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fivetimechamp) wrote2017-03-05 04:45 pm
fivetimechamp) wrote2017-03-05 04:45 pm
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Let's get hotpot! 6 November, 2014 - Shanghai, China
Probably he should be more bothered by what Yakov said –
– but it's difficult to worry too much about a cranky old Russian coach when he's in Shanghai, and it's competition season, and Yuri has two of the best programs he's ever choreographed up his sleeve to wow the judges with. He has no interest in discussing with Yakov whether or not he plans to return to competitive skating, or if he ever wants to come back to St. Petersburg, or his own skills as a coach.
(All right. That last is a bit of a lie: Yakov is the best coach he knows, and there have been more times than he'd anticipated when he'd wished he could ask the old man's advice.
But he's not pretending. He never was, and he isn't now.)
And, anyway, his focus is on Yuri.
As it should be, as a coach. Over the last eight months, he's gotten attuned to the shifts of Yuri's moods, his nervous tics, the tells when he's feeling stressed or uncertain, and right now, Yuri is distracted. He's been lost in thought since their arrival interview, and quiet during their walk through the Shanghai streets, although not uncharacterisically so.
Sometimes Yuri speaks loudest when he uses no words at all. It's another thing Victor's learned about him, noted, kept in the back of his mind for afternoons like this. Yuri gets nervous near competition, and there's already mounting pressure to succeed after the failure of the last season. There's a nervous energy Victor can feel humming under the arm he's got slung around Yuri's shoulders, distraction in the short, one-word or belated answers to Victor's comments. He's not even sure Yuri notices when Victor's steered them into a hot pot place (almost universally agreed upon as the best one by the fans he'd asked for recommendations on social media), or when they're seated in a private booth, or when Victor orders.
It's all right, Victor decides, smiling gently across the table at him. Yuri's been able to overcome his nerves on the ice, and they both have absolute faith in the programs they've built together, practiced together, perfected together. Tomorrow, Yuri will seduce the whole of China, and everyone else watching: Victor has every certainty in his ability to win.
He could hardly be more confident if he were skating them himself. "Look, Yuri!"
(But he still needs to find a way to distract Yuri tonight.) "Shanghai crab! Drunken shrimp! Duck blood!"
Everything looks so colorful and delicious, he almost doesn't know where to start: hands up, an expression of pure bliss settling over his face.
"Doesn't it all look great?"
(I feel sick when I see you playing pretend-coach)
– but it's difficult to worry too much about a cranky old Russian coach when he's in Shanghai, and it's competition season, and Yuri has two of the best programs he's ever choreographed up his sleeve to wow the judges with. He has no interest in discussing with Yakov whether or not he plans to return to competitive skating, or if he ever wants to come back to St. Petersburg, or his own skills as a coach.
(All right. That last is a bit of a lie: Yakov is the best coach he knows, and there have been more times than he'd anticipated when he'd wished he could ask the old man's advice.
But he's not pretending. He never was, and he isn't now.)
And, anyway, his focus is on Yuri.
As it should be, as a coach. Over the last eight months, he's gotten attuned to the shifts of Yuri's moods, his nervous tics, the tells when he's feeling stressed or uncertain, and right now, Yuri is distracted. He's been lost in thought since their arrival interview, and quiet during their walk through the Shanghai streets, although not uncharacterisically so.
Sometimes Yuri speaks loudest when he uses no words at all. It's another thing Victor's learned about him, noted, kept in the back of his mind for afternoons like this. Yuri gets nervous near competition, and there's already mounting pressure to succeed after the failure of the last season. There's a nervous energy Victor can feel humming under the arm he's got slung around Yuri's shoulders, distraction in the short, one-word or belated answers to Victor's comments. He's not even sure Yuri notices when Victor's steered them into a hot pot place (almost universally agreed upon as the best one by the fans he'd asked for recommendations on social media), or when they're seated in a private booth, or when Victor orders.
It's all right, Victor decides, smiling gently across the table at him. Yuri's been able to overcome his nerves on the ice, and they both have absolute faith in the programs they've built together, practiced together, perfected together. Tomorrow, Yuri will seduce the whole of China, and everyone else watching: Victor has every certainty in his ability to win.
He could hardly be more confident if he were skating them himself. "Look, Yuri!"
(But he still needs to find a way to distract Yuri tonight.) "Shanghai crab! Drunken shrimp! Duck blood!"
Everything looks so colorful and delicious, he almost doesn't know where to start: hands up, an expression of pure bliss settling over his face.
"Doesn't it all look great?"
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Answering Phichit, animatedly, and suddenly piling more food on Yuri's plate, like he's overjoyed at this sudden possibility. (He probably is, too. It's exactly how Victor was for weeks and months on end at the beginning of getting to Hasetsu.) Meanwhile, Phichit starts going into a detailed list of his top four or five places he's researched, got best advice experience reviews from the fans, the skaters who've already been there, and natives who live here.
Yuri is nodding through bits of it, as they both fall into a pattern that seems so familiar even almost two years later.
Phichit's salesmanship of the world side-by-side with Yuri's tacit attention and acknowledgement, if not always agreement.
Even if there's some resignation to the whole suddenly mounted pile on his plate, Yuri does make a more invested effort this time. He knows he does need food. Will before tomorrow, and he might be far too nervous to eat more than a few bites in the morning.
Victor's reminder making the slightly larger bite he'd just been chewing and swallowing get comically stuck for a moment.
But there's a waitress coming, bringing to them the first of newest of guestlist, "Here you are."
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Even if the bottle feels light enough to be a bit of a surprise, and he can't, thinking back, quite remember how many times he's tipped a little more into the glass to top himself off – but it's fine. He feels good, and Yuri is on his way to feeling good, and that's all Victor really needs to care about tonight.
That Yuri eats. That he relaxes. That he sleeps. That he knows Victor has nothing but absolute and perfect faith in him.
(That the last eight months have been some of the best and happiest of Victor's whole life.)
But for now, he only listens with a smile, leaning on crossed arms and sipping at his rice wine, enjoying the faint buzz in his head and the warmth he's beginning to feel and having Yuri right there next to him, reunited with an old friend. And –
"Ciao ciao!"
