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

[theglassheart]

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

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

It took forever, and then it was just over.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

[fivetimechamp]

There's an approving roar from above, and Yuri shivers like a cat that's been sprayed with water, looking up at him with huge, panicked eyes, and Victor thinks, Вот дерьмо.

"O-Okay, Yuri."

Smiling and trying his best to stay an even keel, even as he's holding his hands up to try and ward Yuri off at the pass. "First, let's take deep breaths."

Yuri has to calm down, if for no other reason, so that he doesn't have a heart attack or stroke right here in the garage. "Don't worry about it, Chris was only the second to go. Looking at the standings now isn't going to mean anything, okay?"

He has no idea if anything he's saying or doing is getting through, and he doesn't like it down here: it's cold and dim and echo-y and it's maybe the second to worst place for Yuri to warm up. The problem being, of course, that the worst place is where they just came from, with all the building pressure.

(Phichit is up now, he thinks ... that means another ten minutes or so before they have to start heading back up.)

"Go ahead and warm up, I'll keep an eye on the rankings for you. That's part of my job, not yours, remember?"

[theglassheart]

He doesn't know why Victor is smiling, hands raised, and voice light. All of it contorts in his head. Twisting. Nothing makes sense.

There's nothing to smile about. There's nothing about this that is light. Is okay. He doesn't want to be patronized. He knows he's not doing well. He knows everyone else must know it by now. He's not keeping anything together. He's failing Victor, and everything they've been working for, every day, every night, almost every single hour he's been awake since the moment Victor showed up in Hasetsu.

Question after question, Victor's voice asks them, half like a question and half like he's talking to a scared animal, and Yuri hates that, too. The look on Victor's face. Ownership and uncertainty, and direction, over and over and over, again. But Yuri manages something to an affirmative when he's told to go back to warming up (even though not knowing rips at him, turns and twists, maybe it's worse than he thought from the cheers, maybe it was perfect, flawless, unbeatable by any standard short of Victor going out there).

He tries, even if he flounders for a long moment looking at the space around him. They didn't bring the mat and he doesn't want his costume touching the dirt, grime, and likely grease to be found on the ground. It wouldn't be polite or proper to use one of the cars, and the walls don't look that much better. He can practice his steps. His arm movements. He can try to loosen the muscles in his back, his shoulders, around his chest, where he still can't breathe.

Close his eyes and try to find even the most shredded approximation of his theme. Try to find his love. Somewhere underneath everything else. Shift to the choreographed sequence. But the clock is in every turn of his body, every cross of his feet. It must be passing. Must be. He should already be up there. What if it is his turn. What if he's late. It must be time. It must.

He reaches up to take his earplugs out, to ask Victor, remind him -- and the world goes from drowned quiet to thunderous applause.

So much louder than anything that had come earlier. Slamming into him with the force of his fall from earlier. No, worse. More. Heart sprinting into the top of his throat, his mouth, out of the top of his head, at the same second as his stomach makes the same mad dash, bottoming out his body, his shoes, straight through the floor. Who is that? Is it still Phichit? Or is it Leo now? Who?

But he can't hear. He can't even hear his own thoughts. The crowd is going crazy and the whole garage is an amplifier.

[fivetimechamp]

All he can do is watch over Yuri, and it's not a position he's used to taking up, but then, before Yuri, what did he have to protect? His career, his winning streak, Russia's dominance on the ice –– but no person. Nothing like this.

But he doesn't know if he likes it. The inability to do anything. Having nothing to do but stand here, arms crossed, and watch Yuri warm up, and try to keep him focused, and try to find something, anything to say or do that might make the tension singing in Yuri's shoulders and the worry in his face dissipate. What would Yakov say? Probably nothing very helpful. Yakov had never coddled them when they were nervous or tired: he would be barking that Yuri's lines look sloppy, that if Yuri keeps shaking like that he'll fall before he ever even gets the chance to start his program, that if he can't focus on his warm-up and flubs the routine, he'll lose his spot on the roster.

Victor doesn't think any of that will help.

But he's distracted for a moment and glances up at a sudden roar of applause from above, where Phichit Chulanont must have just finished his program, and that means it's Leo next, and then Georgi, and then Yuri. Another ten minutes, give or take, and Yuri will be on the ice whether he's ready or not, so Victor has to say something, doesn't he?

Prove he can get Yuri through this, like he promised he would, heady with confidence back in the hot spring of Yu-topia, with Yuri's bewildered face staring at him through the steam. Yuri hadn't believed him that night, and not for plenty of nights afterward, and it certainly may not have been as simple as Victor thought it would be, but he can do this. Yuri can. They can, together.

Except everything goes right out of his head when he looks back to Yuri, mouth opening to tell him to wrap up his warm-ups so they can head back, and sees Yuri staring at the ceiling of the garage, earbuds in his shaking hands, and that isn't nerves, or exhaustion on his face, stark and pale: it's fear.

Striking like an arrow directly into Victor's chest, and sending him at a run, even if Yuri's only a step away, heart sprinting into his throat, all his thoughts wiped away in a single second of desperate need to stop that face. Stop Yuri from hearing the applause. Block it all out for him.

Gloved hands landing on Yuri's ears and pressing, as if he might be able to stop Yuri from having heard the roar of the crowd a second ago, but he can't, and it makes him furious. "Don't listen!"

[theglassheart]

He's not expecting Victor to shout suddenly.

He's not expecting Victor to run toward him, hands slamming the sides of his head.




