{ 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]

"If you want ice, a bed, your clothes, or to sleep tonight ... yes."

But he doesn't want Yuri to come back because he has to, he wants Yuri to come back because he wants to. Finally. After making Victor wait this long, after Victor was convinced he was wrong about everything, or that Yuri had changed his mind, or that Yuri really was that playboy from Eros, and stealing Victor's heart away like it was a cheap festival prize.

And he wants Yuri's hands to stop fluttering at the air like he's doing his best to take off directly from the sidewalk, can't help the shiver that runs through his arm when one (finally? accidentally? unknowingly?) brushes against the back of his gloved hand, while Yuri's looking at him like he's gone insane, and maybe he has. Lost his mind, all his sense, any direction except back towards Yuri, over and over again, the way migrating birds keep returning year after year to their homes thousands of miles away.

He shouldn't love that crinkle between Yuri's eyebrows, that pulls there when Victor is being especially exasperating, but he does. Loves getting under Yuri's skin, loves how Yuri's whole body pushed towards him.

(This wasn't going to happen. He'd come to terms with it, and he'd accepted it, and he'd loved every other minute of every day he could get, just being here, with Yuri, coaching him and getting to know him and never managing to fall any less in love with him the more he saw and learned.

Maybe he can be forgiven for his inability to come down from this high, for his stupidity, for how every single word wants to come out as a disbelieving, insane laugh.)

"So you should stop distracting me in the middle of the sidewalk, don't you think?"

[theglassheart]

It's not as though Yuri needs a detailed list of his own point, but Victor makes it anyway.

Pointing out that, yes, of course, Yuri has to come back with him. There's no other place for Yuri to go to. (Which is funny? To Victor? Still ?) At least not one that isn't already his. With all of his things in it. It makes him want to sigh, and drop his shoulders, but Victor is still a little too close for anything but an absent collection of those feelings to spin through, but without the power or ability to fall straight into action.

Especially not when it's immediately overridden by stampeded gasp and wide eyes, his shoulders actually bouncing up, instead of down, with the fastest of looks to each side of Victor's face. The first reaction about -- Him? Him distracting Victor? As though this wasn't all Victor who -- getting entirely sideswiped by a carrier engine about the sidewalk. About the world.

When there are definitely people around them. Not close, but definitely some of them are staring at them.
And. And. And the arena building isn't even two kilometers behind them. Maybe not even a fully one.

And he is backward before he's realized it. Jumped straight out of the fingers that had been touching him. The inches that had been all there was between them, confused and catching up suddenly with the absent piece of luggage at his feet. The one he expects to trip over, and instead ends up tripping over not being there at all. Suddenly looking to his sides and around, before --

"Hey!" -- is a little too loud, finding it at Victor's side, in Victor's other hand, cool and calm as thought it's always been there. (... and just when had he even last been holding it? When did Victor take it? He had been dagging it out here originally, right?)

[fivetimechamp]

Victor only straightens as Yuri realizes where they are and bounces away, only to finally realize he's no longer holding onto the handle of his bag and direct an accusatory look his way, that bounces off Victor's mild smile, standing with the handle in one hand, the other propped on his hip.

(It's just deeply satisfying on a near-cellular level that Yuri forgot where they were standing, and that there were people going by, and simply never noticed Victor stole his bag straight from his hand, because of Victor. Because Victor touched him, teased him, kissed him.

He's pretty sure this won't get old anytime soon. Is completely sure it's as heady as wine and far more addicting.) "What?"

Innocent as if butter wouldn't melt in his angelic smirking mouth. "Do you want to go back to the hotel, or not?"

He can take Yuri's bag. Wants to. It might not be what a coach would do, but it's what a lover would, and that line went from blurred to non-existent the second his shoe first hit the concrete floor and sent him sprinting towards that gate. Maybe was never really there to begin with, no matter what lies he told himself.

Half-turning, now that Yuri's gone from pressed against him to tripping over his own feet a half a meter away, and tipping his head like he can't believe how long Yuri's taking. "Come on, Yuri, let's go."

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't defend himself or explain. Which really isn't anything new. Is it. He just smiles merrily, looking like he's not apologetic about the happenstance of thieving Yuri's luggage from him, at whatever point that was, and nothing like phased, about ... anything else at all. He looks like he always does. Maybe a little smugger and more unapologetic than ever. Innocent of all wrong doing.

