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fivetimechamp) wrote2017-02-19 01:26 pm
fivetimechamp) wrote2017-02-19 01:26 pm
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GPF Banquet, 9 December, 2012 – Sochi, Russia
He's never quite sure how long he should stay at these things.
It's not that he doesn't enjoy the banquet – he does. After winning his fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final, the champagne tastes all the brighter, and the company around him is more delightful than ever. He enjoys seeing his peers and companions, sharply-dressed and relaxed for the first time in months, the strain of competition dropping away, even if only for a single evening. The food is tasty, the attention warming, the evening sparkling, the room filled with all the brightest stars of their world. Yes, he enjoys the banquet.
But there's a part of him that itches to make his excuses, and leave. To trade out this suit for a loose part of pants and a warm shirt; these polished shoes for the clean glide of his skates.
He can make the program even better. He can perfect it.
So there's an element here, too, of detachment. He notices it with the others, too – with Chris, who fell short of him, again, and JJ, full of boundless confidence. Eventually abandoning polite small talk and gossip to dig into their craft, to discuss music selections and jump compositions, to compliment and rag on each other. No one used to being off the ice for long.
He talks less, but thinks more. Already working through the choreography in his head, even as he laughs over champagne, and greets his friends.
It is who he is. The champion. And tomorrow will be more of the same.
It's not that he doesn't enjoy the banquet – he does. After winning his fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final, the champagne tastes all the brighter, and the company around him is more delightful than ever. He enjoys seeing his peers and companions, sharply-dressed and relaxed for the first time in months, the strain of competition dropping away, even if only for a single evening. The food is tasty, the attention warming, the evening sparkling, the room filled with all the brightest stars of their world. Yes, he enjoys the banquet.
But there's a part of him that itches to make his excuses, and leave. To trade out this suit for a loose part of pants and a warm shirt; these polished shoes for the clean glide of his skates.
He can make the program even better. He can perfect it.
So there's an element here, too, of detachment. He notices it with the others, too – with Chris, who fell short of him, again, and JJ, full of boundless confidence. Eventually abandoning polite small talk and gossip to dig into their craft, to discuss music selections and jump compositions, to compliment and rag on each other. No one used to being off the ice for long.
He talks less, but thinks more. Already working through the choreography in his head, even as he laughs over champagne, and greets his friends.
It is who he is. The champion. And tomorrow will be more of the same.
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He can see it in the other skaters' faces: Chris and JJ and the others are all laughing, chatting, occasionally taking a spin or two on the dance floor with a partner, but it's nothing like how they cut loose when it's just them. People at the height of their game, in peak shape, all with shatter-resistant egos around their too-easily shattered hearts. Drinking too much, dancing too much, daring each other, insulting and friendly all at the same time.
It's a camaraderie they're missing here, and he can't help but wish it was just the few of them. The six.
(Perhaps then he could even manage to get something out of Katsuki Yuri.)
There's a slight commotion just over his shoulder – he begins to turn towards it, but the couple he's talking to drag his attention back to them with a question his manners can't let him leave unanswered.
He's beginning to wonder, again, just how long he needs to stay before he can politely leave...and if he can convince Chris and a few of the others (and a few of those bottles of champagne) to come with him.
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Maybe he just thought it.
The dance floor is starting to dance.
Not the dancers. The dance floor.
But he narrows his eyes at it.
Given how much this is their party, almost none of the skaters are the people out there. Which seems. That must be wrong, right? He's terrible at these things, remembers the horderves more than the people, and even he knows that is wrong at this kind of thing. This is a party -- no, a celebratory banquet. It is supposed to be for those people is this room who slaved and wasted, trained and traveled, everywhere to end up on those boxes. Not in chairs.
It's supposed to be a night to celebrate all the broken toes and scraped-up faces, every ruined pair of practice skates, pulled muscle that had you counting the minutes you were behind, the debuts of new costumes, new successes never tried before. One more well-earned step. It might not be his. But somehow, none of them were making it theirs either. Which seemed.
Just. Wrong.
That was wrong. Right?
It must be.
Yuri jumped and swayed, when the world rudely unoriented, for a hand waving in front of his face. Some girl. She looked familiar even. Just barely, before his focus shifted entirely again. To the bottle she shoved into his frame of vision and then into his hands.
"Danke schön," he said with a little too much determination, as he watched his fingers, having to focus, to curl them in the right place. Looking at the floor, and back to the bottle, before lifting it to his mouth, and deciding to push off from the wall. No. No, not the wall. He wasn't on the ice. The table, it was the table, right? Same difference. Someone had to stop these people from being dead, before their time.
Only one person in this room had the right to be cloistered away, moping, and it wasn't them.
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"Victor."
"Chris."
Amused, covering that hand with his own, while he leans back for a second. Chris doesn't know how to soften his affections: he is all eros and no agape, all sex appeal and lean attraction, all promises and coaxing, lacquered over the real kernel of affection and friendship he doesn't quite know how to express with his clothes still on.
It seems unbalanced, to Victor, but he can't argue that Chris is always a good time. Overt sexuality has never bothered him, even if it isn't his preference.
