fivetimechamp | Let's get hotpot! 6 November, 2014

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Let's get hotpot! 6 November, 2014 - Shanghai, China

Probably he should be more bothered by what Yakov said –

(I feel sick when I see you playing pretend-coach)

– but it's difficult to worry too much about a cranky old Russian coach when he's in Shanghai, and it's competition season, and Yuri has two of the best programs he's ever choreographed up his sleeve to wow the judges with. He has no interest in discussing with Yakov whether or not he plans to return to competitive skating, or if he ever wants to come back to St. Petersburg, or his own skills as a coach.

(All right. That last is a bit of a lie: Yakov is the best coach he knows, and there have been more times than he'd anticipated when he'd wished he could ask the old man's advice.

But he's not pretending. He never was, and he isn't now.)

And, anyway, his focus is on Yuri.

As it should be, as a coach. Over the last eight months, he's gotten attuned to the shifts of Yuri's moods, his nervous tics, the tells when he's feeling stressed or uncertain, and right now, Yuri is distracted. He's been lost in thought since their arrival interview, and quiet during their walk through the Shanghai streets, although not uncharacterisically so.

Sometimes Yuri speaks loudest when he uses no words at all. It's another thing Victor's learned about him, noted, kept in the back of his mind for afternoons like this. Yuri gets nervous near competition, and there's already mounting pressure to succeed after the failure of the last season. There's a nervous energy Victor can feel humming under the arm he's got slung around Yuri's shoulders, distraction in the short, one-word or belated answers to Victor's comments. He's not even sure Yuri notices when Victor's steered them into a hot pot place (almost universally agreed upon as the best one by the fans he'd asked for recommendations on social media), or when they're seated in a private booth, or when Victor orders.

It's all right, Victor decides, smiling gently across the table at him. Yuri's been able to overcome his nerves on the ice, and they both have absolute faith in the programs they've built together, practiced together, perfected together. Tomorrow, Yuri will seduce the whole of China, and everyone else watching: Victor has every certainty in his ability to win.

He could hardly be more confident if he were skating them himself. "Look, Yuri!"

(But he still needs to find a way to distract Yuri tonight.) "Shanghai crab! Drunken shrimp! Duck blood!"

Everything looks so colorful and delicious, he almost doesn't know where to start: hands up, an expression of pure bliss settling over his face.

"Doesn't it all look great?"

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He can't be practicing more right now, but it's all he wants. It's under his skin. This restless need to move, but not the kind of moving Victor has him doing. Walking, talking, sitting. If he were still in Hasetsu, he'd be jogging to the Ice Palace. Maybe would have gone an hour ago already.

Victor is in the full swing of being in a new place, all about getting out of interviews and into somewhere with food.
That whole thought might make him smile if his stomach wasn't a complex knotted ball since waking when they landed.

The first two Prix events are done and he's watched the performances more than he'd like to admit. A thing that doesn't really have any bearing, it seems, on Victor. Victor, who was restless during his arrival interview, trying to drag him off for food right in the middle of it. Victor, who'd wandered off, then, to invited his old coach, and then returned saying the man didn't want to come.

Victor, who was eying it all, with his eyes gone bright-light and his gone high, like he'd found heaven came served on plates.

(Again.

If Yuri's being honest, and he tries to be, it's almost a little comforting.
Victor, still acting like Victor, even on the first night, here.)

Yuri made a soft noise, a sort of yes, that he didn't think really needed any words, as he picked up a ladle to start transferring things to his plate. He was hungry (sort of) but he wasn't all that sure Victor actually needed him to agree -- not while making that face and using that voice -- and anyway Victor might not be thinking about earlier, but Yuri was. It was stuck in his head.

First impressions. First interview questions. What they'd be saying. How they'd be pulling it apart. What would be put up.

The hot pot is simmering away, but he plucks out a shrimp first, slurps it down saucy and wriggling.

"Vkusno!"

(He loves Shanghai.)

But – "Huh?"

Yuri's plate is still looking a little bare, and he's not reaching for any of the more adventurous items on the table at all. His anxiety is a strange creature, but normally it makes him overeat, not ruin his appetite. But he's just picking at food, over there, chopsticks idly sorting through the vegetables and meat for the hotpot.

Normally, Victor can get him to try a new food at least once: he's gotten a lot more relaxed about it, laughing at Victor's enthusiasm, and amiably allowing him to drag Yuri to new food stalls or eating a bite off Victor's own plate, after coaxing (or insistence). They've gotten so close, it's been a long while since Yuri's been this unmoved by Victor's enjoyment of some new food or place.

That could mean he's anxious...or maybe just that he's tired, or not hungry, or that he doesn't like this style of food.

Either way, Victor's not about to let him stay adrift alone in his own head.

"You're not eating the shrimp?"

If there's going to be one Russian word Yuri never forgets, no matter where his life goes after the next three days, it's going to be that one. It never ceases to fall out of Victor's mouth while a half dozen or a dozen other things are going into it. Yuri is managing bites of it. He's going to need his strength tomorrow, but Victor's excitement isn't infectious right now.

The Duck Blood Soup is possibly the strangest, and he's not in the mood for strange. (How can he miss his mother's cooking already, barely half a day since landing?) He's already -- his left foot keeps bouncing a little, even though the toe of his shoe doesn't leave the floor. Time has moved too fast since leaving, and it's moving both too slow and too fast with getting to tomorrow arriving.