He's really not expecting Victor to stand there, staring at him, with his fingers dug into his hair, around his ears just looking at him, with this expression Yuri can't even tell if is real for the first few seconds. Things he's not certain he's ever seen on Victor's face. Something like anger -- concern? Is it concern? He can't tell. Or maybe fear? But, no, Victor doesn't fear anything, -- and in it, in that demand before those hands landed, more absolute, unwavering command than Victor had ever shouted at him on a rink back home, sending Yuri from one shock to another, shoulders up and hands down, and spine straight.

But none of it stays, and Victor's hands aren't the same as ear buds, and the cheer exists around and in and through him, and his hands, and his too clear, too bright, too sharp eyes -- even when this one, this one is somehow more terrifying than the last second -- and Yuri can't think, and thinks too fast, and he did this, too. Whatever this is. He did this to Victor, too. Like he's going to tear Victor apart with what he's done, doing, can't stop from happening.

He deserves that, doesn't he? That anger. Disappointment. He waits for there to be more words.





But they don't come.





They don't come at all.




Victor just stands there, staring at him.
Pinched brows and firmed mouth pointing down.


Sourness curdling Yuuri's stomach on an endless loop, more and more and more, as this expression he's never seen never lessens. Tells him exactly how Victor feels about everything. About him. But the words still don't come. Like Victor who can find the words and way to charm everyone has nothing left for him. It's almost worst than anything else might be.

But the cheers have died away, and there's something else starting. Some other music.
Time is still passing. He still has to go out there and end this. For himself. For both of them.
To try. He has to try. Even if that word feels beaten so thin it's something like nonexistent, save for force.


Yuri raised his hands, looping them around Victor's forearms and pushing him back, saying it, if he won't. "Victor. It's almost time. We need to go back." When there aren't any words for that (and that's an answer as much as anything else is, isn't it?), Yuri looked down to a side and started walking past Victor. Stairs and doors, and everything in him, pushing for the back of his throat. (He remembers this too well.) But it's worse than that, too. (Worse because it's not just him. It's Victor, too.)

[fivetimechamp]

The problem is, now that he's here, with his hands against Yuri's ears, he doesn't know what else to do.

(Above, there's music: Leo de Iglesia.)

What can he do? He'd thought Yuri was tired, but Yuri didn't sleep. He thought Yuri was anxious, but this is unlike any attack of nerves he's ever seen. Why is he so nervous? He isn't throwing up or breaking down, he's just ... dissolving. Right under Victor's hands, and Victor is powerless to stop it, because he doesn't know what's going on, or why. If Yuri were a younger skater, he could understand being affected by the other skaters' rankings –– but Yuri isn't young. Not like that. He's been in this world for years, has competed at the national and world level on multiple occasions. Sure, he'd broken down two years ago, but two years ago, he hadn't had the last eight months of work, or programs built especially for his strengths and story and music. Two years ago he didn't have Victor, because Victor decided to hate him a little for making him fall in love instead of come to Japan like Yuri asked him to.

Because Victor was proud, and petty. And now, Victor doesn't know what to do.

How can he motivate Yuri?

He has no idea, and he hates that even more than he hates the way his heart dropped a second ago when he'd looked down to see raw panic written bare across Yuri's face. Standing here with his hands muffling Yuri's ears ... is this really being a coach? Is this doing what's best for Yuri? All day, he's been trying to be positive, optimistic, to try and lighten the mood, but was that actually beneficial, or was it a selfish reaction to Yuri's anxiety, to try and make him feel better, instead of fixing the problem before it spun out?

Did he cause this, because he didn't know what to do? Because he placed wanting Yuri to be happy over Yuri's ability to perform?

Maybe his question is answered when Yuri gently pries his hands away from the sides of his head and tells him they have to go, and this isn't right, his skater isn't the one who should be saying that. He should. He's the coach. He has to be a coach.

What would Yakov do?

Yakov believed that applying enough pressure would turn his skaters into beautiful masterpieces, but more often than not, they shattered first along the way. Perfection from pressure, beauty from pain. Skaters might be strong as diamonds, but their hearts are as fragile as glass. Maybe he's been trying for the wrong kind of motivation all along. Maybe Yuri needs something more substantial.

Or maybe he needs someone else to take the pressure off his shoulders.

"Yuri."

If they're so fragile ... maybe Victor should try shattering his into pieces. Maybe Victor needs to take the blame, and be the enemy, so Yuri can stop blaming himself, and fighting himself.

His footsteps have stopped, so Victor turns, hand digging into his forehead and hair, before sliding to the back of his neck. "If you mess up this free skate and miss the podium, I'll take responsibility by resigning as your coach."

It's the only thing he even has to give, isn't it?

[theglassheart]

He turns back at his name. For the first words Victor's spoken since those two shouted. Since telling him to warm up. But what he hears sounds almost unreal. Except. Except. Except. It is. Except he watched Victor's mouth move. He heard Victor's voice. It wasn't in his head. Victor saying those words. Victor prying them from every dark space they'd been whispering at him all day.

Victor saying, absolutely straight-faced, back from whatever the earlier expression had been to something more flat, more business-like. And saying. Saying that he would take Yuri's shame. His failure. His weakness. Take responsibility for it. Stand up in front of the whole world. And say that it was his fault. That Yuri couldn't do any better this year than he'd ever down before this year, and it was --

It was his fault? He was the excuse? The scapegoat? The reason Yuri was this way?

That Yuri could just bow out? Just escape all of this, and leave it and everything else, all on Victor?

Yuri doesn't even realize it's started until there's moisture falling down his cheeks, dripping off his chin, and his fuzzy vision is blurring even worse against an amount of sudden, agonizing pain that seems to have only finally caught up with his head, his chest, his inability to pull in a breath, or stop the words that escape through his lips, "Why would you say something like that, like you're trying to test me?"

