{ 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]

If he was worried for a moment that he might have read this wrong, it disappears like a popped bubble once he gets a look at Yuri's face. Flushed hot pink, eyes wide and stunned: it might be funny, if he didn't find it so charmingly adorable. Yuri appears to have swallowed all his words, Japanese and English both, and it looks like they're stuck like a fish swimming around in his throat.

But that look –– the one that drops from his eyes and wanders shyly down to his mouth –– that requires no interpretation at all, although it might require someone to drop blackout curtains around them to dim the way Victor suddenly shines up underneath it. Smile going from sweet to smug, a wide grinning flash of teeth and curve of lips that could put Maccachin's most appealing doggy to shame, that's doing its damnedest to make the sun itself sulk away behind some clouds, because Yuri is looking at him like this.

Eyes slipping to his mouth like they've been drawn by a magnet. Yuri. Who has never. In all the world full of people who have looked at him this way, Yuri hasn't been one of them since that night, and Victor had been sure, had known, he must have been mistaken.

But there's no mistaking this, just like there's no mistaking the way Victor brightens beneath it, smile shining, eyes sparkling and vindicated, so pleased he has no idea what to do with the feeling except kiss Yuri again, hands cradling his jaw, body pressing him flush against the door that could open any moment, and he doesn't care. How could he care. How is he supposed to give a single damn about anything in the whole world, medals or Yakov yelling or people gasping or interviews or someone coming through the door, when Yuri was looking at him like that.

Like he wanted him. Like Victor wasn't wrong, all those months ago, after all, like the sun really did come up on the correct side of the world this morning and sank again on the opposite one, and gravity still exists, and Yuri wants him.

What else could he possibly do, but give Yuri what he wants? Hasn't he been trying to do that this whole time?

[theglassheart]

The smile that tugs on to Victor's mouth while Yuri is staring (staring, and can't stop staring, and he's going to light up like a fire for that, too) is as familiar as it is foreign. A single solid shining curve of movement that feels like it's got a toepick hooked under one of his ribs, and the rest of a blade pressing down on the rest of his, as it widens, coming as sudden and bright as dawn when the sun finally flips over the horizon line, flooding everything sticky and golden.

He jumps, just barely, when Victor shifts, again, and if he could he might kick himself for the inability to see it coming or to stop it. But he can't, he can't even think. Can't even look down beyond the tip of Victor's nose back to his mouth, because Victor is leaning into him again. Victor's mouth presses against his, again, Victor's body does, presses him back against the door, and Victor -- Victor, Victor, Victor, the world's star, living legend, Victor, his coach, his -- Victor -- Victor is kissing him, him

And from nowhere and everywhere a soft sound, hollow and high, wrecked on itself, crawls up the back of his throat, into his mouth, against Victor's, before he even knows it's coming, like the last crash of anything like sanity, or maybe control. When his mouth moves with it, brushing Victor's lips, somehow flooding through his head, his skin, like a flash of light and lightning, fire bright and charring, blistering hard to think through and clarifying pointed all at once, when he pushes up from his toes thoughtlessly into it.

Because Victor is kissing him, kissing him, kissing. Again. A third time and he must be an idiot, an absolute idiot, that it took until this second (the third time) to parse that sentence -- the one he's been repeating for the better part of twenty minutes -- was a one-way sentence. Because the other side, the other side, is just as crazy, and it should have been there, he should have thought about that, then. But it's only happening now.

Now, with the realization, with that smallest friction, weight in the balls of his feet, even with his shoulders on the door,
hands somewhere in the air, confused, having absolutely no clue where, what he should be doing, or not doing,


Except that he has to kiss Victor back. Is. Is now.


Like it's the only clear thing left in the world. And even that is burning away fast.

[fivetimechamp]

There's a held breath of a moment where Yuri is still frozen, and maybe that look was a lie, or Victor's giddy brain melting its way into outright delusion as well as whatever insanity has taken him over, but then ––

But then there's a tiny sound, that's barely a sound, that almost can't be heard, but it lands in Victor's skin and burrows in, lighting a trail of fire in its wake and arrowing straight through his ribs, evaporating into steam that fills his skull and blots out anything, everything, but Yuri. Yuri, and that sound he just made. Yuri. Who is kissing him back.

Finally, finally, untying one knot in his stomach only to tangle a harder, larger one there, and the only thing he can do is try to get even closer. A factory whistle pouring steam couldn't have anything on the way his blood is boiling right out of his veins, leaving him light-headed and fever-warm; a single sound couldn't have hit him harder even if it had been the sharp report of a bullet, or the horn of a St. Petersburg car right before it smashed into him.

Like the slammed impact of a perfect landing, or the glint of a spotlight on a gold medal. Yuri against him, pressed all along him, and Yuri made that noise, and Yuri is kissing him back.

Even if it's cautious. Even if it's adorably uncertain. Even if it's unpracticed and a little messy, and he doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands aside from let them float in the air, like an insect that's been rolled over and picked up.

But here. With him. Not pushing him away. Not saying don't. And even if this kiss is heart-achingly, breakingly, shy, it's his. From Yuri. If he could catch it in amber and keep it forever, he would.

All of it perfect, no part of it possible, but happening anyway, and he's idly considering catching one of Yuri's hands to ground it, when there's a sudden shake of the door, and a pause before a confused voice sounds outside and pulls Victor to the surface with a sudden deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been needing.

Well, perhaps his choice of place could have been better.

