{ 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]

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.

[fivetimechamp]

It's hard to say how long he would spend stuck in thoughts of last year, or even just last week, without being tugged out of them, but the answer is probably too long. it's all over and done with, and he won, in the end. So what does it matter?

Except it does. Matter. It matters that Yuri is here in his arms, after all these months, willing and wanting. It matters that he's finally had the chance to say what he feels, everything that's been in his head and heart for longer than he'd care to admit. It matters that he can touch Yuri, like this, now.

And it matters that Yuri touches him, back. That Yuri's fingers unfurl against the back of his neck, and he holds his breath for fear that doing even that much, even taking a breath, would scare him away, before the pad of Yuri's thumb is skating over his skin, sensitive at his hairline, being followed by goosebumps that vanish almost as soon as they disappear. "That feels good."

Yuri touching him. Yuri stroking him, the back of his neck, the edge of his hairline, right over the cluster of nerves that light up over and over again, every time Yuri's thumb slips over them, no matter how light. It feels good to have Yuri hold onto him. It feels good to have Yuri's chest beneath his, and Yuri's neck against his nose and mouth.

It feels good to have Yuri in a way he'd given up ever thinking was possible, and all that old wistfulness and longing gets brushed gently away, like cobwebs Yuri's banishing with the sweep of his fingers, the warmth of his skin, the pressure of his arms, and Victor sighs, a long and low and contented sound, into his neck.

(Is it strange to feel like he's being melted into a puddle of hot water, or molten chocolate, just at the faint brush of those fingers?

Is it that odd to feel dismantled and put back together again on a single touch?)

The sound he makes is one of low, humming contentment, as he shifts a little closer, hand at Yuri's waist tightening, moving up towards his ribs and down again, and he wonders how strange it might be to say that he hopes Yuri never stops touching him. Maybe ever.

[theglassheart]

He's not sure can come up with a single one.

One where Victor isn't out of breath from something else obvious to the memory moment.

Riding his bike as fast as Yuri could manage to keep up at his side. Running through the waves, or being knocked over by Maccachin, or just laughing until he was saying he couldn't breathe. Or the end of a long day, when Yuri's already pushed practice an hour, two, three beyond when Victor had originally said they were done and Yuri had demanded or begged or wheedled for more time, more practice, more jumps, more run throughs from the beginning, more whatever it took to be better, get it right.

Even the way Victor looked at Yuri sometimes when he was skating or when he got it right -- the one he couldn't really place or name entirely -- he didn't think that looked breathless. It was, also, something else. Something in the stillness of Victor that was another shade apart and yet part of the same, other one, that sent him smiling and throwing his arms out at the end of skate for Yuri to come to him, or had Victor throwing his arms around him, hugging him, shaking him, more like an excited child than a professional coach after.

Maybe it's good that Victor's voice breaks the silence, with words not about his last sentence, which had only birthed the contrary circling and multiplying in the heavy sunk shadows beside those deep black drapes edging in, and over, and under, and around, all of his thoughts. Victor commenting on -- his hand? The way he touching him? When it's barely even the smallest piece of himself? One finger, compared to any other part of him?

One weighted arm, curled around and across half of those broad shoulders still. One hand curled, thumb tracing the same patch of Victor's skin back and forth. Suddenly more aware of that errant touch even more than he had been, maybe, when he started, and definitely not when it had just been happening, while he was thinking about the rest far more. The warm, faint pressed back and forth, in the arc of reach his thumb could make without having to move his hand. Back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth.

It'd be almost like figures, but that would require him to change hands and that isn't really an option when Victor is sighing and then humming contentedly into his neck and his shoulder, making it vibrate into his skin, making him want to curl in toward that sound and Victor there. Even, if that's kind of crazy, given Victor is the one half-curled on top of him at this point, heavy pressure, surety, pushing Yuri into the bed, into the heavy darkness sucking at more than just his feet.

It's in the skin all around the sides and the back of his closed eyes. The joint of his shoulder and elbow and wrist on the side with his arm not on the bed. It's in the ladder of bones that Victor draws his hand up and down against, making Yuri heart stumble just a little sideways, but he doesn't stop Victor's hand any more than he forgets to consider stopping his own.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't answer, which has not been an unusual occurrence tonight, but his thumb keeps lightly sweeping back and forth across that inch of skin in a way that feels a little like he's forgotten about it, is just mindlessly stroking back and forth more by instinct than intent.