[fivetimechamp]

At first, there's nothing but silence stretching, and Yuri's stricken face, but he has to wait it out, has to give Yuri the chance to ––

Oh.

Oh.

He's not expecting the thin twin streams of tears that pool and then slip down Yuri's cheeks, and whatever he was thinking a second ago, he takes it all back now. "Ah, sorry, Yuri ––"

Hands lifted in apology, taking a careful step towards him, a little afraid that any sudden movement will just shatter the skater in front of him even further. Well, if he'd wanted to know where his priorities lie, that question has been answered with flashing alarm lights and sirens and a huge banner draping itself over his head. Being the harsh coach is too impossible when breaking Yuri's heart feels like breaking his own, and he should never have offered an empty threat like that, anyway.

Not that any of that is his immediate problem, which is that Yuri is crying, and all Victor knows is he wants it to stop.

"I wasn't being serious ––"

[theglassheart]

But started, it won't stop, there's no handrail, no brake, no pause, no breath. His shoulders start shuddering up and down, and the sobs slide up his chest, in painful gasps for air that do nothing to displace the pain or the shame that floods him, while tears flood out of his eyes like he's somehow, without warning or any knowledge of it, been on the brink of just falling apart, like this, this whole time.

The pain that has no name, no shape, just sudden swelling void, wraps itself around Victor's face, Victor's voice, Victor trying to move closer to him, even though Victor just gave him an exit, an excuse to not try, acknowledgement of not being good enough without even going out there, that stalemate offer to take no responsibility for Yuri himself and this weakness that belonged to no one but him. Told him to take Victor down instead of himself. Like that wasn't already the problem. That wasn't already what he was doing. And just to hear it out loud --

He's talking, but Yuri can't hear it, feels like parts of him are screaming and cracking from that single sentence more than any of the applause from seconds ago, from the hours from this morning or last night. Those were simple stage shows before Victor. "I'm used to being blamed for his own failures!"

It's weak and it's loud and feels like it wouldn't be loud enough if he shouted it and it echoed in the whole place. He knows that better than he knows anything else. He'd gone home on it. To Detroit. To Hasetsu. But this -- This was. He could hardly even contain the idea, and in words, the tears just kept falling, his voice shaking even as they thrust out. "But this time I'm anxious because my mistakes would reflect on you, too!"

On Victor. Victor. Victor who'd done nothing but show up and give him everything, teach him everything, try to help with everything. Victor who was untouchable and perfect, who was graceful and happy, and everything he'd ever imagined, and then more, on top of it, and Victor just wanted him to sully every bit of that with his own failure like it was ever Victor's. Victor who shouldn't have even been here to being with, and who he'd given every reason not to want to be here.

Nothing holding, that comes flying out, too. "I've been secretly wondering if you wanted to quit!"

Even when he knows it's wrong -- thinks, prays, desperately wills against the pain. Because Victor has never.

Not once. Not a look or a word. Never yelled this morning, or months ago. Ever. Never a single threat or word. Until. Now.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri can't seem to stop, and Victor's lost track of the music upstairs, or anything but the words pouring out of him, the tears spilling down his face, how he's holding himself so tightly it looks like he's going to tear a muscle. Victor's really not sure if he should touch him or not: this is not in his wheelhouse of experience.

But that final confession, the one that's spat out like Yuri's had it in his mouth all day, at least that he knows how to respond to, can relax a little against. Finally, an answer. "Of course I don't."

Quit? Leave? It's never crossed his mind, not even once.

[theglassheart]

"I KNOW!" The two words burst out in a raw-throated yell,
and there's something almost angry firing them finally.

He knows that.

He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows Victor has never meant to leave him. He knows Victor has only meant him well. He knows that Victor wanted him to eat and sleep and calm down before his body actually fell apart. He knows it the way he knows yesterday was real. That it was his body, his head, his feet, his skating, his best ever.

That doesn't change that it. That he knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows.

When right beside it, in the middle of screaming those two words, hearing Victor's words, knowing both are the truth, that every single other part of him is screaming, that he is, that he does, that he's fulfilling his own prophecy and doubts with proof. Right here. Right now. That he's a ruin and wreck and worthless. That he's handing up to Victor, on a golden platter, exactly why to leave, why to run now, what the worst of the worst parts of him are on the best of a gold medal display.

[fivetimechamp]

Well, whatever solid ground he'd finally felt he'd stepped onto turns out only to be quicksand again, as Yuri shouts at him that he knows, like it's so obvious even a child wouldn't need it told to them, but if he's worried about it –– ?

None of this is anything Victor understands or knows how to stop, and the tears streaming down Yuri's face are only making him more uncomfortable, left-footed in a way he hasn't felt since he was a tiny thing just learning how to stay upright on the ice. Yakov was right about one thing: he's never had to worry about anyone's feelings but his own, before, and his have always been as clear to him as running water. Yuri's, though: they keep shifting, clouds to sun to storm to impenetrable fog, and he's never quite sure of the right thing to do or say.

Which is why he turns away, a little, just to rub at his forehead and prop his hand on his hip, frustrated. "I'm not good with people crying in front of me." This is a problem he doesn't know how to fix, because he's not sure there is one, a solution that will set things right. It's not a question of teaching Yuri where to shift his weight to make his landings as strong as his take-offs, or promising not to go and having Yuri believe him. Yuri knows all that, and it isn't helping.

