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

[theglassheart]

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

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

It took forever, and then it was just over.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

[theglassheart]

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."

[theglassheart]

It's all aborted at first. Victor's disbelief, Victor's unfinished sentences, is nothing -- nothing at all -- to the sudden crescendo in Yuri's head that actually defines what fear is, between the thought of not being ble to be afraid of Victor and the wholly new, wholly foreign, idea, slamming to life, catching fire to every next thought and throwing shadows on every lingering other, that he might be.

When everything feels like it's ready to shatter on anything so much as his taking a breath in. Because.

Because. That can't be true. Because. If that is true -- then -- thenthenthen --


Except the next second, Victor is throwing his arms around him, and Yuri, on something like pained reflex, can't tell whether he's flinching or half prepared for Victor to just be kissing him again, tossing this terror of him with everything else he's stopped and started several times now. Which makes it even more confusing for the first second, when Victor is still talking. Next to his ear. Pressed to his cheeks, his head. Hugging him -- ? Hugging him. And something in Yuri, something in his chest, in his heart, gives a drowning cough, spasmed sharpness, foundering on air.

As Victor says that he'd never hurt him. That he loves him.

Why does it hurt? Why is the only reaction he has to suddenly realize his arms are already around Victor's back, not even having realized he moved them? Only to know they are there when he was crushing himself so much closer against Victor, arms tightening down hard against his back, hard enough to make him real, hard enough to push through him, send them backward a step. When the thought of any of it being true (he can't be afraid of Victor, he can't, he can't, he can't) is something Yuri doesn't want to be true. Feels bordering, blurring the mania of this afternoon.

Except it's worse. It's so much worse. He can't have lost, or lose, Victor. Not while he's right here. Not because he kissed him. That makes no sense, and it's everywhere suddenly. Everywhere when Yuri presses his face into Victor's shoulder and his neck. Into warm skin and darkness. The last and only respite he knows. The one thing he trusts. Beyond trust, beyond faith, beyond every self-admitted fault and flaw in his own thinking, his own feelings, all the lies in his own head that already run the other half of his days.

The one thing he even said to the world, he knew he had to hold on to, couldn't let go of. Victor. Just Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

Some small part of him was expecting Yuri to flinch away, maybe: the part that hates himself in the middle of the night, the part that even now is saying you've ruined it, everything, but he doesn't.

Nor does he just stand there and let Victor hug him, passive and unsure. His arms are up in a second, wrapping Victor's ribcage so tightly that for a second it feels like they're creaking in protest, shoving forward into Victor so roughly that Victor takes a quick step back to keep his balance, and this is the kind of love he understands, better than trying to explain it. Physical and immediate. Wrapped in arms and breathed against the crook of his neck and burned there in the impression of Yuri's face into his shirt collar, into his throat.

It takes him off guard, but he's hugged Yuri more times than he can count in the last eight months, and he can do this, if it's what Yuri needs, can unfurl one hand over the back of Yuri's head, fingers light on soft hair to hold him here while Victor stares at the closed door in front of him and wonders what he should do, or say. If there's anything he should do or say, or if it's like in the garage, when all Yuri wanted from him was to be there and not leave, to believe in him when Yuri couldn't believe in himself.

That was easy, and this is, too, his voice low and a little breathless from the way Yuri's arms are squeezing his ribs. "I'm not going anywhere, Yuri."

Even if Yuri wasn't holding onto him like grim death, determined to cling to him like a barnacle to a dock, he has no more intention of leaving or ability to go if he had than the dock might.

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't let go, and Victor doesn't push him away, and Victor doesn't tell him to let go. Doesn't pull back this time for those words in his hair and behind his ear, but still close enough to feel the breath they are said on. When the words aren't even holding entirely, and what Yuri has is exactly broken down into one point for some very long, explodingly silent seconds: holding on to Victor.

Holding on to Victor like it is the only last thing in the world keeping him here on the ground. Which, he knows, it wouldn't make sense to put into words, to try and explain to anyone else. Not that any of this would make sense if tried to tell someone about it. Not that he has someone to tell about it. Someone who isn't Victor. That he's crushed himself against Victor's chest, only vaguely realizing he needs to breathe slower against Victor's neck, because Victor is the only thing he knows, that makes sense, that feels more real than his own skin, his own heart.

