Виктор Никифоров (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fivetimechamp) wrote2017-03-01 11:20 am
fivetimechamp) wrote2017-03-01 11:20 am
Entry tags:
The Road to the Grand Prix Final, May, 2014 - Hasetsu, Japan
He's not sure what he's doing wrong.
None of this is going quite like he expected. Yuri just isn't bonding with him as a coach the way he thought he would. In fact, Yuri doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with him, as a coach or otherwise. It seems like every time Victor reaches for him, Yuri pulls back. Still.
It's been over a month.
It's been over a month, and every time he thinks he's got the problem figured out – Yuri needed to get back into shape, Yuri lacks confidence, Yuri has no faith in his own decisions and ability, Yuri has trouble landing quads, Yuri needs some external motivation to finally fight – another day breaks and they're still out of sync with each other.
So he's not sure what he's doing wrong, only that it's something.
Or maybe that he is.
There must be some reason Yuri's avoiding him. He'd worked so hard to win Onsen on Ice that Victor had been sure that Yuri wanted him here, but morning after morning, he's late to the rink.
(A little later each time.)
Morning after morning, he mumbles one or two word answers to Victor's questions, hunched and awkward and not meeting Victor's eyes.
Day after day, he works, and listens, and does what Victor says, but doesn't offer anything of himself aside from his presence and his obedience. Outside the rink, there's barely anything at all, like Yuri can only be around him when they're on the ice, working on Eros.
And night after night, he turns red and looks away in the bath, he sits in silence across the table, he shuts the door, and won't let Victor in.
So he must be doing something wrong, or maybe he's just wrong, entirely, after all, and Yuri doesn't want him here, but –
Don't forget!
Spending the nights when Yuri is a hallway and a closed door and further away in the same house than he seemed when he was continents and oceans away lying in his own bed with Maccachin at his side, scrolling through old pictures, old videos, laughter and applause and loud voices tinny through his phone speaker.
Going back, time and again, to the one that brought him here. The message in a bottle. The reminder. Trying to find any other explanation for it than the most obvious one, the only one that makes sense.
So he's here, but Yuri refuses to meet him on the same page, and time is starting to get away from them, and Victor has never been a particularly patient man:
And when –
– on the morning after the morning after the morning after the morning, Yuri simply never appears at the Ice Castle –
Victor?
Is done waiting.
None of this is going quite like he expected. Yuri just isn't bonding with him as a coach the way he thought he would. In fact, Yuri doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with him, as a coach or otherwise. It seems like every time Victor reaches for him, Yuri pulls back. Still.
It's been over a month.
It's been over a month, and every time he thinks he's got the problem figured out – Yuri needed to get back into shape, Yuri lacks confidence, Yuri has no faith in his own decisions and ability, Yuri has trouble landing quads, Yuri needs some external motivation to finally fight – another day breaks and they're still out of sync with each other.
So he's not sure what he's doing wrong, only that it's something.
Or maybe that he is.
There must be some reason Yuri's avoiding him. He'd worked so hard to win Onsen on Ice that Victor had been sure that Yuri wanted him here, but morning after morning, he's late to the rink.
(A little later each time.)
Morning after morning, he mumbles one or two word answers to Victor's questions, hunched and awkward and not meeting Victor's eyes.
Day after day, he works, and listens, and does what Victor says, but doesn't offer anything of himself aside from his presence and his obedience. Outside the rink, there's barely anything at all, like Yuri can only be around him when they're on the ice, working on Eros.
And night after night, he turns red and looks away in the bath, he sits in silence across the table, he shuts the door, and won't let Victor in.
So he must be doing something wrong, or maybe he's just wrong, entirely, after all, and Yuri doesn't want him here, but –
Don't forget!
He hasn't. Can't.
Spending the nights when Yuri is a hallway and a closed door and further away in the same house than he seemed when he was continents and oceans away lying in his own bed with Maccachin at his side, scrolling through old pictures, old videos, laughter and applause and loud voices tinny through his phone speaker.
Going back, time and again, to the one that brought him here. The message in a bottle. The reminder. Trying to find any other explanation for it than the most obvious one, the only one that makes sense.
Please come.
So he's here, but Yuri refuses to meet him on the same page, and time is starting to get away from them, and Victor has never been a particularly patient man:
And when –
– on the morning after the morning after the morning after the morning, Yuri simply never appears at the Ice Castle –
Victor?
Is done waiting.
no subject
He'd said he would hold on as long as he could, until it would inevitably end. He has dreams about that day. He has nightmares of sudden, gaping, black pitfalls suddenly appearing where the ice should be under his skates. He pushes himself up. He exercises. He goes out on the ice, and he does what he's asked, what he needs to, endures the comments about his life, the criticism about his skating.
Victor's overwhelming nearness in his life. No breath taken without him somewhere.
A nearness not even Phichit seemed, and they were in the same room all the time.
If Victor knows how flawed he is on the ice, even having won and not miraculously gone skyward from it, it's nothing to the despair at realizing it's worse off the ice. There is nothing he could have to say that would be enough. To answer these question. To counter Victor glee with everything he sees, tastes, is nearby. His smile was already too brilliant, but now it's painfully blinding.
Every smile. Every joke. Every nudge. Every comment. Every bath. Every meal. Every look from everyone.
He said he'd make it until whenever that day was. The day Victor would realize it. Wherever. Everywhere.
That Victor is perfect, world renown fact, undesputable, and Yuri ... just isn't. Won't ever be.
It weights more. Instead of enjoying every last laugh or tidbit of advice, it's heavier, harder, every day.
Something else that is all he'll have left, have lost, when that inevitable day arrives.
He sleeps less. Tossing and turning, able to lose himself on his skates sometimes, but never in his bed. When it's just him and his head, demons no windows and doors can stop. Falling asleep only exhausted before dawn, and waking up at the wrong time, putting himself on the back foot every morning, each day, again, and again, but it only continues, the cycling swallowing him. Each morning, each night. Each morning, each night. Only exhaustion, only the darkness of too much of even those, where he finds any empty-peace.
no subject
(Yuri, do you know why I decided to become your coach?)
– but, he has to conclude, sighing as his elbow finds his thigh, as his hand catches his cheek, they'd only crossed wires again.
Well, maybe it was because he wasn't being entirely truthful. He should admit that to himself, at least, if not to Yuri, and while he hadn't been lying about being able to see the music Yuri makes when he skates, he hadn't been wholly honest, either. He'd known Yuri could skate Eros, because he's seen him do it before, and he knows Yuri has the skill to bring a program of the level only Victor could create all the way to the top of the Grand Prix Final's podium, because he's seen that, too.
But he hasn't reminded Yuri that it was Yuri himself who asked him to come here; Yuri, who planted the idea of even being a coach into his brain.