While Yuri's cheeks are a scalded mix of mottling, and his feet are suddenly very connected to the ground, to his body. To (-- everything that is not Victor, while Victor stands that distance from and then) Victor is telling him to hurry up. Like the world isn't, hasn't, very suddenly, very recently, become a spinning top, where it does make sense no matter how fast or slow it's going, no matter where he's standing.

He might exchange it for his morning, if he was given the option.


(Except.)


Still his first point, in what feels like a very long time and the only one he can remember in a while, stands. There's only one place for him to go, and even only one person for him to go there with, even if that person is Victor, and Victor has somehow, impossibly, miraculously, also, kissed him, several times, and is walking away from him. Complaining like Yuri might be dragging his feet about them getting somewhere, or getting a day started, like any other day.

It's -- it's easier almost not to ask, even though he knows he will, already is -- and to just start walking.
If, maybe, a little to the side. A little too aware of the world everywhere suddenly. Hands shoving into his pockets.

[fivetimechamp]

There's probably something wrong with him, that he finds Yuri's exasperation with him to be nearly as cute as the surprise on his face a moment ago, the flush that still hasn't seeped back out of his cheeks. It's probably mean to tease him, probably a little cruel to egg him on, to needle him like this, but he's finding it as hard to stop as when he was little and hadn't quite figured out how his toe picks worked, yet, and just relied on the walls or other skaters.

He wants to tease. To egg. To needle, and push, and prod, and crowd Yuri back up against a wall, and take off his gloves to touch his throat with bare fingers. "I could always keep kissing you out here," he offers, the very spirit of generosity even as he's falling into step beside Yuri, the little bag wheeling cheerfully just behind. "I wouldn't mind."

He's pretty sure there's nowhere he would or could mind kissing Yuri, now that he gets to kiss Yuri. In public. In private. What does it matter? How on earth is he supposed to care even a little about the opinions of anyone walking nearby who might see?

But Yuri probably cares. It seems like the kind of thing Yuri, usually so reserved and contained, so quiet and shy and awkward around people, would care about. He's forever rolling his eyes at the way Victor dives into interactions with the people in Hasetsu, and looking startled when Victor tries to pull him in on it, and Victor's sure Yuri would prefer to keep this kind of thing to himself.

But Victor has no such reservations. If anything, he's happy for the world to see, to know, to make it real by association. Sometimes it seems like his whole life has been under the spotlight, so why should this be any different.

But Yuri would care. So Victor should care.

Still, it's fortunate that the hotel is only another block or two away.

[theglassheart]

Yuri nearly chokes. On the absolutely nothing in his mouth or throat but air.

He's not sure whether the better happenstance was that he didn't, or that he could have.


He's not sure if his ears are working right. Except that he totally heard that sentence. And the one after it. And his cheeks are doing nothing like cooling down. Nor is any other part of his body. His body that hasn't even seemed to register that it's still winter in Shanghai out here. That he'd never put on his gloves or his mask, and honestly,

if he wanted to hide the shades his cheeks are sticking he could put on his mask now.

Except that if he does, then Victor can't actually kiss him, and -- oh oh god, he wants Victor to kiss him? Again? Not out here. Not. But. He can't even bury his face in his hands. He's walking. They're walking. And who on this planet probably doesn't? And how is this even happening? To him, and at all. Why is he. Are they. Is it all from before?

Because of that choice he'd made? Because of doing Victor's flip? Somehow?

The same one Victor bragged about at the interviews, even if he's already clarified they have to work on it.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to: the sudden dull flush of red in his cheeks and the choked sound he makes is enough for Victor. Some inner devil almost pushes the words are you all right, Yuri? innocently up his throat, but he shouldn't, shouldn't. No matter how cute Yuri is with his face gone that fetching shade of cherry blossom pink. No matter how his awkward, reflexive push in towards Victor only a few moments ago when to Victor's head like champagne.

Besides, as nice as that was, he wasn't lying, before: he wants Yuri all to himself, and that will never happen out here on the sidewalk, or by pushing Yuri into locker rooms that will, sooner or later, turn out to actually have people in them.

So he settles for a chuckle that does nothing to settle the itch starting up again just under his skin, the smooth and insistent waves of heat that keep flushing up and down his arms, his throat, his chest. "You look so cute right now, Yuri."

Well, he does. Much like he did when Victor first arrived, and Yuri was a flustered ball of surprised, all pink cheeks and shining eyes and stumbling words, even while he did absolutely everything Victor required of him. Ran. Jumped. Did calisthenics. Hours of ballet. Hours of stretching. Hours of basic drills. Never once giving up or in, even when he seemed so disbelieving that it could actually be happening.