(Besides, the day Chris ceases flirting with him is the day he's lost all his charms...and he isn't quite ready for that, yet.) "Are you enjoying yourself?"
"I could be enjoying myself more." But the arm loosens from around him, and when Chris steps back, Victor turns to him, already smiling, fond and warm.
He really does like Chris...in small doses. Now, he watches him sigh, and wave a lackadaisical hand. "Oh? Can I help?"
It's Chris' turn to smile. Sometimes it feels like their entire relationship is built on trying to one-up each other. "Of course. This party is dull, isn't it?"
Victor looks around, as if he hadn't noticed. The lights all still on, the music still sedate. Guests in cocktail attire still talking quietly amongst themselves. "Cocktail parties aren't meant to be exciting, Chris."
Even if they're meant to be a celebration. They're meant to be classy, sophisticated, sparkling. Full of good wine and passable conversation.
They aren't meant to be fun.
Chris sighs, again, waves his champagne glass in the direction of the DJ. "I wish he would put something else on, at least."
Victor does, too, but as he starts to reply, there's another flurry of motion just outside his range of vision, and this time, he glances over, to see a semi-circle of men in black suits and women in sleek dresses begin to back away from a corner of the dance floor, the way they might if there was a spill of water beginning to flood towards their expensive shoes. He can't see what's causing the tidal shift, but it's at least interesting enough to spend a moment trying.
"Maybe you'll get your wish, Chris, and Cinderella has finally arrived at the ball to start the dancing."
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They are suffocating this room, and it's been suffocating since he walked in, hasn't it?
They could even be on the edges of here, but it shouldn't be owned by them. Nothing is owned by them.
They weren't standing on the boxes, and Yuri survey's the rocking waves of people around him, pushing back from him.
In their demur dresses and suits, and that's suffocating, too. None of them live in these either, and he pulls at his tie, while still stepping forward, and while his mouth and the mouth of the bottle meet again, with a long gulp of champagne that doesn't end as fast as a flute. Heavenly. Longer. Deeper. Richer. Bubbly and sharp, a waterfall on his tongue instead of a trickle. Boldness in a bottle. He doesn't care when he opens his eyes and there's basically a ring of space. A hush of near-silent whispers and more people turning, but he doesn't care. He really doesn't. Not even when they edge back every step he goes forward. (Or...is it sideways?)
Because they are quiet enough he's hearing the music more than them. Seeing it in the air. Feeling the count begin to tangle with his own pulse. It's the wrong music, but it doesn't matter either. Music and ice are the twins that made him, even in the wrong key and the wrong clothes and he has no skates, or even flats, it pulls at him. A jittery electric need screaming in his muscles, that don't feel anywhere near as exhausted as they were earlier, somehow, pushed on by the heady feeling of everything else.
Enough that his eyelids flicker half-hooded for a second, listening to the music.
The music and nothing else, only the beat under the song,
before one knee comes up and the arm with the bottle goes out, and his body, turns fluid to follow it.
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Everyone, except. "Katsuki...Yuri?"
Blinked and spoken, both, in astonishment so complete he doesn't even notice the people bumping into him as they shift away from the dance floor, and away from Katsuki Yuri, who is holding a bottle of champagne in one hand, and loosening his tie with the other. Undoing the button at his throat, letting the too-soft folds of his collar fall open, while Victor's own suddenly feels like it might be choking him. Too tight. Caught up against the dip of his throat, and constricting breathing.
He swallows, hard, against it, aware, somewhere past his surprise, that Chris is clapping, next to him, grinning like a cat about to catch a canary. "I think maybe you're right, Victor."
Taking Victor a second to remember that he'd just mentioned Cinderella, and dancing, because that's precisely what Katsuki Yuri is doing: arms lifting, and legs following, and his eyes slid half-lidded, like every muscle in his body relaxed at once. Nothing like how he was on the ice, earlier today, when it seemed like he was fighting every step and every note of the music, when his feet were his enemy and his movements so wooden Victor wondered for a moment if it wouldn't be better for him to skate to Pinocchio ––
But this is nothing like that. This is seamless, liquid movement. Untangling music from the air and spinning it into something that begins to make sense, in a way nothing ever has for Victor unless it's between his blades and the oblong walls of the rink, the pulse of applause, the glitter of lights.
Like he's making his own music.
There's another flurry, and he's pushed to the side, only just now realizing that he'd pushed upstream against the crowd to the edge of the dance floor, hand dropping from where it had been resting at his mouth, elbow in the other, forcing him to look down and see Yuri Plisitsky, red in the face, blue eyes blazing, looks as furious as though this was his party, that had been crashed.
"What the hell are you doing?" he yells, at the dance floor, but Victor only laughs and pats him on the shoulder.
"It's a dance floor, Yuri. It's for dancing. Don't you think he has the right idea?"
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None of the resistance in a toe pic or a pair of ballet flats. Made to be soft and smooth. Clipped steps. He'd almost rather be barefoot. But that would take more caring than he had at hand. Especially, given his hands were busy. One gliding over his head and around his shoulders, bottle still in hand, and actually ending up with some champagne on himself in the process but not enough to care about that either.
Falling on ice, skating on ice, living on ice, got you used to being constantly wet and pushing through it, too.
