{ 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]

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."

[theglassheart]

Victor's mouth is the definition of existence. Crushed against his with a speed that even crashing into a wall at full speed on skates doesn't knows. Holding on like the end of a whip chain even as everything is shattering and burning. While Victor is biting out Russian on his lips, and shoving it into his skin, his mouth, pushing it into him. Kissing the crook of his neck, and then the side, while Yuri is still in his arms, and the worlds is rushing, with the marching band marathon of his heart and the blur of the walls. The bed. The inside of his head.


Yuri's body is buzzing. Buzzing. Like he's turned into a hive of honey bees.


Then, Victor. Victor's face is a blur in front of him, fogged, and his mouth is moving.
(He's so gorgreous. It's unfair. It's unreal. He's blinding. How has he managed not to die yet?)


Absently. Distantly. Yuri is perturbed at the gal of Victor to be talking.

To probably expect Yuri to be listening. To be able to hear him.


That Victor has a mouth at all, when it feels like Yuri's gone. It got blown off, it fell away and melted into the buzzing that it is in everything. Everywhere. Blistered and buzzing, the zip that is every single nerve and every single thought. That isn't moving, and it takes , he doesn't know, whatever a while is in buzzing, to even realize that sound of hiccuped breathing, furiously fast, is actually coming from his mouth because it does exist.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri only stares at him myopically, mouth swollen and lips drifted open, face flushed and glowing, and Victor notes with satisfaction that his glasses are fogged and that Yuri appears to not have heard or understood anything he just said. Which makes him think back to check, but, yes, he definitely switched to English, if he hadn't started in it, but still, Yuri just stares. Brown eyes stuck to Victor's mouth, tracking across his face, looking like someone just whacked him in the head with a cord of wood, and Victor blinks, before comprehension breaks like dawn across his face.

He did this. Yuri is so drunk on his kisses that he can't even speak, and Victor's smile is a slow crawl that becomes a sudden brilliant grin, smug and shining with self-satisfaction. "Yuri."

Yuri who is outright useless, because of him. Breathing hard and looking like he was just thrown from a rollercoaster, and Victor shouldn't let it go to his head or puff up his chest, but it does, of course it does, how could it not?

Grinning as he leans to press a quieter, but still firm kiss to Yuri's parted lips. "Yuri."

Coaxing and amused, Yuri's name surfing the crest of his chuckle, while he, perhaps unfairly, while his face is tipped to Yuri's and his lips are close enough to brush Yuri's, tells him to: "Breathe."

[theglassheart]

Victor is truly unfair. He is. The whole world knows this. Like everyone. Everyone that is everyone that is everyone who has a clue what skating actually is, and a good number of millions who don't even, but still know who Victor is. Because Victor is Victor, and Victor is impossible. Perfect. Hotter than is proper for anyone to have been able to attain, and he's finally used it to scorch Yuri's brain to nothingness.


Yuri who still sways into the press of that mouth again, with something that is definitely an uncontrollable sigh after the gasping had paused for the press of another kiss. When it feels more like he can hear himself and see himself more than be himself. And Victor. Victor is laughing about it. Victor is smiling. Victor who is unfair, so very very unfair, and fine. Like it was nothing, and he can't make this stop because it's not happening to Victor. That would be too easy.


While Victor, whose mouth is still brushing his lips, is telling Yuri breathe. Like he isn't already swallowing reflexively anything he can get in his mouth, whether it's air or saliva. Whose first sensible mumble of any kind is, "You're making that hard."

And he meant -- he meant by being pressed against his mouth, right now, laughing at him, being this bright and this overwhelming, and everything outside his eyes and inside his skin, but the things is he says it, and it sounds like he means all of this. All of ... everything that just happened in the last few -- seconds? minutes? Blistering scorch of time that is nothing but fire and buzzing and his mouth and Victor?

And he's not sure there's a piece of his skin left to turn redder, so he can't really blush about that being true, too.

