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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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Chris. Out there on the pole.
The way he is on the ice. A completely different kind of story, type of music, feelings. Erotic. Electric. No one here is unmoved. Even Yuri's blood is rushing, breath catching, against the music and the show. The thoughts, swimming like fish doing loops around his wrists and forearms, about whether he could even do anything like this. Near.
It's been years, and Chris' feet, arms, hands, everything is flawless. Like he's been doing this every day of his life. If pictures are to be believed it's at least a number of times a year. Stealing everyone's hearts, everyone's breath.
Loving it. Living it. Every inch of him putty and power at turns.
Everything charged. On fire.
Yuri's sure somewhere, his reaction should be something else, but his jaw sets.
He did the first and the second. He hasn't failed yet, and he isn't going to either.
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( – and Yuri has had enough to make Victor want to shake himself, hard, about everything that seemed like, felt like – )
– because he could still decide not to, could join the other skaters in their groups around the dance floor and take part in their amusement and photos. He's no helpless sheep, and it's clear Yuri's attention is focused elsewhere, now.
But he still goes. Some inner curiosity driving him to see what will happen next. Maybe the same instinct that had his hand finding Yuri's back or shoulder or cheek again and again, like he'd lost all control over it.
(He has always hated losing control.)
And, to watch Chris, too: his mood brightening when Chris swings out, legs spread-eagled, and casts a sultry look back at the audience, making Victor laugh and applaud. "Sexy, Chris!"
And, well. His earlier madness aside, this is still the best time he's had at the GPF banquet in as long as he's been coming to them.
no subject
It shouldn't be that easy to hear just one.
But Yuri does.
Looking over his shoulder to find Victor, smiling, laughing, clapping, and cheering (and when did Victor get that far away?). Calling out Chris' name. Calling him sexy. And all of the sudden, it doesn't matter if it's true (and it's so true), if Yuri was thinking every same thought seconds ago (and he was, he had been, it's undeniable, Chris is sexy, sex personified), he doesn't want Chris' name in Victor's mouth.
He leaned down, going at his shoes, as the music was ending and the crowd was just losing it entirely. Victor's easy, excited, pleased laughter and voice in his ears. Present or repeating, it didn't matter. When Yuri was sliding his shoes off and pulling his nice dress socks next, leaving them there on the floor, as he was stepping out in bare feet to Chris' semi-blurred face.
Lit up as if made of gold, resplendent on the shade of his skin. Eyes of emeralds and chest muscles shining on deep breaths.
Yuri isn't sure what he said, even though it was something. It was something. Nice, maybe. Or something like it. While he was still only halfway there, hands on his pants, and for a second distracted because he thought he heard his name. He thought he heard Celestino saying his name. Shouting it? But in the blur of the crowd, he couldn't really tell, and nothing was going to stop him. Nothing. He could find him after. Whatever it was could wait.
There's a cheer starting, but he doesn't care about that either. Even when it's gathering at the nape of his neck, where his shirt brushes his skin. (Where a hand had.) His pants are in his hands, and the music hasn't started yet, building the crowds noise, and he thinks that's Chris, too, and he knows he doesn't have the same look or demeanor, or even underwear, as Chris. But he doesn't care. Those are all details. He remembers what Minako said, all those years ago.
When he was appalled and scarlet teenage embarrassment,
If your body can tell the story, where doesn't matter.
The music finally does start, and Yuri settled into his soles, eyes closing for a second, catching the beat driving beneath it, under it, in him. Hands, and then arms by extension, coming into his chest, and the fluid upward. Around his chest and up over his head, before a hand ever reaches toward the bar, and even then not touching at first. It skims gracefully up, and down, bare centimeters from connecting with the metal, like a caress (it's your partner, your lover), through the air from the highest point he can reach and descending back down.
Fingers curling the solid metal, finally, only when it's at perfect even from his shoulder, but at the same time his other hand had popped out from his chest the opposite direction. The same directions as his head popped suddenly, eyes flashing open, to look, right down the line of his arm, over the flat of his hand, exactly where Victor was in the crowd. Definitive. Demanding.