It's the sudden screech of a voice that blast through into his reverie of movements. Familiar, but also, sharp as a blade, shattering glass, and when he finds the face of the bellower it's the first time he blinks. A young, aggressively agitated teenage boy, who looked .... he looked familiar, too. One of the junior skaters? One of the medal ones, yes?
There was something biting at his heels, in the too tight cling of his jack, even loose at his side, on his arms. Something he should have said, would have said, should have felt, it was trying to creep up his spine at that yelled question, cold and familiar, but then Yuri's eyes had shifted to the two men next to him. Victor Nikiforov. Christophe Giacometti. Perfect. Poised. Standing there. Watching him. Commenting to the boy. Looking .... interested, as well?
And somehow, somewhere,
even not sure entirely what it was,
with its icy fingers in his guts, still unnamed,
That unnamed thing driving up, dissolving against him.
He points out with the mouth of the bottle at the boy. Gold hair. (Gold medal?) His words cutting the whispers, direct gaze unwavering, "Dancing." Not pausing, for his affronted face to being spoken to as though he was slow, Yuri adds. "I haven't seen you doing any better." As though earlier today was nothing. Yesterday was nothing. Everyday before now is nothing. Every hour, and minute, and second, before this one, right here, was nothing.
The boy scowled in a way that seemed to take up more space that his face, into all of the space around him, outraged at the insult. "I can do better than anything you're doing!"
Yuri didn't know where it came from, but he stopped checking the sign posts. It came without thinking, without caring, broad and wide. His arms were thrown open, wide from his chest, the bottle still dangling from one, and hands fingers wide on the other, gesturing to the space that had been widened all around him, space enough to well hold another person, or even five or six with their won space. A challenge in gestures of all this space, and no one else but him stepping up to it.
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He looks different. More like when he's on the ice, but not, too. No perfectly slicked back hair, or tailored, sleek, glittering costume; only the flush on his cheeks and the jacket that's getting sprinkled with champagne, and the shirt underneath that's working steadily looser, never meant for this sort of movement. Looking almost...
Debauched. It's a strange word to have come swinging into his head, but Katsuki is moving to music that Victor stopped paying attention to a few minutes ago, that is probably still not appropriate for...whatever this is. That's nothing like how he expected this evening to go.
Just like he could never have expected how he can't seem to look away.
Well. He may as well take advantage of that, then –– pulling out his phone and setting up the camera, while laughing at a fuming Yuri Plisetsky next to him. "Oh, Yuri? That sounds like a challenge to me. I don't know, do you have another competition left in you?"
Certain to set a fire under the younger boy's skin: he's proud, and impatient, and temperamental, and Victor is already framing the dance floor in his camera sights, as Yuri storms onto the dance floor.
"Yuri vs. Yuri!"
This is a truly delightful turn of events. "Go, Yuri!"
Not sure which he's cheering on, only knowing that this party has suddenly become one he deeply wants to stay at.
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No clue where it comes from either, but it feel good. Across his warm cheeks and down his shoulders, and then he catches part of what Victor is screaming behind the man and his eyes wide, and then narrow, confused. About his name, and the kid. And his name. And, seriously, if they are taking this seriously, he has too much on to move the way he wants to move, and he want to move.
More than he thinks he's felt driven to move in so long. It's strange to be certain of that while looking at Victor Nikiforov. Victor Nikiforov whom he own almost every poster, and article on, has seen every interview and skater piece on, but could not for the life of himself bring himself to say more than a passing mumbled hello at the floor more than his face at any of their competitions. Not even this one. Somehow never. Not once. And can still hear his name in the man's voice. That strange, high-pitched, excitement. It's an electric skip in the music that still isn't right.
That voice cheering for him for some reason, and it actually sends him tottering toward him for a second.
Even if by the time he's taken three or four steps, and has made half the distance towards the man, the boy behind him is yelling again. Screaming about where he's going and making him turn in a far too fast twist, to raise a finger, to tell him -- but there's a bottle there, and for a second, he almost loses his hold on the neck, and the end of his sleeve tightens the fabric at an elbow, also, no helping, but he has a finger up, clumsy and true, and he's saying, "Hold on."
Before spinning back, not quite sure why. What was he going to say? He needed his hands-free, right?
Right, that was it? He needed his hands free to be able to move.
"Take this!" He thrust the bottle at the champion, of the world, and his day, with the camera out, but his hands free, freer than Yuri's, before he was already yanking his jacket off one arm.
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And Victor, watching through his phone's camera, suddenly blinking in surprise as the screen is taken up by Katsuki Yuri's face, filling the frame. "Eh?"
It's as much as he can get out, before there's a bottle being shoved into his free hand, and he'd do something about it, except that Katsuki is similarly shedding his jacket, only he's doing it inches in front of Victor. Tugging the collar of his white shirt even looser, with the loop of his tie slung low on his chest.
(Taking a swing of ice-cold champagne suddenly, insanely, sounds like a very good idea.)
One he has no time to act on, though, as the jacket gets shoved into his hands, and he grasps it reflexively, eyes gone wide and bewildered, feeling awkward and wrong-footed even without moving. "––Eh?"
