{ 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

[theglassheart]

If Victor expected Yuri to be able to answer that question, he was mad. As well as cruel. Yuri fingers dig in a little. It's tickles and from there it flickers upward. Sparks that had tickled, making him try to squeeze his shoulder all but to his neck to stop the assault, with Victor in the middle, shifting in ripples of unexpected darts of warmth flowering up from Victor's mouth against the skin of his neck again.

Placed everywhere while his arms won't let go and he can't even figure out how to duck away his head and or push his neck toward Victor's overexuberant sudden attack on his throat, until his arms tighten at the first nip. That finds his toes, with a detour to tighten everything in his center, tugging a small gasp the first time at his throat, and even though he tells himself it won't happen again, it does, when Victor gets to his ear.

He's going to drown in the ocean between his own laughter, and Victor's obvious lies, and the fire trying to push up through the heaviness in him, and still he doesn't want to let go. Doesn't. Head rolling back onto the pillow, and he thinks Victor's smile only gets better through tonight. All of them different shades of the same rainbow, burning themselves into him with each passing glance.

"You haven't been insulted a day in your life." That Yuri's seen, from afar or even here at his side.

(Not even to the day Yuri thought his great insults to Victor's existence would have him finally leave.)

[fivetimechamp]

That gasp is the most perfect sound he's ever heard, soft and burning and surprised, and all he wants is to hear it again and again, until it's the only thing in his mind. The first a pleasant surprise, the second a smug triumph, as Yuri's head tips back and his arms tighten, laughing at him, breathless and amused, although Victor shakes his head at the words that come out.

"I've been insulted."

Just because he doesn't show it, or lets it roll off his back more often than not, doesn't mean they don't, on occasion, land and sting. He's even been insulted by Yuri –– by Yuri's silence, by his detachment, by his fickleness –– even if he's forgiven it all now, forgiven it long ago.

(But that man thinks only of himself, and it makes me sick to see you play pretend-coach, and still playing at being a coach? stick like burrs and worry at him, annoying him out of nowhere.

Yakov, especially. He's been with Yakov for years, thinks of him almost as a father, and Yakov has yelled and threatened as long as Victor's known him, but this –– this ––)

Mouth twisting, even against Yuri's skin, before he pushes up with a smile that's not quite as bright as it had been, a little wry for all its steadiness. "But not right now. You found me out."

[theglassheart]

It's endless, apparently. The number of time Yuri can find himself thinking that Victor is beautiful.

This time when Victor lifts his head, and Yuri's eyes open, and even taking a few seconds longer than it should to focus, it's not the same as the last. It's not his wry smile, or the brilliant points of his eyes, that still beg and prod Yuri to believe him, amid laughter and lies that hum like the light he remembers are supposed to hang in the sky a week from now. It's not about that night, or the smooth fall of the silver hair, that matches his silver lashes. It's not anything about his face.

Not unless it's everything about his face and something that is so much more than. So much more that all of those things fall like yens from a pouch, and snowflakes from a thick grey sky, and drops of water fallen from a wave, and petals fallen from a cherry tree. Beautiful, but fleeting pieces, and absolutely nothing, dust compared the bigger part of itself. The light inside all of it. The way it fills everything in Yuri's chest, and his head, and his heart. Most of all his heart.

His heart that was always Victor's, from the moment Yuu-san told him to watch, and the moment he watched the first senior gold medal, and the first time he touched Victor's ice, and the first time Victor shook his hand on the sand and told him he wouldn't take it easy on him because that was how Victor loved, and every day he made good on those words, and today. Today, today, today, a million times today and tonight.

"I don't think I believe you." Which is nothing like real either, he thinks he'd breathe in even under water if Victor told him to, eventually, but his fingers tighten against the fall of that so soft silver hair his fingers are already tangled, and he pulls Victor back down, against that light in Victor that seems everywhere, and the one in himself, because he has to kiss Victor. Late or early, for this second it doesn't matter. He just wants to touch it. Victor. Victor, shining. Victor, underneath all the shine, and all the lights, and all the worlds' words of who he is.

Victor, laughing, and lying, and absolutely outlandish.


Victor, different, but not different at all.

[fivetimechamp]

What does he do with this?

This is nothing like Yuri's earlier bewilderment or hesitation. There's no shock or surprise or wary uncertainty in his face. It's all been replaced by ... whatever this is, that makes Victor's heart skip and then stumble and then speed. That's poured across him like sunlight, shining from pink cheeks and bright eyes and that smile. No tremble left in the fingers that tighten in his hair, against his skull, and pull him steadily downwards, and where else could he go? Yuri is his only gravity.

Yuri. Reaching for him. Pulling him down for a kiss, and Victor wonders if he'll ever, past tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after, stop feeling like that thought alone has cracked him open like an earthquake, each and every time. Feeling like his blood would run the other way, if Yuri asked it to, unable to do anything but give into that pull, bend into it with his own fingers sinking into thick dark hair, eyes slipping heavy-lidded, and then closed at this kiss.

Wondering how he ever managed to breathe before this. Wondering if he'll ever manage it again, after.

Yuri's mouth too soft, and too sweet, and too perfect under his, for him to hold here and keep from slipping too far under, diving in too deep. (He has to be able to keep some sort of control.

He doesn't know how long that will possibly last.)

Hands cradling Yuri's head against the pillow, and pressing another kiss against it, and another, and another, until they start to blur together and he can't remember why he'd ever stopped kissing Yuri to begin with.

[theglassheart]

Victor moves with him, and Victor's eyes close, perfect barely visible silver lashes when Victor's own body and head block the light above, and he has to close his. He's not certain if his head is even still entirely back on the pillow when his lips find Victor's. Not content to wait seconds, and only pull one way, not content to do anything but meet somewhere in the middle and pull Victor and himself back down, together.

