{ 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 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."

[theglassheart]

Yuri might have been about to roll his eyes at Victor's words, but then Victor was pressing his lips to the tip of Yuri's nose and everything froze for a too long stretch of a second, that was still painfully just a single second. Like the world inverted again. Victor. Kissing his nose. His heart. Giving an unexpected burble of warmth.

He doesn't have time to think more than the word crazy, with its too many bright and dark strings that reached in every direction, before Victor was leaning over further and kissing his temple, before, just as suddenly, his face and pressing it into Yuri's neck. Kissing the skin there and rubbing his face there. Eyelashes and nose and his mouth, and Yuri doesn't know what the sound is that comes out of his mouth.

All shocked surprise, half a laugh, the kind of trying to curl away that has nothing about leaving and everything about trying to breathe, escape, but stuck under Victor's hand, the ice, and Victor's face, pressed into his skin, only able to half-cringe away, shoulder coming up so that it bumps Victor's own or chin or something, all the flood of sparkles that tickle under his skin before Victor pulls away looking far too satisfied.

When the first odd thought is that it would seem a lot less crazy if he was crazy right now,
but his words don't have that.

"We're in China," like it's a reminder, a pat on Victor's head, like Yuri expression hasn't gone a little shy, while his eyes hit Victor's shoulder, and collar, even as he's striving to remember this one. It had been a bit longer, but he had practiced it too. "It's just pork and rice here. Just 猪肉盖浇饭."

If there's a pink creeping into the tops of his cheek as he tries to remember how to pronounce it, and probably gets a third of it wrong, it's just that, of course, he would have looked it up and tried to learn it, right? He'd wanted to win, right? And that was the one thing he attached to every reminder about winning, that wasn't a gold medal or each being the next step to The Grand Prix Finale.

Something that wasn't suddenly the whisper of,

I didn't get gold.


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

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri giggles and squirms and Victor hasn't been drinking, but he feels drunk. What else explains how all he wants to do is keep teasing and tickling and kissing Yuri until the only thing he or Yuri remembers about this night is that neither of them could stop laughing? When he knows he can't just bowl Yuri over, like Maccachin might, because Yuri is sore and the painkillers probably haven't kicked in yet, and he should call for food.

Pulling back enough to pretend to consider Yuri's statement. "Well, it's like a silver medal katsudon, maybe."

He's teasing. Mostly. Yuri did wonderfully and he is proud and the goal is gold at the Grand Prix Final, anyway, so getting gold here or even in Moscow was never really the point, but ...

He really wants to see Yuri win gold.

(Moscow, Moscow. He'll get it there. With the quad flip in his arsenal, he'll be unstoppable, just like Victor was.)

Hmming in exaggerated thoughtfulness even as he's leaning to nudge his nose and then his mouth against Yuri's jaw, teeth scraping daintily against the shell of his ear and the tip of his nose pushing at Yuri's glasses. "Well, let's have them do their best."

It'll be fine, whatever it is. Meat, rice, vegetables: still nothing like what he would want after a competition, but tasty, anyhow, and he leans up to lean his chin on his free hand. "How does the ice feel?"

[theglassheart]

None of this feels real. How is that true? When a second ago he was certain it wasn't, and just as suddenly it still is, and that feels even less real than thinking he might have gone crazy. A dizzying loop, clarifying from a breathless squeal of laughter to Victor's face when he finally pulls away.

Long enough to point out it's probably what Yuri deserves. A silver medal meal for a silver medal weekend. And how is it his gaze shift just a little, linking it too fast to the silver of Victor's hair, too, even as his heart feels the falter of disappointment.

Of doing good, but not good enough. Of falling apart before he started.

Victor is making that expression that is nothing like Victor actually thinking, and that sound, xaggerated and dragging, not helping Yuri's heart, like it's asking him to defend what happened, how he dared to fall short with Victor behind him, but then Victor leans forward and his heart gives such a hard leap he can't tell how it can hurt, stop, scream, explode violently all at once.

