{ 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]

Yuri's fingers reach the far edge of his collar, and start tracking slowly back, and Victor's pretty sure he could fall asleep right here, just like this, under that touch. Head on Yuri's stomach, instead of his chest like it was earlier, arms wrapped all the way around him, every conscious thought slowly drifting along with that light touch.

But he can't fall asleep, because Yuri is still talking. Talking more, even, expanding on a few words that drop like pebbles and expand outwards in quiet ripples, and finally give Victor something to grasp onto, something to try and fix. "That isn't stupid."

None of it is. He might find it more alarming if Yuri did know what to say, considering. "I know that may sound useless, but it's still true."

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow and content. Yuri smells clean and Yuri's shirt smells like Yuri, and it's a heady combination, leaves him wanting to bury his face into Yuri's stomach and never resurface. "I think it's probably pretty normal."

From his own limited experience, and what he's heard and seen. "It's complicated, and not everyone is good at talking about it." Maybe most aren't. How many novels and poems and operas in Russia end tragically simply because the characters residing in them have no idea how to say what they feel?

"If you want ... pick something small, and focus on it. Like when we started working on your step sequence, remember?" Drilling each piece step by step, until the whole thing came together in a single, fluid, perfect sweep. "And go from there."

[theglassheart]

Millions and millions of plays and stories, operas and ballets, tv shows and movies were not written about this as something perfect and magical, when it all went right, for that to sound like it made any extra sense. Even if those are all just stories, like all the stories they weave and spin, mining for three or five perfect minutes on the ice, or to entertain themselves with off of it, it still feels stupid.

Like it makes even less sense the whole world is dedicated to these things if everyone in them feeling stupid and useless is normal. Yuri tries his best not to huff a note of complaint at the combination of the unhelpful words and the even less helpful tangle of his brain trying to pull that apart, injecting too much and too little. A million things he doesn't know, from his parents to the world around him.

Things he'd never though he'd really have to worry about. Even if that just increased how different he was.



It's even harder not to sigh at the last suggestion. One thing? How was he supposed to choose one thing? His thoughts were like fish, swimming under the water, scattering at a shadow and flying from him to hide in the shadows, when his lips tried to form this much, and when it didn't work they just schooled themselves back in, tumbling one over another in the space of his head.

He lifts his hand when it comes the opposite edge, staring at Victor beneath him, at the dangerous edge of consideration, and it's stupid, what does half an inch really matter. How few millimeters thick is the thin shirt that's been under his fingers. Maybe it all has to happen at once, maybe there isn't any other way. Crossing a line that feels so solid, even when he can't point to it existing, but only by moving a few breaths, a few millimeters.

"I don't like it." Yuri's voice is quiet, even in the silence of the room, when his fingers land softly against Victor's pale skin. "I don't want to feel like--" Tracing only the tips of themselves up the side of Victor's throat. "--I can't." He can feel his heart in his chest, like each word and touch is carving a layer of skin off the top of his heart. Handing off something he might never get back, that it would hurt to watch burn. "Again."

Except it's not just that, is it? It's not that simple. Because there's a whole world of people that's still true of.

And only one who isn't as true of as it is for anyone else. There's a moment his teeth are against his lip. Then. "With you."
It wasn't perfect. He was never perfect, and he knew there were still more times that he couldn't talk than he could.

That he got quiet, and he couldn't put together his head for a normal day, no less a day like today. But the idea of losing the ones he had, the more than he'd ever had in his life before these. Losing all the pieces that had come together, that made him try so hard, even right now, against the tension in his chest and the danger of the silence all around him. He wasn't sure he could lose the little he'd grown to be so glad for, so reliant on, for anything. Even this, whatever this was.


Then, hated, just a little, how little of him seemed prepared to have a clear feeling agreement to that. To not wanting to lift his fingers away, not wanting to let go of what he had yesterday, and not wanting to stop this, stop pressing slowly down the soft pale line of Victor's skin, watching his own fingers like he might forget to breathe entirely if he had to stop touching Victor now.

[fivetimechamp]

It's not so bad, this. Lying here with his head in Yuri's lap, arms around Yuri's waist, while Yuri's fingers draw slow lines back and forth across his shoulders and they're finally getting somewhere. Slow and halting, maybe. Even if there's a slight pause, and a faint huff of breath that sounds like Yuri doesn't believe him.

He's not surprised, but he ought to argue it, except then there's a butterfly's kiss of a touch on the thin skin at the crook of his neck, and his eyes, which had been slipping closed, open wide. That's –– Yuri's ––

He can't freeze up, but he doesn't know how to describe the sudden buzz of full body tension that strings through him, like a sequence of lights flicking on. It's barely a touch at all, so light he can barely feel it, can track it as much by the trail of lifted fine hairs and goosebumps that try to follow it as the fingertips themselves. Tipping his head on instinct to lengthen his throat, and give him more room, while his heart starts pounding.

Again. He won't have to do his cardio all week, if this keeps up.

But Yuri's saying something, at the same time, which Victor finds deeply unfair. How is he supposed to be able to pay attention to words, when all he can hear is the rush of blood in his own ears?

Except he has to. It's important. Yuri saying he doesn't like it, the not knowing what to say. Not wanting to go back to being that way.