That knot just taking up all of the space inside of his stomach, leaving him drink more water than eating.

He raised a hand at the question, not surprised Victor asked, but still a little chagrinned at the notice, even though Victor always tends to notice things he'd almost rather Victor didn't. But the answer is easy there, even on his nerves, because he had avoided that one for a good reason on top of it. "It's right before the competition, so I want to avoid raw food."

Avoid anything that he might get sick on tonight, tomorrow morning, in the middle of performing.

His nightmares are numberless sometimes. But even they are a bare distraction for his circling thoughts. This place.

Edited 2017-03-06 03:41 (UTC)

He'd ordered a couple of bottles of miju with the meal, hoping to coax Yuri into having a drink or two to relax, but so far, only his is open.

(It's good, though: similar to the sake he's gotten used to in Hasetsu, and leaving a warm glow in his stomach along with the hotpot to counteract the chill of the Shanghai winter.)

More concerning is the way Yuri's just picking at everything, sipping his water, but wound so tight Victor's not sure he'd be able to swallow a bite, even if he took one. "It's really good."

Coaxing, stopping just short of snagging another shrimp with his chopsticks and feeding it to Yuri himself.

(He thinks about it. There are times when it would work, but he doesn't think tonight is one of them: tonight is the sort of night where Yuri just needs him to be distracting and confident, and, most importantly, right here so they can talk through whatever's on his mind.

Whenever he's ready for it, at least.)

He knows this voice. This is Victor's soft wheedling voice. This is the one that is sometimes followed with things being stuck in his face, or with Victor sliding to his side and making him look at something, or having an arm thrown around his shoulders and him hauled off in the direction of something that can't be lived without seeing, until he agrees out of sheer amusement or necessity for space and them moving on.

Yuri usually forgets somewhere in the middle. Victor is good at that. Making him forget, for a few seconds.
But tonight is different. Today is. These three days are different. It's not Nationals. It's the actual Prix performances.

Everything is different. He should have remembered that earlier too.

Yuri set his chin in his hand, giving Victor something else, aside from more and more words about food. They could come back to the food, probably would be given Victor's rapture. Instead, he offered, concerned with earlier and disregarding of the other, "I ran my mouth too much at the press conference."

It wasn't the same as suddenly make a declaration right after nationals on tv. This was International. World Wide. Everyone was watching now. This was him actually coming back to the ground where everything fell apart so horribly last time. Why had he thought to go into those questions seeming to have forgotten that? "What will people say if I lose after that?"

"Oh, Yuri?"

There was a voice with sudden exuberance, and Yuri looked over in surprise and something flared bright inside of him. Even knowing this was coming, with being in the same bracket this time, he felt his mouth drag itself from his control. Edges coming up in surprise, happiness, as he found the face -- "Phichit-kun!"

Still in gloves, dressed, like he'd just come from outside the doors, even with his phone already in his hand.
Smile already free and warm, everything just as welcoming and open as he'd ever been. "So this is where you're eating."

Edited 2017-03-06 04:49 (UTC)

There it is.

Yuri, chin in hand and gaze far away, but talking. Taking the things running around his head, and saying them out loud, in a way Victor would have paid in blood for back at the beginning of all this, before Yuri trusted him enough to talk to him.

Worried about the press conference, then. Worried about making a confident statement, and not being able to follow through on it. Worried about declaring without fear his intention to win, his confidence in himself, his desire to redeem himself.

It's adorable. It's Yuri, all the way through, concerned about things Victor hasn't given any thought to in years, if ever. He'd never second-guessed his own statements or predictions, just like he'd never second-guessed his own abilities or talent.

But Yuri isn't like him. At least, not in this instance.

He's got his mouth open to reply – something about how he'd only spoken the truth, and that everyone watching would love it, and him, and that if anyone can win with the power of love, it's Yuri, who has so much capacity for it and inspires it in so many others –

But there's an interruption, although not an unwelcome one. "Hi!" he says, smiling, with a small wave, and Phichit Chulanot (the best skater to come out of Thailand in years, and perhaps ever, he thinks: the one foreign skater Yuri considers a friend; the one with the excellent Instagram feed) beams back at him with a polite bow.

"Oh, hello!" Before turning back to Yuri, while Victor sips at his drink. "But talk about a coincidence. Oh!"

His phone appearing in his hand, while he beams. "Can I invite Ciao Ciao?"

Kind. Friendly. Brilliant. Phichit-kun is exactly how Yuri remembers him. In person and on the phone. Even if Yuri feels like his shirt is suddenly four times tighter around his throat and that seeing Phichit-kun again, should not have to suddenly demand a sit down with his old coach. Even if he'd going to run into him soon anyway. Even all he does is fluster in a non-helpful, "Huh?" of surprised, that might have been more huff of air than actual question.

"You want to see him, don't you?" There's a laugh in that voice, like it could be the only truth in the world. The only thing that could make this tiny reunion even better, is to make it even bigger reunions with everyone, all around the same hotpot table tonight, right now.

Yuri's voice is most of a mumble at, "Not really..."

