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theglassheartIf Yuri thought the night before this one never ended, he was wrong. It's this newest night that feels like it never ends. Oppressive, pressing, darkness, digging into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears, while Victor breathed heavy and easy in the adjoining bed. Yuri had tried to sleep. Turning this way, turning that way, staring at the backs of his eyelids toward the ceiling, pressing his face into his pillow. He tried and tried and tried (and most of all found himself trying not to let his breathing race so fast it might wake Victor).
The evening had been bearable, if not entirely enjoyable or unenjoyable. Less stressful than the one before it, if only marginally, while Phichit and Victor drug him from place to place. Too late for museums or anything with middaytime, there had been rather quick tours through the Yu Garden, the Oriental Pearl Tower, and the Jade Buddha Temple, and in the cases of closed doors, pictures with their iconic buildings. As well as everything else that looked interesting between them.
It took forever, and then it was just over.
He'd enjoyed some of it, but none of it stuck for long.
Not even the late calls from his family and Yuu-san had.
Not with the Free Skate looming. Not with every single person he was skating with gunning for where he was standing, and every person watching wondering if he could somehow pull out o f himself the miraculous performance that had seemed to come from almost nowhere. Like it hadn't even belonged to him. How many times had he performed Eros and it'd never been that?
How badly would it be when (if - when) tomorrow couldn't match it?
What would they say about him, then? What would they say about Victor, then?
Yuri would fall asleep only to startle awake what could only have been seconds later, nerves sharpening with each new jolt, until it felt like ice was splintering more and stabbing up harder through every part of his veins, until each second asleep seemed to only contain the certainty he would fall, he would fail, he would forget. He could never reach whatever he'd touched for that brief two minutes and eighteen seconds.
It'd been a fluke. He'd only dreamed it. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't sleep.
Every minute in that dark reaching, but, also, clutching his pillow.
Eyelids clenched tight, or eyes open, staring at the other bed.
Over and over, he counted his breaths down.
Over and over, he repeated that he had and he could.
Over and over, he told himself this was all in his head.
Over and over, he slipped right back as soon as it finished.
That morning comes at all only changes the color of the sky.
Breakfast is a blur, piling food into himself, like maybe it would give him any solidness. Weigh him to the seat, to the ground, to reality. It should be impossible, but his head feels even heavier than his body. Hot water had shaken some tension from his skin, but none at all from his mind. It hadn't mattered whether he was in the bed, in the shower, in a booth, at a table.
His foot tapped under the table, all the way up to his knee and thigh, and in the moments he could make himself stop, his fingers drum against the side of his thigh or the seat instead. Desperate to try and keep it from Victor's sight, when Victor won't stop looking at him, smiling like that, talking about how Eros was perfect, and what he should do as soon as they arrived at practice.
How would he look when he realized Yuri couldn't reproduce what he done. Couldn't even look at the things that compounded to get him there. Words Victor'd said, but entirely in a different way than he'd said them. That Yuri'd blown them out of proportion and reality out there, during Eros. What would he do if Yuri couldn't place at all?
What would he do when everyone no longer was cheering his name as the reason Yuri had done so well? When there would only be that gut-wrenching pity on every face and Victor's name was smeared with his failures the same as his already was? Why was he even going to put himself through that? Why was Yuri?
Practice is a comedy of uncertainty.
He doesn't even want to return to the wall and Victor during it.
His feet hardly feel like they belong to his body, and thinking about love doesn't produce his love, his family, Hasetsu, or Victor, it brings up more and more knots in his guts. It tears up the ice under him with images of last year, of every fall, of every day spent in his bed, avoid being awake, avoiding the rink, Celestino, Phichit. The flip of what that could -- will -- look like again.
Except at home. Except with his parents, and Minako, and Yuu-san, and his family.
Their sad faces, their disappointment, as Victor's back went vanishing away in the background of his loss.
Even the ease of his long earned and long loved turns seems to be slipping from him when his focus won't pull itself together. At full speed it makes it a fumble of something he hasn't fumbled in half his life, even if he doesn't fall. It's better the next time, and gone the third, but it still there. He can do this. He can. He's done it how many hundreds and thousands of times.
It makes him sloppy. It makes him reckless. It makes him stubborn. It makes him hesitate.