[fivetimechamp]

He might love that sigh even more than he loves the gasping, at least as much as the way Yuri leans into his kiss like a sailor on a heeling boat, stumbling into the pull of gravity. He definitely loves those mumbled words, that make him shine up, sudden as hitting a light switch, and laugh. Yuri's attempt to sound accusatory is about as sharp as a limp fish, and for a second Victor is gone, riding high on a cloud of being more appealing than breathing.

For Yuri. For Yuri who had never cared. Not in months, anyway, and at the banquet Victor had convinced himself Yuri never wanted it to get any further than the dance, the game, the challenge.

Maybe he'd only ever wanted Victor to come be his coach; Victor still doesn't know. All he knows is that Yuri is melting in his lap, warm and relaxed and flushed from the tips of his ears to where his throat disappears into the collar of his shirt, and he can barely talk, or breathe, and that's all because of Victor.

It boggles the mind. "Don't you want some ice?"

Even if he's not sure he'd even be able or willing to get up now and leave Yuri alone, to stop touching him even for the space of time it takes to go down the hall and visit the ice maker.

(He's even less sure that standing up, right now, would be a good idea or even possible.)

But he should try. Yuri still had a free skate today, and he'll still have the Exhibition tomorrow, and he hit the ice hard after that flip, and he should have some ice. And some food. And more water.

And none of those are going to be things Victor can get for him while he has Yuri curled around him, on his lap and ready, willing, wanting. So dazed from kisses that he can barely think, or even talk, at all.

(Still. He should try.)

[theglassheart]

Does he want some -- what?

Ice? It rings like a bell, confused at the edge of his thoughts.

The first thought it evokes is that his throat is dry from the rasping breathing, and it would be nice to have a piece to suck on, to alleviate that problem. Or a bucket's worth that he could shove his head into so it didn't feel like he was feeling around with his hands in the dark for his glasses at such an inconsequential word, that Victor makes sound important.

Ice for, for, for and then something clicks all at once, and he reaches out like he has to even make sure he has legs still. Only finding he has his hand, and his leg, and his hip, and his knee, and his shins, and that he's got two of every one of these, when his hand lands on the side of his thigh and Oh. Right. Right. Because he fell. For something that wasn't Victor. Except. He's not sure that's true.

Given where he's sitting. Given what made him fall into the ice. Victor's flip. Victor in the garage.
There's a crazy, delirious little tip to his mouth, helpless and utterly unaware of itself staring at Victor.

Victor in front of him still looking too bright, too bright even for the flare of continuous pain under his still pressing fingers, and the lesser, but not quieter ones, everywhere else, especially his now rather throbbing shins, and knees, and ankles, and his feet, and he finally gets the question. Even if he thinks he might have lost it for a few seconds in there to even remember what it had been, and why, again, before he's nodding, his voice still slightly firmer but still quiet and wandering a little, "That might be smart."

Ice. Ice would probably be smart. For his hip. And his head. And his mouth.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri is adorable, and Victor has never been this enamored of anything, or anyone, in his entire adult life. Maybe never, at all. He can almost see the question getting drawn together in Yuri's head, smile widening as Yuri's hand drifts down to his own thigh, where Victor covers it with his, larger and warm.

Can watch it get put together like a puzzle until the light blinks on and Yuri's nodding, as if in a dream, and saying that ice would be smart. Which, it would be. That's why Victor suggested it, has been planning to go get some since the kiss-and-cry, back when he had some feverish idea of getting back here and sorting everything out, taking time to talk.

Well, some of it has been sorted, anyway, and there was a little talking, but his plans have really gotten quite derailed, so he's glad to see they're back on track, except for how he's not. Because getting ice means getting up, and getting up means letting Yuri go, and letting Yuri go feels like a physical impossibility, especially when his mouth is right there, pink and a little shiny, and Victor is already kissing him again before he realizes it was even a temptation.

(Will it ever stop being a temptation again? How will he ever get anything else in his life done? Is it just going to be a series of hours where he refuses to let go of Yuri until he dies of dehydration or starvation because he forgot they needed food and water and not just kisses to live?)