(Is it strange for that possibility to make Victor smile with even greater contentment? Should it be?

Yuri is touching him, casually and constantly, just because he wants to. How could that mean anything but complete satisfaction?)

It makes him lift his head a little, near arm shifting so he can lean his cheek on his hand and look down into Yuri's face, other palm warm and fingers spread over Yuri's side. "You look tired."

Exhausted, really, and Victor isn't surprised. He hadn't slept last night, and hadn't napped this afternoon, and with the crash after the adrenaline rush of performance, it's amazing Yuri can keep his eyes open at all. There are faint bruises of purple and dark blue under his eyes, marring skin that looks too pale, shading eyes that look a little too glassy. Victor's thumb is gentle, when he lifts his hand from Yuri's waist to touch his temple, brush the mess of his hair out of his face and over his ear. "Close your eyes."

Rest. Get some sleep. Relax. Everything Victor might forget to tell him to do, because he's so focused on suddenly having Yuri here in his arms, saying he dreams about Victor, and wants Victor back. Yuri who is touching him. Yuri who is holding onto him.

There's so much more Victor wants to know and say, but it will have to wait, and it can. He's not sure Yuri's exhaustion could, even if Yuri wants it to. "You need to sleep."

[theglassheart]

Victor shifts, more than just the hand Yuri had somehow lost, or the ribs expanding into his -- and he's not quite sure how he lost those, or he is, but that takes more thinking and his thinking only has one path, Victor suddenly moving. Making him blink eyes open, against the light being suddenly more bright than he'd expected. A flare of unfocused brightness he grimaced at, sidelong with the weight of eyelids, and the way that opening them felt like pulling two stickers apart.

The voice above him rumbling words about his being tired as he closed his eyes tighter, before blinking them a little more, as though both might help more, with getting them to open and stay open. To dispell the feeling, and let him dispell Victor's words about it, about his not being tired. Except that right as he meant to open his mouth to tell Victor he was fine, instead of words a yawn pushed out through his mouth and his teeth, and what felt like all the way to ribs, stretching again all those muscles in his back for it.

He tried to tamp that down, but ended up having to turn his face away, and raise a hand to his mouth, muffling, "ごめん." Not English. He thinks harder, reaching for his other words, with a furrow of his forehead. "I didn't mean to--" Suddenly yawn in his face? Almost fall asleep? Actually fall asleep? Did it say something that he wasn't entirely certain himself, in his own head?

Which has more than a touch of a blush to it, and maybe a bit more focus, blinked and forced into focusing on Victor's face so close, mined up from the mire of the hooks all around him already aching downward. He's probably the only person in the world to almost fall asleep with Victor Nikiforov on top of them, in the middle of talking to them. Had he still been talking? Had Yuri missed something? He couldn't really remember, but Victor didn't look mad at least?

Victor was leaning on one of his hands, staring down at Yuri, and pushing back Yuri's hair with the other. Still touching him, and Yuri wants to lean into that, to be certain it's not a dream and it won't suddenly dissolve and dilute if he agrees to sleep, agrees to close his eyes, and actually can sleep for the first time in nearly three days now. It was amazing he was still managing anything, and miraculous that he'd managed to get a silver medal almost without any sleep at all.

Did that say something about him?

Maybe?

Maybe he'd think about it tomorrow.

Right now, holding on to the thought, or wherever that led off into another path in the dim of his head, was like trying to catch the sunlight in his fingers, especially while Victor is this close and has a hand on one side of his face. Tell him he needs to sleep. It's almost the very last thing he wants to do, agree to just sleep, or to point out the logical flaw, or next step in Victor's point. Which. Maybe he is right, but maybe Yuri isn't entirely sure he wants to be right. He's tired. Fine. But he has to move to go to sleep.

The thought of which has more to do with Victor on top of him and his bed a few steps away over there.

Which Victor probably hasn't even gotten to thinking of in his gentle teasing. Point. Something.