Shrugging his jacket on, he thinks of Celestino's disdain –
(You're playing at being a coach in Japan?
– and his mouth presses into an annoyed line. Maybe he's new at this. Maybe he doesn't know the best way to go about all of this, and maybe he's screwing it all up. It may well just be that he isn't a very good coach, and that's why Yuri isn't responding to him.
But he doesn't think that's it. And, even if it is, he has to find a way to fix it, because he's here, and this is where he's going to stay. He didn't forget.
Lost in thought, as he bikes back to the resort, even while he's smiling and waving and greeting the Hasetsu natives he's come to know, mind wandering down crooked paths and running up against overgrown stone walls.
Yuri needs to trust him. He'd thought they had some trust already, but he must have been wrong.
Leaving him taking determined steps down the hall, towards that (still closed, always closed) door, and this time, he doesn't knock.
Just reaches out to emphatically slide the door open, free hand on his hip, eyes narrowed.
...Until they clear, and he smiles. "Good morning, Yuri."
(At the moment, just a quivering lump under the covers.)
"Let's go to the ocean."
no subject
(He hasn't even been asleep. Just so tired.
Beyond his muscles. In his head. So tired. Given up.)
Shock slamming guilt, embaremssment and confusion, when he's on his hands and knees, blanketed. "The o-ocean?"
That's even more surreal. That Victor doesn't even look angry, look annoyed. He's not even using the voice he does then, when he's done something wrong for the umpteenth time in a row, or he's refused to give Victor the answer to a question containing more than five words and only just enough not to be an absolutely embaressment of himself. And he has. He knows he's done wrong. The worst wrong yet. The one where he basically stayed down, asked for it end and stop leading up to the end, without thinking about it like that until just now when it's alive in his shock.
And yet ... ? Victor is ... ? The ocean ... ?
no subject
– but that doesn't mean that, occasionally, that hand isn't hauling Yuri towards him by the back of his shirt. "Yes!"
Everything about him is pleasant. Voice, smile, attitude: he doesn't want to give Yuri even the smallest reason not to agree.
He doesn't even come past the threshold, only stands in the doorway. "So get dressed, and meet me downstairs. Don't worry about going for your run: let's take a break, this morning."
That might be part of it. Yuri's been working himself to the bone: first, to lose the weight he'd put on over the last season, finishing school and avoiding competition while Victor had been tearing through another season's worth of practice and performance; then, to beat Yurio and win the chance at having his wish granted. And now, to perfect that program, and get to competition-level skill and shape.
Maybe they could both use a morning off.
But that doesn't mean he's entirely off the hook.
Pleasant, but firm: "You have five minutes."
Before he turns to head back down the hallway, and makes for the main dining space, his mind half on whether he'd managed to motivate Yuri (the squeaked O-o-o-okay seems to suggest he had, at least, won this walk), and half on whether he might be able to charm some of those fish and rice triangles from Yuri's mother while he waits for her son, the Sleeping Beauty, to join him.
Well, he's had one win this morning: may was well try for two.
no subject
Probably four now.
Yuri shook himself. A movement almost too like Maccachin, who shows up under his feet and even in his bed more often than Yuri's quite sure how he even got in. But it was comforting. Putting a soft balm on the empty unshapabale ache of Vicchan's loss even after five years of being half a world away from him, even a year after he'd passed. The hurt hadn't cared about the details, seemed more real here at home, where the hole he should be in was, and sometimes it was better when he woke up with Maccahin curled against the bottom of his bed, or even him under his blanket.
An absolute stowaway, but one who asked nothing of him. Except an occasional pet and patience with being licked at.
Three minutes. He blinked, rubbed his eyes and hauled himself off the bed this time. Tossing his night clothes on the rumpled blankets and digging for clean pants and a nice shirt. Then, covering the second with a loose grey sweatshirt. Socks and shoes, hopping around a little, before throwing a look in the mirror as he quickly brushed his hair. He looked about as well as he felt. But he was up, and he was dressed, in what he hoped was the time.
Or close enough to it, after not even attempting to meet Victor's first time mandate on this day. Coming down the hallway, calling his name once in question, as though in search of just where Victor might have ended up in five minutes. It was Victor, after all. But Yuri doubted he turn up forgetful enough this sudden newest trip and just vanished.
no subject
"That boy!" she says, beaming. "He has always wanted to hide away."
Victor nods, because he knows: not well, and not everything, but he's seen enough and heard enough to know that's true. That Yuri hides himself away, from family and friends and fans and even from Victor, his coach. He'd hid his true feelings about that music from Celestino, and he'd hid from the other skaters all last season, until the banquet.
And the champagne.
But Victor can't get him drunk all the time (or even now and again: Yuri doesn't drink when he's training, he'd said), so he has to find some other way to get Yuri to shine the way Victor knows he can.
Calling out "Here!" to his name being asked like a question, while he nods a goodbye to Yuri's mother, and heads towards the entrance, holding out one of the onigiri to Yuri when he comes in. "Here, Yuri: let's have these on the way. See you later!"
With a wave to Mari and Yuri's parents, as he slides open the door and Maccachin bounds ahead of them into the sunlit morning.
It's warm in May, and the sun feels good on the back of his neck, on his forearms, where the sleeves of his black shirt are pushed up. The onigiri is delicious as he chews, and he managed to get Yuri outside, to walk with him.
Maybe he'll be able to pull this off, after all.
Helping himself to another bite, and closing his eyes in delight. "Vkusno!"
Before smiling brightly over his shoulder at Yuri, and lifting what's left of his onigiri in a gesture. "We don't have anything like these at home. They're delicious!"
All the food here is. It's just one more thing to love about Hasetsu.
no subject
Grateful with his joy, glad for the company he's brought. Glowing at his praise, and her obvious happiness at watching Victor drag him off, out of his room and into the sun, handing off food, and still crowing about it himself, while he eats it. Yuri took his, chewing it slowly, wondering where exactly this was going.
He'd have a better theory on why and what, if it weren't for the way Victor was smiling and so buoyant.
There's another bite, before, "What would you usually have back home?"
no subject
Thoughtful, as he finishes off his onigiri, and wipes his hands off on each other, before one slips into a pocket, and the other swings lose by his side, where Maccachin comes to lick his fingertips for any remaining grain of rice or shred of meat. "Syrniki, often. They're a sort of..."
He fumbles for the words in English, head tipping back and forth. "Cottage cheese pancake. Filling, full of protein, very good for training. We eat them with sour cream, or sometimes jam."
Considering. "Or sometimes some bread, with a little butter and cheese and kolbasa on top. Sausage, I mean."
It's not much, but then, Yuri doesn't ask him much. Perhaps it's a good sign that he's putting some effort into making conversation?
