{ 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]

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?"

[fivetimechamp]

Oh, he loves this. He loves it more than he thought he could love anything, anything at all, the way Yuri's face breaks and shines, and shines, and shines. No more wary caution, no more uncertain and careful bracing: he's melting and sparkling and Victor is tempted for a long and insane moment to just lick his way up Yuri's throat and the side of his face like Maccachin might. It's unbelievable, it's unhygienic, it's probably disgusting and definitely the thought of a madman.

But Yuri is almost laughing. He wants Yuri to laugh, and he thinks he's maybe waited his entire life to have someone in his arms who he loved enough to want to lick as much as kiss. Whose smile makes him useless. Who occasionally rolls his eyes at Victor from underneath those glasses and makes Victor want to set himself on fire, or throw himself out a window, or do something unexpected and absurd to break that fond exasperation into the cascading laughter he wants, craves. When has he ever wanted to play the fool this badly? Is it just because he wants to chase away the shadows of earlier and make sure they never come back, the way Maccachin hurls himself headlong at flocks of gulls just for the fun of watching the scatter? Has he lost his mind? Has Yuri lost his?

He doesn't know, only knows he wants to keep it going, isn't sure he has the ability to stop now that it has. Wants Yuri breathless from laughter as much as he wants Yuri breathless from desire, and maybe he isn't sure how to do both at the same time, but he has never backed down from a challenge yet. He's the champion: he can win this, too. Taking Yuri's delight as an invitation to attack the other side of his face, jaw, neck, too addicted to the taste of his skin and the shimmering breath of almost-laughter and the way Yuri is straining his head to one side or the other to let him have the space to claim that skin to stop.

All of which culminates in a burst of an idea that isn't even an idea at Yuri's words, is too quick and flashing to count as thought, is only warned in the curve of a grin that's too stupid and brilliant for Victor to have spent much time on contemplating whatever he just thought, and maybe Yuri recognizes it. The flash of inspiration across his face, that has led to Yuri being dragged to beaches, to ramen stands an hour away by train, to tourist spots, to mountaintops, to anywhere Victor had a sudden and burning desire to be and an apparent inability to go without hauling Yuri right along with him.

It might be a concerning expression. Victor doesn't know, only says: "Good idea," before he's shifting, arms slipping inside Yuri's to grab him at the top backs of his thighs, and pick him up, hitching him high enough that he's looking up into Yuri's face, instead of the other way around.

(There may be yelling, or squeaking. He's blithely oblivious to both.)

Only to take a few steps back and sit down again on the mattress, with Yuri a lean weight on his lap and his arms around Yuri's waist, head tipped back to grin up at him, right before he nuzzles his nose and a kiss along Yuri's collarbone, conveniently situated now directly in front of his face.

[theglassheart]

There is definitely yelling, and definitely squeaking, and there's even flailing on top of it.

When Yuri's expression goes faintly wary when Victor's eyes pop-bright and wide, and so familiar it's disturbingly alarming as it is easily recognizable. That doesn't mean there's time for Yuri's eyes to do more than widen and for him to shift his weight into the back of his furthest shoe. But it's nothing like enough to save him. Nothing is. Because Victor's hands are on his thighs, thumbs along resting against his bottom, the whole of that touch slamming heat into his every limb, and suddenly he's airborne, and it's not airborne like skating, it's airborne like he doesn't know whether to clutch on to Victor's shoulders because the ground is gone or shake his shoulders so he can scramble off and away.

And landing on the bed? On Victor's lap?

That's a whole other layer of sudden whites around his eyes, when it's not unjarring in every single fashion. His weight settling on his hips, his knees, his ankles, his spine, in a way it hasn't been since the kiss-and-cry, giving a sharp, unpleased hiss about the jolt of sitting with a bouncing flourish into a matress, and the angry reminder of his hip having put up with standing and being ignored for so very long. While Victor. Victor. Victor -- He's on Victor's lap and everything in his head is shouting and his heart has clambered into his ears.