"You have to move if you want me to get up."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri blinks sleep-muddled eyes at him and opens his mouth to answer but instead falls victim to a jaw-cracking yawn that is too adorable for words (or reason, probably: he doesn't understand why he finds it so endearing, but that could be true of everything about Yuri that continually trips him up and sends him spiralling into a cloud of adoring fascination), and Victor can't keep from smiling, indulgent and fond, at the words that stumble after it. "I don't want you to get up."

That would be beside the point. "I want you to get some sleep."

But he didn't mean anywhere else. Isn't that obvious? Yuri stayed with him that whole night after they went to get hotpot, and that was before any of this found its way into the air between them. Yuri is exhausted, and already falling asleep right here, and it doesn't make any kind of sense to banish him from this bed just for the sake of propriety. "Just stay here."

If he gets up to move to the other bed, Victor might just follow him, anyway. It's not rational, and it's probably not appropriate, and Yuri may still have some doubts about Victor's intentions, here, but all of that can be worked out tomorrow, can't it? He knows he won't be able to keep Yuri here every night, can't even remember having him here just two nights ago, but tonight is ... different. The first real night. The first time he's been able to do any of this. The first time he thought it might be an option.

The idea of letting Yuri go anywhere else, of letting go of him, is incomprehensible, and so he dismisses it out of turn. "I promise I'll just let you sleep. Just ..."

Settling his head on the pillow next to Yuri's, fingers slipping softly into that shock of black hair, to stroke through it in a slow and gentle rhythm. "Stay with me. Please."

[theglassheart]

It's probably not surprising that his awareness tries to hook a few more fingers toward the light and Victor's, Victor's voice, given what he's saying. That his words about Yuri going to sleep, hadn't been about Yuri going to sleep in Yuri's own bed. Again. Even if he says it calmly, quietly, amused and persuading.

Saying that he won't do anything, when Yuri's last thoughts of what happened in this bed two days ago was a wide gaping chasm between the nothing happened that was true and yet still not anywhere near I'll just let you sleep. But it's the 'please' on top of the two times he's said that word he said the whole other night. Stay. Stay. Stay.

Please.

Please, while Victor fingers start running through his hair and something too soft escapes his throat, the back of his mouth, this time, because it feels so good, making him want to lean into it, and the dark, and Victor, and everything. His eyelids closing slightly more as he leaned toward Victor's touch.

He knows he's too tired, because he doesn't even want to argue with his own head about whether he's being stupid or selfish. Whether he should or he shouldn't. He doesn't want to be far away from Victor, and Victor doesn't want him to go, and Victor is saying nothing is going to happen. He's just supposed to sleep. Which will probably be incredibly boring for Victor, but it means he wouldn't have to move, get up, pull apart his --

Yuri's eyelids flickered, finding him, from nowhere, "Are you going to get the blankets the right way this time?"
Or would that be Yuri's job, again. Figuring out how to get them, right through Victor, again. Except on top of him.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's giving in without even putting up an argument, so he must really be exhausted, and Victor's smile flickers as he watches the way those lashes drift down again as if holding his eyes open was too physically draining to maintain, and Yuri's head started to tip towards the fingers in his hair. It looks like he might just slip off to sleep now, without further comment, and Victor wouldn't be surprised if he did: it's been a long few days and not enough sleep for Yuri between them, bracketed by the stress and strain of competition.

He's honestly amazed Yuri made it this long.

But it's only a moment, before Yuri's eyes are blinking back open, and he's giving Victor a suspicious, if sleepy, look from beneath his lashes, and Victor has only just begun wondering if he should brace himself for a debate, before a thick and dopey voice makes that single demand. it makes Victor blink, wondering what he'd missed (again, when had he gotten them wrong before?), but when no other qualifications follow, his readiness evaporates into a widening smile. "Yes, I'll get them right. Do you want them?"

He doesn't want to move away from Yuri, but if Yuri wants the blankets –– and if that's the only qualification Yuri is putting on staying here, right here, with him –– then he will get Yuri blankets. He leans forward just far enough to press a kiss to Yuri's forehead, and pulls away, fingers slipping from Yuri's hair as he pushes himself up, and swings his legs towards the edge of the bed to start untucking the sheet and the fluffy white comforter over it, now dented from his bodyweight. "You'll just have to move for one second, so I can get them out from under you."