It ends all too soon. The alarm sounding for them to come in, and he trails in.
The evening had been bearable, if not entirely enjoyable or unenjoyable. Less stressful than the one before it, if only marginally, while Phichit and Victor drug him from place to place. Too late for museums or anything with middaytime, there had been rather quick tours through the Yu Garden, the Oriental Pearl Tower, and the Jade Buddha Temple, and in the cases of closed doors, pictures with their iconic buildings. As well as everything else that looked interesting between them.
It took forever, and then it was just over.
He'd enjoyed some of it, but none of it stuck for long.
Not even the late calls from his family and Yuu-san had.
Not with the Free Skate looming. Not with every single person he was skating with gunning for where he was standing, and every person watching wondering if he could somehow pull out o f himself the miraculous performance that had seemed to come from almost nowhere. Like it hadn't even belonged to him. How many times had he performed Eros and it'd never been that?
How badly would it be when (if - when) tomorrow couldn't match it?
What would they say about him, then? What would they say about Victor, then?
Yuri would fall asleep only to startle awake what could only have been seconds later, nerves sharpening with each new jolt, until it felt like ice was splintering more and stabbing up harder through every part of his veins, until each second asleep seemed to only contain the certainty he would fall, he would fail, he would forget. He could never reach whatever he'd touched for that brief two minutes and eighteen seconds.
It'd been a fluke. He'd only dreamed it. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't sleep.
Every minute in that dark reaching, but, also, clutching his pillow.
Eyelids clenched tight, or eyes open, staring at the other bed.
Over and over, he counted his breaths down.
Over and over, he repeated that he had and he could.
Over and over, he told himself this was all in his head.
Over and over, he slipped right back as soon as it finished.
That morning comes at all only changes the color of the sky.
Breakfast is a blur, piling food into himself, like maybe it would give him any solidness. Weigh him to the seat, to the ground, to reality. It should be impossible, but his head feels even heavier than his body. Hot water had shaken some tension from his skin, but none at all from his mind. It hadn't mattered whether he was in the bed, in the shower, in a booth, at a table.
His foot tapped under the table, all the way up to his knee and thigh, and in the moments he could make himself stop, his fingers drum against the side of his thigh or the seat instead. Desperate to try and keep it from Victor's sight, when Victor won't stop looking at him, smiling like that, talking about how Eros was perfect, and what he should do as soon as they arrived at practice.
How would he look when he realized Yuri couldn't reproduce what he done. Couldn't even look at the things that compounded to get him there. Words Victor'd said, but entirely in a different way than he'd said them. That Yuri'd blown them out of proportion and reality out there, during Eros. What would he do if Yuri couldn't place at all?
What would he do when everyone no longer was cheering his name as the reason Yuri had done so well? When there would only be that gut-wrenching pity on every face and Victor's name was smeared with his failures the same as his already was? Why was he even going to put himself through that? Why was Yuri?
Practice is a comedy of uncertainty.
He doesn't even want to return to the wall and Victor during it.
His feet hardly feel like they belong to his body, and thinking about love doesn't produce his love, his family, Hasetsu, or Victor, it brings up more and more knots in his guts. It tears up the ice under him with images of last year, of every fall, of every day spent in his bed, avoid being awake, avoiding the rink, Celestino, Phichit. The flip of what that could -- will -- look like again.
Except at home. Except with his parents, and Minako, and Yuu-san, and his family.
Their sad faces, their disappointment, as Victor's back went vanishing away in the background of his loss.
Even the ease of his long earned and long loved turns seems to be slipping from him when his focus won't pull itself together. At full speed it makes it a fumble of something he hasn't fumbled in half his life, even if he doesn't fall. It's better the next time, and gone the third, but it still there. He can do this. He can. He's done it how many hundreds and thousands of times.
It makes him sloppy. It makes him reckless. It makes him stubborn. It makes him hesitate.
It ends all too soon. The alarm sounding for them to come in, and he trails in.
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Date: 2017-05-16 01:08 am (UTC)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.
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.
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Date: 2017-05-16 01:27 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-05-16 03:33 am (UTC)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
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
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.
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Date: 2017-05-16 12:46 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2017-05-16 01:37 pm (UTC)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."