Victor's free hand lifts as he shrugs. "Our food is much heavier than yours. Good for long winters...and always tasty after a long day of training."
no subject
Even if the whole world would know the first time Victor put up a picture back home, wouldn't they.
Even the cheerfulness of and the ease of his current chatter now seems suspect. How many stories has he sold on the ice, to every person watching? How many interviews and autographs, even when not in the mood? How easy would it be, to just make it look good until they got to the beach and they had it out about this morning?
(And every day before this morning. Where he tried, he did try, kept trying ... but not enough, too.)
Yuri wrinkled his nose a little, the dip is his thoughts not helping the description of the first breaking food which sounds a bit terrible. But that's rude to say, and even ruder to even consider saying with where he's headed. He can at least be respectful, if not graceful, before it all ends.
The second one isn't all that terrible, but both of them different,
and he doesn't know entirely what to say, so instead he says, "Right."
no subject
But it's nice to walk in silence, too. He's not accustomed to making small talk much, outside of seeing other skaters at competitions, but even if he were, he'd enjoy this, he thinks: the blue of the sky, the warm sun, the sparkle of light scattering off the ocean's surface, as they slowly make their way towards it.
Yuri, next to him. Maccachin, trotting up ahead.
It's not a life he would ever have anticipated wanting, and he's still not always sure how to navigate it – but he is sure about one thing: that this is exactly where he should be, and what he should be doing.
The details, he can always hammer out as needed – but in order to do that, he has to make sure Yuri will be right there with him, or this gambit will never pay off.
The bite of salt is thick in the air as they turn off the sidewalk, and towards the beach, where a wall bars the grass and trees from the sand: he steps down, sand giving way under his foot, and sits, Maccachin plopping down next to him. Out ahead, the water glitters, and overhead –
"Oh, seagulls."
Sounding their lonesome, familiar calls across the wide sweep of water, and wheeling in the air with an ease that makes him laugh at his own stupid attempts at flight.
Even a quadruple flip is nothing to them.
no subject
At least that's a direction. Even as his stomach cramps and he wishes a million things.
Suddenly certain if he did anything but sit down he could stop this. Somehow. Still deserve it.
Take back the morning. Take back the week. Try harder. Pretend through the things he didn't get.
But they've all already happened, and Victor is already sitting there. Maccachin sitting down next to him, and looking up, tailing wagging and waiting for Yuri to sit down with them. The only person here that isn't aware of what is about to happen. There's only one way forward now, so he steps up and over to Victor's side, sitting down beside him.
His knees coming up to his chest, and being rounded by an arm, instead of out like Victor. Victor's absolutely ease with all of this even more unsteadying, and even how he simply looks at the sky and talks about the birds. Far away and insignificant. That Yuri doesn't look up at. He knows what they will be. What they've always been. "Black-tailed Gulls."
no subject
As if he'd rather the world passed him over, unseen, when Victor knows that would be a loss – not just for Yuri, but for the world.
The yearning calls of the gulls ahead speaking to his own heart. Keeping his hand on Maccachin's back, so he doesn't reach for Yuri, and send him running.
That hasn't been working. He needs to try something new. And if Yuri won't be the one to open up, well: Victor can take that, too. Isn't that what a coach should do? Lead by example, offer a guiding hand, prove that it's safe to come along? "Ever since I came here, I'm reminded of St. Petersburg when I hear gulls in the early morning."
The sand is rough against his palm, the sky shrouded in clouds: not heavy rain clouds, or the gauzy humid mare's tails that mean a change in weather, but silver and gray bands, filtering the sun and casting diffused light across the sand and water. "I never thought I'd leave that city, so I never used to notice the seagulls' cries."
He never used to notice a lot of things, before this last year. What he sees and hears and knows now, he knows because of Yuri.
There's so much more to the world.
"Do you ever have times like that?"
It's not unlike his other questions –
(tell me everything about you)
– but it isn't as pointed, gets asked out towards the water, instead of directly at Yuri. He's learned that Yuri gets anxious, that Yuri is uncomfortable with direct attention, that Yuri stumbles and stammers over the details he's asked for, so this isn't quite the same. A little more general, a little less pressure. Offering as much as asking.
An open hand, there for the taking.
no subject
To never have to feel the kind of weight that settles on his ribs when Victor says that this reminds him of home every single morning. This home Yuri's almost never heard him speak of and hasn't asked about, and it must be the perfect opening. The home he never thought he'd leave, and the things he missed from it now that it was gone, that he's remembered and missed every morning.
The one he was going to return to now.
Yuri hears the question but it's not what happens to it, when it bounces around inside of him with the other words. Because this may be the one and only chance he even has to explain. What went wrong. Why it did. That this isn't Victor's fault, any more than it's never been anyone else. When what that makes him think of is the people who've tried to help when it got to the worst.
The ones that had understood, few and far between, and the worst moments, when it really showed, and he doesn't even know if he'll be able to explain it right when he starts talking. Gaze somewhere between his knees and the sand and the sea, but looking through all of them, back to that day. To someone else who hadn't understood, and kept trying to blunder right into it. Even well meant.
"There was a girl in Detroit who was really pushy and kept talking to me." All of the time, but it hadn't seemed like such a big deal. Something manageable. Avoidable. Defendable, until he just didn't have it let in him that one day. "One time, a rink mate got hurt in an accident. I was pretty torn up with worry..." Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, trying to not let the waiting get to him, even as it did. Like it always did. "I was in the hospital waiting with that girl."
"When she hugged me to comfort me--" It had all gone sideways, and there wasn't anything left. Not to both hold himself, and the weight of everything, even her sympathy, then, on top of him, too. "--I shoved her out of the way without thinking about it."
no subject
But he waits. Takes that breath, and the next one, because he can be patient, when it's important. And it is important. It's Yuri's whole career. It's his, that he dropped in a heartbeat, for the memory of one night and a three minute video online.
For him. The boy sitting next to him, tucked into himself, peering worriedly at the world through glasses, hair gone ruffled in the sea breeze, and still more beautiful than Victor knows what to do with. Different than he had been that night, but more real. This foolish thing in Victor's chest that has been reaching for him and dreaming of him and longing for him for over a year, still yearning.
But mixed up, now, with a new need. Wanting to help. To prove he could, that he isn't just playing at being a coach, like Yuri's career is a silly diversion, as if it's something Victor would take so lightly.
Uncurling itself like a cat to relax around Victor's ribs when there's a pause, but some words actually come, and even if they aren't what he expected, they're more than he thought he'd get.
And maybe more useful, too. Someone trying too hard to push past Yuri's barriers, who hugged him without warning and got pushed away: It sounds familiar.