A short hiccup of surprise, but Katsuki's already gone, leaving Victor blinking, feeling strangely adrift. Uncertain.
It's a strange feeling.
Hearing Chris laugh, next to him, low, with an undercurrent of amusement Victor's not sure he understands – nothing that just happened is funny, exactly, is it? In the way where he very nearly imagines that Chris is laughing at him, and his surprise – before his hand lands on Victor's shoulder, and then slides off. "I'm going to go talk to the DJ."
Making Victor look over to see him wink, already moving towards that table in the back of the room. "Give them some real music."
Them. Looking back towards the dance floor, where Yuri Plisetsky is up in Katsuki Yuri's face, and Katsuki is smiling. Every joint gone loose and relaxed. Looking like the prince of those few square feet, secure in his confidence, in his ability to defend his tiny kingdom.
(If he'd held himself like that, today, if he'd shown the judges this, unfazed and flushed with triumph and challenge...
Victor would have liked to have seen that.)
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Well, nothing is stick, all together too fully. The room has turned a warm, sort of golden, and the crowd has changed. There are some people cheering and yelling their names now, sporadically clapping even though they haven't started, and no one's got rules, when Yuri actually puts a hand on the kids' shoulder and spins him toward a different piece of space, not in his face, and he searches for the beat again, finding it just as the music stops.
"Nani?" It's slipped out of his mouth as he's turning toward the DJ, because they can't stop now. They haven't even started.
But his eyes get there, and he kind of laughs, again, even as he can here the kid grinding his teeth, because they both get there at the same time. There's a man at the computers for music, but he's accompanied now. Christophe Giacomet. Arm slung over the man's shoulder, and leaning in, over, around him, cheek to cheek, as though he's helping himself to the man's system through the man, himself,, and it feels like the whole mood of everything shifts. Heightens.
He's not the only one. Or at least they're all going to make it worth their while to watch this now.
When the music comes it's thundering. The base is hard, beat electric, and it's faster. So much faster. Something wicked sparking at the edge of Yuri's mouth, that isn't a smile, but is, it really is, before he starts moving. He can't remember the last time he got to just dance. Not skate. Not ballet moves for skating. Dance.
He'd learned every single kind of dance he could from Minako, when he was training with her. Every single way that he could learn to move his body. He'd been ravenous for it. Got lost and found in every single new piece and style she showed him. Music, movement, new things he could take from his feet and her lessons and put to use once he was back on the ice. But this, this was its own type of enjoyment.
Like his body had never forgotten. Like he'd learned yesterday. Every muscle and bone felt more fluid than even water.
Like he was becoming one with the air, and the music thumping through it, through the floor, through his blood.
And if the kid looked like he was starting to sweat, like he hadn't quite expected this, Yuri couldn't help smiling right back.
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Suddenly something you might hear at a club, or at a very particular kind of party, that this one is apparently turning into. Which Victor is fine with. The bass dropping, thud into his bloodstream intoxicating as any liquor. Making him want to move, too, instinctual and fluid.
But nothing like Katsuki Yuri.
He's in the middle of the dance floor, but it looks like he's stopped even noticing the wood under his feet, his shirt gone rumpled and half-untucked, now, flashing occasional glances of the pale, creamy skin of his side and back. Moving to the beat like it's his own pulse, like gravity has only ever been a suggestion for him, in some strange combination of ballet and break-dancing and something else entirely, that's almost like watching a matador spur on an enraged bull.
Dipping and leaping. Arms graceful in the air, long, tracking around his head and shoulders. Apparently ignorant of the cheers and wolf-whistles erupting around him, while his cheeks go pink, but his focus never wavers.
Making Victor wonder if he really is as drunk as he'd seemed a second ago, when it looked like the floor was a see-sawing deck he could hardly keep his balance on. Now ––
Now, he's sure-footed as a mountain goat, and claiming this music, this beat, this pulse hammering through Victor's bloodstream, for his own.
And he's winning.
Which is more than enough to make Victor laugh, and cheer with the rest, snapping pictures where he can, and whistling appreciation when he can't.
Because, finally? It's a party.
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He can pull out other things he hasn't done in years. The floor is slick for some reason, but he slides with it, instead of reacting from it. Lets his body move in ways he wouldn't dare on the ice. Not even in the Ice Castle, back home, when he was alone and it was early morning, and there was little possiblity anyone would see him. His knees going too wide, body long lines and sliding bounce, the burn in his calves and lower back muscles glorious, like a tribute more than a hindrance. Shoulders, back, wide, lost in the beat thundering in him.
It comes in clip shots, and it's almost surprising sometimes that when he opens his eyes it's still the golden ballroom of a reception area, and not somewhere else. Somewhere darker. That the lights aren't strobing. He actually almost applauds the kid on a move he does. He has to give it to him for getting out here. For staying out here. For looking challenged, looking angry, and never giving, only bringing more and more of himself to the dance floor.
Even harried, even blonde hair everywhere, and his tie flying in all those directions that aren't in his jacket. It's fun, though. To be out here. The two of them. Together, and apart. Both at once. Two different spaces, two different dances, bluring, matching, mimicking, opposing, a constant roll toward the mode of one-upping each time they look over and the other is doing something more complicated.