But he's not sure if he even ever meant for his voice to reach Phichit at the end of the table, already texting on his phone while asking that delighted question. Likely sending the name and address of the place he's happened to find Yuri, and Victor in. A forgone conclusion of events unless he can hope that Celestino is already busy somewhere.

This might be just the distraction he was looking for. A friend of Yuri's to cheer him up, and Celestino, who knows Yuri as well as anyone might, after working with him for years, hot pot, and the miju, getting a little more pleasant with every sip. "Of course!"

The more the merrier, in his opinion. It's so rare for any of them to see each other outside of competition, and Phichit looks so pleased with his idea and the prospect of spending an evening with his old friend that Victor could hardly do otherwise than support it.

Besides, Yuri needs to get out of his head. "Yuri, come sit over here with me so there's room."

Shifting more towards the booth wall, and patting the seat affectionately, even while he's directing his smile back towards Phichit. "There's lots of food, so dig in! Do you want some shrimp?"

Pushing the dish towards him as temptingly as he can, while the shrimp wriggle in their sauce, distraught at the turn of events that has led to this predicament.

Or maybe they're just drunk, he doesn't know. "How was your trip?"

Victor is, of course, not helping.

Even though, like always, he looks like he thinks he's helping in every way possible.

Patting the seat next to him, all but bouncing at the prospect of more people, which something sinks in Yuri at the fact he's not getting out of this, and that it might be getting bigger as Phichit is saying, "We should get someone to translate. I know just who!" face still in his phone, and fingers moving fast as lightning, even as he's dropping right into the booth side Yuri evacuates.

Yuri, himself, slipped into the one with Victor against the wall, listening as he went straight into offering food and asking questions, with that same enthusiasm he'd been showing Yuri with no matching response. Except Phichit looks like he's sat down with the best friends he's ever had. Lively as ever.

"Yes, thank you!" Beat. Then, even more excitedly, "Spasibo!"

The phone goes down on the table, and Phichit takes one of the empty small plates near by. No hestitation in his movements or sudden invitation for even more involvement, rambling cheerful as he piles it. "It was little over four hours and everyone on the plane was so nice. Many people were coming for the Cup, too."

He's so proud. The first of his people to do this, who will be recognized in such a way. The first to skate his pieces.

Edited 2017-03-06 15:02 (UTC)

Well, at least someone is eating. Victor doesn't know Phichit well at all: barely had any idea who he was, before Yuri talked about him, but he's done a little research since then.

Twenty years old, the pride and joy of the Thai skating world. If he qualifies, he'll be the first Thai skater to make it to the Grand Prix Final: quite an accomplishment for such a young man. Victor hasn't seen much of his skating, but what he has makes him think the boy certainly could go all the way to Barcelona. He has a youthful energy about him and a sense of all encompassing joy that's hugely appealing, and audiences love him.

And he's Yuri's friend. That's as good a reason as any other to get to know him.

"Good, good." Refilling his glass, and plucking a mushroom from a plate to set simmering in the hot pot. "We had a good trip, too, didn't we, Yuri?"

What he remembers, anyway, before and after falling asleep on Yuri's shoulder, more comfortable than he's ever been in an economy seat. "I'm very much looking forward to the start of the competition tomorrow."

Yuri's cheeks heat a faint pink, when the first thought isn't like Phichit's. It isn't about the plane. It isn't about the people who Victor talked cheerfully to, like he could make best friends everywhere, and like half of the people he talked to weren't absolutely bowled over, their eyes shining and half-focused, like he'd come down from the clouds, looking all proud and excited.

It wasn't that. What it came up as made his cheeks warm, but nothing compared to the spike in his chest.
It wasn't quite appropriate, was it? Remembering waking up to something tickling his cheek.

Realizing it was Victor's hair. Victor's head falling back near his, turned sideways, his back more against Yuri's own shoulder than the back of the airplane seat. The way he'd gone still. So still, so awake, so instantly. Confused. Surprised. Aware of the weight. Aware of being touched. Not even reaching up to rub at his cheek, or to move at all. Silver-bright still brushing his skin there, clouding his vision. Victor's forehead, and temple, and ear, visible right beyond.

Unable to take a breath in until Victor shifted in his seat, his head falling the other way. Still impossibly fast asleep, even after telling Yuri it would never happen. Not in the economy seats. Yuri closing his eyes, then, trying to get back to sleep, to breathing, to not replaying that in confusion, that absolutely nothing second, too aware suddenly, even more of his cheek. Of the weight on his shoulder. The tightness in his chest. Muscles.

"Right. Yes." It's a mumble. Too fast, too low, cheeks too warm. For no reason that he could defend as sense.
None except that eight months later, he still hadn't perfected Victor being entirely normal, being unaffected by the rest.

Next to him, Yuri is still being quiet, so Victor shifts a little closer and leans an affectionate elbow on his shoulder to bring him into to conversation and out of his head.

Something's on his mind: he agrees, but it's distant, and his eyes are focusing on something Victor can't see.

It might be the program. It might be worry over the interview, that he hadn't really needed, because he's going to say absolutely everything he has to on the ice tomorrow.

(After they see Eros and Yuri on Ice, no one will be questioning how much power of love Yuri has.)

It could be something completely different. Worry over seeing Celestino for the first time since they'd parted ways, maybe. Or possibly he's just tired from the flight here, even though it wasn't a very long one.

