{ 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]

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.

[fivetimechamp]

Even from beneath the pillow, he can hear the water turning on, just like, a few minutes later, he can hear it change in sound and consistency, when the stream is hitting Yuri instead of the tub floor.

But that way lies madness. He can't think about it, can't wonder about it, can't allow himself a few harmless daydreams about it. Hasn't he already done enough, today? How much more thoughtless does he need to be before he recognizes that Yuri is ...

Not uninterested. Not un-invested. Nothing he's said or done tonight has been an outright rejection in the way Victor is used to it being from him ––

(and he should ask, needs to know, when did that change, how did it change, when did it go from no no no no no to that soft but certain onegai?)

–– but it's certainly troubling him. Making him uncomfortable in ways obvious enough that Victor groans into the pillow and idly considers smothering himself for his idiocy. Except Yuri wouldn't like that, either, probably. Would be deeply unimpressed with Victor's histrionics, the way he always is, quiet exasperation and fond patience while he waits for Victor to realize that he's being too ... too. Excited. Physical. Whatever his too is, whatever flavor of too much he's foisted on Yuri might be on that particular day, at that particular moment. It could be anything.

But Yuri doesn't look exasperated or patient or even fond right now, aside from the few moments Victor had managed to surprise a laugh out of him, and that had been more because Yuri is ticklish than anything else. No: it's bothering him. Victor is bothering him. Troubling him. Worrying him. And so Victor has to make sure that when Yuri comes back, he does better.

Which means ... if Yuri is embarrassed about lack of experience, or nervous about expectations, Victor should probably go ahead and change while Yuri isn't here to panic about the sudden loss of clothing, right? A thought that finally spurs some action, settling the pillow back on the bed while Victor pushes up, raking his hands through his hair distractedly, and makes for his bag to find something a little more comfortable to wear.

[theglassheart]

The water is wonderful. Clarifying in a way that doesn't quite really mark up the same way as clearing up anything in his head, but it does bring his focus down to his skin. To the heavy exhaustion in every inch of his body, like bricks. To the pain in all his muscles, and even leaves him for a half minute examining the bruise on his side that is well into coloring.

It'll be darker by morning, and it'll be sore through the exhibition, but he deserves it -- and strangely, the thought that truly sticks, is he earned it.

Tried it. Both succedded and failed it and would be trained on it.

(And - and - and - no. Not yet. Not yet.)


It isn't like he couldn't skate Stay Close to Me in his sleep, too, at this point. Even if it will be the first time for Prix itself. The first time people are watching him, while Victor is at the edge. A shadow of his shadow, inside the shadow of the flip he'd done the day before.

He doesn't regret it. That, too, is a thought that sticks in the heat.

Not the flip.



(Not kissing Victor? Echoes softly right after.




There's a wobble. A clench.
An uncertain blink and sigh.

No. No, maybe not that at all,
if he set it apart from everything it evoked.)


But still his fingers raise, brushing his own skin slowly under the hot water. His fingertips against his lips. His cheek. His temple. Against the edge of his ear and slowly down the line of his throat. It's not the same, nowhere near the same, and still, everything under his skin aches toward those points he presses. His mind filling with images and the barest echoes of how overwhelming, how everything it had felt in the second.




Why.


Why. The door in his head that was closed harder than anything else he'd closed away in the days and weeks and months after the beach. When he'd stopped asking why Victor was there and why him without ever asking, without ever having an answer. He'd accepted Victor was there, Victor was training him, Victor was prepping him for the Grand Prix Finale, Victor would be there until the end of this year.

Why. Like a fist beating lightly against a wall. His heart against his ribs.
No insult and no curiosity, no hundred answers he gives himself, knows.




As much as he's not aiming to take forever, not forgetting he only has about fifteen minutes, and really that's enough time for a shower like Victor says, this isn't the springs. He can't just stay here, put a towel on his head, and close his eyes and drift away on the heat and the steam.

There's nowhere to even sit because it's just a shower, and eventually that means he has to turn off the water and go back out there to Victor and, soon, dinner. (And the Gala, and training, and Moscow, and and and

and Victor.)

So, off the water goes and he pulls himself a towel, drying off.