The clapping and calling of his name. The way they should have been earlier. He should have made them.
But he'd show them now. He'd shown them all. No one was going to beat him at this tonight. No one.
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Somewhere behind him, he can feel a pressing wall of icy disapproval, but he doesn't care: he, and Chris, and JJ, and the others are circling the dance floor, hooting and applauding every perfect mirroring line, only to erupt in approving cheers when Katsuki Yuri suddenly flips towards the floor, only to catch himself on a palm, the long lean line of his body hung for a moment into the air, arcing like a bow and leaving Victor feeling the bright tension of a plucked and vibrating string.
Setting the things in his hands down for a moment, to move closer, and take more pictures, laughing the whole way, and –
Click. Katuski Yuri, breakdancing, feet in the air, shirt gone all the way untucked, the muscles of his stomach and sides and back tense with holding himself up against gravity –
Click. Yuri Plisetsky, red in the face and sweating, but fighting to keep up. He'll lose, Victor knows, because he cares too much about winning, and subsequently is worried more about the moves he's making than the fun he could be having.
Moving back to the edge of the circle, to pick up the abandoned bottle of champagne again, and Katsuki's jacket, and –
Click. A selfie with Chris, who has returned from the DJ, to reappear at Victor's shoulder and smile for his camera, while loosening his own tie.
At this rate, Victor may soon be the only one still pressed and polished, suit kept in clean lines, and tie still snug against his throat.
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That's not even surprising, but the occasional flash makes him blink, the occasional suddenly realizing someone's calling his name, trying to get him to open his eyes, to look at them, smile even broader, bolder, smugger, daring, crouched down, or tackling trying to stay with him in the perfect circuit of existing somewhere between the music and the applause, which was just a second strain of music, mixing in and under and around, another beat, another part of the floor and the song.
He doesn't remember quite when he decided to do a flip, and then to up it even from there, all of his weight shifting to one hand, fingers sticky on the floor, when he decided -- even though he was already well shot into beating the kid, who was young and couldn't, who was red in the face and running on sheer, impressively impossible, determination to not be left behind, not be shown up, even as his tension and his expression showed the anger at knowing he was and exhaustion of keeping up, tripping up his moves, making them too sharp, fast, sloppy -- that he wanted more than to win.
He wanted to own this floor. These people. That boy. The skaters watching. The music. The air. Everything.
He wanted his name stamped on every breath of air going into and out of them. The memory of this song. Night. Everything.
It's a stagger of confusion, when the song comes to an end, and even his shoulders are shaking.
A smaller twin mirror to the boy with his hands on his knees, looking like he'd rather hit the floor than stand.
While Yuri's body weight is reacquainting itself with his feet, adrenaline on a spike, almost blackout dizzing like something else is wrong, spots in his vision, body parts suddenly not certain entirely how to move as the music stops and the small crowd is pressing in, going insane, and he can't stop grinning. It's plastered across his whole face, every muscle, and how he doesn't even wait for the spots to end. He twists, again, with a flash, throwing his arms across himself, elbows stacked, one hand flat above his shoulder and the other to his side.
Always an ending pose. Always. Dramatic and dynamic and never forgotten.
Leave them with something to remember, Celestino always said.
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Showboating. And Victor can't take his eyes off him.
Blinking at the struck pose, that looks almost like his own ending, at the end of the story he's been telling, when the heart-rent, wistful lover clasps his beloved to his chest, grateful eyes lifting to Heaven. Except it isn't.
(Because Katsuki Yuri is showboating, and Victor can't take his eyes off him.)
Except there's nothing of longing in this. Except there's nothing of purity. Except it's all avarice, and certainty. Except it looks like a claim, and not an embrace.
There's a wave of applause that washes over him, buffeting him like a current, tugging at his skin and ankles and stomach and his heart, that suddenly started racing, some few minutes ago without him noticing.
Only noticing it, when his eyes crease and close in a laugh, as he claps, before he has to open them again, eager to see what might happen next, and not expecting it to be what does, which is:
"Victor!"
Called from someone in the crowd, and finally breaking his focus on the boy in the spotlight, blinking him back into reality, where there is no spotlight, and there are other people here, suddenly returned from a muddled mass and back into individuals. Yuri Plisetsky slinking back towards him, looking flattened and annoyed, as Victor searches for the source. "Eh?"
Him?
"Victor!"
From someone else, and he half-turns on his heel to look for the voice, wondering what they might want, as a ripple of encouraging applause rushes through the crowd like wind through rushes, and his pulse quickens in response.
(Always entertain.)
Grinning a laugh, and lifting the hand with his phone, and the jacket in the crook of his arm, in a wave. "What?"
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Throwing his arms up with the kid stalks off, not even enough left in him to make a salvageable insult or dirty face. Just slinking away, like he might need something to hold him up just a for a second, until his next wind comes to him, too. While Yurio's is pulsing alive, like the rush, the drain, the sway of everything is only amping up the electricity in his body, thundering and thumping as the music goes into the next song, with little pause.
The crowd starts shouting something that isn't his name, first layered in with his, confusing him momentarily. Then, he catches it.