Celestino, suddenly arrived, offering a small wave and a smile, and Victor's already fishing with his chopsticks while Yuri's stumbling over a greeting, to offer up a squirming shrimp.
"Want some shrimp?"
"Oh – " Celestino's face contorts, but he waves it off politely. "That kind of food doesn't agree with me."
But he hasn't even tried it. "It's really good!" Victor tries again, pushing the shrimp closer, but Ciao Ciao only recoils, so he shrugs, and slurps it up himself, instead. "Anyway, we have lots! Do you want a drink?"
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Even when Victor is just as effusive, maybe even more so. Waving the wiggling shrimp at Celestino and inviting him into the hot pot food, too. The way he probably will with everyone. Yuri feels some sympathy for Celestino recoiling from Victor's food pushed in his face. Yuri is still not over that reaction himself, but he's gotten almost to a state of being both shocked-and-not all at once, since Victor does it more often than he doesn't.
Victor is a little .... not that Yuri is judging it. Effusive is still a good word for it. But not the meaning behind it exactly anymore.
He's familiar with the glide, of a voice, of movement, has watched it happen often enough with his father, or Minako-sensei. But Victor looks so happy, when he's closing his eyes and slurping up another one of the drunken shrimp, and then gleefully offering to let the next person he can convince to drink with him to have a drink, and it's hard to knock that. How happy he looks.
"It has been a long day," Celestino says, sitting in the seat next to Phichit and offering the glass, that had once been Yuri's over there on that side, across the table to Victor. "A little wouldn't be a bad idea. Tomorrow will be here sooner than we know, won't it?"
It's an odd movement, and a sinking set of words, tossing ice cubes into his guts, but Yuri, ends up saying, disjointedly, "We're going to need more plates."
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"Na zdorov'ye."
The familiar toast rolling comfortably off his tongue the way English and French probably never will, even if they're much more fluid than his still stilted Japanese.
(He's picking it up, though, more and more.)
Clinking his glass against Celestino's and downing most of what's in it in one smooth gulp. It doesn't even burn anymore, or really taste much like anything at all, and he laughs a little when Celestino tries to emulate him, only to cough into his sleeve, eyes watering.
It's not that strong, is it? "Oh?" Innocent, as he tops them both off again. "Do you think you can keep up with a Russian, Ciao Ciao?"
"I think I can keep up with a play-acting coach," Celestino growls, but it lacks heat, and Victor only laughs, and lifts his glass again.
"Okay! Let's see it. Salut!"
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"Wait!" Yuri almost stumbled straight into his friend, eyes wide, looking at a set of large columns, almost like statues, covered in large, but delicately carved and golden painted, Magnolias. The ones all over Shanghai, like the squids and wisteria back home. "This is perfect." He threw Yuri a smile, classic and begging to be infectious. "We need a picture for tonight anyway, right?"
Yuri was still trying to regain his feet, but he knew better than to argue with this one. A picture cost him nothing. Especially not when it was Phichit who somehow managed to make all of his pictures look perfect. Magically perfect. He didn't fight the arm that looped his shoulders (even if it felt strange to be leaning down a few inches instead of up them now), and leaned his head in.
"Can I help?" A man announced himself, in broken English,
even as Phichit said, "One second!", framing and snapping mid-those words.
A little too fast for Yuri, who ended up caught on the image just looking back to the camera, smile faltered by distraction. Not that Phichit seemed to have minded, as he was calling it perfect and saying he needed to upload this right now, which left Yuri to step over to the man, hands making a circle as though on habit. "We need a few more plates."
The look of comprehension didn't seem to dawn, and Yuri dug out his own phone, looking for one of the handful of apps he'd picked up earlier during the week. Searching for the word in English, tapping the picture and enlarging it, with its manadrin word under it. Turning so the picture faced the man, and raising a hand. Looking at it, thinking, "We need--
At least three or four now, right? Except that Phichit had invited one more, and that one had invited one more, and what it that last person did, too? He uncurled his thumb "Five?"
"Shì, shì. We get them right to you." He walked off briskly in the opposite direction, vanishing around a corner.
"Look! It's already getting liked!" Phichit had reappeared at his side and he was sliding the phone in front of Yuri's face, with their faced, smiling, and his own caught in the middle of what looks like distracted surprise. Even so, with his name, and the hashtag, for both of them, Shanghai, and the restaurant, it was already flashing hearts on his screen.
"Yeah," Yuri said, not absolutely loving it, but grateful enough it wasn't terrible. Phichit's never were. It could be left at that, as Yuri turned and started taking them back through the network of little hot pot cubicle spaces, with all their designed walls and nice tables, most of them full.
"You still haven't said--" This with a nudge against his arms, right below his shoulder, that caused Yuri to look down with a quizzical confusion at the unclarified topic of this sudden, almost hush-hush shift to Phichit's voice. The kind of conspicuous not-quite-whisper he used when making plans on the ice, while he should have been practicing.
His eyebrows went a little more up, as though obviously, this should be obvious. Slowing their steps back.
Then a little higher, which only made it more necessary to ask, "Haven't said ... ?" and leave it hanging as a question.
Put out a little for having to put it into words, Phichit none the less lost now of his surreptitiousness, nor the garnered friendly interest behind it, saying at the same volume, "How it is working out with Victor. As your coach."
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The first one, not the second, but the second is well on its way, and Victor's not totally sure when that happened, only that it must have at some point. Phichit and Yuri are...somewhere, and this restaurant is feeling warm and cozy and the booth is beginning to feel more like a cocoon than a table. The sounds of the restaurant have faded away: he doesn't notice anything other than whatever Ciao Ciao's saying, even if he forgets what it was almost instantly, after replying.
He thinks they talked about coaching for a little while, but he can't remember if he asked any questions and got any real answers, or if it's just been more of the same derision he's gotten from Yakov and Ciao Ciao and all the other coaches who used to treat him with respect, and who now seem personally offended that he's moving into their domain.
He's not sure if he could ever explain it. If he'll ever have the words to clearly convey the fact that he doesn't plan on being a coach instead of a skater, that there was only this one specific instance where he would even consider it, and he can't imagine working with anyone else. Anyone other than Yuri.