Before his far arm came across his body in an arc, to meet his other arm,
Second-hand curling right above the first, and he turned fast with it,
into the center and a spin around it, weight on his extended arms.
no subject
It feels like swallowing a lump of coal, only to have it light itself once deep in his gut. Eyes widening, and throat gone strangely dry and painful.
There's a derisive noise next to him, and he looks over, and down, to see Yuri Plisetsky glaring at the dance floor, face gone red, arms crossed, shoulders set in a terrible imitation of indifference. "This is so gross."
Making Victor smile, as he looks back up, his own arms crossing, weight shifting. "It's probably inappropriate for the junior skaters."
Just a little dig. He does enjoy getting under Yuri's skin, prodding him until he gets a reaction, and this time is no different: out of the corner of his eye, he can see Yuri's face getting redder. It looks like he's getting ready to kick him in the shin, and Victor opens his mouth to egg him on a little further, when a shiver at the back of his neck notifies him to a shift in the mood around him.
Looking up, and around, to see people looking his way, faces gone shocked or suspicious, and he doesn't underst–
Until he looks past them, and sees it. Katsuki Yuri, staring him down, over a shoulder, over the length of one long and graceful arm.
Huh?
Surprise followed by a rush of adrenaline that hits like a freight train, coursing electric through his entire system, rinsing cold and then hot, at the look in those eyes. The poise, even with his rumpled shirt, and only his shorts beneath.
Until his hands move, and his arms follow, and Victor's eyes, do, too, because Yuri is coiling around that pole, and there's something wrong with his chest, because it feels too tight to breathe.
Still stuck on a stare. An issued challenge. An...invitation?
So maybe he wasn't wrong?
Maybe he was right? After all?
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Aching as much against prior exertion, as though with longing to just be back in it.
A reprieve from the prison of standing still. So much standing still, watching the deck turn sideways. A clarity that comes only with the music being absorbed into his movements, or maybe it's his movements absorbing it, and the noise of the people around the floor, that comes and goes in waves.
His focus demanded elsewhere. The tension in his grip. The stretch of muscles in his upper arm. His thighs straining to remember what flows into what, how. Where his hands need to move. What the rest of his body needs to do while secured by what point. Gravity and foundation no longer required on his feet, where it is every other hour of the day. No, sliding silver blades, only a few millimeters thick, beneath the center of his feet.
It anchors to a single slender line of silver.
About the width of a small wrist. Can be used by a number of parts of him.
That concerns him less than the faint reminder here, and there, shifting, that his shirt is not helping his movements.
It's not perfect. Not flawless, but it feels good to just let go, to not care if is or isn't. To ride the music, the crowd, the warning burn in his muscles, that is left just as far behind as everything else. A high, sloshing and washing, through him when he catches the surprised and amazed, even enrapt, faces of those people closest to him, when he pauses to hold, barely breathing, already thinking to the next movement.
Always distracted, each time, when he's facing that way, taking the seconds he never could when skating, when it's all about that moment. Wanting to know. Needing to know. If Victor is still there. Still watching him. Still stock still the way he'd stopped suddenly at the beginning. Wants those eyes on him. Wants him to know there is nothing else in the room worth looking at. Worth his time. His attention.
But never long enough. It's only long enough for another round of applause, like ballet dancers, like opera singers, but not like competitive skating (where there are no stops, no breakings, no other faces, only beginnings and endings and everything riding through them, heaven and hell at once, in-between those) and then it's onward, again. Racing the music, racing his heart, for the next turnout among blurry memories most of a decade old, but not forgotten it seems, either.
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A different person than the one doing flips and handstands on the dance floor, annoying Yuri, flush-faced and energetic. A different person than the one he'd mirrored, than the one who laughed and pretended to be a bull chasing Victor down. A different person than the one who gripped his leg, and wrapped an arm around his middle, and laughed as they spun into a pas de deux that Victor's not sure he's recovered from, even now.