When he can note for a just barely there second that Victor didn't balk or even seem surprised, even when his eyes were staring, figuring out Yuri impossible to fight trump to a conversation he'd meant to keep having. Impossible not to want everything, when everything was an unknowable endless gray fog. Only defined by Victor and the press of Victor's lips, that comes again and again, and again, as Victor replaces the focus given to his skin barely a minute ago with his mouth.

It blurs and blends with the heavy dark that has its own hooks when he closes his eyes, but nothing in the world is as strong as the need to kiss Victor back. Every time Victor kisses him. Not yet. Even if his glasses bump, again, pushing up. A thing they've been doing all along, pressing into his cheeks, ending up upset and askew, and he pulls back, pulling his fingers from Victor's hair, with something that isn't quite hesitation, or maybe something that tries to shotgun past it. Barely mumbled, against that mouth, "Moment."

Dropping only from Victor's hair to the edge of them. The metal temple against his own temple. Fingers resting on it only a second, with a press of his lips, before he pulls his glasses off. A thing that might not be smart, tired in so many ways, to add everything a little out of focus, even while refusing, even when he keeps closing his eyes, keeps feeling it sluggish at his ankles, but he wants to know that, have that, too. The smallest of things he'd never thought about. On the ice. Against that door.

Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't care at all. Too. Maybe he doesn't want to have to think about anything but Victor.

A pause of any kind makes his stomach clench a little, even as he reaches out with his other hand to put them on Victor's other pillow, before reaching back up to Victor's face. Trying the light smile he'd had, teasing, as though somehow it hasn't happened dozens of other times, other places, that weren't ever this, even if his mouth was too warm now and his voice lower than expected. "Try not to fall over and break them."

[fivetimechamp]

He's certain he's never felt this drunk on anything in his life. Not even the night before last, that turned into a hazy blur he can't remember at all and that Yuri had to describe to him. There's no wine or beer or liquor in the world that can compare to this: Yuri reaching up to meet him halfway, Yuri kissing him back, again and again and again, Yuri's fingers in his hair and Yuri's heart thrumming just below his chest.

Leaving him dazed and licking his bottom lip when Yuri pulls back, and asks for a moment, while the world spins around them and Victor's not sure he'll ever find his balance again. Him. Five time World Champion, winner of more gold medals than he could accurately count right now, finding it impossible to stand up, or even spot on the wall, simply from a few kisses and nothing more.

(If it could be nothing more when this is everything, the only thing he's wanted in so long he'd forgotten what it was like to want anything else.)

Pulling in a long cooling breath as Yuri takes off his glasses and tries a smile that only looks a little shaky, a little uncertain, his eyes gone just slightly unfocused in that way they do when he's trying to look at something too close to his face without his glasses on. Saying that, and making Victor's grin spark again, brilliant and wide, at being teased. Like Victor can't be trusted, is a loose bull in a china shop, is all hands and feet and no grace or control at all.

Speaking of things he should be insulted by, but can't be, isn't. Never could be, when Yuri's teasing him so sweetly, and Yuri's hands are back on his skin, palms against his cheeks and jaw. "Don't push me off, then."

Not that Yuri looks like he will at all. Not after getting rid of the glasses that were getting in the way.

Certainly not while Victor's arms are slipping around his upper torso, crossing beneath his shoulderblades to pull him closer, as he leans down again to find that smiling, teasing mouth and steal the breath right out of it.

[theglassheart]

He doesn't love it, especially right now, even when he's the one who made the choice, but Victor, Victor, reason and impetus and everything above him, is softly fuzzed, it's an impossible choice, with a cost either way. A thought that has sharper tips than expected on its claws, sharper wants inside his chest, on Victor, of Victor, everything Victor, even if it exists for all of the second before Victor says those words and most of the air in Yuri's chest turns into something like steam.

As though he would, could. As though Yuri has been the one to throw anyone, anywhere in this room. On ... this bed. Not once yet even, and he doesn't know if that thought should stick, but it slides, slides the way everything gone diffused soft peach pale and gray-silver slides toward darkness, when Victor is leaning down and Victor is sliding his arms beneath Yuri and finding his mouth, and the last thing Yuri's mouth needs is his eyes open to answer.

If he meant to think of anything, anything at all, it was a fools plan. There is nothing more than the slide of Victor's lips. The soft drag of Victor's bangs against his own forehead and cheek, while his fingers push up from cheeks back into it, and he still feels like he's pulling down, needs Victor closer. Dangerous and foolish, everything heavy and still in all of his skin warming so rapidly. Almost like it's easier this way, like there's less and less resistance in his skin, in his head.

He should be thinking about the fact he probably needs to put an arm down to better balance, with Victor's arms beneath him enough to takes a portion of his back off the bed, shoulders and middle back, weight on a new bar beneath him made of Victor's arms, muscles fussing at the newly acquired strain, but he can't quite yet. Can't focus on anything. It falls into his hands, and falls right back out, while Yuri's focus is stormed singularly by Victor.

Impossible perfect Victor, soft and smooth, in his head, defined by his fingers,

charcoal burning, defined by his mouth, that seems to be trying to make his heart explode.

[fivetimechamp]

Down, down, down. Yuri keeps pulling him down. Closer, down. Tighter, down. Down to his mouth and chest and the small gasps for breath coming from one or both of them. Fingers in his hair, and maybe this is a dream, after all. Maybe he'll wake up to find himself alone in this bed, with Yuri still asleep nearby, or back in Hasetsu ––

(or, worse, all the way back in St. Petersburg, victim again of his own imagination)

–– weeks before the Cup of China even begins.

