fivetimechamp | The Road to the Grand Prix Final, May, 2014

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!

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.

Threaded | Flat

It's worse every morning. It's worse every night.

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.

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