This isn't unlike those days, except Victor knows Yuri better now, and he knows not to push too far, because even if Yuri is all right with being kissed –– or, at least, is surprised enough he hasn't actually considered running away yet –– it's probably a tenuous gift.

But it should be better when they're alone. When Victor can explain, and wrap him up, and touch his cheek with his fingers, and they can figure it all out together.

(The hotel loom just ahead, thankfully close, frustratingly far.)

[theglassheart]

Yuri wants to roll his eyes, or hang his head, or find a hood on his jacket suddenly decided to exist for him. But it doesn't, and he can't tell which way he's feeling about it, when the words about him, his face, his action, he doesn't know, something about him right now, is like a slippery patch of ice under his tennis shoes, but his brain latches on to the way Victor says his name.

Differentiating it from earlier. From that low, slow, amused linger on the vowels of it.

This is almost normal, and he can't even tell if that's comforting or just picked apart for comparing.

He should say something, but it's like language is absolutely receptive to his ears, his brain, but nothing is coming back. A dull throbbing heat. In his cheeks. In his skin. Confused confliction that spills and spurs dominoes that don't seem quite able to work right still. Fingers balling up some of the cloth that make the lining of his pockets, because he has to do something. His skin is not stretched right all across him, even though it hasn't changed.

(Except it has. Except he has.


And, oh, that's stupid. It is.
There's the press of his mouth
and harder ball of his fingers.

He'd never. Not. And. Victor. Now, Victor.
Victor, from all the posters and tv.
Victor, his coach ... his friend?

Has that word has always

felt off)

He can't reach up and touch his face. His mouth. He'd never live that one down already. He's aware. Especially with Victor commenting already. He just presses his lips together. Ends up with part of the back of his lip, the loose skin beneath it between his teeth, and he even tries to force that down into a single sentence. List. He came to Shanghai. He got a personal best. He might have broken down and screamed. He got second place. He has a silver medal in that suitcase, wheeling between them. And Victor kissed him. They kissed.

Victor Nikiforov is the ... his ... first kiss. And he's a handful up from that.
While Victor. Over there. Is just teasing him about here. Right here.
About choking and flustering. About everything.
Making Yuri want to hide under something.


Like this is normal.




... Is this normal?

He doesn't have a clue. Obviously.

[fivetimechamp]

This is worse than the time he and Chris snuck a full bottle of vodka past Yakov and Josef at Worlds and wound up wandering the streets of Calgary while Victor tried to teach Chris Russian folk songs and Chris wound up stripping for an extremely appreciative hen party. It's worse than any rowdy after-party he's ever been to, worse than even just two nights ago, that rice wine-flavored haze that keeps dancing just out of reach of his memory. He's never felt drunk like this, when he hasn't had a drop of alcohol in almost two days.

All because of Yuri, and Yuri's cute blush over there, and Yuri's awkward tilt in towards him, and the joy on Yuri's face when he'd skated towards the gate in the full knowledge that he'd been excellent, outstanding. Even now that he seems to have forgotten how to talk, this giddy incoherence soaking Victor's brain and turning him into a useless fool isn't going anywhere. Nothing like how Yuri wasn't talking to him earlier today, although he has to wonder if he's going to get shouted and cried at again tonight.

That's all right. It all is, would be, as long as Yuri hasn't changed his mind. Victor can handle being yelled at, as long as he can hold onto Yuri for it. For now, Yuri can be silent if he wants, but that can only last so long: Victor has questions to ask and admissions to make and there's so much he wants to know. Why his flip? Why tonight? Was it because of what Yuri said downstairs in the garage, that he was afraid of his failures reflecting on Victor? Did it go all the back to I've always looked up to you from that morning on the beach when everything finally began to fit together? How long has it been? How long has Victor been wrong?

His pocket is buzzing, but he ignores it: texts from friends, possibly from Minako (he'll get an earful from her tomorrow for stealing Yuri away, he's sure, especially since she wasn't planning on going to Moscow with them), notifications as he's tagged in social media posts. All of it can wait, as they're walking up towards the hotel and he holds open the glass door for Yuri to head in.