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Date: 2017-05-16 01:44 pm (UTC)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?"
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Date: 2017-05-16 02:13 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-16 02:37 pm (UTC)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."
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Date: 2017-05-16 03:10 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-16 03:23 pm (UTC)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?"
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Date: 2017-05-16 04:08 pm (UTC)There's no room left for that. There's no one who wouldn't be watching. No less space or ability he could ever pretend everything is normal and all that's happened. He skated Yuri on Ice and happened to somehow look like that doing it. Beautiful, it had called him, and he didn't look bad in the shot. But it's the word that never stuck.
And Victor is staring at him confused, like maybe he's gone crazy.
Again. Again, again, again. Not even a day after he had last time.
Except he can't. His chest is tight and tightening still. His throat is dry. His eyes are pricking at the edges. (And still some part of him is registering it was true. Victor is beautiful. Even sitting in the shadows, face painted by the light of his phone between them. Even the shadows lay gentle on him, like nothing but the softest of caress of those features is allowed even by the softening of night toward dawn, and the pain in Yuri's chest only gets so much more sharper, suffocating, denied already.)
"It wasn't bad enough they already thought we were sleeping together right before the Cup started?" It's the wrong words, the wrong point, and it's the one that comes out first, crescendo's from something not quite forgotten, able to forget, that wasn't even true. Never true. Not even good enough, enough enough, not for Victor, not for the world, not when it could have been offered, but not to Yuri, amd not for that when all of this got to this place.
No one would question it, this, these, Victor, and everyone who was everyone would have a hundred thoughts, questions, opinions about it. Like every step of Victor renouncing the season, coaching Yuri, appearing with Yuri at the Championship and the GPF Qualifier. There were always a million people with an opinion of what they'd lost, what Yuri'd taken from them.
And now there was this on top of it? Thrown to them, like it was just another piece to be?
How much of this doesn't he understand everytime he thinks he's started to understand anything?
no subject
Date: 2017-05-16 04:21 pm (UTC)Wasn't it bad enough? Bad enough that people thought they were together even before the Cup of China even started (he doesn't know what that's a reference to, but he saw enough I knew it!!! posts last night to guess that it was probably the case)?
Bad that people thought he was involved with Victor?
Or bad that he was? (Is.
Or.
But it all takes a back seat to the way Yuri is leaning too far, and Victor is up and reaching for him before he can even comment on anything else, because whatever's wrong will probably only get worse if Yuri actually flails himself straight off the mattress. "Yuri, you're going to fall off! Be careful, come here ––"
His free hand wrapping around one wrist to pull him in, the other (phone in hand), trying to circle around Yuri's waist, because he might not know what's happening, but whatever it is, he'd rather Yuri took it out on him, in his arms, than by slamming the floor and hurting himself. "Why are you so upset?"
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Date: 2017-05-16 05:02 pm (UTC)Against him, above him. Yuri's heart trying to explode and collapse all at once. To bang out his back still held aloft, still caught in the desperate freefall and scramble to get anywhere but near Victor, Victor who is with the rest of the world, and, also, still, straining toward him. Trying to push out the front of his chest, the iron band of his ribs choking him. To the fingers that had been overly sleep-warm on his wrist, pressed to his front. To Victor's hair hanging from Victor's face, and Victor's face him.
Confused. Worried? Everything too fast. Too much. All of his body orienting to Victor.
"You -- it shouldn't have--" It wasn't right. Wasn't proper. Wasn't how he wanted.
He shouldn't have. He. Him. Yuri. It hits like a wall.
Him. Him, too. Struck dumb with surprise every time Victor had kissed him right at the beginning. Hadn't stopped him. Not. Not like that. Not entirely. Not to have stopped Victor from kissing him. On the ice, and in the locker room, and here, so, so, so many times, from getting here, to those last seconds before bed. But not on the way back. Not where so many cameras existed everywhere.
This is his fault. His. Too. Isn't it always?
But Victor hadn't said anything to it earlier. Hadn't given it any fire. Fuel. Credence.
