What looked like might be a second of reprieve when Victor is doing something with the far side of the covers Yuri can't make out in the dark, ends after those seconds. When Victor turns and slides right back up to him. A hand settling on his stomach, where everything is sour and gold-touched still, while Yuri's mind keeps adding clearer dashes of color and shape to the image in his head.
As Victor's hand finds his stomach, and Victor's head, the section of his pillow left on that side.
While Victor in his head leans in until their noses and foreheads are almost touching, finger touching Yuri's lips, because his head somehow thinks it's fun in his exhaustion. Mixing up what's happening while Victor is drunk, maybe with how Victor was when he first arrived. Before Victor had dropped that act as though it were a facade he'd been wearing only the first few weeks, too. An act that faded without comment or recourse into everything they'd become.
He wants to blow a breath out his mouth, between his lips. Heavy and hot and loud. Wants the image to go away. To stop sitting in the middle of his head, replaying on slow motion. Frantically trying to connect to something else he doesn't know the shape or sound of. Only feels the need under it. A question and an answer, neither of which he knows. Neither of which he cares about by the half-dozenth. Crushing his eyelids together, even as Victor is sighing contentedly next to him. Mumbling a word that's very too lost to hear.
Making Yuri want to pull the pillow out from under him. So he doesn't have to share. So he can press and dig it into his own face without sharing that, too.
Sleep comes after a million replays, of the things in his head, sliding, slipping, merging, melting. All of them Victor. All of them about the few hours and how much he really does need sleep, which sidetracks him into the slip and slide for tomorrow's skate, every fear about messing up if he doesn't sleep, can't even keep his eyes open tomorrow, and snakes back to the words Victor was saying earlier. Which circles and circles and circles, until whenever the floor drops away again.
But after a million replays kindness is not what he finds in the dark.
He slips, and slips, and slips, but can never truly slip away from Victor's hand. That keeps pulling him back. Holding him there. Until Victor is curled around him, until Victor's words are a blur of Russian against his skin, and somehow it doesn't stop where it starts. On the nape of his neck, soft hairs and sensitive skin, that make him shiver and shift in his sleep.
They slide outward. Along the side of his neck. The line of his shoulder. The round of it. Victor's lips making the only part of him that exists that S curve from the lower bend of his neck to off his shoulder. Stealing every thought, every breath, one fire-laden foreign word at a time. Too many to translate, too hard to think, to fight the war of keeping his own mouth closed, eyes tight, each one making it harder and harder to breathe, making his lungs, now made of fire and not air, compress heavier and heavier and heavier.
Until he wakes with a strangled gasp.
A gasp that trying to use his lungs, makes him acutely aware of the real weight on his chest.
Which takes a second of startled confusion to realize is ... Victor's head. That Victor, still heavily asleep if his deep breaths and solid weight have anything to say about it, has somehow made it to the corner of his chest and shoulder. Almost, but not quite, over his heart. Weighing into his bones, making his breaths softer, shallower in response. Because Victor can't leave him alone, in his head or his bed.
The next slide down isn't long. He's exhausted and everything under his skin is beginning to itch with it. Which makes it worse when his eyes snap open some indeterminable time later. For a reason ... he can't place. He can't remember if he was dreaming this time, and it's when he's trying to figure out if it was a noise or Victor -- that he realizes Victor is actually a bit further away. Maybe almost a good half a foot. Not pressed along any side of him. His hand still on the blanket over Yuri. But only that.
It's surprising enough Yuri tests shifting slightly, but nothing happens. Enough for him to start wondering if he lifted the blanket carefully enough, and Victor's hand with it. If. If he could. Finally. Just go to bed, in his own bed. Escape. Curl up. Find it in the dark, even without his glasses ... which seems to have gone somewhere else. He can't even remember taking them off.
But he skates without them just fine. He can navigate a small hotel room to his own bed and fall on it and die until he has to skate tomorrow without them, too. Which means he has to try it before his window passes, which suddenly feels like it's seconds before Victor might shift or jump to life. It's quiet, silent, still. Holding his breath. The movement of starting to lift the blanket, and Victor's hand off of him, and inch for the side of the bed in tandem.