Making a soft sound that's almost a groan, and almost a sigh before he pulls back and takes a deep breath. "I miscalculated."

With the getting up. And the having to let go of Yuri. "I don't want to let you go."

But he should, said he would go, and Yuri does want the ice and, more to the point, he needs it, so Victor sighs, and shifts his hands back down to the backs of Yuri's thighs as he pushes himself up, only to turn and dump Yuri on the mattress, instead, while he lands with one knee next to Yuri's leg and his hands on the mattress one either side of Yuri's hips.

Which is, it turns out, also a problem, and he's distracted for a long moment by Yuri's mouth, caught on watching Yuri's face, before he remembers. "Ice."

[theglassheart]

Victor doesn't say anything, smiling like he's too amused, and then he's leaning back in again, and Yuri's blood just bubbles by his ears, like he's a fish and water was always made of fire, and he just never knew, and his hands tighten a little too fast at Victor's shoulders, even as Victor mouth slips away. As Victor groans and pulls back and says that word that makes Yuri laugh before he can stop himself. Before he really knows it's coming.

It's hilarious, really. Victor might forget when the sun could come up if something distracted him.
But, really, it's hilarious that somehow Victor is distract from helping him by ... him?

Victor who unceremoniously drops Yuri onto the bed, knocking that laugh and his breath from him (making his joints screaming a little too madly) and his heart go ratcheting up suddenly, slamming violently into the pain and the surprise with something that is snapping clarity, even through the fog still on his lenses, when he's no longer looking down at Victor, he's looking up.

He's on the bed (looking up at Victor), who suddenly has the room light in his hair (that is somehow disheveled?), and he's slightly over him (and his shirt collar isn't flat anymore?), and Yuri can't breathe in at all (not with Victor's eyes on him).

When there's a tense moment, electric, that feels like it makes the room hum instead of Yuri, and Victor finally get to that one word, and Yuri can't tell if it's supposed to save him or damn him. Only that he's nodding. He's nodding so fast it almost hurts. They need to get ice. Victor needs to get ice. "Yes."

Because if he doesn't, something disastrous is going to happen (like Yuri's eyes are going to finally make it to the place he hasn't gotten -- to the tie hanging off of that coat, loosened so long ago, but he doesn't know when it came untucked, only that it's the only thing of Victor's touching him now) and he's going to find out just how truly insane he's gone since Victor kissed him and made him lose track of time even.

A thought, fluttering a little frantic at the audacity of even existing in his head, not helping his heart rate in the slightest.



Which might be part of why he adds, "Ice. I need ice."

Or air. Or something. Something Yuri has no name for that's coming far too fast.

[fivetimechamp]

"Right."

Ice. That he should probably get to dump on top of his own head so he can cool off, because Yuri is only centimeters away and it feels like his head is already beginning to fill with steam, just from the way Yuri is looking at him. Color high in his cheeks and his eyes still that stunned stare that keeps traveling over Victor's face.

(How had he wanted this? Didn't he realize how useless it would make him, to be so caught just on Yuri's face, on the flicker of his eyes and the rising and falling color in his cheeks?) "Ice."

And Yuri should –– Yuri should shower. Change into his more comfortable sleep clothes. Eat something. Everything he usually does after a competition, before he and Victor would dissect the performance while Yuri iced whatever needed to be iced and chased his dinner with some ibuprofen.

But Yuri might take it the wrong way if Victor suggests that –– even if it might be, he might be, more comfortable if Victor's not in the room for some of it –– so he just swallows hard and pushes away, back to standing, and almost passes out from the lightness of his head.

(Love, it turns out, is dangerous on more than a strictly metaphorical level.)

But there's the ice bucket, over by the minifridge, and he takes a short reprieve in walking to grab it, before turning back to Yuri, and finding he has absolutely nothing useful to say, because stop looking so cute, I want to kiss you until we both die of dehydration isn't useful on any level, but he does stop back and lean towards him again, knee denting the mattress, and kiss the dip of his shoulder, just where his shirt collar gives way to skin. "I'll be right back."