Victor. And his head swings, his vision blurring the faces across the space betweeen where he was looking and where he ends up. The smiling champion. The world's silver haired prince. He's laughing. His hair fluttering in the air as his head turns to look at different parts of the people cheering his name. He's eating it up. His too perfect smile. Like he has no clue what's being aske--
Wait.
Is that his jacket? And his bottle of champagne?
All collected in Victor's arms like the most awkward bouquet ever?
He's not sure if it's the face or the champagne bottle he's coming for, when those cheers feel like they are a tide rising, louder and louder, pushing him right back to Victor Nikiforov. Both. Both is just fine. His throat is dry and he's not about to give a single inch anymore. To anyone. Not even Victor Nikiforov.
With his perfect hair and collection of shining medals, that have nothing on his face in Yuri's vision.
His mouth is saying, "Well?", even as his hand is just reaching out to yank his champagne bottle back.
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He's grateful for it. Always is. Their love, that he returns wholeheartedly. Their expectation. Their delight at being entertained by him. Their captivation, when he weaves them a fairy tale. The trust they give him, asking him to break their hearts, and hand them back the pieces like clear, colored glass. Wanting everything from him, while he's always been happy to give it, accepting their adoration and thanking them for it the best way he knows how: by giving them more, and more. Living for their surprise, the crash and roar of applause.
He didn't quite expect it here, but he isn't accustomed to backing down, or refusing, when he's being called for. And –
Katsuki Yuri might be able to beat the gold medal winner of the Junior division, but Victor doesn't lose. The gold he had around his neck earlier tonight proof as much as the numbers that sit comfortably higher than every other on every scoreboard, now, for years.
Acknowledging the call, while he steps into Katsuki's reach, allowing him to grab the bottle, before Victor is taking a quick step back and behind, turning in a quick, sharp circle, that drags Katsuki closer to him through momentum, smile going sly, and eyes going half-lidded, but bright with laughter.
"Well, what?"
Tossing his challenge back out there, before pushing the bottle of champagne into Katsuki's chest, and handing the jacket and his phone off to Chris, next to him, as the chants of his name dissolves into a loud cheer that brightens in his blood, quickens his pulse, as he's cracking his neck, and stepping in towards Katsuki, throwing his dare and arrogance and certainty right back into his face, on a glowing bed of delight and perfect, unbreakable composure.
"I won't go easy on you."
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Victor soaking it up, right in front of him, like Yuri's only been warming up the spotlight for Victor to decide to finally get off the sidelines and wipe the ground with everyone in there all over again. For the second time today. It's riding the line of Yuri's shoulders, when the world suddenly spins, upending everything.
Victor turns him, and Yuri's eyes would narrow but at first nothing that is anything is standing still, the only thing even remotely in focus those bright, brilliant blue-green eyes, made to cut glass with a glance. He refuses to reach out and stabilize himself on the slender, but taller, Russian man, who is suddenly the only thing not dancing before his eyes. That clarifying smile, a taunting line of acceptance and challenge, arrogant, like Yuri is that boy who just slunk away, tail between his legs.
Which matches his words, when they come and Yuri steps in. Not away.
"Good." A hairsbreath from right into him, even three inches shorter. "I won't either."
A hand comes up and he pushes Victor back and it's more cut-slashes. The hand on Victor's shirt, jack, tie. The bottle at his lips. Sparkling, smooth, easy and light as water now. Several gulps more than breaths. Then it's gone, maybe on a table, maybe in someone else's hands. It's just gone. Jitters. He knows. He knows he isn't as good on the ice as Victor of the four medals, aimed for five and the one contender everyone is expecting.
But. He won't lose again. Not again. Not today. Not again.
He steps on to the floor, listening for the new song, pushing aside the swishing, swirling world, to find the music already playing through the first verse of its new piece, and there's the pulse. Like his blood has been trying to drag him back out here the whole time. Screaming at him for stopping at all. If his eyes slide too easily first to the man on the other part of the floor, and his mouth is a little firmer, that's just fine. His arms rise, and his back curves and he just goes into it.
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That was –
A quick thud or two of his heart against the palm on his chest, and then its gone, and Yuri is stalking back onto the dance floor like he's headed for a duel to the death, leaving Victor feeling strangely light-headed, before he shakes it off with a self-deprecating laugh, and follows, grinning.
Arms already lifting, hands already graceful, the beat of the music already shifting his blood, his pulse, dictating his steps. He is better. He's the best. It isn't ego, when it's fact, and music and movement are the two languages he has always been most fluent with. The dance floor under his dress shoes as welcoming as ice under his blades, the laughter and clapping of the crowd fuel tossed on the fire, and he could make this his own, but why?
They're out here together, aren't they?
And he's finding it strangely difficult to take his eyes off Katsuki Yuri, over there, only a few feet away, with his hands lifting into the air like a prayer and a sacrifice all at once, eyes closing, carrying away with the vibrating beat of the bass. The line of his throat clear for a second against the lights, the lines of his body clean and fluid all at once.
They're here together, so Victor lets him take the lead, watching him, and perfectly mirroring each move with delight, and keen curiosity, and his own joy in the movement, all at once, as he wonders where this was, before.
Where it ever was.