So if he can't fix it –– and make Yuri stop leaking in this deeply unsettling way –– what can he do? Wracking his brain for similar situations and their subsequent solutions unearths nothing of use. It's not like Yakov had ever done much for a sobbing skater other than hand them a tissue and tell them not to dehydrate themselves.

The closest he's ever even come to this situation was a handful of moments at the end of short-lived but intense relationships, and even then, he'd never known what to do, so he'd just kiss them or embrace them and assure them he cared, and go on his way. "I don't know what to do. Should I just kiss you, or something?"

Would that help? It's really the only option left in his arsenal, which he's now realizing is woefully thin on the ground.

[theglassheart]

There's no surprise when Victor says he has no clue what to do with a crying person. With Yuri. Like this. He's not the first. He's like everyone else in that -- Phichit and Celestino and Minako and his family -- and Yuri can't even fault that. Even when it feels inescapably and suffocatingly alone. Like he's screaming now and still, no one can hear him. Not even Victor.

But there's no restraint, no charity, no patience, no ability to even breathe when Victor throws out that question.

A joke of a response, so out of the field, it that has him shouting again, before he can stop himself.

A "NO!", his voice is loud and breaking sound in the emptiness of the garage, when anger and horror and helplessness and desperate disbelief and terrified loneliness are all one ocean, shifting and shining and stabbing through him and through his tears. When he's never needed anything more than -- "Just have more faith than I do that I'll win!"

Just believe. Just believe what he couldn't, when everything that was his belief, and his self, was slipping through his grasp, splintereed and shattered. It didn't even. It didn't have to be words if Victor had none. It just had to be him. "You don't have to say anything!" Didn't have to make it up. Didn't have to find some magical cure. Because there wasn't one. This couldn't be fixed. "Just stand by me!"

He just had to stay. Just stay anyway. Just believe anyway. Just make every voice wrong.

[fivetimechamp]

It startles him out of his frustration, that yell –– has Yuri ever shouted at him before? Never like this, right? –– and leaves him blinking and surprised. Is that all?

Is that so much to ask?

Hasn't he been clear, this whole time, eight months (and two years), that he was here because he knew Yuri could win? Isn't that why he built Yuri on Ice with him from scratch, to take advantage of everything he can do that he'd never thought was possible?

Is that really the only thing Yuri needs from him right now?

Above them, the crowd's applause changes tone and depth and lasts too long to congratulate a landed jump or an excellent spin: Leo is done, and they have to go, there's no more time. He needs more time. This whole day has been spent trying to show Yuri that Victor has nothing but faith in him, but he's failed at it, spectacularly, and even if he knows what to do now, there's no time.

Is there? "That's easy."

Time enough to try a smile, anyway, and to lift a hand to run the pad of his thumb under one of Yuri's eyes and wipe away the tears shining there, and time enough to step in to give him a quick hug, arms slipping around his neck and Victor's cheek against his hair. "I've always believed you could win, and I always will, because you can. I know you can be great."

Maybe Yuri doesn't need him to say it. Maybe he doesn't need or want the hug. Maybe he wants Victor to leave him the hell alone, and offer silent support, the sort Yakov excelled at, but that's not Victor. He'd tried that today, and it had only exploded in his face. "I said we're going to the Grand Prix Final, didn't I? Why would I want to go anywhere else?"

But the applause overhead is dying away, and that means their time is up, so he lets go and steps back, but keeps one hand on Yuri's shoulder to turn him towards the door. "But for now, you have a free skate to finish."

[theglassheart]

That's easy, Victor says, like Victor wasn't offering to just shut him up with a kiss five seconds beforehand.

That's easy, the way absolutely no single breath of air going into Yuri's body is easy anymore. That's easy, when Yuri is flinching, shoulders up fast enough it's like he expects it to hurt like getting punched, from the soft touch of a finger on his cheek, from Victor touching his tears, his face, him, like this, but it's only the catch a second, of that flinch, before Victor has thrown his arms back around Yuri.

And he stands there.

Heart still pounding everywhere.
Hitching breaths too loud in his own ears, next to Victor's.

Stands there, confused and overwhelmed already, and confused, again, by this.

When he doesn't even know if he can move, or even if he did whether it would be to shove Victor back or bury his hands in some part of Victor like he was the only thing left on the planet that was solid at all. Desperate enough to grab ahold even as he was drowning, even if all it would be was weakness, and all it would do would be to drag Victor down into this darkness with him. He doesn't know what's right any more than what's wrong than what he wants and has no clue which of those it is now.

But Victor is standing back up, before Yuri can so much as think to react, more than even move to react.
Because they have to go. Like he said ... was it only minutes ago? Minutes ago. Everything is upside down.

There's cheering, again. He can hear it while he's staring at Victor. Someone else has finished. He's either next, or one away. He doesn't know. Hasn't had a clue since he got down here. Since everything got worse down here. But he has to go back. They do. He has to skate. Yuri can't quite bring himself to even look to the hand that's left on his shoulder, pressure on his jacket, on his costume, on his body, but he nods anyway.

He has to go. They have to go. There's no more time anymore.

[fivetimechamp]

Georgi's music is tinny through the wall of the stairwell as they climb back up, but Victor's not listening to it, anyway. Was that the right thing to do? He doesn't know. Should he have even opened his mouth at all?

You don't need to say anything!

Whether Yuri meant that or not, they've both lapsed into silence, now, but it's a troubled one on Victor's part. He should have prepared for this somehow, or guessed that it might happen. If Yuri had woken up this morning with a broken wrist, or a cough, or a sudden inability to remember his choreography, he would have known something was wrong, right? How had he been caught so off guard?

