{ 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]

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.

[theglassheart]

Yuri has never felt like this. He keeps coming back to that thought. But it doesn't hurt this time. It's soft, and warm, and golden. The way Victor is soft, and warm, and golden, when his forehead shifts to Yuri's shoulder, pressing in against his neck, his hand stopping, arms wrapping Yuri, and he's never felt like this. He never knew anything like this feeling existed.

This warm and soft. This ... right and safe.
Like he ever held something this precious.

Like he was ever trusted enough, or good enough.

While Victor huffs a slow, warm (causing him to shiver) breath into his shoulder, the bare skin of his neck (maybe more sensitive for so much focus on it) relaxing into him, into holding on to him, like it's all Victor's ever wanted. To hug him (hold? hold him?) like this. This thing Yuri has no name and no comparison to, and suddenly never wants to let go of when his nose, and cheek, and jaw is left against Victor's hair for the shift.

That huff of breath. This hold of Victor's arms around him. The way Victor's shoulders relax down, pulling Yuri's arms around his neck down, slowly with them, and that breath. When Yuri just wants to drift away, forget everything else he ever thought he knew, or needed, or felt that isn't just this, filling every hole and space and piece of him. Making him close his eyes and tighten his arms, gently. Tucking his face down against Victor.

He doesn't understand how he could mean any of these things to Victor, even half of the way to the words he'd said, this isn't a dream, but he doesn't want to let go. Wants to believe, even just so far as maybe Victor is feeling this thing. This thing that is in every part of his body, just as important, maybe more, than the rushes that spike and fall.

Yuri's nose wrinkling and mouth grimacing into Victor's soft hair against his face, at the reminder, at these words that sound like Victor is going to let go. Victor is probably right, and Yuri, reluctantly opens his eyes, looking over at the tray. The one he'd carefully set his cup on and then forgotten as entirely when he'd pushed up to get to Victor as Victor had shoved it away to get to him.

But Victor doesn't let go, doesn't pull from being curled into him, and Yuri says quietly, to his hair, to warmth against his neck, to Victor, Victor, Victor, here in his arms, wrapped around him, "We're lucky it hasn't fallen."

The both of them. Forgetting everything that wasn't ... this?

[fivetimechamp]

That's true, and it gets a faint rumble of a sound that barely makes it past Victor's chest in response, and he does move. Just not to save the tray.

No, his knees are sore from being knelt on for too long, supporting his weight and part of Yuri's, and they complain now more than the used to, so when he does let go, it's only with one arm, to lean back and prop himself up while he shifts. Legs uncurling from underneath him, the right bending flat against the comforter, right foot under his left knee, which conveniently gives him an excellent spot to draw Yuri into, as his left leg bends to wall him in, leaving Victor sitting half cross-legged and half sprawling. It drops him another few inches, even as he's pulling Yuri onto him as if he's more of a stuffed teddy bear for Victor to hold onto than a skater with elbows and knees and a bruised hip and, potentially, free will.

Yuri might scramble. He might pull away. He might poke at Victor and tease. He can do whatever he wants, it's all fine: but Victor wants to hold onto him a little while longer, even if Yuri's weight will eventually cut off the circulation in his leg.

He doesn't care. From this angle, he can wrap his arms around Yuri's ribs and settle his head back on Yuri's shoulder, and all it takes to ghost a kiss over Yuri's throat is to tip his head just slightly and let his mouth run across the skin right there. "In a minute."

Muffled into Yuri's shirt and skin, while Victor sighs like a dog that has just managed to tamp out the perfect circular bed into a blanket, after turning around and around and around before getting to collapse boneless and satisfied.

[theglassheart]

Victor moves and it only narrowly doesn't make Yuri groan in disappointment, start shifting his weight, to realize Victor is only looking down. Making him pause and look down to where Victor is moving his legs. Not to stand, but to drop down onto the bed. Getting off his knees, but not to his feet. Sitting down on the bed itself. It's a confusing move, enough that Yuri doesn't seen it coming.

When Victor reaches out and pulls him in, suddenly, next. "Victor!"

When Yuri's body, under him, with dawning awareness flails, and everything he's been doing good to create equilibrium with the pressure and the pain and everything that was Victor and seemed so much more important. Movement sends that out, with a number of aching bursts of pain all along his ankles, his knees, that hip, and his spine.

His weight tumbles, knees sliding unprepared, while Victor just positions him on top of Victor's own legs. He doesn't know if it's that Victor isn't listening, or that everything goes spotty shortly. His hands tighten on Victor's shoulders with a red-faced grumble while he tries to unfold a little now that everything of his body is a small throbbing mass, to straighten his abused legs with a small pop on each side of Victor like little inhuman shoots rocketing out.

