{ The China Cup GPF Qualifier, FS } November 7-8, 2014 - Shanghai, China

[theglassheart]

If Yuri thought the night before this one never ended, he was wrong. It's this newest night that feels like it never ends. Oppressive, pressing, darkness, digging into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears, while Victor breathed heavy and easy in the adjoining bed. Yuri had tried to sleep. Turning this way, turning that way, staring at the backs of his eyelids toward the ceiling, pressing his face into his pillow. He tried and tried and tried (and most of all found himself trying not to let his breathing race so fast it might wake Victor).

The evening had been bearable, if not entirely enjoyable or unenjoyable. Less stressful than the one before it, if only marginally, while Phichit and Victor drug him from place to place. Too late for museums or anything with middaytime, there had been rather quick tours through the Yu Garden, the Oriental Pearl Tower, and the Jade Buddha Temple, and in the cases of closed doors, pictures with their iconic buildings. As well as everything else that looked interesting between them.

It took forever, and then it was just over.

He'd enjoyed some of it, but none of it stuck for long.
Not even the late calls from his family and Yuu-san had.

Not with the Free Skate looming. Not with every single person he was skating with gunning for where he was standing, and every person watching wondering if he could somehow pull out o f himself the miraculous performance that had seemed to come from almost nowhere. Like it hadn't even belonged to him. How many times had he performed Eros and it'd never been that?

How badly would it be when (if - when) tomorrow couldn't match it?
What would they say about him, then? What would they say about Victor, then?

Yuri would fall asleep only to startle awake what could only have been seconds later, nerves sharpening with each new jolt, until it felt like ice was splintering more and stabbing up harder through every part of his veins, until each second asleep seemed to only contain the certainty he would fall, he would fail, he would forget. He could never reach whatever he'd touched for that brief two minutes and eighteen seconds.

It'd been a fluke. He'd only dreamed it. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't sleep.
Every minute in that dark reaching, but, also, clutching his pillow.
Eyelids clenched tight, or eyes open, staring at the other bed.


Over and over, he counted his breaths down.
Over and over, he repeated that he had and he could.
Over and over, he told himself this was all in his head.

Over and over, he slipped right back as soon as it finished.




That morning comes at all only changes the color of the sky.

Breakfast is a blur, piling food into himself, like maybe it would give him any solidness. Weigh him to the seat, to the ground, to reality. It should be impossible, but his head feels even heavier than his body. Hot water had shaken some tension from his skin, but none at all from his mind. It hadn't mattered whether he was in the bed, in the shower, in a booth, at a table.

His foot tapped under the table, all the way up to his knee and thigh, and in the moments he could make himself stop, his fingers drum against the side of his thigh or the seat instead. Desperate to try and keep it from Victor's sight, when Victor won't stop looking at him, smiling like that, talking about how Eros was perfect, and what he should do as soon as they arrived at practice.

How would he look when he realized Yuri couldn't reproduce what he done. Couldn't even look at the things that compounded to get him there. Words Victor'd said, but entirely in a different way than he'd said them. That Yuri'd blown them out of proportion and reality out there, during Eros. What would he do if Yuri couldn't place at all?

What would he do when everyone no longer was cheering his name as the reason Yuri had done so well? When there would only be that gut-wrenching pity on every face and Victor's name was smeared with his failures the same as his already was? Why was he even going to put himself through that? Why was Yuri?





Practice is a comedy of uncertainty.
He doesn't even want to return to the wall and Victor during it.

His feet hardly feel like they belong to his body, and thinking about love doesn't produce his love, his family, Hasetsu, or Victor, it brings up more and more knots in his guts. It tears up the ice under him with images of last year, of every fall, of every day spent in his bed, avoid being awake, avoiding the rink, Celestino, Phichit. The flip of what that could -- will -- look like again.

Except at home. Except with his parents, and Minako, and Yuu-san, and his family.

Their sad faces, their disappointment, as Victor's back went vanishing away in the background of his loss.

Even the ease of his long earned and long loved turns seems to be slipping from him when his focus won't pull itself together. At full speed it makes it a fumble of something he hasn't fumbled in half his life, even if he doesn't fall. It's better the next time, and gone the third, but it still there. He can do this. He can. He's done it how many hundreds and thousands of times.

It makes him sloppy. It makes him reckless. It makes him stubborn. It makes him hesitate.

It ends all too soon. The alarm sounding for them to come in, and he trails in.

Comments

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri 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.

