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

[theglassheart]

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

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

It took forever, and then it was just over.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

[theglassheart]

"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?"

[theglassheart]

"No." And "No," wildly, again, the next second, pulling back even more, more than a little over the precarious edge of the bed, like the first two weren't enough, weren't clear enough. even as he's shaking his head. By which he means yes. Yes -- no is the answer. Yes -- no, he can't. Not now. It hardly feels like he can breathe, no less speak, no less act.

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?

[fivetimechamp]

He doesn't understand that repeated no any more than he did the first time, and he doesn't understand the next sentence that comes ricocheting out of Yuri's mouth, wild and panicked, but he doesn't need to know what Yuri's talking about for it to sink like a fist directly into his solar plexus. "Bad?"

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.

[with a chill]

...Was?)

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?"

[theglassheart]

Victor reaches toward him and Yuri can't even help the flinched-jump the sends him back further, and probably, very likely, would have sent him toppling right off the bed, if it wasn't for Victor's arm. He still falls backward. There just isn't a hard impact, unless it's that Victor has to come tumbling more further forward, directly onto him, to keep him where he is, to keep him from falling in earnest, catching half his weight on that arm around him.

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.

[fivetimechamp]

Two things happen almost instantly:

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."

[theglassheart]

He feels like a child, all over again. Ashamed. Embarrassed. Victor warned him and then he all but fell off the bed anyway. Then, Victor caught him and set him back down and he's pulled back entirely. So very awake in the slowly, so slowly, brightening dim. Both of them.

"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.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri isn't looking at him, and his voice is small, but definite in the quiet room, two words that feel deafening even though they're tiny, pebbles dropping in water, and all Victor has is: "Why?"

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?"

[theglassheart]

If Yuri's expression is a testament to his defeat at Victor's first question -- cut in his direction like this is obvious. Like he doesn't want Victor to make this cute, or some joke. That he can't even manage to wake up and pick up his own phone without feeling like he's all the way outside his clothes and his skin all over again

-- 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.

[fivetimechamp]

For a long moment, Yuri does nothing but stare, before no comes out like a reflex, as if Victor shook him and he remembered he'd meant for words to come out. The others aren't as clear –– Victor doesn't care about anyone, and he's sure it's possible for Yuri, too, he knows he can occasionally be too exuberant and too impetuous and that Yuri's affection for him is just as often laced with exasperation as it is with laughter. He could, possibly. Maybe even probably. Be embarrassed by more than the public attention that Victor barely remembers to notice, and that Yuri never seems to forget.

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?"

[theglassheart]

Victor says that word again and it feels like it hammers against Yuri's ears and his breastbone all at once. Hard. Too hard. That word shouldn't even be allowed in Victor's mouth, to even and he's saying it again, calm and cool (except there's something about Victor's eyes that Yuri doesn't think is anything like cool and calm), like he's trying to gently explain to Yuri exactly what it is that people do who are ashamed. How shame works. Or hiding.

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.

[fivetimechamp]

"Why?"

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.

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't flinch.

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?

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't flinch, but he doesn't respond, either, and Victor's never been very good with silence. He wasn't yesterday, and he won't magically be better at it today, probably, even after everything that happened last night.

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?

[theglassheart]

Those fingers tighten gently and Victor says his name, and Yuri's mouth presses. His eyes sting slightly, and he looks up, to look down, blinking. Refusing. Teeth pressing through lips pressing together. Trying to find something. Anything. Even with the photos. Even if it was clear and obvious, that they were kissing in the photo, before the picture's caption and Victor's own cut for use response. Even if, even it, even it. It —

“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.

[fivetimechamp]

"Oh, Yuri."

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."

[theglassheart]

It doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like it's just theirs. Just his. Not inside of him. It was too hollow and too full, and it didn't get better for saying it, and it didn't get better for Victor saying those words. Victor who scoots just a little closer but doesn't touch him any more than that hand on his leg still.

"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.

[fivetimechamp]

That doesn't seem to help, even though Yuri repeats his own words back to him. They sound sharp, even whispered, like Yuri can't believe what an idiot he is, how obvious it should be why he's unhappy. He'd meant to reassure, but he'd gotten it wrong, and he's already unsure of what else to say or do when Yuri shakes his head and says that.

That Victor didn't have to help them. "I didn't ––"

Paused, and drawn off, because maybe he didn't mean to help them, the media, the people talking, but he supposes he did, whether that was his intention or not. "I wasn't trying to help them, I was just ..."

