{ 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]

His smile curves, pauses, falters, and begins to fade. A thin line draws itself between his eyebrows, and those rocks in his belly begin tumbling over one another, freezing portions of his stomach lining and making it suddenly difficult to breathe.







"Did you change your mind?"

[theglassheart]

He doesn't understand why that question makes his chest hurt. He's not sure he's made a single decision in the last hour. Not on purpose. Not thought about anything and done it, except this absolute necessity to fold himself into Victor, to kiss him back once he'd even figured out what was happened. Too slow and too stupid, even in that,

When had he made any decision to ever take one back.

The idea of even making one is what has him stuck, has everything snapping.

"That isn't the point." It's not. It's not. It's not. It doesn't matter what he wants -- if he wants this -- wants Victor, and even that is insane, insane, insane. "You're --" Victor. He's Victor Nikiforov. "-- you -- and everything you've already --"

And, oh, he doesn't swear, but he almost wishes he could. Swear, and scream, and bury his head into a pillow. Because it hits him viciously. How many time Victor probably has. How many people. Even selectively. Even not for long. No one else who would be standing here, like an idiot, frozen, arguing, like Yuri. Who doesn't deserve any of this, or understand in the slightest. All of it is wrong, and all of it hurts.

Victor, who has no issues with any of this. Victor, who has skated things like this. Wrote made Eros and gave it to Yuri.

"-- and I've never even --" Kissed someone until minutes ago, and he's trying to pull his hand back.
He just wants to wrap his arms around himself. Curl his fists by his sides. Vanish. Hide. Stop existing.

[fivetimechamp]

Victor is blinking at him.

(Sometimes Victor thinks his entire life has come down to blinking at Yuri. How could one, small, shy Japanese skater surprise him so much and so often?)

Blinking, and listening, and trying to put the ends of the sentences Yuri isn't finishing together, along with this look of frustration and the way he pulls his hand out of Victor's, which should be a sign that Victor was right and the answer is no, but somehow doesn't feel that way.

Not with that isn't the point, with which Victor would beg to disagree, he consider it to be the main point, perhaps the only point. Not with you're ... you, which makes even less sense.

But there's that I never again, but this time there's that last word after it, and there's a brief silence as Victor's hand floats, empty, in the space between them, and he can almost hear in the silence of the room the copper clink of the penny dropping.

"Yuri..."

It's not that he's surprised. Or, well, he is. But. He should have thought of it. Nearly had, a few moments ago, without putting much weight behind the thought, but he hadn't thought –– not never ––

"Was that your first kiss?"

[theglassheart]

Then. Suddenly. It's out there.



It's in the air. In Victor's voice, and Yuri's heart is in his shoes.
The floor isn't nice enough to suck him down and envelop him.

Everything hurts, and the truth is brutal. It's always been brutal. Shameful. That's not new, is it? And yet nothing compares. It doesn't matter if there's a medal somewhere behind him, or a good portion of his body that hates him, standing here, standing still. That win, that pain. They don't exist next to those words in the air. His shoulders just crumple as his face gets so much hotter, no place to run, no place to hide, just that truth between him and Victor, like every other divide.

"Gomen," falls out of his mouth, incapable of being anything other than it's lost itself.

The level of how much he could make a fool of himself, in his life, defying new limits.

[fivetimechamp]

Barely a step away, Yuri crumples, and the answer is stamped across his face even before it appears as that mumbled apology, but Victor can't really parse it at all, because something in the back of his head just went puttt and he has lost the ability to think. Relief flooding like stepping into the hot spring, warm water everywhere, chasing goosebumps up his skin and shoving him up off the bed in a quick motion that barely even registers.

Is that it? Is that all?

He was. And Yuri hadn't. First. First. The only one to ever.

There are dull thudding explosions happening inside his chest, and he could be wrong, but he's pretty sure the lights of Shanghai have suddenly gone up in a blaze of fireworks, because all he sees around Yuri's face are hazy, sparkling flashes. If his eyes were replaced by huge and shining cartoon hearts, they couldn't be anymore of an open door into the way his heart is bursting. He was Yuri's first kiss. And Yuri is standing here looking ashamed of it, as if Victor could possibly care, as if it matters at all, as if that might be some sort of dealbreaker. "Oh, Yuri."

Standing there looking like he wants the floor to swallow him, and it is well past the legal limits of what should be considered adorable, but Victor doesn't care, can't, can only lift his hand to the spot on his chest under which his heart is cracking into a thousand glowing pieces. Relief turned him on his head, all the fears and worries and uncertainties of a moment ago washed away in the same flash flood that seems to have obliterated his sanity, as well. "I'm honored."

It's all he can say before he's pressing himself close and his hands have found Yuri's face again, thumbs tracking along the line of his jaw ––

(his skin is soft and warm and it sends a hard shake down along his arms, into his shoulders and back)

–– and kisses him again. And again.

And again.