When Yuri was the whole reason, and impetus, and inspiration. When Yuri was the only one who ever asked him to be a coach. Who wanted him for this even before it had ever even been an idle thought in Victor's brain.
Even if turned out, in the end, that was all he wanted.
And he's tried. He has. He's tried so hard to put all that aside, and just use it on the ice, the way he always would have before, but over the last seven months, the line between friend and coach and lover keeps blurring.
They spend all their time together. Go out to eat, see the sights, practice, exercise, bathe, work, relax together. Are so entwined in each others' day that Victor's not sure he even remembers what life was like without Yuri in it everywhere, along with Maccachin, and hot spring baths, and a large and loving Japanese family.
Yuri doesn't want him for a boyfriend. He knows that. Academically. But it's difficult to remember, sometimes, when he's stopped fleeing when Victor touches him, or when he looks up at him from across the ice after a perfect rendition of Eros or Yuri on Ice, when he knows he's nailed it and his face is lit with brilliance and delight, or when they're playing a game with Maccachin that ends with all three of them in a muddled mess on the floor, and Yuri's laugh has gone breathless and his glasses have been knocked askew and his hair is rumpled and he looks at Victor with so much warmth and genuine affection that it makes him want to knock his head between the sliding bedroom door and the jamb until he's remembered:
That Yuri doesn't want him for a boyfriend. Even if sometimes it feels like he does.
Even if trying to keep that distance has only made things worse. He'd thought pining over those fifteen months, only able to express himself through the choreography and performance of Stay Close to Me had been shattering, but it was nothing to being in close contact, every day, with Yuri, and Yuri's shy appeal, and Yuri's bright eyes, and Yuri's skill on the ice, and Yuri's determination and fire and the way he never gives up.
Leaving him staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, Yuri sleeping only feet and one room away, wondering. How to use this. How to set it aside. How to keep it to himself. How to contain it, when it feels uncontainable.
Now sipping at the rice wine, that has stopped tasting like anything, and is getting swallowed like water, and wondering the same thing, lost in thought while Celestino's rambling about something or other.
About how he thought he loved Katsuki Yuri a year ago. About how wrong he was.
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Though, he supposes, he shouldn't be surprised. Phichit would be the one to ask, and it's not like Yuu-chan or Minkao haven't asked similiar things in their own ways across different parts of this year, during the, admittedly rare, times he was alone at one of their places. Doing figures on the ice, in the middle of the night, still. Continuing to learn new ways to move his body, express even more feminine sexuality the way he can see it in his piece.
But that is it. The first thought. It's different.
It's not like with Celestino, and the rink full of skaters he shared Celestino with, and his room with Phichit, and his tutors. It was his home, his family. It was Victor everyday, from morning to night. It was practice, and family dinners. It was Victor dragging him to anything one of his family members or friends mentioned, like he couldn't live without it. It was doing whatever new hair-brained scheme got into Victor's head to make him connect with his pieces, learn his jumps. It was Victor, and Victor, and Victor, without pause.
Which makes his answer a little too waffle, a little too weak, "It's not that different."
Because in the end it's not, right? Not really?
"We're still on the ice just as often," No, not exactly, "maybe more." But not because of Victor alone. Because he felt driven to make it happen. To reach higher, go father, find a way to express everything Victor had handed him, to show him, over and over and over, that he'd made the right choice, choosing Yuri's season instead of his own. "He's more demanding. Sometimes."
He's more specific. He doesn't let Yuri waffle. Even if he waits for the why to be told to him.
Then he works Yuri through that, too. Whether it's in his feet or in his head.
Like it's theirs, instead. Sometimes that's more exhausting.
"And?" Phichit is leaning into him as though he's gathering the secrets of the world, and Yuri would rather he'd picked a different topic. He could probably talk about the strange way Victor fell in love with every food dish and festival he ever went to, or tried, more than about how it was different. When it wasn't. (But it was.)
Which was stupid, he knew. Saying he could explain something that wasn't happening every day better.
"And nothing?" Yuri countered, even though the expression on Phichit's face looked like the one he made in Detroit, when Yuri was refusing to get up off his bed, and Phichit was calculating how much force it would take to drag him out by his hands, heels unhelping, because it would be absolutely worth it. He'd see. It looks like that face. But somehow not, too.
There was ... more there? What was that even. Curiosity? Suspicion?
There really wasn't more to it.
Sometimes he tangled it up in all the wrong ways. But that wasn't about Victor coaching him.
Sometimes it started blurring. The feeling of Eros seemed to suddenly fit, suddenly fill everything.
The story of Love in him, his life, name such, extended to Victor, to his family, to his home.
The fact is was all Victor, and Victor, and Victor.
When everything was just dizzying sureness exploding in him, when something went right, on the ice (or, even off sometimes, when he forgot to worry, forgot to count, forgot to remember), and those glass cut eyes that never left him. Not even in his dreams. Where ... it just ... blurred. In ways it shouldn't have, but did. That wasn't the right answer either. Only And nothing?
His shoes didn't have any answer for him, and it was good they were rounding the wall to their table.
Where he tried not to translate the fact something in his chest felt relieved just to see Victor, and not talk about him.
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"I said, I'm glad to see Yuri back in the running. Even if it's with you as his coach."
There's a moment where they're both silent, but – thought as he refills both their glasses, and takes another swallow – there's another conversation going on under the surface.
The one where they both remember how Celestino pried Yuri off of him at the banquet, after Yuri had asked Victor to be his coach. The thing no one – not even Yuri – has brought up.
How unlikely it is that anyone there that night might think coaching was the only thing going on between the two of them. How he can see that very suspicion in Celestino's face, and he can't even defend himself against it, because it's true: he left his own career, his home country, everything he ever knew, and flew to Japan on what turned out to be a whim on Yuri's part, even if it had been followed up months later by that video.
The one he still doesn't understand. The one he still watches, now and again.
Celestino's talking again. "... –ad potential, he just never believed in himself. I'm happy to see how determined he is to do well this year."
Now looking at Victor, if a little blearily, and Victor's sure he should have some sort of response to that, but he's not sure how coaches talk about their skaters; only knows they probably don't say the things that are trying to burst out of his chest, out of his mouth, that have been tackled and taped down for almost two long years.