[theglassheart]

Victor presses in further, and Yuri's heart is somewhere in his head, outside his head, pounding so fast and so hard, that it's both all he can hear and that there's absolutely nothing he can. Nothing in the world exists except the way Victor shifts even closer to him, making even more space evaporate, his head pushing back into the door, even if his mouth feels foreign and clumsy, and electric, impossible to forget and impossible to remember when Victor's mouth so much as moves, which is a constant thing, as everything about this becomes too complicated and too simple.

He doesn't know anything. About anything.

(And Victor probably knows everything. Ever.)

A million images from a million places, common knowledge, all of it deserting him like it never existed. When there's nowhere else to go between the door and Victor, and there's no part of him that can think further than a second before it all falls apart again, breath short and fast.

Until the door suddenly bangs, forcefully, into his shoulders and the back of his head and his hips (one of which gives an angry spasm), and there's a What the--? muffled from the other side of the door, while Yuri's hands finally grab Victor's coat in the shock between the door hitting him, him pitching the no distance into Victor, and back to the door, all while Victor is gasping in air right in front of him. Pulling it straight off Yuri's lips, right from the bottom of his stomach, lighting it on fire and emptying it out all in one go.

Dizziness, disorientation, despair, and panic sprouting up as though they'd been waiting at his ankles to sink their teeth in. His eyes going wide, as he remembers, his heart vaulting straight for the ceiling now, the locker room, the arena, they are still here, here, here, and one of his hands does push at Victor. "We have to --"

Move. Somewhere. Anywhere. Not here. They were -- they weren't supposed to. He'd -- He'd kissed Victor and Victor had kissed him, and everything had become a tumble from there, and there was a person, and Victor was far too solid to scramble straight through, and the lockers were far too far from him to be able to hide in one.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri does push at him now, but it only makes Victor laugh, doesn't coat him with ice and then shatter him with a hammer blow like it would have only seconds ago. The panic that's been missing has camped out there, too: his eyes have gone wide and the color on his cheeks has mottled as the flush there fights with the blood trying to make a break for it. "Okay."

Laughed, because he's not sure he could stop laughing tonight, as he steps back, hands raised innocently and tosses Yuri a wink. "Go get changed, I'll be outside."

Outside. Outside. Outside will be good, because even though outside has people, it has something far better than anything this locker room could offer: the hotel, only a few blocks away, and the room there with the door that locks. A thought that distracts him for a second, the ghosts of long-past champagne bubbles popping in his head, before he's reaching for Yuri's shoulder to guide him past Victor and towards the actual lockers and his street clothes, as the door opens, and Leo de Iglesia looks in, with Guang-hong peering under his arm, only for both of them to turn pink at the sight of Victor waving at them cheerily.

"Oh, sorry."

Lifting both his hands in a mea culpa. "I must have accidentally blocked the door. Do you mind?"

Grabbing the edge of the door and opening it wider, which unbalances Leo and Guang-hong both, as they trip their way in, making Phichit, just now rounding the corner with his gold medal gleaming, laugh and wave an idle hand to Victor as he passes by. Leaving the scene of the crime, as if he were just another innocent bystander, and not the mad perpetrator.

It helps that they can't see the way his gloved fingers touch his lips, bangs shading his eyes, before he strides back into the thick of the press, hands up like a hostage, smiling bright.

"Okay. Time's up!"

[theglassheart]

Victor is laughing and Yuri's brain can't even seem to catch up, even at double or triple the speed. Or it's that there's too much in there. They have to move, there are people, but some part of him is giving a break screeching yelp when Victor's hands come off his face, Victor's weight all the way off of him. Those hands finding his shoulders but only to give him a shove in the opposite direction of Victor, like Yuri knows what's happening. (Happened.)

When Victor is laughing ( ... at him?), and winking (at him) like this is a game. Still a game. (Just a game?) Laughing, and suddenly smiling, affably and gracefully apologizing to the just now appearing faces of Leo and Guang-hong. Both of them going pink just with a look at Victor, but neither of them missing him in the back (and Yuri swears he watches Guang-hong's eyes get rounder and cheeks get pinker when they find him), even if the door being taken from them and Victor exiting takes both of them right back, too.

Leaving Yuri to stagger to his locker. His legs being at all attached to his spine and his ankles is confusing, while his hip is just an alarm bell that having rung doesn't want to give up the shattered snap it had pressed into awareness. His face is on fire. Or his body. Or both. He just wants to grab the sides of his locker once it's open and stick his head in, or lean on it and figure out either how to breathe or just not, and sink down against it. But he can't. Right? He can't? And when his hands goes to his chest, where his heart is still sprinting, there's the confusion of hitting something hard, making him look down.

His silver medal. That is still on. Along with his suit. Because he just. But not just as just --

He stares at, the distorted reflection of peach and black and purple that is him, before pulling it off. He got Silver. Second. (He was kissing Victor, against the door behind him, seconds ago. Minutes. Something.) It's hard to swallow, but he's pulling off the medal as the door opens, again, and Phichit is coming in, all a broad smile and quick bounce. Which makes Yuri turn back even faster. Changing.

Changing. Changing, he can handle, right? Out of this outfit and into his street clothes.

Shoes off. The costume goes off. The clothes get pulled on. Shoes pushed back into. Federation jacket goes over his shirt.