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't want to look up. Doesn't want to hear Victor, when his name is all soft, and Yuri almost flinches. He doesn't want to be another honor on Victor's pile. Whatever it is, it doesn't even compare, and it means, when Victor's hands find his chin -- and he shudders hard at the contact -- the last thing he wants to do is to be made to look up, to be made to never forget whatever face Victor is making, and his hands are on the forearms of Victor's jacket --


-- by the time he realizes Victor is kissing him.

Making something bubble up stubborn and defeated and impossible and absolutely uncomprehending. Not able to tell what impulse it is (run, fight, push, pull) that tightens his hands on Victor's arms, fingers digging into expensive cloth, because it's all he has to hold on to, and even that is slipping. Because Victor hasn't stopped. Victor is kissing him. Again, and again, and again.

Stealing his thoughts. His words. Any certainty except a stinging, bubbling, surge of warmth expanding fast and hard through his center, shoving everything else out, that has him on his toes, before he knows he's there, too. Because there is no question, and no answer, and no fighting it. Victor kisses him, and all he has in him is to push into it. Wanting and absolutely confused, how and why and still, all of it floundering, drowning under the press of Victor's lips and wanting to be impossibly closer.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers are gripping his forearms and Victor has lost his mind, relief and want and the need to wipe that expression off Yuri's face seeping deeper than bones, straight to his core. If it isn't that Yuri doesn't want this ––

And Yuri, for all his flushing and shamefaced glances away, is pushing back into this kiss like he's tossing himself into a jump he doesn't know but is determined to learn ––

That's all he needs to know. Unable to pull away even far enough to keep their noses from brushing so he can say "I don't care about that at all," before his hands are dropping from Yuri's face and throat to his ribs, sliding across the material of his jacket to his back so Victor can press flush against him, close enough, probably, for Yuri to feel the way his heart is sprinting even beneath the material of shirt and vest and tie.

First kisses are meant to be followed up. That's the whole point of first. And there's so much to learn and experience.

Which only makes him think of the panicked way Yuri's gaze had flicked behind his head a few moments ago, and Victor had thought he was just uncertain about whether or not he wanted this to continue, but if that was his first kiss –– and Victor had been sitting on the ––









(He wonders, idly, if there's room in the mini-fridge for him to fit his head between door and jamb and slam it a few times.)

Idioty. Him. That much is clear, but at least he's an idiot who can make sure that isn't something Yuri has to worry about. Until an hour ago, his expectations were non-existent.

Pulling back again, this time more than a little breathless, trying to blink the haze from his eyes and getting caught on how wide and dark Yuri's are, but he should say something, right? Reassure him, somehow. "Don't worry, Yuri."

Fond, as one hand lifts back up to smooth the pad of his thumb over Yuri's bottom lip. "It's still just me."

[theglassheart]

It's wreckless and wrecked and so damn confusing, that it feels like his lungs try to follow Victor even half an inch back. When Victor is everything that exists, and he doesn't even know how many kisses that was, or why they happened, he can't really think beyond the flecks of color in Victor's eyes, right in front of his, and the words about how it doesn't matter.

When all it does is matter. Wind Yuri to remember. Still breathless.

Not gaining any more air, even in the smallest to fast drags of air in, when Victor's hands move. Hands dropping from his face, brushing his throat, burning it, his ribs, his whole body still shaking, when Victor's hands find his back and pull him in tight, and he's hugged Victor.

He's hugged Victor more than he's ever hugged anyone who wasn't in his family, just in the last eight months, but it's not like this. It's not this desperate, dizzy, fiery whirl. That's left his hands up and pressed between them, not sure where to land. The front of his jacket, or just to lift up and wrap around his neck, like he was hugging Victor from any other day. Catching, speeding up, needing, needing to do something, feeling it in his skin, but clueless to what. Quite how.

None of it as important as the impossible, overwhelming, obliterating of everything, that is Victor's mouth against his. The shift and slip of skin. The awareness of every single second of it. All of his body and being reorienting to that friction, the faintest movement, pressure. His hands on Yuri's back, his entire body pressed against Yuri's front, and the absolute disaster the is pretending he can focus, even with his glasses, when Victor leans back at all. The whole world feels tilted sideways and upside down, and Victor's face is beautiful.

Painfully, beautiful, perfect

more so than anything Yuri's ever seen,
and he doesn't want to remember how to think.

Which doesn't keep Victor from talking, from suddenly reaching back to his face again. From the fingers against his jaw, and the thumb on his lip, setting the top inside of Yuri's chest on fire. Even if the groan that come up is far more exasperation than anything anyone in the world, especially Yuri, would consider sexy. Which might be why Yuri colors up, even more than he already is, asking, "Is that supposed to help?"

Victor being Victor (Nikiforov) being Victor (his coach, his -- ?) was every single problem.

