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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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Yuri is terribly torn between raising a hand to shield the side of his face and keep him from looking, and from looking, because there should be an answer. But that can't have been enough for Victor to lose his pants and find sleep pants, and Victor might be naked, again, like it's one of his natural states, and Victor might be fine with that, but Yuri just isn't. Still. Not for a second time tonight. Not for the millionth time this year.
He's about to try and turn his head, keeping his gaze averted, to try and find at least Victor's face, even in the dark, when suddenly a long arm snags around his center and he's jerked from his seat. To the bed itself, still bouncing beneath him, them, bouncing his body, while it's still smacking right into Victor's very likely, entirely undressed, body, AGAIN, while Victor is huffing and moving still.
The whole shock and desperate realization making his arms and legs shoot out, wildly,
as he shouts Victor's name and tries to break free so he can scramble right back off the bed.
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Not for water.
Not for another bed.
(Not for fifteen months, with no sign or signal.)
Yuri is back to wiry strength, and he's faster than Victor is right now, but Victor is still bigger and stronger and he can just tighten that arm around Yuri's middle and drag him in flush against his own chest and stomach and mold around him, a leg slipping over Yuri's to pin him here, in place, while he snuffles a low contented rumble of hmmmmmm into the mess of Yuri's hair.
Relaxing, boneless, even as Yuri struggles to get away, as if he and this bed are nothing but quicksand, drawing Yuri in closer the more he scrambles to get out. Voice gone low and rusty and too warm and too satisfied and too everything that has made Yuri keep trying to get away from him, tonight, but he can't help it. He's drunk and tired and all he wants he has right in the circle of his arms, and he just needs Yuri to:
"Stay."
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When everything is trying to explode in his head, desperate panic, and some pleading, except it's a well of words that are all tumbling, shooting, sparking unhelpfully. "What are you-?!" The arm around his waist, which won't pry up at his fingers, drags him back only hard, tighter, more flush to Victor. "Victor? Victor!" Who is not listening. Again. As a leg wraps around him, too, and Victor's face, he's pretty sure, is in his hair.
As a sudden blast of all too warm air hits his skin and makes it prickle everywhere, as Victor finally finds his mouth ... for something that is not any more help that any other part of him right now. When his own voice sounds a little too desperate in his ears, "You were supposed to be going to bed."
Before he decided to change it to this. Whatever this is. Whyever. He can't think straight about that. About anything. Because Victor is taller than him, stronger than him -- if he ever had a true question about it before this moment, it's gone. When he can't pry up that arm, or push down that leg, and he can't even quell the shock for relief at the fact his hand had found that Victor did still have clothing over the skin on leg.
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With the straightforward logic of the very drunk, because he is. Yuri never said anything about Victor not bringing him to bed, too.
(Even if it's not ...
Even like this, he knows he should let Yuri go. That he should be responsible, and less selfish, and release Yuri to go do whatever it is Yuri wants to go do, but his eyelids are growing heavy, and when he bends his head, he finds the back of Yuri's neck, soft tender skin and warmth, and a faint pulse that's thudding at a much higher pace than Victor's own. "I just want you."
English is getting harder and harder, making him have to amend more and more. Even if it's true, it's not ––
Yuri doesn't have to worry. He knows. What isn't wanted. "Here."
Where are all of his words? He's known English for as long as he's known the ice, and almost as well, but none of it seems to mean what he wants it to mean. What he wants to say. What Yuri needs to understand.
That Victor wants him, here, in the circle of his arms, in this bed.
And Victor never wants to leave him, or the ice they share.
And Victor doesn't know how to say what Yuri means, or why, when all of his words are landing like lead on his tongue and the only refuge he can find is speaking them low into the nape of Yuri's neck. Trying to pick out the meanings, like the princess in the old fairy tales trying to pluck beans and peas from a pile of ashes. "Just you."
Only Yuri. Yuri is ... singular. Yuri is ... Yuri. Yuri is ...
"You're ..."
Everything Victor can't have. Everything he wants. The one who called him out here to begin with. The one who put the idea of coaching into his head in the first place. The one who demanded his attention and wouldn't let go.
"The only one."
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Victor is shifting and Yuri for the life of him, still stuck in fight-or-flight, even though he's been denied, he's lost but not given up, is trying figure out if Victor's arm or leg will loosen, and is not expecting Victor's entire face to press into the back of his neck suddenly. Everything popping with dramatic, painful clarity. The smoothness of his skin, breaking for a forehead head, a nose there. Cheekbones. The chill of either winter, or water from the bathroom on them. The suddenly, startling, scalding, heat of his breath.