Even if he's an absolute idiot, because Victor, Victor Nikiforov -- No.
No. Victor, just Victor (-- and maybe his arm tighten fractionally more.)


Victor has, basically, all but thrown himself at Yuri.


Except. No. He did that, didn't he? He did. He actually, literally did.
Throw himself at -- on? -- Yuri. In front of thousands there, and millions worldwide.

When I don't care who sees mixes against the locker room door, and the sidewalk, and the elevator, and the spot that can't be five feet away from where they are now. Where he wasn't ... uninterested. Uninvolved. Un- whatever other un-words exists. But it did start, back there. On the ice. With Victor throwing himself literally on Yuri, and arena ice. After his music came to a close. After.

There's a small question Yuri asks, finally, he doesn't know how long into these thoughts, but honestly, given how tight he's hugging Victor, and the fact he doesn't even move his head, doesn't release or pull back in the slightest, it's basically only an unintelligible muffled mumble of a sound in cloth and skin.

[fivetimechamp]

There's a long moment, and then Yuri's arms tighten again, and, really, they are like bands of steel, and he can only hope he gets to kiss Yuri again once more before he gets crushed to death in his skater's accidentally iron embrace, but then there's a mumble he can't catch, even as he strains for it.

"What?"

Yuri says something into his collar and neck, and he does his best to ignore the faint shiver that slips across his skin at the brush of lips and puff of warm breath, tries to focus on listening, but Yuri doesn't repeat it. "I can't hear you."

[theglassheart]

For a moment, he thinks that's the answer. A startled confused response to the question, like in the elevator, or was it the hallway, and it'd taken too many breaths in to actually push out. But Victor follows it with saying he couldn't hear it, and Yuri's mouth presses for a long second. Still. Just absolutely still, before he sighs.

His shoulder dropping some.

And then he moves. Just a little.
Tilts his head, but not back and not up.

It presses the side of his temple, his glasses, and his hair against Victor's neck and Victor's jaw more than Yuri's face there. Takes his mouth from being pressed to anything. Makes him have to see the lights of Shanghai, achingly beautiful and distant, like a completely uncaring world, sparkling bright, still moving at every normal pace, like the world hasn't changed at all, over Victor's shoulder.

"Because of the flip." It cobbles. Not the same structure of words.

More effort. More awareness Victor is listening. To him. "Is this all?"

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri shifts, hair pressing soft against Victor's neck and chin, and Victor loosens his arms a little to let him move, but the first four words don't really make any more sense for being heard more clearly, until Yuri clarifies them with a tiny three word question that has Victor blinking into the dimness of the room. Was it ...

Yes. No. If it hadn't been for the flip, how much longer would he have gone? How much longer could he have gone, thinking he was fine and that this was all he needed, to be Yuri's coach and friend and confidante, champion and companion?

But Yuri did it. His jump. His flip. And it was a message, wasn't it? It had seemed so clear at the time, but now that he has to explain it to Yuri –– and he's suddenly, sharply aware that all this might actually hinge on how well he explains it –– it all seems muddied and difficult to parse. There's nothing for it but to answer, though, as honestly and clearly as he can, so: "I kissed you because of the flip."

Which is true. Even if now, he's not sure he read it correctly, is horrified at the thought that he might have just slapped his own interpretation on it and tackled Yuri without permission or desire, but he swallows it down, thinking back to that moment, his surprise, the way his blood had run cold and then scalding, the way the ground dropped out from under his feet. "I thought it was a ... message."

A confession. Like this one. Like Yuri's version of Stay Close to Me. There's a rueful puff of breath from his nose, and his mouth has gone dry, but his voice stays even and low, the way it might if this was a different sort of night and a different sort of embrace and there were a pillow beneath his head instead of Yuri's rumpled hair. "That you ... loved me, too." Except even loved isn't the right word: that Yuri trusted him, wanted him. That Victor hadn't been wrong all those months ago, or over a year ago. "But it wasn't –– it's not ––"

Searching for these words is harder. Even now, he doesn't want to confess to that year and a half he spent angry and hurt and unable to stop thinking about an uncaring Japanese skater who had blithely wandered in and out of his life, idly taking his heart and soul and joy along with him, as if for kicks. "But I already felt this way. I have for a ... a long time. That didn't, doesn't, have anything to do with the flip. But it was my jump, and you ..."