[fivetimechamp]

Oh, well ––

His eyebrows push up, curving and pressing together over wide and reproachful eyes, not at all unlike Maccachin's melting dismay when he's been caught sneaking snacks from the kitchen and scolded for it. It hurts, a little, distantly, even if he's aware it's only a bruise to his pride. "Of course it is!"

Everything he's done and said today has been an attempt to help. Well –– almost everything, anyway. The large majority of it. And Yuri was the one who said he wanted Victor to be just Victor, all those months ago. It's not as if he doesn't have worries and fears and doubts like any other person in the world, after all, and the point is, there's nothing Yuri needs to prove to him, and nothing Victor's going to push him towards without Yuri wanting it.

And even with that exasperated noise Yuri makes, and that eye-roll of a question, the fact is that Yuri is pressed all along him, even closer when Victor's hand drops back down to his side and then runs along to his back to tuck Yuri in a little tighter, and his cheeks are flushed and his mouth is slick and a little swollen. Love, apparently, is still wanting to kiss someone who has just called him unhelpful and looked put upon at Victor's attempt to put him more at ease.

(Tchaikovsky had led him to believe there were a deal more magic spells and dramatic confessions immediately before tragic murders, but this is probably better, in the long run, even if Victor feels a little put out.)

[theglassheart]

Yuri isn't positive he wants to play this game. Where Victor sounds a little stung with the offense.

Not angry. But a little offended. The flash bright reaction of it.

He's seen and heard things near enough to have some clue at Victor's actual disappointment and stormy annoyance. But this one he doesn't entirely believe. That there is a cent of him that believes Victor is less than fully aware of who Victor is, what he is, what he represents to the world. With his characteristic ease and the million hearts that broke anytime he so much as threw a wink at a crowd, or a camera.

Yuri doesn't, though, entirely have the time to focus on that, or, more aptly, just that, because Victor pulls him closer even while sounding stung. A hand running down his back, pulling him there. Momentum moving him a step in, shoe bumping Victor's and that catches, with no real preparation or thought and his hands still trapped, making him catch himself on his hands on Victor's chest. Which. Is. It's. It's a development. Leaving him blinking at his hands.

Before he realizes, with exquisite pressure against the back of his breastbone, that he can feel Victor's heart.
Just faintly. Through the lapel of his suit jacket and his shirt. Through everything. His cheeks are definitely warming.

But the look up after is something slower, something ... different.
Eyes caught on his hands, while things slot together like odd, suddenly checked boxes.

His hands are on Victor's chest. And he's in his room (their room) (they are). He's in Victor's arms. Pressed against Victor. Because they were kissing. Because Victor says he's not going to stop. And there's. It's. Really. It's all rather insane, still, but when he's looking back up to Victor's face, there's something soft plucking the edge of his mouth.

[fivetimechamp]

He's still a little stung when he pulls Yuri closer, but there's a sudden pressure against his chest that makes him look down to see Yuri's hands laid flat there, and whatever he was thinking, it's gone in a second.

In the lift of his chest as he breathes, and how that shifts the weight of Yuri's hands, the warm perfect flat of his palms and the delicate curve of his fingers, and it takes him the space of another breath and a few skipped heartbeats to realize that this is the first time Yuri's touched him so far. At least, that hasn't been Victor tugging him around, or pushing him into doors, or taking his hand, or kissing him. Even when Yuri was pushing back into that kiss a second ago, his hands had still been mid-air, like he wasn't sure what to do with them, and even now it's accidental, that's clear.

Certainly from the way Yuri's staring at them, himself, like he'd forgotten he even had hands, or what they might be for, and even when he's touched Victor idly in the past, it's never been like this. Has always been a hug, or an arm around Victor's neck while holding his balance to wipe snow off his blade, or the occasional loose pile of limbs that could be Yuri's or Victor's or Maccachin's, and Victor isn't used to being touched with purpose by Yuri.

Or, at least, if it started as an accident, it's on purpose now because Yuri keeps them there, even as his eyes track back up to Victor's face, with something sweet and shy playing at the corners of his mouth that just manages to punt Victor straight back off the edge of this cliff he'd somehow managed to scale and cling to.

(Somewhere on the horizon, a very long way away, the tiny shimmering dot that was Victor's logical forebrain winks out in a brilliant twinkle.)

They can circle back to ... whatever that was. How just being Victor isn't helpful, or whatever Yuri meant to say, because all Victor can do in this moment, right now, with Yuri's hands over his chest, directly over where his heart is attempting to barrel out towards them, is kiss him again, soft and careful and as achingly sweet as this thing in his chest that he's never known how to express, except in ballet and the tight control of spins and the wide white sweep of the ice.

[theglassheart]

He's been close to Victor for months. Closer than really with anyone else. Even Phichit gave him an air of careful, respectful space during the years they lived together. But nothing like Victor, and even the comparison of Victor before the last hour, in the whole of the last eight months, is nothing like Victor this hour. Is nothing like watching his expression change this close to it.