It's that unreal. That impossible, to have Yuri's arms around him and Yuri's body beneath him and Yuri's lips meeting his again and again, like he needs Victor to breathe. The soft skin of Yuri's throat under his mouth, when he shifts, finds that spot just under Yuri's jaw and pulls lightly at it, every thought and want and need rushing through his head and lighting his bloodstream tagged with a reminder of not too hard. Don't push. Don't drag. Don't toss Yuri over the edge, when all of this is so new for him, and he might not even know what he wants.

No matter how clear it is to Victor. No matter how many times he's dreamed, wanted, longed for exactly this. How he'd planned what he would do if he ever got the chance.

It's all in the air, now, burning. None of it matters anymore, except the boy beneath him and his own bursting heart.

[theglassheart]

Everything unfocuses, and it's not just his eyes, it's everything in the world that isn't Victor. Isn't this impossible slide away from vision and thought and cohesive remembrance of anything other that Victor kissing him. Than feeling Victor's mouth find his, again. Than pushing up to find it, dizzy, desperate, electric snapping, against something that has nothing to do with balance, that doesn't care at all about balance, in those not-even-seconds between.

That doesn't care about does or doesn't. The thundering race of his heart running a marathon inside his body. His chest. His ears. Every joint. Fast. Loud. Hot. Against the rushing, bleeding, swallowing black behind his eyelids, defined not even into colors, but into swatches of heat, of impossible, reckless, overwhelming feeling, beyond any of the control he clutches at so tightly, especially in his head. Both dissolving into and tension defining every muscle.

The small jolt of his whole body when Victor's mouth leaves his and finds the top of his neck again.

A bursting bubble, pushing up through waves, rippling scalding heat in the center of his head, of his body, against the soft tickle and drag of Victor's hair on his cheek, the side of Victor's face next to his. The way there should be the pain, but for a moment it's not there. Not under the heated second of shock. Not under the way his bare heels dig into the bed, his lips throb, and his fingers are in Victor's hair, against the back of his head, his neck, caught in the pull of gravity between the bed below and beyond the wall of those arms, and Victor's body, Victor's mouth, above him.

None of this should be possible, and it is. Every short desperate pull for air.

The way his head tips back, hair and the back of his head brushing the pillow, barely, and just barely bent.

[fivetimechamp]

It's real, he'd said. Real today. Real tomorrow. Real when they both wake up and Victor still feels this way, even if every other part of this has been a dream, after all.

Even if he's not sure he could have ever dreamed this. Yuri's fingers digging desperate into his hair, and Yuri's head falling back to give him room to roam up and down along his throat and neck, finding the racing beat of his pulse and pulling at it, wanting more of it, wanting all of it. Everything he can have, because Yuri was right, before, too, he's selfish. Always has been. Has spent his life in a world where people cheer his name and want to know every detail of his life: what his apartment is like, why he has a poodle, why he cut his hair, why he skates what he does. He's never been asked to think about anyone else as anything other than competition.

So maybe it's not all that unusual that, when he finally did find someone else to care about, he had years of attention to give. Decades of missing out on putting someone else first, on paying attention to the smallest of signs that they were unhappy. Never knowing the desperate need to be able to do something, anything, to help. He had no idea it was possible to love someone so much that to hear them struggling to breathe felt like being unable to pull air into his own lungs.

Maybe that's why he pulls back, a little, just far enough to look into Yuri's face, shifting one arm out to move his hand from Yuri's shoulderblade to the back of his head, thumb running over the soft skin and hair just behind his ear, that spot no one would ever have a need to touch in the course of a regular day, that would go unnoticed and unloved.

Not today. He'd adore every ignored inch he can find, if he could.

But first, swallowing his own rasping breath, to lean down and kiss Yuri as gently as he can, feeling restraint shake like a dog on a leash. "Breathe, Yuri."

There's no rush here. He's waited this long; he can keep waiting as long as he needs to.

[theglassheart]

There's a whimper, and one he's not proud of, doesn't know is coming, until the sound is there, escaped without warning or thought, embarrassingly needy, when Victor's pulled away, fingers suddenly calmly in Yuri's hair, a finger rubbing against his hair even and calm too (and why does Victor get to suddenly seem able to be calm, not affected like this), between his head and the pillow. Telling Yuri, again, to breathe.

When it seems unfair and unreal, aches even while things focus more in his head, even against everything in him being against that. Forming only to find drops of colder water. To want something else. That he doesn't want. Whether he should want this. Has any clue. Should breathe. Should pull back, from Victor suddenly everywhere. Victor over him. Victor holding him, like this, on Victor's bed.

Except.

Except all of his skin is throbbing toward every still there place they are still touching. Except Victor's own breathing doesn't sound anything like the calm and he wants to lean into that, more than Victor's single word. Victor's mouth -- always his mouth, all to present source of every problem, how has it only been minutes and hours -- but not that. The way his voice is just slightly rough, too.

Yuri wants to lean into both of those. His heavier breathing. His not so steady voice. He wants to believe that this insane thing inside of him, pushing up, demanding, getting everywhere, pushing everything out. That seems to not have handrails and keeps stealing his mind from his head, his heart from his chest, caution and panic and fear.

Wants Victor feels anything like this. Even if it's not new for him.

If he said those words. If he meant any them. All of them.

And still, still, Yuri can't help it. His breathing slowly getting deeper, breaths longer. Lungs as much a traitor as his arms, his fingers, as the study of Victor's face, swinging up and down, swimming before him. As though there isn't a part of him that knows how not to listen to Victor. Even if half of the things happening, all listening to Victor, are at the opposition of the others, the messages, requests, demands, touches, kisses, words.

[fivetimechamp]

That sound almost undoes him. A whimper, dragged out of Yuri's throat, because Victor has stopped, because Victor pulled away, because Victor no longer has his mouth on him.

Reminding him of the real reason he needs to pull back. The one that isn't because Yuri needs air, but because he does.