[fivetimechamp]

The first thing he does is sift through his luggage, searching for and eventually pulling out a soft black v-neck t-shirt, of the sort he's been wearing regularly around Yu-topia and the Ice Palace, between practice and the warm weather and absolutely no need to be fashionable or sharply dressed or anything other than comfortable. Anything other than just him.

Just Victor. What Yuri said he wanted all those months ago. (And now ... ?)

Followed by a well-worn and equally soft pair of sweatpants, pale-gray and light enough to wear as pyjamas, which is probably for the best, tonight.

Clothes found and tossed onto the top of the bed, he takes down a hangar from the closet, unbuttons his way out of the suit's waistcoat, undoes his cufflinks, the tie slithering out of his collar. Trousers, once off, carefully aligned on the wire, followed by shirt and waistcoat and the jacket he'd tossed aside and immediately forgotten about, and he pauses for a moment as he hangs the suit up, looks at himself in the full length mirror on the inside of the door. Black shirt, gray sweatpants, bare feet. His hair gone rumpled from where he'd brushed it neatly back earlier, all those pressed lines (first crisp, later ruined –– by Yuri, by Yuri, Yuri's hands on his shoulders, Yuri's breath on his neck, Yuri's fingers knotting into his shirt and his suit) looking a little sadly dulled.

But he feels more comfortable. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, maybe there is no right thing, today, maybe there is only varying levels of screwing things up, but he hopes Yuri won't take it the wrong way, read too much into it. What else could he do, aside from ask for a separate hotel room so he could be out of Yuri's space completely?

So this will have to do, and since Yuri's still in the shower and the food hasn't yet arrived, he finishes hanging up his suit and tugs out of the dry cleaning bags the hotel staff had left for them there to lay it out on the other bed while he collects Yuri's costumes: Yuri on Ice, from Yuri's equipment bag, and Eros, from the closet.

Which he maybe spends a little time looking over, fingers tracing the cut-outs, the lines of mesh and spandex, the jeweled decoration.

It's been so long since he wore it. A lifetime ago. A century ago.

(When did he start feeling old?)

But the water shuts off, so he busies himself with slipping both costumes into the bag, and sits on the edge of the mattress to write instructions for their care to the hotel.

Love changes a lot of things, but it doesn't, apparently, change the need for laundry.

[theglassheart]

First his body, then his hair, even though it keeps dripping down the nape of his neck, while he stands there wrapped in the towel. Stares in the mirror, and he looks ... like himself. He's not sure he feels at all like himself, but he looks it. He looks like he always looks after his shower. Flushed and like a wet rag.

He stares long enough to think he looks tired, maybe troubled. Maybe just so exhausted. Long enough to scrub at his eyes, and find his glasses from where they'd been left on the counter next to his sleep clothes. They are softer, even in his hands, than his practice clothes. Softer on him, too, even if that, also, makes them feel a little less ... substantial, too.

The worn pants and t-shirt that looked soft and shabby to him.
Like his skin isn't pressed to his muscles and bones as certainly.
Which is stupid given he's had nothing on for the whole shower.

Yuri ran his fingers through his hair, wet and limp now, but free of any residual hardness. Even if it was just laying there. He made a faint face at it and wiped the wetness from his hair off on his pants. Before turning back to the door, gathered clothes in his hands, with a breath pressing out his mouth he's not certain he was aware was even building in his chest.

It's still just me.
(Just Victor who he kissed.)


It's still just me.
(Just Victor who kissed him.)



Yuri took a breath back in, fingers a little slick on the doorknob, and opened the door, making himself repeat that faint whisper a time or two. Which, oddly, enough, when he finds Victor. Sitting at the end of the bed. In different clothes, too, now. Writing something. Looking ... like himself. Like it was any other night, here or home.

[fivetimechamp]

He's nearly done when the bathroom door clicks open, and it takes him a second to look up, pen still in hand, having just finished writing rush –– will need before check-out, but he forgets all about that –– dry cleaning slip, pen, Yuri's costumes in that bag, the food on the way –– in the space between one breath and the next.

Hadn't he had some thought, a second ago, about giving Yuri some space? If he had, he doesn't remember it, is too busy being bowled over by something unbelievably simple and ordinary: the way Yuri's damp hair curls against his ear, the faint warm flush coloring his throat and cheeks, the hang of that shirt that looks so temptingly soft and touchable it's all Victor can do not to emulate Maccachin pounce for a forced snuggle. "Yuri!"