[fivetimechamp]

He isn't aware of anything after falling asleep –– if he dreams, he doesn't remember it –– but it feels like only seconds before he's blinking sticky eyes open into the warm darkness. Even then, he only feels the pillow under his cheek, the soft sheet over him and the weight of the comforter above that. The slight sensation of too warm because for some reason he fell asleep in a t-shirt and long pants, rather than just in briefs, like he's used to, and he's moving his hand to tug at the waist of his pants when he realizes what woke him up.

Motion. Movement. The mattress shifting.

Yuri.

Yuri getting up –– or maybe coming back? –– and Victor can't remember why he's here, but he also can't remember why he thinks this should be strange. The only thing he can think is that, if Yuri's here, he doesn't want him to go anywhere else. "You're leaving?"

A thick mumble, from under one cracked eye, pried from his pillow, even as he shifts towards that warmth and weight. Yuri.

All he knows is, no one should be moving.

[theglassheart]

Victor shifts and Yuri goes still, like it might stop it, but it doesn't. Victor voice, sleep-thick, and soft, and spacey as Yuri's brain still feels, slips through the silence and Yuri's squeezing his hand gently, before even deciding to. Stopping as soon as realizing, but taking a second before catching up with the still pressing problem, with fact he needs to put it down.

He has to think for a second longer to get from お手洗い to "Bathroom."
Then stringing more than one word in English, "I'll be right back."

Which is a strange thing to hear in his own mouth, even if he picked the words, as much as anything this late, this tired, and this much in need of getting up just to go to sleep feels picked. Still that sticks itself between his teeth and the notches of his spine, as he's slipping out. Setting Victor's hand down on the bed gently.

I'll be right back, he said.

He'll be right back ( ... to Victor's bed).

His brain doesn't even feel like it has enough to put up a fight or much of a defense. Enough energy to think much of anything. He keeps a hand out for where he remembers the wall being at the edge of the room. It's not that hard to trail himself from there to the door, and slip into the bathroom. There's a second he considers the light, but avoids it. The idea of having them flare bright at him seems like asking for a spotlight.

He's fine. In the dark. Even if his eyes barely feel open the whole time he is. He manages. Even washes his hands. Only has to spend about ten or so seconds working on relocating the door knob itself after finding the door just fine. A lot smaller than everything else in the darkness. But that completed, with overwhelming relief from need, everything feels like it's already sinking and sucking back inward. From the top of his head back toward the center of him.

A yawn getting covered with the fingers of one hand as the other closes the bathroom behind him. He brushes the wall with his fingertips and crosses the room back to the bed, pulling the blanket back over him. Only seeming to realize the chilly winter night air had been nipping at his bare skin as the comforter starts wiping it's shadow away.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri is explaining, in a sleep-thick voice, but all Victor feels is his hand being squeezed, and all he hears is Yuri saying he'll be right back. It never even occurs to him it could be a lie: he's still close to sleep, his brain too fuzzed and hazy to take it at anything but face value. Yuri says he'll be right back, so Victor lets his hand drop to that warm dip he left behind in the mattress, and curls towards the pillow that smells like him, eyes falling closed again.

Probably he falls back asleep. Certainly he doesn't notice if the bathroom light comes on, or hear the water running, or even know how long Yuri's gone. The next thing he knows is the sheets lifting and the mattress dipping under a new weight, and he shifts to make room, only to curl towards that warm body, on instinct, as soon as he can. Arm across Yuri's stomach, head settling close enough he can brush his mouth over Yuri's shoulder, mumble something sleep-soaked and fond that he barely realizes he's saying into the crook of his neck.

It doesn't matter. Not the words, or their precise meaning, because they all mean the same thing: stay here. Don't go. I need you.

Everything that's always been true, that he's never been able to say, and it doesn't matter if he uses those words, or not, or if it comes out more like: "You came back."

Mumbled and already more than halfway to sleep again, as his arm tightens and he settles along Yuri's side, with a jaw-cracking yawn that turns into a heavy, huffing sigh.

Yuri's back. The details don't really matter.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's not entirely certain he isn't more than three quarters asleep by the time his first knee hit the bed again, but he surfaces for the surprise of being suddenly besieged. An arm wrapping around his stomach, and Victor's face settling back into a too familiar place suddenly, washing those memories together, one hot and one cool, while Victor mumbles those soft words. Right before yawning, warm against his skin.

The surprise bubble of warm, makes him shiver, and while Victor's arm wraps around him he stretches a little, but there's nowhere to go when Victor's chest is firm against his back, and Victor is sighing there next, part and parcel with Yuri's pillow, that can't be moved now, to tuck more against his shoulder. Yuri thinking he should be thinking something about it, but all he can think is in the smallest, lightest, drifting, drifting, dropping, dropping, notes that he's warm, and Victor's warm, and Victor's comfortable, and he's so tired, and he has a bed (and Victor) so who cares if he does or doesn't have a pillow.