Not wanting to go back to being that way with him. "I don't want that, either." If he's lost Yuri's trust, or everything they've built up together, everything that makes Yuri want to confide in him and joke with him and tease him and talk to him about anything, everything ...

He wouldn't change this. Even if he had to chance, he wouldn't go back in time and un-kiss Yuri, not say all those things he said or do all those things he did, but ––

But if they've lost that, how will this ever work? "Nothing about ..." He trails off, wondering what it is he's trying to say. What distinction he's trying to make. How to help Yuri understand that this, them, him, it hasn't changed. Not like that. Not enough to mean Yuri can't talk to him anymore. "... before is different. There's just, just –– more on top of it, now."

He's still who he was yesterday, and who he was with Yuri yesterday, and Yuri could talk to him yesterday. Sort of. "Is it really –– does it feel ––"

He's not sure he wants to finish that question, not sure he wants to hear the answer, but it should be asked. "That different? With me?"

When the only thing that's really changed is that Yuri knows, now. But maybe that's all it takes.

[theglassheart]

None of the answers for that question are right enough or wrong enough, and he poses them for the air and himself but, all of them sounding more like questions than answers. All of them just feel foreign in his mouth, the way he feels foreign in his body, and would probably have -- on any night before now, before Victor was half laying on him -- just flopped back on either of their beds, with his arms out and a frustratedly loud huff of annoyance at the ceiling, with no true need for caution or self-examination in expressing it.

He can hear Victor, again. Language is clumsy.
Clumsy. Fragile. Flimsy.


Like his fingers and the skin beneath them.

When he can feel every swallow Victor makes, watch the shift in his skin as he breaths. The way he stretches more, pressing to those fingers that tried to be so soft, to not ruin everything with too much. Like there was an idea of too much. Like he hadn't been wrapped around Victor, with Victor's mouth pulling his own skin somewhere near where his fingers were on Victor.

When the building urge, curiosity or necessity, is to know what it would feel like if he curled down and placed his lips right there.
(Who is he that even has these thoughts now? That he's allowed? To do this? Touch Victor? Kiss Victor?)


He doesn't curl down, and he adds, admits, after a breath, "Everything feels ... a little different."

That was probably a lot truer at its outset and quick than most of the things he'd said in a while. He felt different, from who he understood himself to be, and he was feeling things that felt different from any way he'd ever considered them or felt them or imagined them to feel before. Like everything in certain parts of him, before Victor kissing him had been cast off shadows burned away by him.

His understanding of how Victor felt about him, and even his own understanding of how he felt about Victor, that there was so much more under all of his carefully figured and martialed out feelings for him. To have the odd thought, strike him only now, about how much of this morning might have been touched by this, too. All of it.

The first night here, in this bed right beneath him, and then, Eros, and worrying about Victor leaving, and sobbing and screaming when Victor answered his every irrational fear saying he would leave, and, then, Yuri on Ice after all of those. Like some strange trail of feathers and snow and pebbles, he should have seen something more in before he got this far.

Before Victor was in his lap, and he was half-curled over him, one elbow on an aching knee balancing his cheek and an aching shoulder, while running his fingers slowly up Victor's neck enough the front of his first knuckle knocked lightly into the bottom of Victor's head. Victor who was so much to so many, and yet it felt like he couldn't be the same more, same everything, that he was to Yuri after these months to anyone else, too.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers trace a cool path up along his neck, towards the base of his skull, and he's trying not to let it ruin him, but it's all getting a little difficult. Wanting to push up into that touch. To turn over so he can catch those fingers and kiss them. Breath coming a little more shallowly as his pulse picks up and stays there, thrumming like a wingbeat under his skin.

Unable to keep himself from shifting a little more closely to Yuri, until he's lying with his chest against Yuri's hip and his stomach against Yuri's one extended leg, eyes open and listening, feeling a little like Yuri's just talking to the room and he's eavesdropping on something that isn't his business. "Different doesn't have to be bad."

If it is different. And how could it not be? He's just surprised by it because he's never felt any other way about Yuri, has only ever started out lost and only fallen in deeper. For him, none of this is new, except for Yuri's fingers against his throat, and Yuri melting into his kisses, and Yuri knowing everything.

But it's true, too. He's spent his life and career trying to be different, chasing surprises, never settling for doing the same thing twice. Different can be an adventure, something new and exciting, and even if what they had was good, it can always get better.

Underneath it all, he's still him, no matter how Yuri might scoff at that simple statement, and Yuri is still Yuri. The important parts haven't changed.

He hopes.

[theglassheart]

Different doesn't have to be bad. Those words wing around the space in his head, hazy space, hazy shadows, hazy filled everything, like they are seeking purchase, but don't know where or how to land. When it makes him think about Victor showing up in Hasestu, and when he moved to Detroit. How the beginning of both was harder than he knew what to do with it, but hadn't been terrible once some of that was worked through.

Even if Detroit had ended mostly in darkness and slinking home, and this thing with Victor. It wasn't over yet, but it's ending, no matter how well the next few weeks went, was so close it hurt to think about even without this. With this -- with Victor in his lap, rearranging himself even closer, even more against what part of Yuri he could reach -- it feels end more winding. How much worse could that be already than the other. How often did he worry about crashing at the end no matter how hard he, or they, tried.