He trails off, and this time can't pick up the thread again, but there's a hunch pulling at his shoulders, uncertain and uncomfortable, because. Well.

Saying it out loud, it sounds stupid. All of it.

What a threadbare reason to lose his mind and kiss someone who wasn't expecting it and probably didn't want it.

[theglassheart]

That he doesn't let go isn't a testament to will or confusion.

That he doesn't let go is a testament to the fact so much has changed in the last three-quarters of the year.

To the way he's grown used to hear Victor talk about skating, and what little of his life he's shared outside of it. About music, and Maccachin, and every new discovery he's made about every facet of Japan since he moved there. That he knows when something is hard even Victor's answers aren't always easy ones, no matter how light and blithe and careless and arrogant he can make a lot of things.

None of the words are trite. Not even after Yuri heart seizes just for a moment after the first sentence, and before the second. When. He's not wrong. Right? Yuri hasn't even had time to think about his skate. Not really. Not with all of this. Not with Victor jumping at him, cradling his head kissing him there on the ice. And then again the step inside the locker room. And being here every step, every thought, clouded instead with this. Only this.

He hadn't thought of it. He hasn't seen a replay of it. There weren't clips of his skate before the kiss-and-cry because the scores were already up when they were pushed there finally. He'd have found one by now, even if Victor was telling him to put it away, that he'd been fine and they could worry about any flaws and falls tomorrow. Except he isn't. Has. They aren't. And he shifts, again, sliding to settle his cheek down against Victor's shoulder.

Not even certain whether he should let go. Even hugging Victor hasn't been like this. Not this long. Not ... like this.

"It was." It's soft, so soft it's almost a question. Like Yuri is asking it out loud.

"At least, I think it was." Everything feels like so much of a blur, but he remembers being out there. "After what happened ... in the garage--" His voice goes quiet and there's a wince, wrinkling his nose. He'd burst into tears and then he'd gone shouting at Victor for his comment. "--and after the triple axel, and the salchow--" Because everything out there compounded everything else out there.

Messing up, and Victor's face replaying. The face he'd made when Yuri started crying. The face he made while Yuri was screaming. The face he has the whole, silent, time while they walked and Yuri stepped onto the ice. The way none of it needed to stay. None of it needed to matter. "I think -- I wanted you to know it was okay. That everything --" There's a raise of his shoulders, that isn't a shrug it's just everything. Everything that happened before. "That everything was okay."

Except that's not enough. It's not everything. It wasn't about everything like he could hide it in everything, the way he's almost still definitely hiding himself in Victor's shoulder. In Victor's arms. Like it's somehow a shelter from. Victor's arms, and Victor's mouth, and everything that is everything else in Yuri's chest. Yuri's skin. Still warm. Still buzzing. Even now.

But not everything. It hadn't been about everything. "That we were."

Which seems, suddenly, like the stupidest thing to have chosen. Stealing something that belonged so securely to Victor, and slamming himself into the ice, without a single moment's practice. It had hurt. It had been stupid. But it felt so right. He remembers that, too. He remembers that when it defies any language he knows except his skate, except being airborne (except maybe a second ago, a second ago, when Victor was kissing him so softly, so slowly, it felt like the ease of tracing figures in the middle of the night) and his fingers released and clutch just a little against the fabric.

It had felt more right than anything in his life ever had in that moment.

Victor and his skate and his self and everything that truly was everything.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's words, when they come are a soft mumble in the quiet room, but that doesn't make them feel any less like rocks dropping into his stomach. Explaining. That it was a message, but not the one Victor had thought he understood. That it was about the garage, and the way Yuri broke down. Shouted at him. Sobbed. Keeping Victor on the back foot, even when he thought he'd had a handle on it, on what to say or do to help. That I know! a raw near-scream, that he thinks might still be echoing down there.