Glancing up, and he's about to go again, but he pauses to kiss that mouth again, before pulling back with a grin. "Don't forget me."

Before he's heading for the door, steps quick and firm, and heads out into the hallway and the cool, Yuri-less air there.

[theglassheart]

Victor kisses his bare skin, setting off a million reactions in his body, teeth meeting inside his mouth and lifting one of his hands on pure impulse, kisses his lips, and then smiles as he tells him not to forget him, as though anyone in the whole world has ever forgotten Victor, ever could, and then he’s gone.


He’s just.


Gone.




And Yuri falls back on the bed and lays there, breathing breaths through his nose, at the ceiling, staring blank-eyed, chest rising and falling too fast and too many times to count, faster without being counted or watched, for the first few seconds. Everything still feeling like he stepped through fire, aching in the sudden absence, and yet somehow all of his arms, legs, fingers, toes, joints still attached, which doesn’t help the thought that barrels at him brutally breathless after that.

Victor Nikiforov — champion of the decade and longer, the poster boy for all modern ice skating, media icon, heart throb of the masses, who could have pointed at anyone and had them since, well, ever — wants him?

Victor, his Victor … his coach, and his confident, and his ... the person who has brought him more laughter, more safety, always met him wherever he was, always sent him to higher heights than he’s ever believed he could reach, always believed in him even when he couldn’t, even today, on the worst showing of what his worst could look like, even after the garage, and the crying, and the screaming, and not being able to hold his head together silver medal earned or not … wants him?



There’s something manic, something just as nauseous as it is giddy thrumming itself up through his throat and his hands end up on his mouth like he’s trying to stop himself from laughing. Or throwing up. Or from whatever sound will burst out. But what he ends up with instead isn’t a sound.





It’s the ceiling above him.

It’s his blood pounding in his ears.

The feel of his own mouth underneath his own fingers.





He’d kissed Victor.
He’d wanted to kiss Victor.

He … wanted Victor? He wanted Victor?

Not a vague fantasy. Not a trumped up and unreal image twisted in his thoughts for Eros based on words Victor used as a cattle prod for the proper showing of his creation. Not the bare shards of a confusing golden dream that repeated now and then after too long days of training or stress. Not Victor whispering drunken things he hadn’t meant.

(Or might have? Did he?)

Yuri wanted to grab a pillow and pull it down over his head, but he looked to the door rather than pillow. He couldn’t be found with a pillow crushed to his face when Victor got back. He couldn’t live through that. He pushed himself up on his elbows, then his palms, both so sore without any distraction from the feeling, looking at the room around him. Empty and so much bigger and so much smaller at once. So empty without Victor filling up the space and the sound. It made him restless to move. He could get off the bed? Go get his phone from his jacket pocket? But would look weird, too, that he’d moved from here? Would it? Wouldn’t it?

Was he sure he couldn’t just borrow the pillow for a second? Just one?

Instead he sat up and pulled his glasses down, feeling the creaking in his shoulders sockets, and he used his shirt to clear the lenses, amazed, somehow that his fingers aren’t shaking. Everything felt like it was, but nothing actually was. His skin still felt like it was vibrating everywhere, a low grade electric hum that had not beginning and no end and no handle, but his fingers weren’t shaking under his gaze. He took a breath and put his glasses back on. Looking at the empty space, and trying it out again.

He liked Victor.
He loved Victor.




He’d kissed Victor.

That might even be the wrong word.

Was it the wrong word now? Were they passed kissing with that had just happened and flung well off the next rung into making out now? Were there even steps between those? Were there even steps after this, right here, before …

That didn’t make the fact Yuri was sitting in the middle of a bed, Victor’s bed, in the middle of a room dominated by beds, in a room that was basically just a traveling bedroom, in a building made to be full of traveling bedrooms, any less conflicted. He took a breath in, and reminded himself he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move. It would look weird. If he moved. It would look weird. He couldn’t move. Breathe.

Yuri. Breathe. Victor’s voice repeated in this head.