Doesn't want to think. Doesn't want to move. From here. From Victor. Ever again.
Which is all these is in the last seconds before there's nothing all over again.

Nothing, and nothing, and nothing. No clue to when or where, a hovering moment of awareness, answered and forgotten in the space of handle of seconds, minutes. Everything that slips, slips, slips, slides, slides, slides, slides back toward obliteration deepeer than deep and darker than dark, still claiming it's overdue fine, and Yuri has nothing in him that tries to fight back against that either. It spans and spins and spools against the night seeming everlasting, right until it doesn't.

Right until something snaps Yuri's eyes open again with molasses thick blinks at the ceiling and his heart racing a little too hard, with a confused feeling like he'd forgotten something important. The room was still inky, but the curtains when he finds them, are edging toward a softer light that nighttime. Dawn's fingertips. Not quite to rosy, and he sinks back against his pillow, shoulders dropping, and chin drooping.

Except somewhere in his head, in every sleep soaked, still exhausted bone, it feels like there's something in his way. A door. A floor. A ... something. His brain doesn't want to put more of it together. Blinks again, and leans up just enough to check the clock -- over Victor. Which takes a second of blinking and squinting at. Rolled to his other side, toward the opposite side of the bed, and it takes Yuri a second to get back to the clock.

Which is, what it is. It's about as early as he should have gotten up yesterday. The day before. Any day he needed to still to be ready for everything that was coming. Even today? Maybe today. He was trying to keep his eyes closed. Today could have flaws. He could flub everything and they still couldn't take his medal back.

Except today he still didn't want to. Maybe especially now. Yuri tucked back down against his pillow, but his eyes opened, head turning, to look back at Victor's back. Specifically. Today. When he'd wear that blue and black outfit, that would be entirely recognizable to the whole world, for the first time. With the music everyone knew. Even the everyone who had never seen that video. They'd recognize it for exactly what it was.

Victor's program. A tribute as close as Yuri's skating could go to it.

He hadn't wanted to mess up before this second even. Not when it was a tribute to everything. Even before the flip. Even before ... this. But now that had happened. He'd done Victor's flip. He had the bruises to prove it, and maybe even the quiet, don't look at it or it might be spooked back away, pride. And this ... this had ... happened. He fought the urge to drag the comforter up to his chin, or over his mouth, to just press it against his face.

His fingers still steal up to rest against his mouth. Even if it makes him watch Victor closer.
He'd never imagined all of this before that. Not before ... anything happening. Not ever. It wasn't.


But it was?

Yuri lay there, studying the rise and fall of Victor's shoulder, and the line of his back. The way, if he squinted just right, as the light continued to shift, that he could almost see just how Victor's hair rested against the pillow, and the nape of his neck, a contrast of what would be silver hair, and peek of a black shirt at the nape of his neck, and the thick down of the white blanket tugged up high. The other end of one unmeant recording of the skate that had brought Victor halfway across the world to him.

All the days tipped, tripped, and tilted, all the way here. Here. Today. His exhibition of Stammi Vicino.

This morning. Yuri. Here. Waking up in Victor's bed. Staring at Victor's sleeping back across from him.

Staring while anything like sleep seemed to be slipping further and further from his shoulders. He still felt like he should have been able to sleep for hours. There was no way he'd made up for two lost nights, and two performance skates on top of them, but his head didn't seem to be listening. The way the world might wish to stay dark, but it had to listen and watch dawn creep closer and closer, breaking warmer and clearer all across it. That was how being awake was. He wasn't even annoyed Victor was still asleep. It was almost -- and maybe the thought is cowardly -- easier.

Even if the night seemed slightly blurred by his skate and his shock and his exhaustions, it's not that blurred.

Victor had kissed him. Victor had said he wanted him, dreamt of him. (How that was even possible.) Amid the kind of laughter and breathlessness, Yuri could only imagine for Eros for months, and that made him feel he was getting goosebumps everywhere just to think about. Something too warm, and just this side of too wobbly in his chest, stirring and trying to push itself back upright. A day ago he'd never been kissed, and this morning he was in Victor's bed, watching Victor sleep. There were million of fans would have done million, maybe billions, of things to be where he was right now.

He lays there a while longer, watching Victor's shoulder, wishing, maybe, for him to turn over. It's not like he's never seen Victor sleep. He has. From the first day to several times in the many months between, but nothing feels like it has ever been the way it is now. Because it isn't. Because it can't. But, after awhile it's not entirely enthralling, continuing to just watch his shoulder rise and fall, just watch Victor continue to be lost far away and sleeping, turned from him. Yuri isn't about to wake him up, and his head isn't about to let him sleep.