Whatever it is, he'll ground Yuri here, in this moment, in this place, with this good company and food and the wine that Yuri isn't drinking, but that Victor is enjoying immensely. He feels it as a slight buzz in his teeth, a flush on his cheeks, and thinks that maybe he wouldn't normally be quite as ready to simply reach out for Yuri as he is now, because he's been trying not to.

Counting off each time Yuri lets it happen like he's marking off years in a jail cell, still overly cautious of intruding too far and seeing him run, again, like he used to at the beginning.

Even if he hasn't, in months, it's still something Victor usually at least thinks about, and doesn't just do, but –

He's in a good mood. Their season starts in earnest tomorrow, and Yuri's ready, and Victor can't wait to see it.

Across the table, Phichit is texting someone, before looking up with a smile. "Leo's here, but he's going to try and find Guang-hong. And Celestino's on his way!"

Yuri blinks a look over at his shoulder, the elbow there, and then up at Victor's face. He'd call it an admonishment. It kind of is.

Even when Victor's eyes are so bright and pleased. Just as coaxing without a word this time, as he was with the words about the food. There's a lightness there, just in his eyes, just in the way he leans into Yuri -- almost too like the memory a second ago, except aside from his elbow he is further away still, thankfully -- asking Yuri to focus for him. Somewhere other than inward.

He swallows down those last thoughts. Pushing them back out.

He ducks his head a little, but he moves, too. Not far, and not away.
Enough to find his chopsticks. Enough to tug his plate closer to himself again.

As Phichit moves their already widened number of four, up to five. More people Yuri doesn't really know, though he wouldn't put it off Phichit having nearly everyone that will be here this week already in his phone, in his instagram feed, and Victor having at least the first. Contacts that Yuri can't even begin to think of how he'd make, that they make effortless as smiling and breathing.

He can at least make an effort here. Should, right? For Victor who is nudging him quietly, with a single touch, the faint list of weight on his shoulder. For Phichit who is so excitedly over there, looking over the moon about getting to have dinner with him, with them, with everyone coming now.

"Are you planning to see any of the sights while you're here?" Yuri asks, even though he already knows the answers. He know how much Phichit could find to see and do, even years into being in Michigan, when Yuri was sure there must be nothing left to see. Any chance for new sights -- and new selfies with them.

"Tomorrow!" Phichit agrees, after swallowing down some vegetables and chicken. "After all the results are in. You could come if you'd like, Yuri!"

There's that winning expression. A little goading, even giddy, that Yuri had seen for years. Even as he turns it on Victor, all winning, wide brown eyes, like he was well aware who he might have to actually ask for permission, or for help to convince Yuri this was the best idea. Not that Yuri was certain Celestino had green lit it, either. He liked to know where they were.

But Phichit had that confidence and certainty. He had to see things, just as much as he had to be someone.

"Oh?"

With interest, as he's plucking cooked meat and vegetables from the hot broth, and setting them to steam on his place. "That sounds fun!"

He thinks so, anyway. Yuri hasn't seemed all that interested in looking around Shanghai, and Victor's not even sure he'll be able to get him to go sight-seeing in Moscow, either, even if it's a place Victor knows almost as well as Yuri knows Hasetsu or Detroit.

(And really, no matter if tomorrow goes well or poorly, Yuri will need a distraction to keep him from obsessing about the free skate.) "That's such a kind offer, isn't it, Yuri?"

Helpfully piling cooked vegetables and meat onto Yuri's plate as well as his own, because Yuri needs to eat, and with a hot pot on the table, can't hide behind his "raw food" excuse forever.

(Victor, for himself, has a few more of the shrimp: they are strange but quite delicious.)

It's warm in here and he's thirsty: he tips back the rest of his glass, and fills it again. "We'll need to take lots of photos to commemorate your return to competition."

Victor really is excited enough for both of them.

Answering Phichit, animatedly, and suddenly piling more food on Yuri's plate, like he's overjoyed at this sudden possibility. (He probably is, too. It's exactly how Victor was for weeks and months on end at the beginning of getting to Hasetsu.) Meanwhile, Phichit starts going into a detailed list of his top four or five places he's researched, got best advice experience reviews from the fans, the skaters who've already been there, and natives who live here.

Yuri is nodding through bits of it, as they both fall into a pattern that seems so familiar even almost two years later.
Phichit's salesmanship of the world side-by-side with Yuri's tacit attention and acknowledgement, if not always agreement.

Even if there's some resignation to the whole suddenly mounted pile on his plate, Yuri does make a more invested effort this time. He knows he does need food. Will before tomorrow, and he might be far too nervous to eat more than a few bites in the morning.

Victor's reminder making the slightly larger bite he'd just been chewing and swallowing get comically stuck for a moment.
But there's a waitress coming, bringing to them the first of newest of guestlist, "Here you are."

He's beginning to feel pleasantly floaty and warm. Next to him Yuri's chatting with – well, listening to, and nodding when prompted – Phichit, but he's eating, and the tension in his shoulders has started to wind down, and that's a good enough start for tonight that Victor refills his glass again, fairly sure now that he won't have to be on high alert to talk Yuri down until much closer to the actual competition.

Even if the bottle feels light enough to be a bit of a surprise, and he can't, thinking back, quite remember how many times he's tipped a little more into the glass to top himself off – but it's fine. He feels good, and Yuri is on his way to feeling good, and that's all Victor really needs to care about tonight.