At least it had a steady, unwavering progression. A reliable line of expectations and dates to check off. The season.
This doesn't feel steady, doesn't feel unwavering, doesn't feel like what he should do is clear anywhere.

But neither had been figuring out what to do with Victor originally.
Not even, if he was being honest, meeting Phichit had been way back when.


He's not always right. There's a lot of times the last thing in the world that's right is him, or his thoughts.

It's not like he wants this to be bad. Like he wants to know, to have more than imagine every worse ending. Right?

Not when he tilts his head, looking at his fingers, against Victor's skin and the frame of the silver shore of his hair, as they brush the back of his jaw. The round of the line the leads to the bottom of his ear, before stopping. Before lifting, a little hesitant just to set down again at the top of it, and trace around the curl of his ear in a gentle line, catching Victor's hair, so soft against his fingers and pressing them back behind his ear, away from his cheek.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri might say something in response. It's certainly a possibility, but if he does, Victor misses it.

For a good reason, though. For a very good reason, that very good reason being that Yuri's fingertips are tracing along his jaw up towards his ear, and he'd forgotten how sensitive that skin is. Hasn't thought about it in years, only ever touches it himself when he's pushing his hair back over his ears or rubbing at his jaw while deep in thought.

Not like this. Yuri's finger almost too light to feel, moving almost unbearably slowly, so gentle it could just be an errant breeze, but it isn't. It's Yuri, touching him. On purpose. Yuri, tracing along the edge of his jaw like he might find the answers he's looking for at the end of this path he's taking, while Victor's heart squeezes and founders and stumbles all over itself in surprised, confused need.

Needing more. Needing Yuri never to stop. Needing to stay absolutely still so Yuri won't snatch his hand away, but needing to push into it, too, to ask for his fingers to keep going, keep melting Victor away drop by drop down the back of his own skull.

A tiny sound that would probably be embarrassingly needy if he heard it, or cared, escaping as Yuri's fingers slip around the curve of his ear and tuck a few strands of hair back, while Victor's arms tighten and he buries his face in Yuri's shirt and stomach, sighing huge and shaky.

There was something he'd been thinking, but he's lost it, which is probably just as well: he can't imagine caring about absolutely anything else in this moment.

[theglassheart]

He doesn't understand so much of this. Not sure he would even if it was written on cue cards in front of him. So he could just keep looking down at them every time his mind balks and tries to start over like a computer turned off, restarting. It basically is, isn't it? When Victor's arms tighten around his protesting ribs and stomach and back muscles, sore from the day, from the whole weekend, but not sore enough to care when Victor is doing that.

Victor. Is in his lap. There. Still there. Every time he looks down. Everytime he breathes.

Hugging him closer, making this soft plaintive sound, and then sighing so hard it shakes his whole upper body. Making Yuri stop for it. Victor's hair only just pressed back ending up everywhere again and Victor's face pressed into him. Yuri's hand curling, lightly, on the back of his head, as the only place to really land without any weight because he's waiting to see if Victor's going to move again.



This isn't how he pictured this. Not that he pictured this. Not really pictured this. Not even truly pretend-pictured this. This isn't how ... his panicked worst exploded in terror thoughts at the beginning, or even brightest, confusing dreams, like that, even to recently get stuck on the wrong reactions and days of exhaustion with only one sensible, worldwide agreed, focal point, went. They never made sense, to begin with, and they weren't real, but they weren't like this.

They weren't ... Victor suddenly curled up on top of half of him like he was a life-sized pillow.
Like he was emulating his own poodle. Flopped down and unmoving. Sighing like it's all he wants.

Both that sound and the one before it caught in Yuri's chest. Messy in his lungs. Kicks him back to. Victor wants him. Victor loves him. More than in any of the ways Yuri has already both had so many problems believing and grown so reliant, so supported on being real, at the same time. Everything so very real and not before this, and this just shifted it up a million notches.

Every word Victor said, every movement Victor made. When he takes a breath in and his fingers shift, gently, against Victor's hair, fingertips sliding into his hair, even though watching his hand makes it so he can't even breathe in. How many people would -- and he's. There's a wave of everything. Overwhelming everything as he cards his fingers so very slowly and lightly down, uncertain again, ready to pull back.

Strange like he can't breathe. Strange like his eyes are slightly stinging. Strange like he wants to hug Victor. Strange like everything is different. Strange like ... he doesn't even know ... light. So much light. Silver and silent. But he doesn't do anything more than that, watch his fingers and feel Victor's hair, until both reach the softer shorter end and his neck.

[fivetimechamp]

He shifts, and Yuri stops, making Victor crack one heavy eye, like a sleepy and suspicious dragon, but before he decides to do or say anything, Yuri's fingers slip down into his hair and he stops thinking altogether.

It feels like warm water pouring over his head, down the back of his neck and along his spine. He's gone boneless and heavy, and he probably shouldn't be putting the weight of his whole head and half his torso on Yuri when Yuri is sore and tired, but Yuri's fingers are in his hair and he doesn't have a choice. It's like being slowly liquefied. He wonders if this is how ice feels when the sun kisses it in the spring, if it's happy to melt, to pool into warm water and shimmer there under the gentle rays, and, really, it's just unfair. Yuri dismantling him with no more than a few fingers in his hair, barely touching him at all.