His teeth -- his teeth?! -- foreign, baffling, moist, just faintly sharp -- his teeth -- running along the edge of Yuri's ear, dragging, and there's a slam of heat everywhere, so overwhelming, so damning inappropriate in his every sudden bodily reaction, or exactly appropriate and terrifying in the absolution of it alone, that there's a whimper escaping from Yuri's mouth while his hand shoots out, fingers clutching in the first thing they can even slam into in front of them.

[fivetimechamp]

Stop distracting me so I can call down is what's about to come out of his mouth next, a little tease to make Yuri blush and make his eyes shine, but he never gets the chance because all of a sudden there are fingers sinking into the thin fabric of his dress shirt and the thicker, but better fitted fabric of his vest right at the inner curl of his shoulder, first pushing him back and then yanking him forward, while his eyebrows shoot up and a stupid, surprised noise slips out from between his teeth like a string of question marks.

Almost surprising enough to miss that sound Yuri makes, but not quite, because it skips across his skin like a pebble on water and sinks in with a hiss of steam directly over his gut. From. That? Just his teasing? After he'd tackled Yuri on the ice and thrown himself in a hug at Yuri only moments ago here and then picked Yuri up to deposit him on his lap, and Yuri had only managed that one agonizingly slow exploration of Victor's forehead, temple, cheek, lip, in return, but this ––

It's like yesterday, just before Eros.

Don't ever take your eyes off me.

Words written in fire across his ribs, as impossible to disobey as they were unnecessary, but Yuri's grip, that sound, have the same effect now, with Victor's wide eyes staring at him in perfect compliance.

Anything. Anything. Anything. He'd do anything. Whatever Yuri wanted. What sort of black magic is this? Like Yuri directing him on the dance floor, and Yuri gripping his hand yesterday, and Yuri's forehead searing against his, and isn't he the one who's supposed to give the orders and be obeyed?

How is it he feels ready to live or die on a single word from someone who doesn't even know what they're doing to him? And why does he love it so much? More than seems right. Like the bliss of pure oxygen, whiting out his senses, deftly removing any attempt at sanity or shame or self-restraint, and if Yuri liked that –– if Yuri wants more ––

Victor certainly isn't going to deny him.

Leaning a little more carefully, his balance thrown all off by Yuri's grip on his shirt and vest, to run his mouth up the cord of muscle at the side of Yuri's neck, ending in the soft skin just below his ear, and nipping there, teeth light. There's a particularly satisfied –– it might even be smug note –– in the rumble of his voice, that gets said low and a little more hoarse than he'd ever admit to, with such little provocation, right there. "You're going to rip my shirt."

There are easier ways to get rid of it sharp and sticking in the back of his throat, but he does his best to swallow it. That would probably be a little more teasing that Yuri is strictly comfortable with.

[theglassheart]

Yuri is going to die.

He's going to die on feeling like something so small, so strange, has turned him into steam and incoherence. He's going to die on the startled look in Victor's eyes, gone wide and white in surprise, and his hand. His hand is clutching Victor's shirt, and his vest, and his tie, and everything else doesn't exist. Never has. Never did. Never might again.

Because Victor leans right back in. Victor's mouth is on his neck, again, all open and exposed laying here, with the ice and the pillow, and his fingers under the later might be just as white, bone tight clenched, as the ones he saw a second ago. This isn't like those soft, slow, gentle kisses that happened here first or even the messy exuberant ones after.

Not even the way it was earlier, all of it part of a rushing inferno, when Victor was everything, everywhere and everything was drowning on fire. This. This is still different. When Victor's mouth is running up his throat, all pressed attention, all exposed and all electric haywire shocks, each new centimeter, slamming his chest, his stomach ... other places.

Before Victor bites him, bites him, and there's something small, something helpless, confused and aroused and wanting things he's never so much as more than barely heard or read of, still coming out of his mouth, escaping his throat, tongue, teeth, lips. Fingers clenching harder, desperate, insensibly. It's not even like a second ago. Makes it a vague brush of shocked heat, when this is a snap of lightning. Blinding. Blistering. Gone, again, in a flash.