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Date: 2017-05-16 05:20 pm (UTC)First, Yuri moves too sharply and actually does fall, and, second, Victor lurches up onto his knees to catch him, one hand wrapped around Yuri's wrist and the other arm secure around his waist, and he stays there until it feels like Yuri's secure, before pulling him back towards the center of the bed and letting go, because something else happened, too.
Yuri flinched.
Yuri startled. Yuri moved on instinct, and it wasn't because he was falling off the mattress: he almost fell because he was trying to get away. From Victor.
Which means that as soon as Yuri's safe from falling off and landing on his head, or his sore hip, or anywhere else, Victor lets him go like he's on fire, even when it feels like the sick lurch of slamming the ice or the wall in this realization, that Yuri is ...
Afraid of him? Horrified by him? Disgusted with him?
Repelled enough that he almost threw himself off the bed, rather than be close to Victor, and there's nothing Victor can do about it aside from not touch him, even when it means his hands have to fist in on themselves tightly enough he can feel the nails biting into his palms. "I shouldn't have what?"
He still doesn't understand, can't tell, doesn't know, only knows that Yuri is upset and that Yuri jumped away from him hard enough he almost went crashing to the ground, and that neither of those things is how he thought this morning would go. "I don't understand."
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Date: 2017-05-16 06:08 pm (UTC)"Said anything." Which suddenly sounds absolutely, utterly, stupid.
It imprints on every inch of his brain how overwhelmingly, idiotically, stupid that sounds when those only two, and two too many, words get pushed out his mouth. Another of those things anyone else would have jumped at, right? Victor (Victor Nikiforov) confirming in front of the whole world that he was kissing them. With. Them. It would have made anyone else ecstatic. Right?
Right?
So, why did he feel like the curtains were wide and he had no clothes on, maybe like he'd been shoved out the window like that, absolutely alone, though no one had ever removed a single piece of clothing since getting here? Not like that. Not like anyone would care. Or believe that. He doesn't even want to look up or at Victor now.
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Date: 2017-05-16 06:42 pm (UTC)He still doesn't understand. Not why Yuri's upset, not what he did to upset him, not why Yuri pulled away from him without caring that doing so would mean he'd fall.
Not why Yuri is saying he, Victor shouldn't have said anything, responded at all to the clamoring questions and theories that flooded his notifications last night. Why should he have kept it to himself? Why be silent, when they weren't wrong? "I didn't think it was a secret."
Not those kisses, which were caught on cameras both professional and amateur. Not how he feels. Not how he feels about Yuri. Even when he'd tried to set it aside, it hadn't really been a secret, had it? Why would that change now?
Unless ...
There's a chill building up in the middle of his chest, but he tries to set it aside for now, because Yuri had said, and. He hadn't, not all last night, not every time Victor gave him the chance.
He hadn't changed his mind.
So it's worth trying out other options, before he asks that. Just in case it's the answer he dreads, he'd rather put it off until he can't any longer. "Are you embarrassed by me?"
That's not quite the right question: he knows he accidentally embarrasses Yuri all the time. But. Not like that. Like.
Searching for the right term, something that feels sore and achy and a little hurt. "Are you ashamed of me?"
Why would anyone want to hide this, unless they find it shameful? Something they'd rather the world not know, something they want to keep nudged into the shadows, never spoken of, only occasionally indulged in. The thought hurts, but he pushes on. He needs to know. If he's supposed to be a secret, hidden away and discreet. "Of being with me?"
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Date: 2017-05-16 07:21 pm (UTC)-- it's horrified a second later. When Victor doesn't stop.
Victor piles more questions on the second. Impossible words.
Words Yuri wouldn't even believe Victor could form with his own mouth, with anything short of arrogant, lightness at the ludicrousness of the idea. Of anyone not loving him. Except. Victor isn't smiling. Victor is looking at him, stricken and still in the darkness, like Victor of all people in the world believes that an option?
That Yuri could be ashamed of him? Like Yuri doesn't spend every day of his life trying not to drag Victor down with him and trying not to be terrified into the certainty he already has, is every second Victor stays? Hadn't he said that yesterday? Screamed it? Hadn't that even made sense?
But Victor was staring at him. Staring at him. Like he believed it could -- this was at all about --
"No." It finally gasps out of him, realizing he's just staring, mouth dropped.