The breaches of sound around him, as Leo congratulates Phichit and then something about both of you in his words makes Yuri look back, still zipping his coat. But it's looking that makes him hear the hitch in Leo's voice, see the shadow of losing on his face. The effort it takes to say those words, he remembers. Though he doesn't think he managed it years ago, with even this much grace. He's not sure at all what to say, but he doesn't have to, when Phichit's voice is effusively brightness about thanks and wishing him well in his next skate, and Yuri only has to press his mouth toward a smile.

He's not sure it makes a smile. He's not sure at all, because he has to think about smiling, about his mouth, and it catches in his chest like something clicking too hard and sends him right back to Victor hovering over him, Victor kissing him. The slide of his own lips against Victor's. The texture of his mouth. The zip that flares through his skin. Whites his thought. Which turns him right back to his locker. To closing it. His medal and costume and skates in his bag. Jacket on and he could be leaving now. Could just go. Fingers grabbing the handle of his bag to pull it behind him.

That confused stricken muddle between stuck here, and knowing Victor is out there. Victor. Victor who. He. They.

He pushes that way, even when everything feels like it's some combination of floating, falling, and too still. All at once. He makes it a few feet to the door (that existing innocent in front of him is making his cheeks flush again) before Phichit sings his name and that he'll see him tomorrow, and Yuri isn't sure exactly what flavor of escaping this is. But it's another one. When he's nodding and saying something about tomorrow, yes, tomorrow or about being there.

Or. Or. It's something. It's anything, because his brain can't think while his hand is on the door.
The plain, oridinary door. That is the same it's been everytime he walked in and out of it.

(Except that he was pressed back into and against this door. Under Victor. Just -- )


The door closes, and there's the sound of laughter and shouted voices coming from not far away. Victor's recognizable from even this distance. One or two of the reporters, as Yuri is pulling that direction. Coming up behind them. Something aching all too presently at how naturally Victor fits right here. Yuri wanted to run from a room where barely two people spoke to him (where - where - where) and Victor is surrounded by a crowd, soaking up every light, like it was meant to give him life.



And ( ... and Yuri can't even stop the and ... ) he looks so happy there. Had Yuri forgotten. Had he thought he'd gotten used to it. An inundation of Victor Nikiforov having to wear in. Suddenly it's the sparkle on everything. The sound of his laugh. The cut of his hair. The tilt of his eyes and his smile. The exact way his shoulders move under his jacket, and how easy every single movement is even from behind him.

[fivetimechamp]

He's never minded the attention of the press, the flash of cameras and the confused shout of questions as each interviewer tries to be heard over the others, but this isn't the tumbled chaos of a press conference, it's just a few paired off interviewers and cameramen, each focused on one coach or skater at a time, but the room is crowded, and he still likes it.

The attention. The focus. The way the interviewers all ready their questions like they're shuffling flash cards, and he's in a good mood. How could he be in anything but? Yuri won silver. Yuri did a beautiful job. Yuri did his flip.

Yuri was just there, backed against a door and pressed against his chest, and beginning to melt into his kiss.

Life, for Victor, at this precise moment, has never been better.

It shows in the brilliance of his smile and the enthusiastic way he tackles their questions: about training, about the eight months getting here, about his view of Yuri's potential, about the weekend's triumphant return to the ice for them both, in new roles.

And even when one of them –– a new person, someone he doesn't recognize –– offers the microphone with a sly smile and asks about Victor's enthusiastic response to Yuri's performance, he only laughs.

I think probably anyone in my place would have done the same thing, after a performance like that.

Which makes everyone laugh, and nod, and Victor doesn't have to explain that Yuri did his flip and suddenly rewrote every interaction and every assumption about the last eight months, or at least the last eight hours. Doesn't have to say it was the product of the larger part of two years' worth of waiting and wishing and wanting and frustration. There was nothing else he could have done. Anyone in his position would have done the same thing.

But none of it –– not the questions, not the cameras, not even his delight at enthusing to the world about Yuri's ability –– can hold a single candle to the way he lights up when Yuri comes back around the corner, in his street clothes and looking uncertain and adorable and making Victor's heart stumble all over itself like a fawn trying walk on ice. "Yuri!"

He swears the air is charged with fairy lights and popping champagne bubbles that blur everything outside Yuri, in the center of his vision. "Are you ready to go?"

Victor is. Has been. Was ready an hour ago.

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't sure exactly what Victor is talking about, something about his performance, and everyone is laughing. Victor with them. Something clunking in Yuri's chest, with the perfect square of his shoulders, and movement of his hair as he shifts. Before Victor is turning toward him, and that smile is.

It's. It's just blinding, and that awkward thing in his stomach vanishes, because his everything in him gives a hot jolt, twisting, turning. Like his lungs fall out of his body, when Victor is staring at him, calling out his name in a delight like Victor just remembered he existed, or had been waiting forever.

Like he hadn't been utterly enamored in the attention around him seconds ago.

Shooting a tendril of spiking cold into that muddled, crescendo of warmth.
Why. Why, then. Why had. He could never compare with any of this.


The thought cuts through, burning cold, razor sharp.


(How hadn't he gotten to that earlier, too?)


Before Victor was staring at him, asking this question, light and bright. Before he's blinking behind his glasses, feeling suddenly bereft of air and gravity, in a completely different way. A completely familiar way. More familiar than anything that came before it. An ache cracking, breaking and freezing, around his thoughts, around that wide, brilliant smile still beaming away at him, like he was just another piece of Victor's adoring world.

Making him nod, a little too much, no more than a single word pushing up, "Yes."