Making Yuri's heart and his stomach do something explosive he can't describe, can only try to hold on for dear life through. Fingers digging into the sheet and blanket, and his own other shoulder, while it feels like everything in him goes impossibly hot, too big, too small, and too stuck. Unable to even process, behind startling pain and startling heat, because that is only one beat, and in the next one, Victor's lips are brushing his skin and Yuri must nearly bite through his lip when he shakes.
And.
And.
And.
He's gone insane. He has. Or Victor has. It's probably him. Victor is just drunk. He's the one who's gone insane. He always was mentally weak, and now. Now. Now. He's just snapped. The darkness of the room pressing into his suddenly wide open eyes, blurred brightness of twinkling Shanghai from when Victor last through the curtains open so much earlier, while Victor's mouth brushes his skin on occasional words and he's speaking directly into Yuri's bones.
Yuri's skin catching on fire, heating everywhere, while his bones try to melt.
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A humph. Unable to express what he needs to. To make Yuri understand. Why he won't let go. Why he can't.
The only one…
He wants.
Loves.
Needs.
Can’t live without.
Has longed for.
Who kept him waiting.
Who doesn’t want him, too.
Who makes music on the ice, like fingers dancing over keys or strings.
“кто может...”
What’s the word. Is there a word for it?
“Познакомьтесь с моими ожиданиями.”
No. That’s not right. Even if it’s true.
The only one.
Who can surpass every expectation.
Who can continue to surprise.
Who can.
"Исполни меня."
It's…
Closer.
Still not right. But closer. Even if it's cheesy and too simple, and it's not really true. What fulfills him is what he's had for over two decades. He was happy. Even neglecting so many other aspects of his own life in order to accomplish it.
It's not right. Too saccharine. Not what he means.
Making him grumble a little, into the nape of Yuri's neck, arm tightening, frustrated.
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His heart is being flung each direction on it. His lungs are trashed. He's not sure he can swallow, no less breathe in.
He doesn't understand what's happening. He needs to get off this bed. Get away from Victor. "V-Victor." Because none of this is. And he's not. And he's drunk. And Yuri's heart is going to explode, but only if his skin doesn't melt first. His neck, and then his face. Which is an order he's not used to. Like all of the words Victor's saying.
And his own voice sounds ... like it isn't even his. Thin-strained. Like it might crack. Finger that might have clutched bruises into his own shoulder trying to drop to pull at that arm locked across him again, but he can't even seem to gather the right focus to make his muscles listen entirely. "I can't--"
But he doesn't even sound like he's listening, and Yuri has no clue at all what he's talking about now. What he's even saying. Only that it's being pressed into his skin with an iron. All the foreign, smooth, round, strange edges of Victor's Russian. Thicker and faster than he's ever spoken it to Yuri. And he's going to die. He's just going to die right here. And he can't admit that either.
Not to Victor who is drunk, and has given up on English again, and tightens his arm, grumbling an all too familair annoyance into Yuri's own skin. At a vibration, in his skin, he might never be able to wash off. Out. He can't. Doesn't. Yuri just snaps and sags under it, strangely and savagely confused, left up too high where it stops, leaving his body still humming, clutching at the arm around him, like maybe it'll keep him from falling apart instead of continuing to drown him.
Even though Victor is annoyed now. He knows. He knows. That tone. That sigh. That grumble.
He can't stop his heart from trying to strangle his throat. He's such an idiot.
Shaking his head, "I don't even know what you're saying."
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"Humph."
Petulant, while he takes a deep breath through his nose, and tries to organize his thoughts. It had seemed so important, only a moment ago. Or was it a year ago?
Two?
Settling the side of his head a little more solidly into the pillow, while his arm loosens minutely, but never lets go.
Fulfill isn't the right word. Meets expectations is too anemic. With Yuri, he's..
It's something he's never known. A completeness. Feeling full, every day, like he's always eating his fill and always slept enough and always has all the air and sunshine he needs.
He doesn't know if there is a word for what he feels, has felt, what draws him here, but. “ Удовлетворяет.”
But it's not. Is still hiding. Like he might be ashamed of it. “ Я люблю тебя одного.”
Mumbled before his drowned brain catches up with what Yuri said, what he meant, and it's like suddenly catching himself on a toe pick, an unexpected about-face.
Searching for the English he hadn't realized he wasn't using. Things he's said before, but maybe never as clearly as he should have. "Who ... hm."
A pondering pause. "Satisfies me."
The only one.
"You alone, I love. Yuri."