"How could I? How could anyone?" He was lucky every single day Victor even deigned to keep being here, every day he woke up and Victor was still his coach, they were still headed toward the Grand Prix Finale together. It was more than a miracle, and only short of not being possible because it kept happening every morning, that Victor even showed up in Yutopia because of some amateur youtube video.
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Date: 2017-05-16 07:50 pm (UTC)He might be. Ashamed. If he wants this to be a secret. "People hide things they're ashamed of."
Relationships. Habits. Old mistakes they never quite got over.
He said it yesterday, and he meant it: I don't care who sees or what they think. There's nothing here he wants to hide, wants to keep a secret. "If that's not it..."
If it's not that Yuri is embarrassed at the idea of being connected to him, or with him, why is he so upset? Is there another reason he can think of that isn't the one he dreads most, slowly squeezing a fist in his stomach?
That maybe...that was it? Last night?
And maybe he changed his mind, after all? "What does it matter if people know how I feel?"
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Date: 2017-05-16 08:21 pm (UTC)Like Yuri is not intimately aware of pretty much everything about shame.
Being it. Feeling that everything about yourself isn't worth anyone near you.
It feels like a reprimand to turn those words over. People hide things their ashamed of. Like there's only one way, and it involves either being ashamed of Victor, of last night, of the very little and so much that happened, of everything hurting somehow, or the naked light of day, and feeling like this. Ice and hurt and shock, and shame.
Okay. Yes, there's shame. It's in there.
But it's not Victor he's ashamed of. It's never Victor.
Victor is everything good in his life. That hasn't gone yet.
And, without any warning, last night, he'd become even more.
"It does. It matters." That's feeble, and even more, it's maybe not even allowed. Now.
But it does. It matters. He doesn't even know how to put it into words. Thoughts. He feels so much smaller. So much less real. Cold and small, with his shoulders sagged. There are so many things that aren't him and aren't Victor mixed into all of it, everywhere in his head, suddenly, and he wasn't even sure he'd even gotten anywhere near that him and Victor being real, being still.
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Date: 2017-05-16 08:48 pm (UTC)It's what he still doesn't understand. If it isn't that Yuri wants to hide this because he thinks it should be a secret, and it's not that Yuri changed his mind, there's no immediate reason Victor can think of for his reaction. "Yuri..."
Finally, he leans forward again, one hand lifting, a little hesitant and ready to pull back if Yuri flinches away, to rest gently on Yuri's leg, the closest part of him Victor can reach without moving further back towards him. "Calm down. Tell me why you're so upset."
It doesn't always work. Sometimes Yuri only gets more frustrated when Victor asks him to calm down, or to talk to him, to try and explain what he's feeling. Sometimes it helps, like what Yuri needs is a specific answer to focus on, in order to keep his anxieties from spinning out of control.
But Victor can't fix this unless he knows what's wrong, and it's obvious to him that he won't be able to figure it out simply by guessing.
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Date: 2017-05-17 12:56 am (UTC)But he, also, doesn't move.
There's a faint tension, here and then gone, in the muscle under Victor's hand touching down on his leg, but he doesn't move. Finds himself looking down at that spot in the morning soft-dark. The pressure of Victor's fingers through the warm, but worn material of well-love-on winter sleep pants. Solid as the bed under him. He's not certain he has any clue how to put the words together and make them make sense, and it's his heart more than his head that rails against being told to calm down.
That this was important. Was supposed to be. Had been?
He can't get his fingers to sink in. Everything feeling like it washed in and washed away, against something too loud and too sharp and too present. Everything in glaring retrospect from what he'd expected it to be, if he expected anything, and he had to have expected something, right? He had not freaked out when he just woke up, or in the minutes after, and he hadn't still been freaking out when he fell asleep, like falling with a large stone from a high cliff, and
None of this felt like what Victor promised. None of this felt like nothing will have changed when you wake up. It felt like everything under him had shifted entirely while he slept on, believing that. Victor had. While he'd lay there, earlier, unquestioningly. Why hadn't any of it been enough to just tell him?
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Date: 2017-05-17 01:17 am (UTC)Maybe especially because of all that, considering the way Yuri is staring at Victor's hand on his leg, in troubled silence. He'd talked Yuri down from a few spirals last night, but those, he'd been able to understand without too much wheedling or coaxing from Yuri himself. This, he's lost at sea without a compass, without stars or moon to steer by.