Taking the pause to pluck Yuri's glasses from the pillow and deposit them on the bedside table near his own phone, thinking he should turn out that lamp, too, and pull the curtains to keep the Shanghai lights from flooding in and keeping Yuri awake. "And then you can go straight to sleep, if you want."

He needs it. Maybe they both do.

[theglassheart]

There's an all too clear second he thinks that was a mistake. Not at first. It comes in little parts.

The first part, the one where Victor leans in and is placing a kiss on his forehead floods himself behind mostly closed eyes, tugging from his chest a feeling childishly comforting, which spans into something flustered almost pink, because of it, because that almost certainly not what he should feel while Victor is kissing him, embarrassing but bearable, is mostly fine. All the way mostly normal in the slight unsettled, but deeply wanted, feeling.

The second part is definitely where it starts, when Victor pulls away and Yuri's eyes widen, first in question of why and then in a muddled, furrowed line between his brows, rather wordless, but not emotionless, dislike at himself, and barely, Victor, because why was his question, because why was Victor's answer, because Victor is with almost magic suddenness off that side of the bed, because--

Third, Victor is actually tugging at the blankets and sheets like this is something amusing. Nothing like that barely there memory that had borne up the question. Victor. Tugging him awake from being almost asleep. Victor. Directing him to get the blankets, because Victor was cold. Victor. Keeping a hand on his wrist the whole time, like a leash meant to keep him from going more than to do just that.

Except Victor is on his feet, and Yuri feels so suddenly weightless without the pressure of Victor above him. On him. And disoriented by the near aplomb he's going about unmaking his bed for Yuri. At Yuri's question, that hadn't even gotten around to being a request, or even an exact comment on needing them. Even though he would sleep better with a blanket. Would, did, want one if he was supposed to, was going to, go to sleep.

Here. Apparently? In Victor's bed. Who is saying he'll have to move. Help. "Okay."

He did sit up though, leaden muscles giving annoyed groans and that rusty familiar bone deep throbbing, as he used them, and went on moving, to help with at least where he was. Still fuzzy on just how his question had worked up to this. Victor up. (Victor away.) Victor looking just as fine to be doing this, and Yuri could at least get this part of the sheet and comforter. Tug it down from under the pillow he'd been using.Then, get himself levered up off the bed enough to pull it under his bottom, then set himself back down, while tugging it under, then over, his bare feet, in a wiggle of shifting weight and fussy joints that never has him actually off the bed where he is.

Then, back sitting with a slow few blinks and a puddle of Victor's white bedding in his lap and around him suddenly, oddly reminding him of yesterday morning. Except he'd run away as soon as he finally could yesterday, and even without Victor's hand on him now, even if his stomach shifted a little inside him, like it was trying to poke wakening fingers through the deep cloud of his exhaustion ... he wasn't.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri looks bewildered, but he shifts, tugging at the sheet and comforter from under the pillow he'd stolen, and slipping his bare feet and legs under them until he's sitting in a puddle of white bedding, looking like he can't remember what comes next, which is ironic, probably, because it only makes Victor forget what he was supposed to do next.

(It was close the curtains, but that's hardly important.)

All of it vanishing on a glance at Yuri, muddled in a soft white cloud of bedding, hair rumpled and glasses gone and looking so adorably bemused that Victor finds himself stepping back over before he's even realized his feet have moved, setting one knee on the bed to lean himself forward on both hands, one on either side of Yuri's hips. He feels like he's been whacked over the head with a pillow, or punted off the edge of a waterfall to plummet towards what he hopes isn't a large collection of razor-sharp rocks and drowning rapids.

Not that he has much say in the matter, when Yuri is this cute and he finds it irresistible, has to be touching him again, intent and beaming, to say: "how are you so cute, Yuri?"

Before leaning to cup his cheek with one hand and shifting closer to press a kiss to that bewildered mouth. Wanting to taste that warm, sweet, sleepy look on his face. Tempted to just wrap hs arms back around him, and drag him down into the soft nest of sheets until they both fall asleep, and no one is awake to worry about curtains or table lamps or fallen ice packs anymore.