He could get his laptop, but the typing might wake Victor up, and where had he left his phone? Not next to the bed. He pushed up, slowly, watching Victor to make sure he didn't stir, before looking at the room. Had he ever even taken it out of his jacket pocket? He didn't remember having done so and the things might even be dead then. Yuri tried to very carefully, very quietly lever himself off the bed without similarly waking up Victor and padded over to where their jackets were hanging, feeling his way into his pockets and finding it.

Heavy, familiar weight in his fingers against a multitude of thoughts, as he's scroll up over the locked picture of Maccachin, taken harmlessly and amusedly in the late fall a while before they left. He probably had at least one, maybe two, messages from home at this point. They were only an hour off, but it was still too early to call them. And Minako, she'd be in there somewhere. He'd never heard from her after, and he wasn't entirely certain what he'd say to her now. What to say to her in person, with her sharp eyes, that had never missed anything. Maybe it's why he scrolls, not quite looking for her name and not quite not-avoiding looking for it.

There are tons of notifications. Email. Instagram notices of updates from people he follows. He pauses when he hits a stream of messages from Phichit that says they were from five hours ago. Several familiar green and white talk bubble icons. First, Tomorrow. Bright and early. Second, You're probably sleeping. Enjoy your sleep . Third, There will be full details today now, right? Right. Because we both know *I* deserve them. And last, or more specifically, first in this strange group, before another email, Et tu, Yuri? Am I last person to know things now? followed by a shortened hyperlink.

Yuri was squinting at it as he went to sit back down. Tapping on the second one, that would have come first, so it would pop up the text box, and then he could click on the link inside, that doesn't even entirely have his attention when all it has in the box in the text box is "Five Time Russian World Champion Nikiforov . . ." before breaking off. The tap opens his web browser and his squints at it, before everything seems to disconnect from his eyes down. His focus on anything outside of the headline loses focus when it pops up -- dark, and bold, blared like burned oild, across the top of his screen


FIVE TIME RUSSIAN WORLD CHAMPION
NIKIFOROV CONFIRMS RELATIONSHIP
WITH SKATER KATSUKI?

-- goes in a flash, dropping him harder than he meant on that side of the bed, with an alarmed gasp, "Nani?" But scrolling doesn't make it better. He's not even entirely able to focus on the words. He's not sure whether it's his vision not wanting to focus, or his head not wanting to handle the smaller, unfocused English yet. But. There's a photo from the ice. When Victor tackled him and kissed him after Yuri on Ice. Then, a photo of Victor closer to him, with the sports center in the background.

And another paragraph beneath it, an Instagram screencap, from @v-nikiforov, and barely the top of another showing, and Yuri doesn't even make it any further. "Victor?!" When had he even. How.

[fivetimechamp]

Awake happens in a jolt, with a feeling of being unceremoniously dropped, at two things: the bounce of the mattress beneath his side, and a scandalized yelp of his name that at full consciousness would probably worry him. He's nowhere near it, though, so he just shifts and stretches under the sheet, and turns onto his stomach to slip his arms under his pillow and resettle himself with one eye cracking to give Yuri a sleepy, confused look. "Yuri, you're being so loud."

He's still tired. He still wants to sleep. Even if some part of him is eyeing the distance between them, trying to judge through his still-gritty mind how easy or difficult it might be to reach around Yuri's waist and drag him back into the puddle of sheets. It's still dark in the room, even with the edges of morning along the window drapes, and he's so warm and comfortable and Yuri is too far away and also yelling at him far too early.

Yuri is also too far away, but those are both problems with simple solutions, that Victor will definitely put into action after he lets that eye close again with a sigh, snuggling his cheek into the pillow. "It's not time to get up yet."

Probably. Not that he's sure he cares if it is.

[theglassheart]

It's not. They aren't. Isn't. Haven't. What. Victor. Why. Yuri's brain sprints faster than words and characters can attempt to keep up, still scrolling, up at the pictures, down at the screen shots, with heart-eyes and teasing words he can all but hear Victor's voice saying, and when did he even have the time, it was only.

Yuri nearly jumps out of his skin and away from the bed when Victor's actual voice comes grumbling confusion, stretched over something that is close to sleepy annoyance and Yuri isn't sure he can hear it. His fingers have gone white around the phone, and his head can't stop conclusively exploding second after second after second.

Phichit. Everyone. Everywhere. Everyone everywhere.
Now. Everyone. Everywhere. With the internet. With a TV.

