywhere this suddenly flashes and floods under every inch of his skin, the idea, inflated and impossible, that somehow he has Victor, and he doesn't care if it hurts.

Everything in his life hurts in some amount, and that. That pain has nothing to do with Victor. And everything.

That Victor is all of getting him here, today, there --
and nothing ever almost as good as that --


and all of this

-- nothing is as good as this.

Victor kisses him harder, and Yuri leans into it, into him, wrapping his arms around Victor's neck, in an abandon that fills almost as helpless as it willful as it grateful. Impossible. All of this is impossible. But all of the impossible bits are turning into mist in his hands, because his arms around Victor and Victor's hands are on him, pulling him closer, like the answer to a question that just becomes a surging waves rocking through him, over and over and over.

He doesn't know how long it takes to need a breath. Maybe it's only a few seconds, maybe it's longer than a minute. It's a gasp, loud enough it goes cutting the silence of the room, but he's not sure he can help it. Can even regret it, his head swimming. Can't remember when he last took a breath, not during this, not before it. Only that his cheeks are flushed and his whole body is spinning, and pliant, and pressed along Victor, as much as can be on his knees.

Both of them on their knees. Victor even looking a bit pink, a bit dazed, sounding out of breath.
With the room gone silent and the tray still on the bed, and somehow, his first word is still, "Sorry."

Something as sheepish as it is almost surprisingly-proud like maybe he didn't quite mean it. At all.
Didn't care what he might have missed, should have said, or done, or listened to more of.

Nothing was almost as good as that. He felt half-drunk on it.
His own boldness. Breathlessness. The reckless nearness of Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

In the times he'd allowed himself to picture this, it had never really looked like those earlier kisses, the ones where Yuri was too startled or uncertain to do anything other than stand there, or even the ones he can't believe he would ever think he didn't want, when Yuri leaned carefully closer and kissed him back, careful and clumsy and so sweet it made his chest ache.

It had always been more like this. Yuri active and determined, Yuri pressing against him on purpose, Yuri's arms around his neck, Yuri's mouth making short work of his brain and thoughts and breath. It's not perfect, but it is. Perfect as more than simple skill, or experience letting them both know what works and what doesn't. He doesn't care if it's a little messy, if Yuri almost knocks him over in his haste to get to him, if Yuri tastes more like the food they just ate and the tea they just drank than anything sweet. He wouldn't care if that whole tray got knocked to the floor, if it meant Yuri doing this.

Kissing him. First. Hard. Arms wound around Victor's neck, while Victor's head explodes in a shower of sparkling confetti and there isn't a closer that's close enough, even when his knees spread and he sits back as much as he can to steady them both, which leaves him looking up, nearly, at Yuri, when there's a sharp gasp for air and Yuri's mouth is suddenly gone.

Leaving Victor to run the tip of his tongue in wonder over his tender bottom lip, and breathe hard, before a laugh is startled out of him by the outright boldness in Yuri's voice and the pleased, dazed look on his face that contradicts that single word. "I don't believe you."

He doesn't look –– or sound, or feel –– sorry at all.

[theglassheart]

Victor laughs, this puff of contradictory sound, obviously at him, at his words, and then his words are directly in contradiction to Yuri's own. While Yuri's head can't figure out how to duck his head, with Victor's face, Victor, still this close, or whether he's embarrassed, and his cheeks are trying to warm more, and he's confused about just how to go about even breathing deeply enough to even breathe and none of it is holding against the rush.

How there is enough blood somewhere else in his body, to be sent up when all his blood feels like it's racing? Again.

And, not, again. Not like this. Not even like that long line of minutes at the end of the bed, singed into his skin.
Not dizzy on heat, but, also, the desperate need to just hold on. Falling in. Not letting go. Lost under it, succumbed.

Not that. This time.

Not that he hadn't felt like he was, too. Not lost, but dissolved into it. Certainty giving way to heat and necessity, and Victor, Victor, Victor, and the need to breathe and that to Victor laughing at him. (He loves the sound of Victor's laugh this close. Even at him.) There's something, something not chagrin, perhaps, still a little embarrassed, to realize just what he'd done, what he'd said, or said without saying a word aside from apology. That Victor could read it on him. Hear it.

"No?" First, even as that boldness seems to be diluting in the cool air of the room on his skin, and each breath going a little deeper. Pulls him back, into his skin, into his head, into his self. "Is that--"

But he doesn't have a word for this either. Right. Wrong. Okay. Improper. Hilarious. Shameful. No word fits.

When he means for having apologized, and maybe for not. When he means everything he just did, that he's not sure how to even look right back at, and the way his head and his body come down, but his heart is just sprinting along in his chest, in his veins, not showing any sign of listening to anything else but Victor's laugh, Victor's voice, Victor's face, Victor's hands still on him.