It's a totally different kind of movement, and a slowly building intensity, and – he can't shake the feeling, every time it happens, every time there's a carefully controlled pose, weight balanced against the pole and a hand or ankle or thigh – that it's for him.
Because Yuri keeps meeting his gaze. Or, no. Catching it. Demanding it? Something almost angry in his focus, grim determination, brown eyes finding his from beneath brows lowered in concentration or effort or both.
As if he could look away. As if there's a part of him that isn't watching those fingers wrap around the slim silver pole, and not imagining them around his wrist instead.
As if watching thigh and calf muscles go taut under skin as doesn't send sudden boiling images of just how solidly they can grip, leave him wondering how they'd feel around his hips, or waist.
As if skaters aren't flexible enough, already, but it's rarely used like this: their spins and poses meant for beauty, not sensuality, but here, in a different context, all he can think of is being tied up in knots, legs and fingers and arms twining and refusing to let go.
Around him, people clap and cheer and wolf-whistle, but he's too busy watching, too busy meeting those eyes, accepting it. Whatever's being offered. Everything. All of it.
He wants it all.
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He's there. Victor. Victor, the victor. In every cell of his skin. Wanting it. Feeling it.
At the edge, where Yuri left him. Last saw him. He doesn't know where Chris has gone. Doesn't know if it was Celestino who called his name. Can't define who all is beside Victor. But it doesn't seem like it's a lot of people. The crowd is shoulder to shoulder everywhere, but even from this distance, even through the haze of his unhelpful, unfocused vision it's like there's a hallow around him.
Like everyone around him had left some space. Made space. Moved some.
But Yuri can't tell. Doesn't want to. Doesn't care about the rest of them. Anything but that brilliant shock of silver-grey, a corona of flaring light that sets him entirely apart, above. Brighter than the fixture far too close to Yuri's head to be missed, or ignored even. Something not to hit, but also, something caught up in his eyes, dotting his vision and making him focus even more. His hands. His back curling, falling back, held only by this thighs, hanging.
The dazed colors nothing like the spot of Victor in his vision. Blinding brilliance. He swears he can see his eyes.
Swears with every breath he refuses to even consider taking, that he won't let go. Of those eyes. Of that attention.
He'll hold it and keep it and make it so Victor wants nothing else in the world, this dance floor, Yuri in the middle of it.
The demand on himself to be better. The best. Mind filling with the fingers under his chin. The thumb on his lips. The low whisper against his lips. The laughter from only minutes earlier. The way his hands had been curved on the man's body. Music that wasn't so much music as thunder in his veins. Demand. Denial. Scalded to the core of his bones by a fire that was all his body had become. (Don't you want to come with me?)
Tendrils and gouts of fire licking at the silver post, exploding, expanding, all the way to his fingertips, all the way to his toes.
He might not be able to match Chris' prowess, his practice, but Yuri is known for his steps and Yuri's known for his spins, for his unexpected stamina, that no one in his earlier brackets were expected to have, and he takes what he knows and pushes it in there everywhere. Every moment his feet touch the ground, hands using the pole as though someone else is there, under it, in it with them, with him, before his feet find the pole again and the spins are back in the air.
Until he stops, with the music, hand clenched, arm tight and long, pain somewhere, but further away than even his feet most days, everything shaking with the weight of his breath. Everything stopping exactly where it started. One hand out, one focus point. Victor, and the only answer he could ever have. (Yes, and yes, and yes.) It's the only thing in his eyes, in his head, with every breath his lungs demand from him suddenly.
Right before Chris steps into the space between them.
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No one important, anyway: the crowd around him is just a moving, blurred mass of color and sound, but nothing sticks out, except for the boy on the pole. And he: he is in hyper-saturated Technicolor, every line crisp and clean. Slick skin, rumpled shirt, that tie hanging loose around his neck. Hair gone every which way, and Victor can't believe he was so stupid as to use the word debauched, before, because before was nothing at all like this.