His arm shifts, now, but not to let go, only to move his hand from under Yuri's side to his chest, where he can feel Yuri's heart beating, a rapid rabbiting pulse. But his. “Don’t leave again.”
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Before he's slammed into relief that aches too fiercely to be a relief. That wants that back, and he shouldn't. He shouldn't want that. Shouldn't suddenly make his finger tighten when Victor shifts behind him, against the pillow, but without letting him go, and Yuri's not sure if that's good or bad suddenly. Like if Victor did, he might not be able to even work his limbs right now, might just dissolve and pool off the bed like some melted gelatinous lump.
He's not sure it matters, he matters, words matters, because Victor just goes right on speaking something else in Russian.
(How had he ever managed those night in hot spring? He'd been this close to Victor before, without clothes even.
Victor sober and laughing and delighted at things.)
There's more Russian, and Yuri is certain that he's never going to survive -- he's not sure anyone on the planet could survive this from Victor -- because it drops so soft he can only catch edges of sounds, edges of the same kinds of sounds that trying to crack off from his ribs and break for Yuri's mouth, when Victor is whispering something so soft, so close to his skin, it's like he's depositing it there. A secret buried in Yuri's spine only between them.
Something is cracking in him, because he wants to know. He wants to turn over and shake Victor. Until he remembers. Where they are. Who he is. That he's drunk. Everything that isn't. Whatever. Is. Whatever this is -- that isn't. (Like he did in the restaurant, and the hallway, wide eyes and apologies, slumped shoulders and apologies. Always finding Yuri too late. Remembering it was Yuri too late. And apologizing for forgotteting, himself, and Yuri, each time.)
But then Victor slips back to audible English and the words are worse than running, or skating, or dancing, until he thought he was going to puke up everything he'd ever eaten in his life. The first word is nothing. It could be related to anything now. Anyone. Yuri has no clue what topic he's been on for ... however long Yuri hasn't been able to breathe or think. Or get off the bed. Out of Victor's arms.
Which makes the words after, the ones that clarify the ones before, but before and after and during, his brain is trying to break itself. Because Victor is saying. Victor is saying. Victor is saying. He loves Yuri. (Which he knows, he knows Victor loves him, right? Academically? Related to his skating? To what they're doing?) But alone? How is. He can't. He's. Alone? Out of what? Everything? Everyone?
It's not even possible. And it's not even real. Victor is drunk. Talking about loving Yuri. Being satisfied by Yuri.
Moving, and Yuri wants to run, straight through the wall and the window, into the cold outside, but he doesn't know how much that's true, until Victor's hand is suddenly over his heart. Telling him not to leave, and it's only by some miracle he doesn't bolt. Almost as much as it is that he doesn't whimper. None of this, none of it at all, is fair.
Or true.
Or real.
And it's like his body has stopped caring about those.
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Refining choreography. Pushing himself further and faster, to greater heights of artistry, driven by this: this impossible thing threatening to snap his ribs, break his heart, drain all the color and joy from his life. This torture, aching deep in his bones for months on end.
That he cultivated. Wanted. Brought upon himself.
Anytime it seemed like it might start flagging, reborn again with a glance at a particular roll of photos and video on his phone, only to drown him in it all over again. Despair and anger. Hopeless desire. The battle he was losing, between eros and agape, between selfish want and selfless sacrifice, even as Stay Close to Me reminded him daily that it could never be so simple.
That there was no coming back from this.
And that was before he knew.
Before he knew what Katsuki Yuri was really like, who he really was. How his forehead crinkles and his eyes clear. His favorite food. His favorite people. His favorite places. Everything he hates or fears, and how he reacts to hate and fear.
Before he knew what it was like, really, for Yuri to stay close to him. Before he knew it was so much worse than he could have imagined. Back when he thought he would have a choice about staying or leaving, or thought the distance and silence was survivable.
(He'd skate that program so differently, now.)
But Yuri says nothing, even when Victor falls silent, and he's not sure what else there is to say, or how else to say it, if Yuri doesn't understand, if it wasn't clear. His mind is foggy and his thoughts keep blurring, and the only thing he wants is for Yuri to stay right here, with him. As close as he can get.
For as long as he can have.
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Five words. Five words should not have so much power. Five words should not be able to score so deeply.
The edge of a blade is not even so sharp as Yuri's mind when it settles for its newest thing to wield like a knife, and stab in constant repetition. Victor's hand still on his heart -- his heart, his heart, his heart, that shows no sign of returning to normal -- and his is on Victor's arm. He can't stay here. He can't.
