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

[theglassheart]

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

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

It took forever, and then it was just over.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

[theglassheart]

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.

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't know what to do with any of the words after Victor agrees. After saying this time, tonight, here, now, things he hadn't earlier. Not that Yuri thinks there would have been a good way for that to go. That anything put into his hands at that point wouldn't have shattered on impact, too much needing an outlet. But. That was his problem. Not Victors.

Kind of like these. When he feels tired, every part of him, also, so tired, so much more tired than he realized, even if the laying down is helping with the pain. Marginally. Likely the painkillers, too. But maybe not those yet. It's still only been a few minutes. Mostly, he thinks. Uncertain. Not wanting to turn and look at the clock anymore than pick up and turn over the last thing Victor says.

At least the first two are vaguely, he's not even sure, something like ... distantly comforting.

Something like ... at least not requiring further personal mortification
(and that maybe make his heart give a small squeeze).


He doesn't want to comment on the last one or pull it apart. (The sticky fingers, prying up edges, in his head don't care, but he can try to push them before he makes that a very terminal statement, the kind that could be said to anyone on a given night. But it does, anyway, too.) He's not certain he even wants to comment on what he, himself, just said, about thinking about Victor, here and now, as a dream. But he can try not to look away, even if it flickers his gaze, before returning it to Victor's face, and try to find something else, which he does without too much turning over of cups.

Instead, he offers something that's phrased almost as an apology, "We were supposed to be ordering dinner."

Before they got distracted, again. This time not as amusing as last time. Had he actually laughed at Victor then?

[fivetimechamp]

It doesn't seem to help. Yuri keeps not responding and not responding and not responding, and when he looks away and back, Victor's expression has slid more towards rueful than earnest. "I keep doing this wrong."

Which is probably not the best response to Yuri's reminder about ordering dinner, but he's pretty sure Yuri wouldn't be ending this conversation if he'd done the right thing, said the right thing, found, somewhere in himself, the right answer, but he hadn't. Again? Again. He's used to being on the back foot with Yuri, not quite knowing what to do, but when was the last time it seemed like Yuri couldn't talk to him him at all, that wasn't today? Sometimes it seems like their entire relationship is based on Victor skipping ahead by a few pages or a chapter and being surprised when Yuri's still working out the chapter index.

But it's never been so important before, has it? He's never gotten the chance to say things like this before, and have Yuri understand them, but it doesn't look like Yuri does, and he has no other way of proving those fears wrong before morning breaks and nothing has changed.

Well, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe Yuri doesn't want or need to hear any of it, and Victor should just swallow it all back down again, anyway, like with the earlier you don't have to say anything! still ringing admonishment in his head, so he lifts Yuri's hand to press it against his mouth, and then his chest, with a brief and apologetic smile. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'll call down and I'm sure they'll be quick."

Even if letting go of Yuri's hand to be able to do any of that feels so fundamentally wrong he can count the number of twists in his stomach in protest.

[theglassheart]

Is it wrong that he wants to kiss Victor?

Besides the fundamentally cruel whisper of a laugh in the back of his head at the sheer bareness of the question, the concept, the opposition of sensible realism, that makes something in his center shiver at a snap of bitter cold. But right now. Right in this second. It's a strange urge. All of this is full of strange urges and even stranger feelings. He doesn't know, while Victor is kissing his fingers that tremble just slightly, and saying he's sorry. When Victor somehow thinks he's doing everything wrong, and Yuri is worried for an all too clear moment, he might take it back.

Has to remind himself it hasn't been even a minute since Victor said he would stay.

He would stay and wanted to be nowhere else.


Yuri's head is never the best to him.


But somehow all of this is real, Victor says. Real, real, real. (Real?) Victor is laying here, kissing his fingers, and apologizing, even just the brush of those words, and Yuri wants to kiss him. Again. And apologize. Again. Like it's the only thing he knows how to do here. Even though Victor keeps telling him to stop. Keeps telling him there's nothing for him to apologize for like those things don't fill an entire arena.

He nods, though, without chasing the impulse, without leaning toward Victor,
watching that strange new urge chase itself around his chest. "Okay."