"Wow," is not quite a laugh, because it isn't funny, but he's breathing relief, and keeping it light. "Why?"
no subject
The one anyone sensible and sane would ask.
Why punish the girl for simply trying to console him?
"I didn't want her to think I was feeling unsettled," he says, a little too easy to be right. Because he had been, because it must have been obvious, but it wasn't only that. It was (and he can't look over, can't raise his gaze from just beyond his shoes, voice getting softer, as he tears from some place still fragile and flimsy even years later, like something broken that never fixed) -- "I felt like she was intruding on my feelings or something, and I hated it."
The helpless assumption that someone knew what it was to have all these feelings inside of him. What they felt like. How they circled. That someone felt they could just step in and fix it somehow, fix him, by boxing him in even further, and adding themselves to the pile. That made him feel even more useless and less capable of carrying it all than he'd already felt.
It'd sat with him for so long after. Whether he was unsettled, was even more so because of what he'd done.
"But, then, I realized Minako-sensei, Nishigori, Yuko-chan, and my family never treated me like a weakling." Even far away, half the world and several years, and some more, so much more on the worst nights. "They all had faith I'd keep growing as a person, and they never stepped over the line."
They'd let him be himself, still. Hadn't demanded that he find a way to stop being himself. To let them fix it.
no subject
(Will you watch?
But, more importantly, it gives Victor some insight, and a foundation to work with. Yuri had said I lack confidence when Victor asked him why he lost, despite having the skill to win, but that's not the whole problem. The problem is that he's worried about what others think about him, and his fragility. His meltdown last season, the way he's been running away.
What Victor thought was Yuri ignoring him being avoidance, instead...and that's something he can fix. "Yuri, you're not weak."
Nothing Victor's seen over the last few weeks would have made him think so. Not even the crash and burn of the season before. Athletes at their level exist under tremendous pressure: they all know cracking under it is a possibility.
But it isn't a weakness. "No one else thinks so, either."
Yuri doesn't answer, but this is promising, enough that Victor coaxes it a little further, heading towards the next item on his list. Once he knows what's bothering Yuri, he'll be able to help. But first, there's one other thing he has to know:
"What do you want me to be to you?"
Because he keeps getting it wrong, somehow. Flirting results in red faces and the rapid backwards scuttling away of Yuri from him, and he can't seem to find the correct relationship dynamic to give Yuri whatever it is he needs. "A father figure?"
no subject
but the answer is immediate in his mouth,
even as a rumble at his knees.
"No."
He had a father, and he could not image trying to put Victor in his place.
no subject
He's not looking at Yuri as he gently presses, because it seems to be easier for Yuri to open up if he isn't under scrutiny, and his voice is calm and conversational, but –
Well, he needs to know. What this is. What they are to each other. What Yuri wants him to be, so he can stop, at the very least, being so wrong.
Getting even less of a word, but as clear a negative in the soft sound Yuri makes, which only leaves him one other option. "Then, your boyfriend, I guess."
Isn't that the crux of the whole thing? A reason he never called, even when he didn't forget, even when he sleuthed out the number, even when he spent night after night looking at those pictures, hearing those words: if you change your mind, just give me a call!
When his mind hadn't changed, because nothing had changed between that night and this day, except for him coming here and finding a vastly different Yuri who didn't seem to want to be touched, or seduced, or even spoken to.
But the word feels strange in his mouth, maybe because he doesn't know if it's right, because boyfriend seems like the correct term, but it doesn't mean to him what he feels for Yuri. It feels a little too prosaic, a little too casual, and he doesn't have any idea if it's something he's even capable of. Has he ever, even once, been a good boyfriend?
But isn't he willing to try?
"I can try my best."
no subject
He’s not certain it would go well to say he isn’t certain Victor is even of the latter. The way they’ve come at this. How far apart they are. How little Yuri has managed to navigate whatever was already on the table in front of him. It's too tight in his chest. Not even pain just tightness, like admitting the confusion of even what they are, on the back of having no clue why for everything, would just be worse
Insult on top of so many other ones. Not even certain he could make it form into a sentence. A single word.
(Who is he to even say that, think that? Who in this world wouldn't call themselves Victor's friend if they could?)
But then Victor says the last part, with a smooth voice, the huff of an easy joke and before Yuri know's it he's up, looking at Victor horrified, and the word No won't stop coming out of his mouth, while it explodes everywhere inside him. Is bouncing from side to side to side inside his body, inside his head.
Because. It's not a joke. This isn't what he wants.
He doesn't want to be pretended to. Like a child who couldn't handle the world.
Like - Like - Like he couldn't handle who Victor was on Victor's terms, so he'd - just change himself. That easy.
"I want you to stay who you are, Victor!" He doesn't want Victor to be someone he isn't, when Yuri is already trying his hardest to figure how to take all of his understanding of Viktor Nikiforov and translate that into just Victor, here, in Hasetsu, here, with him, and he knows he's slow, slower than Yurio would be, or anyone else on the ice with Victor even, but he doesn't want lies. He doesn't want to be acted to, like an audience given cue cards.
He might not deserve this chance, whatever it is, however its happening, while Victor talks to him about them and not about leaving. It's sick, befuddled relief, and panic all clashing together. It would be dynamic and so loud on a piano. Screeching thunder. It makes his stomach and his lower back sore, and his eyes drop. Because he doesn't deserve it, even as it swells with dangerous relief and a blossom of such guilt.
Trying, to reach deeper, to pull out the things that true. That should be said. Explained. No matter how stupid.
"I've always looked up to you." Yuri looked down and away, his world on a replay. He'd shown that so badly, hadn't he? Shown everything but that? He'd won, but he couldn't handle anything else but the ice, but the forward momentum of everything there. Celestino's call, Victor's exercises, trying to get back the piece written. He'd hardly given Victor his full attention when not practicing, and maybe not full honesty ever. Maybe not even now, but he was trying. Trying to at least open his mouth. Trying to say why, as it rushed up.
"I ignored you because I didn’t want you to see my shortcomings." Because it would be easier to fail anywhere else but here wouldn't it? It was worse to be left for who he was than even just because he wasn't a good enough skater, wasn't it? The scores had already told him the latter enough times last year, he had video footage of it...but to have Victor tell him the other, too?
But Victor was still here, sitting below him, him and Maccachin, looking up with those cool, clear eyes. The colors of the ocean so close to them, so vibrant in his face, while he watched, and still, still, still had no single wrinkle or weight on his expression that said the knife was coming for Yuri, for his life, for this strange new life where Victor was his coach, for anything he'd done wrong already.
He needed to do better with that. To find a way to get to where that was. At least show up.