And Victor is saying.



Victor is saying.

He's what -- ?


He's ---


Oh. God.


Oh. Oh. He is.

He is going to die.

He can't even scramble backward, and most certainly almost all of him wants to. (That a lie. That's such a lie it's painfully, and blatantly, embarrassing. Half of him wants to run. Half of him wants Victor closer.

Is dying instead on this space between them.
The space to speak. The space not touching.

The even part-seconds of Victor not doing it again.)

"Sorry." He's trying to let go. He's laying on the bed. He is not falling through the bed and ground or the sky or space or time. But letting go, pulling his hand back so fast to himself, fingers crushed into his palm, fist to his own chest, (but maybe the one under the pillow only clenches tighter in response), makes him feel weightless and embarrassed and absolutely confused, absolutely in the wrong, and does nothing to stop the way his body is fire. Everywhere. All of it.

Over something that is probably insignificant to everyone in the world. Including Victor.
Being quietly, amusedly, admonished for almost ruining one of Victor's expensive things. "Sorry."

[fivetimechamp]

"Oh, no, no."

Shaking his head, and lifting his hand from the towel-covered ice to slip his fingers around those that Yuri is trying to clutch, like he might be able to forcibly stop himself from grabbing Victor, like he has to forcibly stop himself from grabbing Victor. As if Victor could ever want him to stop.

His fingers are probably cold, but Yuri's are warm, and even if he doesn't put them back on his chest, his shoulder, his clothes, his self, he laces his through them loosely and pries them gently from Yuri's chest to tuck the back of that hand against his own. "Please feel free."

It's only a shirt. Only a suit. (If a nice one. Bespoke. The sort of expensive you can feel in the near invisible stitches of the seams, the particular heft and weight and gloss that is the hallmark of rich fabric.)

There are other suits in the world, and he has no illusions about how easy it would be to replace, between sponsors and his own means. "At least it would die happy."

Ecstatic, really. Thrilled. After all, a shirt's only purpose in life is to be put on and taken off and to look good while doing so, and if it has somehow made him more attractive to Yuri (and how is that a thought he gets to have, suddenly, today, after considering it a lost cause?) then he will have considered its duty done.

Besides.

Do you have any idea how long I've wanted you to want to rip my shirt off floats around his head in a haze of smoke, but he shakes it away, opts instead for: "I care more about you than about any shirt."

[theglassheart]

Yuri freezes at the first no, both hearing the tone that makes it mean what it isn't saying and caught thrown for a loop by that same word. A denial of his request, like he couldn't be forgiven his trespass of not thinking, not being able to do anything but hold on to Victor because of Victor.

Which catches with a strange sudden tense of muscles, only pulling his arm back even more, before he realizes that shock that makes his body reflexively jerk back slightly is just cold. Is just Victor's hand, lifted from the ice and lacing itself, his fingers, with the offending hand he'd had been clutched to Yuri's chest and saying three words that make so little sense his eyes just snap up.

Snap to Victor's face as he keeps speaking, and the next words make even less sense, leave him staring confused and harder. Feel free ... to rip his shirt? It would die a ... what. Yuri gets, humiliatingly enough, over and over, since Victor kissed him (keeps kissing him; he keeps kissing Victor, somehow) that the divide here is more epic than he has any words to even explain.

But he can feel it. In every bewildering throb of his skin.
Every passing second staring at Victor right now.

A painful, sheering separateness.
An endless, dwarfing ocean.

Not like. Not like.

When his eyes even dropping down to Victor's chest in that clutch of confusion, cold spreading up the back of his hand, from it's back, from between his fingers, across his palm, up across his wrist, it's still doesn't. Nothing does. Absolutely nothing. It feels like that spread of cold is seeping suddenly from his breastbone outward. It's dumbfounding, and his brows are knitting. When it doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense.