[fivetimechamp]

Well, he can do this right, anyway. Roll towards the edge of the bed and push himself up to sitting, one hand raking through his hair to resettle it while the other finds the phone.

The front desk is gracious. He's probably ordering off-menu, but they're used to accommodating the particular diets of athletes here, and he's sure no one will bat an eye at the pork and rice, steamed vegetables, dumplings, and tea he orders. There's a brief moment when he wonders if he should ask for some champagne, too, but Yuri doesn't drink during competition season and it wouldn't be worth it to have by himself.

The polite voice at the other end of the line asks him to please forgive the wait, they'll send the food up fresh as soon as it's ready, in about fifteen to twenty minutes, and thanks him for thinking of them before he hangs up, and shifts to look over at his shoulder at Yuri. Hair rumpled and creased with sweat and what's left of his gel, ice on his hip, still wearing the clothes he'd changed into back at the arena.

Along with that expression Victor doesn't quit know what to do with, again. Braced. Every time Victor scares it off, it sneaks back in, turning Yuri's usual amused silence into something full of trap doors over pits lined with spikes. "It'll be up soon," he says, instead of anything else, and settles back onto the mattress and his own pillow with a sigh, though he stays on his back this time instead of reaching for Yuri or crowding him, only turns his head to watch him, while his hands land lightly on his chest and stomach and stay there. "But there's time for you to shower, if you want. It might help with the soreness."

[theglassheart]

Victor rolls away and goes to the phone and Yuri's freed hand finds the ice pack, to make sure it's still settled, still balanced, even though Victor had never let it fall and he'd never moved enough to make it fall. Still it's solid under his fingers, like the bed is under him, when his eyes follow Victor.

Victor with his fingers in his hair. Victor talking politely on the phone. Victor beautiful in his waistcoat that hugs the top of his shoulders, and the sides of his chest, effortlessly, like it was made to breathe with him. Victor who has never not been gorgeous.

It's not that he ever forgot. Not that he hadn't .. been effected Victor.
He's not sure anyone could ever said that with a straight face.

It's just. It's just that he'd tried to shove this out, too, hadn't he? After that day. After they agreed to take each other as they were, to work together, as themselves. That morning on the beach. And he'd done all he could. To try and not see Victor as everything Victor represented and to see Victor as he was.

Not just the untouchable world champion. Not just the heartthrob of that world renown wink and perfect face and body or graceful god of every competition of his million hidden posters. Not just ... not just any of those things. Victor, instead, or at least Victor, too. Just Victor. Just Victor who got over enthusiastic with delight about the most trivial things. Just Victor who could as easily devolve to pouting worse than the triplets. Just Victor who loved Maccachin and the ocean and their programs ... and even Yuri.

It worked a lot of the time. Even most of the time.

Only started and startled and broke from time to time when Victor had gotten too close, too fast, said something too audacious. But most of that had stopped after the beach, too, with the rest of the masks he asked about. Only sometimes happened when his body reacted the wrong way during training, during Eros, during seduce me with all you have, or his exhaustion gave way to strange dreams that muddled his skin and his heart.

He was only human, and he was mentally weaker than most.
He'd done his best to shove it into his pillow, into the back of his mind.



Maybe it had never worked.

It didn't explain Victor. But it might have explained him.



Yuri's thoughts have to pause when Victor is hanging up and coming back to him, when he's taking in Victor's more worn expression while Victor crawls back on to the bed. To his side. But lays on his back, hands safely on his own body, and only turns to look at him. Victor who looks. What is this? Crestfallen? Almost sad? Disappointed? Again? Because of him? Whose first suggestion is that he should get up and go?

Which makes his heart stumble about surprised. Confused. Find itself aching for a touch that doesn't come, and when and where did that even come from. He'd always been ... uncomfortable with being touched too often. By anyone. Everyone. Had to adjust to even Victor's rare, but severely overabundant, displays of sudden affection. Had found himself loosening into it, tiny steps at a time, making it okay to touch Victor back.

A hand on his arm. A hug. Shoving at him in the middle of a pile.

Nothing like this. Never like this. Not this long all at once. Not with anyone.
Maybe not since he was child curled in his mother's arms.