Yuri had done so well yesterday. He'd been sublime, yesterday. Victor thought he knew how well he'd done, and that it would bolster his confidence. How could he have predicted it might have the opposite effect? But he should have. He's Yuri's coach. He's let those lines get too blurred, and it ended up harming Yuri today, and whatever Yuri says about only needed Victor to stand by him and have faith, he'd done this wrong.

Up through the green room now, Yuri's face is dry, but his eyes are red and puffy, and Victor's throat feels swollen and painful every time he swallows, like there's some clump of razor blades down there he can't figure out how to breathe past. He's keeping their pace slow and steady, and he only lets go to find the water bottle Yuri hadn't been able to open earlier and the tissue box that is sadly not as comforting as the real Maccachin would be while Yuri put on his skates. Georgi's music is an aggressive swell as they head in towards the rink, and he wishes it didn't sound like such an accusation.

I'll save you now, really?

But they're approaching the end of the line, now, and there's nothing else to do when the music ends and Georgi bows but take up his spot at the rink wall, and try to figure out what he can say now.

As if there were some last-minute confidence to impart into Yuri. As if he knew what to say at all.

(He probably should have asked Yakov what to do in situations like this.)

[theglassheart]

That hand stays on his shoulder, as they walk back up the stairs. Victor quiet and present, a weight hovered at his back and his side, while Yuri wipes at his eyes, and cheeks, and chin, with his fingers, and hands, and the cuffs of his jacket. He probably doesn't have time to splash water on his face, and he doesn't want to ask.

He's not sure if there's a point, while their steps echo up the stairwell the same way they'd echo'd down. The same silence, but it feels different. When Victor beside him, looked at only in the barest glance now and again, is silent. He might not have been talking the whole time earlier, but this is different. Victor, hidden behind the curtain of his bangs, and his face a quiet seriousness and distance.

One Yuri doesn't know the shape or sound of. What it means. Only that he made it. He did, didn't he?

He shouldn't have yelled, but somehow, he's not sure he's sorry either. Which is just an impossible feeling. A curious, empty, impossible feeling that stretches and stretches in the question of itself across the space of his thoughts. Ready and waiting for the shame and recrimination, the doubts and second guesses, that will land on him and swallow him for that. But it doesn't come.

He really doesn't have the time to ask why, because the dividing curtain is moved, and they are walking outside of the practice area. Georgi is on the ice, in the middle or end of his routine, all straight shoulders, more dignity, and grace than Yuri remembers from what little he could remember of watching Georgi yesterday. But his eyes don't stay there either. He finds a bench and starts putting on his skates. There's only minutes.

Only minutes as that music comes to a close and a cheer goes up.

A breeze ruffling his skin, but his fingers on his laces only hesitate for the barest breath.

Then he's pushing up, looking up long enough to see the disappointed curve of Georgi's shoulders as he says something to Yakov that isn't relayed on the big screen the way the third place marking is. Third. He's in third and Yuri has absolutely no real clue who is in any of the other four places. None at all. No idea how well or badly they did, or at what. It's a strange thought. A strange feeling, elastic and formless, but touching everything, when he hands off his jacket and steps onto the ice.

Simple stroked steps sending him over to where Victor is waiting by the wall. Skates guards, tissues, water bottle and this face. This troubled face like Victor, himself, had done something wrong that. He looked so ... young. Uncertain. Lost. Frustrated. Guilty. Yuri continued to look at him as he took one of the tissues from the box and blew his nose. Something answering, even from the rung dry state of himself.

Something quiet, exhausted and exasperated, and ... fond? ... was it fond? Fond ... and almost sad? ... when he crumpled the tissue. He held it out, watching Victor's hand dropp like a mechanism. More reflex than thought, and before he could second guess the nature of the inspiration, Yuri moved his hand.

Inches to the side of where he'd been only right over Victor's hand, and dropped his tissues toward the ice.

[fivetimechamp]

Around them, the rink is hushed in anticipation: Georgi's scores put him in third place, but Victor has no idea where anyone else stands. It's not something he's cared much about, in the last few years, and it feels strange to have his mind run up against those thoughts like a wall.

Not that it matters. All Yuri has to do is skate the way Victor knows he can, the way he has been skating when it's just the two of them and the music and the story they've been telling together.

At least Yuri looks a little more pulled together, now. He's still pale and his eyes are still red, but for the first time today, he looks calm and focused, and Victor is a little envious. Crying might have made Yuri feel better, but it had the opposite effect on Victor. Reminded him he doesn't know what he's doing, as a coach, and that as much as he'd thought he was helping Yuri, maybe he'd been wrong the whole time.

But he still knows to hold out first the tissue box, and then his gloved hand for the used tissue, but he's not expecting Yuri to suddenly move his hand and drop the ball of tissue towards the ice, sending Victor over in an ungainly, graceless lurch to catch it before it hits, teetering over the rink wall with his toes just touching the ground. It's a second before he can even get his balance back without topping head over heels and crashing facefirst into the ice, but just as he's about to stand up, there's the pressure of a finger on the top of his head, right where his hair parts.

"Huh?"

(I can't recover from this.)

It's only a second, and then Yuri's finger lifts, to be replaced by the flat of his palm, and then it lifts, too, and Victor watches his skates move away, before finally levering himself back up to standing, hand on his head where Yuri's had just patted his hair. That spot he's afraid is thinning. Poking at his vanity, teasing him ... now?

After everything that just happened?

Blinking, while the announcer informs the crowd that on the ice, representing Japan: Yuri Katsuki! and they lift in a cheer, but Victor barely hears it.