How he never knew this was in Katsuki Yuri, at all.
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The music is loud. The music is vibrating the air, the floor, the world. But there's a hush all the same. Scattered shouts of both of their names, but with pockets of space, as they are watching, and if Yuri's surprised anyone in this room is on his side, shouting his name, cheering him on, Victor's name is still just as loud. Louder. In this small ring of familiar faces and their companions.
Everyone else has retreated as slowly as was still proper to those corners Yuri, himself, had been in earlier. Their places changed. Almost none of them anywhere near here, and none of the faces that fly through his vision in that circle restraint to a demur politeness and the whisper of expected conversations, topics. Their hands are up. Their faces are animated.
He's perfect grace --Victor-- in the seconds that Yuri finds himself turned in a way he can see Victor.
Made to move. Everything Yuri has always loved beyond the idea of love, reached for, wanted to be like, reach for even the shadow of, in every copy of every routine with Yuu-chan's laughter in his ears, smile in his eyes. An idealization encased in childhood awe of glory and deepest desire of self.
He was made to move. Made to win. And something aches in some place Yuri can't even place.
It's a nebulous cloud like the golden-white light of the room.
The ache. The light. The music. The stubborn fire.
The other part. The part he doesn't realize quite until a good four or five things later, is that Victor is following him. Copying him. Not exactly. Not entirely. But close enough, it'd be impossible for anyone else to miss it outside, where the cheering and whistling hasn't stopped. Only rising for moments one of the other them edges something faster, smoother, more drastic.
In those moments where something is different. Where the flare or choice for exact posture, where their hands up, the bend of a knee, the flat or point of a foot, the landing between legs, is different. He's not sure he likes it. This mirroring. Even if it's not all that different from the first time either. He can feel it like a strange tingle on the back of his neck.
Something else. He needs to unfoot his opponent, again. Somehow.
Stop giving him the ability to take whatever Yuri starts and change it, spring board it for himself.
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Fun!
Fun like he hasn't had in months, or possibly years. He loves training, and he loves performing, but it's rare now that he gets to simply dance: not to think about choreography, or presentation, or the next jump, or how many points he needs for the gold. He never simply gets to move.
Not like this. Arms up, hands trailing graceful arcs through the air, toes pointing into kicks, leaps that carry him across half the dance floor. Free from keeping his arms and elbows in tight, to create the most perfect spiral he can: free to let them swing and lift and trace patterns through the air, like the music is a fogged mirror he can draw on. While near him, Katsuki Yuri is – it seems like – creating his own.
Catching Victor's attention again, and again, and refusing to let it go, and now holding his gaze with his own brown and brilliant one, while Victor laughs, breathless, thrilled, his heart flying, his spirit soaring. Katsuki Yuri staring him down across the floor, pushing him. Katsuki Yuri, whose hands are tracking fire through the air, and whose body is forming a melody it seems like only he and Victor can hear.
That Victor suddenly, desperately, wants to harmonize to. Wants to ratchet higher. Push it further.
When it's already pure electricity, crackling between them. Feeling more like lightning striking his heart, than shoes hitting a dance floor. Feeling like those fingers are stroking down his bare skin, more than through air. Heat pulsing faster and faster, and it's not like he doesn't recognize it. How hot it is.
How could he have thought –
How could what Chris does be even close to this?
Needy, greedy. Always wanting more. There is no song that could be long enough for this, for the way his body is loving this movement, for the way he can't keep his eyes off someone he barely knows.
They're athletes, at the top of their game. There is no such thing as too far, when Katsuki Yuri is watching him, and Victor's heart is exploding in response, in a brilliant explosion of light. "Okay – "
Accepting this newest challenge, and letting his jacket slip off his shoulders in a dare, before whipping it around, and holding it near a cocked hip, while he stands, arrogant, laughing, joyful. For the first time, in a long time, unconcerned with winning –
Only with following, and leading, and taking, and giving, as long as they never stop moving.
"Toro!"
Challenge, and invitation, both clear, in his laughing face, brilliant eyes, suffusing happiness.
Come and get him.
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It's not a lost step, or wobble. He doesn't miss up a move. It's more like a pause of a moment that he stares too hard at Victor, brow forming in bafflement, s he's suddenly whipping his jacket our and calling out those two words, with a face that looks so happy it's almost childlike. It's nothing at all like war cry of every single second he connected gazes with Yuri. Who was burning down his every atom with every look.
Victor is . .. happy? Smiling. Acting like a fool. Like this wasn't set up as a competition of prowess and precision.
Which might be the very last thing Yuri ever expected after those words on the side. From the man was all of both, and more.
There's a wrinkle in his brow and there something in the roll to his shoulders, that might be the most graceful shrug only a dancer might recognize, because nothing about it moves up and down only and he just goes with it. Hands coming up and forming horns, chest puffin up, foott in a brushing step on the ground, that would be more perfect in flats, that is twice sided with something almost like a leap, before Yuri goes straight for him. In a move that is decidedly and absolutely nothing like it had been earlier. In their own boxes.
Ducking under against the snap of fabric brushing his forehead, and shoulders, and the way he doesn't think about.