It's not even that it's not a sound suggestion. It is. He would have by now on any other day. He'd have showered. They'd have planned where to go for food. They'd be critiquing everything that had happened on the ice. It's a new pattern, only the fourth time that even fits, but it had a pattern. One decidedly broken on only it's fourth round.

Even if his heart and his stomach were confused, were complaining, were telling him no no no no, over and over, about the idea of getting up, the idea of leaving, of moving even further than this sudden, untouching divide, Victor wasn't wrong. His muscles were sore. His skin probably still sticky with dried sweat. His hair a mess from that and the gel.

It made even less sense, suddenly, that Victor had been touching him. At all, still, but especially if he was still an absolute mess amid it. There's a breath out his nose, before, pushing up toward sitting, "I probably should."

[fivetimechamp]

Yuri looks uncertain, but then, Yuri has looked uncertain for the lion's share of the time since they've been back up here, so it's probably for the best that Victor encourage him on this, even if he's not sure what this expression means, or if Yuri's still worried about the reality of ... this ... or if Yuri is having some second thoughts. None of which would be surprising, or should be unexpected, and he may just have to weather them until Yuri has come to whatever conclusion that will manage to stick.

(He can hope for one, and still be prepared for the others, can't he?)

In the meantime, whatever else he is or has suddenly become to Yuri, he's still the coach and Yuri is still his skater who needs to unwind from his free skate, and that means that no matter how much Victor might want to keep him here until he's coaxed out all those thoughts and worries and questions he can see chasing themselves around Yuri's head, he has to be the one to push him into taking care of the more immediate physical needs, first.

They have all night, anyway. Or, they have until Yuri falls asleep, which, if precedent is anything to go by, probably won't be long after food and ice and hot water.

But Yuri seems to come to some kind of decision, admitting that a shower would be a good idea, and Victor's near hand goes to his back as he's pushing himself up, firm and steady and it only lingers a little longer than usual, or so he tells himself. "It'll feel good."

It probably will. Hot water and steam relaxing sore muscles and helping untie knots both physical and mental. "Not as good as your family's hot spring, but it'll have to do for now."

Strange to feel that it'll be a relief to get back to Hasetsu for himself as much as for Yuri, but the thought only surfaces before he waves it away again and forgets about it. "Take as long as you want." Which may be true for more than just the shower. Should he add that he'll still be here when Yuri's done, or is that too much, not necessary, would Yuri think he's just teasing him again?

(He'll wait until the bathroom door closes before he gives in to the temptation to pull Yuri's pillow over his own face and press it down.)

[theglassheart]

Sitting up makes his back hurt more. Muscles that had gotten the break from being upright not having to support standing or even sitting singing suddenly their great song of unpleasantness. Even though Victor's touching his back. An easy, familiar kind of touch, that lands and eventually fades, too, because he's setting the ice pack on the bed and getting off of it.

(While Victor stays there. Making Yuri feel even more adrift.)

Victor doesn't say anything not related to this new, sensible point and Yuri stops at his own bed, not hesitating for a very long second before he's pulling his sleep clothes from under his pillow. But he does hesitate just for a second at the bathroom door, looking back to Victor, on the bed, fingers on the door handle, before he pushes himself in.

There's a vague flicker to being here sometime earlier, something heavy and grey, but it thankfully doesn't clarify for him, while he's depositing his sleep clothes on the counter and turning toward the shower itself. The water goes on, not even needing to warm up, and it's truly idiotic that he looks toward the door, like it might go flying open, when his hands find the hem of his shirt. He's an idiot. He is. Absolutely. He's glad he can't be seen by anyone. Victor.

The shirt gets pulled off and tossed on the floor. Socks, and pants, and briefs following shortly after. Tries not to shiver, as goosebumps prickle his skin on contact with the air, and he tries not to look there again. It's almost wrong how right Victor is. It's the second best feeling to hit his body when the hot water is everywhere and he closes his eyes, body shivering from the contact.

The best, the best is still -- and he can't believe he's blushing in the shower, even now, while his skin is already flushing under the heat of the water -- is still earlier. With Victor.




Second might not even be correct either at the hazy number of images that come back.