Air. Sanity. The chance to cool off and regain his slipping hold on his self-control. (It doesn't matter what sounds Yuri makes, or how dopey he looks when Victor pulls back enough to see his face, watch him blink, or how pink his mouth is, how flushed his cheeks.

The only thing that matters is not taking it, any of it, as permission to go too far.)

But he still swallows hard, looking down at Yuri. Thinking of how easy it could be. How much better it would feel, to skin out of this shirt, no matter how soft and thin it is, and tug Yuri's over his head. To not stop just at the collar there, but be able to trace the curve of his neck all the way down to where his shoulder rounds, run his mouth over his collarbone, down towards his stomach. Yuri might even want it, everything Victor is telling himself not to do. Right now, flushed and breathless, not thinking straight, he might. He trusts Victor. He might even trust Victor to do everything, anything.

Which is exactly why Victor can't. Not when Yuri only got kissed for the first time tonight. Not when he's exhausted and barely able to think or even stand up when adrenaline isn't thudding through him. Not when they've barely had time to talk about any of it, and Yuri was flabberghasted just at the idea of having a date, a single harmless evening doing something they both love.

(That ice pack is still within reach: he considers grabbing it to dump the contents directly over his own head.)

Slow down. It's not a command he's used to giving himself, but he needs it, now. Not stop, maybe never stop, not again, now that this is all suddenly in his hands and someone would have to break his fingers to make him let go, but slow. Slower. Try to keep some semblance of his rational mind on a leash in his head, so he doesn't ruin everything before it gets the chance to start.

There's a spot at the top of Yuri's throat, just under his jaw, that's turning a dusty rose, and he leans to kiss it lightly, thumb running over it when he pulls away again, with a huff of breath and a rueful smile. "I need to, too."

Breathe. Cool down. Regain his senses. It isn't as though this is his only chance. Right?

[theglassheart]

He can't miss it. Not this close. He can watch Victor, who was looking at his face, watch his face tip and his eye drop further than Yuri's face and he feels it.

A wave that starts at just about his shoulders and rolls down with those eyes. As hot as it is chilled, a flash of fever bright fire leaving a train of sudden goosebumps right as it passes, to his chest and his stomach, and so much lower, settling, sticking, throbbing there, even if Victor, laying half on him never gets there, and Yuri doesn't know if it's desperate, disastrous, dangerous thrill, the want of too many pushed away dreams, or banging fear, with starting to stumble awareness, that this is realrealreal, unlike any of those, that answers that.

Maybe both.

And maybe it's going to happen now, here, for real. Anyway. Yuri's heart thundering even louder in his ears, in his teeth, and his lips, and every joint and inch of skin on his body, when Victor leans down, past his face and kisses his neck again. Yuri's finger pressing in some combination of everything, body pushing slightly up reflexively.

But that kiss happens only lightly. This brush of lips nothing like the maddening pull of lips claiming inches of his skin, like Victor had wanted to taste it, take it off of his body entirely. Only lightly, while everything else rushes, catches, wants, and falls in a confused stumble at that sudden lightness, and his unaccountable, undeniable hunger for more than that. Stamped clear as the sun even when he can watch it happen, think after it, weight settling right back.

The breath of muddled thought before Victor is leaning back again. Saying that.

Yuri lets go of one arm finally, finding the bed with it, the faint awkwardness of one arm under him now that he can feel it, and the muscles around it, can't miss any of it. His expression dubious as his inability to really source any words at all, but especially that aren't to the contrary and don't sound like a confused complaint or a waking concern.

[fivetimechamp]

Without trying to drag Yuri closer, it's less comfortable to hold onto him like this, so he shifts, lets his arms slip up and over, elbows resting at Yuri's sides and his forearms bracketing Yuri's shoulders, while one of Yuri's hands leaves his hair to find the sheet.

Yuri, who's looking up at him now with an expression so far flung from the previous dizzy desire that Victor almost laughs to see it: he looks like Victor just suggested they get up and go for a hike, or announced that he was creating a new program for Yuri to learn before this coming weekend. "Why do you look so skeptical?"

Is it because he said he needed to breathe? Or is he simply annoyed that Victor called a pause? A thought that sears into Victor's lungs and smokes there in smug satisfaction. Yuri, wanting him enough that he's annoyed with Victor for stopping. Yuri, still giving Victor exasperated and dubious looks even now, pinned between Victor and a hotel bed.

How absurd is it that he still finds that irresistibly endearing?

It makes him grin, even as he knows that will only annoy Yuri more. "What are you thinking about?"

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't know why Victor has to look so amused. It makes him feel even more self-conscious.
Feet stepping into unexpectedly freezing water. Skipping up to spasm chilled cracks in his chest.

About whatever expression is on his face, and suddenly every though that had been passing through his head right before Victor pointed that out. The slip-slide of those thoughts and feelings that don't that somehow stopped getting checked at the door, and just parade across his body, or, apparently, his face. While Victor looks at him with the expression Yuri usually thinks of how Victor looks at Maccachin. Amusement or something else. Something almost ... syrupy.

Victor who holds himself there and shifts his arm free, and Yuri can lay back, not even needing the arm he just reclaimed.

His head back on the pillow and eyes narrowed because he can't avoid it, and he wants to be able to see Victor's face, staring down at him, and reaching for his glasses is a defeat. Of both laying here, and of thinking maybe it won't ... Victor won't ... kiss him again, and he might want them just as gone a second later. He wants to shake himself. His head. His shoulders. The slip and slide between his lungs and his stomach, where nothing seems to work right.

Instead, there's just a too heavy breath out his nose. "You look fine."

If there's some faint catch derision in the reluctant exasperation, Yuri is at least laying it around fairly everywhere. About the fact Victor, aside from being inches about him, still looks like Victor (I'm still me, whispers from earlier), casual and cool, with the world on a string, like everything that happened around him did so as it was supposed to, who no one had to tell to breathe or seemed to be laughing at. About the fact Yuri's not, when, obviously, somehow, he should be.