[theglassheart]

The silence drags on, and Yuri doesn't know if that's good or bad. Doesn't have any clue the longer it goes on, except why? Why and why and why. It bounces around his head, confused and dizzy. He can feel his steps more as he takes them, more as everything isn't dissolving. The pain in his side is greater than everything else, but there still is an everything else. There is still all the pain and soreness of competition skate. Pulling his bones and muscles down heavy and sore, full of complaints about speed, weight, time. Mixing with that iron leaded exhaustion clinging to the bottom of his spine.

He hasn't slept in more than a day, not for lack of his or Victor's trying, which makes his glance flick to Victor.
How much more sensible would this be as a dream? If he'd just passed out somewhere, in a chair, by a wall.

(How much does that ache, confusedly, in a retort to the idea. Of not real, not Victor. Not him.)



The door gets opened and he steps through, even though his eyes drag a little on his bag, still at Victor's side, in Victor's hand, and the person behind the counter, and he goes pink, like all the world knows. Can see all of this on him. When they aren't even touching. Aren't even near each other. When for all he knows, which amounts to nothing, it might be over. He hasn't the faintest clue. But that makes his heart stumble hard into a wall, too, while he's mumbling a polite arigato for the door holding.

He's not entirely incapable of using his mouth, apparently.

But they are. At the hotel. Where the lights in the lobby are bright and butter yellow, and they are going back to their room. A thought that catches up with Yuri against the back of his teeth. A thought he's been having, without really having for the last five or ten minutes of quiet walking, and occasional glances to his side. Just at the edge of his vision, trying not to even turn his head too much.

It's so very few steps to cross the lobby and be waiting in front of the elevator, and he thinks he might be starting to have a heart attack. Again. Because they are. Going back to their room. And what does that mean? Does it mean anything? Is this over. Is it not. Now that Victor has finally subsided to his side of the sidewalk, the doorway, teasing him, enough quiet to think. Not that everything could be. He has to skate, and Victor's going to teach him his flip now. But.

But. Anything - everything - else. Wherever - whatever - this. This is. If it even is an is and isn't already past.

[fivetimechamp]

He hasn't been a real believer in years, but the elevator arriving right now seems like the hand of God itself reaching down to help him out, because Yuri has only mumbled one word at him in the last five minutes, and it was in Japanese, and it was just to be polite about him keeping to door open, and really the last thing he wants right now is for Yuri to curl up into himself like a confused and sulky hedgehog.

Not that he looks sulky. Or confused, even. But there is a distinct air as of invisible bricks going up between them, and that's probably Victor's fault for kissing him in public –– twice –– and not quite knowing what to say about it without giving in to the desire to just flirt. (But who could really blame him, when Yuri is just so! Cute! anyway?)

So the soft ding of the arriving elevator is a relief, and when no one else rushes to get on and ruin everything, it seems like a sign from the heavens above. It's not the room, locked and private, but it'll do for now, for Victor to lean Yuri's bag against the wall, and reach for Yuri's hand to tug him gently across that space he doesn't want growing between them. Not anymore. Not after everything. Space is the last thing he needs or wants. "Yuri, come here."

It's not the full body tackle onto the ice, or pushing Yuri gently but irrevocably into a door, or even getting in his way on the sidewalk: it's coaxing, a question and not a command. Free hand lifting to smooth back a piece of Yuri's bangs that fell into his face once the sweat of performing melted the gel away. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you."

A little. He doesn't care what people see or know, but Yuri has never been as comfortable with attention as he is, tends to shrink away under it like a mouse faced with a flashlight. "I just didn't want to wait any more."

The very concept is impossible, inconceivable. How could he, why would he, who could possibly have resisted the temptation?

But Yuri is sensitive, and Yuri is shy, and Yuri has never had the relationship with the world and the public that he has, so he probably shouldn't have teased so much. It's just difficult to remember, when suddenly everything is possible that was never supposed to happen to begin with.

Anyway, his smile is as appealing and winsome as he knows how to be. "Can you forgive me?"

[theglassheart]

This. This is more normal. Even if Yuri's heart gives a disturbing leap into the bars of his ribs. Painfully panicked and disturbingly relieved. But it is. It is more normal. That Victor just takes his hand, and pulls him somewhere, even while asking, like he isn't already moving Yuri wherever he wants Yuri. The fingers that raise to brush away his hair, probably everywhere. Again.

Distracting him briefly with the dark color, passing before his eyes, brushing his skin.

But then Victor apologizes, and Yuri's heart stutters. Stops.

It feels like those words barrel straight through it, lips still pressed as Victor keeps adding words to it. For embarrassing him. For not. Asking for forgiveness, and something hurts, confused, befuddled, not able to believe seconds ago, not wanting to now. When suddenly. He was. He was ... right?