Bursting out with unfettered delight, which is absurd, because it has only been about ten minutes, not ten months, ten days, or even ten hours, but he can't help himself, he just looks so cute. "Was it a nice shower? Was it relaxing?"

Slip and pen getting set aside and forgotten, because he might be able to hold himself back from simply tackling Yuri into the floor or wall or bed, but that shirt just looks so soft and his already-drying hair so silky and he's up, padding over on quick bare feet in no time to set warm hands at Yuri's waist and nuzzle into the crook of his neck, making delighted, inquisitive sounds. "Oh, you're warm!"

And he smells good. And he feels good. And Victor can't remember why he'd thought he was supposed to not be touching Yuri, right now, or what he was thinking earlier. This isn't complicated: it's the easiest, simplest, most obvious thing in the world.

[theglassheart]

He's surprised that just as much the familiarity, that he feels sink into some part of his chest, his lungs, like a breath of air that defies breathing in or out, but still loosens something in there, giving it more space -- he's almost reluctantly saddened, too, about it, as though maybe he had entirely forgotten to take advantage of something he should have, or looked at Victor just a few beats longer, the way he'd been dressed before Yuri went in.

When that's crazy, and he wants to shove it aside. He shouldn't be actually caring what Victor wears, right? When eight months ago he would have been simply greatful for Victor to be wearing anything while talking to him? Except now he's almost regretful he hadn't seen more of a suit Victor has been wearing all day long?

It makes no sense, but really there's hardly anytime to make sense.

Not when Victor looks up and exlaims his name with sheer delight and something close to glee, like Yuri's been gone somewhere other than the bathroom, and then he's suddenly up, tossing out questions, and headed quickly toward -- and then suddenly, into -- Yuri.

When the surprise, at first, gets a strangled noise and the feeling of something zipping up his spine as he went a little straighter, as Victor's face is in his shoulder, his neck, and his hands are on Yuri's sides again. Ratchet's his heart with dwarfed nearness, making his muscles complain and fuss at touch and impact. Somewhere dimly in the back of his head is the recognition that, apparently, that distance wasn't lasting? While Victor is purring noises about his being warm, against his neck, which is, honestly, just making him feel warmer.

On the spot. His cheeks fighting to become hoter in multifaceted surprise, ducking his head, because obviously he would be right -- but he can't focus on his own flickered-exasperation even when he's trying to remember when or more how he'd ended up with an arm around Victor's neck -- to keep his balance with Victor's height bowed into him?

"It was nice." It was. The hot water and a moment to breathe. Away. Alone. Even if that was confusing, as creating of a touching of questioning guilt, as it was relieving, too. The silence and just the steady sound of the water and his breathing. "Not as good as home, but nice."

Beat. "No food yet?"

[fivetimechamp]

"In a minute, probably."

Maybe. To be perfectly honest, he'd sort of forgotten about the food, too busy with the need to push his face into Yuri's clean, warm skin and get his hands on that thin soft shirt. It feels like hugging a hot water bottle, and he makes a contented sound, a low hmmmmmmmmmmmm that gets inked directly into the warm delicate curve of Yuri's neck and shoulder. He wants to sink into it, shower-fresh scent, warm cotton, warm skin, warm Yuri, and never let go, wants to steal Yuri over to the bed and curl around him, let it suffuse him like sun on a beach. Wants to lean them both against the room wall until he can feel hot water pouring through, over, around him.

Hands sliding to Yuri's back, and up it, arms cinching around his ribs to fold his whole lean length against him. First the tip of his nose and then his mouth finding the pinked skin of Yuri's throat, which only makes that sound turn happier. Was there something else he'd been thinking about? Could there be? Could there be anything at all as necessary as this right now? It feels like all those two years' worth of thwarted affection is threatening to flood from him all at once, and he should ration it out, but he's not sure that's possible, without shackling himself across the room.

Every time he'd ever wanted to do this, and couldn't, running through his head and seeping into his already full to cracking chest. Every time he'd ever had to try and ignore Yuri being cute, or beautiful, or appealing, or untouchably perfect pushing him to make up for lost time, not waste this precious opportunity.