Not give up. Not give up at all, if Victor wasn't giving up on him. "I’ll make it up to you with my skating!"
no subject
When even I want you to stay who you are, Victor! lands deep, but he can't respond, because Yuri's working on something, and any word or action now might break the spell. Even if his heart doesn't know what to do with that, with being wanted just for himself. Whoever he is. Showman, champion. Victor.
Who is he, after two decades of neglecting every other part of himself, unless they could help his craft?
But Yuri's going on, quieter now, admitting. Finally opening up, and Victor just turns to watch him, to absorb it all. Everything he can get, as the sea breeze tugs at the bangs in Yuri's face, and his eyes track back and forth across the inner lens of his glasses, maybe without seeing Victor at all. Saying he's looked up to him, like so many skaters have. That he's been avoiding him because...because he's afraid of letting Victor see his failings, when failings are what make a person and a performance interesting. Overcoming them. Pushing past them. Not being defined by them.
So. Putting the pieces together. Yuri's fear was – what? That Victor would walk away, seeing the truth?
When all Victor wants is for Yuri to just stay who he is, too?
The final declaration making him smile in its determination, so similar to I'll give it all the eros I've got! Like Yuri has finally been able to come to a decision, to come to a place where he knows what he wants and how to get it. "Okay."
(And, reminding himself, because it was just shot down, that even if Yuri is beautiful and finally opening up to him and the light casting off the water and filtering from the clouds gives him an unearthly air, he's been clear: he doesn't want that.
No matter how much Victor wants to just kiss him, right now. Even after offering everything else, first. Saying he'd do anything, be anything. He's still only a sinful mortal.)
Doing what he can, instead: what Yuri wants from him. Offering his hand, as he agrees, like they're striking a deal. "I won't let you off easy, then.
"That's my way of showing my love."
no subject
Which is nothing that makes sense, when he's opened the door and spilled his fears, like a stick thick sauce, everywhere, and yet something stranger yet happens, too. Something in him warms, trailing ribbons of that warmth, behind his ribs, careful and slow, slipping in like that light through the blinds at dawn. But backwards, but ... warm.
As Victor holds a hand out. Not coming toward him. Not a riot of movement and ownership of Yuri's space, Yuri's body, Yuri's action that Yuri thinks he's maybe never lived a day of his life, that wasn't spent in the movement of his skates, faster and faster, until his feet are wind, and ice, and music, and his body can't help but follow in their song. Just that hand held out between them. Like.
Like Victor is willing to meet him in the middle. Meet him where he is. Even here. A little lost still.
To let him choose to back up his words, decree, with action on his own merit.
And it brims over at his ribs.
Like. It's own thing, peering out from those bars, and he wants it. He wants to.
He watches his own hand come into his vision. Slip into Victor's hand. Slip into Victor's words.
That he won't go easy. Maybe anymore. Maybe at all. The definitive of when doesn't matter against him in the light.
Against everything pressing out of him, shy and uncertain, but yearning for that. That unnamable in Victor's face. "Okay."
The same word. Small and simple. But he doesn't look away from Victor this time, and he doesn't pull his hand back to himself.
no subject
No matter how relieved Victor is feeling, and no matter how much he wants to, he doesn't turn this handshake into a hug ... but there are benefits to this, too. Seeing Yuri's face clearly, and watching the way the worry that had been stamped there melts into a small, but true smile. Like he's as relieved as Victor is, if perhaps for different reasons.
Making Victor laugh, because this went better than he'd expected, and even if he's disappointed – a little, of course – he thinks he understands. That the two of them need to meet where they are, and build from there, because even after over a month, and all his questions, and every interview he'd ever had, neither of them really know that much about each other.
But he's learning. For example: that Yuri's eyes sparkle, when something's on his mind, but that he hasn't found words for yet.
Because they're sparkling now, brimming with all the thoughts and feelings and questions that Victor wants to pull out of him, but that he'll have to earn, instead of just grab for. "Good!"
Letting go of Yuri's hand and casting that satisfied smile out at the ocean – it's a good start, maybe the first real start – before bending to one knee, fingers going to the laces of his runners. "It's so warm out!"
Not much warmer than St. Petersburg would be, but when does he get the chance to walk on the beach with Maccachin when he's at home?
Standing, he toes off the shoes, and lifts first one foot, and then the other, to tug off his socks, before letting his toes sink into the sand with a sigh. "Ahhh – ! It's probably still too cold to swim, but that feels good. My feet get so sore."
All of theirs do: suspending their weight on millimeter-thick steel blades, uppers laced tightly enough he sometimes looses feeling in his toes entirely.
Tucking his socks into his shoes, and tossing them up on the bank, and taking a few steps down toward the water, before turning, eyes bright, simple happiness brilliant. "You know, Yuri, I really like it here."
Sea air, blue sky, silver clouds, Maccachin running, gulls calling.
And finally feeling like they're on the same page.
"With you."
no subject
No. No, he doesn't want to frame it like that.
Not as how it is or isn't what he expected. What was.
It's just this. Victor. (Just Victor.) The air tugging at that light fringe of hair as he throws his shoes away from him, toes buried in the sand, while Maccachin lopes about in playful steps nearby, still just as pleased as ever. Some how looking freer than anything Yuri's ever seen in his life. This is Victor. Yuri can't help but duck his head a little.
That strange warmth in his chest, touching his cheeks, even as his eyes can't stay down, are drawn right the next second right back, right when Victor turns back to him, all clouds and sea all backdrop, fading, light streamers from thick clouds and glittering water, saying those words. That make that reaction. Stay, deepen, even as Yuri leans down and starts working on his shoes.
His first reaction is to ask why, why to either of those.
His second reaction is that he thought Victor must be coming to hate it.
They both come to his mouth, but they don't come out. He's gotten one shoe off and he's working on the laces of the other when he finds something he actually thinks to say. Something that sounds more like he wants it to sound. That is a little fragile and ... more real, actually his. Something that is more about finding that same middle where their hands had been a second ago.
"It must be very different for you." Victor who had been competing every year since the middle of Yuri's childrhood. Every single one. (He tries not to let the ice catch him on the why, to reflect it to being about him.) Hands steady on his laces, determination forming on his cheeks, as the stays on this line, following it.
He remembers how different it was, even if it's not for the same reasons. "It seemed like that last year, for me."
Even here, until Victor had suddenly shown up and answered the question of whether he was competing again.
no subject
He doesn't think that's quite it, watching as Yuri follows his example and bends to untie his own shoes. "Or different because I'm not competing?"
Different for both, in separate, but related ways. He never thought he'd leave St. Petersburg, because he never thought he'd stop competing – at least, not before forced into it by his own traitor body. He's almost 30, and that's getting close to old for a competitive skater.
But it doesn't really matter, because Yuri's offering a little more, himself, of himself, and it's all Victor can do to keep from latching onto it like a lamprey – but it clarifies what he'd meant, because Yuri took the last year off, in Detroit, before coming back here. "Yes. But different doesn't mean bad."