The way the wrinkle of something that looked exasperating like it truly was going to become a bewildered pout almost. Except it smoothes away. He watches it. This shift in Victor's face. When he'd been looking down at the same thing Yuri had been -- Yuri's hands, which almost fidget in the urge to run, hide, be put somewhere, anywhere else with everyone's attention on them -- but Victor looks up and it's different.

There's something Yuri can't label. Something almost familiar about this look. When Victor's eyes only look to his, wander his face, in quick shots like he's not quite sure where to stay, how to take in all of it, and that's crazy, right? Victor can't feel nearly anywhere as overwhelmed as he does? It's that it's all new to him. All of it. Embarrassingly, and clear, to the whole world. Or at least the room. Everything.

Like the way, he swears, and swears himself down from insanity, the certainty,
that the speed of Victor's heart does not quicken, right before Victor kisses him again.

Which even that feels different, fingers pressing down faintly at the surprise and the ... and everything else the comes back.

At the way, this feels suddenly more fragile and suddenly more real than ever before. When there's still a corner of him ready for this to be a dream, and another that made of shadows of terror for things that haven't changed, he can still feel them both. And still there's this. There's the careful, sweet way Victor is kissing him, and the solidness of his arms. The aching slowness, like he wants Yuri to remember every second this time. To not get lost, to not leave him, or this second, and the next, and the next, and yet to shatter against him all at once.

[fivetimechamp]

It's only been a little over an hour, but it's been such a full and confused one that he hasn't really had time to feel it. This dramatic, comprehensive shift, that feels like the earth has started spinning the other direction all at once, and tomorrow morning the sun will rise in the west and not the east as it always has. That could hardly be as unbelievable as having Yuri in his arms, hands against his chest, kissing him back so soft and shy that every muscle in Victor's body starts shivering with the strain of holding back.

Not just crushing him to his chest, or against a wall. With anyone else, this would already be half over, clothes scattered on the floor and the sheets flung off the bed, but Yuri ––

Yuri, who has only just been kissed for the first time. When Victor should have made it like this, if he'd known: the perfect careful press of lips, even as it's starting to fall apart on its own, like the decay of a spin before it kicks off again. He can't help it, the way his breath hitches and his heart speeds, thudding so swiftly against his ribs he feels a little light-headed, drowning on dry land, here in this hotel room, on having Yuri in his arms.

One hand leaving Yuri's back to drift up between them and cover Yuri's, pressing them a little more firmly into his chest, but even that is almost too much, tugs a low, sore sound from the back of his throat, from the eight months he'd tried to convince himself to accept and adjust, from the year and a half before that when there was nothing, nothing, nothing. How is it that with Yuri here, finally, pressed warm and wanting up against him, he can be so suddenly flooded with the crystal clear ache of all those months, the overwhelming sense of loss and loneliness and bewildered heartache that he hated to call love? Why is now when all of that is resurfacing, when the last eight months have been so happy, and he's finally holding everything he wanted, the one person he has ever wanted, the only one he's ever loved?

He doesn't know, only knows that the press of Yuri's palm hurts and heals all at that same time, and that, more than Yuri melting in to him, he's pouring himself towards Yuri, led by this idioty heart of his that can't tell happiness from pain, or air from drowning.

[theglassheart]

He doesn't know what he's expecting, maybe because he has no expectations that even seem rational and no experiences to base it on, no assumption that holds a candle to Victor or Victor kissing him. But it's not this. He's not expecting the soft gasp of air from Victor's mouth, like he can't breathe, and he's not expecting that hand that lands on the back of his so much he almost falters and pulls back, ready to be admonished, even as those fingers press his hands down.

Flatter. Firmer. Snapping clear any doubt.


Victor's heart is sprinting rapidly under his palm.
It's not at all that same simmering beat from seconds ago.


But he doesn't even have the time to figure out what to do with that, aside from feel his heart stumble straight into a wall, hard and heavy, because the next sound to come from Victor is laying waste to anything Yuri knew what to even do with his ears. It's dark and it sounds almost painful, and he's not sure whether kissing is ever supposed to sound like it hurts. Except that Victor's hand stays pressed hard to the back of his, heart thundering under his fingers, under his palm, and Victor doesn't pull away.

Victor doesn't let go of his back, and doesn't stop kissing him. Victor just keeps kissing him, keeps dragging him further and further out into this dark, unknown sea on this feeling like everything he is is in Victor's hands, on Victor's mouth. He'd only ever dreamed he needed air. Especially as it turns from something sugar spun delicate to something that feels more like its paper being pressed toward a lit match. Rolling over stones, molten, and surprising in his stomach.