But Victor is shining an absolutely mad, insane, curl of a proud, triumphant, pleased, smile up at him, and then is kissing his collarbone right through his shirt, and Yuri isn't sure the whole world isn't going to swim into the absolute dissolution of shock, and pain, and blistering heat, against the spasm of his heart, the heat of his skin under his shirt, all against overwhelming awareness of just what he suggested and just what Victor did.

That is now, so very much, quite on the bed, with Victor. On Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

There's definitely something wrong with him, because Yuri's shock and the way he squirms, far from making Victor worry about going too far or making him let Yuri go only go to his head like pure oxygen, because Yuri might be yelling and startled and squirming reflexively, but Yuri's not trying to get away. Doesn't put his hands on Victor's chest to shove, doesn't leap off him as soon as they hit the mattress, bouncing gently in a way that reminds Victor all too clearly that this suit fits far better than he really wants it to, right now.

But it doesn't matter. None of it does, because Yuri's sitting here in his lap looking at Victor like he has lost his mind, which is true, or suddenly sprouted another few heads, which is probably not, and it's comfortingly familiar. Yuri's shock because Victor did something he didn't expect, and the blossoming satisfaction in Victor's chest at having surprised Yuri. Again.

Even if it was stupid, and ridiculous, and he does feel a little bad for the tiny hiss that Yuri makes as his weight shifts onto his knees and shins, hips bending for the first time in over an hour. Victor knows that hiss, and that inadvertent flinch which isn't from him but rather from protesting muscles and joints which have just remembered their bruises and strains. His hands drift from Yuri's back to settle at the joint of his hips, instead, warm and large and gentle as he looks up into Yuri's face, smile gone from bright and pleased to something softer and sympathetic.

"How's your hip?"

He'd hit it hard, after all, and Victor had meant to get ice for him, but one thing led to another and now he'll have to shift Yuri off his lap to get it, which is possible but not preferable.

He'll go. In a minute. Once Yuri's relaxed again and once Victor has stopped letting his eyes drift down Yuri's face towards his mouth, only to flicker back up again.

(Can he really be blamed?)

[theglassheart]

Through the pain, Yuri can already see the problem forming. The way the pain doesn't, still doesn't hold a candle. It's angry, an edged red, dots his vision briefly, at the side of it, not stopping, now that it's started. Started huffing, annoyedly, in existence, about being given its proper due. Throbbing to the tune of his too fast heart beat and the collision with Victor's legs and the bed (the bed, he's on the bed), but he can't get himself to focus on that.

He can't even entirely get himself to focus entirely on Victor's words, on this sensible question, that is sensible, smart, even in the pert and professionally innocent way he asks it, while his eyes are shining up at Yuri --



-- all Yuri has is this ache, growing, widening, slamming into his chest, like the greatest chasm in the world suddenly pushed into him, widening bigger than a continent, bigger than the world, because, he's looking down at Victor looking up at him, all peerless ownership and false innocence and professional words with absolutely nothing professional here anymore, and has it always, did he never, was Victor always this bright? This painfully, perfectly, brilliantly beautiful?

When his fingers are in the air, lifted from Victor's shoulder or neck, from wherever they'd gotten amid flailing like a cat trying to escape being crushed, and they stop. Oh, god. They do. Stop. Sway. Stutter. Stop. In his vision. Bare inches from Victor's face. When he can see his hand. Like a car. In traction. Fighting against itself. Fingers out, half in, with a stutter, and in. Closing. Fingers only crushing back into his palm. Before it drops from his sight, his breath still caught, hurting, heat seeping out to his ears, his neck, trying, trying, frantically to remember the question.

About his hip? About landing? About his flip and Victor's lap, and his heart, sprinting, idiotically in his chest.

"It's okay." It's. It's there. It hurts. Obviously. He'd probably cried out. It probably hurt. (Did.)
Except he's not even sure he can feel it under the dramatic race of his stupid, stupid, heart.

[fivetimechamp]

He'd asked something. Was sure of it. Was teasing, only a second ago, because a second ago he had air to breathe and even though looking up into Yuri's face was intoxicating, he'd been more smugly satisfied than seduced, and so he'd asked that question, the one he can't remember, can't hear at all through the sudden crushing wind swirling a storm through his head and chest.

