It changes again, and this time Victor loses his English entirely, while holding Yuri's hand to him.
There's only a single word Yuri understands -- любовь.
In anything other than the year he's currently living, it would probably be far more awkward to try and explain how the first things he learned in Russian, at least to recognize by ear, were words in the categories of love and seduction. It doesn't help him with the rest of the sentence, or the Russian itself, which is complicated for what research he has done into in rare spare moments.
Complicated seems a good word for the whole Russian language. Yuri doesn't know whether Victor is talking about a love story, or something he loves about a story. Or whether it's wholly unrelated to the beginning of that sentence, when he shifted languages, maybe shifting topic just as fast as he had only minutes ago. The uncertainty, laced with the thickness of Victor's speech, makes it even easier to doubt himself.
But it isn't that that stumps him. Not the Russian, and not that one possibly right-heard word. No, it's not either of those. It's the way Victor's voice suddenly sounds almost ...
sad?
That even to get to that word, that idea, it takes a second of basically trying to trace through every interaction he's ever had with Victor. Because Victor is sunlight, and snow, and absolute magic ice, and yes, exuberance, exasperation, belabored lists of what he's done wrong, so much tact bluntness Yuri still blushes at the brashness of it sometimes, even used to it. He's even heartstoppingly hard to look at sometimes, especially because he knows it just as much as the rest of the world does, likes to play with and off of it.
But Yuri doesn't think he's ever seen Victor sad. Heard this tone of his. In any language. Ever.
It leaves him blinking at the next statement, and the realization they are at the door, because that had stolen his focus finally. From the building and his feet and the room, and it's still tangled around his feet, like his laces came undone in the middle of his skate. Trying to place whatever that had been in Victor's voice with the unhelpful nothing all that different in his face. Wanting to know, suddenly, how that sentence ended.
Even as he's catching up to the next two words, shouldering in through the door Victor opens, "I did tell you." He pushed them across the lobby and headed toward right hallway, and elevator, asking, "Keycard?"
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There's only a single word Yuri understands -- любовь.
In anything other than the year he's currently living, it would probably be far more awkward to try and explain how the first things he learned in Russian, at least to recognize by ear, were words in the categories of love and seduction. It doesn't help him with the rest of the sentence, or the Russian itself, which is complicated for what research he has done into in rare spare moments.
Complicated seems a good word for the whole Russian language. Yuri doesn't know whether Victor is talking about a love story, or something he loves about a story. Or whether it's wholly unrelated to the beginning of that sentence, when he shifted languages, maybe shifting topic just as fast as he had only minutes ago. The uncertainty, laced with the thickness of Victor's speech, makes it even easier to doubt himself.
But it isn't that that stumps him. Not the Russian, and not that one possibly right-heard word.
No, it's not either of those. It's the way Victor's voice suddenly sounds almost ...
That even to get to that word, that idea, it takes a second of basically trying to trace through every interaction he's ever had with Victor. Because Victor is sunlight, and snow, and absolute magic ice, and yes, exuberance, exasperation, belabored lists of what he's done wrong, so much tact bluntness Yuri still blushes at the brashness of it sometimes, even used to it. He's even heartstoppingly hard to look at sometimes, especially because he knows it just as much as the rest of the world does, likes to play with and off of it.
But Yuri doesn't think he's ever seen Victor sad. Heard this tone of his. In any language. Ever.
It leaves him blinking at the next statement, and the realization they are at the door, because that had stolen his focus finally. From the building and his feet and the room, and it's still tangled around his feet, like his laces came undone in the middle of his skate. Trying to place whatever that had been in Victor's voice with the unhelpful nothing all that different in his face. Wanting to know, suddenly, how that sentence ended.
Even as he's catching up to the next two words, shouldering in through the door Victor opens, "I did tell you."
He pushed them across the lobby and headed toward right hallway, and elevator, asking, "Keycard?"