Hands sliding into his pockets, he looks up at the sky, the clouds slowly marching their ponderous way overhead, the wheeling gulls. Mouth curving, eyes gone soft. "I get to spend so much time with Maccachin, and eat whatever I like, and live here, in a new place, with you, and your family. I never got to see much of life outside the rink before coming here."
Or if he had, he hadn't cared. There was life on the ice, and there was everything else, and, until this past April, he'd never thought there could be something even close to a competition between them.
Yuri had changed that. In a three minute video in April, and less than an hour over a year before. That December.
Yuri has changed everything.
no subject
It echoes just a send, stilling his hand on his shoes.
He knows Victor is talking about his question. Maybe even some allusion between the one he just made between his last year and this one, and it makes him look up from his shoes, because it makes him think about something completely other -- at just the wrong time. Or the right time. Depending on whose view of the sudden event of Maccachin dashing up and licking him in the face, across his mouth and his nose and part of his glasses
The surprise knocking Yuri down on his bottom. Him down, the sand up, one bare foot and one shoe hanging off the other, as the large poodle only dashes back only two or three steps, front paws and head toward the ground, bottom waving in the air. Like this is a game, and Yuri is taking far too long over here.
He can't help that he goes straight from the pink of surprise to a laugh, in spite of himself and the cold sand under his fingers.
"I'm coming," he says, even though he takes the time to put his first shoe, by his second, hopping for a second to get his last sock, and leaving them together, down here, on the sand, rather than tossing them where Victor's had gone. Dusting sand off his hands onto pants half covered with it, to head out to where Victor is, Maccachin bounding off in front of him, only to look back at him, before settling, with one last bounce, over by Victor, like Yuri somehow needed leading there.
no subject
Katsuki Yuri, laughing and pink, relaxed and happy, squirming as Maccachin swipes a tongue across his face, before darting away and settling into a tail-wagging, tongue-lolling invitation to play.
Leaving Victor, still taken aback – not by Maccachin's misbehaving, but by the sudden flood of happiness across Yuri's face, like the sun breaking through clouds. Like nothing he's seen before.
But he wants to.
And finally laughing, himself, as Maccachin comes bounding over, to lick at his hand, and run towards the water, before stopping, and looking back at Yuri, now hopping on one foot, still grinning, cheeks still pink, eyes bright, and Victor wishes he'd thought to take his phone out, to capture it. Rumpled and adorable, nothing like the femme fatale of Eros or the challenger on the dance floor or the wistful beauty of his Stay Close to Me tribute.
This is something new. Something heart-wrenching in its appeal. Innocent and pure.
Making Victor's smile widen, even as his heart aches, even as he throws an arm up in the air in a wave, and an invitation, taking steps backwards towards the water. "Come on, Yuri!"
no subject
Even though he's mostly certain Victor heard him the first time, saying it to the poodle, and it would sound like a grumble maybe if he wasn't smiling and shaking his head, eyes more down than up. But constantly shooting up, too. The sand is cold under his feet, but Victor isn't wrong about what he said when he put his feet on it first. It does feel good.
Tendrils of cool shooting up his skin, balm against soreness, even when it sends a small shiver up his back, as it hits his system, coming full circle. It crisp, that coolness. Not cold as snow, or ice, even if the water might be. More like a sudden tugging breeze blown up into his skin, like it would blow up into the leaves of the wisteria outside his bedroom window.
Maybe his last steps are a little faster than a walk, but not quite to a run to get to where Victor is now.
The sand getting denser and colder where the water was earlier, before the tide pulled out.
Stopping only a few feet from Victor and the frothing surf right beyond him.
(Thinking for for the briefest second of stopping here, like stopping, right at the edge of the rink, after skating Eros, right before Victor threw his arms around him, still all out of breath, surprised, at the hug, that he couldn't figure out what to do with arms or hands at all during, or the sudden proud compliments from Victor for winning, before he let go and proceeded to lecture him on whichever thing he'd messed up that time.)
no subject
But he waits, because Yuri is coming towards him, with that same new looseness to his shoulders that makes Victor want to sling an arm around them, silky black hair rumpling in the same playful breeze that's toying with Victor's, making him want to run his palm over it, fingers through it.
Keeping one hand at his side, and the other in his pocket, instead, and only turning to walk down towards where the water is lapping gently at the sand once Yuri has caught up.
Past the tideline, the sand is packed and wet, and his steps leave perfect imprints that are and are nothing like the shining lines of water and carved ice he leaves on the ice. Stopping just where the clear sheets of water begin to fall back, once they've slid up on the sand, before taking that last step.
Dissolving into sudden bright, breathless laughter, at the cold, too chilly to be comfortable, but that lights all his nerves up at once, as if someone threw a switch. "Ah, it's cold!"
Dancing back out of the surf with a laugh, until Maccachin comes running past him to splash headlong into the water, and Victor runs right after him, the splashes from his toes spattering the ankles of his pants and making them cling, cold and clammy.
But the sun is out, and Maccachin is barking, and Victor is laughing, and he can't remember the last time he played in the ocean like a child.
no subject
That breathless things that isn't a real complaint.
There's too much wind and lightness, breathless surprise, getting spangled inside Yuri's chest, as he laughs at Victor's words, and then Victor running after Maccachin into the wavelets, all regard for any other life flown away with the wind blowing his silver-grey hair back behind him and then all around him. All joyful abandon even at the first brush, more than Yuri thinks he's felt about things he's known he's loved forever.
Yuri's is not quite sure when he ended with his ankles all the way in the water already, cold sliding between his toes and into his bones. Like the ice, the water is, but kinder. No sharp feeling of burns scratching through his skin at its kiss. It's up inside his chest and his arms, cold snaps, that feel like they are blighting out the clouds that were left in his head, and he hears those words again, watching Victor and Maccachin splash at each other.
Different doesn't mean bad.
Different from all he'd expected, when looking at Victor was still partially like looking at the sun. Not like looking at him through the corona of the podium light (or maybe just a little bit, he's trying, to not see it, or see past it, past himself, past the boxes and roles they could give or take). It's still like the sun, itself, made every effort to catch itself in his hair, and corners of his mouth, as he laughed. Still just as gorgeous as the rest of the world had known, still reported on now ... but maybe even more. Here, now, in this absolute simplicity.
Maybe they are both are -- maybe all of this is.
Different, but not bad, when Maccachin comes half bounding half swimming back toward him, half attack and half retreat from Victor, all flopping and flying water, and Yuri leans down to splash him back, before realizing, only as his hand comes up with the arc of a swing (getting half his sweatshirt sleeve wet) that it's aimed at Maccaachin, but it's going to hit Victor full on, too, coming up behind him.
no subject
The two of them staring at each other for the space of a breath, that feels like an entire rotation of the Earth, before Victor's running at him, grinning like a lunatic. "Yuri!"