Not what Victor is saying.

Not that his hands were on any part of Victor's clothing altogether.

A second ago. Before he left the room, when he, he had to have been, his hands had. Victor's suit. Victor's clothes that were always a cut apart from everything. Everyone. Anyone in a room with him. Made for television, and full spread pages. Worn with the ease like it was nothing. Like he was king. Even now. Without his jacket, shirt undone, collar anything but straight, tie hanging loose. Part of his shirt obviously rumpled, out over the edge of his vest, where Yuri's hand had just been.

A camera would have loved it. The world would have. Anyone who wasn't Yuri might have done something, anything, more. The more that didn't miss each of these comments, because he didn't. He wasn't. But more. Anyone else would have done more, he was sure. More than suddenly feel it had been profane to have even touched it any of those times. Catching up with him like he'd slipped on ice, and was only now feeling himself slam down.

When he doesn't even know, he doesn't even know where he is,
and what he's thinking, been thinking, by the time his eyes get back to Victor.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri doesn't answer, and doesn't answer, and only looks more troubled the longer he doesn't answer, so Victor slips his hand into Yuri's palm and pulls it close to his own chest, his other hand sneaking back from where it had been lying on the pillow near Yuri's hair to cover them both. Like he's holding something precious, fragile: an egg, or a bubble about to burst. Yuri's hand, between his, one warm and one still cool from the ice. "It's only a shirt, Yuri."

It doesn't matter. What matters is that Yuri was losing his mind just as totally as Victor was, on a few kisses and one light nibble, and Victor's not sure he has words to convey how much, what that means.

What he's prepared to give up for Yuri to want him, too. How little anything else matters, when he's already paused his career, opted out of another season's worth of medals and accolades.

But. "I shouldn't have teased you." Which is as soft as it is apologetic, and punctuated with lifting his right hand from Yuri's to run his thumb gently over Yuri's jaw, fingertips settling soft as a breath on Yuri's neck. "I only meant you don't have to apologize." Not before, and not now, either. He can touch Victor as gently as he wants, or grab his shirt as roughly as he wants, or not touch him at all and just ask for food and water and some sleep, finally, and Victor will go along with any of it. All of it. As long as he can stay here and be grateful that this is suddenly in his hands at all.

"How could a shirt possibly mean anything to me, when you want to kiss me?"

How could anything, is the better question. He was restless and listless before, when it was an unrequited and thwarted love from across thousands of miles, but now he's fairly certain he'll be completely useless, hung on a single look or touch or kiss. How does he communicate that? That Yuri could do anything, could have whatever he wanted, as much or as little as he cared. That Victor is happy to give it all. "I thought it was impossible."

[theglassheart]

Only. Like he needs the reminding. That it is nothing. That he's incapable of something, dwarfed and overcome and not enough, for something that amounts to precisely nothing. To the world. To Victor who has dragged his hand across these few inches, that Yuri can't remember if were more when he first laid down here and scooted over. If it became closer, again, when he'd -- they'd -- when --

But Victor's voice intrudes on that thought, with a soft set of words, that Yuri can't tell if is worse or better. Victor apologizing, or something like it. Like Victor had stepped over some invisible line in how Yuri had to be 'handled.' Even now. Even with all of ... this. Which is wrong. Victor hasn't isn't the--But Yuri's heart gives a confused little mewl in his chest and his head has tipped into the warm touch against his jaw before he's even entirely registered that it's happening.

But Victor keeps talking, and these words, they aren't any less confusing, and something, somewhere, always waiting for just the right moment to strike, holding all the cards. The ones he doesn't hasn't wanted to look at, sets them out neatly, like cards, like cones on the ice, like columns, that might as well be bars, slamming down into place, cold and hard and solid, even when they have no weight.

Don't you know how long I've wanted you?


I have for a ... a long time

I thought it was impossible.