Not sure, for a second, that that isn't exactly what he should do.

[theglassheart]

Victor comes back to the bed, from what exactly he'd been turned to look at, or distracted by, Yuri doesn't have a clue. It all washes back out, as Victor is suddenly leaning on the bed, and then his hands are down besides Yuri's sides, his face filling Yuri's vision, asking that question. That question that makes Yuri blink and have to focus more on Victor's face, because he's uncertain if that's serious or if he's joking or if maybe he's just fallen asleep sitting up.

But then there's Victor's hand, soft and warm and larger than his own, cupping his cheek and part of his jaw and his heart is just melting from its already nebulous, half-asleep, half-awake, puddle of awareness into something so much more and so much less all at once, because he's not dreaming Victor kissing him. There's nothing in any dream that feels like this.

Exquisite, even when he's made of cement and ice, fingers balling in the comforter over his legs and leaning toward that soft, simple touch of lips. Focus and direction both feel like he should and just a little further out of reach than he really feels like he has in him to reach for. Leaves him leaning his forehead against Victor's forehead, eyes half lidded, awareness diffused along the warm tingle of the kiss spread through him, with a contented little sound vibrating in his chest and his throat.

In the smallest of percentages left to question,


Even if it was a dream, it was the best dream he'd ever had in his life,

And if it wasn't, there was nothing in his sleep that could begin to compare ever again.

[fivetimechamp]

He can't imagine he'll ever get over this. It's a ridiculous thing to think on night one, probably, because he's never known a novelty that hasn't worn off eventually and become usual, mundane, expected, but there's still that thought, burrowing its way into his hindbrain and curling up there:

That he can't imagine he ever get over this.

Yuri, leaning into his kiss, and returning it, just as soft and just as sweet, until it feels like Victor's heart is about to crack, it's so full. Yuri's forehead resting against his, warm and solid, while his eyes go heavy, dopey with exhaustion, but absolutely trusting. Every inch of him relaxed and tired, a little mussed, looking younger than his twenty-three years even without his glasses, puddled in a soft t-shirt and sheets, and Victor's hands go to his face while he smiles, all his other thoughts dropped without ceremony by the wayside. "Come on, Yuri. Lie down."

Shifting to settle his own long body on the mattress, and gently tugging Yuri down, with him, towards the pillow and the cloud of sheet and comforter, and Yuri can really lie on either, if he wants. The pillow, or Victor, himself, who can't quite remember why it was he was going to get up only a minute ago.

It doesn't seem important. Nothing does, aside from making sure Yuri gets settled in and has a chance to give up this losing battle he's trying to fight against sleep. Victor can finish up doing whatever it was he'd meant to do in a minute, once Yuri's dropped off. Until then, he has all the time in the world, and only one goal: get Yuri to sleep, the way he'd failed to earlier today. "Isn't it comfortable?"

Soft, warm, cozy. Not his own bed at home, but the next best approximation, and, well ––

This one has an added feature Yuri's little bed back in Hasetsu never had.

[theglassheart]

Victor is there, luminous still (luminous always, but luminous still), when his eyes push back toward open when Victor pulls away. When Victor isn't kissing him, and Victor's other hand joins the firsts against his face and he must be out of it, Victor has to be right, and Yuri's head is in agreement with him, without argument, a rarity that should get its own gold medal, because he feels like he could just lean against one or the other and close his eyes. Trust Victor would take care of whatever happened next.

But it isn't that. It's Victor (luminous still) smiling at him now, and Yuri might like to hide from that smile a little. At least as much as a flicker of thought, whisper thin, still wants to reach out and trace the shape of it. Because. (Because he can? That logic sounds too simple and childish even for exhausted.) But Victor is smiling, and Victor is gently encouraging, directing, and then more-than-half pulling him back down, to the bed, where Yuri can stretch out his legs, pushing his feet deeper into the cold crisp sheets.

Yuri can tuck one hand under the pillow he refinds, to make sure his head lands in the right place, and use the other to find the comforter and tug it upward, even while he notes the dip of the bed due Victor's weight and how different it is to anything except two night back. Even Maccachin didn't really cause Yuri to slightly tip toward him. But Victor did. Victor did ...