Trying to help me is how that sentence ends, but he pauses with it, again, even feeling the words like marbles in his mouth, because there's something wrong in there, too. Something that feels off, something that niggles at the back of his brain and sounds like Yakov, suddenly and alarmingly.

That man thinks only of himself!

Which he'd fought against all last night, trying to make sure Yuri felt safe and happy and protected, trying to make sure he didn't railroad Yuri's wants and fears for what he wanted.

Trying to think. About someone else.

And then Yuri had fallen asleep, and it's like all his restraint had gone out the window. He hadn't meant to help them the ambiguous Them Yuri means, but he had only helped himself.

How Yuri would feel about it hadn't even crossed his mind.

It's a thought that leaves him aghast, a cold hard chill shivering across his skin and up into his hair, lifting it like he's just noticed a pair of eyes watching him from out of the corner. "I didn't think of it like that, I was just ..."

Thoughtless? Selfish? The juggernaut he'd been trying so hard not to be?

Unable to finish that thought with anything other than "...happy."

It feels lame. It feels like an excuse. It feels like he should have known better, and he should have. How stupid can he be in a single twenty-four hour period?

Even as he's lifting a hand, helpless, to card into his hair. "I didn't think there was any harm in a few comments saying so."

Because he's an idiot. And Yakov was right.

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't sure he understands, which probably makes it make even less sense that he nods. He can't put it together from the beginning. He can only see it from the end. He's not sure at all how those are even supposed to be conciliatory things as one. How something that made Victor happy dominoes to him feeling like ... this. To Victor's sentences breaking off and restarting several times, and the way he almost wants to say the first wrong words that come up.

Was it worth it? Are you still happy?

Except that's the wrong side of his head.
That's the worst voice in his head.

His eyes clench for a second.



He knows the answer and even, sitting here in the dim morning with Victor, he knows it and he doesn't want the answer to be what it is. That Victor is confused. That Victor didn't think about it. That Victor didn't understand. That Victor is absolutely nowhere near happy, even if he'd probably still be happy, if Yuri just didn't open his mouth, just didn't have problems with everything under the sun.

That saying this now. Poked and prodded until it found words, that somehow took purchase somewhere, and Victor even seemed to get a glimmer of it, while his defense of only meaning well, which Yuri doesn't really think is wrong, gets weaker, softer. Didn't make it better.

[fivetimechamp]

"I'm sorry."

He tries to make sure they don't sound too desperate, those words, but he's not really used to saying them and they come out in a sort of burst, like Yuri has banged his knee and an apology came out instead of a kick. He's not even sure what, exactly, he's sorry for, only knows that it's whatever he did that put this expression on Yuri's face, instead of the sweet and trusting one he'd had at the end of the night before, right before dropping off to sleep.

All he knows is he has to fix it. That he can't have ruined everything with a few dumb comments on Instagram simply because he was overly excited at the idea of finally having Yuri, after all this time.

He can't lose him because of it.

But Yuri isn't saying anything, closing his eyes in pain even after he nods, like he's trying to figure out the best way to phrase something terrible, and Victor has to leap on it, to stop it, desperation welling so thick in his throat he thinks he might choke on it.

This is not what he meant to do. "I wasn't thinking about how people might take them. I ... wasn't thinking."

Not straight. Not carefully. Maybe not at all.

(If he'd thought this was a possible reaction, even in the slightest of chances, he never would have opened that app at all.)

Yuri isn't looking at him, and he has to reach out, shifting onto his knees at Yuri's side, one hand lifting, wondering if he'd even be allowed to touch Yuri's face, his neck, his shoulder right now. "I felt so lucky, it seemed wrong to keep it to myself."

Yuri hasn't grown up in the public eye the way he has. Over a decade of every move being watched, recorded, dissected, and discussed, and he's gotten used to it, almost considers it to be the norm, now, even if he knows it isn't. That it isn't for Yuri, and not for most people even in his position, either, but he's never minded. Probably he should have, this time, but it's impossible to know for sure now.

Which only leaves him feeling even more helpless, as his hand drops again, to his own knee, and he's searching Yuri's face for some sort of sign that this isn't it, but all he has in his own defense is still, only: "I'm sorry."

[theglassheart]

It's not cruelty to believe Victor didn't think about something. That he got so excited (subject aside, subject prone to shift with the wind) that he forgot to think. That he got so happy, he forgot about Yuri (even if he was happy about Yuri)? It doesn't make sense ... and somehow that makes absolute sense. The kind of sense that is only Victor.