Settling for: "Yuri's very special," as neutrally as he can, and hoping to God that's what comes out, and not he's remarkable, isn't he, the things he does, the music he makes, the love he feels, how hard he tries, I'm prouder of him than I could ever be of even myself, he makes my heart beat, I love him, but Celestino is only nodding, a little loosely, so he thinks he managed it.
Thinking that it's getting not just warm, but hot in here now, and slipping his jacket off his shoulders, as a cheerful voice sounds, and he looks up, a little foggy, to see Phichit and Yuri come back around the booth wall.
And Yuri. With that half-awkward look on his face that he sometimes gets when he's uncomfortable, all slender lines and dark silky hair and cute glasses and Victor sort of forgets that Phichit, or even Celestino, is there, as he's hanging his jacket over the back of Yuri's chair, barely even able to feel it against his fingers. "Yuri!"
Unable to keep from gushing delight. It's only been minutes, maybe – longer, possibly? – but it's felt like years, and he's thrilled, and, also, Victor missed him. "You're back!"
After Victor asked if he wanted to come back with him. Except. No. That was a different night, and a different Yuri, and a different Victor, and a different everything. Everyone.
But there's nothing else in the room but Yuri's face. That Victor cannot lean in to kiss. Or reach out to touch.
Which he remembers just soon enough to make his hand go to the back of Yuri's hand, instead, in what he hopes comes across as his original intention. "We were just talking about you."
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Even as something relaxes in his chest at the sight of Victor there, and even as Victor is turning to him, grey-silver hair swinging, eyes all brilliance, saying the one word he's said most in these months -- his name, and his mind knows the second one, is just as trained to it.
But the bubble of the thought, and the vein it cuts itself from, is broken back into the cracks it tried to burble through while Victor is suddenly smiling up at him, calling his name more loudly than needed. Nothing like the momentary image of the man on the ice, the lips at his ear. It's just this. Victor:
Bright, glass-cut, eyes, lighter than the sea, and maybe even a little glassy.
Mouth stretched in a smile, like he somehow didn't see Yuri four minutes ago.
Hasn't seen him every day, all day, for most of the last year. It's over the top. It's very Victor, too.
That wavering hand, that seems confused by the air, or movement, finally finds Yuri's hand, to drag him back into his chair, as though there was somewhere else he might have ended up, and he's halfway to thinking Victor might be a little -- before a brick falls through his stomach and crashes on his feet with Victor's words.
Looking from Victor to Celestino and back suddenly, the ability for dread to creep so fast, collapse in so vast, impossible even when it's happening. When his cheeks color, and every wobble, every fall, every time he never spoke, how slow he can be in comparison.
How many minutes had they left them alone? How much could they have covered, and agreed upon, already?
It's absolutely unsteady, barely a second later, warbled uncertainty, surprise, dread. "O-oh?"
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There's nothing to make that face for, here, is there? It's just them. And the hot pot. And the hot room. And the rice wine.
It sears through his veins like boiling water, flushing his cheeks a deep and cheery pink, and he lets go of Yuri's hand to brush his hair back out of his face and eye, only for it to fall back again in a second, while he's already reaching for Yuri's wrist again. "I love this place."
It does not start life as I love you, because he might be a little tipsy, but he's not that drunk, and that would be a stupid thing to say, a thing that would make Yuri run, or make that face, like he doesn't want to hurt Victor's feeling but he just doesn't –
Anyway, it doesn't. Is the important thing.
He reaches for his glass, only to find it empty again, and refills it, before remembering that Celestino is right there, too, and they were talking about Yuri, and Victor should be a good host and refill his glass, which he does, even though Celestino is beginning to look a little wobbly.
Italians. They can't handle anything stronger than wine.
The refreshed glass goes down, halfway, at a gulp, and Victor's laughing at Celestino, who's trying to pick up a mushroom with his chopsticks and keeps aiming way off to the side, before he feels motion under his fingers, and turns back to Yuri, who is:
Beautiful. Perfect? Adorable. His favorite face in the whole world. Who wanted him to come to Japan, all those months ago. Who skated for him, over a year later. Who steals his heart again and again, every day, every time like the first time.
And he'd been ...
Right! "Good things," he assures, leaning in a little closer, surprised when his forehead bumps against Yuri's head, and his vision is full of black silky hair and Yuri's ear and the angle of his jaw and he, just. It feels like drowning.
Maybe he is. Maybe he did. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
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-- and really, he should be used to that. He almost is, in some ways. Even if he looks at the fingers on his wrist, briefly, under the tuck of his face, and careful blink of eyelashes. He more used to being touched by Victor than he was months ago. It's always a little bit of a surprise, a strange, faint flutter in his chest when it's not on the ice.
If he's being honest, even on the ice, but on the ice, he has to focus more. Beyond. Be on all the time. When and where he's being touched by Victor are parts of what he needs to focus one. Where his weight should move, where he should be turning, leaning, moving more. This system of a physical language, of learning, instruction, they build between themselves, an extra language beyond their cobbled stones.
Which means that gets a glance, something almost patient when it's just a shift from his wrist to looking over.
Because Victor is in love with another place, that gives him more to eat and drink, and that's the least surprising thing.
But it's gone seconds later, too, and Victor is filling his glass and Celestino's glasses, like he hadn't tied a fading string of warmth on Yuri's skin. Not when he's giving a carefree laugh at the man who looks --now that Yuri's managed to actually look at Celestino since returning face gone reddish and eyes having a trouble focusing on his chopsticks -- rather more drunk than Victor, and he's uncertain how that could be. They weren't gone that long.
But then suddenly something bumps into his temple, cheek, and Victor's words are suddenly being said with breath rebounding on his cheek, and everything happens in the startled stiffness of a second. He blinks rapidly, his cheeks reddening and his eyes shooting to what he can see of Victor's face, and then to the people across the table. One of whom is still chasing a mushroom (badly) and the other, Phichit, whose eyebrows are alarmingly high suddenly.