But touching him with purpose. Touching him on purpose. In a way that can't be mistaken for all the other ways Yuri has touched him, leaned on him like he's furniture or fallen against him when he crashes after a long day of practice. It's not even anything like that night at the banquet, when Yuri had reached for him like Victor's body and skin were things he owned, was entitled to. It's just ...

Nice. Nicer than anything. So nice his eyelids are heavy and he's relaxing so deeply that he might actually fall asleep if he's not careful. Which is why he shouldn't say: "Don't stop."

Mumbled just loudly enough to hear, while his fingers stroke the back of Yuri's shirt lazily, right where the edge of it has rucked up against the small of his back and a thin sliver of bare skin is exposed between the edge of the shirt and the waistband of his sleep pants. It's soft, and warm, and Victor spreads his hand to cover it, too, feeling protective of that tiny, vulnerable spot.

He'd blanket Yuri entirely if he could, until he knows. Until he believes. There's nothing to be afraid of.

[theglassheart]

It's the first words since -- since something else and in the reverse of helpful, of listening, it makes Yuri go still, in surprise at the sound in the silence. Even the mumbled whisper of it. Takes him a second, while his cheeks are warming in surprise -- or, or, or, no something else, too, something warm, with wide nebulous arms, pushing everywhere in his chest right above where Victor's head is pressed -- and he is blushing, by the time he puts his hand down again.

Starts closer to the top of Victor's head, of what he can reach of it. Which touching down, again, reminds him of poking the top of his head and then patting it before his skate. How as that only a few hours ago? When he'd wanted to point out that everything was fine, but he didn't have the words for that any more than he had the words to explain his head was broken, and he knew it was, and he was trying his best. That Victor didn't have to look so distant or confused or frustrated.

That he'd decided to play off his own so much earlier embarrassing loss of control and Victor's own vanity, like a reminder.

Victor's perfect hair and concern over it, and everything else about how he looked. As fussy and pointless, and impossible for Yuri to even pretend he or anyone human could emulate as it seemed on a daily basis. Yuri wasn't certain Victor knew how to look one hair out of place from perfect. Not in a suit and not in a single robe. Even now, curled into him, like this, while Yuri was running his fingers through it. Still soft, but with just a tiny bit more pressure against his head, and just a little less slowly, like he might not need to stop after each new millisecond.

When everything is pushing up toward the top of his chest and he doesn't have any clue how to catch it into words. It's just getting so big and so nebulously warm, curling up inside his chest and rising like a balloon, the way Victor is curled up against him, sinking and holding him where he is on the edge of this bed. Everywhere, everything, all at once.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers are back in his hair, running a little more firmly and quickly through it, and it. Is. Bliss. It must be how Maccachin feels when he gets his ears rubbed, and it makes Victor shift and melt and mumble something incoherent directly into Yuri's stomach.

He feels like a warm sauce being slowly poured, or like a gradually dissolving sheet of tissue paper in a warm bath. Yuri's fingers rubbing against the thin skin over his skull, and there are so many nerves there, it feels nothing like shampooing or brushing his own hair, or even like running his own fingers through it. Laying him absolutely low, a useless puddle of himself. He'd had such good intentions: intentions of talking, figuring things out, explaining. If he'd thought about this at all, he would have pictured it the other way around, taking care of Yuri and Yuri's sore muscles, and letting Yuri, who must be exhausted, rest against him.

He hadn't considered this, and he's too selfish in this moment to give it up, even to flip the image. Even as his fingers sneak lightly under the hem of Yuri's shirt, to run the pad of his thumb over the skin at the small of his back before flattening his palm and fingers there.

(He's so warm.)

An unintelligible mumble slipping from somewhere between his mouth and Yuri's shirt, that has no effect on the looseness of his shoulders, the heavy pool of him trying its best to sink into Yuri's side and leg. Thinking, blearily, that Yuri should stop, if he's ever going to be able to answer any of Yuri's questions. Absolutely certain that Yuri should never stop, because nothing in his whole life has ever felt this good.

[theglassheart]

Yuri shivers at the hand that finds his skin, but sits up, pushing his spine straight in surprise at the bare touch, which only presses him into Victor's face. Victor being behind him and in front of him. Fingers on his skin, that make his whole lower back feel suddenly aware of itself. Fussy, strained muscles, that feel like they've already forgotten the hot water from the shower, forgotten his shirt, forgotten there was anything they were made for, but suddenly laying there under the flat of Victor's hand.

Holds. Holds still a moment longer still. But Victor doesn't move. His skin tingling everywhere under and around that hand. Victor just holds on, hand against his bare skin, mumbling something Yuri can't hear clearly enough to tell if is or isn't words, into his shirt and Yuri has to press a breath of out of his filled chest and his still warmed cheeks. "I can't hear you, if you're talking."

Somehow, even surprising himself, is the way his voice sounds light. Amused, and soft.

Like it could just drift away, unheard and unanswered and that would be fine.

Maybe everything could just be fine, even without words, if he just didn't have to move, or stop running his fingers through Victor's hair, staring down at his hand doing it, and Victor curled around him. Every second of it still beating a ragged, running, blossoming whisper of real, real, real that was getting sticky warm everywhere in his chest.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri stiffens, but Victor waits –– he's learning to wait, all over again, like he did those first few weeks when it seemed like everything he did pushed Yuri a step too far –– and after a breath or two, he relaxes again. Not enough, because Yuri's sitting up when he should at least be leaning against the headboard, and Victor's mulling the thought over when Yuri's voice breaks through the fog, and he cracks that eye again, half rolling his head to try and look up.