Not even as Victor keeps saying, Don't leave,
and I only want you ... here and that. Those. (You alone, I love. Yuri.)
Victor, and Victor's mouth, and the words he won't stop. Aren't real.
Everything is fracturus. Rapid. In his head. In his chest. No clue where to look. No clue what to do. Nothing staying cohesive, except those words. Except, Victor's palm too warm against his chest, like the fabric of his shirt was nothing before it, while his heart, wounded and turning into a drunken traitor, like it could be water by that single touch and entirely forgotten everything it should know. Does. This isn't real. Victor is drunk. Victor is drunk. Victor is drunk.
(So what excuse does he have?)
There's still the excruciating awareness of Victor's breath, slow and even on the back of his neck. The cool inhale of breath in and the warm expulsion after. The hairs on his neck, the skin under them, victim to every single one. A patch of skin with so much focus it might just be more real than any other spot on his body is or has ever been, even though Victor isn't exactly pressed directly to it, which doesn't change, even without sight, how directly he still is there. (Everywhere.
Or how every place he had been is smouldering rubble.)
Victor is waiting on him still. To say something. Do something. A tingling awareness tinged with only ramping desperation, like when he knows he's messed up badly at the beginning of one of their practice runs, but Victor still makes him skate the next four minutes without calling it out first. He has to say something. He has to get away from here. His own bed isn't even entirely half the room away.
But Victor isn't helping, gave up helping hours ago, and even if Yuri raises his hand like he might try at that arm now -- his heart, drunken traitor, still whispering the whirlwind of all the words that Victor has said since dragging him down, in time with those breaths on his skin, every inch of his skin alive and awake -- it flounders, and then settles for landing, tentatively on the back of Victor's wrist. Eyelids squeezing closed, eyes still moving rapidly, trying to find something, and only coming to: "Y--we should sleep."
Because he's a coward. Because if Victor sleeps, he can slip away then. To his own bed. Or maybe just to the bathroom, where he can lock the door and die in privacy, if not with any dignity. His fingers tighten, just a little, despite himself. Despite reason. Sanity. It's just to make sure he has Victor's attention. (It is.
Isn't.It's not even new. It's not. Touching Victor.
He'd given into Victor being more physical than he'd ever known.
Months ago. Maybe not the same as these months. But. Not. Not-Not-
"Tomorrow," He adds, feebly. Caught in his throat, that belongs to Victor and not him. "We--I have to be ready for tomorrow."
Coward. He's such a coward. Using the only reason he could have. Find. Touch. A real one, strained and desperate, to make Victor come back to something real and feeling far more like an excuse than the reality of his world. Except it's real, too. Except he's got no clue how Victor will be in the morning after this night, too, and that actually makes his heart stutter, too. A wrinkle between here and him, them, and the first Prix Qualifier.
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Agreeing, this time, instead of annoyed. "Yes, you need to sleep."
Tomorrow is the beginning of it all. The road to the Grand Prix Final. Everything they've been working towards over the last eight months, with every perfected program and aching muscle and bruised bone. It's why they do what they do: pushing themselves on and on toward greater heights of artistry and beauty and athleticism.
Yuri's ready. Victor has poured as much of himself into those programs, and into his training, as he would if this were his own season and his own try for the gold.
But Yuri's fingers tighten on his arm, and his arm tightens, in response, because he has no way of reacting to anything Yuri might give him, any encouragement or affection, that isn't taking it and running with it, and wanting more, and doing his best to absorb every last iota of it. Every smile, every touch, every hug, every confidence, every sudden laugh or fond glance. He wants it all. Feels it soaking into him, making him turn towards Yuri even further, like a flower towards the sun.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow is ... "Eros."
That he cheated on. Just a little. On the assignments. There was never a chance he would give Eros to anyone but the one who inspired it.
His chuckle a low and sleepy muddle against the back of Yuri's neck. "You seduced me."
Over and over again. That night. On the tiny screen of his phone. At the baths. On the ice. Tossing him that burning look across the rink, over and over again. Saying please watch. Saying promise.
(As if there's been a time in almost two years when Victor could do anything but.)
"It always was yours."
How could he have ever thought that program might be meant for someone else, even him? Even without knowing it, he'd been choreographing it for Yuri. Because of Yuri. Snippets of that night, played out over and over again on ice instead of a ballroom floor. His own frustration at being sought out, pursued, won, and then finally pushed aside gaining immortality as Yuri seduces him and rejects him over and over and over again.
And he falls for it, every time.
(But so will China.)
"They'll love you."