When he's not even positive there's a way to.

How could anyone be right here, where he is, looking up at what is, and be that?

It wasn't even a one a million thought this morning, and he can't imagine how it could ever be true now.

[fivetimechamp]

"I look fine?"

It surprises a laugh out of him, the last thing he would expect Yuri to say. He doesn't even know what it means, but it's not said in a way that makes it sound like a good thing. If anything, Yuri sounds annoyed by it. "What do you mean?"

He's not sure what would be so deeply aggravating about him looking fine, whatever that means, but he issure he shouldn't find Yuri's exasperation so very appealing. It's familiar, looks like the face Yuri gets when Victor is being especially frustrating in the rink, telling Yuri to try something that Yuri thinks is obviously insane, or like the face Yuri gets when Victor is dragging him all over Southern Japan, demanding photographs and to try absolutely every new thing that he can find.

Like Victor doesn't live in the real world, the way Yuri does, and is a source of aggravation as much as or more than he is one of comfort or inspiration.

Probably it's equally as annoying that he enjoys it, instead of being insulted by it. You've never been insulted a day in your life comes floating back, and he's right: Victor's never been insulted by this, even if he should be. How could he be? It's still time spent with Yuri. Still Yuri treating him like a normal person instead of being too afraid to even talk to him, like he was when Victor first appeared at his family's hot spring.

There's really nothing about this not to love.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's doesn't need absolute focus for the expression he wants to make just at the sound of Victor going from appearing like he might be laughing at him, to actually laughing at him and his expense. It makes the sharp cold sharper and colder, pushes it hard further and further into the places it had started, and maybe it's good that it does. Dousing torches on its path, continuing with the absolution of breathing deeper and everything else in him slowing.

It's a nauseatingly unsettling thing.

Going back to feeling so quickly unbalanced, this way, too. In the wash of his head, his chest.

One question followed by another, in that laughter, as though Victor doesn't get it, or he's going to pretend that he doesn't and make Yuri have to spell out everything different from where he's standing and Victor is, all over again, like a child reciting the first piecemeal sentences in a new language. Again. When he's already managed the little of a retort a few seconds late to what he couldn't said more than the half-minute before.

He's not even sure which of those thoughts in worse. Yuri's mouth presses, and there's another breath out of his nose again, and even almost something toward, but never reaching, a third of rolling his eyes. He can't even tell if it's at Victor or at himself. "This."

What an unspecific English word to means everything in this room, in these few feet of them, touching so much, of the last few seconds, minutes. Foolishness. He needed to stop getting lost in it, whatever it was and however, that worked. There's a shrug -- or mayhap, something like a shrug that works almost not at all like one while laying on the bed, while bracketed by Victor. Parroting Victor's own words, stapled like an excuse that he needed the same as the command for Yuri to do so. "Breathing."

While Victor looked, honest as the sun above him, like he didn't have a single problem with that in the smallest.
Not while he was telling Yuri, and not while he was rearranging himself around Yuri, and not while laughing at Yuri.

[fivetimechamp]

This? Fine. Breathing. It almost makes him laugh again, at the sheer inaccuracy of it, but Yuri looks defensive as well as aggravated now, and he's fairly sure that right now would be a bad time to laugh.

(That's probably what Chris would tell him, anyway, and in this instance, Victor thinks he'd be right.)

But it is laughable. Not funny, but laughable, because however he might look, he is the furthest from fine he's ever been. Or the closest? He honestly can't tell anymore, his whole world has been tipped upside down and shaken around and now it feels like down is up and hot is cold because Yuri is lying here beneath him, hair rumpled from Victor's fingers and lips pinked from Victor's kisses and saying it looks like Victor can breathe just fine, when Victor's not even sure what he's breathing is air, and not fire. He's not even sure he's breathing at all, too distracted by the way Yuri's skin feels under his fingertips, soft and warm, too distracted by Yuri's weight against his arms, the rise and fall of his chest beneath Victor's. "I'm not."

That's so easy. Maybe the truest thing he could say. He's not fine. Not with breathing, or anything else. Not now that he finally has Yuri here, after so long. Not now that it isn't just him, the way he always thought it was.

He's not fine, when all he wants to do is loose that shaky hold he has on his own self-restraint, and let the room burn down around them. When he knows there's so much more, so much past this, everything and anything Yuri could possibly want. All the ways to rip the air from both of their lungs, and wipe this expression from Yuri's face. The want to hear him gone wrecked and breathless, when the only word he can even find is Victor's name, and there's no room for any of this questioning.

Everything he wanted that night. Everything he put into Eros, pleasure after pleasure. Everything he ever dreamed about, fantasized, wished for.

Everything he can't do, because this is the first time Yuri has ever even been kissed, and Victor is thoughtless, and selfish, and impetuous, impulsive, but even Victor knows he can't just storm him with everything that's on offer, everything he could ever possibly ask for or imagine. He won't trade one night of perfection for the ruin of everything after.

And it would. Ruin everything. Even he knows that, knows that pushing Yuri too far now would mean wrecking everything once Yuri caught his breath and mind again, feet back on the ground, cold realization seeping through the steam and haze. "I've lost my mind." Did, long ago. Continued to do so in a very public fashion, when he dropped everything to come to Japan for someone he met once for only a few hours and had barely spoken to.

His mouth is dry and his heart is still racing; he swallows to try and find some normalcy, but the breath he lets out shakes, half with a laugh at himself, and half with the effort of just breathing. Normally. As if he didn't have to order himself to try and make his lungs world. "I'm just trying not to lose control."