Was he talking? Probably. A running list of everything that's wonderful about this, the way he does when he's somewhere new that's amazing, or has just bitten into an especially delicious new food. It's such perfect bliss that he should be shouting it from the rooftops, extravagant in his joy, and he would be, if it weren't also so relaxing. "You feel good."

That's not enough. His arms shift, and tighten, fingers firm against the bare skin of Yuri's back, and he's starting to shift, too, head pushing up towards Yuri's chest, using his weight to coax Yuri into leaning back towards the pillows and headboard. He might be close enough to use them as a brace, or he might be too far away: Victor's not sure he cares, either way, just wants more of Yuri's fingers in his hair and more of Yuri's skin under his hand and Yuri's heartbeat under his ear. "You should relax more, Yuri."

It's almost back to his old wheedling tone, but there's no sly look accompanying it. "But don't stop, I love it, it feels so good."

Sighed against Yuri's chest, now while his eyes slid shut again, and his hand has slid further up Yuri's back, the other arm still wrapping his waist. "It makes me want to fall asleep right here." He's so comfortable. The most comfortable he's ever been. He wouldn't have thought Yuri could be so soft to lie on, after that first month when he leaned out, but he's perfect, and Victor just wants as much of it as he can get. "But you should be the one getting sleep, not me."

[theglassheart]

Yuri's fingers stop running through Victor's hair when he moves. Not pulling away, but letting his hand cup Victor's head where it had been, curled over his hair, while Victor seems to be shifting it to look up. Even when the newness of something as simple as that, just leaving his head there, cradled against Victor's head, just holding itself or Victor's head, while Victor moves, is something so small and so new it feels like it wobbles about, coltishly new, like spring and newborn animals, in his chest.

He doesn't seem to get there. Upward. To make it to looking up at Yuri for answering, and Yuri forgets it for a flood of surprising warmth at Victor's first words. When his head ducks, and he's blinking, even when it wouldn't help him in the slightest to avoid anything, given Victor is right beneath his face already, but it's habit. He can't stop it, and his heart is giving that same pleasantly painful, impossible but real, swoop and stumble in his chest, that leaves warmth at the top of his cheeks and pooled in his stomach between Victor's hand on the skin of his back, and Victor's face pressed to his stomach through his shirt.

He feels good? Him? When he can't even stop touching Victor's hair, getting lost on the feeling of it slip, slip, sliding soft and silky between his fingers? Doesn't want to stop any second he does, has, can't stop? When Victor is the one who is perfect, even more this close up, his skin as soft as petals over dense, lean muscles? When Yuri's entire body seems to have become non-existent except for where Victor's face, and Victor's hair, head, and Victor's hand are making him truly real and still solidly here? He? Feels? Good? He? Shouldn't? Stop?

Something as delighted as bashful as ridiculous just colors through all the light in his chest, the sputtered thoughts trying and failing to form and hold in his head, to pull him away, to douse it out with a whisper of cold. The warmth in his face. If his hands weren't busy, and Victor weren't in his lap, he thinks he'd be pressing his hands to face. It might actually help something that Victor keeps talking, and the next bit has more sensible bits scattered in it, making his brain reach for some of the sense.

At least until Victor is suddenly leaning into him, all but headbutting him in a fashion all too like his comparing Victor to Maccachin earlier. As though somehow he could get Yuri to move, to lay down, if he just prods at him, or tips him over, from that spot, in his stomach, without actually coming off of him, or even looking. At Yuri, or the bed, or the floor, or anything. It makes him remember being lowered on the bed and kissed earlier, but that does stop the laugh that comes out because of what is happening.

"You're going to make me fall off the bed." How is it, his own voice makes that sound so funny?

As though there's nothing better in the world than that eventuality? Even though it would hurt a lot, if he tipped backward off?

It reminds him, without warning, of a million moments strung together, his own rare but true laughter like a golden string tying them together, caught somewhere between Victor and Hasestsu and Maccachin and the roll of too many unexpected golden summer days, beach trips and days trips, to truly lay the absolutely familiar, absolutely loved, feeling to any one day or one moment.

[fivetimechamp]

"Nooooo." Drawn out and certain into Yuri's shirt, but his arms tighten just in case. Yuri's laughing, and he can feel just as much as he hears it, bubbling in his chest, shaking against Victor's cheek, new and intoxicating. Not nervous, not quiet and uncertain, not picking his words as carefully as picking out a password he doesn't know for a bomb that could go off any second: laughing. Relaxed and happy, even if he's tensing up at the prospect of being pushed off the bed. "I wouldn't do that."

Well... he wouldn't do it on purpose, anyway. "You're too cute to push off the bed."

If he's pushing in the wrong direction, the thing to do is to reverse course, isn't it? Pull onto, not push off of, so he settles his weight back and starts dragging Yuri more towards the center of the mattress, instead of back. "And I don't want to have to get more ice, so no more falling."

It couldn't be stern if it dressed up in uniform and yelled at a line of cadets, because of course he's go get more ice if Yuri needed it. He'd get more water, more food, anything at all that might be asked for that he has to give. As long as he can come right back here afterward, he wouldn't mind at all.