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But he doesn't think this is one of them.
He doesn't even have time to fully question if Victor means the idea or the short program, or the mingled everything that raised to the references at this point, but it doesn't matter. Because Victor's next words burned themselves through his skin on contact. Yuri can feel the way his body goes rigid, almost curving, and his ears are heating. Even when that's impossible. Even when that's familiar.
Backward, forwards, Victor has used that word, but not like that.
Present and pressure, a demand and an order and a request and shouted directions. Seduce me and you'll steal every heart. Seduce me with all you have. Seduce me, as Victor made himself the impossible, never reachable, standard to which Yuri had to throw that program, to be good enough to even be a pale shadow of. But not that. Not past tense. Not even when pulled to his chest, just like this, and whispered in his ear, before the cameras last time. Not--
You seduced me.
A lie so scalding and so bald Yuri swears his entire body throbs in confusion and denial. (And undescribable, impossible yearning?) At the laugh. At the brush of his lips. At the words. All of it pulling at him, the way Victor meant for him to perform that routine. His blood at a boil, even when his heart aches in the cage of his ribs. Impossible and dizzying, when Victor is still talking, and Yuri has no clue what it even is, or was, because he can't make his mind leave the scorch of the earlier second.
The thing that is so categorically impossible that it feels like his ears are going to pop under the insanity of having heard it. Because. Because the impossibility of actually seducing Victor
It's always been greater than if Victor asked him to reach up into the stars and pull down the moon. It would be more likely. As art, maybe. A forever reaching. To make Eros even the slenderest sliver of what Victor would have made of it himself, always remembering what he told Yurio. That it was up to them to find a way to win with these pieces, because he would have. Obvious simplicity of who he was.
Like the obvious simplicity that Yuri would never actually seduce Victor.
Victor, whose last words seem so unattached to the implosion of Yuri's mind, the frantic fall of his heart, the heat everywhere in his skin that Victor will not stop touching. About everyone else loving him. Making the point for him. That Victor meant it the same way he always has. Seduce him, and the world will fall. (Like Yuri is falling. Like no one is strong enough not to fall against this, against Victor Nikiforov.)
"Maybe," Is a weak and choked word. Distorted and burned. Coughed up from a ruin he doesn't know how so few words has made of him. Pressed to Victor's chest, Victor's hand to his heart, and everything aside from the fact Victor is drunk, is normal. So long as he doesn't die right here, and make it easier for the world not to even have to see him.
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Certain as gravity. As the spin of the Earth around the sun. How could anyone not love Yuri? Is there a single soul who could fail to be moved by the mute appeal of Yuri on Ice, or whose blood could do anything but sear in their veins during Eros?
He created those programs to showcase everything Yuri has to offer, and everything is what they'll get. Every lost battle and heartbreak, every triumph, every coy glance. "You've done it before."
Won over an entire room. Set his sights on the most unapproachable, unreachable of them all, and claimed him.
Like it was easy. Like there was nothing else that could have happened. No other way for Victor to react. "Show the world your true eros, Yuri."
The demon who danced away with Victor's heart and left his soul aflame, stole his way into dreams and into choreography as easily as he'd laid claim to the ballroom dance floor. The playboy who broke the hearts of every woman in town, and left his hardest conquest alone and pining for him.
He can do it again. Victor has absolute faith. After all, doesn't it keep seducing him?
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He can feel it everywhere now. Thundering through him. In his ears. In his toes. While Victor finally sounds like Victor again, and somehow, even though it's all he wanted for the last, he doesn't know how many minutes, hours, it's not right either. It feels like he's been thrown over the edge of a cliff, and like he's still falling (falling and falling and falling) with no hope of stopping, while Victor just sits blithely and easy on the edge, watching him fall and talking about the weather. His last newest error in judgment.
(Which is not his last word.
He's a coward, and liar, and he's ... he shouldn't ... he can't.)
He can't imagine what he's supposed to do with his mouth now, and how exactly he's supposed to keep forming words, as though it had been created for them. Not while Victor is so close, the soft hum of a thought tingling through his skin, each new brush a burn to prove his skin is still there, is still slowly charring and yet refusing to go numb. Alive, shooting lightning through his veins at the faintest tickle of Victor's hair even.
He can't find them this time. Words. A single word of his own. A single word that isn't Victor's voice, and Victor's lips, and Victor's words from the dark spinning themselves around him. Phantoms faster and more skilled, more deadly and demanding than anyone has ever moved on ice, except Victor.