As though anything could be impossible for Victor. Anyone. Who could have had anyone. Who could have had anything, or anyone for anything, at anytime. Just snapped his fingers. As though he hadn't shown up and taken over Yuri's whole life, without any in-depth explanation, and Yuri had given it all to him. Eventually. As thoughts, neatly lined up, dashed down like running steps, none of those words of Victor's made sense, even in a line. Even as they form a single line of protracted conversation almost.

Except. Except. Except. Unless they weren't, and then they probably did. If this really was just a dream, maybe all of it made sense, sheerly because it didn't have to then. But, if it was, he thought, helpless not to, even now, eyes stuck on this image of his smaller hand, tucked so securely into Victor's long, delicate fingers, right there against Victor's chest, if it was, he still didn't quite want to end just yet. Not just yet.

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri's still silent, looking at his hand, tucked into Victor's, and Yuri is often quiet, but this seems different. Hard on the tail of another apology, as if there was absolutely anything for him to be sorry about, when that was precisely the reaction Victor wanted: laughter, relaxation, reaching for him.

How could any of that be something he'd think Victor wouldn't want?

So he waits for Yuri to meet his eyes again, but it keeps not happening, and he's never been very good at trying to read Yuri's mind. Wasn't today, certainly, and that's the thought that spurs him to ask, quiet and coaxing: "What are you thinking?"

Maybe today would have been easier if he'd asked that earlier. Maybe Yuri would have been able to work through everything with him, like usual, instead of holding it in until he exploded in the garage in tears and shouts that Victor can still see and hear all too clearly.

Was some part of him still worried about that? Was he being sincere with that raw and angry I know!, or does he still think Victor wants to quit, that maybe he might somehow ... fail Victor?

Whatever it is, they can work it out together, but he wants to know. Has to know. If they never have another day like today again, it'll be too soon.

[theglassheart]

It's a quiet long pause, while Yuri feels that want slip and slip and slide and slide through him. Making him feel translucent. Making him feel weak, and confused, and certain all at once. About sanity, but, also, about this thing. This thing rattling around inside of him. One moment fire, and one moment fear, and one moment laughter, and one moment despair.

Like something wild trying to get out of his skin, and when quiet, when irrefutable to removal, like it has already sunk claws in and those throbbing places, they were like scars, too. This constant knowledge. Like everyone else, and not like everyone else. All at once. Thrown and semi-shattered, and still -- still? -- he didn't want to let go of this? Even if it wasn't?

The question when it comes is quiet and leading. Requesting him.

How many million times has Victor asked. Not usually like this. (Nothing is like this.)
But at the end of long days, or random points when Yuri gets stumped. Not often. But present.

It makes his heart seize. He knows the answers, but does saying it shatter everything. The way letting a translucent, floating bubble land on your finger from the breeze pops it. What are you thinking? That he wants to place his hand against Victor's heart, to feel it, just one last time. What are you thinking? That he wants to kiss Victor and find himself dissolved and remade there, one last time. Before.

Yuri pressed his lips, a torn war between shreds of an ache that had no edges and the longing urge that was every part of his heart saying speak, speak, because Victor asked it of him, and Victor listened, and Victor was the one he spoke to. That reminding him of burying his head in Victor's shoulder. That reminded him of It's still just me, but in a different way.

The only way that it's really ever matters in the end. The way it had on the beach that day.
He doesn't look up. He can't. But he unpresses his lips. They shift against each other for a breath.

He doesn't think he could make this admission to anyone who wasn't Victor, both because he does and doesn't understand.

"I'm trying to figure out if this is real. Or --" And he can't help the way his fingers tighten on Victors under his gaze. Not ready. Not ready in the slightest. Maybe he'll never be ready to let go of Victor, no matter what he's convinced himself about the year and December even. "--it's just another dream you're part of."

[fivetimechamp]

It takes Yuri a little while to answer, but this silence is one Victor knows and is familiar with and doesn't mind waiting through, the kind where Yuri is working through his thoughts and trying to find the words to express something he may not even fully understand himself.