What was he supposed to to say to his parents now?
Minako? Phichit? Everyone. Everyone. Everywhere.

Everyone was going to look at him today. Because of this.
Not because of his outfit, or his medal, or how he skates.

"What did-" It just comes crashing out of his mouth. He wants to curl up into a ball. He's not sure he can breathe. He's still feeling his shoulders rise and fall too fast. He thinks his hand may have started shaking in its clutch. Or is that all of him. "Why would you."

[fivetimechamp]

"Hmm?"

Something seems off, and he cracks that eye again in a dozy frown. "What did I do?"

He's only been sleeping, just like he promised. He hadn't done anything else, had barely even touched Yuri. As far as he knows, he hasn't done a single thing that would warrant being rudely awoken, or accused.

(Unless Yuri meant last night. All of last night.)

It's a thought that has him shifting, finally, to rub the heel of his hand into his eye and blink them both up at Yuri, bewildered and still a little more than half-asleep, not quite processing whatever it is that's going on. "Yuri?"

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't even sure he knows. Has words. That they won't come out too loud, even uncollected. He's flat on the bed and he feels like he's going to fall off it, plummet through it. The room is too big. His head is too small. How much worse is there? What else did he say? What else is everyone else saying?

His chest feels like ice, and Victor is just sleepily rubbing his eyes.
His hair still a shadowed smudge, but his features are almost clear enough.

Beautiful. He'll be beautiful whenever Yuri's brain or Yuri's eyes get there. He's never not beautiful. Never not been. Yuri had touched almost all of that face last night. Last night that feels suddenly yards and days away from him, and scaling, burning this second past. Burns left on this skin, the ruin of where Victor's hands had been. Suddenly ripped apart.

How many of them agree he doesn't deserve this? How many of them would have done so much more with the possibility of even one night? Would hate him even more than they already did for stealing Victor, for this, too?

The terror is an ice worse than the morning chill in the air.
While Victor lays there. Beautiful. Confused. Innocent.

"You told them?" His voice sounds wrong. Too high. Almost shrill. It's like the quiet, dark room that had been calm, safe, dark, is suddenly filled with a thousand voices, a thousand eyes. There's a hand, he doesn't know when got there, against his chest, and he's leaning back, back away, even when he's showing off the front of his phone. The article still there. Damning headline and all.

[fivetimechamp]

"Told ...?"

Who? Them? Told them what?

None of it making any sense, least of all the way Yuri is collapsing back with his hand on his chest like he's having a heart attack, which only makes Victor ignore the outstretched phone to sit up, concerned, and reach for him. "What's wrong?"

Dozens of hazy questions buzzing in his head, but he's stopped by the hand holding the phone that's in his way to getting to Yuri, and he takes it to look at the headline of the article that's open, scrolls down the page with a look of blank confusion. "I just commented on a few pictures."

The headline is blaring CONFIRMS RELATIONSHIP, but that's just clickbait: all he'd really confirmed is that he'd kissed Yuri, which anyone with eyes could see from the photos.

(And how he felt, he supposes, but that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It's not the first time he'd posted adoring emojis on a photo of Yuri, and it's certainly not going to be the last.)

That posted photo of Yuri mid-free skate is hovering in the middle of the article, and he smiles down at it, turns it around for Yuri to see. "Isn't that such a good photo? You should repost it to your account."

[theglassheart]

"No!" It's too loud, too sharp still, and it sounds just as horrified as it feels. That he should post anything on anything anywhere now. That everyone won't be waiting for that. Watching him. Judging what it is. What it isn't. They will be. Looking. There. Here. Everywere. How many people does he have to pass before he even leaves this building?

How many of them are, similarly, skaters who competed this weekend, winners and losers, staying and leaving both, who would have already seen, or be waking up, scrolling through it as part of their dashboards or articles about the end of the Grand Prix Qualifier competition days? The people at the desks? The other guests, who'd been attendees?

Oh. God. Interviews. There would be reporters still today. Cameras. Questions.

Oh. God. Oh. Oh. God. No. No, no, no, no. He doesn't. He can't.

[fivetimechamp]

"No?"

He doesn't understand either the rejection or the tone it's made in, flipping the phone back around to look at it with raised eyebrows, but seeing nothing alarming. Just a photo of Yuri, looking graceful and focused, that he had liked and commented on, which surely isn't surprising. Not before, and especially not now.

But Yuri looks not only surprised, but betrayed, horrified in a way he hasn't since a few chilling moments last night, and Victor feels the beginnings of a knot tying itself in his guts, wondering if he should brace for the impact, finally, of everything he'd feared might happen last night. "Yuri, what's wrong?"