Which just makes Yuri flush more, heart thudding too hard, shoulders uncertain whether to come up and drawn in or stay stuck. When Victor just isn't done. Goes about all but murmuring against his ear (again, again, like that day...) with that completely innocuous question that bounces too fast around Yuri's brain, because it's trying to dissolve and explode as much as make it to the center of his brain.
It's a nod. Tiny, fast, a few too many times. (His throat not agreeing to swallow.) "Yes."
Which sounds captured in his throat, so he tries harder. A little louder. Normal. Totally normal.
This is normal. And there are people with them. "They're bringing more plates for everyone."
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Fond and warm, and maybe a little too close to the shell of Yuri's ear, but he's finding it difficult to pull back, or to let go of Yuri's upper arm, where his right hand has decided to find a hold.
Even if he's not sure why they need more plates. Even if he can't remember why Yuri went to ask for them, anyway, or even anything beyond the way Yuri's cheek is turning pink just inches away. "It's kind of hot in here, isn't it?"
Hot, hot. Not as hot as the hot springs at Yu-topia, but hot enough that his shirt feels like it's clinging.
Or maybe it's just being this close to Yuri, like he hasn't been for months, since before their conversation down at the beach, since the days when he'd thought Yuri was still on the same page as him and he couldn't understand why it wasn't working.
(Maybe he still doesn't. Maybe he never did. Maybe he's still just as confused as he was those first few weeks, because Yuri hasn't even once mentioned – )
Well, either way, it's hot, so he leans back, even though his first inclination is to lean even closer, and brush his lips against that ear, and whisper into the skin of his neck, and find those moments from the banquet all over again ... but his fingers slip reluctantly away, and he shifts back towards his own seat, blinking in surprise at the boy across the table.
Right. Phichit. Yuri's friend. Celestino's current skater. Currently staring at him like Victor's head has rolled right off his shoulders and into the hot pot.
Victor beams at him, and offers up one of the trays, the meal on it now partly taken apart. "Shanghai crab?"
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All warm and thoughtless, like he's done everything right, like there's nothing strange about this, nothing jangling hard enough to wind him in Yuri's blood stream when he swears Victor's mouth is brushing against his hair, the cut of air, of pointed scalding heat rising on the thin skin there, like they had almost brushed his ear, too, and nothing -- nothing -- is sticking together in his head. Nothing at all.
Nothing but the warmth of Victor's face catching on his skin, his must now be burning ear, the smell of the miju Victor has been drinking since they arrived. Fermented rice and something sweet. Something he nearly tilts his head toward, but it's right as Victor asks another unrelated question in this new game of tripping up Yuri's brain and he's leaning away, letting go. Suddenly not against Yuri's head. Suddenly not wrapped around his arm.
Leaving Yuri sure that the ground is no longer flat and his chair is no longer steady, and one of his arms collapses across his own lap, catching on his opposite hip, like he's seat belting himself to the world. Or the chair. Or the existence of his own skin. Air still uncertain it wants to come anywhere near his lungs. Stupid and startled and everything at edges, shivering like cold slammed him, not the hot Victor had asked about, while Victor cheerful offers food to Phichit like that was nothing.
(Because it was.)
Because that's not even a new thing, if in a new country.
(With people Yuri knows differently.)
Phichit, on the other hand, seems to be taking the long way around to getting his eyebrows down, back anywhere on his face, and not so comically far up they are basically floating above his head and his only-just-not dropped wide mouth. Camera in his hands like something he both has forgotten and is clutching too tight, in some kind of inner battle.
Before he's nodding, too. Too fast. Excitedly fast.
Hands not leaving his phone to pick up a plate to help. "Yes. That sounds good. Please."
His eyes shooting to Yuri with something vital Yuri can't make out, because Yuri is only finally beginning to parse his own blood in his own head.
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Not much. Surprisingly. They haven't had that much, have they?
But he refills Celestino's glass, and tops off his own with what's left, without noticing that Celestino is turning faintly green around the gills. He does notice, though, that it's definitely hotter in here than it was when they came in: even without his jacket, he feels flushed and feverish.
Maybe it's because he's used to having a hot bath every day, now. His body is used to, expects a temperature change.
Or maybe it's just really hot in here.
Even Yuri looks a little pink in the face, even though he never answered Victor's question –
Don't you want to come with me?)
Except that wasn't the question he just asked. He thinks. He's pretty sure. He hasn't asked that question in almost two years. In the end, he was the one to come to Yuri, and not the other way around.
Not that he minds. Not that there's anything about this last half a year that he minds, except for that one part that's missing.
The one big part. Huge. That he can't seem to forget or stop wanting, no matter how hard he tries. Even if everything else is amazing, a whole world he never knew existed. Time with Maccachin. Every day with Yuri. His family. Time to himself, to go sight-seeing around Hasetsu, to spend days at the beach or in the rolling hills nearby. A hot bath every day, big enough to swim in, almost.
Like the hot pot on the table. Only. With people. And less actually getting cooked.
Across the table, Celestino is slumping, giggling about something or other into his nearly empty glass (Victor notices with a start that his own is empty again, too – when did that happen?). He looks tired, but Victor doesn't feel tired. It hasn't been that long of a night yet. "That hot pot..."
Laughed, in Yuri's general direction, while the world swings. "Doesn't it make you think of the hot springs, Yuri? Your parents shouldn't cook people, that's cruel."
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But someone has to take the plates, and Phichit has a platter, and Victor and Celestino are out, so his hands are already out, too. Taking them with a conflicted, unthinking, "Arigato," amazed his voice even works, in time to cringe with a wrinkle of his nose. "I mean," He fumbled, making his brain work. He even knew this one without the help of a translator or a book, still he forgot. "Xièxiè."
The man's expression went from something politely passive to remotely pleased.
Even though, he responded in his same broken English. "No problem. Anything else, you tell me."
There are still plates in his hands, getting set, carefully, on this end of the table, only by himself and Phichit, Victor laughing at something -- that Celestino seems to be laughing at, too, that he didn't catch, making his nerves slip into snakes, the already evoked questioning if it was about him, about his slip seconds ago -- as Victor said something that sounded like hot springs, and then Yuri's name, demanding he look toward Victor to catch a sentence that makes no sense.
Except that Victor really is, maybe, probably, very likely, very drunk.