Pulling in tight in an arc, the graze of fingers, and heavy palm like an announcement or a warning, running whisper quick, but solid, across the back Victor's waist, the well defined, if hidden by his shirt, curve of the small of his back. There for only the breath of the twist he executes. Not a thought, as he's rounding Victor from behind and half guessing the man is going to end up twisting to face him someway again, too.
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Arms pulling back, with fingers locked into horns, and charging at Victor with a suddenness that might catch almost anyone else off guard, but Victor's laughing as he pulls the jacket up, and begins to turn the other way, fabric trailing behind him like a cape ––
But his eyes widen, and his lips part in a breath he forgets to take, as a shock runs ragged through him, knifing through his gut and ripping into his chest, and emanating from the smallest of things: the solid contact of Katsuki Yuri's palm against the small of his back, delicate fingers tracing along after.
Did he –
That –
He didn't – ?
That is, nobody, except Chris, who doesn't count, because Chris has never seen a boundary in his life that he didn't feel an immediate need to shatter –
Blinking his surprise quickly away, because he's turning, and Katsuki Yuri is coming up on him, counterclockwise, leaving them suddenly face to face, as Victor's pulling his jacket back on in a graceful arc of cloth and a breathless, brilliant grin.
Stepping one foot back, and swinging his right arm across his stomach as he folds forward, in what might be a bow, if he weren't still keeping his eyes locked on Katsuki Yuri's face, cheeks sore from the way he can't to stop smiling, eyes wide and brilliant and delighted. Already searching for the next, move, considering his own. And thinking, somewhere beneath the childlike and innocent joy, and beneath the heated, too sharp to touch, other, that if this were on the ice, they'd be telling a story.
Thinking, somewhere beneath the way he straightens, with an arm lifting gracefully overhead, and a leg extending out before him, that maybe not every dance has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Particularly not that last part. He'd be just fine with this one staying here, in the middle, until he can no longer breathe or move at all.
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Enough that he catches the flicker, right at the edges of his vision. Right before it's swallowed up again. The consummate performer, golden and graceful. But he caught it. One of a million expression painted on the insides of his eyelids, that he knows the shape and scope of, more in its rarity than it overuse. Shock. Just for the barest second.
He'd shocked Victor Nikiforov.
He'd done something the man hadn't predicted. Prepared for.
Even when that suddenly winsome smile is being bowed toward him, it's there.
Just a notch off of perfect. The barest ruffle of a feather, of shining silver fringe and suddenly more luminous eyes.
It turns his own playful smile tinged predatory without any pause on his part. Rolling off warm delightful and winning. Like he scored a point, he hadn't expected anymore than Victor, and even if this was smiles, more graceful suddenly, and silly, as they all but bowed toward each other, it was still war, someone was still going to win, and that someone was going to be Yuri.
Yuri who didn't know where the room had gone, and maybe not the music or the crowd for the second he calculated, on the single solitary thing left in the whole of the universe, in pristine focus. The graceful raise and arc of Victor's arm, Victor's leg, before he surged forward instead of away. They all know each other's skills, each other talents, they watched the best of the best they can bring each time, and it makes nothing Yuri does a guess.
There's nothing half-hearted, no second of hesitation, to his step toward Victor. The way his arm moves entirely in a different way from Victor's, no longer mimicking the bow and not moving into anything like Victor's new graceful rise. Yuri's fingers instead catch against Victor's calf on his raised and pointed leg, over those very nicely pressed, expensive pants. Running down to his knee, as the trajectory of his forward movement demanded Victor's leg stretch higher.
A dangerous glee, heady with its own sharp sparkling bubbles, pop pop pop poping in his head, in his blood.
The music louder, against against small pockets of gasps and voices suddenly breaking out again, but there's nothing but Victor. Except testing a theory in action, in midair, before his feet can even land from this jump. Except he's not waiting, not to give Victor time to give him a sign if it's right, or safe. No one gets to give him any rules tonight, no one gets to define what he does, and he's going to knock him right back to where he was a second ago.
That perfect surprise he hadn't gotten to savor.
Victor surprised everyone, even Yurio, over and over and over.
The hand traveling up Victor leg in a downward stroke made it only to an inch past his knee, before it vanished, at the same time as the arm that had snaked soundless around his waist, grabbed the furthest fistful of Victor's jacket it could and pulled to twist him outward, to send him into a spin that would suddenly put his back against at least Yuri's shoulder and have him facing the crowd instead of Yuri suddenly.
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- when Yuri –
moves in, and
(quite literally)
sweeps him off his feet.
Nothing compared to the sudden firm grip on his leg, that pushes him up, instead of forward, while an arm sneaks around his waist, and Victor finds himself staring into brown eyes gone sparkling, and a smile that's the curve of a gold medal and the brilliance of a spotlight.
No one touches him. (Chris doesn't count.) No one touches him like this. Like Yuri is, gripping his jacket, and spinning him on the axel of his one leg, that Victor is allowing without having any very clear idea of why, other than that is surprised him, and Yuri's hand feels good on his leg, and his arm felt good around his waist.
Making Victor want it back, even as he's spinning, and grounding himself against what must be Yuri's shoulder.
Leaning in, instead of leaping away.
Which is the most surprising thing of all.
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