The idea of not touching Yuri now seeming an impossible feat he has no idea how he'd managed, except that Yuri hadn't seemed to want it before, and he still doesn't know when that changed. "Yuri, when di ––"

Which is just as far as he gets before there's a knock on the door and his question gets blown out into an exasperated sigh directly into the curve of Yuri's shoulder while he imagines a thousand evil curses to visit on the heads of whatever punctual chef finished their food as quickly as it was promised. "Speaking of."

[theglassheart]

Victor goes from faintly pressed to him to actively pressed to him,
a distinction Yuri was not certain he knew was possible.

Not until Victor was suddenly humming into his neck, making everything under his skin shiver and shift, orienting half his body to that spot, while Victor just tipped into him. Like he planned to go about falling, and hanging his entire self on Yuri's body suddenly. Hands suddenly coiling around his shoulders, almost like a rope on a post, and then Victor's weight settles on him even more, like Victor's decided to defy gravity and any height difference.

This already something Yuri, even starting to heat like a summer morning, a little faster than expected, had been about to bluster some sort of comment on. At least he had been, before Victor's lips were brushing against his throat, again, in this - this - this - Yuri doesn't even have a word for it. Victor is basically curled up to his skin, humming, almost the way Maccachin sometimes showed up in his bed and curled up to his side and stayed there all night.

Except. Full body. Into his throat. With his mouth. While humming. To a note it felt like all of Yuri's body was scrambling to match somehow right under the stirred race of his heartbeat. The nothing like forgotten reactions boiling up. Making his arm tighten, fingers reflexively curling across the back of Victor's neck and part of his head, hazily aware of the soft, smooth hair suddenly under his fingers. Not sure he was ready for whatever exasperating, or confusing, or fluxing question Victor was starting to ask his skin more than him and already hanging himself on the idea of Victor kissing him, there, again.

Which definitely meant neither he, not his skin, is prepared for the knock on the door.



For the way it makes his spine stiffen, suddenly ultra aware of. Everything.
Hands. Faces. Mouths. Bodies. The sudden embarrassment -- and disappointment?

That seems to find it's a perfect match in the sudden beleaguered sigh that shoves into his shoulder.

Yuri can't stop the chuckle that bubbles out. It's very Victor, and there's something very strangely, impossibly giddy warming in his stomach that he's not the only one who had that reaction. It makes him smile oddly, fingers cupping the back of Victor's head for just a second when he's taking a step backward, toward the door behind him, without quite walking that way, because he's getting a look at Victor's face. "Dinner time."

[fivetimechamp]

He expects Yuri to pull away, but he doesn't expect that hand curving at the back of his head, or the affectionate laugh that gets tossed this way, but even if he had expected them, he could never have predicted his reaction. No one enjoys being laughed at, do they? And yet it hooks around his breastbone and yanks, sending Victor wandering after Yuri like a lovestruck ... what. Giraffe? Something that feels like all long clumsy legs that don't seem to work just right, too tall and too gangly and too young.

It's the hand in his hair, he thinks. He loves Yuri's hand in his hair, Yuri who so rarely touches him at all, and even that is more often than the world at large does. Or maybe it's how Yuri's laughing at him, like he's a petulant child who just needs a time-out or to go pout in a corner before he can be coaxed out of his annoyance. Or maybe it's some combination of those things, plus his post-shower warmth and clean scent, Victor has no idea.

All he knows is he doesn't want to lose that hand at the back of his head, or Yuri's smile, and that when Yuri's fingers slip from his hair and skin it feels like everything founders while Yuri teases him, leaving him eying Yuri and weighing the option of simply pinning him against the wall and ignoring the door and dinner in his head.

The squeaking alone would be fantastic.

But Yuri's moving away, and he probably should go get the dinner he ordered, but it's a little more difficult to change his direction from following Yuri to answering the door, which he finally does, accompanied by a put-upon expression he tosses at Yuri from over his shoulder. "Can't I just let him stand out there?"

None of which is on his face or in his voice when he opens the door and smiles for the bellhop, offering over a folded bill for a tip in exchange for the little cart with a xiexie ni, xiexie before he can finally close the door again and push their dinner over towards the bed, unveiling the meal with a flourish. "Here we are!"