All he has is Yuri, and his hand on Yuri's leg, that tightens, gently. "Yuri?"
How can he fix this, when he doesn't even understand what's wrong?
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Date: 2017-05-17 01:30 am (UTC)“It was private.” His eyes flick through the darkness, toward Victor, because it sounds wrong. It’s the wrong word, and it’s not: “Not a secret.” Not. He hadn’t. Even if he wished hard that it could be now, suddenly, so much, now that it felt like was everywhere else but right here, between them. “Just—“
Not a secret. Not private. “Personal.”
Except that was wrong, too, and he shifts. Agitated. Breath catching in his teeth. Right, but wrong, in the same way private was right, but wrong. The second one made it sound like it was just his, and it wasn’t just his. He hadn’t thought it was just his. Which becomes.
“It was just—“ He pauses, looking up, shaking his head, with nothing else coming up, having to swallow, feeling overwhelmingly stupid and childish and uneducated in everything he'd been suddenly drug into, for the word coming. For the fact it’s wrong, and he’s wrong. Again. “—just ours.”
And now it wasn’t.
Now a world of people, a whole world, anyone with the internet, or access to the news, had it. More than just another picture on some street, where Victor had apologized to for kissing him front of some small, forgotten crowd. Instead, it was confirmed by Victor, in front of millions. Billions. The whole world.
A world with opinions and questions, and assumptions, who would start making and leaving comments on all them, about things Yuri hadn’t even gotten to sit here to figure out and know he had questions about or wanted to know or do or learn. When most of him was only back to his old favorite: wanting to know how to vanish into thin air again.
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Date: 2017-05-17 01:50 am (UTC)It's the only thing he can say, as Yuri picks out words, discards them, tries to find the right on, and he's shifting closer before even realizing it, only wanting to clear away that unhappy, bereft look on his face. "It's still just ours."
Nothing has changed. Not really. Has it? These photos and theories were going to be all over their notifications today, anyway, because Victor couldn't hold himself back and kissed Yuri in public, in full view of hundreds and maybe thousands of cameras, on a live television stream, and again outside, right on the sidewalk where anyone walking by could see.
His comments haven't changed that, the inescapable nature of media coverage. They maybe fueled the fire, a little, but he didn't say anything inappropriate, did he? Didn't say they were dating, or anything about anything other than his own personal feelings.
Did he?
But it doesn't look like that matters to Yuri, and he looks so miserable Victor doesn't know what to do, isn't sure if he should reach out to pull him into a hug, or touch his cheek, or do anything other than try to convince him it's all going to be fine. "That hasn't changed. It's still just you and me."
Everything else is opinion no one needs to care about, because it has nothing to do with them, in the end. He doesn't want this to be used to push article clicks or headlines any more than Yuri does, but whatever gets published is likely to be more fiction than fact, anyway.
But it's a strange ache in his chest, watching Yuri's face, hearing those words. Like Yuri just wants to keep this ... safe.
Like it's too precious to be shared with the world. Like he feels as though he just lost something treasured, and didn't know how to get it back.
(When was the last time anyone felt that way about him?) "Whatever they think they have, it's not this."
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Date: 2017-05-17 02:17 am (UTC)"Whatever it is?" It's barely a whispers the first time. Whatever it is, the world thinks it has, Victor meant. Like there'd even been enough time before Yuri passed out for Yuri to even have a clue, a guess, an idea at whatever it is he's supposed to have now. Or not have. Or had. He's an idiot. That's all he has. Victor is talking to him like this is absolutely normal, and maybe it is.
Maybe this is normal for Victor. Maybe he was supposed to know this was all part of it. When he finally kissed Victor back. But half was already done, then, wasn't it? From the ice and the sidewalk, and the other half as he slept. Bookends. Covers of a book already shut. Everything already happened, that needed him for it, in the middle, without paying attention, known to pay attention, to everything that would stand out stronger in comparison.
"Whatever it is," Yuri starts again. Then, shakes his head. "You didn't have to help them."
Choose them. Go looking for it. So happily dropping comments and emotes on it all.
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