Nothing he breathes in feels like it goes past the middle of his chest, and he wonders, idly, if he's about to hyperventilate and panic. "Are we, still?"

Did he ruin everything, by projecting his own wants and desires and feelings onto Yuri's actions? Did he really wreck all they have, because Yuri tried his signature jump and he'd somehow thought that meant Yuri wanted him, too? What a stupid, romantic notion. He'd known. He'd known. He should never have let himself think otherwise.

But he can't help asking it, anyway, uncertain if he's trying to make sure, or if he's just trying to hurt himself more for the stupidity, the careless, selfish idiocy of his actions. "Was I wrong?"

(Yuri kissed him back. Yuri told him no, don't apologize. Yuri looked up at him with that smile and those soft eyes, and Yuri is here in his arms, holding onto him like Victor is the air he needs to breathe. He didn't make all that up, did he?

Or was Yuri just so surprised and uncertain that he went along with it, even without wanting to, because Victor wanted it and Yuri didn't want to upset him? A thought which sinks like sour milk in his gut, threatening swift and immediate vengeance on himself if it turns out to have been the case.)

He needs to know. How wrong he was. If he was. If he should let go of Yuri, and never touch him again. If Yuri loves him, yes, but not ... like that. He might have been right that the flip was a message, but was he wrong, too? "About everything else?"

[theglassheart]

Are they still. Was he wrong. Was he wrong about everything.

Everything, like there's an everything to be wrong about, like there's a world without Victor in it. Like he knows how to stop this thing trembling inside his chest. When it makes him have to draw in a breath to do this thing he's doing without letting himself think about it. When he moves. Finally, really moves. Loosening his arms, and pulling back enough to look up at Victor. Victor who looks. Yuri is trying to decide if he looks ... scared?

Is it scared? Does Victor even get scared? Not the way he does.

Not the way he thinks he's certain, even through that feeling, when he's looking up.

He's not afraid of Victor. He's not. He's afraid of a lot of things right now. He can feel them, right outside and inside of his skin. He's afraid of what he's feeling, and what it means, and whether it means nothing at all, or whether it means something now but will mean absolutely nothing just as soon, just as suddenly as this became a reality.

He's afraid to look at the words Victor said like a long ... long time,
afraid to give them any meaning they don't have,


or of how he thinks, suddenly, from nowhere expected,
if he had just a single ounce more courage he'd just lean up and kiss Victor.



But he's not afraid of Victor. Not of Victor.




And he doesn't think Victor's wrong,
And he can't hide or look away from Victor's face anymore,

And if that sticks in his throat, in his thudding heart, he just shakes his head.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri pulls back, but not away, which is probably good, except that having his arms relax around Victor's ribs makes it all too easy to feel his own thready, nervous pulse, gives him a chance to try and swallow although his throat is dry, because Yuri has moved to look up into his face, but Yuri's not say anything. Is just watching him. No. Studying him? Like he's trying to decode this newest expression the same way he had to learn how to interpret Victor's whims and sayings and instructions all those months ago.

But saying nothing, while pressure threatens to blow Victor apart from the inside out, until finally there's a silent but certain shake of his head. Even though his eyes look wide and anxious, and his cheeks are flushed –– but he isn't letting go, and he shook his head. No.

No.

No, Victor wasn't wrong.

Relief a heady and cold spring wind shoving its way through a window to knock over furniture and break glass, heavy in the breath he lets out, and the smile he finds that's only shaking a little at the corners, steady with bravado in the middle, like he could never have doubted himself.

(All that a lie in how his eyes widen, and then begin to shine.)

"Good."

It doesn't seem like enough, but it is. Good. Maybe the only word he's capable of finding right now, while his arms are around Yuri's shoulders and he has one hand curved at the back of Yuri's head and Yuri just said –– well, indicated –– that Victor wasn't wrong. And that means he ...

That Yuri ...

It's another sore thought, but this time the ache is a soft and exquisite one that he closes his eyes to with a tiny, soft, curl to his mouth, before he opens them again to look at Yuri. "Then can I kiss you again?"

[theglassheart]

It's a single word, while Victor starts smiling.

Only a single word, before Victor's eyes close and his smile becomes smaller.