... a lot of things. That was an epic list.

All of it written in blurry letters right now,
like someone had spilled water across the page.

He nodded, looking at Victor so close, but not as close as minutes ago, inches and air and space between, filling with the feeling of everything sinking further as though in response to lying down for a purpose, all of his body pulling toward that dark, weightless place, even as finding Victor's face made him want to not close his eyes, again. Even if the greater want to was going to win if he tried not to let it.

Even then, or maybe, it was especially, or specifically then.
There was another flicker. This one tightening his mouth briefly.

The concern of whether he'd close his eyes, just to open them the other side and realize it all really had been a dream -- too perfect and too messy, one each of both of them -- but, still, just a dream, brought on by the exhaustion he felt now, and beside it? The feeling of how badly he didn't want to let go of it, didn't want that to be real. Anything other at all than Victor looking at him right now.

[fivetimechamp]

He goes down easy, too tired to argue, and too tired to do anything other than find the pillow and the blanket and settle himself into them, but he doesn't close his eyes the way Victor expects him to, even though it looks like he'll fall asleep any second. Every time his eyes start drooping, he refocuses, mouth tightening in that stubborn line Victor's learned to recognize as 'Yuri doesn't want to do something.'

Except he's not sure why Yuri wouldn't want to just relax and go to sleep. Not unless it's the same reason he doesn't want to close his eyes, and go to sleep: this uncertainty that all of this will have vanished in the night. That maybe it will all look and feel different in the light of day, after Yuri's finally had some rest and some time to distance himself from the competition and time to think and process.

That maybe he'll wake up, and decide he doesn't want this, after all.

It's the only thing Victor can think of, when Yuri's eyes are stubbornly locked on his face, even looking fuzzy and out of focus, more myopic by the second, each blink a little slower and harder, and it's such a strange, luminous feeling. Yuri, not wanting to take his eyes off of Victor, as much as the other way around.

The hand that isn't curled under his own pillow settling back in Yuri's hair again, fingers stroking through it lightly, slow and gentle, while Victor's voice goes low and coaxing. "Go to sleep, Yuri."

His arm looped over Yuri's, the pinky of that hand on the pillow by Yuri's head, long fingers and thumb in his hair, forearm lying close along his neck and back. "I promise nothing will have changed when you wake up."

It hasn't before now. One more night certainly isn't going to be the final straw.

[theglassheart]

Victor says nothing will change and the first thing Yuri's heart or head, or whatever's left of the mess of them together and fading, coughs up is promise. Except he just did. He said that. He promised. Without Yuri's distant but desperate longing for it spiked the next second. Already given. Freely. Undemanded. (Undeserved?) While Victor's fingers have started stroking his hair again.

The first touch making his eyes widen a little in recognition of it, or startle at being touched, before tumbling him harder the other direction when it feels like the warmth, slippery embracing darkness just gets bolder, deeper, drags him down faster with the stroke of those fingers against his hair and his scalp. Instead of tingles, it's like his thoughts, and his ability to keep them in any order, even at all, slides away with those fingers. Everything melting into drops of water, rolling away, away, away from his head, his mouth.

There's a moment, looking up, at Victor, before he finally, shifts his shoulders, tucks his chin, with a rub of his cheek against the pillow, and lets his eyes close. As much a relief as a distant clamor. It's almost like counting, except there are no numbers. There are no American sheeps. There is only the length of the slow strokes of Victor's fingers through his hair, against his head, and the quietest of quiet, so needed, thought-whispered refrains to each one, in the slipping (I promise nothing will have changed when you wake up),

slipping . . .
(I promise nothing will have changed)





. . . slipping . . .
(I promise nothing)

. . . slipping.
(I promise)

[fivetimechamp]

He waits until he's sure Yuri is asleep, breathing slow and even, a boneless lump beneath a cloud of bedding, before moving. Fingers slipping out of Yuri's hair, and just brushing against his cheek, before Victor is pushing up, carefully, trying to keep his weight from shifting the mattress too much and waking Yuri up.