Obviously a mistake, but not one he's going to let slide, even if the water is slowing him down, and it's hard to catch his breath between his laughter and the drag of water against his ankles, the way the sand shifts underfoot.
Giving Yuri more than a good chance to run, too, but if he does, Victor isn't going to just let him get away. Even if he won't bodily throw himself at Yuri, and tackle him onto the sand like he might have a few weeks ago (or even just yesterday), he can kick water at him, and threaten worse, if he catches him.
Maybe it's undignified. Maybe it isn't attractive, maybe it's pointless –
But Yuri told him to be himself, and this is the best way he knows how. "You can't just splash me and get away with it!"
no subject
hadn't seen -- hadn't meant -- not when everything had just gotten --
he was -- he was so--
But Victor's face shifts from the startled slap of shock into (not a frown, not blank, not anger) a sudden smile, with Yuri's name on that mouth, like a song and a promise, and some something-something something more, when Victor suddenly is trying to rush at him through the water. Sending him back on uncertain, suddenly wobbling legs, calling out with a yelp of his own surprise at the sudden focus that wasn't -- well, everything it wasn't, "Gomen! Gomen!"
Except there's that lunatic smile, brighter than the light from the clouds on the water, so familiar from every time Victor had to try some new treat or spotted something he'd decided was the newest amazing thing in Yuri's world, focused on him. Charging toward him. Even as he's apologizing and trying to run backward in the water and still not slip, which means having to flip it. Backward on ice and backward in water aren't the same. "I didn't mean to!"
Cold water sliding against his skin, soaking more of the bottom of his pants with the splashed half-running, full-retreat and -escape, steps, getting colder as his heart races to match his feet, and as a reflection of the expectation of payback, goosebumps his skin and checking through all his nerves like a test flight for the readiness of it.
no subject
To catch him, with an arm around his middle. To drag him in. To enact revenge in the most satisfying possible way, and muffle those apologies until they turn into a laugh as giddy and breathless as his own.
(This is going to take some getting used to.)
But he doesn't think it long, especially once Maccachin decides that they're both just playing with him, and comes splashing over to tangle with Victor's ankles, which shifts his priorities from chasing Yuri to the much simpler stay standing, which shouldn't be hard. His livelihood is based on his ability to stay upright on ice, and his nimble feet, and his athletic prowess –
– none of which turn out to be a match for Maccachin, who gets so solidly underfoot that Victor trips, arms pinwheeling, desperately trying to find some handhold in the air, before sitting down, hard, while glassy wavelets run up around him and Maccachin jumps to lick his face.
Leaving him struggling with wet dog, wet self, shifting sand underneath, and unable to get up. "Yuri!"
Laughing, and extending one hand in a plea.
"Help!"
no subject
Even forgotten for years and years, it's not forgotten entirely.
Beach days with rink mates, beach days with his family here, as a child.
Slides into his muscles like the push on the ice, hours in, even when the pull of the water on his feet and ankles is heavier than his skates ever do. Not like choking tight laces that make his boots into his feet, every move what he wants and needs it to be. Effortless melding. This drags him back, this slows him down, but he can feel the muscles and the focus, surging through his legs, bursts of energy billowing down and up, not used already this morning.
Dashing far away, concerned with getting away, until there's suddenly a large splash, a yelp of surprise and Maccachin's happy barking, while Yuri looks over his shoulder and stops entirely. Chest heaving, cheeks flushed with the wind, the water, the embaressment, the extertion, and even play-fear. It's all a wash in his face, swimming in his chest, when he sees something he absolutely doesn't.
He's on the ground, Maccachin jumping at him, head butting his shoulders, licking his face like this is the best turn of events. Like Victor Ni- Victor isn't down. Fallen into the water. Water lapping up at all of his pants, water dripping from his hair, his chin, hands. Trying to fend off his own soaked poodle, laughing and calling out to Yuri to rescue him now.
Who can't help the laugh that startles out of his mouth -- surprising even him, wind blowing his hair across his forehead, almost in his eyes -- as he takes tentative, surprised steps, the quicken as he's getting back there. Even if there isn't actually that far away, and he looks. Victor looks like a surprised kid, a sodden mess, and even painfully perfect even then. But even more real in it. Like a normal person.
This is Victor, his mind whispers, strangely giddy, one hand trying to find Maccachin's neck, and the other Victor's hand.
Victor who said he never got time to be with Maccachin, never got time to be anywhere but the ice before now. (Before Yuri.)
no subject
Not that he's sure he'd care much either way. It's too nice a day, the weather is too mild, the water too fresh, and his cheeks too sore from laughing. Everything smells like salt and wet dog and fresh air, and even as he's trying to push Maccachin off, he's not struggling too much. Why would he?
It's the most fun he's had in months.
But Yuri comes to his rescue, jogging back towards him, windblown and brilliant, and if Victor were still trying to crack open that shell instead of coax it, he'd yank down on the offered hand and pull Yuri straight down into the wet sand and lapping wavelets with him –
But he's not, so he doesn't. That would be a bad way to earn the trust he's telling Yuri he deserves, wouldn't it?
So instead, he braces himself on his other hand, and pulls himself up instead of tugging Yuri down, trusting that even if he's smaller, that wiry strength of his will keep them both up, until he's on his feet, only to bend down and scold Maccachin, finger wagging.
"Maccachin! That was very bad!"
(It loses a little of its impact when he's laughing, and when Maccachin, the unrepentant, just swipes a wide tongue across his face, instead of looking ashamed or even the tiniest bit guilty.)
Leaving Victor to try and brush himself off, and shiver a little in the wind. Even if it's warm in the sun, it isn't warm enough to be standing around in soaked clothing, with a fresh breeze sticking it directly against his rapidly chilling skin. "Ah! Not warm enough to swim. Come on, Yuri, let's go back – I need a hot bath and a change of clothes!"
no subject
He expects the freeze, the sudden clench of his stomach, the tension to put him tight, rigid, but it never comes.
Victor letting go of his hand as soon as he's upright and already bending down, away from him, scolding Maccachin in a way he hadn't even gotten to scolding Yuri before dashing after him, and Yuri's world feels like the sand under him is shifting, rocking, like the waves, but it's not dizzying. It doesn't feel like it's trying to knock him over, drive him down under the water, even only inches high here.
It's tremulous and so new he can't look at it. The same way he can't look away from Victor swinging to look over at him, again.