When the only things he needs, the only thing he can think, is set to the rapid fire beat under his fingers, and all it says on and on in an endless loop is Victor, Victor, Victor, Victor. All he can do is follow Victor, fall helplessly into this, wanting to erase that note of near-sadness, and to never stop this,

Stop touching Victor, stop pressing up to meet each new kiss, losing count and focus, finding himself pushing upward, straining, and, then, with a burst from nowhere he can even point to, kissing Victor first when it feels for a brief second like maybe this is about to end suddenly, just wanting more, wanting this all not to end, not to have to think or remember. Just this. Just Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

It's bad enough that he's getting to kiss Yuri, and hold Yuri, and have Yuri's hands against his chest, but when he pauses to take a quick breath and is interrupted by Yuri leaning up to kiss him, he loses what little was left of his sanity and self-preservation.

It pulls a strangled, longing noise from his throat, and his fingers tighten around one of the hands on his chest, while what's left of his brain desperately tries to remind him that Yuri has never been kissed before, and that he can't just shove Yuri into a wall, or pull him back towards the bed, and he shouldn't be overwhelming him with kisses, either. Probably.

But Yuri kissed him, and if he'd thought his heart had burst before, he was sorely mistaken, because there are these concussive waves pounding through his head and chest now, and he's not sure he could breathe again, even if he were to have the chance.

Because Yuri kissed him. Pushed up on his toes and pushed his mouth against Victor's, and isn't tearing himself away, and isn't in a confused and anxious ball on the floor, and Victor doesn't quite know what to do with this new information except for knowing that he never wants to let Yuri go. Possibly ever again. Definitely not in the next few hours, or days.

As long as he can have this, he wants it. Him. Them. Yuri's hands on his chest and Yuri's mouth pressing more and more confidently against his, making him groan and laugh and say, against Yuri's mouth, "You are going to be the death of me, Мой Yuri."

His heart is going to explode. Or he's going to collapse from a lack of oxygen. Or he'll simply die right here, of happiness, because all he's known for the last eight months was that it wasn't going to happen.

But he takes a second to lift one of Yuri's hands from his chest to his lips, to kiss those fingers and his palm, before settling it back on the rich fabric of his coat and vest and smiling into this next kiss. "But I can't think of a better way to go."

[theglassheart]

Yuri can't tell, in a drastic swerve, whether his choice is right or wrong. Except that choice is the wrong word. It would be like saying opening your mouth to take a breath in was a choice, or opening your eyes and seeing was a choice. There wasn't a thought or a choice to it. It had been as immediate and necessary as breathing, as seeing. No. More. Stepping into the pause. But Victor's fingers suddenly clench incredibly tight around one of his hands and the noise Victor makes this time --





-- it's not pained, it's not sad. Yuri doesn't even have the words for what it is when it's already reached straight into his chest, hooking fingers around his ribs, his breastbone, and just yanks like it will take it out in one tug. Flooding heat behind the unweighted and unbalanced uncertainty of this darkness and light, and Victor, that is the only things he had to even hold on to now.

While Victor goes on to laughing against his lips, and it sails in, snags and all. A familiar sound, but in a floundering place. At a pace and in a way he's never before. Against Yuri's mouth, breath puffing against Yuri's skin, ending up inside Yuri's own mouth. Beautiful and terrible, and it's almost the perfect welcome mat for his newest joke, and the words he says after it. Words that tug at Yuri's head far too hard, while Victor drops back stealing his hand.

Kissing his hand. While Yuri's bubble of air breaks on him like it was holding rain water inside.

Because he remembers. He does. He doesn't know the words well enough to say them himself -- might not dare if did. But he remembers what they sound like. What they mean. Which freezes everything in front of him into something slow. Victor's luminous eyes, something like drunk bright, and the Victor kissing his fingers, cheeks far too colored for pinking now, but it doesn't stop the whine of it in his chest, as Victor kisses his palm next.

(He said it last before the silence,
eventually labeled as sleeping.

He'd said that he loved Yuri,
and he said those two words.)

He'd said ... a lot of things. A lot of things Yuri tried to put out of his head, and never managed to sleep well on. As Victor's personal pillow, and it had gotten into his Eros performance. And. And. And now Victor was kissing him. There's a chasm between one and the other, like there should be a line. Between that and this. A sensible line of ... something.

It makes him too conspicuously still when Victor leans in and kisses him, again, still joking.

[fivetimechamp]

Breathing again feels good, even if he feels like his lungs will never be full of air again, and it's probably not a bad thing to take a short break to try and swallow some oxygen, slow his racing heart before it gives up out of sheer surprise and sudden stress.

It's probably good for Yuri, too, if it's is his very first experience with anything like this. If Victor is feeling overwhelmed, if he feels like he's drowning, unable to get air or even want it, surely Yuri is feeling even more so. Or maybe not: Yuri might not have anything to compare this to, but Victor's not sure he does, either. It's nothing like the brief and blazing infatuations he's had before, nothing like any seductions he's managed or willingly fallen prey to. When was the last time he'd felt like he was falling to pieces on a few simple kisses?

But something has shifted, because Yuri's gone stiff and motionless, making Victor pause a breath away from his mouth, and pull back again to look at him. Maybe he shouldn't have joked about dying? Probably he shouldn't be joking about any of this, but he's not sure he knows how to say anything that won't otherwise come out like hysterical laughter or the sort of melodramatics more suited to Georgi and his ridiculous short program.