That Yuri eats. That he relaxes. That he sleeps. That he knows Victor has nothing but absolute and perfect faith in him.

(That the last eight months have been some of the best and happiest of Victor's whole life.)

But for now, he only listens with a smile, leaning on crossed arms and sipping at his rice wine, enjoying the faint buzz in his head and the warmth he's beginning to feel and having Yuri right there next to him, reunited with an old friend. And –

"Ciao ciao!"

Celestino, suddenly arrived, offering a small wave and a smile, and Victor's already fishing with his chopsticks while Yuri's stumbling over a greeting, to offer up a squirming shrimp.

"Want some shrimp?"

"Oh – " Celestino's face contorts, but he waves it off politely. "That kind of food doesn't agree with me."

But he hasn't even tried it. "It's really good!" Victor tries again, pushing the shrimp closer, but Ciao Ciao only recoils, so he shrugs, and slurps it up himself, instead. "Anyway, we have lots! Do you want a drink?"

His words are a mumble, unprepared, even with the warning and the time lapsed since being told. It seems like a good analogy for the morning, and he wishes his mind wouldn't just instantly, tensely, shoot there that next second. His stomach tensing for the one, and then tightening even further for the latter.

Even when Victor is just as effusive, maybe even more so. Waving the wiggling shrimp at Celestino and inviting him into the hot pot food, too. The way he probably will with everyone. Yuri feels some sympathy for Celestino recoiling from Victor's food pushed in his face. Yuri is still not over that reaction himself, but he's gotten almost to a state of being both shocked-and-not all at once, since Victor does it more often than he doesn't.

Victor is a little .... not that Yuri is judging it. Effusive is still a good word for it. But not the meaning behind it exactly anymore.

He's familiar with the glide, of a voice, of movement, has watched it happen often enough with his father, or Minako-sensei. But Victor looks so happy, when he's closing his eyes and slurping up another one of the drunken shrimp, and then gleefully offering to let the next person he can convince to drink with him to have a drink, and it's hard to knock that. How happy he looks.

"It has been a long day," Celestino says, sitting in the seat next to Phichit and offering the glass, that had once been Yuri's over there on that side, across the table to Victor. "A little wouldn't be a bad idea. Tomorrow will be here sooner than we know, won't it?"

It's an odd movement, and a sinking set of words, tossing ice cubes into his guts, but Yuri, ends up saying, disjointedly, "We're going to need more plates."

"That's tomorrow," Victor says, waving it off a little more loosely than expected to, but his hand is still steady when he pours one for Ciao Ciao, and another for himself, before lifting it:

"Na zdorov'ye."

The familiar toast rolling comfortably off his tongue the way English and French probably never will, even if they're much more fluid than his still stilted Japanese.

(He's picking it up, though, more and more.)

Clinking his glass against Celestino's and downing most of what's in it in one smooth gulp. It doesn't even burn anymore, or really taste much like anything at all, and he laughs a little when Celestino tries to emulate him, only to cough into his sleeve, eyes watering.

It's not that strong, is it? "Oh?" Innocent, as he tops them both off again. "Do you think you can keep up with a Russian, Ciao Ciao?"

"I think I can keep up with a play-acting coach," Celestino growls, but it lacks heat, and Victor only laughs, and lifts his glass again.

"Okay! Let's see it. Salut!"

"I think it's this way. I saw one of them walk this way a few seconds ago," Phichit was saying, while dragging Yuri off with him, Victor's voice raising in a warm, but short, wave behind him. A word he didn't know, but a tone he knew all too well. Celebratory, even in Russian. Maybe he'd ask later what it was, exactly. If he remembered to a--

"Wait!" Yuri almost stumbled straight into his friend, eyes wide, looking at a set of large columns, almost like statues, covered in large, but delicately carved and golden painted, Magnolias. The ones all over Shanghai, like the squids and wisteria back home. "This is perfect." He threw Yuri a smile, classic and begging to be infectious. "We need a picture for tonight anyway, right?"

Yuri was still trying to regain his feet, but he knew better than to argue with this one. A picture cost him nothing. Especially not when it was Phichit who somehow managed to make all of his pictures look perfect. Magically perfect. He didn't fight the arm that looped his shoulders (even if it felt strange to be leaning down a few inches instead of up them now), and leaned his head in.

"Can I help?" A man announced himself, in broken English,
even as Phichit said, "One second!", framing and snapping mid-those words.

A little too fast for Yuri, who ended up caught on the image just looking back to the camera, smile faltered by distraction. Not that Phichit seemed to have minded, as he was calling it perfect and saying he needed to upload this right now, which left Yuri to step over to the man, hands making a circle as though on habit. "We need a few more plates."

The look of comprehension didn't seem to dawn, and Yuri dug out his own phone, looking for one of the handful of apps he'd picked up earlier during the week. Searching for the word in English, tapping the picture and enlarging it, with its manadrin word under it. Turning so the picture faced the man, and raising a hand. Looking at it, thinking, "We need--

At least three or four now, right? Except that Phichit had invited one more, and that one had invited one more, and what it that last person did, too? He uncurled his thumb "Five?"

"Shì, shì. We get them right to you." He walked off briskly in the opposite direction, vanishing around a corner.