Try again.






He liked Victor.
He loved Victor.


He’d kissed, and, or, made out with Victor.

Right here. On this bed. Because.








He wanted Victor.





And Victor wanted him.







What did that even mean?







Aside from that he might be relieved ice was taking a minute.
(At least as much as he was terribly desperate to hear the door click already.)

[fivetimechamp]

There's a second where he just leans against the door and breathes.

Maybe more than a second. Maybe more like a minute. Eyes open but unseeing, while air moves in and calmly out of his lungs.





He kissed Yuri, and Yuri kissed him back.




He's not surprised by the first thought. Looking back, it could only have been a matter of time before he lost his head and tackled Yuri exactly like he just did on the ice after the free skate. Today, tomorrow, whenever he was sure he'd seen and decoded some message that was meant just for him, that Yuri wanted him, too.

It's the second thought that gives him some pause, because although it wouldn't have surprised him that December in Sochi, or any of the months between then and last April, it's a surprise now. Now, after that morning on the beach with Yuri's panicked string of no no no no no no and how he'd all but shoved Victor away every other time he'd come too close, gotten too flirty, expected too much.

He doesn't know what changed. When it changed. How.

Can he ask? Is that something he can do, tonight, while they're here in this hotel and they don't even have to think about traveling for the next day, when the only thing on their plate is tomorrow's Exhibition that Yuri could do in his sleep? Should he know? Does he need to know? Would Yuri even tell him? He's pretty sure he can count the number of words Yuri has said since Victor! I did great, right? on his two hands.



All of it tumbling in his head when he finally pushes off the door and heads towards the elevators and the ice machine in the little room just next to them, and that's more uncomfortable than he'd like, too. Walking. Acutely aware of just how close Yuri had been pressed against him until bare minutes ago, and whatever he might say and mean about not pushing too far, that doesn't mean he has as much control over his reactions as he might like.

(Would anyone really care if maybe he just stuck his head in the ice machine for a little while, until his blood cools down?)

Finding the room, filling the bucket. He can focus. What does he need to do tonight? Help Yuri ice his hip. Make sure he takes some painkillers and has some food and more water. Make sure he gets some sleep.

He can do all that. Even better, he can do it all right in the room, because he's not at all sure he can focus on anything other than Yuri tonight, or that he wants to share Yuri tonight. Not when everything is changing so quickly and he needs to find his footing before he crashes and ruins it all. Not before they both get on the same page and figure out what this is, what it should be, what they want it to be.

Heading back, he feels a little steadied. (It helps to be sucking on a piece of ice that's slowly melting down his throat and cooling him from the inside out.) None of this is anything they can't handle, is it?

Hoping he's right, when he's finding his key card and sliding it into the lock, waiting for the light to flip before he pushes the door open. "Yuri?"

Swallowing down the sudden and ridiculous fear that Yuri might have just up and left, too panicked or weirded out or ... he doesn't know, hungry? –– to stay, but he's relieved when he steps inside and Yuri's there, right where Victor left him.

Holding up the bucket of ice as proof that he'd done his job, before setting it down to rummage through his bag for one of the several large plastic bags he brings for this exact reason. "Move up and lie on your good side so this can lie on your hip, okay?"

[theglassheart]

He stares at the front of the room, listening to his heart pound in his ears, across his body, in every joint and every inch of his skin. Had he ever realized he had so much of it? Ever cared to even notice? Why is it now, even more, when Victor wasn't here, wasn't touching him? Why doesn't he know whether the sudden, violent startle of his heart is painful or pleasant when the door finally clicks, then shoves open, and it's simultaneously like he can and cannot breathe at the same time.

Like he's blinking up and looking for something to be different?

Something that ... isn't Victor standing there, brandishing an ice bucket, looking just a little untidy but still like he could be holding a miscellaneous trophy and asking for the applause of seconds for getting it, like any other day, any normal day, before beginning to rummage in his bag like it is any other day, and for a second, a very drastic, very sudden, very flooded moment, of blinking, Yuri wonders if he did imagine it all. If he blinked and imagined it all after laying down on the bed after getting back from his award ceremony and that's all it was.