He wants to ask. It's on his tongue to, flitting against his teeth and the press of his lips, but Victor is an adult, older than him, and Victor went out while in Hasetsu even. Not with him. Until dawn. Always a little later, a little more rumpled those mornings, in a way magazines would have been dying to photograph him, and Yuri couldn't help being both envious of and ... troubled by. (Even if, all these months later, that's still the wrong word, and he doesn't know the right one still.)
It's not really his place to ask, or tell Victor what to do like this, right? Maybe this is normal for him. Maybe this is what did before and during and after competitions, when he met up with other skaters and their coaches. Maybe Yuri never knew, like he never knew what any of them did when they weren't on the ice or on the podium. Never willing to ask. Not a one of them. Definitely not Victor.
It's uncertain, but more normal sounding, when he says, a little off balance to need to correct something even a child would know, for a drunken Victor, which he's still trying to wrap his mind around there being: "They don't cook people. The water isn't hot enough for that."
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When it had seemed so clear at the banquet. Clear in a way it hasn't seemed since, until now, when he's looking at Yuri, and it feels like his heart will burst, or break. Thinking he's been fooling himself over the last eight months, even if he never thought that was he was trying to do.
He's been trying, hasn't he? He put himself aside and focused just on Yuri. Even if he relived that banquet, almost every day, while watching and working on Eros, with the choreography he remembers all too clearly from that night, he'd never even once alluded to it. Had done what Yuri asked, and just been himself: working hard, focused on the art, on the performance, on perfection.
But just being himself is being in love with Yuri. That's part of being Victor, too. A part Yuri doesn't seem to want, even with his theme this season, even with his new understanding of love, the way it supports him and lifts him and inspires him and buoys him. The love of his family, Minako, the Nishigoris, even that small fan of his from the qualifying competition.
And his love for, and from, Victor. That Victor cherishes, even if it isn't what he'd hoped for.
He knows Yuri loves him. It's not a question. But there's some missing piece here he still doesn't understand, and has done his best to simply not need, but when he's looking at Yuri like this, and it's so warm and hazy in the room, he can't think of a single good reason to have not kissed him when Victor had the chance.
There's a slight scuffle across the table, and he thinks he'd stopped paying attention for too long, because Phichit had been saying something, to someone – Yuri, maybe – but Celestino's glass has tipped over and Victor's trying to focus, but it's impossible, with it being so hot.
Fanning the collar of his shirt, and saying: "I feel like I'm getting cooked," but that just makes him think of the hot springs again, and how much he enjoys them, and shouldn't they find one, here, to go to? There must be something like it.
Reaching for the hem of his shirt and tugging it off over his head to a blissful burst of cool air against his skin, shaking his hair out of his eyes and sighing. "Oh, that's better."
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Those blue-green eyes, so different from everything in his life, so completely a color that is just Victor's, only Victors, that comparisons only pale beside or bring him back to the color and depth of, are just staring at him. Or maybe through him, a sly, unhelpful thought whispers. But he doesn't think he is. He's collected a lot of the way Victor has looked at him, most of them translatable. Most of them familiar.
That happened so often.
Too often to still now know it.)
It's uncomfortably clunky uncertainty when he's about to ask Victor the question he almost asked a second ago -- How much have you had?, except this time with something almost patiently amused, that feeling flickering in his stomach, trying to toy with the edge of his own mouth -- because this time Victor, who never forgets what he's saying, seems to have forgotten he started this conversation. With actual words, and not just staring at him.
But before that smile can break like a wave on him or any of the playful tone that he's not sure where is pushing up from, suddenly there's a scuffle for things on the table, that makes his hands jump to hold their side of the table. Celestino's glass has lost its grip and sounds like it's fallen, hitting the ground, but Yuri can only barely hear that because Celestino takes a dive for the table right the next second, like the cup was his last standing support, and Pcichit is yelping something, asking if Celestino is okay, leaning in, waving a hand. Both. Frantically.
Yuri's eyes wide, against the shock, about to look to Victor and suggest that this dinner is o--
Except his eyes track to one side -- to reach Victor -- and Victor's shirt is flying over Victor's head and the shock he felt a second ago is nothing like the one smacking into him now, as the shirt goes flying and Victor (all far too familiar, pale skin stretched taut over muscles) looks so relievedly pleased with himself. Like this isn't a restaurant. Like they don't have company. And none of those make words, nothing holds for the slam of it, it just comes out -- "V-v-victor?"
Panicked floating question, shocked demand, embarrassed recrimination, broken notes and all.
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Well. Almost. But Victor has gotten to know all the shades of Yuri's expressions, and he knows, okay. That lightness in his eyes, that's half amused and half affectionate, and the way it's twitching at the corners of his mouth, like he's laughing at Victor.
Except not. Because that would be mean, and Yuri isn't mean. Even if –
– he isn't always kind, either.
But it doesn't look like he's being laughed at. It looks like Yuri's exasperated, but affectionately so, and it's running through Victor's mind even as he shucking his shirt over his head, and blinking at the stumbled, stuttered use of his name. "Huh?"
Looking up, and. Oh.
Yuri's right there.
Yuri's right there, and he's so close, and he looks scandalized in the way where his cheeks have gone brilliantly red, but Victor's not paying attention to that. He's not paying attention to anything but how close Yuri is, and how good he feels, and how much he wants to hug Yuri, because Yuri is so cute and Yuri cares so much and Yuri is right there, so he does.
Leans over, arms loose and languid, to wrap them around Yuri's neck, and pull himself closer, and he can't remember why he stopped doing this. Nose burying in Yuri's hair, mouth against Yuri's ear, chest against Yuri's shoulder, unable to stop smiling and pretty sure he maybe doesn't ever want to let go again, because Yuri smells good and Yuri feels good and Victor is just so overwhelmed with everything he feels and wants and all the months and days of almost two years.
He should have gone to Hasetsu earlier. Should have gone right when Yuri asked him to. That night. He never should have waited, not even a single day.
Hasetsu, Hasetsu. Where's he's been so happy, and more relaxed than he'd ever thought possible. "Yuuuuuuuuuuuri."
Drawn out and warm. "Do you think there's a hot spring here? I miss it. I think we should go to one."