"Look! It's already getting liked!" Phichit had reappeared at his side and he was sliding the phone in front of Yuri's face, with their faced, smiling, and his own caught in the middle of what looks like distracted surprise. Even so, with his name, and the hashtag, for both of them, Shanghai, and the restaurant, it was already flashing hearts on his screen.

"Yeah," Yuri said, not absolutely loving it, but grateful enough it wasn't terrible. Phichit's never were. It could be left at that, as Yuri turned and started taking them back through the network of little hot pot cubicle spaces, with all their designed walls and nice tables, most of them full.

"You still haven't said--" This with a nudge against his arms, right below his shoulder, that caused Yuri to look down with a quizzical confusion at the unclarified topic of this sudden, almost hush-hush shift to Phichit's voice. The kind of conspicuous not-quite-whisper he used when making plans on the ice, while he should have been practicing.

His eyebrows went a little more up, as though obviously, this should be obvious. Slowing their steps back.
Then a little higher, which only made it more necessary to ask, "Haven't said ... ?" and leave it hanging as a question.

Put out a little for having to put it into words, Phichit none the less lost now of his surreptitiousness, nor the garnered friendly interest behind it, saying at the same volume, "How it is working out with Victor. As your coach."

Edited 2017-03-07 15:01 (UTC)

The bottle is empty.

The first one, not the second, but the second is well on its way, and Victor's not totally sure when that happened, only that it must have at some point. Phichit and Yuri are...somewhere, and this restaurant is feeling warm and cozy and the booth is beginning to feel more like a cocoon than a table. The sounds of the restaurant have faded away: he doesn't notice anything other than whatever Ciao Ciao's saying, even if he forgets what it was almost instantly, after replying.

He thinks they talked about coaching for a little while, but he can't remember if he asked any questions and got any real answers, or if it's just been more of the same derision he's gotten from Yakov and Ciao Ciao and all the other coaches who used to treat him with respect, and who now seem personally offended that he's moving into their domain.

He's not sure if he could ever explain it. If he'll ever have the words to clearly convey the fact that he doesn't plan on being a coach instead of a skater, that there was only this one specific instance where he would even consider it, and he can't imagine working with anyone else. Anyone other than Yuri.

When Yuri was the whole reason, and impetus, and inspiration. When Yuri was the only one who ever asked him to be a coach. Who wanted him for this even before it had ever even been an idle thought in Victor's brain.

Even if turned out, in the end, that was all he wanted.

(What do you want me to be to you?)

And he's tried. He has. He's tried so hard to put all that aside, and just use it on the ice, the way he always would have before, but over the last seven months, the line between friend and coach and lover keeps blurring.

They spend all their time together. Go out to eat, see the sights, practice, exercise, bathe, work, relax together. Are so entwined in each others' day that Victor's not sure he even remembers what life was like without Yuri in it everywhere, along with Maccachin, and hot spring baths, and a large and loving Japanese family.

Yuri doesn't want him for a boyfriend. He knows that. Academically. But it's difficult to remember, sometimes, when he's stopped fleeing when Victor touches him, or when he looks up at him from across the ice after a perfect rendition of Eros or Yuri on Ice, when he knows he's nailed it and his face is lit with brilliance and delight, or when they're playing a game with Maccachin that ends with all three of them in a muddled mess on the floor, and Yuri's laugh has gone breathless and his glasses have been knocked askew and his hair is rumpled and he looks at Victor with so much warmth and genuine affection that it makes him want to knock his head between the sliding bedroom door and the jamb until he's remembered:

That Yuri doesn't want him for a boyfriend. Even if sometimes it feels like he does.

Even if trying to keep that distance has only made things worse. He'd thought pining over those fifteen months, only able to express himself through the choreography and performance of Stay Close to Me had been shattering, but it was nothing to being in close contact, every day, with Yuri, and Yuri's shy appeal, and Yuri's bright eyes, and Yuri's skill on the ice, and Yuri's determination and fire and the way he never gives up.

Leaving him staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, Yuri sleeping only feet and one room away, wondering. How to use this. How to set it aside. How to keep it to himself. How to contain it, when it feels uncontainable.

Now sipping at the rice wine, that has stopped tasting like anything, and is getting swallowed like water, and wondering the same thing, lost in thought while Celestino's rambling about something or other.

About how he thought he loved Katsuki Yuri a year ago. About how wrong he was.

Edited 2017-03-07 16:35 (UTC)

It's different, that's Yuri's first though, with a blink of surprise at the question.

Though, he supposes, he shouldn't be surprised. Phichit would be the one to ask, and it's not like Yuu-chan or Minkao haven't asked similiar things in their own ways across different parts of this year, during the, admittedly rare, times he was alone at one of their places. Doing figures on the ice, in the middle of the night, still. Continuing to learn new ways to move his body, express even more feminine sexuality the way he can see it in his piece.

But that is it. The first thought. It's different.

It's not like with Celestino, and the rink full of skaters he shared Celestino with, and his room with Phichit, and his tutors. It was his home, his family. It was Victor everyday, from morning to night. It was practice, and family dinners. It was Victor dragging him to anything one of his family members or friends mentioned, like he couldn't live without it. It was doing whatever new hair-brained scheme got into Victor's head to make him connect with his pieces, learn his jumps. It was Victor, and Victor, and Victor, without pause.

