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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.
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.
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Date: 2017-04-21 04:16 pm (UTC)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?
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Date: 2017-04-21 04:49 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-21 06:03 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-22 04:28 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-22 01:09 pm (UTC)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."
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Date: 2017-04-22 02:36 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-22 03:04 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-23 03:12 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-23 03:43 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-23 04:01 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-23 04:51 am (UTC)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
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Date: 2017-04-23 11:31 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-23 12:43 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-23 01:16 pm (UTC)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."
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Date: 2017-04-23 01:50 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-04-24 01:02 am (UTC)"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?"
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Date: 2017-04-24 12:29 pm (UTC)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."
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Date: 2017-04-24 06:05 pm (UTC)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.)
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Date: 2017-04-24 08:08 pm (UTC)"Not all of them are appropriate." Obvious winnowing away of that pile that English didn't have, and even Victor seems distantly surprised about, even in that expression that he thought was questioning why that was his thought. How it connected to anything right before. "As a man. To a situation."
A barely there pause. "This situation."
He'd meant more about there being specific ones that were more professionally, and other more personal, but even at that, this situation -- this situation was far more ... intimate than most of those counts even. This. Him sitting here on Victor's lap, this close, hands on each other. The kissing.
The next hesitation actually is.
But Yuri lets go of one of Victor's shoulders, pulling back his arm, to lay that hand over Victor's on his neck. It's silly, he knows. That he's already touching so much of Victor it shouldn't make him pause, even while still in Victor's lap, in the curl of his arm, to touch a different part of Victor. On purpose. While thinking about it.
"This--" There's a faint pressure of his fingers on the hand there, and he can feel it. The pressure on his skin. "--one is fine in both." Even if it makes him sort of blush, the wrong meaning touching his head. He means the word earlier. The I foundered in his sudden disagreement with his own mouth. When he started, before he tried to separate them.
He lifts his hand a second later, dropping it even further, to place it sideways across the center of his own chest. "This would be different."
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Date: 2017-04-24 09:37 pm (UTC)Solemn, maybe. Earnest. Like if Victor took any of this too lightly, he'd crack right in half and clam up, never to speak again, never to touch Victor with this so careful, so gentle hand, cool fingers and soft skin. Saying this. Hand over Victor's hand. Meaning ... maybe ... Victor touching him? The situation that made this touch possible?
There's a pause that makes him wonder if he's supposed to respond, if he should know what to say, or ask, or do, and he's racking his brain before Yuri's hand lifts again, and lands on his own chest, over his heart. This.
A this that is easy to recognize, even if Victor still isn't sure what the difference is meant to be, but he knows this. This feeling in his own chest expanding, trying to crack through ribs to reach Yuri's hand, to say I know, I know, me too. This sharp and sweet and too painful thing that has kept him up and pulled him down and dragged him halfway across the world because it could never be satisfied.
He doesn't know if Yuri means love or if Yuri means heart or if Yuri means the secret inner workings of themselves, that makes them themselves, that they mine for programs and carve out onto the ice and offer up to the love and judgment and hands of the people watching them ––
But maybe it doesn't matter.
His own hand lifting from Yuri's neck a moment later, to land over the hand on Yuri's chest, longer fingers wrapping lightly around Yuri's palm. "Is this ––"
Index finger tapping on Yuri's chest, light. "–– the one you mean?"
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Date: 2017-04-25 02:43 am (UTC)"We have different words for it." Words that were, also, other words, but had nuances and were this, too. "They're--"
Except he doesn't want to say that anymore, even when his mouth is saying it. Because he's not sure it matters.
Not when Victor's fingers are wrapped around his hand, and Victor is tapping his chest light, but like a small brand, like Yuri's shirt and Yuri's hand are maybe not even there. Skipping steps, and translations, and explanations. Making his heart race with something that is fear and more, so much more, so many other bigger things. Pulling his words out of his hands, just by Victor putting his hand on him.
When his fingers curved under to try and wrap around Victor's fingertips, and the urge to pull him in, pull him closer makes no sense. There is no closer than the centimeters to his chest. There is no closer than how close they are already sitting. Victor's already so close, and too close, and not close enough all at once, when Yuri nods, caught in the urge that says closer still.
Because he had meant this. At the beginning, and then, again, at the end.
Because he still meant every part of it he hadn't gotten to say, because it was wrong inspecific.
