Victor's fingers slide into his -- again, a second time, warmth tingling into Yuri's fingers, the slide of their palms, where they touch, even as his second hand is getting wet now, too -- and he comes up, while Yuri pushes his weight into his heels, his calves and it feels so easy. Easier than he expects. To pull Victor up (toward him).

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."