Which makes his answer a little too waffle, a little too weak, "It's not that different."

Because in the end it's not, right? Not really?

"We're still on the ice just as often," No, not exactly, "maybe more." But not because of Victor alone. Because he felt driven to make it happen. To reach higher, go father, find a way to express everything Victor had handed him, to show him, over and over and over, that he'd made the right choice, choosing Yuri's season instead of his own. "He's more demanding. Sometimes."

He's more specific. He doesn't let Yuri waffle. Even if he waits for the why to be told to him.
Then he works Yuri through that, too. Whether it's in his feet or in his head.

Like it's theirs, instead. Sometimes that's more exhausting.

"And?" Phichit is leaning into him as though he's gathering the secrets of the world, and Yuri would rather he'd picked a different topic. He could probably talk about the strange way Victor fell in love with every food dish and festival he ever went to, or tried, more than about how it was different. When it wasn't. (But it was.)

Which was stupid, he knew. Saying he could explain something that wasn't happening every day better.

"And nothing?" Yuri countered, even though the expression on Phichit's face looked like the one he made in Detroit, when Yuri was refusing to get up off his bed, and Phichit was calculating how much force it would take to drag him out by his hands, heels unhelping, because it would be absolutely worth it. He'd see. It looks like that face. But somehow not, too.

There was ... more there? What was that even. Curiosity? Suspicion?

There really wasn't more to it.

Sometimes he tangled it up in all the wrong ways. But that wasn't about Victor coaching him.

Sometimes it started blurring. The feeling of Eros seemed to suddenly fit, suddenly fill everything.
The story of Love in him, his life, name such, extended to Victor, to his family, to his home.
The fact is was all Victor, and Victor, and Victor.

When everything was just dizzying sureness exploding in him, when something went right, on the ice (or, even off sometimes, when he forgot to worry, forgot to count, forgot to remember), and those glass cut eyes that never left him. Not even in his dreams. Where ... it just ... blurred. In ways it shouldn't have, but did. That wasn't the right answer either. Only And nothing?

His shoes didn't have any answer for him, and it was good they were rounding the wall to their table.

Where he tried not to translate the fact something in his chest felt relieved just to see Victor, and not talk about him.

It takes Celestino waving a hand in front of his face for Victor blink, and realize he'd been asked something. "Huh?"

"I said, I'm glad to see Yuri back in the running. Even if it's with you as his coach."

There's a moment where they're both silent, but – thought as he refills both their glasses, and takes another swallow – there's another conversation going on under the surface.

The one where they both remember how Celestino pried Yuri off of him at the banquet, after Yuri had asked Victor to be his coach. The thing no one – not even Yuri – has brought up.

How unlikely it is that anyone there that night might think coaching was the only thing going on between the two of them. How he can see that very suspicion in Celestino's face, and he can't even defend himself against it, because it's true: he left his own career, his home country, everything he ever knew, and flew to Japan on what turned out to be a whim on Yuri's part, even if it had been followed up months later by that video.

The one he still doesn't understand. The one he still watches, now and again.

Celestino's talking again. "... –ad potential, he just never believed in himself. I'm happy to see how determined he is to do well this year."

Now looking at Victor, if a little blearily, and Victor's sure he should have some sort of response to that, but he's not sure how coaches talk about their skaters; only knows they probably don't say the things that are trying to burst out of his chest, out of his mouth, that have been tackled and taped down for almost two long years.

Settling for: "Yuri's very special," as neutrally as he can, and hoping to God that's what comes out, and not he's remarkable, isn't he, the things he does, the music he makes, the love he feels, how hard he tries, I'm prouder of him than I could ever be of even myself, he makes my heart beat, I love him, but Celestino is only nodding, a little loosely, so he thinks he managed it.

Thinking that it's getting not just warm, but hot in here now, and slipping his jacket off his shoulders, as a cheerful voice sounds, and he looks up, a little foggy, to see Phichit and Yuri come back around the booth wall.

And Yuri. With that half-awkward look on his face that he sometimes gets when he's uncomfortable, all slender lines and dark silky hair and cute glasses and Victor sort of forgets that Phichit, or even Celestino, is there, as he's hanging his jacket over the back of Yuri's chair, barely even able to feel it against his fingers. "Yuri!"

Unable to keep from gushing delight. It's only been minutes, maybe – longer, possibly? – but it's felt like years, and he's thrilled, and, also, Victor missed him. "You're back!"

After Victor asked if he wanted to come back with him. Except. No. That was a different night, and a different Yuri, and a different Victor, and a different everything. Everyone.

But there's nothing else in the room but Yuri's face. That Victor cannot lean in to kiss. Or reach out to touch.

Which he remembers just soon enough to make his hand go to the back of Yuri's hand, instead, in what he hopes comes across as his original intention. "We were just talking about you."

Except that's not even entirely true, is it?

Even as something relaxes in his chest at the sight of Victor there, and even as Victor is turning to him, grey-silver hair swinging, eyes all brilliance, saying the one word he's said most in these months -- his name, and his mind knows the second one, is just as trained to it.

(Seduce me.)