Not the broad smile he throws about like he's flinging out change or flower petals. Not like his mild smile, that is constant everywhere else. Professional and approachable, but, also, unattainable and untouchable. Something incredibly different, even with so little difference to the hold of his mouth. That press of his lips curled at just the edges. The way his eyelashes sweep his eyes closed, and how it feels like Victor relaxes inside Yuri's arms, even though Yuri's not certain until he is that he noticed Victor ever wasn't.

Only that it's happening, and Victor is smiling, and that urge from a second ago becomes a steadily stronger hum. Building behind everything. The hold of his own shoulders, and the back of his throat, in even his teeth and this uncertain warmth trying to uncurl inside his stomach again. Trepid but determined. Making the only thing possible, when Victor's eyes open, shining and focused, asking that question, like he somehow knows,

a soft, but not small, "Onegai."

[fivetimechamp]

Onegai, Yuri says.


Please, Yuri says. Kiss him. Please kiss him. An alarming and wild temptation to laugh trying to hiccup its hysterical way up Victor's throat at how polite Yuri is, even now, about this, when Yuri has already been seducing him for months, but he swallows it down, acutely aware that if even a breath or glimpse of it gets out, it'll get taken the wrong way, and Yuri might take it back. His onegai. His please. Soft and determined in a way that makes Victor's heart want to explode all over again into confetti that is metaphorically if not anatomically heart-shaped, sparkling and effervescent.

(It's so cute. SSsssssssoooooo. CUTE. Has Yuri always been this cute? How has he been able to survive it all these months?)

There's no laugh, but his smile is very fond, and his eyes very warm, when he leans down, grateful on some distant level that he's managing to keep himself from simply swarming Yuri like he has too many times already tonight. Even if it seems like that's going to be more and more difficult to do, when his lips finally brush Yuri's again, and it feels like he can finally breathe, even though the one he takes is sharp and a little painful, before he's pressing his mouth to Yuri's and that breath is nothing more than a tiny noise in the back of his throat as everything he'd been holding so carefully in his head all topples at once.

[theglassheart]

He's not sure there's any other answer he could have given to those questions when Victor smiles, triumphant at Yuri's own answer. He's not certain that anyone on the planet could have answered at all, differently. Not when Victor looks like this, and has said the things he's said, and maybe that means it's all the same as any other --


-- but Yuri doesn't want to think about that when Victor is leaning down to kiss him, and his heart is starting to skitter, and his eyes are open and he doesn't have to be surprised or confused or startled. It's just this burst of fluttering that hits his stomach, when Victor is leaning down, like a larger wave rolling in Genke, catching his head and pulling him under the warm summer water by surprise. Except without any surprise.

There's just that fluttering warmth, flooding outward everywhere, pressing back his shadows just a few paces, as his eyes closes and Victor's lips touch his, like a swell of music marching gliding effortless upward and the warmth of his stomach slipping into a soft sprint of his heart. Fingers knitting in the coat under them as he shifts closer, leaning into Victor and kisses him back.

[fivetimechamp]

It's probably better, giving him some warning. He makes a mental note of it, that he'll have to rethink everything he previously considered universally understood and start from the very beginning, with Yuri. Yuri who doesn't have enough experience to know when he's about to be kissed, even if there's ample warning, without being told. Yuri's who's never kissed anyone before. Has never kissed anyone else.

Only Victor. Which is a thought both flattering and terrifying. When was the last time he cared about making sure each kiss is a perfect experience? Has he ever?

(If Yuri's never even kissed anyone before, then where did that night at the banquet even come from? If Celestino hadn't dragged Yuri away, how many firsts would Victor have unknowingly bulldozed his way through?)

But he cares now. Maybe even more than he had a few minutes ago, because for the first time, Yuri is leaning back into him, and Yuri's fingers are fisting in his suit coat, and Yuri is kissing him back in a way he hasn't yet: carefully, with purpose. Victor's hand sliding to the side of his neck, trying to keep his touch light and this kiss slow and gentle, but it already feels like it's burning out his stomach lining and filling his lungs.