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't believe that. About the not pushing him off a bed. Which Victor absolutely might do, but more out of excitement and forgetting than on purpose. He was smiling as his hand caught for balance on Victor's shoulder and then the bed, as Victor starts tugging him the opposite direction. Toward the middle of the bed, and Victor's body currently taking up that space.

Which Yuri might be more helpful to even helping or not helping, if his shoulders hadn't come in and his head ducked a little again. It's not even probably just the hundredth time Victor has called him cute. Voice a dozen ways that most made Yuri roll his eyes, the diminutive, and write it off as a part of Victor's over exuberance. But it sounds -- no, feels -- different to hear him say it again. Like this. After, during, all this.

That Victor thinks he's cute. That way? Somehow?

(That begs the question, in s loop too persistent to not exist and too loopy to have claws, what is not cute enough to not push off a bed, and who and how many in the world might not agree, given he's never even been put on a bed by anyone else. Never let, or wanted, or felt this drawn to all of this with anyone ever before.)


He doesn't try to keep Victor from moving him though, even if it does make his bones ache and his ice pack fall. It's strange and strangely endearing, but amusing still. Victor unwilling to let go of his middle, to even look back up, not even for pulling him closer into him, or the bed, or everything, while proclaiming his muddle of words still muffled more into Yuri's body than said up to him. The warmth just keeps splashing around in his chest, rocking itself back and forth in cross hatches that make ripples of it, instead of clinging ice dust.

Maybe it is teasing, but maybe Yuri lifts his hand and brushes it over Victor's hair and the back of his head, at the same time, fingers sliding through the very ends of it again (and, how did he ever stop?). "Was that supposed to help something?"

Not that he meant it that way, but after saying it? He thinks this all, just here, has helped a world of things.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's teasing him, but Yuri's still running his hand over Victor's head and slipping his fingers through Victor's hair, so Victor's going to call it a win. "It helps me."

Because he's selfish about this, and has been since the second it first exploded in his chest, so long ago it feels like a separate lifetime, such a short time ago it feels like he blinked and two years flipped by like someone skimmed through the book holding them. He's not the same person he was before, and he used to hate that, but now he doesn't. Now, he thinks he prefers being the kind of person who Yuri can tease, the kind of person who can hug Yuri and not be pushed away, who gets to see everything the world doesn't. Everything past the mental weakness they still throw at him, like those words are darts and Yuri's fragile heart is the target. Everything past the talent that paints beauty and music on the ice, only tainted by those same uncertainties.

He gets to see the work Yuri puts in. How training soothes him. The person who runs to the Ice Castle, or to Minako's ballet studio, or, sometimes now, to Victor's room, to work through all the thoughts running around his head. This person, who laughs at Victor's antics as often as he laughs at Maccachin's, who is full of more warmth and love and affection and humor than any interview or program or profile could ever show. His Yuri. The one no one else in their world sees.

How could he be anything but selfish? Is it so impossible to understand?

He's dragged them both towards the center of the mattress, and that's good enough, but not good enough, because Yuri's been toying with his hair and letting him hold on, and Victor has to shift enough to push up and find his neck, his jaw, his cheek to kiss.

But not letting go. Why would he ever.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's not at all certain how that can be true, Victor's short retort that is as far from sharp as possible.

But he's even more certain that maybe it doesn't matter, because, before he can answer, Victor is climbing upward on him. For a given definition of it. It's half like Victor is finally coming up, and half like the weight of Victor has intensified and any part he manages to get to on Yuri is just be steadily drug down more to where Victor's center of gravity is, on the bed still, and how Yuri's is barely steady at all, and none of that holds at all, because Victor is kissing him.

Against his neck, and his jaw, and his cheek, and Yuri doesn't even quite know why, but he's laughing, again, before he knows it's coming, maybe even before he realized it's happening and happened, and still happening. One of his hands more than half buried into Victor's soft, soft hair and the soft, soft, thin skin of the back of his neck, and the other somewhere stuck between them, while he's pink and smused, and his head is ducking, but that only puts him even closer to Victor's face brushing his, Victor's mouth dusting kisses on him, not away from it.

The soft, almost ticklish brush of his lips, and the beautiful color of Victor's eyes, half out of focus when his glasses get knocked up, awkwardly, for a moment. When his heart skitters just a little, giddy overwhelming delight, and he almost just leans in to kiss Victor, finally right there again, because it'd barely take the tilt of his head. He doesn't know how or why or where, but he still can't help teasing Victor more lightly. "Isn't that selfish?"

[fivetimechamp]

"Maybe."

He was just thinking it, so he knows it's true, but Yuri's not throwing the word at him like Yakov does, not following it up with that man thinks of nothing but himself!, and there's still that near-giggle in his voice that pops bubbles in Victor's head and his chest and leaves him feeling giddy and delighted.

And anyway, hasn't he earned a little selfishness, a little moment to savor this? Two hours ago, or three, it was never going to happen, and now it has, is. Is there anyone in the world who wouldn't be a little selfish, in this moment? Especially when Yuri is pink and laughing, and his fingers have sunk deep into Victor's hair and curved lightly at the back of his neck, and he's not trying to get away, only ducks closer, which only makes Victor want to be even more ridiculous, even more extravagant.