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Date: 2017-04-25 03:39 am (UTC)Either way, his smile turns gentle, palm warm and steady over the back of Yuri's hand, the both of them protective over Yuri's heart. "Different, but not different?"
That's not how it worked for him. There was nothing, and then there was everything, and his whole world turned on an instant and on a single touch, a single glance, a single hour. One of thousands. Millions. And even though things have changed since then, since this spring, he's not sure it would count as feeling the same, but different, regardless of how he references himself.
But maybe not. There's a slight wistful tinge to the corners of his smile, even as his fingers tuck themselves under Yuri's, and his thumb runs along the back of Yuri's wrist. "I don't know if I completely understand."
He doesn't. But. "But I know this."
Tapping on Yuri's chest again, because he can't lean down to place a kiss there, over the I that Yuri meant, that doesn't fit into English and probably wouldn't into Russian, either. To him, the self is all once complicated organism, inner and outer, superficial and complex, mundane and sublime. He's always found his feelings as friends, or sometimes as hurtful enemies, but always recognizable, always familiar.
(Even if he hasn't always wanted to accept it right away.)
But he knows the sensation. The feeling of a separate self, a wayward idealist living in his chest and masquerading as his heart. And he knows the words are difficult to find, even in the tongue he grew up with.
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Date: 2017-04-25 04:41 am (UTC)His fingers tighten, the same way it feels like his ribs do, because he could just agree. He could roll along. He could say nothing and follow Victor. Follow the soft expression on his face, and the soft brush of one of Victor's fingers having found his wrist. Brushing back and forth, so soft and distracting, over his pulse.
"This part doesn't feel different." Not just the words, and not him unchanged, but not new.
How he felt about Victor. That it wasn't some magical shift and switch. Every touch was new. Every reaction. But. Under it. He still wanted to make Victor proud, to show Victor he'd been worth all his sacrifices. He could feel the way he still found Victor exasperating, surprising, impatient, annoying, beyond the highest bar of inspiring, incomparable, beautiful and smart as he was forgetful and arrogant, affectionate, safe, trustable, over-excitable. "It -- I still feels like I did."
"Before." Before this room. Before Victor kissed him. Before this morning and two days ago.
He's not sure how far before reaches to. Which day, where, it started.
How long he's possibly been pushing it back. Drowning it.
He knows when it wasn't, back when he couldn't let Victor in, couldn't dream Victor would ever want to see the real him, but he's here, now, and it's everywhere all around him, in every thought, every feeling, like it's always been right there, all around him, inside of him, for so long it's like it's just been waiting for him to catch up and open his eyes.
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Date: 2017-04-25 11:55 am (UTC)So Yuri's felt like this ... here, in the center of himself ... for how long?
Since the start? Victor's not sure he believes that, entirely, given what did and didn't happen over that first year and a half, or even when he first came to Hasetsu. Yuri hadn't looked like his heart was giving him any trouble then, except in the sense that it might have been dismayed by the amount of physical labor it suddenly had to do.
Even if there were some times when Victor caught him looking over, a strange and uncertain look on his face. Something that went along with I've always looked up to you and I didn't want you to see my shortcomings, but not this. Not the way Yuri was just pushed against him, or how he's settled on Victor now, or how his cheeks keep going pink but his eyes are shining, the way they sometimes do when he can't find the words but is filled with something, an idea he can't describe or wants to keep close to himself.
But he's saying it isn't different. This. And Victor's trying to understand, because Yuri is trying to tell him something. Answer that question that feels unimportant now, even if it felt so all-consuming only moments ago, and probably will again later, when Yuri isn't right here, physical proof that things have changed. "What does?"
If this isn't different. But he'd said something was, too.
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Date: 2017-04-25 12:23 pm (UTC)It's almost disorienting how fast it all can become frustration. Disappointment.
(But at least he's well versed in that shift? Those feelings. Their weight.)
That he'd gotten there, back there, and it seemed almost right, except that now it looked like it'd gotten lost on the way there, too. Or maybe it never made sense when he did finally try to say it. Or maybe it made as little sense to say as it was to try and question the inside of his head, his feelings, as though someone else was ever going to find the questions and echo back a clear answer up for him.
He wants to sigh. He's not sure there is another way, if he arleady managed to bungle this one up, and the first one, when it was freshest and most direct, and least understood. Language is clumsy, and it feels like the answer is all over him, in his skin as well as on top of it, and somehow he still didn't get it right.
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