While Victor is smiling, all apologetically pretty, and asking his forgiveness -- "For kissing me?"

He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand anything at all.
Definitely why it's suddenly starting to hurt everywhere.

[fivetimechamp]

Not the reaction he was expecting.

And not the clarifying question he was expecting, either, inasmuch as he was expecting one at all, and not just Yuri's exasperation at Victor's inability to remember that the world is populated with anyone other than them, and that those people were on the street with them only moments ago. "What? No."

It's a kneejerk negation, but even as it's blinking out of him, he takes a harder look at Yuri's face, how his lips press hard enough to turn the skin around them white, and thinks he's been reading this all wrong. "Yuri!"

Nearly gasped, but he can't help it, it knifes straight to his heart. The assumption. The possibility. How wrong. How desperately he needs to clear this up before he says or does absolutely anything else, because he might be sorry for embarrassing Yuri, a little, and he might be sorry for surprising Yuri, a little, and if Yuri has changed his mind then he certainly is ––

But not for that. Never for that.

He is only sorry he didn't start kissing Yuri two years ago, so that he would never have had to stop. Both hands going to Yuri's face, while he's trying to make Yuri understand through the sheer intensity of his gaze. He would never. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not as long as Yuri wants him to keep doing it. "Of course not. I'm not sorry for that."

The thought can't even take root in his mind, is rejected out of hand. "Don't you know how long I've wanted you?"

Their floor is coming up –– if he could will the elevator to slow down, he would. All he can do is hope Yuri can see the sincerity in his face, and that isn't enough, he has to show him, so even as the elevator slows and comes to the slight jounce of a halt, he leans in to prove it. That Yuri's read this wrong.

That there's nothing Victor's sorry for, except not doing this sooner.

[theglassheart]

Oh. Yes. It's absolutely certain now. He doesn't understand anything.

When Victor's eyes widen, startled, no, maybe it's shocked even, and then he's suddenly closer. Dropping Yuri's hand, and cradling the full sides of his face in those gloved fingers, staring at him with such stricken intensity Yuri doesn't even know how he's supposed to remember to breathe, or whether to start apologizing now. For anything. For everything.

After Victor has shouted his name, in this small space of theirs. Is holding his face.
Saying. Saying no. Saying he's not apologizing for kissing Yuri.


Saying.

Saying.

Saying.

Saying . . . he's been waiting to do that?
He ... wants him? Victor wants him?

He wanted to kiss Yuri before now? He.


Yuri is blinking. He doesn't even know if he's breathed in, and his eyes aren't closed this time, they go wider, but Victor is kissing him again. So close everything blots out but the pale of his skin, the cut of his cheek bones, the shape around his eyes, and the shine of his hair, eyebrow, his eyelashes, and Yuri is trembling before he can stop himself.

Everything, everything hurts and swells and falls sideways, pained, shot through with sliced need, desperate from asking, desperate from that single thought, cheeks warming, chest singing with sudden tension, even when he can't stop himself, terrified and falling and relieved, but only painfully, can't stop anything, can't stop. The way his eyes snap closed. The way he presses into Victor. Victor's lips. The way his face tips up in those hands for more, for this unnamed, confusing, absolute unknown that everything in him slams toward, more important than air or words or sense.

Right as the elevator dings behind them.

[fivetimechamp]

He couldn't have been more surprised if Yuri had hit him, but maybe he shouldn't be. Hadn't he said, back then ––

Have you ever thought about love?

–– and Yuri had just shook his head. Said he'd never had a sweetheart before. No girlfriends, no lovers. Had never even thought about it.

At the time, Victor had assumed that was only confirmation of Yuri's brush-off the night of the banquet: that it was just a game for him, and he'd never thought about taking it anywhere off the dancefloor or outside the ballroom. He's less sure now, when what he'd meant as light teasing had instead made Yuri think ––

As if he could ever ––

But Yuri pushes back into him now, mouth pressing up against Victor's in a way that's both unpracticed and intoxicating, a little clumsy, a lot needy, making a surprised and delighted sound come tugging out of the back of Victor's throat that almost makes him forget about the sound of the door opening behind him. (Not entirely, though. Isn't that what he just was apologizing for? Kissing Yuri in public?)

Pulling back, but not before placing another kiss on Yuri's mouth like a signature or a stamp on a letter, one hand dropping to take Yuri's, and the other reaching for the bag handle to pull it along as he directs them both towards the open door and the empty hallway.