But the bubble of the thought, and the vein it cuts itself from, is broken back into the cracks it tried to burble through while Victor is suddenly smiling up at him, calling his name more loudly than needed. Nothing like the momentary image of the man on the ice, the lips at his ear. It's just this. Victor:

Bright, glass-cut, eyes, lighter than the sea, and maybe even a little glassy.
Mouth stretched in a smile, like he somehow didn't see Yuri four minutes ago.

Hasn't seen him every day, all day, for most of the last year. It's over the top. It's very Victor, too.

That wavering hand, that seems confused by the air, or movement, finally finds Yuri's hand, to drag him back into his chair, as though there was somewhere else he might have ended up, and he's halfway to thinking Victor might be a little -- before a brick falls through his stomach and crashes on his feet with Victor's words.

Looking from Victor to Celestino and back suddenly, the ability for dread to creep so fast, collapse in so vast, impossible even when it's happening. When his cheeks color, and every wobble, every fall, every time he never spoke, how slow he can be in comparison.

How many minutes had they left them alone? How much could they have covered, and agreed upon, already?

It's absolutely unsteady, barely a second later, warbled uncertainty, surprise, dread. "O-oh?"

He's never been so happy to see Yuri. He's never been so happy. Grinning, "what?" because he's not sure what Yuri's talking about, or looking surprised and wary about.

There's nothing to make that face for, here, is there? It's just them. And the hot pot. And the hot room. And the rice wine.

It sears through his veins like boiling water, flushing his cheeks a deep and cheery pink, and he lets go of Yuri's hand to brush his hair back out of his face and eye, only for it to fall back again in a second, while he's already reaching for Yuri's wrist again. "I love this place."

It does not start life as I love you, because he might be a little tipsy, but he's not that drunk, and that would be a stupid thing to say, a thing that would make Yuri run, or make that face, like he doesn't want to hurt Victor's feeling but he just doesn't –

Anyway, it doesn't. Is the important thing.

He reaches for his glass, only to find it empty again, and refills it, before remembering that Celestino is right there, too, and they were talking about Yuri, and Victor should be a good host and refill his glass, which he does, even though Celestino is beginning to look a little wobbly.

Italians. They can't handle anything stronger than wine.

The refreshed glass goes down, halfway, at a gulp, and Victor's laughing at Celestino, who's trying to pick up a mushroom with his chopsticks and keeps aiming way off to the side, before he feels motion under his fingers, and turns back to Yuri, who is:

Beautiful. Perfect? Adorable. His favorite face in the whole world. Who wanted him to come to Japan, all those months ago. Who skated for him, over a year later. Who steals his heart again and again, every day, every time like the first time.

And he'd been ...

Right! "Good things," he assures, leaning in a little closer, surprised when his forehead bumps against Yuri's head, and his vision is full of black silky hair and Yuri's ear and the angle of his jaw and he, just. It feels like drowning.

Maybe he is. Maybe he did. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

The jacket is a new bit of lumpiness laying over the back of his chair, between his and it, but he doesn't have long to consider that, or whether he should, would, wants to move it at all, because Victor's fingers slide around his wrist, with pure nonchalance, and he's suddenly crooning about his love for this place --

-- and really, he should be used to that. He almost is, in some ways. Even if he looks at the fingers on his wrist, briefly, under the tuck of his face, and careful blink of eyelashes. He more used to being touched by Victor than he was months ago. It's always a little bit of a surprise, a strange, faint flutter in his chest when it's not on the ice.

If he's being honest, even on the ice, but on the ice, he has to focus more. Beyond. Be on all the time. When and where he's being touched by Victor are parts of what he needs to focus one. Where his weight should move, where he should be turning, leaning, moving more. This system of a physical language, of learning, instruction, they build between themselves, an extra language beyond their cobbled stones.

Which means that gets a glance, something almost patient when it's just a shift from his wrist to looking over.
Because Victor is in love with another place, that gives him more to eat and drink, and that's the least surprising thing.

But it's gone seconds later, too, and Victor is filling his glass and Celestino's glasses, like he hadn't tied a fading string of warmth on Yuri's skin. Not when he's giving a carefree laugh at the man who looks --now that Yuri's managed to actually look at Celestino since returning face gone reddish and eyes having a trouble focusing on his chopsticks -- rather more drunk than Victor, and he's uncertain how that could be. They weren't gone that long.

But then suddenly something bumps into his temple, cheek, and Victor's words are suddenly being said with breath rebounding on his cheek, and everything happens in the startled stiffness of a second. He blinks rapidly, his cheeks reddening and his eyes shooting to what he can see of Victor's face, and then to the people across the table. One of whom is still chasing a mushroom (badly) and the other, Phichit, whose eyebrows are alarmingly high suddenly.

Which just makes Yuri flush more, heart thudding too hard, shoulders uncertain whether to come up and drawn in or stay stuck. When Victor just isn't done. Goes about all but murmuring against his ear (again, again, like that day...) with that completely innocuous question that bounces too fast around Yuri's brain, because it's trying to dissolve and explode as much as make it to the center of his brain.

It's a nod. Tiny, fast, a few too many times. (His throat not agreeing to swallow.) "Yes."

Which sounds captured in his throat, so he tries harder. A little louder. Normal. Totally normal.
This is normal. And there are people with them. "They're bringing more plates for everyone."

Edited 2017-03-08 02:32 (UTC)

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