What on earth was that?

[theglassheart]

Victor's hair is soft against his finger, and then his palm, in the soft pat,
and for a moment he almost regrets that he's not going to see Victor's face.

Not going to know if Victor gets it. Wondering if even he does . Anything more than a seconds brush of contact to intimate a million things his mouth can't, and didn't. That there is no time for now. He won't see the face that comes up, not when he's already shifting his weight to push off. His minutes are down to seconds now. He has to skate. He has to try and show the world. His love. The story they wrote together.

But he won't leave Victor looking entirely so alone, so adrift, so apart. He isn't.
Whatever he is, they are, even now, especially now ... it isn't that.

Yuri knows better than all of those things, even if he's only just thinking them as he comes across the ice. A long fluid movement and the soft hiss of ice, backed by a roar of cheering that coasts over every inch of his thoughts, his hearing, his self as slides into his starting position. Closing his eyes. One foot behind the other, hands down and fingertips all but not touching his thighs.

Face tipped down and he breathes. Out. In again. Feeling it fill down and down into him, nothing stopping it. The music starts and he breathes through it, hands lifting in time to it. Muscles answering the music and his own direction, with an almost disorienting amount of ease. Everything flowing, upward, and ... there's so much s p a c e. In his head. In his skin. In the music.

He felt so much better after crying. And Victor's expression when that had started. Had he ever seen Victor so shocked? It seemed priceless now. Now, removed. Now, flickering against the glide of the first easy spins, turning his mouth. The beginning of this story. He'd cried after a competition before. Several. Most, even. But not before. Never before a competition. Everything was so spaced out, and he was already coming into his first jump.

A glide that turned out his combination quad toe loop, and then a double toe loop, with even surprising ease. The effort was there -- he still had to throw himself off the ice, catch himself, continue, right into the same again -- but not the wall he'd slammed into earlier. He trailed straight through it. Surprise and relief like twins settling on his shoulder, trailing in the icy air between his temples and his hair, buoying up something warmer in his chest. The smoothness rounding out all of his still slower beginning movements.

As the music began to only slowly introduce the more and more complicated strains. Of Love. This paths he'd taken.

[yuri_plisetsky]

Seven thousand kilometers and five time zones away, Yuri is standing in the cafe at the Sports Champions Club.



So he'd forgotten to watch most of the China Cup free skate. Not that he particularly wanted to watch Georgi vomit his toxic soup of emotions all over the unfortunate people of Shanghai, but Yakov had told him to keep an eye on Giacometti -- that oversexed brick of a Swiss who'd been chasing Viktor for most of their careers -- in particular as a likely competitor for the Grand Prix Final. He'll have to pull up the videos on his phone later; if he catches the tail end of the free skate, at least, it won't be an outright lie to Yakov that he'd been watching it live.

The cafe serves a reasonably cheap and healthy menu, and after more than an hour going over his own free skate step sequence his body is screaming for food. A hot bowl of borscht, the specialty of the little old Ukrainian chef who runs her cafe's kitchen with the wonderfully soulless efficiency of a missile production factory, is exactly what he needs. And Baba's there already, watching the free skate with that friend of hers from Tomsk whose name Yuri can never remember -- Petru-something, maybe, or maybe not -- and so Yuri can hang back and keep half an eye on the television.

And of course, because he has the best luck these days, he's just in time to see the cameras follow Katsudon as he glides into position.

Yuri on Ice. Stunningly imaginative.

Even the best camera work is no comparison for watching a performance live at the rink, but Yuri's eyes focus on Katsudon's skates as he starts in on his routine, queuing up his first couple of jumps (ha, quad salchow, so you finally figured it out, Katsudon?). His movements look cleaner than they were in Hasetsu, true, and right now he's in the top spot, but there's still time for him to choke.

The borscht isn't going anywhere.

[fivetimechamp]

It doesn't make sense. Yuri was just a mess, sobbing in the garage, but now he's ... smiling? Why is he smiling?

Out there, in the middle of the rink, slipping into Yuri on Ice like he'd never even skipped a beat, and if Victor hadn't just seen him break down, if Victor hadn't just heard him yell all his fears into the echoing shadows and a fleet of innocent cars, he would never have guessed that Yuri had even second's worth of self-doubt.

Which is ... good? Right? All he's wanted all day was for Yuri to relax, and now he is. Out there, moving like water, opening steps into the first jump combination –– quad toe loop, double toe loop –– which he nails. Makes it look easy. Makes it look beautiful. Whatever happened down there, whatever Yuri needed to say and said, or needed to hear, or didn't, it seems to have snapped the tension that's been stringing through him all day. If anything, he looks more relaxed now, in these steps between his jumps, than Victor's ever seen him.

Taking off for the quad Salchow, that's he hit right on the money yesterday: gorgeous, again, and Victor's arms shoot into the air in triumph. Making it look easy. Making it look like breathing. Making it look like everything Victor always knew he could, as Yuri's soul shines bright across the ice, brilliant as a spotlight, candle-warm. "Perfect, Yuri!"

[theglassheart]

Victor's too inexperienced as a coach. It's not like his mental weakness started now. Not like it wasn't there before now. Not like it wasn't there for all of the years he trained with Celestino. He should have been prepared for this much. Stupid Victor.

Yuri's feet touch the ground in more realization, catching his weight and turning it into momentum, than any realization that he'd gone into his jump. The salchow landed, without quite thinking about it beginning. Surprise that he'd made it, surprise that he'd simply gone straight through it. That everything in him knew where he should be going, what it should be doing. That his thoughts are a ribbon of surprise, without shock, without recourse, as his fingers wrap his back and his camel spins level.