Can't do more than swallow. Breathless. Helpless. Desperate, and drowning. Sure, that if he so much as opens his mouth soon, near any point while Victor is touching him, it's going to be a gasp, or something else. Something else he can't quantify and is rapidly losing control of trying to claw its way up his throat. He ends up nodding his head, maybe a little too much, too fast, because he thinks he bumps against the top of Victor's head once or twice there.
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Sure, this is the first real test since he came back to competition, and he knows Yuri's worried about it, the shadow of that last year and all his failures dogging his every step, but Yuri isn't a new skater. He knows how all this works. And Victor wouldn't lie to him about his chances or his ability or his skill level, the same way Victor hasn't lied to him at all over the last eight months about what he's gotten right and what he's gotten wrong.
Usually Yuri listens, but usually, Victor is saying these things to his face, not mumbling them into the back of his neck, which is the thought that makes him shift, finally, and start pulling back, but before Yuri can move away or get up, Victor's flipping him onto his back and looking down into his face. It's a little blurry in the dark, but he still gets that squeeze around his heart that reminds him, every time ... as if he could forget. "You're ready for this."
The Cup of China. The road to the Grand Prix Final. To show Eros and Yuri on Ice to the whole world, and win them over.
His leg is still tangled with one of Yuri's, and his hand is still on Yuri's chest, but he doesn't really notice, holding himself there with his cheek on his hand and his elbow on the bed, watching Yuri's face. His favorite face. The one he never can look away from. "I wouldn't have come to be your coach if I didn't think so."
Which is as true as it isn't. It had been such a ridiculous thing for Yuri to ask that Victor hadn't considered it to be anything other than a joke for a long time, but the more he watched of what Yuri could do on the ice, with his body, with the music he creates, his mind had slowly changed. There was a wellspring of potential written in every careful copy of his own choreography, in the thoughtless grace of the banquet dance-off.
A thought that makes him smile, soft and fond and a little nostalgic, before he's leaning down to settle his cheek on the pillow next to Yuri's head, there, nose just about brushing his hair. "Don't be nervous."
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Because. Victor is suddenly above him, or at least slightly to the side. When he's not even sure he has the time to be grateful Victor isn't pressed to the back of him -- because Victor is pressed to his side, hand still on his chest, pressing him into the bed with it, eyes just barely glinting in the dark (and they'll still be cut glass and the sea and ice and nothing like anything else), bangs brushing his cheek (whinsome and artistic and somehow graceful), hair just barely mussed by the pillow. Victor is staring down at him, making him freeze, but making nothing inside of him freeze, or stop.
(Because his neck is still burning, and he's sure it's all over him,
And he can't help despair or desperation at that Victor is drunk and still perfect,
even as every word there in the air, still presses into his skin before it reaches his ears.)
He stays there, not granting Yuri the grace of vanishing or letting him escape. He stays there ... not doing ... anything he'd never do ... because Yuri's brain has cracked staring up at him. So close, half-formed, unknown things Yuri is terrified of just as much as he might almost be desperate enough to blunder toward, run from, trying to take root in his head. Pushed at in a flailing fashion he can't push Victor away with.
While Victor goes on not meaning any it. The words he'd chosen (Only you, I love. Yuri), that stabbed at Yuri's chest, (you seduced me) his head, (who satisfies me) as Victor spoke with a drunken sleepiness. Except he does. Victor means them the way he always has, nothing more than academically, nothing more than Victor's inflation of everything he feels, and does, and says, blown up to the highest degree. Academics turned into artful exaggeration on his tongue.
And still ... meaning nothing, nothing, nothing, but what he always has, reminding Yuri that is what he is, Yuri's coach, when he's laying back down, back down on the bed, with Yuri's arm pressed against his chest and a little under him. Victor's arm looser and covering more of his chest. Whispering those last three words, fond and failing, somewhere not far from Yuri's hair, and Yuri's ear, and making Yuri want to give a pained, insane laugh. Sure that he passed nervous a long time ago.
He has to try so hard. Just to breathe in. Just to keep that (and everything, everything, everything else down, that he's such an idiot for feeling, questioning, hurting), to even say, "I'll try."
Two words, like it's a default setting on a machine, and the only thing he can even begin to make fit anything. Not being nervous about the morning, even though he's trying not to fall apart entirely before he can even sleep, or get away, or get to tomorrow existing at all.
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Which is as far away from his current blurred state of mind as he can conceive of being, but it's fine, he's just tired, and the bed is so comfortable, and Yuri is right next to him, almost half under him. Close and warm. Even if he still doesn't. Even if he'll never.
There's still this.