Yuri's looking at him. Like. He doesn't know. Can't find the words for anything anymore, because Yuri's not just looking at him, Yuri's looking at his own hand, that's floating near Victor's cheek so close he can almost feel it. The ghost of his fingers in the warmth they give off, and he has never, never, never in his life wanted anything more than he wants, in this second, for Yuri to reach out and touch him.

He doesn't, often. Victor might drag him into hugs, fix his position on the ice, sling an arm around his shoulder, even kiss his cheek when he's feeling especially exuberant, and Yuri lets him, but Yuri almost never reaches for him, first. No one does, aside from Maccachin. Not Chris. Not any of his other friends. Not his coaches, unless you count the cool clinical way they corrected his posture or worked out knots in his back and legs. Maybe no one in his whole life since his parents when he was very small. And how starving he is for it. Physical touch. Affection he can feel. He doesn't want to be distant anymore, clear blue water between him and the next best competitor, and no one daring to touch him even when they fawn all over him.

Doesn't want to be made of ice, the way Yakov hoped he would be, the inhuman Russian legend without a heart who lives for perfection and the gleam of gold.

He wants Yuri's fingers against his face. Against his throat. Over the too-thin, too-fragile skin just above his heart. He wants Yuri to lean down to kiss him, without being kissed first. He wants to be reached.

But Yuri's fingers drop without ever touching him, and he makes a sound like dying, like the last chisel strike against the chest of a marble statue that sends it cracking and shattering to the ground, tension strung through him like barbed wire. He can't even hear what Yuri's saying, too busy trying to calm down the stumbling, hitching race of his heart, that can't quite seem to remember that's supposed to keep beating.

Was he joking, only a second ago? How was that possible? He feels raw, like the ghost of Yuri's fingers are deftly lifting his skin and folding it back and away from bleeding muscle. Every nerve lit and frustrated and crying out.

For a touch that wasn't even a touch, that even if it had, would have been barely anything. An afterthought for anyone else. Not something he should realize he'd stopped even breathing for, for the moment it was possible.

[theglassheart]

Victor makes a noise and Yuri's eyes dart back to his, from -- from he doesn't know where. From wherever he'd gotten unfocused and pained and trying to focus and failing entirely. Caught up in the race of his own heart and the staggering need that had caused him to move, that not moving seemed like it was killing him just as much as almost moving had, and now Victor has this expression.

This expression that looks pained, too, and did -- did he do that, too?

He hurt Victor? Somehow? Without even touching him?
Which hurts so much more. Strident. Clarion. In him.

Everything snowballs, in rapid fire silence. He'd made the room go dead silent. Too. His heart wails at the suddenness of it. The realization. The silence. The stillness of them. The loss of Victor's voice and Victor's smile, Victor's laughter and crazy antics, dried up like a desert had swallowed it all under gritty sand, and what did he do. How does he take it back. It's comes tumbling out of his mouth, confused, desperately necessary, and only half meant, still fighting the tremor in his skin, the open bleeding want that was still everywhere, on everything. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

[fivetimechamp]

"It's all right, Yuri."

Said after a pause, and swallowing a dry throat, blinking himself back to this moment: Yuri on his lap, looking horrified and apologetic, Yuri blushing and unsure, Yuri. And Yuri's fingers that have curled into his palm, away from Victor, while Victor searches for saliva to keep his voice from sounding this hoarse, swallows until he finds some.

It's a start. He searches for a smile, something reassuring and warm and real, even if it isn't quite like the brilliant and nowhere near innocent grin of only moments ago. "Don't apologize."

Yuri has nothing to be sorry for at all. It's not like Victor hasn't become acutely, painfully aware that Yuri probably has no idea what he's doing, and that even a touch that tiny might be too much for him. That he might not know if it's wanted. Or even if it's allowed. "You can touch me if you want."

He lifts a hand from Yuri's hip to find Yuri's, clutched there near his chest, and lifts it to gently kiss those fingers. He could place them on his own cheek, or against his neck, or on his chest after, but he doesn't, just keeps his hand protectively around Yuri's when he looks back up, mouth still pressed in that small smile. "But you don't have to."