Katsuki Yuri, looping himself up and around the pole, muscles in forearms and legs standing out under the ballroom lights. Cheeks flushed, eyes brilliant, while his body writes new music.
Maybe not as precise as Chris' performance, but all the more appealing for it: even with the heavy thud of bass, even with his tie gone loose and tempting, even with the promise in his eyes and the intention in every grip and loop of the pole, there's something still naive and raw about it, that's nothing like Chris' experience, his assurance.
A little rough-edged, a little too desperate. Creating music, writing a story: of someone who perhaps isn't well-versed in love or passion, but knows it, is experiencing it. Wants it, maybe without knowing what it is.
And who has picked the perfect victim to start with.
Of course. (His heart is pounding.) There's no way it isn't, is there? No way it couldn't be meant for him, written to him. Like a love letter scrawled across the pure ice of a rink, or the polished wood of a dance floor, or along the slim, gleaming line of a pole. It started with him: dedicated to him by the line of an arm and a pinning glance, and then offered over and over again throughout, and now...
Now, Yuri is suspended on the pole in a graceful line, and he's there, again. That hand. That arm. Those eyes. All aligned toward him, and it's hard to breathe. Or maybe he's stopped breathing. Or maybe the world has.
Thinking, in an insane laugh, again, that this is not how he thought the evening would go. Wondering where it's coming from. Why Yuri chose him.
He's used to being wanted. He's even used to attempts at seduction, that have never worked because he has only ever wanted that passion for her performance, and it seemed cheap to throw it away on something as flawed and fickle as a person.
But – now ...
It's the first time someone has been able to meet him there. To push it further, and faster. Putting on a show. Creating a fairytale.
He isn't used to wanting anything other than the next gold medal, and the surprise of his audience. He's not sure he knows what to do with wanting Katsuki Yuri.
All he knows is that there's the force of a magnet, or gravity, or the momentum of a spin working its will on him, and there's nothing he can do but step forward, towards that outreaching arm, toward those eyes that pin him, toward that invitation. All he can do is be seduced.
...Until the line of sight between them is suddenly cut, by a gleaming, naked back, and a familiar crown of golden hair, and it feels like being cut from a jump harness, and suddenly plummeting to the ice.
Blinking at Chris's back and shoulders, too startled to be annoyed, like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. "Hey..."
Hand lifting, as he steps forward, but Chris is already moving, back towards the pole, and Yuri, and that's not right, that invite wasn't for him.
Victor's sure of it.
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And the hold of his arm is trembling slightly the longer he supports more than half of his weight on the triangle of it, between his hand and his thighs. Which is barely a though, and, apparently, not one of Chris's, when he's grinning, broadly. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Not perfect, of course, but--" A champagne bottle is actually pushed from one of Chris's hands into the only hand Yuri has left, and it's calculation of immediate confusion, making him feel the anchor point in the one hand even more, while Chris doesn't seem to care nor pauses. "Better than I was expecting. But, are you ready for round two?"
Round . . .
It's all but written on Yuri's face for a blink in spaced black lines.
Like he hasn't even collected his brain enough from the first, and the only place he'd planned to go from there is suddenly not there at all. The brilliant silver-grey splash of light absolved in golden and green. Not right, but demanding his attention and his focus, torn between his own body and Chris's face.
Except the idea of surrender and excuse is met with something too sharp and broke ice, glass jagged, in his gut, where the whine of churning, burning, heat is bleeding into anything else it can. Firing behind this new hiss of a woken feeling. That isn't new at all. He's surrendered too much today. His mind and mouth have been full of excuses. Voices, and replays, and -- he hasn't lost anything, anywhere in this room tonight, and he's not starting now either.