Chase that smile and turn it into something wide and brilliant. Tug that laugh out until it's breathless and sparkling. Nuzzle that ticklish spot on Yuri's neck until he's wriggling and relaxed and all wrapped in Victor's arms, against him. "I've always been a selfish person."

Also true, even if not like this. When what Yakov said used to be true, used to be Victor, and not even Victor could argue it, or would. He is selfish, and occasionally thoughtless, and forgetful, and occasionally finds it difficult to understand other people, all their foibles and flaws and bewildering feelings.

But not like this. Nothing he ever cared about for himself holds a candle to everything that Yuri is, everything he would do for him. Anything. Everything. Even before today. "But it helped you, too, see?"

Pleased with himself, while he's nuzzling his nose into Yuri's neck, and chasing it with his mouth, running all the way up toward his ear. "I saved you from falling. You should be more grateful, Yuri."

[theglassheart]

Yuri wouldn't have picked seflish anything more than a joke, and maybe it's why he'd make a face at Victor's second statement if he could. But the problem with that isn't not agreeing. It's that Victor's nuzzling into his neck and everything feels light and silly. Self-absorbed, he might agree, sometimes, but not selfish, but definitely not now, right here, when all it is was a joke Yuri made without questioning it and Victor agreed to shamelessly.

But there's no face he can make, and there's some wiggling, because Victor's nose and his cheeks are being rubbed into delicate, ticklish skin and it does, it tickles, and he's trying to pull away as much as he's not trying to actually pull away at all. His balance and his hip, hips, upper thighs hate it, hate the rock and shift, that evades the tickle without actually trying to escape it or pull away, squirm.

"You saved me from you pushing me off the bed," Yuri replied. "I don't think that's that same thing."

Except. Except he doesn't think Victor's wrong at one of those words.

That Victor always helps more than Yuri ever knew he could. All along the way. In ways that were so foreign from familiar was left on the other side of the globe, and yet he still did. Help Yuri. Save Yuri. From his lack of direction this year. From giving up on the skating he loved so much, and everyone, except Yuri's own had, had so much potential for. From his own head, even if what that looked like was today.

Was screaming and sobbing until everything in his head had gone suddenly so very quiet, elastic, set free.

Was laughter, and calling Victor's bragging ridiculous, while Victor laid half over him, making him forget he'd been afraid.

[fivetimechamp]

Victor is shocked. Shocked. "I wasn't pushing you off the bed!" All indignance, except for how it lacks any fire or snap, is just a melting wounded reproach.

(Maybe he was. But it certainly wasn't on purpose, that would have been a waste.)

It probably loses a little credibility with with arms still around Yuri and his hand on Yuri's bare back and his face buried in the crook of Yuri's neck, too, but he doesn't care. It's finally starting to feel like Yuri's relaxing, and it's starting to feel like Yuri's remembering that Victor is just Victor, still, someone Yuri knows and trusts, and that means he's happy to keep going, keep egging, keep coaxing Yuri out, make him laugh, make him tease. Pull out that affectionate exasperation that Victor has started to crave in a way that's probably not usual, is it? Is this what love is, is this how people act? "I just think you should lie down and be more comfortable."

Ice his hip. Relax. Let the day start seeping out of his muscles and joints. Even if those bruises and achy bones will feel better tomorrow, resting them tonight will help.

And, selfishly –– because they've determined, both pointed out that he's selfish, and he'll admit it –– because he loves this, wrapped around Yuri, with Yuri's hand in his hair and Yuri's laugh in his ears, but it could be better, still. Go from perfect to more so.

As long as Yuri doesn't freeze up again.

(But if he does, it's alright, they can ease their way out of it.)

[theglassheart]

Yuri's exasperation is fond. Maybe even more.

It's not like he really needs to defend that Victor started pulling him into the center of the bed after being told he was going to push Yuri off the bed if he kept going his first direction. The details don't really matter, when most of all Yuri is trying to find some way to press his smile to something manageable. Lips pulled in and pressed between his teeth and looking up and then down, unable to really stop it, that smile, at Victor's declaration of abused innocence.

Because Victor is impossible. On a daily basis. Not just ... all of this. But this, too.
Impossible and artlessly innocent, to a wounded kind of defensive whining.

Before today, it would have been somewhere near him, possibly with the widest blue eyes of pleading and declarative innocence, squishing into his face, to demand all his attention for the innocent defense. But it's not before today. It's today, and it's being cried into the skin of his neck, and it's all just as amusing, just as endearing, and impossible, and childish, and absolutely not real, and not important, and so very Victor, even like this.

The point that follows is the truth and he does buy that. It might have been at the base of it when Victor started. Yuri couldn't remember now if or whether he'd said something about it when he started to do that. It'd devolved into its own thing, which was normal enough, too, and it wasn't actually a bad point. He'd been laying down earlier. Before. It's a speculative thought, that makes him say, "It might hurt less."

Not a complaint. More an absent, maybe even slightly tired of being real, agreement. It hurts. Existing. Sitting. Breathing.


Victor half on him. But he saves that one for the last spot on the list and he doesn't let go. ... Doesn't want to be let go of?

[fivetimechamp]

"See?"

As if that was the point all along. (It was. Sort of. Mostly.) A note of satisfied triumph in his voice, even as he's stretching up to push a kiss against Yuri's throat, because neither he nor Yuri is actually moving.