[fivetimechamp]

Thank goodness. It's only been minutes, but those minutes spent at a hard simmer have left him antsy, everything feeling a little too sharp, a little too clear, steps quick and sure away from whatever questions he might have left hanging, or answers he might have left unfinished. They don't matter. Even in the cold hall of the arena, the air feels thick with electricity.

Everything has changed. He doesn't know how, or why, or what that expression on Yuri's face is, or how that flip made its way onto the ice, but he doesn't care, they have hours to figure that out. Days. And all of his questions get swallowed again at the sight of Yuri's face.

He thinks he offers some sort of farewell –– a smile and a wave, maybe –– but he forgets it instantly once he gets to Yuri's side and slips an arm around him, gloved hand curling fondly around his upper arm. "Good, let's go."

Impatience beating at him like bird wings on glass, another of those new thrills running deliciously down his arm and along his back and stomach just to have Yuri here again, under his arm, close enough to bump sides. Even if close enough isn't close enough. Not now that he's been closer, enough to see the specks of gold and black in Yuri's eyes, enough to watch as blood filled his cheeks in a shy and brilliant flush. "I don't want to share you, anymore."

Not with reporters. Not with skaters. Not with friends or fans. Minako is here somewhere, but he doesn't even want to stop for her.

(Don't you want to come with me?)

He's not even going to ask it, like saying the words might be tempting fate, and anyway, Yuri kissed him. Finally. If awkwardly, and uncertainly, but he didn't run and he didn't shove Victor away and he didn't tell Victor to stop, and he did Victor's flip. Told him not to apologize.

Yuri can be as shy and uncertain as he wants, as long as he doesn't go back to saying no, no, no, no, no, as long as he doesn't go back to saying this isn't what he wants from Victor. The rest are fuzzy details that can be worked out later, in their own time, and Victor has every intention of doing exactly that.

Stepping through the sliding glass doors, and out into the Shanghai evening, that's as sparkling as he feels, and it's about all he can do to not just pull Yuri in to the nearest shadow and try that again –– but Yuri, who has twice now warned him about people watching, probably wouldn't appreciate it. No matter how impatient Victor might be, no matter how long he's waited, and how little interest he has in waiting any longer, or how little he cares who sees or knows.

He loves Yuri. That's not a secret, and hasn't been for longer than he probably wishes were true. "You certainly made an impression on everyone tonight. Now everyone knows what I do: you stole all their hearts, too."

But he's smiling, because Yuri may have made the world love him tonight, but Victor is the one he's with. "I'm almost a little jealous."

[theglassheart]

Victor's arm encases his shoulder, curling at his upper arm, his shoulder, and his insides give a queasy leap. In the direction of that hand. In the direction of Victor's body gently bumping into his, even if there's the smallest amount of a faint wince now. Tightening his cheeks, the edges of his mouth, fluttering his lashes. A pain in his steps, the shift of his ankles, knees and hips in tandem, in being bounced, in walking, that exists and passes in a flash.

Well known, more surprise at the pop of it than even focused on it.

Not even, truly, staying between it happening and looking up at Victor so close. (So close Yuri's heart, not his body, is the thing that gives an alarming leap.) So close, saying -- saying -- Yuri isn't sure anything else stays in that second, stays well even after it, when he's looking back down almost instantly, fingers feeling slick on the handle of his rolling bag suddenly.

Nothing makes sense, and Victor doesn't want to -- what? To share him? With who? What?

Except, even as it makes no sense, and his heart has gone back to a confused, bewildered, too quick canter inside his chest, Victor is pulled him down the shortest direction to getting out of the building. Away from the people he'd been holding court for seconds ago. Anyone between there and outside, and even then, it's not quite like this is a foot dragging pace.

At least the next words he says sound a little more normal. Even if the end part, no matter how it makes the inside of his chest flounder, confused, at the wrong things, like a fish on a market table, flopping around. Victor probably hadn't been jealous of a single thing in his life. He was joking the way he always has. Did.

But at least about a topic Yuri can shove his head toward, toward his skate today, the blur of everything that had led up to, skating, after, and what comes out is another phrase he hasn't said yet, and had only really been clear enough to think while out there on the ice the fourth time today: "I didn't get gold."

[fivetimechamp]

"Well, you did fall on the quad flip."

The wince hasn't escaped his notice, and neither has the way Yuri's been favoring that side, and while Victor can't go back and fix the jump (done without practice, without a jump harness, apparently without thought) and keep him from slamming the ice, he can still help now. Right?

It's helpful when he pauses walking to step in front of Yuri, arm sliding from around his shoulders, hand wandering down his arm to cover Yuri's over the handle of that bag, while the other slips beneath Yuri's chin and tilts it up towards Victor's face. Helpful to steal the bag's handle away from him, while distracting him by leaning in close enough to bump the tip of his nose, eyes gone hooded and hazy. "But once we fix that, you'll win the next gold for sure."

Just like he'd told the cameras, and the world. Pure confidence in everything from the way he takes hold of the roller bag's handle to the way he leans close enough to brush his lips against Yuri's, with a smile that manages to be both sly and fond.

What was that about other people? He forgets. It's not important, anyway. Nothing is, or could be, except tempting Yuri's attention back to him in every way he'd thought was impossible, and he can't think of a single good reason not to flirt with Yuri, who did his jump and looked at him like that and really needs to be getting back on the correct program, now that they're out of the arena.

"You got me. Isn't that almost as good?"