Each piece flows into the next, the music filling his mind. The triple loop brings a flare of applause, of release, and it's such a relief while his hands are thrown out and his face is up, eyes briefly closing, to just let himself go with it. Smooth all the way down, as the music draws out, and he lowers, hands coming down across his body as his legs spread and his back one nearly, but never, touches the ice behind him.

Ebbs into a handful of delicate turns, cross-backing the ice, to match the gentle tinkle of the piano keys.

The triple axel starts well enough, but the counterbalance proves that wrong barely the second later on landing when it's all he can do to make sure it's only his hand that touches down. To push himself back up, press himself back into the ramping music. It went well enough, for not having practiced it at all earlier. But still. It's a frisson of clarity coming with the first blaring error, and the need for something else to push it from there.

Especially as his focus and precision sharpens, pressing the edges, riding control and demand, and the triple flip next is perfect. Again. The crowds cheering, but he's stuck with a thought from the far edge. Because. What if. How would Victor react if he made the last quad toe loop a flip instead?

Barely enough time to think it before, he's sliding across the length for his last combination. To get enough space, enough distance, enough speed to start. The triple axel is perfect that time, but the jump into the single loop isn't, and it sends his loop into an overrotation. One where he does catch his weight without overbalancing, but while eradicating the trained leap into his triple salchow. But.

No. No. It was overrotated, but he's not as tired as he should be having not slept.
He's not tired and he's not done. He's not giving up now.

There's a cross-back only one length and the speed to throw himself into a triple lutz.

Not stop. Not slowing. Only letting one foot, then the other touchdown, before he's back up for a triple toe loop, too.

[fivetimechamp]

The triple loop is perfect, too. The edge of the rink wall digging into Victor's stomach as he leans against it, gloved hand at his mouth, elbow balancing on his forearm, watching Yuri somehow knock out his best performance yet, picking up momentum like each element is energizing, not fatiguing. The lunge, into the spread eagle, followed by the Ina Bauer, achingly beautiful.

This love letter they wrote together. The one he tattooed even beneath that, putting in every gorgeous held position he could think of to showcase the beauty of Yuri's skating, the way he holds himself, how it seems like every note is being written across the ice and in the air by his blades and his hands and his body. The appeal of it, that maybe even Yuri doesn't see or recognize, but fills each movement with the sore perfection of love. (Unrequited and impossible. Discovered for the first time. Finally recognized.) Textbook lines, graceful extension, deep edges, sending him soaring around the rink as the music pauses, allows for a breath.

Not just for Yuri. For him. For the audience. Everyone enrapt, and Victor can't quite place what's different about it, until Yuri tosses himself into his triple axel (a hand down on the ice, and an accompanying grip of fear in Victor's chest) and there's a sudden explosion of applause that's so surprising he thinks it must have been silent, before. Has he ever heard a rink full of skating fans go completely silent, before?

But there's no more time to breathe, now, because they've reached the halfway point, and the jump combinations are up, and somehow Yuri still doesn't even look tired. Not even when he over-rotates and double-foots the landing of his triple Salchow, and Victor shakes off his own disappointment and swallows down the stomach that's trying to make a run for his throat –– triple lutz?

And a toe loop? He's changing the jump elements again, this late in the game?

Victor can barely feel his own hands at his face, can't feel anything except the rush of being caught along with this performance. With Yuri, heading now into the climactic step sequence like he's never made a mistake in his life, everything from seconds ago washed aside already. Still chasing perfection, as he heads into the final moments of this absurd skate, and the celebration of the love all around him.

Certainly the audience loves him. At least, Victor thinks so, or would, if he hadn't stopped paying attention to them two minutes ago.

[theglassheart]

They both land soundly, and he won't know about perfectly until later, but there's no more time, when he's chasing the music, for the seconds that passed to take those, into the step sequence that follows. Certainty already settling in around him, as he moves into them with the absolution they were made for.

Each step of his feet weave the story of the complicated dance his life has become since he labeled it love all those months ago. His home, and his family, and Victor. The foundation under him. The support behind him. Always pushing him forward, but never demanding more than he could give. Never doubting him, even when all he seemed to do was doubt himself.

He wanted to be stronger. He could be stronger. He could surpass even Victor's wildest imaginings.

All of himself that he ever could be he pushed into it. Every sharp spin, every faster step, every sudden high-speed bracket turn, every twist of his arms and sinuous follow through with his body, while his feet moved. Never stopped moving. Faster and faster, toward what could only be one thing. No longer a question. Not when he pushes off from the ground and no part of him is questioning how it will end, is even thinking about that part.

He's slammed the ice more times than he can count in his life. They all have. It's part of this. But he never thinks about that part of it. No more than a breath in thinks about the breath out. Not even when he knows that an attempt, of this scale, in this place, without a cent of practice is certainly not going to have the miracle landing to match his earlier perfect triple flip.

Except into the ice.


Except, it wasn't even about that.

It was about the perfect expression how he felt. Beyond words.




It wasn't about fault, or forgiveness.

He wasn't mad or sad because of Victor.

Everything about Victor sent him higher and higher.
Everything about Victor made him so much stronger.



All of everything else slipped away, every small and great error, the crying and yelling, every silence and every word and every thought, and it felt perfect, in the air. It was in his blood (Victor) and his ears (Victor) and his whole body (Victor). Victor in every part of him, always lifting him up, spreading him out, sending him flying higher and higher, making him want to show that he could be even more than that, could exceed every wish ever shared, dream ever dreamt, in from every darkness turned to light.