For better or worse, he's the one here with experience, and that means he has to let Yuri set whatever pace he wants, is comfortable with. Has to be able to haul himself back from just pushing for more, more, more, and ruining everything. Eyes traveling to Yuri's mouth, the so-appealing line of his throat, and it bowls him over, again. A wave of desire that he feels like a punch to the gut. "I want you too much."

A pause, before he's lifting his eyes to meet Yuri's again, his smile gone wry and self-deprecating. "I have to remember to stop before I go too far. I just want you to feel ..."

What's the word he wants? Fine. Happy. Wanted. Secure.

Bending to mouth along that line of his neck, gently, with a sigh that feels like a held breath. "Safe."

[theglassheart]

I'm not, Victor says, and Yuri's urge from seconds ago only flares stronger. Stubborn under his breastbone.

Especially at the startled squeeze of heart tumbling down unexpected stairs, a panic fumbling fall at Victor's next words. Like he'd find managed to make it far enough, to get the toe of shoe, or his skates, caught and go tumbling. As Victor realized what he'd done. Or what happened. Even more that it shouldn't have. It was crazy. (It was Yuri.)

Except. That Victor doesn't pull away, and if Victor isn't staring at his eyes, where his eyes fall just makes that early flood of warmth, strong as a wave shove through him, undenied again. As Victor's eyes linger on his mouth, and then drop even lower beyond his face altogether. The pause there already making Yuri's heart slam into the slats of bone blinds stacked above it, even before Victor says those words and he can't even swallow.

Which doesn't change that his breath is coming faster through his nose. The whole of the air feeling charged between Victor's face, and Victor's voice, and that aching snapping distance between them. The very real, half-singeing threat of how it just might snap. (Again, again, again.) Even when it's everything at odds from Yuri's lazy-follow-up sudden thoughts, bursting, slightly painfully, back into existence through the heat with drops of coldness, because ...

What even is too much? And how much is Yuri taxing him? Or that? Making him hold back?
Making it so that whatever it is he does want can't be had. Because Yuri is ... Yuri.

A thought too on key, stabbingly so, cold wrapped in the heat, when Victor's words touch that, too. That there's a too far, and that whatever those words were -- if just them being real at all, wasn't insane enough -- it's nothing compared to everything that is everything that Yuri doesn't know. Hasn't done. Been. Isn't.

He hates that it make his eyes sting, like needles against the back and sides of it, even as his body shivers when Victor's mouth graces the side of his neck. The actual heat of breath and the friction of his lips again, making everything in him tremble. His eyes sliding closed, again, maybe too hard, and one arm still there against Victor's shoulder and neck, sliding tighter back, fingers curled at the base of Victor's head and the back of his jaw on the opposite side. Yuri's mouth, Yuri's own voice, in Yuri's own ears, saying the only thing he can even think to. "You wouldn't hurt me."

An irony, when Victor is the one training him to be better than he'd ever have been on his own, and it means he's frequently more in pain than ever out of it. But even more so, when the twin thoughts that hit neither of them giving quarter to its detonation site or clearing out of everything around it and beyond when it lands.

The first that it does, doesn't it, some of it, hurt
(the things this leads to, the places this goes,
and how his thoughts even get there so fast)

and

the second that it will, always would, but more now
(more than he's already accepted the new year would,
why can't he just keep that forgotten a little longer)

.

[fivetimechamp]

He pauses at the crook of Yuri's shoulder, at those words. At Yuri's arm tightening around him, hand at the back of his head, and that strange tight quality to his voice, like he's upset and doesn't want to show it, or disagrees but doesn't want to argue.

His immediate reaction to push up and negate even the possibility of it ever happening. Hurt Yuri? Never doesn't seem like a strong enough word. The very idea horrifies him to his very core. Just seeing that look on Yuri's face, earlier, that guarded wariness like he suddenly didn't know what to expect, suddenly realized who he was in this room with, froze him straight down to his gut. It's impossible, ludicrous. He wants to dive straight into defensive agreement, say of course, and I would never, never.

But he can't, can he? Hadn't he, already, just today, proven that statement wrong?

Hadn't he opted to hurt Yuri in the garage? Hadn't he made the decision to crush Yuri's fragile heart, hadn't he done it on purpose?

Maybe it was with the intent of helping him in the long run. Maybe it was the first and only time he ever made that choice, opted for that decision. Maybe it will never happen again.

But he still did it.

Temple and cheek settling on the pillow Yuri's using, nose just brushing that curve where the line of his neck disappears into his shoulder. Does he even deserve the certainty in Yuri's voice? "I never want to hurt you."

That he can say, promise. He knows it would be impossible to say he'll never, not when he's such a flawed person and he makes so many mistakes, and he's made so many already, with Yuri, and even with the best of intentions he's likely to fail. But he never wants to. Not ever. Not if he can ever stop it. "Not on purpose, and not by accident, either."

Not just because he's being selfish, self-absorbed, thinking only of himself and what he wants. "I would never be able to forgive myself if I hurt you because I was being thoughtless."

[theglassheart]

Victor's quiet makes a bubble of the room, shrinking and expanding everywhere around him.

The room lights creating a red-orange glow even through his closed eyelids. The stolid steadiness of bed everywhere beneath him, and the even more solid steadiness of Victor collapsed across most of his chest. The way he can feel that with expansion and decompression of his ribs. The weight of Victor. Very real. Very truly there. Breathing against his skin, chest expanding and retracting into his own, and not saying a word.

Not contradicting it, leaving those words to echo in Yuri's ears and the room, while Yuri tries to shove at the two halves of his head, from his own words anywhere else but here. Even though his body retains the tingle of it all, even as his muscles finally start giving into this stillness of Victor, of himself, of everything. Even though his heart can't argue with the directness of the logic either.