[theglassheart]

He did, didn't he? He fell. Because he thought he should do something he --

-- can't. Suddenly, Victor is stepping in front of him, with no warning. One of Victor's hands under his chin, pulling his face up, to Victor's, noses almost touching, and he's talking. Talking, talking, talking, Yuri's sure he's talking, he can hear Victor's voice somehow. But his heart is pounding. Thundering.

Everything is Victor's eyes, and Victor's hand, Victor right there again and his heart trying to explode. Everything else is evaporated, gone, obliterated is sudden almost painful jangle. Because Victor is going to -- and then he is. Yuri's heart is exploding, when Victor's lips brush his again. When it's too light, and it -- he nearly takes a step forward as Victor is pulling back to say more, this aborted confused movement when the rest of his body does.

At least his shoulders, his head, his chest. Moves toward him.
Follows the movement of Victor pulling back at all. A sway uncaught.

Victor's words impossible. Confused. Blurred. He's not sure there's anything even almost as good as Victor in existence. (He got what? He got -- Victor? How. How is. What. What.) Yuri isn't sure any of this is real, could possibly be. His chest tightening, breath coming in and out through his nose too fast a few breaths, at that concept uncurling. (Against. Against, you got me.

Isn't that almost as good?)

When he can't tell. He can't. If this. Why -- any of -- why.

And why can't he stop the race of his heart. The sudden, impossible, screaming longing to just have Victor back. (Kissing him.) To kiss Victor. (Which feels even more dangerous.) The way his gaze keeps shifting, up and down, up, down, breath contracting, like his lungs are just done. He can't even. There was a question. But he can't remember it. Can't think. This helpless, overwhelming, thing that leaves him with only one word, drowning in it. "Victor."

[fivetimechamp]

Oh, he loves this. The way Yuri tips in towards him, like an iron filing falling towards a magnet. The way Yuri's eyes can't seem to stop moving across his face, behind those cute glasses of his. And especially the way his name drops out of his mouth, strangled and confused. He hasn't heard Yuri say it like that since the first time he showed up at Yu-topia, waiting there in the hot spring for him, and it makes his smile spread in a slow and satisfied curve.

(He'd never understood why this hadn't worked. it had never not worked, before, until Yuri and his inexplicable immunity to Victor's charms.

Until now. Can he really be blamed for wanting to soak it all in, let it puff into his head like hot air and fill his ears with buzzing?)

"Yuri."

His voice is amused, if also pitched low, but he only has so much capacity for teasing when Yuri's eyes keep drifting toward his mouth and Yuri pitched towards him in an abortive reflex, and when all it takes is to tip his head a little further and lean, while tugging Yuri's chin towards him.

Besides, it's easier to steal Yuri's bag when he's distracted, and when Victor pulls back, he has the bag in hand, at his side, and the beginnings of a sparkling smile on his face. "Come on. You should ice that hip and get some rest."

Sensible words, when sensible is the last thing he's feeling, can't touch this floaty giddiness that seems to have turned him back into a teenager, cocky and arrogantly sure of himself.

Thumb tracing along Yuri's jaw, just the way he remembers doing, mouth quirking like it's an inside joke. "Don't you want to come with me?"

[theglassheart]

Victor is impossible.

He's always been impossible, but Yuri had convinced himself he'd accepted that along with everything else.

Or at least put it somewhere else. Another room. In another closet, under another bed. Made it so they could work. Could. But the way Victor smiles and says his name, slow and low and amused, like this is the best entertainment he could even find, dips into whatever reserve of anything Yuri has left in his stomach, unfair and guttering when those fingers draw his chin up and Victor leans back into kiss him.

When everything revolts, and he pressed up ward, shifts, lifts, his hands almost raising to catch Victors one under his chin, with something like a trill of confused desperation against the idea of losing it again, Victor again, it not lasting -- and it doesn't. It's just the brush of lips, almost like a stamp, while Victor seems to laugh, and pulls back, just as quickly, just as smiling. Maybe smiling even more. Using words that make sense. So much sense, an every day kind of sense, if Victor hadn't kissed him a second ago.

And before that. (And that.) (And that.) (And that.)

Cementing it with a brush of that soft leather along the side of his face, and words that finally make Yuri brow crinkle.

Because Victor looks so amused, like he's telling a joke, and Yuri is going to be sick from the constant flip-flip of his heart, his stomach, his lungs. Not working, or working too hard. Everything falling into and out of his head. Things tugging at his thoughts, that he needs to remember, and then can't even think at all. Stormed. By Victor. By everything ... in himself, too? Nothing lining up, nothing holding still. Nothing rational, sensible, grounded.

While Victor just smiles at what Yuri can't even tell about that. Those words. His newest question.
When the flounder of his hand is coming up to rub at his cheek, palm bumping Victor's hand.

"Don't I have to anyway?" It wasn't like they were going separate places, right?
There was only one back to go to? And that just made it sound ... so pointless?

An empty joke at Yuri's already beyond confused expense for Victor's benefit?

[fivetimechamp]

"If you want ice, a bed, your clothes, or to sleep tonight ... yes."

But he doesn't want Yuri to come back because he has to, he wants Yuri to come back because he wants to. Finally. After making Victor wait this long, after Victor was convinced he was wrong about everything, or that Yuri had changed his mind, or that Yuri really was that playboy from Eros, and stealing Victor's heart away like it was a cheap festival prize.

And he wants Yuri's hands to stop fluttering at the air like he's doing his best to take off directly from the sidewalk, can't help the shiver that runs through his arm when one (finally? accidentally? unknowingly?) brushes against the back of his gloved hand, while Yuri's looking at him like he's gone insane, and maybe he has. Lost his mind, all his sense, any direction except back towards Yuri, over and over again, the way migrating birds keep returning year after year to their homes thousands of miles away.