The kind of sense where Victor forgot about what time it was all the time. Forgot when the buses and trains stopped running, while still two cities away. Forgot he'd already eaten enough for three people when the next shining thing existed on a counter or advertisement. Forgot that no one had a bathing suit and then went running into the waves anyway. Forgot where they were supposed to turn to find a new restaurant, several times, while needing to have Yuri answer every question about buildings, and nicknacks, and signs, and seasons, and everything he could see still three-quarters of a year in.


With Victor, it's not the same how with someone else it would be not caring.

Victor just ... forgets things. Whatever the most important, exciting things to him aren't.


Yuri's not sure he wants to tangle with the snarl of any part of that circling loop. Victor was so happy about him (and how is that real?) that Victor forgot about him (and how is that real?). It doesn't help to eye that spinning circle. What he likes even less, and wants to stop even more, is Victor apologizing. Victor's plaintive tone. Raw in the darkness. The sudden sharp wail in his chest when Victor's hand in the air had dropped back to own leg without touching Yuri.

Yuri's mouth has given a thousand more apologies than the wind knew what to do with, and he's done something two days running that suddenly had Victor apologizing. Victor who said he'd stepped down, take the brunt of the fall, if Yuri didn't make the platform. Victor who was so happy, so lucky, he just wanted to tell everyone he didn't know, who didn't know him. (Not really? Not the real him under the gold and lights?)

Nothing much makes enough sense, except it's wrong, too. Victor just apologizing. Again. Frantic for the words to mean something. Do something. For them to change into gold in the air, or do something to Yuri. Something that isn't making his heart and stutter frantically at both the wrongness of it, and something like the slow thaw of dizzying (but still wary) relief.

He wants to just tip like a small mountain, or crumple like a ball of paper and bounce, and either way, just push himself against Victor. Bury himself. When relief feels just as damning and just as desperate. What did he say. What did he do. What does he say and do now, when Victor is even more desperate for an answer to his apologies than when he'd been saying Yuri's name over and over, worried, wanting him to explain. He doesn't know that there are more words. He's not mad. He's just tired all over. In some new way.

But his gaze, looking down, lands on Victor's hand again. The one on Victor's knee. That Victor raised, almost reaching out, only to drop. Maybe Yuri could not just throw himself into Victor's arms, even if most of him just wanted to be there, again, somehow. Something that seemed trapped in last night, before waking, before dreams, before falling asleep even. But. It takes a second. A breath in. A steady of his spine. Before he does. He reaches out and picks up Victor's hand with both of his. The back of his palm and below his wrist.

Trying not to let himself think too hard and hesitate, Yuri pulled it up, while curling slightly forward. Until he could place Victor hand against his head. Palm against his cheek, finger clumsy against his ear and what must be the absolute mess of his hair. Close his eyes and try, try so hard, just for a second to just repeat it to himself. Without any of the questions. The biting thoughts. The snide whispers. The upended feelings. The panic. The despair.

Victor didn't mean for it to hurt. Victor had been happy. Victor was sorry.

[fivetimechamp]

He probably doesn't deserve for this apology to be taken, but that doesn't make it any less sincere, even if he's not sorry for all of it.

Not sorry for feeling the way he does. For wanting to show the world. For shouting from the rooftops how amazing Yuri is, how beautiful, how special. Treacherously, he still wants to.

What he's sorry for is this other part of it, the unintended part. Hurting Yuri, when all he'd meant to do was love him, in the way he's used to loving things: loudly, exuberantly, publically.

He's sorry for not thinking, the way he so often doesn't think, and there's no excuse for that. He might have been getting better at putting Yuri first as a skater, but he still has a long way to go in every other way.

All of it meaning that Yuri probably shouldn't accept his apology, because it doesn't make things all right, even if Victor still doesn't understand why they've gone so wrong, and that is a desperate, choking thought. That maybe it isn't. Won't be. Couldn't. Even if Yuri understands, and he looks like he does, watching Victor with that closed and faintly weary expression that only makes him want to duck his head, slump his shoulders, dissolve into a puddle of apology. If he had a tail, it would be between his legs.

But then there's a pressure on his hand, of Yuri's hand, and Yuri is pulling it back up to that spot Victor wasn't sure he'd be allowed to touch: palm against his warm cheek, fingers curving instinctively into his hair, careful around his ear, and Victor takes a sharp breath that feels like cracking glass and makes the whole room pause for a long second before he's in motion.

Pushing forward to wrap that arm around Yuri's shoulders, fingers against the back of his head, his other arm going around Yuri's waist, face into Yuri's shoulder, while Yuri's phone has already fallen somewhere on the bedsheets, forgotten in his sick relief and the need to protect Yuri from that look on his face, even if he's the one who put it there. "I won't say anything else, I'll stop. You can take my phone and ground me, I am terrible. Please forgive me."