But Victor doesn't seem to notice, doesn't seem to care. Is already pressed right back to his shoulder. Is pressing a kiss into the soft skin of Yuri's throat, making Yuri shiver and shift despite all else, and sighing into him like this was the only thing Victor had ever meant to consider really. Yuri lets out a breath, arms resting across the flat of Victor's shoulders, with some exasperation, "You're impossible."

As though clarification was required. "I am not the tray."

Even if there's exasperation, as the shock fades there's no surprise in it though.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri can use his name as an exclamation, he can call Victor impossible and annoying, he can be as exasperated as he wants, as long as he does the rest: resettles himself on Victor's lap, arms still around him, shiver when Victor presses a kiss to his throat.

As long as he doesn't pull away, it's all fine, and he can complain and disparage to his heart's content.

But he doesn't pull away. Even when he's grumbling that comment, and trying to shift to a comfortable spot while Victor's legs cross underneath him, he's not actually trying to get away, and maybe that's as eloquently stated by the grin Victor gives him when he pulls back just enough to look up into Yuri's face. Yuri, who just called him impossible in a way that meant you are impossibly terrible, who is reminding him that he isn't the tray that Victor had just been commenting on.

While Victor just gazes up at him, smiling, and smiling. "No?"

As if butter wouldn't melt. Head tipped back, and eyes on Yuri's face, and he's pretty sure the Orthodox Church frowns on worshiping anyone other than God Himself, but that's what this feels like. Worship. The sort of saturated adoration he had always found to be romantic but improbable in so many ballets, operas, classic works of literature. He'd never fully understood why someone might throw themselves under a train simply because they married the wrong person, but this last year, the last hour, the last ten seconds have all proved him wrong. "So you're saying I should let you go to get the tray, instead?"

It's ridiculous. Absurd. He knows he's being patently idiotic, that he may well have simply lost his mind, but he can't find it in himself to care, only wants to keep looking up at Yuri, while Yuri allows him to hold on, while Yuri's arms are around him, while his mouth is still buzzing from Yuri's skin and Yuri's kiss.

His smile is going, really, absolutely nowhere.

[theglassheart]

Victor looks up, only smiling, his eyes still bright as stars, and it really was the right word.

Impossible. In every definition. Impossible is the word for Victor. It always has been. For the people skating after him, as he broke every record, and then only came back around to break his own records time and time and time, again. For the people standing on the sidelines for a single glance of him passing them behind ropes, or skating in front of them in some part of the season, for every reason.

When Yuri feels impossibly accosted by Victor's face, looking up from being pressed into his shoulder, his neck for that faint kiss, being as gorgeous as it is, pale skin and silver frame of hair, and his eyes, that are just so bright, this close, this clear, while he just smiles like he's never had an impure or ulterior thought in his life. It's impossible that he's real, and impossible that Yuri is here, and impossible that there's nothing in Yuri's head but the word impossible and the urge to reach out and touch Victor's impossible face again.

Even while he's teasing Yuri, as though Yuri might be wrong. He might actually be the tray first.

Before asking, without moving, without so much as shifting or tilting or looking away, if he should. Let go. Get the tray.

When Yuri's fingers tighten reflexively, like traitors, against Victor's shoulders and neck in some combination, perhaps, both of not wanting to be let go of so quickly, but, also, of half preparing to hold on if the next second Victor just upended the gravity of the world again, only these seconds later, and dropped him on the bed, as unceremoniously as he'd dragged Yuri on to his lap. Or something.

It is a little embarrassing that this close he can't really disguise things like that.

The smallest tic's of movement that on any other day, any other place -- even like this morning and before he skated -- he could just push his hands into his pockets, or under tables, even just against himself, and it'd be hidden. Only he'd ever know. But he can't, and maybe that does send a soft flash of embarrassed pink to just the very tops of his cheeks, exasperated at himself as much as at Victor for being Victor and being something Yuri's never found a true last defense against.

There's something just faintly rueful that touches his voice because of it. "If you meant to."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri says that, but his fingers tighten like he's anticipating the need to hang on, and Victor really had no idea that his smile could actually grow this wide. It's a realization which is immediately reconsidered, because there's soft pin touching Yuri's cheeks, and that only makes everything worse. Or better, depending on the criteria used, he supposes.

He thinks it's better. He had no idea how much better better could be, because as many times as he'd thought about this and daydreamed about it and longed for it in the middle of the night, when even Maccachin abandoned him (and how unfair, that Maccachin could so easily, casually, slip into Yuri's room and curl up with him without worry or fear of rejection?), he'd never really thought it could happen. It wasn't even on his list when he first arrived, expecting the Yuri from YouTube or the one from the ballroom. If someone had told him then that he would be perfectly happy, beyond happy, find absolute, perfect content in simply drawing Yuri into his arms and into his lap and curling around him, he would have rolled his eyes and sent them back to their romance novels and improbably cheesy movies.