A fever dream from two days of no sleep and so much stress.

The stress of the Grand Prix breaking him all over again. Already.

The request is sensible about enough, normal enough, and Yuri toes off tennis shoes first with some effort, letting them fall off the end of the bed, and lays down, finally stealing one of the pillows, finally clenching the fingers under said pillow slightly like it might somehow become more than featherweight and help him stay on the ground. Have even the smallest clue. How. What. Why. Whether. Is this. Did it, or not. Watching Victor across the room, and settling his head on it, unsteadily.

[fivetimechamp]

Ice in the bag, set aside. Search in the smaller side pocket for the bottle of ibuprofen, and shake out two, before grabbing ice bag and pills both, and heading in to the bathroom to snag one of the smaller towels and run some water into a cup. "Are you hungry?"

His voice echoes a little in the dark bathroom before he shuts the water off and comes back out, towel and ice bag in one hand, pills and plastic cup in the other. Yuri's obeyed, and slid up the bed after taking his shoes off, and he looks a little ... what is it? Wary? Uncertain? It's not quite either, looks more like he's waiting for Victor to do or say something that Yuri isn't looked forward to.

Braced. That's the word. He looks braced for something, but all Victor does is slip onto the bed himself, sitting first and toeing off his own shoes before handing Yuri the pills and the water to take and drink, setting the ice bag down on the towel so he can shrug off his suit jacket and toss it onto the other bed.

(He'd rather change into his sweatpants and t-shirt, but one small step at a time, and he's in no rush, now that he's regained some semblance of sanity.) "I could call for some room service."

They can eat here. That's what room service is for. It exists so that people don't have to ever leave their hotel room, which is perfect, because Victor needs to keep Yuri here. Where there's no one else but the two of them, and all the time in the world.

Mattress shifting and dipping under his weight as he slides further onto it, settling the ice bag, now loosely wrapped in the towel, on Yuri's hip, right where he'd crashed it into the ice.

Doing that flip. Victor's flip. The memory of which is making him smile, soft and fond as he finds the other pillow and drags it under his own head to settle in, pulling both pillow and self across the mattress to lie as close as he can, forehead nearly touching Yuri's, his other hand holding the ice bag there on his hip. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get this for you."

A little. Sorry about the delay, but not about the distraction itself.

His hand uncurls from underneath the pillow to let long, graceful fingers push Yuri's bangs off his forehead. "But it should help now."

[theglassheart]

Yuri is not crazy.

He is actually and very actively, at most times of every day, insanely aware of this.

Most especially during the times when he is feeling like his brain has gone as far into crazy as it can go without actually snapping and it's dragged him the whole way there, with it, even kicking and screaming and fighting as hard as he possibly can. Like when he tried to explain that earlier today before he skated, and all it came out as was shouting I know raw and insensible at the top of his lungs, like a desperate declaration of the fact he wasn't, in fact, crazy ... while sounding, entirely ... crazy.

It's the same right now. Right now, when his breath feels microscopic and his lungs paper thin, when he's taking the pills and swallowing them and then the rest of the water, before holding out the empty cup for Victor. He's already adding those 'sane things' up on his fingertips even without moving them, without looking at them.

Victor's hair, when he's sat down on the end of the bed, was still far more mussed than it ever is even artfully. Victor's shirt, when he takes off his jacket and tosses it away, is still unbuttoned at the top, and his collar is still a little rumpled, and his tie is still hanging loose under that rumpled collar but with the knot down an inch or so, leaving the hollow of his neck framed, right around the skin that's fluttering with his pulse.

When some part of Yuri does toss out the question about the jacket, with mannequin hands stroking the strings on his ribs and his stomach, when it goes sailing away, whether he was supposed to care about the jacket, wants to panic about the jacket, and he's too busy being minutely relieved by the most minor of things, to want to panic about that one yet. Or, maybe, at all.