And even if Yuri doesn't, never, not like this, it doesn't change how Victor's heart swells and breaks and bursts over and over again, like waves that continually crash themselves against rocks, watching him. Talking to him. Just being near him. "я люблю тебя."
Mumbled into the pillow, eyes slid shut, already drifting away. "Мой Yuri."
Which is the last thing he says, or does, except fall asleep.
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But the words land aching and foreign,
so familiar and so untrue and true all at once,
leaving him feeling even more conflicted than ever.
Heart aching against the bars of his ribs, uncertain whether it's still trying to escape out the front, to find the skin of Victor's palm, or if it's trying to hide by his spine, as far as he can get, from that hand, from his mouth, for his words.
And he's not an idiot. He doesn't know the word, but he can guess well enough at the second of the two. A low, thick Russian mumble, between his hair and the pillow. His name, and something that sounds all too like the word my, with a vowel inset to its center, and he trembles beside himself. Unable to stop himself from starting, unable to make himself stop.
Helpless against the idea, and the words before it. The way Victor says it careless and sleepy, clinging to Yuri like he's a teddy bear or another pillow that came attached to his bed, and claiming Yuri with the simplicity of a child picking something up off the street and just making it their own. Heedless of anything those word might mean on the other side. Any other translation that exists except his own.
He waits, alive, alert, every cell in his body on edge, on fire, trembling and trying to hold still, for the next words, the next move, whatever Victor will do next. What new way he's going to display that he can take every part of all Yuri has ever known of himself and rearrange it at his leisure. Without asking. Without caring. With a smile, and a laugh, and a wink.
(And his hands.
Yuri doesn't know how long he's been waiting, how many endless minutes of aching, spooling darkness and anxiety, have crawled by, counted in the Victor's breath's against his hair, his shoulder, his ear, the faintest twitches of Victor's body, the heavier and heavier weight of his hand over the center of Yuri's chest. Before he realizes -- with so much relief it feels like abject denial and disappointment, pitiful and wrong and weak -- that Victor is asleep. Actually asleep on him.
Just gone, and he doesn't know when that happened. Maybe the whole time. (And isn't that every proof?)
Leaves him alone in the dark. Trapped half under Victor, staring at the ceiling. Too much in his head for sense or sanity. Too much in his skin for anything resembling calm. It's all faint shivers and tenses, like he can't stay perfect still. Especially now that Victor absolutely is, and is making it so he can't move. Which makes it shameful that it feels harder to breathe now than earlier. Which can't be true.
Makes each breath a labor to keep himself from taking a too fast, too deep breath and hyperventilating in the sudden, overwhelming silence all around him. Pressing on every fire-bitten part of him, but especially his head. His head which can't stop listening to each breath near his head. In, and out. In, and out. Can't stop listening to a million words that don't mean anything, but are trapped. In his head. In his blood. In his lungs. In his guts. In his heart.
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(Even he doesn't like to sleep outside the covers, no matter how cold it gets in St. Petersburg.)
Pleasantly surprised to find that Yur's there, when his eyes blink open, and that makes as much sense as it doesn't ––
–– but he's too tired to question it, even as he's shifting and searching for the sheets to pull over his ... is he still wearing his trousers? "Yuri."
Wheedled and drowsy, pushing at Yuri and slipping his hand down to find a slim wrist, so he doesn't get any ideas about moving away. "It's cold, get the blanket."
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It's more like the boulder sitting on everything he is forces him down,
with just as much warning or say as Victor dragging him on the bed and keeping him there.
Into the black that swallows him whole and drowns him down and down and down. Taking him out and away, even as nothing finds peace, or peaceful. It's shifts and flows. Backness giving way to something too bright. A golden room, and empty dwarfing space, with no people. Until there are. People, he can't see. He just knows they are there when Victor is.
Suddenly in front of him, looking down at him from such a close distance, everything swaying as fingers catch his chin, and the pad of Victor's thumb brushes his bottom lip, lingering hot and promising, like a claim, against his skin. Luminous brilliance in those eyes, something important vaults upward through him even as the world goes dazzlingly sideways when his name forms on those lips, and they open again, and he knows the question is coming, the question he has to answer, already answered, never got to answer, can't not answer --
-- and he blinks, into sudden darkness,
feverish agonizing need blinding everything for a too long second,
the taste of something sharp, dry and almost sweet parching his throat,
as he's pushed again, his shoulder, and he looks over to find Victor (... oh ...), half-asleep (... right .), ordering him for blankets and leashing his wrist, like a pet or a child. Like. Yuri can't. He can't even think. His head is a cataclysm of gold dust and music? was there music? and .... something. Something too big for his first seconds of groggy confusion, for the skew of his glass he forgot to even take off.