The pangs of thwarted love, indeed.

His thumb moves lightly over the back of one of Yuri's hands, and he can't help marveling at the delicacy of small bones, the strength of tendons, the softness of his skin, even as he's dipping his head to better meet Yuri's eyes. "Is something wrong?"

[theglassheart]

Caught up in the feel of Victor's heart and the spin of kissing Victor, a thing that had less and less beginning or ending or gravity when it went on, it's only really at holding still too long, so long Victor notices, that he notices anything else about himself with it. The way his breath is sailing in and out of his lips so fast, uncertain if it reaches his shoulders, no less his lungs. Or how his heartbeat in ears, his teeth, his everywhere, is at least as fast as Victor's under his fingers. Maybe disastrously faster.

Clarity is confusing, as Victor pulling back to look at him, Victor who is so, and a part of Yuri wants to make it all vanish, as it starts to slips fingers back around an ankle, and another part of him wants to pull back into it. The safety even in the bitter smash and splash of cold water he knows over building warmth, caustic and careless and everywhere, that he doesn't. When the last thing he really said was that he was sorry -- wasn't it? -- and then this happened all over again. (Again, and again, and again.)

Victor saying that doesn't matter, and calling him his. That had to be what that word was. Didn't it? It's the only thing it could be. When he's not sure the prior is as comforting, or if it ever was, or if it ever solved any of its problems, or if it got lost in all of this. The same way his thoughts are splintering and spinning when Victor leans back in close, close enough it makes shadows, keeping his heart fast and high, a smoldered burn of itself digging through his skin, and one of Victor's hands, still curled around his from clenching it tight seconds ago, starts rubbing dizzyingly lines on the back of his hand.

When all he can do, and he's amazed how much it takes so even do that -- especially compared to what he'd just been doing ; how exactly he had lost on him already -- is shake his head and say quietly, "No."

Even if he's disastrously uncertain suddenly about the question, and answer, and everything on the floor around it.

[fivetimechamp]

The first word since that awkward, embarrassed apology, and Victor's not sure he believes it, and he's even less sure that Yuri does. He looks suddenly shifty and unsure, like he's just realized they're standing on cracking ice, and probably Victor had gone about this all wrong, but he'd been working on the assumption that Yuri had at least been kissed once or twice before in his life, and hadn't thought about easing into it.

Not that he thinks he could have. Not after that flip. Not with everything he needed to express.

But that doesn't change the fact that they've barreled straight through giving Yuri some time to come to terms with everything. "Are you sure?"

They could stop right now. He could give Yuri some space, slip back into something more like coach and friend than lover, give Yuri some semblance of normalcy to ground himself in while they work through everything that's happened in the last hour and try to understand it. He doesn't plan to stop –– that had been the truth, earlier –– but this isn't just about him, and what he wants. It has to be about Yuri, and what he needs.

His hand warm under Victor's, still settled there on Victor's chest, leaving an imprint on the beating heart beneath that Victor thinks will never disappear again. He'll be able to feel this touch until the day he dies. "You can still talk to me, Yuri. I want to know."

What he should do. Shouldn't. What Yuri wants, and how he wants it.

(He has so many questions, and they're balling up in the back of his throat, but they have to wait.)

"If you're worried ..."

About this being his first kiss, and therefore his first anything, everything. "You don't have to be."

This is not the kind of waiting he minds; he's in no rush now that Yuri's actually here in his arms, melting into kisses and carefully, cautiously, picking his way along this path towards Victor. "I just want you to feel all right."

[theglassheart]

The fact that Victor can use so many words, so very easily, one on top of the other, without any pauses, is almost an undoing of sorts. Following them. The fact it starts with a question that makes him feel even more self-conscious, not even properly able to get adrift in search of the right word or idea for how to even answer, before he's adding even more of it. That he wants Yuri to be able to talk to him like Yuri has any certainty left about the bottom portion of his face, what's it's used for and how to use it.

Have any control over it, or understanding of it. Aside from the spotlight glare of blistering knowledge that it's added kissing Victor to the list. Which is really as far as anything even remotely like helpful and clear gets, while Victor is still talking. Wants to know. What he's thinking. If he's worried. If he feels all right. Like he has the faintest clue of quite himself, and he needs to, very suddenly, very now, because Victor wants them.

Which is building in the muddle of his stomach, still too warm, he's all over too warm. From the skin of his cheeks under his glasses, to his ears, to his neck and the crook of his arms, and the pits of them, and in a blur of something like all too distant and all too present horror, he feels the warmth on him like a stickiness. Like the sheen of his skin right after a first warm-up round, and it's not helping anything anywhere to make sense.

It's only adding more questions, and he's only still aware of it. Suddenly.