Shaking his head, still at a loss. "Why would you think that?"

He wants to know. Has to know. Needs to be able to make sure that thought never crosses Yuri's mind again, as long as Yuri is only worried that Victor might regret kissing him, and not that Victor is kissing him without Yuri's permission or enthusiastic participation.

But he'd thought he made his own inclinations towards kissing Yuri pretty clear, so if they haven't been, he's bound and determined to get them ironed out right now, if not right here (the room is only feet away, after all) before any more mistakes can be made.

[theglassheart]

He doesn't want this to end. Doesn't want to listen. Not even when something, some -- a sound, amused? -- comes from Victor, and Yuri can feel his cheeks getting hotter. Any sound shattering the silence of the elevator suddenly self-conscious and wrong. Maybe all wrong. Maybe he should pull back. If Victor is laughing at him?

Which still, still doesn't change that there's almost something helplessly, embarrassing, shamefully, like a whine or a whimper vibrating against the top of his chest, the bottom of his throat, when Victor pulls away, then kisses him again, fast as a breath, and the pulls away again. Hand taking his and leading him from the elevator, back to the elegant and empty hallway of endless doors, where people could emerge at any second.

Where Yuri has no choice but to follow.

His feet doing it before his head can even catch up to.

His hand feels. Like it isn't his. Warm. Too warm. Pressed in that glove.

Victor asking that question, and Yuri can't even help but fumble. The way he's looking down more than up, and he doesn't even know how. How to press his lips back together. How his own mouth works. Like he's been carrying it every day for years and never knew anything about it. "You just said you were sorry."

Before kissing Yuri. Again. Twice. Leaving him. He doesn't even know.

Drifting. Barely connected to his feet, his skin, the world, anything that made sense.

[fivetimechamp]

This is like and not like trying to talk to Yuri in the garage –– was that only a little over an hour ago? how is that possible? –– but while he wants to get to the bottom of it, he has to tread more carefully.

Maybe he had to shatter the tension in the garage, and break Yuri's heart to fix Yuri's head, but cracking any part of this delicate eggshell he's balancing is the last thing he wants to do right now. If he hurts Yuri now, even by accident, even with the best of intentions, even if it's only by miscommunication and misunderstanding, he'd never forgive himself.

So he watches Yuri glance down at the floor and struggle with his thoughts, looking like he wants to push his fingers together and never meet Victor's eyes again, and he weighs his response in his head as he lets go of Yuri's hand to fish for the key card in his pocket and unlock the door. "I was only sorry if I embarrassed you on the street, Yuri."

There's a satisfying click and the light turns green, and Victor wishes he could navigate this as easily. Well, maybe he can: this misconception is one he can clear up quickly and without confusion.

He hopes.

The handle turns easily under his hand, and he pushes the door open for Yuri, waits to follow him in. The room is dark and quiet and as the door clicks softly closed behind him, he feels something else click open in his chest to breathe and unfurl, even as he's leaning Yuri's bag near the closet, slipping off his gloves, shrugging off his coat to hang it. "I know you aren't as comfortable in public as I am."

He should change out of his suit, or at least slip off his shoes, but what he does is go to take Yuri's hand –– finally able to feel his fingers and palm and the soft skin right at the wrist –– and lead him gently over to sit on the edge of the bed, Victor's near leg tucked up so he can face Yuri. "I don't care who sees or what they think. I'm not ashamed of how I feel."

The whole world could know and comment, and it probably will, and he still wouldn't care about anything but the way Yuri looks at him with trust, and how fiercely he wants to protect that. "But I was sorry if I made you uncomfortable. And if you changed your mind, I'll be sorry if I kissed you without permission. But if you haven't..."

Now he does smile, a little, drawing all his lifetime experience of charm and appeal to the forefront. "You should know I plan to keep doing it."

[theglassheart]

They are here. Here. Here.

Victor has his card. The door clicks. The light pops. Victor opens it.

Yuri can feel every single millimeter of the air he pulls in through his nose and fills his lungs. It's cold and still, and everything Victor isn't, even though Victor's not touching him anymore. When his feet are taking tentative steps and he can't remember if he ever felt this way the first time he stepped into the first hotel they had to share.