When he doesn't know if some of that was exaggerated, the way Victor's exaggerate his thoughts before forgetting them next.
Even then he's not sure if he wants to know yet, wants to think about anything, do anything that isn't staring at Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri is blushing, and catching his breath, and trying to find some sort of footing to protest, but he can't. Victor is charmed by it all.

By Yuri's pink cheeks and shining eyes, and his arms still around Victor's neck. What about this is supposed to make Victor believe he's actually sorry for anything at all, least of all pouncing on Victor to kiss him? "I don't think you're sorry at all."

Probably he shouldn't sound so pleased with that, but how can he think responsibly when Yuri has, seemingly out of the blue, decided to start kissing him, and letting Victor haul him in close enough he can feel the expansion and deflation of his chest with every breath Yuri takes? He can't. He's too delighted. Has he ever, in his entire life, had a day this good? If he's supposed to be anything other than delighted that Yuri is wholly unapologetic for kissing him, he can't quite figure out how, let alone why.

Even if Yuri is starting to come down from whatever loss of his senses he'd just suffered, enough to ask that question that trails off, which just lets Victor answer it for him. "Good?"

Leaning to punctuate it with a kiss that's warm and pleased and just this side of smug. "Very good?"

And another. Arms wrapped around Yuri's back, one hand flat on his shoulderblade, the other running light but proprietary fingers over the nape of his neck. "Yes, I think so."

[theglassheart]

He's going to go on feeling flushed, feeling like he's flushing more, the more Victor sounds pleased. His voice this warm thing getting inside more than Yuri's ears, and Yuri's cheeks. It feels like it permeated right through his skin, brushes and mingles and all but purrs itself straight into his blood.

When Victor suggests good, and then is kissing him, again, so warm and dizzying, like the point of the point, and then very good is breathed on his lips, and Yuri's heart skips in his chest. Several times. If that's even possible. It feels dizzyingly possible. Like, for this brief half-second, everything is possible if this is possible, Victor is possible. At a word he hadn't even touched and left behind, discarded as soon as fingered lightly at the edges of a thought. At this thing that is the first thing to come to Victor's mind, Victor's lips?

That it was Good. Very Good, even.

Kissing him while his arms are around Yuri's body, flat on his back and brushing against the skin at the bottom of his neck. This place only touched before by Victor's lips, and the collars of his shirts, and the occasional pressure of Victor's arm thrown on his shoulders, dragging him close or hugging him. Running down his throat, curling there to hold only. Nothing, nothing like the bubbles of comparison that drift up and fall away against this touch from Victor.

Nothing, nothing like this feeling that makes his lashes flutter -- and when had they even moved close enough to touch? -- while there's a soft hummm vibrating in the top of his chest, and the bottom of his throat, forehead touching Victor's, making his voice softer for, "Okay."

Then, nebulous, like an answer and just a soft whisper, repeating. "Good."

[fivetimechamp]

That small contented hum, and the faint pressure of Yuri's forehead against his, and the way Yuri drops his eyelashes and his shoulders lift and relax in a breath that feels like a release, all of it is going to destroy him. Maybe has, already, if he thinks in terms of how there may no longer be a Viktor Nikiforov the way there was at this time last year. Single-minded and dedicated, at the very pinnacle of his career and sport.

He gave it all up for this. Before there was a this to even have, and after it was clear he shouldn't hold out hope of it ever happening.

What on earth would Yakov say?

Probably the same thing he's been saying all year, that Victor is selfish and incapable of thinking of anyone else, that he'd run off to be a coach on a whim, even if it was a romantic one. He wonders if there might be any room for sympathy in Yakov if he knew the whole truth, if he could see Victor now, or if all his coach would do would be to mourn the man he lost and blame the one who took his place.

Because this him, the one here and now, the one who made the decision to fly to Japan and throw his own career to the winds, he is as lost on the softness of skin just above the softness of an old t-shirt as he used to be on the perfect curve of a spread eagle. He's happier here, shifting his head so he can settle his forehead in the crook of Yuri's neck, while his arms go around Yuri's ribs, than he ever was in balcony seats for the Mariinsky or standing on top of a podium with the spotlight glinting off the gold around his neck and the rhinestones on his shoulders.

Feels like he can breathe, here, on Yuri's shoulder, arms relaxed and steady, better than he ever could in the middle of the rink, or while watching the gulls lift over the wide sweep of water.

Eyes slipped closed, a peaceful huff of breath relaxing his shoulders, and this could only be better if he could manage to haul Yuri back into his lap so Victor can just wrap around him and drift away –– but reality keeps interrupting, which would be far more aggravating if his reality hadn't just shifted so fundamentally, only a few hours ago. "We should probably clear that food away, if you're done."

Not that he makes any kind of motion at all to do so, considering it would require him to let go of Yuri, and he's not quite ready to do that, just yet.