All of his skin, and looking down, it's maybe not entirely surprising, is it? "I still have my coat on."
It's not all that. He's not an idiot enough to think that. But it's a confused surprise to have forgotten it.
To have never taken it off when he came in, and to be still standing there, with Victor who already had.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri only looks more uncertain, and Victor can't tell in the dim room if he's blushing or not, but the smart money, he thinks is probably on the former. It's strange to see Yuri go back to being so bewildered, like he's forgotten not only how to speak, but how to even begin to form the thoughts that might become the foundation of sentences. It's almost like his first week in Hasetsu, when Yuri barely spoke and never seemed to be quite on top of what was happening, or those first weeks after Onsen on Ice, when Yuri avoided him because he didn't want Victor to see his short-comings.

As if any flaw he might have had could have changed anything at all by that point. It would have been like a single stone rolling over in the bed of a flooding river.

But now Yuri's looking down, like he's only just remembered that the rest of his body even exists, with a surprised mumble about still wearing his jacket, and Victor shouldn't laugh. Should probably not preen under the satisfaction of having made Yuri entirely forget that he was still wearing his jacket inside, in their perfectly warm room, or let the surprise in Yuri's voice go to his head like a smooth swallow of vodka.

(It does anyway.)

"You should probably take that off."

Spoken before he thinks, because thinking seems to be a few steps behind everything else tonight, and it's his turn to color, faintly, with just a slight sting at the top of his cheeks, but he'd meant it innocently and he clings to what little sense of propriety he has left as a drowning man to a life preserver, lifting his hand finally from Yuri's to press it briefly against his warm cheek, before stepping back. Reaching, unconsciously, for the knot of his tie where it's pressed like a thumb into his windpipe, and loosening it in an attempt to catch his breath. It feels like this collar is strangling him, and he has to work the top button loose, while his mind races. It isn't just warm, it's hot in here, and he's wearing too many layers, but he's also a little leery of what Yuri will think if he starts shedding any of them.

But he needs to cool off. He thinks, fondly and with regret, of the bathroom and its kind faucet and cold water, under which he would greatly love to stick his head. Hadn't he said something about ice, earlier? He can't remember.

It's difficult to think much past the last minutes, let alone focus on anything that isn't how much he wants to get his arms back around Yuri again.

[theglassheart]

It's only a single sentence and Yuri is certain the skin on the back of his neck is turning into the surface of the sun. A disastrous snap between the words, and the jangle in his mind replaying both that's too violent to even be a specific thought, that has him looking up too fast, while Victor lifts his hand and brushes Yuri's check before stepping back. It's all too fast, and it feels brutal as anything else.

The sudden spike of terror about getting anything like less dressed, while Victor encourages it like it's a foregone conclusion, Yuri should strip out of his things, with that edge of a laugh in his words. The drastic swing that screams into place next about Victor walking back. Letting go. Suddenly. Space. Air. Cold that isn't cold. That still make his stomach feel like it just drops out of its place. Hands in the air and nothing there to grab or pull back.

Promptly drowned by the next wave that is Victor, with his hand pulling at his tie, and then his fingers undoing a button.
Blurring at Yuri's vision. Or maybe it's his glasses. Maybe they are fogging against the heat that slaps his brain, too.

Yuri has to hope that turning away, as directed, looks anything but like a scramble of confusion away. Fingers hesitant, numb, on his zipper, when it's pounding in his ears. He doesn't know where this is going. He doesn't know what is happening anymore. What he. If he. Does he.

The room is almost pin-drop silent, while Yuri's head is throbbing and his ears are straining for a single clue to whether Victor is still -- still -- and it makes the fast clacking zziipp noise as he undoes his jacket so loud, too loud. Jarring. Makes peeling his jacket off, even with sensible, normal, winter clothes under it, still feels like peeling off a layer of his skin he suddenly isn't ready to be done with. Feels bare without. Which is, he knows, it's idiotic. Childish. He's crazy. Anyone else would be thrilled. Not. Not ... terrified? Confused? Plagued by a million doubts?

He does manage to get it hung up, next to Victor's, and he doesn't know why he stares at them, side-by-side, a too long second. Doesn't know if he's looking for something, or hesitating desperately from turning around. Especially since he has to do just that a second later. Turn around. Turn back. Swing behind the way, even as his heart is skipping beats in a wash too full to have a single name, his eyes still go to Victor first. Fastest. Only.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's eyes stick on something just below his chin, and Victor blinks, realizes what he's doing, and lets the button go like it's suddenly searing hot, color and warmth climbing up his throat a little faster now for the looser collar, but before he can apologize –– is that what he should do, apologize? –– Yuri's headed towards the closet, jacket unzipping.

Still in silence, looking awkward and more than a little, what is that. Not suspicious. Wary?

Of Victor?