Tomorrow, or a week from now, or six. Even if now seemed insane, and tomorrow morning, this all still being here, even more, even if Victor said it would be -- still here, still real -- thinking of it existing to a week, and a place with hanging, dancing lights, thinking of it existing to the GFP, and up to the drop off point of the entire current path of his life. To the space where everything was ink black and unwritten, as riddled with swallowing void-like uncertainty as the beginning of this year.

But so much awareness of how it felt. Losing what he'd gained this year. With each new day.

Losing the one thing he'd given a speech saying he knew he didn't want to lose.
But on the dot from when the end of this whole bargain would be.
This .... thing ; Victor ; him ; them ... changing again.

The inverted echo of another loss coming to come.

He's glad his eyes are closed when Victor's words finally come, and it's strange that his first thought is to question Victor's voice more than his words. Fingers curling faintly firmer on the skin and bones beneath them instinctively, even when his brow wrinkles a little and his eyelids crack just barely at the question of whether Victor, of all people, suddenly sounds uncertain. Does he even have a second of anything to compare that, too? Could he even if he did?

When it moors him back to the room. Victor's voice brushing air against his shoulder and his neck, and Victor who has grown heavy on him, heavy on heavy bones, against the dark beneath his eyelids, tangling with the glow there, and hooking into and dragging down everything in his skin, slowly again. Even when he orients to those words. That voice. Victor. He's not sure he can imagine that, Victor actually hurting him, aside from the jut of cliff coming, with so many places to stumble and fall before he even gets there.

The idea is so strange, after all these months, that all he can truly latch on to is the last word for a second. Thoughtlessness. The way it makes him want to make some kind of poking joke, about the roughness of how Victor, on any or every average day, talked or expressed any ill feeling he had about Yuri's actions, or Yuri's skating, or Yuri's interaction with the world. That that hurts. But even if that pricks still, exhausted levity to both sides, he's gotten more used to that razored bluntness, too.

That even outisde of it Yuri feels so sensitive sometimes a bubble or breeze could do the same.
But it doesn't really form. A joke. Any idea how to phrase it even to any real words.


Instead, Yuri just nods, and lifts his other arm up to wrap over Victor's shoulder again, tightening gently there.

[fivetimechamp]

The whole idea is unsettling. Hurting Yuri. Hurting Yuri without even realizing he was hurting Yuri, and potentially without even noticing until it's too late. Even today, he hadn't meant to hurt, only to release some of the pressure Yuri was under. He hadn't expected Yuri to crack, to start crying, to yell at him until his voice sounded hoarse. He hadn't meant it to be an attack.

(How can you say something like that, like you're testing me?)

The likelihood of it happening again giving him knots in his stomach, a frisson of ice skating across his skin and leaving him shivering. (Maybe Yakov was right. Maybe he was never going to be very good at this. Maybe if he can't be the right coach for Yuri, he can't do this, either.) All of it waves crashing against a stubborn, desperate rock of no, never, never in his head, while Yuri's arms tighten and he presses his face a little more closely to Yuri's neck.

Wanting to be closer. To wrap all the way around him. To promise only to protect, and never to hurt.

All he wants to do is love Yuri. It's a helpless thought, when there are so many ways it could go wrong, when he's already messed up more times than he can count just tonight, but he's powerless against it, can't breathe for it, can't remember anything else he used to care about. His career, his plans, his training, his team, his country, all tossed aside in the time it took to book a ticket to Japan and apply for a visa. (Thoughtless.)

And the only defense he has is: "I love you." Said soft into Yuri's skin, helpless and hopeless and absolute.

(He might be a fool, but at least he knows it.)

[theglassheart]

It's not the words that catch hard in his chest (not that they don't have their own power, not that he doesn't know them, doesn't still reel to hear them, like this, pressed to his skin by lips buried against his neck). It's his tone. This tone that seems to find his ears by a brutually direct path straight through his chest and his heart first. That tone that is so wrong, and Yuri knows that tone.

Which is why, terrible as it is, maybe for a second he believes Victor in a way he can't entirely believe in the intensity of those eyes above him, icy blinding fire, or the laughter in the air, like maybe a bout of madness just swept through with the wind and might pass just as fast.

This isn't those. That is raw helpless inevitability laid on an altar. That is the way Yuri's head always says he'll lose, no matter how hard every other part of him desperately wants to win, or ever gets certain he can win, will show them, the world, Victor, himself. That is the way, even though that thought comes and goes, as Yuri's fingers tighten at the wrongness of that tone on these lips, what comes to mind suddenly isn't that either.

It's Stammi Vicino.

It's the feelings that filled him every time he watched Victor's performance of it last year.

It's those first beats of that sweeping music. It's the way the hands come to his chest, and Victor turns, curls, as almost hiding. It's the plantive beseech soon after on his one knee before he throws himself away to the side. His face turned skyward, gaze turned always in, his expression one of inescapable, soul deep, agony, for something lost that would not let you forget it and would not let you outrun it.

It had spoken to Yuri on such a visceral level.
When he was only drowning darkness, and still--


For a disastrous second he wants to whisper,
You couldn't. You saved me, before you even showed up.


What would Victor even do with that? Would he just graft to it with his camera bulb flash giddy arrogance, that was just as blinding, and then just as quick as a camera flash was over, leave it to his distant mild acceptance? Maybe it was still getting hits, that unintended capture of his skate of it, but that didn't make it any more or less, than one of a dozen videos just like it.

Yuri just one more trying to brush the shadows' edge of brilliance Victor cast.


When it's thinner than twilight's shift to whisper, "I know."

Victor loves him, loves their skates.

Even with his awkwardness and distance and inability to ever just be normal.

Victor loves him (wants him, doesn't want to hurt him). Victor loves him. Victor keeps saying it. Burned edges. Laughing smile. From laughed excuse to pained confession. Yuri doesn't know that he understands, everything that feels like is trying to push him apart and knit him together, that feels on the edge of making sense but, also, so far out of reach as the moon from the sun.