[theglassheart]

There's a second Yuri is almost worried about the expression on Victor's face. A canny, calculated, incredibly familiar slant to his eyes and hold to his mouth. The one that usually gets followed with a finger in the air and an idea! Which, apparently, comes even when people are right outside the room.

It's there long enough for Yuri's heart to skip one beat, before Victor is turning toward the door.
The relief is almost as startling as the residual curiosity. Of what Victor thought.
(And then, of what Victor is thinking about all of this.)



Still he can wait, in the middle of the room, as the food smells start making it his direction through the open door and Victor is part of the exchange through the door. Yuri's eyes don't miss the money, but then he doesn't miss much where it comes to Victor paying for things. Things he'll have to pay for one day. A total he already had no clue how high is, and that is only going up exponentially faster now that they've left Hasetsu.

But that's a back pocket, back foot thought, of months, and it fades while Victor is turning around, with the cart, all smiles, and he rolls it foward. He unveils plates with very-Victor flourish, that makes Yuri's stomach growl as though announcing it's very audible ire with everyone in this room and the world that has forgotten it. Yuri doesn't even seem to do more than flush a little, eyes going to a little glossy. "Finally."

[fivetimechamp]

It's his turn to laugh, at the way Yuri is eying the food like a starving dog. Maybe he should be a little insulted that Yuri is looking at pork and rice and steamed vegetables with greater desire than he's looked at Victor with so far tonight, but he's barely eaten at all in the last few days, and worked hard regardless. He's probably feeling his stomach meet his spine, and that very audible growl only proves the theory. "You must be hungry."

The top tray lifts off the cart, so he takes the whole thing to set it down on the mattress, with enough room for them to sit cross-legged across from each other and share, as long as they're careful not to shift their weight too quickly and knock over the teapot or one of the bowls of food. "Come on, Yuri."

He settles himself carefully at one side, long legs folded underneath him, and reaches for a pair of chopsticks to pluck out a snow pea and tuck it into his mouth, before setting them down to pour a cup tea first for Yuri, and then for himself. "It's good."

Not katsudon good, or as good as any of the other food he had at Yu-topia, or even as good as the Shanghai crab and drunken shrimp he barely remembers eating only two nights ago, but hot and fresh and tasty. He's even developed a taste for rice with his meals, after living in Japan for so long, and the little bamboo steamer full of plump dumplings is wafting the most delicious smell his way.

It's not worth having to give up Yuri in his arms, or even the brief mental image of pinning Yuri against the wall, but Yuri's stomach wasn't the only one protesting and it's not like they won't have time after the food is gone.

That's one thing he'll certainly make sure of.

[theglassheart]

Victor laughs, but it's hard to really care when the food smells amazing, and he's following the tantalizing smell and even now the look at everything, as Victor picks it up and carries it over to lay on the center end of his bed. It requires more care than tatami sitting, where the low table might just be bounced by too much movement. The tray shifts with as little as even the careful movements to sit on the bed, and scoot to the opposite side.

Yuri is already several bites of pork in (and he knows he ate this morning, knows he ate yesterday, that it was harder when he was stressed to get him not to eat than it was to get him to eat) but it's heaven in his mouth. The flavorful bursts of fried pork, salted and seared a little caramelized on some of the edges, under a warm, thin brown sauce. The warm, sticky richness of the rice. He's not certain he's even stopping to breathe before piling each next bite. Crisp snow peas. Soft earthy, buttery mushrooms.

It's like he hasn't eaten since getting to this country suddenly and it's heavenly.

It doesn't stop him from gulping down a bite, and saying, "Not as good as お母さん, but, yes. Good."

Even if it wasn't katsudo, and even if it was, even if it was the best katsudon that could found in this country or Japan, even to the making of something as simple as this, he would still stick proudly by those words. Nothing anywhere was as good as his mother's making of it. The thought of her strikes another. She'll call. They'd all called last night, and that was before he'd gotten a silver medal. They might have already.

Not first place the second day in a row, but he had placed. He was going to Moscow before he'd come home again. Which makes his eyes glance to his coat, but between the food in his lap and the idea of putting down his bowl to go there, he lifts it and takes another bite. Relishing in a slippery chunk of onion and the floret of broccoli captured with it. After dinner. He'd remember to check after they finished eating.