He shouldn't love that crinkle between Yuri's eyebrows, that pulls there when Victor is being especially exasperating, but he does. Loves getting under Yuri's skin, loves how Yuri's whole body pushed towards him.

(This wasn't going to happen. He'd come to terms with it, and he'd accepted it, and he'd loved every other minute of every day he could get, just being here, with Yuri, coaching him and getting to know him and never managing to fall any less in love with him the more he saw and learned.

Maybe he can be forgiven for his inability to come down from this high, for his stupidity, for how every single word wants to come out as a disbelieving, insane laugh.)

"So you should stop distracting me in the middle of the sidewalk, don't you think?"

[theglassheart]

It's not as though Yuri needs a detailed list of his own point, but Victor makes it anyway.

Pointing out that, yes, of course, Yuri has to come back with him. There's no other place for Yuri to go to. (Which is funny? To Victor? Still ?) At least not one that isn't already his. With all of his things in it. It makes him want to sigh, and drop his shoulders, but Victor is still a little too close for anything but an absent collection of those feelings to spin through, but without the power or ability to fall straight into action.

Especially not when it's immediately overridden by stampeded gasp and wide eyes, his shoulders actually bouncing up, instead of down, with the fastest of looks to each side of Victor's face. The first reaction about -- Him? Him distracting Victor? As though this wasn't all Victor who -- getting entirely sideswiped by a carrier engine about the sidewalk. About the world.

When there are definitely people around them. Not close, but definitely some of them are staring at them.
And. And. And the arena building isn't even two kilometers behind them. Maybe not even a fully one.

And he is backward before he's realized it. Jumped straight out of the fingers that had been touching him. The inches that had been all there was between them, confused and catching up suddenly with the absent piece of luggage at his feet. The one he expects to trip over, and instead ends up tripping over not being there at all. Suddenly looking to his sides and around, before --

"Hey!" -- is a little too loud, finding it at Victor's side, in Victor's other hand, cool and calm as thought it's always been there. (... and just when had he even last been holding it? When did Victor take it? He had been dagging it out here originally, right?)

[fivetimechamp]

Victor only straightens as Yuri realizes where they are and bounces away, only to finally realize he's no longer holding onto the handle of his bag and direct an accusatory look his way, that bounces off Victor's mild smile, standing with the handle in one hand, the other propped on his hip.

(It's just deeply satisfying on a near-cellular level that Yuri forgot where they were standing, and that there were people going by, and simply never noticed Victor stole his bag straight from his hand, because of Victor. Because Victor touched him, teased him, kissed him.

He's pretty sure this won't get old anytime soon. Is completely sure it's as heady as wine and far more addicting.) "What?"

Innocent as if butter wouldn't melt in his angelic smirking mouth. "Do you want to go back to the hotel, or not?"

He can take Yuri's bag. Wants to. It might not be what a coach would do, but it's what a lover would, and that line went from blurred to non-existent the second his shoe first hit the concrete floor and sent him sprinting towards that gate. Maybe was never really there to begin with, no matter what lies he told himself.

Half-turning, now that Yuri's gone from pressed against him to tripping over his own feet a half a meter away, and tipping his head like he can't believe how long Yuri's taking. "Come on, Yuri, let's go."

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't defend himself or explain. Which really isn't anything new. Is it. He just smiles merrily, looking like he's not apologetic about the happenstance of thieving Yuri's luggage from him, at whatever point that was, and nothing like phased, about ... anything else at all. He looks like he always does. Maybe a little smugger and more unapologetic than ever. Innocent of all wrong doing.

While Yuri's cheeks are a scalded mix of mottling, and his feet are suddenly very connected to the ground, to his body. To (-- everything that is not Victor, while Victor stands that distance from and then) Victor is telling him to hurry up. Like the world isn't, hasn't, very suddenly, very recently, become a spinning top, where it does make sense no matter how fast or slow it's going, no matter where he's standing.

He might exchange it for his morning, if he was given the option.


(Except.)


Still his first point, in what feels like a very long time and the only one he can remember in a while, stands. There's only one place for him to go, and even only one person for him to go there with, even if that person is Victor, and Victor has somehow, impossibly, miraculously, also, kissed him, several times, and is walking away from him. Complaining like Yuri might be dragging his feet about them getting somewhere, or getting a day started, like any other day.

It's -- it's easier almost not to ask, even though he knows he will, already is -- and to just start walking.
If, maybe, a little to the side. A little too aware of the world everywhere suddenly. Hands shoving into his pockets.

[fivetimechamp]

There's probably something wrong with him, that he finds Yuri's exasperation with him to be nearly as cute as the surprise on his face a moment ago, the flush that still hasn't seeped back out of his cheeks. It's probably mean to tease him, probably a little cruel to egg him on, to needle him like this, but he's finding it as hard to stop as when he was little and hadn't quite figured out how his toe picks worked, yet, and just relied on the walls or other skaters.

He wants to tease. To egg. To needle, and push, and prod, and crowd Yuri back up against a wall, and take off his gloves to touch his throat with bare fingers. "I could always keep kissing you out here," he offers, the very spirit of generosity even as he's falling into step beside Yuri, the little bag wheeling cheerfully just behind. "I wouldn't mind."