But he always gets there in the end, and he does now, too, even if what he says is a little surprising –– and that second part ... but he'll circle back to that later. For now, he can at least solidly confirm the first, and maybe put Yuri's mind at ease. Even if it feels a little like

I've been wondering if you secretly want to quit.

Of course I don't ––

I know!

but it can't hurt to say it out loud, can it?

Not for him, either. Even if he hasn't been asking that question, precisely, it's not like he's fully wrapped his head around how much has changed.

(Everything. Everything. The whole world is different, now.) "It's real."

The proof in his hand, warm now against Yuri's, where his thumb is running lightly along Yuri's skin. In how close they are, right now. In the faint buzz of his mouth, that hasn't been kissed in so long. In his rumpled shirt, and the blush on Yuri's cheeks. "When you wake up tomorrow, it'll still be here."

And the day after. And the one after that. And probably the next foreseeable days, because it's been so long and even when Victor had no hope and nothing but anger and wanted to cut it out of himself or forget it, he couldn't. Yuri stuck with him that whole time, and who is he to argue with that?

The idea of no longer loving Yuri is ludicrous.

Besides, there's photographic proof that this is real, if the cameras were quick on the draw and Victor's betting they were. It's hard to argue that something the whole world saw simply doesn't exist.

But that would be logical, and feelings aren't logical, and this has changed everything. He's not the only one who is finding it difficult to adjust, and Yuri ... well, Yuri has even less experience with things of this nature than he does.

Still, if he can prove it in some way, he will. "What can I do that will help?

[theglassheart]

It's funny. That's the American phrase. It took him so long to understand it.

Years. He's not certain he really does still. Being said before things that are not funny at all. They meant 皮肉, which doesn't translate to English directly as its meaning or history, any better than it's funny, used as irony, or sarcasm, but twisting the true face of an idea by calling it by a falsehood, truly translated to Japanese. Especially not without incident and insult.

Victor says the first two words and Yuri doesn't know whether he believes Victor, or himself. He's still a little shamefaced that it managed to put itself into words, and those words came out of this mouth, and Victor didn't' vanish, which means Victor is still keeping them, and the admission of his weakness. Again. Even as Victor is telling him this isn't the end. Only the beginning.

But he wants to. He thinks he does, while he watches Victor's thumb begin to brush his skin. Watches it like he can almost feel the warmth the suffuses his skin, without asking, without warning. Floods soft and slow, before he asks a question Yuri's not sure he was expecting. Definitely, a question Victor did not ask, has not asked, during anything like this before.

Was there ever a day like this before? Not even since Victor arrived, but ever in his life?

There's something to the uncertain surprise of it that makes his gaze lift, and it's there, there in that second he remembers the strange words, when the only thing to say he's already said once today. It's quiet, and if it's just a soft set of two words from his mouth, it seems to making everything in him shiver as he whispers the same thing he shouted, "Just stay."

(偶然 is still the better one, but he's not sure any other words matter when he's looking at Victor again.)

[fivetimechamp]

Just stay, he says, softer than the echoing version that Victor thinks must still be bouncing around that garage, all alone now with the cars and people all gone home.

Just stay, as if it might be a sacrifice or a chore.

Just stay, as if Victor could or would be anywhere else, unless someone took him by force.

But Yuri's looking at him so shyly, and his hand feels so delicate in Victor's, and as much as he doesn't know why this is so unexpected for Yuri, he isn't going to let that keep him from doing anything and everything he can to reassure him. "Yes, I'll stay."

Smile small and fond, the quiet curl of warmth in St. Petersburg's blue and glowing summer nights, when the sun never quite leaves entirely. "There's nowhere else I want to be."

Which is true. But not everything, and he should be absolutely honest, shouldn't he, should be willing to offer everything he can to ease Yuri's mind. "And no one else I want."

Not to be with, although that's true, too, but it isn't as true. Isn't the whole truth. And Yuri deserves nothing less.