[theglassheart]

There's only a single sound in the room, Victor taking a breath that sounds so sharp and disbeliving it makes Yuri's own heart ache in response, before Victor suddenly all but tackles him. Yuri only has a second to wonder if Victor's already forgotten about the edge of the bed now, before those arms are around him tight. Before he forgets himself. Or more doesn't care.

About the edge of the bed, or the idea of falling, and anything but Victor diving into him.

Just the need to meet that collision, his arms slide around Victor's and hug him impossibly tight right back. Warm and solid, almost still not solid enough. While Victor bounces from one extreme to the other and Yuri almost wants to huff a laugh, which makes no sense, because it's not funny. None of this is funny, and Victor's words aren't either.

It's stupid. It's deeply over dramatic. Yuri'd roll his eyes, if they weren't shut tight in Victor's shoulder. Tight as Yuri is pressed against Victor. Has his arms stretched far as they can be around Victor's neck and shoulders, finger sunk into that soft night-dark fabric over the solidness of muscle and bone right below it.


Yuri doesn't want to take Victor's phone. He just wants Victor.

Yuri doesn't want the whole world to know it's real. He wants to.

[fivetimechamp]

This, he understands. Yuri clinging to him, like he thinks Victor was the one about to be ripped away, when it's impossible. There's nowhere Victor would go, if Yuri wasn't there, too. Not anymore. Hasn't he proven that?

So maybe he screwed up. (Again.) There's a learning curve to all of this, and it involves him being more thoughtful, and maybe Yuri being more open, but it doesn't matter. As long as they're here together, they can figure it out. Relief a cold sweep of water pouring down over his head and along the back of his neck, everywhere Yuri is touching. His chest. Shoulder. The crook of his neck. Those arms around his neck and shoulders, fingers hard and gripping too hard. Not painful, but harder than Yuri should feel like he needs to hold on to Victor, which is why his own arms loosen enough for him to shift, lift his head to find the side of Yuri's neck with his mouth, even as quiet, coaxing words are coming out. "Come back to bed."

Come back to him. Here. This quiet, safe place where the world is still shut out, and no one will bother them, and they have ... not all the time in the world, but some. Some more.

What Yuri said was supposed to be just theirs. When in reality it's just his. Victor is. If there's a world outside that window, he doesn't give a damn about it, or what the people in it think. All he wants, he has, right here and now.

Already leaning his weight down and backwards, pulling Yuri with him in a slow but inexorable drop, to find the bed with his back with Yuri on his chest, long arms securing him like a seatbelt.

He'd said nothing would change, and he'd meant it. And nothing has. Nothing that matters. It's still just them.

Lifting his head to brush his nose into Yuri's hair, lips over his ear. "This is just ours." Except that's not even quite right. It is, but even more, it's. "Yours."

This is. The important part.

All of him. Even if he doesn't always get it right.

[theglassheart]

Even heart-sore, there's a strange prickle of awareness at those words breathed into his skin. Come back to bed, even though he's already in the bed. Still sitting on it. He hasn't actually left it since he sat down (even if he did almost fall off of it). He's already on the bed. Hasn't left. But even he gets that's not what the words mean, and it sends an odd wave of both relief and too much awareness.

About being in Victor's bed, having fallen asleep, slept and woken up in it. Was still in it.

There really isn't time to say something, even think about what to say before Victor is already tipping himself, without letting go in the slightest. Just going to fall against the bed, without trying, and Yuri eye's go wide, one hand trying to fly out to find the bed to their side, with an expulsion of Victor's name.

Not that it saves him -- when does half-shouting or even shouting Victor's name like it should be some warning against his next crazy thing, before Yuri's even adjusted to the first, ever? -- and not that it even matters to him, next. Not when Victor's mouth has moved from his neck to his ear. Not when he says this is theirs, making Yuri's heart stumble hard at the use of his own badly chosen words, and then, even more unexpectedly, this is his.

Which makes Yuri shiver for a completely different reason.
Makes him start to duck his head, only to stop, instead look up at Victor.

A hand on his chest to lift just a little, just wanting to look at Victor's face.

It's still nothing like bright and nothing like light, and there aren't any on in here. There's only the slow dim, and the shape of Victor's face in it, and things that don't need his eyes. Victor's voice, still repeating those words in his ears, and Victor's heart, beating, through his chest and shirt, somewhere not far from the place Yuri's hand was.