He's dripping from everywhere. He looks nothing like --
(no, no, no)
-- nothing like anything Yuri wants to forget. Not now. He wants to see this whenever he thinks about that now. Transpose it. Victor shivering in the wind, hair sticking to his cheek, over his eye. His ear. His neck. Sand speckled and a mess, but still so effortless cheerful about it being a mess, about being tripped up, about being knocked down and covered.
(And maybe his being a mess isn't so bad? That Victor is fine with ... even his mess somehow?)
Yuri starts walking toward the beach and their shoes, wind and water and this strange, strange, new space. Words bubbling from some space he can't name, define, place, with the wind tugging his mouth toward a smile even: "The Genke doesn't warm up until later. In mid-summer."
no subject
But he isn't used to soaking clothes, and a fresh sea breeze, and he's shivering as he follows Yuri back up the beach, even as he laughs at Maccachin trotting ahead and shaking the excess water out of his curly coat. "Maccachin! We don't all have fur coats. Go shake somewhere else."
Reaching up to brush sodden hair out of his face (even if it just falls straight back down again), and jogging a few steps to catch up to Yuri, just as he's opening his mouth to tell Victor about how long this water will stay cold. "Oh?"
That's good to know: he makes a mental note of it, and hopes he won't forget.
"We'll have to come back for a swim then."
A day at the beach in mid-summer will be a good way for Yuri to take a day off. They'll be in the thick of training by then, and the strain will be high, so it'll be important to keep a few ways of blowing off steam in mind.
Besides, by the time summer rolls around, he may miss the afternoons at Laskovy, or the Fortress. "We could have a picnic!"
It's actually just about warm enough for that, but he'll have to keep it for another day. Sitting back on the sandbank, he grins, shaking damp hair out of his eyes to see Yuri a little more clearly. "We have to appreciate the nice weather while we have it, right?"
no subject
But even when Yuri is wiping at his face and next, more than half smearing more water from those hands, from that half drenched sweatshirt sleeve, also collecting the chilly wind, the suggestions Victor is throwing out -- excited, always so excited at his own brilliance and new ideas -- ... they don't sound so terrible anymore?
They'll still be training. All the time. Even heavier. Leading up to Nationals to even lead up to the Prix qualifiers.
Even if it's uncertain, that thing inside of him pulls in a breath, because it's not a terrible idea.
"Yeah--" His own voice a little breathless and light even under the wind, and winded, heaviness. "--maybe."
Maybe if it's still like this then? Victor laughing and Maccachin's heaving, tongue lolling, huffing breaths, wiggling his water-laden body and dancing around them, dashing back and forth between them, like he can't even decide who to be with, when he could be helping both of them, still playing, as they divide to get their own socks and shoes from the sand and the shelf.
no subject
So maybe this helped, after all.
It certainly helped Victor: even if he's chilly and soaked and starting to get hungry again, he feels like he has a better grasp, now, of what to do. How to coax Yuri into opening up, so Victor can meet him halfway, instead of chasing Yuri all the way back behind those walls of his.
And Yuri looks more relaxed, too. Something Victor notices, while he's brushing sand off his feet and pulling on socks, and shoes. "Let's go to the rink after lunch," he says, tightening his laces and their knots, and finally standing up. "Until then, do whatever you want to take a break and relax. You've been working hard, and I don't want you to feel burned out, okay?"
it's important that Yuri stay happy and energized, and that he feel like Victor's on his side, so that if things start to go wrong, he can feel comfortable saying so.
Trust may be a difficult thing to cultivate, but he'll do his best. "
And he did say he wouldn't go easy on him. "Because we're going to hammer out every mistake until your programs are perfect."
no subject
Navigating falling into step, while Maccachin circles closer to Victor than he does.
It's been impossible not to feel affection for Maccachin, who delighted in following him about, but did so without any requirement. The deepest demand he's caused for a moment's attention, to let to be landed on Yuri, or get sleepily pet on the head when somehow shows up on the bed, in the middle of the night, again. He can understand that part, as it plays in his head again. About how Victor never got time to be with him this much, when he was on the ice.
It's been five years (six now) since he'd moved away, and he'd missed Vicchan, but he'd been one of the many necessary sacrifices. He could at least imagine what it might have been like. If he'd never gotten that call. If he'd been here, waiting to greet Yuri when he got home, the same as Maccachin had -- if a little lighter and bit smaller -- when he'd first bounded back into Yu-topia when Yuri opened the door that morning.
Simple things. All the simple things they put away.
(Simple things Yuri isn't entirely certain if he's ever had or understood entirely.
Things translated easier in the slow glide of silver carving ice, a slow turn, with his hand out like the wind, the curve of the earth.)
no subject
It's not I'll give it all the eros I've got!, declared over the ice, or please watch me, requested with quiet desperation, or all right, I'll try, said without confidence or meeting his eyes.
Something's changed. Some switch flipped, or decision made, and he thinks that when they're back at the rink this afternoon, Yuri will be a totally different animal than he's been the last few weeks. There's a glimmer there, now, in the determined set of his shoulders, and the carefree laugh as Maccachin chased him down, and the firmness with how he's meeting Victor's gaze, now, that reminds him of the Katsuki Yuri that brought the roof down over the banquet, that beat Yurio in a dance off, that challenged Chris, that swept him off his feet. There's a cord of steel that runs through him, and that's what will take them all the way to the Grand Prix Final.
That steel, and the appeal with which he skates. (There won't be a safe heart in the whole rink, when he gets it right.)
"Okay, good."
And there's this, too: somehow, he's both. The seductive, challenging eros, and this innocent, windblown boy: two sides of Katsuki Yuri, both brilliant, both irresistible.
It's a pang, but he swallows it. Just be Victor...huh?
And who is Victor, if not a perfectionist, someone who loves the ice, who loves the work, who always seeks to surprise?
"Come on, let's go!"
no subject
There's a glance, or two, in Victor's direction now and then, as they walked. Something bubbling up slow in that same space. The space of his chest, where it had been tight, and he's not sure he has a name for it yet. It's almost too reliving just not to feel like he's choking, like he's drowning.
Still surreal, not quite steady, to realize it's like he somehow isn't. Everything is dry and flat. Nothing is over.
Some anxiety to it. A need to get on everything right this second, like the pendulum has swung diametrically opposite. But there's still time before anything will start. Time for Victor to find clothes, or even take a bath if he wanted. Time, again, for Yuri to put himself down in front of the paper, to try again capturing the mood and meaning into the music he'd been trying to detail into a list for a while now.
"Maybe she'll still have leftovers from breakfast out, when we get back." Food. He could eat food. Food sounds amazing suddenly.
He might even make his bed, if he went back to that paper. Start over today. Not erase it as though it hadn't been. He did want to remember the last little bit of it. The last half hour. But maybe he could restart everything else. Maybe it could all be a little different today everywhere, maybe he could.