He doesn't have to do anything at all he doesn't want to do, isn't ready to do. That has been true this whole time, and it isn't like Victor hasn't already suddenly been given a thousand times more than he ever expected to have. "You have nothing to be sorry for, either way. Okay?"

[theglassheart]

You have nothing to be sorry for, Victor says. After kissing his fingers. Gentle but firm enough to feel it. Feel it left, even soft, like a brand on his fingers. Like forgiveness, and something he has no idea what to call. Because forgiveness and even love, even ai doesn't encompass it. There is no ascribing this a name he does know for a feeling he doesn't. Nothing fits right. Nothing holds just right.

Not after Victor said, You can touch me if you want.

Because he does. Oh, he does. Doesn't he? He wants to touch Victor.

Which sounds so, so, so stupid even in his head. He's been touching Victor for the last hour. He's had his mouth touch Victor. His arms. His hands. His forehead. His chest. Their legs and the bounce of his whole body landing here. And none of it. None of it holds. None of it compares. All of it falls short, doesn't register, meter, matter, to this want, this need surging up.

To touch Victor. As though he's never touched Victor in his life. Not once. Not really.

To the way he lifts his hand from Victor's and his lips press, too aware, so aware, when he raises it again. When, having to think about it, while his heart is catapulting faster, he doesn't even know where to start. What's right. Or wrong. Only that he can't stop. Doesn't have to. Not this time. Even if both moving and not moving are feeling like dying, when his fingertips brush lightly against Victor's forehead and press the long, smooth curtain of he bangs, ever so gently, toward his temple, while he's forgotten to breathe at all, forgotten anything but Victor's face, but the careening madness of his heart.

When a seconds shift, even if his fingers are faintly shivering -- and how had he ever thought he'd known his hands? That he'd mastered them for the ice? For Minako and Celestino, and even for Victor for Eros and Yuri on Ice? For chopsticks, or a keyboard, or typing, or the ability to paint kanji when it was needed?

The pad of his thumb is such an imperfect, rudimentary device, moves, disjointed, skipping, like a stone on water, against the rise of Victor's cheekbone that had been hidden there below his eye, even if moving there makes his hair swing back in at the edge of his face, and nothing, nothing he's ever seen, no picture, no painting, no screenshot, no interview he's seen of Victor in his whole life is as overwhelmignly beautiful as Victor this close.

[fivetimechamp]

There have been times, over the last eight months, when he's wondered if he did the right thing.

If maybe it was a stupid thing to do. Abandon his career without seeing if he could push the peak higher, give up everything he'd known and loved and worked for, a lifetime of it. Two decades of nothing but ice and athleticism and art.

All because he fell in love with a boy who didn't even care.

All because he was stupid enough to call that love, and to think that maybe it was returned. Flying halfway around the world because he thought Yuri had asked him to, because he thought that video was a love letter and not just a video. Because he thought it was somehow different than the hundreds of other times skaters had filmed themselves practicing his routines.

Of course he'd wondered. How could he not? When it was like pulling teeth to get Yuri to even look at him, let alone talk to him. When it became painfully obvious that the only person in love here was him, and that Yuri was at best totally oblivious and at worst simply didn't care. He'd thrown himself into Eros and Yuri on Ice once it was clear that was what Yuri wanted from him, and he'd done his best. He had. Aware every single day that he was only falling harder and harder, but knowing it was only him.

Until now. Until Yuri did that flip, and the world flipped upside down, and he was wrong, or he was right, and it doesn't matter but now he has no idea how he could ever have thought it was the wrong choice, when Yuri is so carefully reaching for him, when there's only the slightest brush of his fingertips against Victor's forehead and it stops his heart and breath dead.

It's not romantic, like in poems and books and movies, a heart skipping a beat. It hurts. Slams like hitting the ice or the wall. Knocks the wind out of him so violently he's a little afraid he'll never breathe again, that he might die, right here, on the slightest of shy touches, and traumatize Yuri so badly he'll have to spend approximately the next decade in therapy.