When he's pushing them straight, and focusing through the darkness, to pull at the blankets, half muddled at the end, half of them, in a way that makes him feel like he's the drunken one here. Reaching for. Not the blankets, not even when his one free hand is on them. But. There was something, wasn't there? There was a question, someone had asked him a question, one that seemed to have faded from his mind before it could even form.
But it still sat there.
Frantic. Agonizing. Need.
Like a bird was suddenly stuck in his chest.
Flapping into the bars of his ribs, never stopping.
His body that felt confused, felt run over, felt used up.
Flickers of Victor's face, tugging at him from the blur, bursting into clear color.
Making him throw himself back to the pillow he'd found at some point, still dazed, dragging the blanket up his own body awkwardly. Victor could help himself to the blanket at this point if he wanted it. Since he was helping himself to everything else. Yuri's night, and Yuri's sleep, and Yuri's dreams, and couldn't he not-have one of those dreams while he was in Victor's bed and unable to leave it. Couldn't something just go right for him tonight?
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Well, chilly.
Well, it's a little drafty.
But Yuri is warm, and once the sheet and blanket are tugged up, he slides back towards that warmth like an iron filing to a magnet, already more than half asleep again, even as his hand slides over Yuri's stomach and his head dents the pillow Yuri's decided to take over.
It's more comfortable over here.
(A thought that fails to trouble him, or furrow his forehead with faint concern, or do more than blip across his consciousness as pure observation. It is. Comfortable. Warm. Everything he wants to be able to curl up to, in the middle of the night.
Sleepy and still more than half drunk, he simply never remembers to ask himself why he doesn't normally have it.)
Only sighing some sleepy thanks, while his eyes are closing, and he's swimming back down towards sleep from the half-aware state he'd floated up into, and all he knows is that Yuri is warm and right there, and Yuri came back with him, and Yuri hasn't left again, and Victor is just ...
Happy. Sleepy, but. Happy.
It's been so long.
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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.
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And Yuri, of course. It's a strange and relieving night when he doesn't dream about Yuri, about the programs they're working on, about walking together, talking together. Yuri on the ice. Yuri on the ballroom floor. Yuri pressed all along his skin, saying things he never would, Yuri's smile, and hands, and mouth.
Dreams he's not proud of, but wouldn't chase away any more than he can't.
But whatever he was dreaming goes directly out of his head the second his eyes blink open, sleepy and only half-seeing, but it's just enough: enough to feel a shift in the bed next to him, Yuri slipping away, under a blanket lifting up, and no. That's not all right.
It isn't even a thought process, only a reflex: reaching for Yuri's side, and finding the top of his arm, with fingers that are a little too tired to be strong or anything other than just there. "Stay."
All of it happening in a blur of still-asleep, and he never really breaks the surface, but it's just the most natural thing in the world to shift and loop his arm around Yuri and push his face into Yuri's shoulder and simply slide back into whatever he wasn't dreaming from there.
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Before he sags into the arm back around him, the bed beneath his. The blurry darkness around him every freedom he can't have (...and doesn't he know, already, hasn't he learned it well enough, about not wanting things he can't have? Isn't that the entire theme of his life?) Victor pressed against him, breath warming Yuri's skin through Yuri's shirt. Stirring it into too much focus. Snapping and hissing wires, still not dead, still just as much under his command as where Yuri gets to go.
Helpless. Hopeless. Defeated. Aching. Certain for a second this is what hell is,
but at the same time the whole explosion makes the edges of his eyes burn and tear,
while his head blurs too many things from the night, into tomorrow behind and coming soon.
But he doesn't move. Doesn't try to. His head is too heavy, and everything that is only feels exhaustion in every alive, alert, pulsing thrumb, while Victor's breaths are sleep-heavy, and his arm is a belt. Because he can't run away from Victor, any more than he can run away from tomorrow morning (... and maybe the worst part is that, even agonised, he's not entirely angry, entirely disappointed, entirely un-wanting of either).
Sleeps is hard, exhaustion as aggressive and demanding and powerless to be fought as everything else tonight, and when it comes it's the boulder again. Smothering, unforgiving, demanding weight. Shoving, slamming, pushing him into a darkness, with greedy and careless hands, where warmth blooms forever at his shoulder, forever at his chest, forever in every part of his body he knows and has never cared to even pay attention to. But it brings only darkness.
Sends him tumbling further and further out, further and further under, into it without any further assault.
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