And yet, here he is. Perfectly content. Feeling like this space in his lap and against his chest was always supposed to be taken up by a slim, warm body. Like his arms were always meant to wrap around this torso, his hands were always supposed to fit on the flats of these shoulder blades, the small of this back, the slight, hard curves of this waist. Aware, all of a sudden, of the nape of his own neck in a way he never had thought about it before, because nothing ever touched it aside from his shirt collars and scarves.

But Yuri's fingers are there now, and it's amazing: how had he never thought about the nape of his neck before? How had he not known how many nerves are there, lighting quietly to life under Yuri's touch, springing to attention and complaining for more?

How is it possible that he loves this annoyance on Yuri's face almost as much as he loved that dazed, starry-eyed desire stripped bare only a few moments ago? How was that only a few moments ago? How does it exist, at all?

But he does. Love it. Yuri's fingers tightening, and Yuri blushing and looking aggravated immediately after, like his fingers gave him away, and Victor's sure he'll never be able to get enough of this. Not if he soaked in it for a thousand lifetimes.

Yuri wants him. And Yuri can't stop himself from holding onto him. Victor's sure this is a drug he'll never stop craving. "In a minute."

Repeating himself, when his hands are flattening against Yuri's back and coaxing him to lean down, while Victor leans up to kiss him again.

[theglassheart]

The pain doesn't leave, it never does, but it becomes less glaring. Seconds passing and it goes back down from screeching panic and the newest versions of impact, of folding and unfolding and settling, lessens to that steady throb of bearable unhappiness, muffled a little by time and not so great as earlier even then, which means the pills are working even if the strain of being on his knees has left it lit up.

More than that by Victor, who can't stop smiling. Victor who, honestly, looks like he's just the shade and space of a second away from laughing at Yuri's stupid giving away of himself. When he finds himself, just for a too-aware second, looking for the hard edge of it in Victor's eyes, Victor's smile. The part that is laughing at him, at his inability to even control his own hands. But he doesn't find it there. Victor simply looks happy with it.

(No, Victor had said, without hesitation. When he'd tried to put into words all his shortcomings here.)

Victor who looks delighted at Yuri's mutually proven culpability in this detour from agreed responsibility.

Delighted and tugging him down, and Yuri is thinking that he's gone useless, helpless to fight things. That maybe he doesn't want to at all when his lips brush Victor's. That even if his cheeks can't have stopped being pink, he's not entirely embarrassed about his all too obvious slip, if it made Victor want to kiss him again. Everything slip, slip, sliding away except the pressure of Victor's lips, soft and pleased, and his own hands spreading, like a cracked door being pushed wider open, gently back over more of Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

The problem is, he's not sure how to let go of Yuri.

The problem is, there's a tray of food and tea on the bed –– or what's left of it, anyway –– that he needs to put back out in the hall. There's the dry cleaning bag on the other bed that has Yuri's costumes in it, with the note that he never managed to finish sitting somewhere on the floor, wherever it floated to when he dropped it in his haste to get to Yuri, and those need to go outside, too. There are alarms to set, and there's the program to go over, and he should let Yuri get an early night, after Yuri didn't sleep well, and there's tomorrow's exhibition to think about.

Not to mention a plane to catch for Moscow, and rink time to confirm once they get there.

There's so much to do, and all of that is only the smallest percentage, the most immediate, most important things, and he can't bring himself to do so much as move that damn tray, because it would require letting go of Yuri ... and the problem is, he's not sure how to.

When really it's a question of want, and not how, and letting go of Yuri is the very last thing he wants to do, now that he has him, but can he really be blamed? After the last two years, and eight months, is there anyone who would blame him, if they were in his situation?

Yuri on his lap, annoyed but not at him. Yuri leaning down to kiss his mouth, because Victor wanted him to. Yuri's hands spreading over more of his back, his shoulders, the back of his neck, where Yuri's thumb against his bare skin makes him shake like he'd stepped outside, buck naked and soaked to the bone, into St. Petersburg's coldest winter night.

Yuri who wants him, back. And just how is he ever supposed to get used to that thought, that new reality? When did it happen? Has it always been there? Was he wrong, after all, all those months ago?

His hand coming up to brush the back of his knuckles over Yuri's jaw, his cheek, his ear, before fingers slip into just barely damp hair, and he's still not sure how to even begin believing all this is real, but this is the best start he knows.

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

(Would anything really be different, then?

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but the words weren't right.

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

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

"You look lost in thought."

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

He wonders how it would be possible not to.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[fivetimechamp]

"Oh?"

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

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

Referring to yourself, for example.

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

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