Like he doesn't remember how to go past the first fifteen steps, or that his stuff is everywhere in this room, too. He stands there listening to Victor explain, speak, words getting slowly more and more drowned by his heartbeat turning back to too fast. Watching


And Yuri does stop. He's stops still, Victor's hand still in his, but he doesn't cross those last two feet, not even at the tug of that hand in his, and he's not even sure his brain can function past this image. Of Victor holding his hand. Victor sitting on the bed, sliding his leg under himself. The bed as every part of his vision behind and around Victor.

Except that it becomes a sling shot the next second. Flinging everything in every direction, from everywhere exploding. With Chris' skate this evening, and his slinky, bright catsuit. With Victor's lips at his ear, at the back of his neck. With seduce me with everything you have and you seduced me, and every childish, suddenly sharply, hardly comparable, thought he'd had during Eros, that wasn't even this.

Victor. Victor sitting there.

Victor. Perfect. Beautiful. Gorgeous.

That face, and that body, and everything Yuri has not thought about, or tried not, and done well enough with not. Except for those seldom seconds, and sometimes the words he chose, his favorite training and performance phrase, and the occasional hazy, stupid dream. That didn't change who he was. That he was. Him.

Everyone in the world died for, wanted, Victor Nikiforov.
Everyone in the world for jump at the chance to be asked by.

Trying to tug him down. On to a bed. Saying he didn't plan to stop.

While everything in him freezing into place, while it feels like it's screaming at the same second, because he can't look away from Victor's face. Victor's face that is so open, and so warm. This charming and disarming smile that he wants to fall into. That any other day he'd follow, heartbeat hesitation-less, absolutely certain, ready to talk about the day, and maybe fall on his bed, steal a pillow, curl around it and complain about everything he got wrong, every ache in his feet, find the way to let it show how proud of everything he got right, too, somewhere in there.

But it's not that. This. This. None of this is that.

Victor's fingers on his hand feeling completely different. His smile.
It makes everything feel lost, and not enough, so very suddenly. He isn't. Enough.

It's sour and his throat is sticking and for the first time in his whole life he wishes it wasn't true, he wasn't himself, that maybe he's never wanted something to be suddenly so untrue, or ever wanted so badly, just Victor, suddenly Victor, and his voice has a shake to it, when he can't stop it, and it's not even at a normal volume. "I can't -- I haven't -- I've never --"

It wouldn't even be enough to sink through the carpet at the last word.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri allows himself to be tugged, which Victor takes as a small victory, but his expression is still troubled enough that Victor's not sure he's hearing anything Victor is trying to say at all, and he doesn't come to sit. If anything, he seems even more tense now that they're alone, which doesn't seem right, if he'd wanted to get away from people ...

But trying to guess is only going to land Victor in hot water, so he hauls his assumptions back from the teetering brink and sets them back down on a relatively sturdy surface. Even if his hand tightens in Yuri's a little, reflexively, at the words I can't.

Followed by stammered haven't and never, and he'll have to clear up what exactly Yuri's referencing here, but first, he needs Yuri to stop looking around like the shadows in the room are going to come to life and leap at him over Victor's shoulder. Even more, he needs to determine what exactly it is Yuri can't do. If it's allowing himself to be kissed again ––

(Cold rocks settling in Victor's stomach at the thought, threatening to seal a frozen stone wall across his throat.)

–– or ... something else. Whatever else it could be. "You can't what?"

He's spent eight months coaching and coaxing Yuri, and he's learned that Yuri can't always respond well to orders, that sometimes Yuri needs to be led along carefully, like a young horse just being broken to tack.

But he also can't allow any room for misinterpretation, here. If this goes wrong, Yuri won't be the only one who breaks. "Kiss me?"

[theglassheart]

The look he gives Victor is slightly sick and almost defeated, because, or, and, but that isn't exactly the point. He's kissed Victor. He had. He'd already kissed Victor. He can't ever undo that. Unfeel it. It's feels branded on to his skin, burned into his mind.




Even if maybe it is, too. Hadn't Victor laughed?


Even if Victor just said he didn't plan to stop either.
Victor, whose face had grown suddenly so very serious.

Victor, whose hand had tightened on his, where it stretched between them still.

[fivetimechamp]

His smile curves, pauses, falters, and begins to fade. A thin line draws itself between his eyebrows, and those rocks in his belly begin tumbling over one another, freezing portions of his stomach lining and making it suddenly difficult to breathe.







"Did you change your mind?"

[theglassheart]

He doesn't understand why that question makes his chest hurt. He's not sure he's made a single decision in the last hour. Not on purpose. Not thought about anything and done it, except this absolute necessity to fold himself into Victor, to kiss him back once he'd even figured out what was happened. Too slow and too stupid, even in that,

When had he made any decision to ever take one back.