Or. Something. Somewhere with Yuri. And maybe fewer clothes.
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As not a half second later, Victor's face follows, burying into his skin, suddenly.
Into his hair, against his cheek, his neck, intently.
Like he intends to burrow into Yuri's skin, or use him as a blanket. His whole body shooting hot confusion, spangled shock, cheeks burning, while Victor's nose grazes under his scalp ( spiking heat and focus there), and Victor's mouth is crooning his name against his ear (snap, it explodes there, too) again, smooth and longer than any characters could supply.
Yuri can't tell if what his body does is tremble or shudder or shake or freeze. He feels half fallen out of it and trapped inside it (inside Victor's arms). The whole world a distorted shock wash, and he doesn't know how his hand ended up on Victor's forearm. Possibly trying to keep him getting there, to begin with, or from succeeding in fully launching himself on Yuri which he was mid-doing.
"Victor-" His voice isn't anywhere near firm enough. The wind could knock it over. There's a shake to it, even as he presses on it. "-we need to-"
But then a throat is cleared not far behind them, and he jerks that way. Toward the sound. Utterly meant to be heard. Expecting the man with the plate. The man or woman who owns this restaurant. Any other customer who was scandalized by suddenly catching sight of what's happening.
But.
It's.
So.
Much.
Worse.
Because Guang-hong Ji and Leo de la Iglesia are standing at the opening to their table cubby now.
One of them in something that looks like shock and the other already turning a soft pink in his surprise, both of their phones already up. Celestino on the table, and Phichit flailing at him, (even though Yuri swears, somewhere, disjointed, he hears the snap and catch of a phone camera from over there, too), and Victor's half-naked and now trying to hang on him like a coat.
Not that Victor's helping the feeling that suddenly everything is over his head. So very high over his head. There's a strange, helpless, weak little laugh trying to come up his throat, getting burned up by his cheeks roasting against his bones like they will just melt off, when Victor's not letting him go even when he turns, still just as plastered to him, moving with him, covering him more. Swallowing for something that falls out, trying to sound sensible, an apology. "Oh, sorry."
This isn't a dinner. Can't be. They can't stay now. Can't. Can't. Can't. "Victor's had way too much to drink."
As though that's not the most obvious thing. As though his voice might not be a shade from cracking.
He just needs everyone to go, to vanish, so he can convince Victor to put his shirt on and leave.
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Perfectly content to wrap his arms around Yuri, and sway them both back and forth, while Yuri is talking to someone, and that's fine. The more the merrier. "We should all go to a hot spring."
There's room for everyone, right? He's fine with that. He like these people, even the two standing there that he doesn't know, phones up and faces pink. Cute. But not as cute as Yuri. No one is as cute as Yuri. With his glasses. And his caring. And his shaky self-confidence. And his family's hot spring, that he told Victor to come visit, so Victor did, and he's so glad, he's happy he did, because it's such a great place. "Hot springs..."
It's connecting in blurry lines that fade in and out, as he's letting Yuri go to fiddle with the button and fly of his pants. You can't wear pants in a hot spring, and not briefs, either.
"Hasetsu..." Yuri's yelling something at him, but Victor just waves him off, except there's a weight in his hand, and he blinks at it. Pants. Briefs. Oh, right. He wants a bath, and he's sick of these clothes. Besides, he doesn't know why Yuri's getting so upset: it's not like he hasn't seen Victor totally naked plenty of times in the past. In the hot spring. Which is one of Victor's all time favorite places. "Hasetsu hot springs...great place."
Waving his hand again, and letting go, forgetting where the pants and briefs go once they're past his fingertips, and beaming at Yuri. He's just helping, Yuri.
More people should go to Hasetsu. Everyone should.
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Not when they seem to still be taking in the fact every quadrant of this table has turned upside in the last five minutes, more than seems possible. Because they were just called? It's only been five mintues, right? No. But. But it wasn't even this crazy five minutes ago, was it? It wasn't. But it is. And there's no way he's letting Victor leave to anywhere now, with anyone. Especially as he's still softly, singing, slurred words about Yu-topia.
He's turning back to tell Victor they can't go anywhere because they need to go to the hotel now -- but that never happens. He never finishes the thought to get to the words even. His head turns, and his mouth opens, but Victor is looking down at his lap, all entirely distracted away from Yuri now, and that makes Yuri's eyes drop, and he doesn't even have the second to be relieve of being fallen from focus because everything is too clear.
His eyes drop, and Victor's lower body is aerobically twisting in his chair, the flash of the tensed muscles in his stomach, and the dip of a very bare slender hip and ... and .... a n d ... all of which are more familiar to Yuri than he'll ever admit. Except in a second like this when it is what it is what it is, and what it is is Victor getting naked at the table in this restaurant, that is not a bath house, or a bathroom, or anything of the like, making him snap suddenly, shattering glass too loud,
"Hey! Don't strip!"
Except he's saying it too late. Victor's pants and his briefs are already in his hands, and he's smiling like he just completed a perfect program on his chair, eyes all hazy and full of nothing but delight. And they aren't going to stay, Yuri can see that, even as Victor's just bringing them up, the coil in his bare arm muscles, and it's already too late, when Yuri's following his first snap with another desperate pleading order, but not loud, meant for Victor, only Victor, "Don't."
Except he does. Because Victor always does what Victor wants.
The pants and the underwear go flying past Yuri's head, and the table.
Because Victor has no shame. He's never heard of it even. He's beaming at Yuri, naked, in his seat, all liquid pale, snow white, even though his reddened cheeks are betraying his warmth, and sheer warning is blaring and exploding in Yuri's head. Between needing to look to where Victor's clothes landed, and being almost terrified of looking away from him, lest Victor jump the table or do something even crazier without being watched every second now. "Hey! Someone help!"
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"Goryachaya vanna," he clarifies, because Yuri was asking him what he's saying, before pausing, and trying to nail down the slippery thought that isn't quite right. "Dzhakuzi?"
Still no. The hot springs aren't a Jacuzzi, even if he sometimes thinks they're similar. "Goryachiy ... istochnik."