Worth it, if Yuri is beginning to calm down and start believing Victor, if Yuri can start to feel the ground underneath his feet again. He's not holding on to Victor for dear life anymore, and that's probably a good thing, but it all feels so fragile that Victor's afraid to even breathe too heavily on it. Certain it'll shatter in his hands if he does so much as give it too hard a look.

But it's hard to believe it's real. Really real. Yuri in his arms, soft and yielding. Yuri kissing him back. Yuri's fingers gripping his coat.

Yuri only millimeters away when Victor pauses to take a breath, and to rest his forehead against Yuri's, while his thumb runs idly up and down the corded muscle at the side of Yuri's neck. Yuri right there, in this silent room, where even Victor's softest voice can be heard perfectly clearly in the bare space between them. "Better?"

[theglassheart]

The fabric of the suit coat is slippy in his hands, and it's not really made to be held on to. A thing hugging him hadn't needed.
The same as it's not really meant to have give because all of Victor's suit always appear to be perfectly made for him.

None of which is really a full though except for the part where his fingers really don't have traction, and he's not sure whether it's a complaint, or a question, in his head, but that blurs almost immediately into the flutter of his lashes and sideways hiccup of his heart when Victor's fingers are suddenly curled around the side of his throat. Flooding his skin with a caustic, snapping jolt where they land, where they stay, making him feel the so clear, so steadily growing want to push into it.

Into Victor. Into this kiss with Victor. Into that warmth turning itself into a dizzying swirl to rival any spotlight.
Victor's hands. Victor's body. Victor kissing him. Victor kissing him. Victor kissing him.

Victor whose face had been a million things in the last hour, last year, and is a millionth-and-one, again, as he pulls away, to rest his forehead against Yuri's, while Yuri's eyes have to refocus on him this time. His heart stumbling, swaying, drunk on light and warmth, in his chest. The light and warmth right there in Victor's eyes. The shine of whatever this expression is. Relief and attention and something something more, as Yuri's eyelashes flicker again, flutter, almost close and draw in and up his facial muscles when Victor's thumb starts moving.

Making him swallow reflexively as something tightened like a knot being pulled tight suddenly in his stomach.

When the question is soft as that kiss had been at it's beginning, and Yuri feels like he's both only in his skin, and just half outside of it, dazed. Better, like he wasn't afraid that this was all going to come down around his ears? Better, like this made any sense at all, that it was him, and not someone else, really? Better, like he wasn't going to very likely embarrass himself panicking about something inane and microscopic and childish and ignorant in about five minutes?

Maybe not.

But better in the way where he didn't even want to let his eyelids close all the way as Victor's thumb was brushing sensitive skin, making him start trembling, didn't even want to let that touch take away his ability to see Victor's face, this close? Better in the way where he didn't want to look away at all? Wasn't afraid to look at Victor? Wasn't afraid suddenly that he was afraid of Victor and the whole world had not only turned inside out but died on the floor of this room?

Better because he wanted to fall toward Victor's eyes, and Victor's touch, and Victor's mouth, as much that kiss a few seconds ago as the soft voice he was using and the soft pressure of his forehead now? At least as much, but steadily, so much more than he wanted to slip backward into the cold shadows of his own mind? More this one than the other, even if the other came to his mind first, fastest, reaching for the worst potential always first?

Yuri nodded against Victor's forehead, and took a deeper breath in his nose, letting it raise and lower his shoulders. Maybe feeling for the first time everything else. The weight on his skin, of the last hour as much as the last day, this whole three days, and the space of the room. The ability to just breathe.

[fivetimechamp]

Someone is trembling, and he's not sure if it's Yuri shaking under his hand, or his hand shaking on Yuri's skin, or some combination of both. Maybe both. A low vibration humming through his bones, hollowing out his chest and stomach like someone took an ice cream scoop to them. All he wants to do is fill himself with Yuri. Yuri's touch, and Yuri's voice, and this look on Yuri's face that's some combination of uncertainty and trust and naked, newfound want. Victor's not sure he likes how surprised Yuri seems to be with all this, how this appears to have been the first time Yuri's even thought about him this way –– but he is thinking it, and he does want it. Him. Him?