But it's impossible to breathe, when Yuri's hand lifts, and shifts, and his thumb is tracing over Victor's cheek, and Victor's heart, apparently getting the message that he would prefer to live through this, starts violently up again.

His breath is shaking. Belatedly, he realizes his whole body is shaking, and he's never felt so fragile, like a touch even a little more firm might shatter him into glass shards. His hands slipping up from Yuri's hips to his waist, fingers spread wide, and they're trembling, too.

It's absurd. It's the pad of one thumb. A single thumb should not be able to do this to him, but then it shifts again across his skin and the sound he makes now is painful in a different way, dredged from months and months of longing and not having, of every time Yuri never reached for him, of every time he never realized he wanted to be touched. Tipping his face up to him, unable to keep himself from pressing towards that hand, suddenly desperate for it, for Yuri to never stop touching him, for Yuri to realize, know what he's doing to him, but all that comes out is a name that's almost a gasp: "Yuri."

[theglassheart]

It's all fast. All sudden. All happening at once.

Victor's skin under his thumb is softer than he's ever imagined (and had he? Had he imagined this? Not this. Only certain things, dreams, trapped seconds of confused reaction. Moments he was certain. Moments that weren't real. Reactions the were impromper and out of place, that shouldn't have come up. Not from Victor just spurring him on to do Eros right, or Victor drunk and forgetting that Yuri was even Yuri.

Right?)

Except Victor's face is tipping up, into his thumb, into his curled fingers tips, into his too warm palm, all of it, and Victor's hands tighten on his waist, skin, under his shirt, and he's says Yuri's name with the kind of plaintive, gasp of want that even Yuri can't miss it. Blushes, blinking, even as something in the center of him gives a pleasurable shudder in a way he's not sure he ever knew it could. He could.

Like everything he's ever known about himself, his body, the things he's done with it, himself alone, his heart, and Victor (the jolt of the whole of that notion, with and Victor as an actual list inclusion and clause), all of it is changing, on the head of this pin, this day, this moment, this moment. While Yuri can't stop. He can't stop at where he is. When his thumb reaches the top of Victor's cheekbone not far from his temple, under that hair, and the first of his three fingertips drag down the edge of Victor's face.

When he doesn't want to be done yet, and he almost wants to lean in and press his lips, just there, right where the center of his cheekbone is. Where nothing touches but his bangs, and the whole world seems half hidden, or Victor is half-hidden from it, from everyone. An untouchable and perfect star, and yet still there, right under the touch of Yuri's fingers. Saying Yuri can touch him, sounds like ... like he wants him to.

Where just the startling clarity of that consideration, the want to do it -- and not the whisper thin comparison and snide comment his brain tries to throw out, of how juvenile he sounds, to even question whether he should could can place a kiss on Victor's skin, after Victor had covered both sides of his neck in kisses , after Victor had already said he could touch him -- makes him color, soft and pink at the highest part of his cheeks, makes him feel reckless and bolder than he thinks he's maybe ever felt outside of a long perfect stretch of ice.

When he holds in his head, in his hand, like a surprised slip of fingers. Or a shell, Victor found on the beach in the summer.

A coal glowing in his chest, when his fingertips trace down his jawline, trying, trying so hard not to offend some level of profanity and perfection when they wobble, so very imperfectly, between above the line of it and below, before pausing. Just a second. Just stuttering, forgetting, painful moment. Forgetting entirely his first thought. Because it's obliterated away by the staggering pound of his heart when his fingers stop against the bottom of his chin.

When he can't breathe, and he might never stop again, and he still watches his fingers move, even shaking slightly, more than even seems to feel them. To touch the bottom of Victor's lips, right off to the side the center. Victor's lips that have changed everything. Everything, Yuri thinks, with a thrill that is made both of fire and ice ( ... the way he is? The way Victor is?). Everything that was ever anything, and all of him with it.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri had brushed aside his veil of bangs, and he's never felt more naked. Used to seeing the world half clearly, half through a cloud of silver, but it's gone now, tucked towards his temple, and both eyes are fixed on Yuri's face with a terrible, painful clarity.