He's pretty sure there's nowhere he would or could mind kissing Yuri, now that he gets to kiss Yuri. In public. In private. What does it matter? How on earth is he supposed to care even a little about the opinions of anyone walking nearby who might see?

But Yuri probably cares. It seems like the kind of thing Yuri, usually so reserved and contained, so quiet and shy and awkward around people, would care about. He's forever rolling his eyes at the way Victor dives into interactions with the people in Hasetsu, and looking startled when Victor tries to pull him in on it, and Victor's sure Yuri would prefer to keep this kind of thing to himself.

But Victor has no such reservations. If anything, he's happy for the world to see, to know, to make it real by association. Sometimes it seems like his whole life has been under the spotlight, so why should this be any different.

But Yuri would care. So Victor should care.

Still, it's fortunate that the hotel is only another block or two away.

[theglassheart]

Yuri nearly chokes. On the absolutely nothing in his mouth or throat but air.

He's not sure whether the better happenstance was that he didn't, or that he could have.


He's not sure if his ears are working right. Except that he totally heard that sentence. And the one after it. And his cheeks are doing nothing like cooling down. Nor is any other part of his body. His body that hasn't even seemed to register that it's still winter in Shanghai out here. That he'd never put on his gloves or his mask, and honestly,

if he wanted to hide the shades his cheeks are sticking he could put on his mask now.

Except that if he does, then Victor can't actually kiss him, and -- oh oh god, he wants Victor to kiss him? Again? Not out here. Not. But. He can't even bury his face in his hands. He's walking. They're walking. And who on this planet probably doesn't? And how is this even happening? To him, and at all. Why is he. Are they. Is it all from before?

Because of that choice he'd made? Because of doing Victor's flip? Somehow?

The same one Victor bragged about at the interviews, even if he's already clarified they have to work on it.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to: the sudden dull flush of red in his cheeks and the choked sound he makes is enough for Victor. Some inner devil almost pushes the words are you all right, Yuri? innocently up his throat, but he shouldn't, shouldn't. No matter how cute Yuri is with his face gone that fetching shade of cherry blossom pink. No matter how his awkward, reflexive push in towards Victor only a few moments ago when to Victor's head like champagne.

Besides, as nice as that was, he wasn't lying, before: he wants Yuri all to himself, and that will never happen out here on the sidewalk, or by pushing Yuri into locker rooms that will, sooner or later, turn out to actually have people in them.

So he settles for a chuckle that does nothing to settle the itch starting up again just under his skin, the smooth and insistent waves of heat that keep flushing up and down his arms, his throat, his chest. "You look so cute right now, Yuri."

Well, he does. Much like he did when Victor first arrived, and Yuri was a flustered ball of surprised, all pink cheeks and shining eyes and stumbling words, even while he did absolutely everything Victor required of him. Ran. Jumped. Did calisthenics. Hours of ballet. Hours of stretching. Hours of basic drills. Never once giving up or in, even when he seemed so disbelieving that it could actually be happening.

This isn't unlike those days, except Victor knows Yuri better now, and he knows not to push too far, because even if Yuri is all right with being kissed –– or, at least, is surprised enough he hasn't actually considered running away yet –– it's probably a tenuous gift.

But it should be better when they're alone. When Victor can explain, and wrap him up, and touch his cheek with his fingers, and they can figure it all out together.

(The hotel loom just ahead, thankfully close, frustratingly far.)

[theglassheart]

Yuri wants to roll his eyes, or hang his head, or find a hood on his jacket suddenly decided to exist for him. But it doesn't, and he can't tell which way he's feeling about it, when the words about him, his face, his action, he doesn't know, something about him right now, is like a slippery patch of ice under his tennis shoes, but his brain latches on to the way Victor says his name.

Differentiating it from earlier. From that low, slow, amused linger on the vowels of it.

This is almost normal, and he can't even tell if that's comforting or just picked apart for comparing.

He should say something, but it's like language is absolutely receptive to his ears, his brain, but nothing is coming back. A dull throbbing heat. In his cheeks. In his skin. Confused confliction that spills and spurs dominoes that don't seem quite able to work right still. Fingers balling up some of the cloth that make the lining of his pockets, because he has to do something. His skin is not stretched right all across him, even though it hasn't changed.

(Except it has. Except he has.


And, oh, that's stupid. It is.
There's the press of his mouth
and harder ball of his fingers.

He'd never. Not. And. Victor. Now, Victor.
Victor, from all the posters and tv.
Victor, his coach ... his friend?

Has that word has always

felt off)

He can't reach up and touch his face. His mouth. He'd never live that one down already. He's aware. Especially with Victor commenting already. He just presses his lips together. Ends up with part of the back of his lip, the loose skin beneath it between his teeth, and he even tries to force that down into a single sentence. List. He came to Shanghai. He got a personal best. He might have broken down and screamed. He got second place. He has a silver medal in that suitcase, wheeling between them. And Victor kissed him. They kissed.

Victor Nikiforov is the ... his ... first kiss. And he's a handful up from that.
While Victor. Over there. Is just teasing him about here. Right here.
About choking and flustering. About everything.
Making Yuri want to hide under something.


Like this is normal.




... Is this normal?

He doesn't have a clue. Obviously.

[fivetimechamp]

This is worse than the time he and Chris snuck a full bottle of vodka past Yakov and Josef at Worlds and wound up wandering the streets of Calgary while Victor tried to teach Chris Russian folk songs and Chris wound up stripping for an extremely appreciative hen party. It's worse than any rowdy after-party he's ever been to, worse than even just two nights ago, that rice wine-flavored haze that keeps dancing just out of reach of his memory. He's never felt drunk like this, when he hasn't had a drop of alcohol in almost two days.