Victor thinks so. It looks that way, with this expression on Yuri's face, and it feels that way, with the faint tremor he can feel under his palm and thumb. Yuri does. He just doesn't know what to do about it, and that, that Victor can help. Maybe he's never loved anyone like this before, or wanted anyone like this before, where it feels like he might die, or crack and blow away into dust if Yuri steps away or changes his mind, but he's had his share of romantic entanglements in the past. Taking the lead here isn't hard, when he's thought about it, dreamed about it, run kilometers upon kilometers and skated laps upon laps and worked harder than he ever had before in his life to try and forget all those thoughts and dreams for so long.

But he has to be careful. Can't scare Yuri away again. He's not sure his heart could take it, the frozen panic from the thought that Yuri might be afraid of him, so this kiss is gentle, again. Pressed to Yuri's mouth, lifting. Pressed to Yuri's cheek, and lifting. Yuri's jaw. Careful.

Moving his thumb so he can press his mouth to that same spot just below Yuri's jaw, along the line of muscle under thin, soft skin, blood thundering in his head but his touch gentle. Following the hand that slides down Yuri's neck to his shoulder, and placing a kiss just under where the crewneck collar of his shirt covers the skin, at the junction of neck and shoulder, before smoothing the collar back into place and lifting his head to see Yuri's reaction. Was it too far? He'd tried to be careful, quiet, soft.

But there's no apology anywhere in him that he can find. Not for wanting to kiss Yuri. Anywhere and everywhere he can.

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't say a word, only leans in and kisses him again. But it's a fast thing. That kiss. A faint press and then a lift away, almost confusing, except that Victor doesn't stop moving. He places a kiss on Yuri's cheek that almost makes him duck his head, in a bubble of something warm and amused. A familiarity that almost makes him smile, or laugh. He's not sure which.

Before it's cut through with a wobble of surprise when Victor is leaning down again, but not to just kiss him. Leaning down more than that. When lips graze the edge of his jaw and everything warm and light become heavier and sharper, aware like he's never felt, suddenly, chest going still, fire bright, brilliant uncertainty. Fingers tightening into that jacket again even as he can hear the small, fast, surprised breath that suddenly pulls in between his barely parted lips and teeth.

When suddenly dizzying is not the right word for earlier, for a single kiss. Dizzying is this. It's the way his heart slams into racing faster than expected, and the way Victor's mouth softly, so softly, only softly, with aching slowness is touching his neck, is dropping kisses, right where his thumb had been before. It's everything becoming brighter, and tighter.

His vision a blur of sparkling gem-gold and night-black Shanghai and silver-grey hair, and blurred so he can't see anything, anything at all, because all of his focus is on that faint pressure of Victor kissing him, and the soft flutter of his hair ghosting after it. The elastic drag that feels like his skin and his heart and his thoughts stretched suddenly fast and tight like a jerked a rubber band when he lifts away, and then just explodes with into a shower of heat when it touches again, drenching through his skin, making him shiver, making him hold on tighter.

A confused contortion of leaning into his body and away from Victor's mouth, not away, not away, not away,
but his head tilts like he'd just give everything away, wants, wants everything, more,
more, whatever more is, Victor wants, again at each the next touch.

It's .... nothing. Nothing. There's nothing in the world, in his head, in that gleaming light, or Victor's face, or any dream, or any story, to even begin to compare. Or is it the other way. Maybe it's the other way, that he hasn't compared, or hasn't understood, at all, the world, himself, anything until this second, this barest brush that he knows isn't even a step but feels like his skin is still crackling, snapping where Victor's lips had touched him, heart, still spinning, air turned to steam, like this was the bath and not a hotel room, and there's the breath of something like, "Oh," falling from his lips.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's fingers tighten, and Yuri's head tips, and Yuri breathes out a surprised sigh that lands like a lit cigarette in the pool of petrol that Victor's stomach has become, sending flames licking out and along the empty space where his guts and lungs and heart used to be. This is an invitation he understands, the pale creamy column of Yuri's throat exposed as Yuri's head tilts, and relief is warm and flooding just ahead of mischievous and sparking delight.