Victor and his intentions? Victor and his hands? That maybe Victor didn't understand and is going to –– would expect ––

But then Yuri's turning back around, and Victor's hand goes from his collar to the back of his neck, troubled, because Yuri's face is a strange combination of blown open uncertainty and the frantic, careful hold on panic that reminds Victor of a bird caught in a net, trying to keep itself from fluttering too hard and breaking its wings. It hits him as hard as any time he's slammed the ice, a fist smashing into his solar plexus and gripping there, making his hands drop to his sides, helpless and empty. "Oh, Yuri."

It hurts the way his bruises hurt when he smacks them against the ice again and again, the way his back hurts after he's tweaked it in a spin or jump but has to keep going, the way his wrists and ankles and knees have hurt when Yakov helped him bind them against sore and swollen ligaments, tendons, cracked bone and torn muscle, a dull and aching pain that is seeping everywhere from this tear in his chest. "Don't be afraid of me."

Don't look at him like he thinks Victor's out to eat him alive, or like he doesn't know who Victor is anymore. Like he doesn't even recognize him. It's thready and hollow, a little more desperate than he knows what to do with or can control, because he doesn't know how to convince Yuri otherwise.

He would never. Couldn't. Can't even begin to comprehend everything he would have to cut out of himself to even be capable of consciously hurting Yuri. "Please."

[theglassheart]

He doesn't know what he was expecting when he turns around. Which one is worse? Is it the one where Victor hasn't moved a step, or the one where Victor has, and Victor hasn't stopped moving, hasn't stopped at all, and he's going to be half undressed already by the time Yuri does get to looking at him again? It's not like it's not an image his brain doesn't have full fodder for given Yu-topia and Victor nonchalance with his own public nudity.

Whatever it was -- whatever conflicted, convoluted, each side not right, not enough, not okay somehow, suddenly -- it isn't this. It isn't Victor standing there, still dressed, with his hand on his neck, while all of those details pale, blurring, burning away, forgotten, for this stricken look on Victor's face. For the careful way, almost plaintive way Victor says those first two words, his name, and the only thing he can think, drastic and suddenly, is that anything in the world is better than Victor's pity for his own ignorance.

He isn't expecting the next words. Of anything else in the world. Anything Victor could say about him, his ignorance in all of this, it's not that. It makes him blink. It makes his heart stumble. Hard. Heavy. Slaming into the wall. Into his chest. Into confusion, and a confused denial of reaction in his head, in his chest, so loud it shuts out everything for a blistering blast of certain.

Because that's not -- it's -- even if --

"I'm not." It's on his mouth, before he can even make it clear in his head.

Because it's reckless and desperate and certain, there's no tremble to those words, and the idea of being afraid of Victor is tantamount to not breathing, to his heart not beating. Oh, he was afraid of a lot of things. So many. Countless things. Sometimes it seemed like there were millions between the moment he opened his eyes and the moment he closed them, and Victor's name was attached to some of them -- especially the fear of disappointing him, in any way, in every way, even among those, maybe but not always daily -- but not Victor.

Not Victor himself. Not Victor. Not in so long. Not in so many months now.
And something terrible, and just faintly pained is snaking up into his heart.


Because. Is he? Suddenly, is he? Because nothing, nothing is okay, anymore, if he lost that.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri blurts that he's not, but it comes out too quickly, and he doesn't even look like he believes himself, and what's Victor supposed to do? He can't break everything they already have, but he can't take any of this back, and he wouldn't even if he could.

Selfishly, suddenly sure. That even if he's ruined it all, there was nothing else he could have done.

But he can't stand Yuri looking at him with those wary, caged animal eyes, and he doesn't know what to do to convince him that it doesn't matter, that whatever Yuri's thinking that he expects isn't. He doesn't care about any of that, it's all just window dressing right now, because nothing could be as important as just making sure Yuri wants to stay, and that Yuri is comfortable and happy. He'd said it didn't matter, and Yuri didn't believe him, and he'd said it was still just him, and Yuri had scoffed in his face.

What is there to say or do to prove it? "I don't ––"

He doesn't even know how to finish that sentence. Want anything from him? That's a lie, even if he doesn't mind waiting, even if it takes forever. He can't not want Yuri, it's been written in his blood and in every thought and every program for almost two years now.

Know what to do, what to say? True, but not helpful.

Want to hurt Yuri? True, desperately so, but still not what it seems like Yuri needs to hear. "You don't ––"

Need to worry. Do anything. Have to be afraid. He doesn't have to take off his shoes if he doesn't want to, doesn't have to talk, doesn't have to push past his comfort zone, doesn't have to test his boundaries, as long as he stays.

But it's all so hard to say, while Yuri is standing there too far away, and any other time Victor sees this face, he'd go hug him to try and soothe it away, so he does. Takes the few quick steps needed, hands up and empty in the universal signal for I'm unarmed, and wraps his arms around Yuri's neck, cheek pressing against Yuri's jaw and ear and hair. Still searching for the right words, but they're a little easier to find here. "I would never hurt you, Yuri. I love you."

More than he knows what to do with, most days, and always more every morning than the day before. "I don't want to push you too far."