The idea of even making one is what has him stuck, has everything snapping.

"That isn't the point." It's not. It's not. It's not. It doesn't matter what he wants -- if he wants this -- wants Victor, and even that is insane, insane, insane. "You're --" Victor. He's Victor Nikiforov. "-- you -- and everything you've already --"

And, oh, he doesn't swear, but he almost wishes he could. Swear, and scream, and bury his head into a pillow. Because it hits him viciously. How many time Victor probably has. How many people. Even selectively. Even not for long. No one else who would be standing here, like an idiot, frozen, arguing, like Yuri. Who doesn't deserve any of this, or understand in the slightest. All of it is wrong, and all of it hurts.

Victor, who has no issues with any of this. Victor, who has skated things like this. Wrote made Eros and gave it to Yuri.

"-- and I've never even --" Kissed someone until minutes ago, and he's trying to pull his hand back.
He just wants to wrap his arms around himself. Curl his fists by his sides. Vanish. Hide. Stop existing.

[fivetimechamp]

Victor is blinking at him.

(Sometimes Victor thinks his entire life has come down to blinking at Yuri. How could one, small, shy Japanese skater surprise him so much and so often?)

Blinking, and listening, and trying to put the ends of the sentences Yuri isn't finishing together, along with this look of frustration and the way he pulls his hand out of Victor's, which should be a sign that Victor was right and the answer is no, but somehow doesn't feel that way.

Not with that isn't the point, with which Victor would beg to disagree, he consider it to be the main point, perhaps the only point. Not with you're ... you, which makes even less sense.

But there's that I never again, but this time there's that last word after it, and there's a brief silence as Victor's hand floats, empty, in the space between them, and he can almost hear in the silence of the room the copper clink of the penny dropping.

"Yuri..."

It's not that he's surprised. Or, well, he is. But. He should have thought of it. Nearly had, a few moments ago, without putting much weight behind the thought, but he hadn't thought –– not never ––

"Was that your first kiss?"

[theglassheart]

Then. Suddenly. It's out there.



It's in the air. In Victor's voice, and Yuri's heart is in his shoes.
The floor isn't nice enough to suck him down and envelop him.

Everything hurts, and the truth is brutal. It's always been brutal. Shameful. That's not new, is it? And yet nothing compares. It doesn't matter if there's a medal somewhere behind him, or a good portion of his body that hates him, standing here, standing still. That win, that pain. They don't exist next to those words in the air. His shoulders just crumple as his face gets so much hotter, no place to run, no place to hide, just that truth between him and Victor, like every other divide.

"Gomen," falls out of his mouth, incapable of being anything other than it's lost itself.

The level of how much he could make a fool of himself, in his life, defying new limits.

[fivetimechamp]

Barely a step away, Yuri crumples, and the answer is stamped across his face even before it appears as that mumbled apology, but Victor can't really parse it at all, because something in the back of his head just went puttt and he has lost the ability to think. Relief flooding like stepping into the hot spring, warm water everywhere, chasing goosebumps up his skin and shoving him up off the bed in a quick motion that barely even registers.

Is that it? Is that all?

He was. And Yuri hadn't. First. First. The only one to ever.

There are dull thudding explosions happening inside his chest, and he could be wrong, but he's pretty sure the lights of Shanghai have suddenly gone up in a blaze of fireworks, because all he sees around Yuri's face are hazy, sparkling flashes. If his eyes were replaced by huge and shining cartoon hearts, they couldn't be anymore of an open door into the way his heart is bursting. He was Yuri's first kiss. And Yuri is standing here looking ashamed of it, as if Victor could possibly care, as if it matters at all, as if that might be some sort of dealbreaker. "Oh, Yuri."

Standing there looking like he wants the floor to swallow him, and it is well past the legal limits of what should be considered adorable, but Victor doesn't care, can't, can only lift his hand to the spot on his chest under which his heart is cracking into a thousand glowing pieces. Relief turned him on his head, all the fears and worries and uncertainties of a moment ago washed away in the same flash flood that seems to have obliterated his sanity, as well. "I'm honored."

It's all he can say before he's pressing himself close and his hands have found Yuri's face again, thumbs tracking along the line of his jaw ––

(his skin is soft and warm and it sends a hard shake down along his arms, into his shoulders and back)

–– and kisses him again. And again.

And again.