He's doing that. To Yuri. Winning that sigh and that tip of his head and the invitation to press his mouth up under the angle of Yuri's jaw, which he does, right where the skin is softest and thinnest and the most sensitive and he can feel the steady pulse of blood beneath his lips. And. That smile. That wasn't quite a smile, never really came to life, but he'd felt it in the bunching of Yuri's cheek under his lips a second ago, in the way Yuri relaxed under his arms and tightened again, not like he was protecting himself, but like he was suddenly being tickled. It's a blink of a reaction, but Victor decides he wants that, too, wants to see Yuri smiling and laughing and sparkling against him, under his touch, his kiss. Wants Yuri happy and amused and affectionate, as well as sighing and melting and stumbling towards anything and everything he might want to give, or want from Victor.

He wants it all. After so long. He feels like a man who has wandered a desert for these two long years, and is suddenly faced with crystal clear water and a table laden with every kind of fresh fruit and sweet cream and fresh bread and heady wine. It feels like there isn't enough air in the air, but he has to try to find some, because he has to be able to think. At least a little.

Even when he'd much rather nuzzle his face affectionately into the curve of Yuri's neck where it meets his shoulder, unable to keep himself from pressing another kiss there, amusement chasing relief and warm, bubbling fondness while his arms slip from around Yuri's shoulders to loop lightly around his upper arms, as Victor works his way back up the perfect curve of Yuri's neck to his jaw, leans forward a little to press a kiss against his ear, before aiming for the ticklish spot just below it with a laugh that's too breathless and giddy to be anything other than pure happiness. "This is terrible. What have you done to me? How will I ever be able to stop?"

But that patch of skin is a little salty from the sweat that dried there after Yuri's performance, and Victor loses his train of thought again, as he focuses on it, before he remembers where he was headed with that thought to begin with. "I shouldn't be making you stay on your feet so long after a free skate, Yuri."

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't stop. He doesn't stop, and whatever it is in Yuri's stomach goes on tightening, before it's stumbling and bumbling, while Victor presses his face into Yuri's skin, and he thinks, in a burst of confusion then clarity that seems brighter and clearer than anything he's ever heard or seen, that he'll never forget that. This feeling. Victor's face pressed to his skin.

The way everything in him is starting to hopscotch and short, as Victor starts kissing back up his neck, this time not as slow or as specific. Like. Like. Yuri doesn't have the words. Language is hard. It's all tiles on a gameboard, falling out of his hands, on each new quick kiss. It feels giddy and slightly messy, and absolutely nothing like focused, and also still perfect. Slightly hilarious. Each one still a fire blossom against his skin, even as it's catching in his chest and he's curling, slightly to the side he'd been leaning, eyes crinkling.

When there's a snort, but it's resplendent and penny-bright in his eyes at Victor's first.

Impossible, insane words, after he's kissed Yuri's ear, and Yuri's jaw and Yuri is still trying not to squeak, and his cheeks hurt from this sudden, crazy smile, from an explosion of sparkles in his stomach, in the air, and this sudden, attack that feels nothing like seconds ago, and everything like everything he knows. Victor's overabundance of affection. Arms thrown around him from nowhere. A pile of legs, laughing on the floor. The overly playful nature he's grown so used to with it's extravagant over exaggeration that was so very foreign in the beginning.

Like this. This notion at all that Victor is the one who won't be able to stop. Who has no control.

But then he's got his mouth against the underside of Yuri's jaw, focused, pressing kiss and kiss and kiss to it, again before he can even answer, and it's all dazzlingly impossible to keep straight. It's like his body is still made of giddy summer sparklers, even submerged and going off in a pool of boiling water, and he wants to die in it. And he wants to never die because he wants to know, suddenly, certainly, what else there is. Beyond this, even.

He wants to still be here for whatever that is and however, it happens.

Here. With Victor. So very, very alive for it.

Even if his words, when Victor pulls back, are true. He knows they are. Even when they swing and swoop, in the too fast spaces between Yuri's rapid heart beats and it tenses everything in his stomach just a little too much, but he still answers. A floating question, when nothing about the pain in his skin holds a candle to everything else Victor has covered that pain with. Even if he's right, even if there's a slippery condensation of flickered tension in him at the offering.

"We could sit down?"