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As Victor's hand finds his stomach, and Victor's head, the section of his pillow left on that side.
While Victor in his head leans in until their noses and foreheads are almost touching, finger touching Yuri's lips, because his head somehow thinks it's fun in his exhaustion. Mixing up what's happening while Victor is drunk, maybe with how Victor was when he first arrived. Before Victor had dropped that act as though it were a facade he'd been wearing only the first few weeks, too. An act that faded without comment or recourse into everything they'd become.
He wants to blow a breath out his mouth, between his lips. Heavy and hot and loud. Wants the image to go away. To stop sitting in the middle of his head, replaying on slow motion. Frantically trying to connect to something else he doesn't know the shape or sound of. Only feels the need under it. A question and an answer, neither of which he knows. Neither of which he cares about by the half-dozenth. Crushing his eyelids together, even as Victor is sighing contentedly next to him. Mumbling a word that's very too lost to hear.
Making Yuri want to pull the pillow out from under him. So he doesn't have to share.
So he can press and dig it into his own face without sharing that, too.
Sleep comes after a million replays, of the things in his head, sliding, slipping, merging, melting. All of them Victor. All of them about the few hours and how much he really does need sleep, which sidetracks him into the slip and slide for tomorrow's skate, every fear about messing up if he doesn't sleep, can't even keep his eyes open tomorrow, and snakes back to the words Victor was saying earlier. Which circles and circles and circles, until whenever the floor drops away again.
But after a million replays kindness is not what he finds in the dark.
He slips, and slips, and slips, but can never truly slip away from Victor's hand. That keeps pulling him back. Holding him there. Until Victor is curled around him, until Victor's words are a blur of Russian against his skin, and somehow it doesn't stop where it starts. On the nape of his neck, soft hairs and sensitive skin, that make him shiver and shift in his sleep.
They slide outward. Along the side of his neck. The line of his shoulder. The round of it. Victor's lips making the only part of him that exists that S curve from the lower bend of his neck to off his shoulder. Stealing every thought, every breath, one fire-laden foreign word at a time. Too many to translate, too hard to think, to fight the war of keeping his own mouth closed, eyes tight, each one making it harder and harder to breathe, making his lungs, now made of fire and not air, compress heavier and heavier and heavier.
Until he wakes with a strangled gasp.
A gasp that trying to use his lungs, makes him acutely aware of the real weight on his chest.
Which takes a second of startled confusion to realize is ... Victor's head. That Victor, still heavily asleep if his deep breaths and solid weight have anything to say about it, has somehow made it to the corner of his chest and shoulder. Almost, but not quite, over his heart. Weighing into his bones, making his breaths softer, shallower in response. Because Victor can't leave him alone, in his head or his bed.
The next slide down isn't long. He's exhausted and everything under his skin is beginning to itch with it. Which makes it worse when his eyes snap open some indeterminable time later. For a reason ... he can't place. He can't remember if he was dreaming this time, and it's when he's trying to figure out if it was a noise or Victor -- that he realizes Victor is actually a bit further away. Maybe almost a good half a foot. Not pressed along any side of him. His hand still on the blanket over Yuri. But only that.
It's surprising enough Yuri tests shifting slightly, but nothing happens. Enough for him to start wondering if he lifted the blanket carefully enough, and Victor's hand with it. If. If he could. Finally. Just go to bed, in his own bed. Escape. Curl up. Find it in the dark, even without his glasses ... which seems to have gone somewhere else. He can't even remember taking them off.
But he skates without them just fine. He can navigate a small hotel room to his own bed and fall on it and die until he has to skate tomorrow without them, too. Which means he has to try it before his window passes, which suddenly feels like it's seconds before Victor might shift or jump to life. It's quiet, silent, still. Holding his breath. The movement of starting to lift the blanket, and Victor's hand off of him, and inch for the side of the bed in tandem.