That's better. More like it, even if not exactly. Not that it's something he had in St. Petersburg. In Russia, people bathe in ice water in the morning, for energy and alertness and to improve circulation: they don't steep themselves in natural hot springs after dinner, although they should. Everyone should.
Specifically, Yuri. And him.
Except Yuri still has all his clothes on, which doesn't seem right if they're going to go in the bath, and, worse, he's being handed Victor's clothes back, by two fish-mouthed boys Victor doesn't recognize, although they look sort of familiar.
But Yuri shouldn't be trying to put his clothes back on. If anything, Yuri should be helping him keep them off, just like Victor was so sure was going to happen at the banquet. It was written on his face, even if it never became words.
He had. Did. Victor was sure of it.
Except the face he's staring at now, trying to find that expression again, is just going red and annoyed, and he's not sure why. Making his eyes narrow, in consideration. How he could find it again. Make it come back. Get that answer he's been due for almost two years.
Even as clothes are getting shoved back in his hands, and he's putting on briefs, more by reflex than anything else. But he's pretty sure this is the opposite of what's supposed to happen.
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Somewhere between the shock that won't stay frozen and the fear, it's only going to get worse, and then, because Victor can't remain predictable in even the smallest part -- he starts talking in Russian. Simple words, and singular. First looking like Yuri understands him, finally. Before, he pauses, looking up, trying to figure something out.
All of it words Yuri doesn't know in the slightest,
except that he can recognize certain pieces of syllables ... or more aptly how Victor says them.
He usually likes the sound of it, foreign and smooth, mysterious like smoke, with sudden surprising hard edges and then unexpected perfect fluidity, reminding him of exactly how Victor skated, even as it crawled down his skin, prickling it like a late winter breeze. Usually. Right now, he just doesn't have any room for it. It's just another sign that Victor is so far gone not only is he naked, he's indecipherable, and still has the gal to look happy about being both.
Until he doesn't.
Until someone is pushing the clothes back on them, with so much haste you'd think they were scared they might get caught up in the middle of this, too, if their hands weren't away as soon as the clothes dropped. (And, he's pretty sure, none of the phones have stopped. This is it, too. This is how his appearance at the Grand Prix starts. Not with just shooting his mouth off, but with Victor naked and drunk at the hot pot.)
He's holding on to Victor's pants while Victor pulls his briefs back on, looking, for all the world like a confused chastised child, a puppy that got left outside, even when he's all -- Yuri can't even drop his gaze below the work of the muscles in Victor's shoulders and the way his expression is almost ... blearily crestfallen? How he can be the most unfair person on the planet is beyond Yuri, but he manages it.
Every day, in new ways. Unfair. Absolutely unfair. And Yuri's heart stumbles about even more. He can't even swallow, and he needs to focus on the one thing he needs Victor to focus on, so he forces his voice to work. "Good. Good." Numb words, "Thank you."
When he's waiting for the first to get done, and judging it by posture, and when Victor is back to more upright, because he doesn't want to look directly down, he doesn't. Even the thought just makes his cheeks and the muscles across his ribs sore. His face might never stop straining, or being stained at this point. He just holds out the pants. "These now."
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A golden night. The taste of champagne. The music. The dance floor. Yuri's hand against his cheek.
"You never answered my question."
it comes out a little too thick, a little to Russian. Like the joke of an accent in old spy movies, and not the one he's cultivated through years of traveling through Europe, learning languages and perfecting his English and French. It sounds a little more Boris and Natasha, and he can feel it trying to escape in Russian, instead:
But he hauls it down, forces the English instead, even if it's without the smattering of Japanese that he's been using for the last four or five months.
It's important that Yuri understand him. That Yuri know he's still waiting. That in two years, and in eight months, he still hasn't answered a simple question. A yes or a no. After Victor had let him do what no one ever did. Touch him. Reach for him. Shatter him.
Yuri's holding out the pants, and Victor's gaze drops to them for a moment, before his hand shoots out: not for the pants, but for Yuri's wrist, to tug him sharply close, even as his fingers let go so his arms can come up around Yuri's neck again. One hand sinking into black, silky hair, the other flat against a shoulderblade, and he should have. Should have. Should have.
Should have demanded an answer.
Should have pulled him out the door when Chris wasn't looking.
Should have dragged him away before Celestino could.
Should have flown to Japan the next day.
He should have kissed Katsuki Yuri when he had the chance.
But he's not going to miss it again.
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Even if it does. Even if he's still hearing that absolutely unfamiliar thick Russian on the words in his ears, when he shakes the pants. It's better than words it's more important than anything he could come up with to say. There was no question, and he needs to get dressed, and they need to leave.
There's the blink of a moment's relief -- when Victor's hand shoots out -- before everything explodes.
Fingers curling his wrist, slim and strong and so hot, to jerk him forward. Hard into Victor's body.
The pants slipping from his hand, then hands, because his eyes shoot up and widen with something akin to horror. When he can't stop himself from pushing back, except there is no back, because the chair back is gone, and Victor's arms are sliding around his neck, Victor's finger are in his hair, just as capable, just as steady and strong, and demanding as ever, somehow.
There's a noise that's almost entirely unintelligible, bordering and then bursting through shock flares (Victor is so drunk Victor is trying to kiss him) slams, like hitting that wall without expecting, but it's not like possibly breaking his nose, it's like tearing off the first level on his bones. It only tosses him into freezing, panicked, desperation. The word no is everywhere in his head, in his skin, but not his mouth. He doesn't want this -- even if something sour and sharp, shackled to his shoe, and the ice and dark night, says that's wrong.
like this.)
His glasses are shoving up his cheeks and into his forehead (Victor's hair against his skin, silvering his red vision, the way it tickled and now .. the way feels like getting hit), and his heart has become faster than seems possible, painful at the bottom his throat, worse than choking, and the smell of the miju is back, so sweet he swears he can taste it on his tongue already and the one name about to be screamed from his mouth, before the world actually dies, changes in a single second, in the only moment he's trying to find someone --anyone -- to help him -- it becomes
"PHICHIT!" And it's worse. It's all of that shock and horror and something more like impossible betrayal added to it.
(Because his friend is turned around backward,
lining up a selfie, through his camera, on what's happening over here.)
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