He could, again. It would be pretty easy, with his arms around Yuri's waist and his own weight already settled. Could just haul him down, next to or even on top of Victor, and hold him there, like he had already twice before.

But a little different. There's still a difference between dragging Yuri into his lap, and tugging Yuri down onto a bed, and he's sure the thin line between them is probably one that would have Yuri floundering and red-faced and anxious again to have crossed, so he shouldn't.

(Maybe only as a last resort.)

Still, his hand sneaks out from under Yuri's shirt to go searching around for the ice pack that got dropped, and he turns his head a little at Yuri's neck to look for it, until he finds soft terrycloth and a corner of plastic that he catches between his fingertips to tug a centimeter at a time until he can grab the whole thing in his palm and press it gently against Yuri's hip. His other hand is dropping to the mattress behind Yuri to brace himself, and he finally pulls away far enough to smile up into Yuri's face.

It doesn't feel like a normal smile, though: it feels almost dopey, eyelids heavy, too full of his own success and Yuri's warmth and how good it feels to be this close without Yuri running away to manage any cockiness. "As your coach, I really suggest it."

And as ... whatever he is now, he wholeheartedly requests it.

[theglassheart]

He does, though. Start letting go. Victor. The fingers against his bare skin coming off, drawing so much attention to his skin there, finally feeling the air and his shirt, while still pulsing with the touch just lost, the heat evaporating faster than his breath or attention can try to hold even the flicker of the memory of it.

It's for a good reasons, Yuri realizes, when he's looking down the same way Victor's head is turning from his neck, not touching that anymore, too, a strained ache that joins the other, and so they are both looking down as Victor's now-free hand finds the ice pack and holds it against him instead. There's an insane second where, as Victor shifts again, to look up at him, Yuri is devastatingly certain in every cell of his body, he'd rather have Victor touching him than Victor holding the ice pack touching him.

But it only exists for the flaring brilliant ache of a second, before everything, everything, slides completely.

Parts like the sand or the sea dividing on a line,
between everything that was only seconds ago secure,
and this, now, where Victor is staring up at him, so warm, so beautiful.

Inescapably and impossibly beautiful. Pushing into all of his thoughts. Filling all of his chest. With Victor's face. The way his hair looks graceful and perfect, even for being mussed from being pressed into Yuri's stomach and fluffed from his fingers. The way his face is just ... perfect, high cheek bones, and graceful hollow of cheeks that drops to his perfect smiling mouth, all over looked the wide smooth set of his half-obscured forehead.

The delicate summer white peach of his skin, the silver fall of his bangs, as liquid as it is like half a layer of ice, over the warmest sunlit blue eyes, komorebi of the sea, of the early winter sky, just as hypnotic in the barren open as flitting, like a dazzling streamer, behind strands of shifting hair.

Yuri's not even sure his body knows how to work.

That his heart has forgotten how to beat and his lungs how to expand or compress.

There's nothing but the stunning face in front of him, and blindingly pleasedness Victor looks. So beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Beyond any of the words that do and don't work in the two languages he has, or even the spare pocket change of Victor's own. There was no wonder why this face ensnared a universe of souls. Yuri's whole body, soul, fought against the flickering reality trying to turn itself back on in his head. Losing even in the realization of anything other.


His heart returns with something of a stab of motion -- or maybe it's that he returns, and it's been marching to this sudden escalation the whole time? He doesn't know. He doesn't want to know. Doesn't want to look away. Even though he's supposed to be answering. Just agreed he should move, hadn't he? That he should be treating his body better? That he needed to think about skating tomorrow?

Like there was a tomorrow. A more than this second, more than just wanting this.
Wanting to lean in, to kiss the light that shining up from the inside of Victor, getting all over him.

When his mouth says, "You're in the way," but it sounds wrong in his ears.

Too distant. Too soft. Too breathless. Too --

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't say anything, and doesn't say anything, and doesn't say anything. Only stares at him, wide-eyed, with a flush of pink growing brighter at the tops of his cheeks, like he's forgotten how to speak, or how his mouth even works. Paused in a caught breath, eyes tracking across Victor's face, and Victor's sure he should probably be concerned instead of delighted by this turn of events. Shouldn't he? Wouldn't that be the kind thing to be?

But he's selfish. So selfish. Wants the giddy realization that Yuri is stuck on him, on his face, is looking at him like he was hit by a car named Victor. People have been staring at him for as long as he can remember, since even before he was first the Junior World Champion and then took the senior division by storm, and he's used to it. Used to the lingering glances, the whispers, the blushes. It's useful, and he enjoys it: is well aware of how he looks and how effective it can be, has a lifetime of evidence to support his vanity.

Yuri has never looked at him like this before. Yuri had remained the one person he wanted to affect who stayed unaffected, never seemed to notice anything about him other than his physical presence taking up space somewhere near Yuri, in his way or next to him or always just behind him.

Nothing like this. Like he can't look away. Like he's forgotten how to breathe as much as how to speak, and Victor's smile is probably getting a little too smugly delighted as comprehension sifts in, as Yuri finally finds a few words that don't sound like anything he actually means. "Am I?"

He wants to flirt, wants to push that look, whatever it was Yuri was just thinking, feeling: shove it higher and harder. "Should I move?"