But he knows this, too. This harder part.

He's known this since he was twenty three, and eighteen, and twelve. Hopelessly and inescapably itself. Foolish and not enough, not deserving and painted on him as a passion, and it's never mattered, the way his depression couldn't keep him from returning to the ice, the way drops of water returned to the sea. He loves Victor, too.

Maybe like ... all of this, too. Maybe has for a while.

When everything is new, and just isn't at all somehow, too.
All of it echoing so hard into everything that already came before.

[fivetimechamp]

This might have been a surprise a few hours ago, but now Yuri says he knows and that's probably true. Victor's told him, over and over again, nearly from the time he first arrived in Hasetsu. That's how I show my love. It's not something he's ever really hidden, or tried to hide, even once he had to set it aside to give Yuri what he wanted. It isn't a secret.

He loves Yuri, and he lost his mind and tracked Yuri down to be with him, and now he losing it all over again, because Yuri hasn't moved, except to hold him tighter, and the only thing in his head is an echoing sense of loss, edged with cold fear. The thought of not having this, of those months spent killing himself in practice at the Sports Palace until even Yakov told him to take a break. He never wants to feel that way again: lost and lonely and so angry he didn't know what to do with it. Angry at Yuri for disappearing, angry at himself for wanting him anyway long after it had stopped making any sort of sense to stay infatuated, to keep longing for something and someone he couldn't have.

To tempt all of that once again simply because he couldn't keep himself from being impatient and thoughtless and selfish tonight is a freezing, desperate thought. It makes him want to cling to Yuri like a child would to a teddy bear, wrap around him and refuse to let go. It makes him want to kiss Yuri again until they're both breathless and unthinking and he can't remember feeling this way, not tonight, and not months ago.

(He wants to pour it all out into the dimly lit air of this hotel room, lay it out here on the crisp white comforter of the bed, how he doesn't understand how his heart could be so full and feel so close to breaking at the same time.)

Yuri isn't going anywhere. He hasn't been scared away, and he hasn't fled from Victor at all even if he's looked uncomfortable or skeptical at various points in the evening. He's still lying here, letting Victor just try to be as close to him as he can get, his far hand sliding down under Yuri's shoulderblade to run palm and fingers over his side, his ribs, down to his waist, where it settles, warm and affectionate.

(He doesn't understand how it's possible to long for someone already under his touch, under his chest, whose skin is against his lips and the tip of his nose and whose arms are around him.

But that's how this feels.)

Puffing out a heavy breath, as he tries to relax his shoulders, his back, all the muscles that had decided to knot and aggravate him and each other, to pull himself back to this moment, here. The reality of Yuri against him. How long ago all the rest of that was.

Yuri, who loves him back. Wants him, back. Is holding onto him, had just been complaining that Victor didn't look like he was having trouble breathing or even just being, right now.

Yuri does all those things, so he doesn't need to long for it anymore, doesn't need to feel desperate. The bruise he's pressing on is an old one, even if it still aches. This is something new. "Good."

He should say something else, but it still feels raw, like he'd accidentally scratched off a scab and now that wound is free-bleeding again, and needs a few moments to clot over once more. "Then you should know you take my breath away all the time."

Not just tonight. Regardless of how he looked just now, that make Yuri make that face.

In the rink. Sitting at the beach. Talking over dinner. In the mornings, sleepy and mussed.

There are times he thinks he stopped breathing altogether, the first time he really saw Yuri.

[theglassheart]

The red-orange is a soft fade as his breathing continues to lengthen, continues to deepen. It doesn't fade, as the lights don't dim or change from anything they've been the whole time. He says those two so soft, known, but equally as founded as unfounded words, and there's a good long stretch, broken only by a continued tension in Victor above and against him, that seems to get tenser, fingers pressing harder for a second, before he shifts. Just barely. Enough to flicker Yuri's eyelashes and list him barely toward it and the hyper-awareness of it.

Victor. Being touched. (More.) Victor's face still buried against him, and Victor's hand. Disjointed, but all him.

Victor's hand, half under him and half curled up his side, slipping there, under and sliding down his side, sending out a strange, sparking, elastic warning of its coming, and swallowing right after with the warm cuff of a slow slide of fingers over his so thin shirt. Over his ribs, and his trying stomach, and settling against his waist and for a second that Yuri can't decide if he's just aware of it, and holding his breath, or waiting, before something else shifts, and Victor breaths out into his skin, snapping his focus to his neck under it.

The breath against it. Warm and calculated slow, like a specific requirement. Warmth tickling almost and dragging him back to full focus, with a faintly unsteadily lurch from, he's not quite sure where. Not when his attention centers back on that breath.The tickle and the even pressure of the air. The same kind of press on the air as the shift of muscles and body, releasing and being pushed back looser, over the top half of him. Shoulders widening a little, breath back in, with the expansion of his lungs, slightly deeper.

The way the muscles even under his fingers on Victor's neck try to stretch and press out more. His fingers stretch a little more, curl a little closer, as though not wanting to lose anything if was already touching, before his thumb shifts, if a question of movement, and then the soft, simplicity of it. Brushing his thumb gently back and forth along the side of Victor's throat and the ends of his hair, and for a second, Yuri has the unexpected urge to yawn tapping at the back of his throat.


Not long. Long enough to feel it in what feels like the whole bottom half of his face, before Victor is adding more words than his single first affirmative and it slides back, without happening, behind the idea of knowing but not understanding. Those next words don't fall under either. Good, then like it's some obvious equation. Good, then like that made some sort of sense. Good, then and Yuri is running mental fingers through a million memories of these months, for anything that even looked remotely like Victor had ever seemed like that in his presence.

Breathless because of him. Flustered by him. Even, just barely, here and gone ruffled.


Ever.


Even once.


Even just for a single second.