All because of Yuri, and Yuri's cute blush over there, and Yuri's awkward tilt in towards him, and the joy on Yuri's face when he'd skated towards the gate in the full knowledge that he'd been excellent, outstanding. Even now that he seems to have forgotten how to talk, this giddy incoherence soaking Victor's brain and turning him into a useless fool isn't going anywhere. Nothing like how Yuri wasn't talking to him earlier today, although he has to wonder if he's going to get shouted and cried at again tonight.

That's all right. It all is, would be, as long as Yuri hasn't changed his mind. Victor can handle being yelled at, as long as he can hold onto Yuri for it. For now, Yuri can be silent if he wants, but that can only last so long: Victor has questions to ask and admissions to make and there's so much he wants to know. Why his flip? Why tonight? Was it because of what Yuri said downstairs in the garage, that he was afraid of his failures reflecting on Victor? Did it go all the back to I've always looked up to you from that morning on the beach when everything finally began to fit together? How long has it been? How long has Victor been wrong?

His pocket is buzzing, but he ignores it: texts from friends, possibly from Minako (he'll get an earful from her tomorrow for stealing Yuri away, he's sure, especially since she wasn't planning on going to Moscow with them), notifications as he's tagged in social media posts. All of it can wait, as they're walking up towards the hotel and he holds open the glass door for Yuri to head in.

[theglassheart]

The silence drags on, and Yuri doesn't know if that's good or bad. Doesn't have any clue the longer it goes on, except why? Why and why and why. It bounces around his head, confused and dizzy. He can feel his steps more as he takes them, more as everything isn't dissolving. The pain in his side is greater than everything else, but there still is an everything else. There is still all the pain and soreness of competition skate. Pulling his bones and muscles down heavy and sore, full of complaints about speed, weight, time. Mixing with that iron leaded exhaustion clinging to the bottom of his spine.

He hasn't slept in more than a day, not for lack of his or Victor's trying, which makes his glance flick to Victor.
How much more sensible would this be as a dream? If he'd just passed out somewhere, in a chair, by a wall.

(How much does that ache, confusedly, in a retort to the idea. Of not real, not Victor. Not him.)



The door gets opened and he steps through, even though his eyes drag a little on his bag, still at Victor's side, in Victor's hand, and the person behind the counter, and he goes pink, like all the world knows. Can see all of this on him. When they aren't even touching. Aren't even near each other. When for all he knows, which amounts to nothing, it might be over. He hasn't the faintest clue. But that makes his heart stumble hard into a wall, too, while he's mumbling a polite arigato for the door holding.

He's not entirely incapable of using his mouth, apparently.

But they are. At the hotel. Where the lights in the lobby are bright and butter yellow, and they are going back to their room. A thought that catches up with Yuri against the back of his teeth. A thought he's been having, without really having for the last five or ten minutes of quiet walking, and occasional glances to his side. Just at the edge of his vision, trying not to even turn his head too much.

It's so very few steps to cross the lobby and be waiting in front of the elevator, and he thinks he might be starting to have a heart attack. Again. Because they are. Going back to their room. And what does that mean? Does it mean anything? Is this over. Is it not. Now that Victor has finally subsided to his side of the sidewalk, the doorway, teasing him, enough quiet to think. Not that everything could be. He has to skate, and Victor's going to teach him his flip now. But.

But. Anything - everything - else. Wherever - whatever - this. This is. If it even is an is and isn't already past.

[fivetimechamp]

He hasn't been a real believer in years, but the elevator arriving right now seems like the hand of God itself reaching down to help him out, because Yuri has only mumbled one word at him in the last five minutes, and it was in Japanese, and it was just to be polite about him keeping to door open, and really the last thing he wants right now is for Yuri to curl up into himself like a confused and sulky hedgehog.

Not that he looks sulky. Or confused, even. But there is a distinct air as of invisible bricks going up between them, and that's probably Victor's fault for kissing him in public –– twice –– and not quite knowing what to say about it without giving in to the desire to just flirt. (But who could really blame him, when Yuri is just so! Cute! anyway?)

So the soft ding of the arriving elevator is a relief, and when no one else rushes to get on and ruin everything, it seems like a sign from the heavens above. It's not the room, locked and private, but it'll do for now, for Victor to lean Yuri's bag against the wall, and reach for Yuri's hand to tug him gently across that space he doesn't want growing between them. Not anymore. Not after everything. Space is the last thing he needs or wants. "Yuri, come here."

It's not the full body tackle onto the ice, or pushing Yuri gently but irrevocably into a door, or even getting in his way on the sidewalk: it's coaxing, a question and not a command. Free hand lifting to smooth back a piece of Yuri's bangs that fell into his face once the sweat of performing melted the gel away. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you."

A little. He doesn't care what people see or know, but Yuri has never been as comfortable with attention as he is, tends to shrink away under it like a mouse faced with a flashlight. "I just didn't want to wait any more."

The very concept is impossible, inconceivable. How could he, why would he, who could possibly have resisted the temptation?

But Yuri is sensitive, and Yuri is shy, and Yuri has never had the relationship with the world and the public that he has, so he probably shouldn't have teased so much. It's just difficult to remember, when suddenly everything is possible that was never supposed to happen to begin with.

Anyway, his smile is as appealing and winsome as he knows how to be. "Can you forgive me?"