(Or is it, yet?)

(It's not like he went for his shirt right after?)

(And if he did? It's not like Yuri hasn't seen -- )

But the next breath his face becomes a grimace and his shoulders tighten, even as half of his body tries to curl in, while the rest knows if he doesn't move, stays still, it'll be fine in a few more seconds, at the pressure suddenly applied to his hip without an overwhelming distraction over it. Which it is. It ebbs. Back. Adjusting to the new weight of the towel wrapped ice, and even Victor's hand holding it steady there. Making sure it won't fall.

Victor, who has curled up close. Closer than he ever would have before. It's not like he's never been on a bed with Victor. Discounting the example of two nights ago, and it's other extenuating circumstances. Other times. At home. When he'd ended up laying on one side of Victor's bed or his floor, exhausted from the day. From drills, from laps, from ballet, and jumps, and worn completely through by a soak in the water. When it was just talking to Victor. About the day. His life. His home, history, culture, himself.

It still wasn't ... like this.

It was just as carefully respectful as Phichit would have been years ago.

It wasn't Victor's dragging his pillow over this close, or Victor's forehead so very close it was almost touching his. His eyes all lit up the way they are when he's devised some new insane plan or found some new excitable thing. Even though he's ... just looking at Yuri. Just apologizing for taking so long to get the ice bag. (Long enough ... he could have fallen asleep and had a wild dream? A dream that clarified he wanted the same things, the same person, everyone else on the planet wanted? He pushes at it, trying not to frown in the process.)

Which is right when Victor's fingers press his bangs away, and his eyes almost close.
When he should say something and Victor had asked him questions, hadn't he? About eating?
And really the answer is kind of surprising when thinking about his stomach, not as a sudden volcano.


He even has a slightly baffled note to his voice, "I am kind of hungry."

Caustically, not quite sure he's joking, or can yet. "I feel like I haven't eaten anything in days."

[fivetimechamp]

"You almost haven't."

All amused agreement, while his thumb is smoothing over hair that's still a little sticky with gel and stiff with sweat. "Haven't I been trying to get you eat something since we got here?"

(Shanghai crab! Duck blood! Drunken shrimp!)

Something that's almost a memory tugs at his attention but it's too hazy still. Rice wine, powerful stuff. "Okay, I'll call down in a minute."

First, he wants to make sure everything here is fine, before he goes moving again. It hardly seems possible, but the few minutes in the hallway feel like they've managed to swallow up everything that happened before: Yuri's question, mumbled into his neck and shoulder, his subsequent response, everything that happened after. It all feels a little more like a fever dream than Victor's strictly comfortable with, but it wasn't. He has intimate experience with imagining what might happen, if Yuri were to ... if they were to ... happen, and nothing he'd ever dreamed up before had even come close to that.

Not Yuri's caution, or the way he threw that caution to the wind and decided to try his best to burn Victor to a cinder right on the edge of the mattress, there.

Not quite the way he's looking at Victor now. So he's not going anywhere for the moment, and anyway, Yuri had flinched at the ice settling gently on his hip and Victor's hand holding it there. It'll help, they both know, and so will lying down, and so will the painkillers, but it'll all take a minute.

A minute during which Victor is tempted to throw caution to the winds and let one of the things circling his head come winging out: ridiculous statements, all of them, some jokes about dinner, some dirty jokes about dinner, any number of innumerable questions that he's eager to hear the answers to.

If there are any. Maybe Yuri didn't think about this at all until only a few minutes ago, when he weighed his options and decided he was okay with it. Maybe Yuri still hadn't thought about it.

But all he does is sigh artfully and say, rueful: "You never listen to me," shifting up to kiss the tip of Yuri's nose with deep affection, and then Yuri's temple, where his thumb has been smoothing over his hair and where sometimes Yuri gets a headache that is suspiciously Victor-adjacent.

One last one, aiming for a ticklish spot on his neck, and nuzzling plaintively there once his lips have lifted before he settles back with a sigh and a smile. "I don't think they have katsudon, here."