I love you so much I flew across the world for you, he wants to say, and doesn't. I love you more than all my medals combined.

This feels like Yuri is taking his skate blades and drawing them slowly across Victor's stomach just to watch the blood well. He knows it's not cruelty –– that look on Yuri's face is one of embarrassed determination and complete focus –– but it feels that way. Sitting here, knowing he has to let Yuri come to him. Unwilling to do so much as to push up to find his mouth again, even as Yuri's fingers trace down along the curve of his cheek and jaw to his mouth, light against his bottom lip.

Even if he can see it. How easy it would be. Just a shift of his weight, and the satisfying thump of Yuri hitting the mattress, the firm way he'd bounce directly back up into Victor. What it would be like to sink his fingers into that hair, and set those glasses aside, and run his mouth along the curve of his throat until Yuri's gasping, until he doesn't even remember what words are, let alone how to use them.

The kind of impact he'd had, high-velocity and with no care for self-preservation, back on the ice, when everything was blindingly clear for just one second and Victor knew exactly what he had to do.

That he can't do now, if he ever wants to get there again. He has to let Yuri pick his way carefully towards him, as fast or slow as Yuri wants to go while also eying the path like it might be the back of a coiling snake, ready to strike as soon as Yuri stops looking.

But his hands can slide to Yuri's back, and he can pull Yuri even closer, as flush against his stomach as Victor can get him, while his traitorous mouth feels so dry he has to lick his lip, suddenly nervous in a way he hasn't been since he was a teenager.

It never mattered then as much as it does now. Nothing has. Maybe nothing ever will.

I love you beating at the back of his teeth, feeling too big and too useless at the same time. Yuri has shattered him with the brush of a few fingertips, and probably Victor should be embarrassed, but it's difficult to be embarrassed when he can't even breathe. He wonders, insanely, if his heart is about to give out.

But aside from his hands, and the way his lips part under Yuri's touch, and the drop of his eyes to Yuri's mouth and back up again, he doesn't move. Is too aware of everything he could ruin if he did the wrong thing, right now. Too deep under this spell to even think of anything else.

[theglassheart]

Victor's hands, wide against his waist, move to his back and pull him closer. Firmer against his lap and his hips, and his stomach and his chest, while Yuri's own body gives a shot of far too hot combusting fire in his center at the same time as the movement brings a groan of protest and blaring pain that makes his features flicker unkindly. But he doesn't want to pay attention. He can't. He won't. He can be stronger than his pain. He can.

Because the idea of pausing, the idea of breathing or stopping or moving away, it's not like slamming the ice.

It feels, even in the half-second of thought about it, like losing the ability to skate again. Losing all he knows of truth.

Because Victor is so warm and so solid against him. Because Victor's face has turned that almost pained shade again, and Yuri's somehow certain, this time, at this point, finally, even if it's just for this second and he'll lose it again in the next, that apologizing isn't the right thing for it. This pained hazarding thing, where Victor's eyes look half unfocused and slightly wild but never leave his face, and Victor's tongue wets his lips, bumping into Yuri's finger and making the whole world canter to the side, and Yuri is leaning down, toward his mouth, toward the place his tongue touched, before he's thought about it.

Because, because, because. There's nothing but Victor. And his earlier thought was a sham, about the plain of his cheekbone being the cliff he wanted to throw himself into the air over because all Yuri knows in every part of his body, even the parts made of grinding bone-deep agony, is that he has to be kissing Victor and he has to be kissing Victor now. Even if it's still untried and not good enough, and he bumps his own chin into his own thumb in his haste, not even remembering to get his own hand back to the side of Victor's face before he's kissing him.

[fivetimechamp]

Sometimes, if he's patient, Yuri comes to him. It's a lesson he learned that day on the beach, that giving Yuri the space to figure things out on his own tended to make it easier for him. That Victor had to wait, and coax, and just be there for when Yuri finally found his way to him, and not always haul him along like Yuri was just another Maccachin for Victor to take on trips and pose with in pictures.