What came right after that moment couldn't hold a candle to that second twisting in air.

Not the excruciating obliteration of air as the pain slammed his hip, his side, his thigh, trying to relocate his bones into his ribcage. Not the desperate thought to get back on his feet nownownow. Not the way the whole arena, the whole world, had seem to have drawn in a shocked breath, silencing everything to a death pall, before pandemonium exploded around him.

Not when he can't look up (not yet). He can't look out (not yet).
He has to follow the music, back to the center (not yet).
Has to finish first (not yet).

Spin (not yet), and drop (not yet), and follow his hand right back up (not yet).

Throw them out wide, even as his heart is racing every hard thundered sprinting beat for the coming second, to match the screaming all around him, all but drowning out the end of his music, when he can finally draw his arm and his hand out across his body to look to where Victor is at his closing pose. Gasps for air demanding a focus he can barely feel and feels in every single inch of his body, more alive in this second than maybe ever before in his life.

[yuri_plisetsky]

The television is the cafe is an old one, and the volume on it isn't turned up very high, so the cascading piano notes that accompany the step sequence sound thin and tinny against the bare walls and floor. But even with the poor quality of the music, the flurry of flashing blades seem to ring out with a music of their own for those who have eyes to see it...and Yuri finds that his mouth has gone strangely dry, and his nails are digging into the thin fabric covering his palms.

This isn't the teasing seductiveness of Eros, where even months of work haven't quite been able to wipe away the impressions of Viktor's fingerprints all over it. Something entirely different is spilling out of this free skate, unwinding like bright ribbons across the glittering ice of a rink half a world away, and not even a certain amount of unevenness in the execution is enough to unravel the story woven into every turn and gesture, from the tensely gathered moment of an approach to the sweeping extension of an arm or a hand.

The seconds are slipping past, and only the hard plastic of the table against Yuri's side feels like it's keeping him from wanting to somehow climb inside that television as if doing so could make him be there, in the cold brilliance of the rink, to see how it ends --

Until the final jump quite literally stops the breath in his mouth.

A quad flip. Ending in a crash landing that Yuri can feel in his bones, a visceral sense of pain without the impact, but undeniably the right number of rotations for it to count.

The very last jump. At the end of the free skate. The signature technique that Viktor Nikiforov had made his own over the years, and here was Yuuri Katsuki staking his claim on it as if he were planting a flag on a mountaintop for all the world to see. Defying the announcers' expectations, the crowd's expectations...and Yuri has no words in any language he knows for the feeling that surges through him in those final moments, as the performance ends and the last notes of the music echo from the cafe television's second-rate speakers.

All he knows is that he can't look away.

[fivetimechamp]

He loves this story they built together, wrote together. Yuri's story, everything he could pour pain and loneliness and disappointment into, back when he was frustrated and felt he was fighting alone. Every wistful dream he was convinced he fell short of achieving, every attempt and failure at climbing to the top.

The flurry of confusion and cautious hope, a flash of skates and growing confidence in jumps, representing when he showed up and offered to be Yuri's coach. The uncertain dance they took until that morning at the beach.

(I won't go easy on you. That's how I show my love.)

The calm centering of the piece as Yuri realizes something like love, understands that it's been there for him this whole time: from his parents, his sister; Yuuko and her family. Minako. Phichit. Even Celestino.

And Victor, of course. Always from Victor. (How could Yuri think he would want to quit? How could Yuri ever believe, even for a second, that Victor could leave?

He's never loved anything, or anyone, the way that he loves Yuri.)

His heart aching through this step sequence, as Yuri realizes his own potential, bolstered by the support and love of his family and friends. Inspired by his love for them. Minako's hard work evident in every clean line and perfect grace of motion. Yuuko's friendship and encouragement in his ease on the ice, the stamina he's built up because he's always had a place to train, where he felt safe and secure, where he could work through everything racing through his head and attacking his heart. Victor, too: there in the technique and precision. Every time he fixed an element, or lectured Yuri on finding the depth beneath the choreography, or helped him come to understand his own feelings.

(In the front rows, audience members are applauding with tears in their eyes, but he can't, can't, can't, can't let anything blur his view of this ––)

All of it the perfect build-up to the toe l ––

Yuri soars into the air, and there's a belated second before realization hits, showering a frisson of ice followed by fire and a sheeting wave of goosebumps across his skin as Victor's heart stops with a jolt that makes that crash landing look soft by comparison. Feeling it like a car wreck. Momentum slamming into a sudden brick wall of shock, dropping his jaw.

Was that ––

That was a ––

A flip?

A quad flip?

His flip?

The audience on their feet, screaming. Something in his head smashed open, yelling. Something in his chest –– that thing, that traitorous, impossible thing, that heart of his that hasn't obeyed him now for almost two years, that breathed hope into impossibility and acceptance into disappointment and never stopped, never fixed itself, kept limping along, kept reaching out, kept glowing at Yuri's smiles and exploding at Yuri's triumphant pleasure at getting it perfect, kept breaking at Yuri's frustration with himself and bleeding alone in the dark when he couldn't sleep and reminding him with pictures and videos he kept trying not to look at or watch ––

Cracking. Like a heart made of glass, tapped with a hammer. A solid line racing straight through it, the caught breath before it shatters.

That's his. That's his. That's his. His signature. His jump. The technique he made his own, that the world sees and knows is him. Viktor Nikiforov written across the ice in broad strokes for everyone to see.

At the end of Yuri's love story, at the final moment, is ...

Him?