Not that he's too worried about Yuri waking up. He went under so quickly and so completely that Victor's not sure even the hotel collapsing around him could toss him back into wakefulness. That's probably a good thing –– definitely for Yuri, and maybe even for Victor, too. It means he can get up, quietly, and move around the room, doing all those things he'd meant to do before. Close the drapes against the gleaming lights of Shanghai. Pad to the bathroom to use it and brush his teeth. Open the door a crack to hang a "Do Not Disturb" notice on the handle outside, along with the dry cleaning, because Yuri should sleep in, and maybe he should, too, even if his weariness has the electric buzz of exhaustion mixed with adrenaline, coating his nerves and keeping his eyes open, even as they feel more and more gritty, eyelids trying to stick closed.

So much has happened tonight.

(He kissed Yuri, and Yuri kissed him back.)

He doesn't know how to begin sorting through it all, or even if he should, but it feels strange and wonderful to sit back down on the empty side of that bed, and look over to see Yuri already there. Yuri, who won't be surprised to wake up and find Victor there in the morning. Yuri who agreed to stay, for the cost of being covered in a blanket. Yuri who has surprised him more in the last eight months than anyone else has managed throughout Victor's entire lifetime.

Yuri who he loves, with a helpless desperation that has him already wanting to reach back out, make sure he's real. Yuri who loves him back.

(How did this happen?)

It's going to be impossible to sleep, even once he turns out the lamp on the side table and the room is doused in darkness, so he reaches for his phone for the first time today, squinting at its bright screen until his eyes adjust. (To his side, Yuri is a ghostly shape in the dim glow, but every time Victor looks over, he solidifies into reality.) The screen is a solid mass of notification after notification, and he scrolls through them, only reading some here and there when Minako's name appears. Where have you gone? she demands in one, and, much further down: What the hell was with that flip???!?!

He grins to see them, flicks open the text box with her name at the top, and types a response, more than an hour after her last message. Wasn't he amazing? Yuri was tired so I took him back to the hotel. He's asleep. We'll see you in the morning!

No sooner sent than those three dots appear, furling and unfurling until they resolve into an annoyed gray bubble with the words WHAT WAS THAT ONE THE ICE YOU PERV??????!? that actually makes him laugh, before he glances at Yuri, guiltily, only to let out a relieved breath when he doesn't wake, and just sends Minako a series of emojis (😄😘🤐) before exiting the app and flicking open Instagram, where he spends a moment blinking at the number of notifications that have popped up. He's tagged in a surprising amount of posts ... or, not so surprising, when he opens one up and finds a short video of himself leaping to tackle Yuri to the ice. It's difficult to see what's happening, exactly, and that's probably why the poster commented with a caption asking I can't seeeeeee but WAS THIS A KISS @v-nikiforov 😱 I kinda think it was HOW DO I HANDLE THIS?!?!?!.

He only scrolls through a few comments (don't be stupid that's a hug, OMG, I ship it, my FAAAAVEE) before skipping to the bottom of the screen, where Add a comment offers him a clean, neat text box into which he can type he was so perfect I couldn't resist 😍😍😍 because, well –– it's true, isn't it?

The other posts he looks at are more of the same, and something comes over him as he scrolls through image after image of him tackling Yuri, kissing Yuri, standing next to Yuri looking like he's forgotten the rest of the world even exists, clips of articles breathlessly asking what their relationship is, topped by headers of photos of that moment on the ice when Yuri had blinked away his surprise and smiled up at him, and the world around him had vanished.

TBH I think they were secretly dating the whole time says one caption, to which he replies not yet! with a winky face, and they're just so cute I hope they stay together forever sobs another, and he has to respond (after looking over at the sleeping figure by his side for a long, long moment) with ME TOO, and he favorites just about every post that comes up.