It's harder to remember here and now, with Yuri so close and his fingers so gentle on Victor's cheek and lips, but he still does. Wait. Give him the space to work his way around to it, if he's going to, even if it feels like dying by inches, until suddenly Yuri's hand stiffens, and Yuri's bumping in to him, mouth clumsy and hard, thumb in the way because Yuri couldn't even wait to move it, and ––

Victor doesn't really remember everything that happened next. All he knows is there's a dark sound at the back of his throat, and a breathless moment of shaking self-restraint, and then he's shoving up against Yuri's mouth hard and thoughtless. Hands ripping from Yuri's back to move to his face, his hair, one sinking in there and the other running back down his neck, shoulder, chest, stomach, to wrap back around his waist and pull him in tight. Yuri's name a running, sprinting litany in his head, pounding in his blood, on the edge of every ragged breath. Like that wait had been two hours, instead of two minutes. Or eight months. Or two years.

Unable to stop himself, now that Yuri's started it again, but this time there's no teasing and there's no laughter: only the bare-stripped electric wire of need and the white flare of insanity.

[theglassheart]

It hurts. That's not the first thought, but it is one of them.

At first, he almost thinks he's gotten it wrong. Because Victor is very still. And then shaking.

And then a sound that comes first feels like it's made of fire, feeling like it sets him on fire, blisters his ears and his head, just to hear it, and Victor's mouth, the next second, breaks that guess, that assumption entirely into what fire actually is. When Victor surges up into him, and it's almost alarming how hard, how fast he can move without ever coming off the bed or pushing Yuri off of him.

When Yuri feels like he's almost gasping for air before it even starts, when he's already under everything the next second, and he can't remember the last time he took a breath, and doesn't want one now, and might pass out, but doesn't care. Everything is burning heat and the movement of Victor all over his body suddenly.

It's exploding fire, coming down everywhere those hands touch, leaving singed burning rubble everywhere, when there are fingers suddenly cradling his face and in his hair and down his neck, and there's excruciating pain in the juncture of his hips, his joints, and, because Victor is jerking him closer, closer still, and Victor hasn't stopped kissing him. The press of his lips, again and again, and again, so fast and so hard that gravity is a fairytale, and coherence was a myth, and Victor is not a wave, he's the entire ocean pouring over the raft Yuri once had and pulling him down.

There's only Victor, only every part of himself being covered and uncovered by Victor, and how Victor and Victor and Victor is going to break him open, burn him open, and slip inside all of his skin, and the pain riding roughshod stubborn under it. There's only the way his breath is gone, and his fingers are actually, desperately, digging into Victor's skin, his shoulder, his coat, like he's falling, and his heart has found the way to be louder than any piece of music he's ever heard, ever turned up to the loudest setting a practice rink could even hold, and it might actually be trying to kill him, just to get out of his body to Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

If he keeps this up, they're both going down in a blaze of glory and damn his intentions to hold back and let Yuri take his own time –– but it's hard to remember when his own brain seems to have evaporated in a puff of steam, and when Yuri's just as bad, kissing him hard and messy and unpracticed, hands scrabbling at his collar, his shoulder, his neck. He doesn't seem to mind. Seems to want this as much as Victor does, seems to want Victor ––

And that's the end of his coherent thought for another few blistering minutes, until his right hand slides to Yuri's hip, and something pings in his head. Something he was saying, or doing, before Yuri tipped the boat over by reaching for him and kissing him without Victor even asking ––

Another few minutes, and now his lungs are burning, and he's swearing breathless Russian against Yuri's mouth, cursing his need for oxygen, his sprinting heart, this frail human body that won't allow him to crack open his own chest or slip directly beneath Yuri's skin to finally be as close as he wants to be.

But that pings something else, and he pauses, trying to think back, before he's sighing and his swears turn rueful before they're muffled directly into the skin of Yuri's neck, punctuated with hard, heavy breaths and kisses he still can't stop. "я придурок ... I am terrible."

Even now unwilling to pull far enough away, rolling his head so his forehead nestles in the crook of Yuri's shoulder, before he looks back up, and cups Yuri's face with his free left hand, smile wry and self-deprecating. "I was going to get you ice."