And there are many. Articles, posts, pictures: he savors them all, as more and more notifications come rolling in. His comments are making some waves, but they're only the truth, as he writes in another comment beneath a photo of him and Yuri on the street in Shanghai on their way back to the hotel. The caption is only a breathless is this @v-nikiforov KISSING #katsukiyuri on the street in Shanghai OR AM I CRAZY???, and all he says in his comment is:

I think this photo shows everything clearly enough 😄

... which gets an astounding amount of likes, and that's gratifying. Just as gratifying is how many people agree with him when he posts 😍 under an incredible photo of Yuri mid-free skate, with a caption that says he's just so beautiful, because he is. Beautiful. On the ice, in that perfect costume, skating his perfect program ...but just as much here, now. Face shaded in the dark, slack and relaxed in sleep, and Victor has to put his phone away, finally, because as fun as it is to let the world know how he feels about Yuri, he doesn't really care what they think. What they know. What they wonder.

Has to set his phone back on the side table and slip a little further under the sheets to curl towards Yuri's warmth, a hand sneaking over the space between them to slide over Yuri's stomach, while Victor shifts close enough, nearly, to share that same pillow, but it's still a problem. Maybe even more so, now.

Not wanting to close his eyes, and sleep. Not wanting to give up even a single second of this, now that he has it.

Not wanting this to end, this perfect, warm, cocoon of silence, where they're the only two people who exist.

He's still thinking that, right up until the second when his eyes close without him even noticing, and he drifts off still in the middle of his single, repeating thought: that he doesn't want it ever to end.

Not ever again.

[theglassheart]

Nothing about sleep when it finds him, so long denied, is gentle. Nor is it tumultuous. Even the options are not optionable. Everything about this sleep is plunging him down, down, down, deeper, deeper, deeper, submerging Yuri into a dumbed and dreamless sleep. A blanket spread across everything that is and ever was and ever would be, heavier than the darkest night or the deepest winter. Down, and down, and down, and down some more for good measure.

To the bare aching bones of that place even, as raw with throbbing overcharge as everything else.

For a long time, it's all there is. Consuming, endless, nothingness, so deep it's beyond blackness even. Long and slow and deep, until something else slowly, ever so very slowly pushes up. Chafes denied for long, against a buried face and a far more buried mind, denied and denied, again, but sticking, and sticking, and sticking. Warm and insistent, until there's finally a crinkle of a nose in the dark, while a face pushes into a pillow, sliding on and hiding in soft high-count cotton pillow case material.

All of it disorienting. All of it unwelcome. All of it Yuri's face scrunches up against, hugging his pillow, not ready, not ready to wake up, because he's still so tired it feels like pieces of him have rolled off and fallen all around him, even the flicker of awareness feels painful, like his awareness of not wanting to wake up is trying just as had to slip off, and something annoying tap, tap, tap, tapping at him toward a sharp, loud crescendo, is still strung together on only the tenderest of vines that aren't even strong as ribbon or string.

It doesn't stop it. Louder for burgeoning awareness. Loud enough he cracks an eye as the center of him complains busily, abusedly, while the darkness swims as the only thing truly in his vision at all at. Darkness in his eyes, and ears, and chest, and head. Everywhere except his bladder that he can't just wish into a lack of existence. He shouldn't need -- but when did he even last. There was water across the day, and tea at dinner, and he hadn't, had he? He'd never gotten up before falling asleep, had he? Yuri almost groans into his pillow, but it just comes out a quiet, lip-pressed, barely there, grumble of consternation.

Just wanting to sleep. But the sooner he gets up, the sooner he can lay down, sooner he can sleep again.

Yuri turned for the edge of the bed, feeling the weight that shifted with him, reaching for it in confusion. Like he might have caught the sheet. Only to remember as he found a wrist -- Victor's wrist, connected to Victor's hand, which he could suddenly feel lightly against his shirt, prone with no grasp -- and looked back from the blanket he'd started lifting. Some muddle of confusion at remembering, a question at the reality, and necessity to see if the facts matched his confused thought, if the world this late, this dark, had any facts at all.

Even as he lifted Victor's hand with his own gently, memories swimming in like a school of too bright, too smooth, too blurred fish, of the other night, when all he wanted was to get beyond one hand, and now, with the shape of Victor there, behind him, all he wanted was not to wake him. Because. Somehow. It was him. At least as much him as a lumped black shadow that might have been Victor as much as any other prone body in the little to focus on darkness. But Victor was the only other one staying in this room.

Victor was the one who kissed him, who asked him, again, to stay.