"Let's go, then." Not that he has the faintest clue how to juggle having one hand suddenly, and the other is getting slick on wet beading, and this shirt has to go. All of it. Now. There's a laugh beneath him, as he does the only thing he can think of. Needs for a second. Curling back into bar, to use his shoulder, chest, knees, to shift where balance and hold is, pulling at buttons around glass, while the bar suddenly shivers and shakes beneath him, making him look down, briefly, as suddenly there is another body attaching itself to the pole. Chris, showing off, suddenly a fluid current of dark skinned movement beneath him, mezmerizing in the sheer level of unexpectedness, while he looks almost, what?, treed here.
And then he's almost upside down. And then he is. Chris. Not him. And it's. This is not a view of Christophe Giacometti he thought he would ever need, or happen to end up seeing, and definitely not this close. His face is getting hotter. His ears, even. There's a movement of Chris's head, and that thing Yuri still can't place a finger on. But it's circling his collar, toying with the hair sticking the backs of ears and the sides of his cheeks.
It's ginger when he uncurls, that shirt still only half unbuttoned, to place one of his feet and then the other on the undersides of Chris's upside down spread eagle. Solid, quivering muscle and he thinks, oddly enough, as he's daring to take his one hand off, fast at his buttons, and yanking it off around the bottle, that he gets it. Suddenly. Like one of the popping bubbles of the champagne. He gets it.
This strange and wild expression looking up at him, straining muscles but startlingly green eyes. It's not the same as earlier. It's not ... not like finding a partner in the oddest spot. It's not like finding himself reflected in every ounce of grace, able to be lead and take the lead, each seamlessly blurring into and out of and blending into one. That isn't how he's being looked at, when his shirt goes one direction and his hand goes back to the bar. It's like - like - a kids' unfettered smile, even under all that fire-bitten smoldering warmth.
Like through it, there's the smile of someone who's found not a partner, but a playmate?
Like it's a game, this is a game, has always been a game, just a game, after all, and not a competition at all?
And Yuri finds himself giving the oddest sudden laugh. The sounded shivering through his whole body, melting any ice that had suddenly built between his muscles. As a leg lifts, and he spins half the circle bar, only balancing on one leg, and leaving one in the air, on hand on the bar, the toes still down dragging the line of the one thigh beneath him, while the champagne goes flying around him, dappling down on both of them.
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Even if Victor wants to smack his fingers away from those buttons. Tell him to leave the shirt, at least, on, because as much as he enjoys the sight, he isn't thrilled about sharing it. And especially...
Especially not when Chris slides onto the pole beneath Yuri, gracefully extending both legs outward, while Yuri stares at him for a second that feels like an hour, while steam threatens to shoot from Victor's ears, unable to parse that expression. If it's lust, or confusion, or simply the same blurry focus that got him up there to begin with, he doesn't care.
He doesn't like Yuri looking at Chris.
He shouldn't care. Everyone has always looked at Chris, since Chris became something to look at, and demanded their gaze and attention. And he is a specimen, perfectly sculpted, intriguingly flexible, full of lithe power and grace, like a jungle cat.
(But he doesn't like it.)
Even less does he like the way Yuri's face suddenly brightens, as his shirt falls away and leaves him in shorts and that tie, still frustratingly hung around his neck and loose against his chest. And the laugh.
Torn between wanting to step straight to that pole, and yank Yuri down by the tie he's left, and the certain knowledge that there's no reason he should be annoyed.
Except that he is. Except this was supposed to be his. Another prize won, another victory, another perfect performance in a perfect record stretching for the last too many years to count.
Except he still can't take his eyes off Yuri, even as he struggles to understand his exasperation with Chris, who is only being Chris, and what he even wants with Yuri, anyway.
(Aside from everything he can get.)
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Tie flapping and forgotten when he was getting rid of the shirt.
But it's too late now. Besides Chris has his. Refound it?
Nothing does. Except for a thigh and an ankle, and his elbow suddenly when Chris starts contorting under him, taking his gravity, and foundation. Making cling to the pole for a second with a question, but Chris is already moving, and this isn't exactly something Yuri has done before. This was never about learning how to perfecting have two people here. Telling a story. Doing this dance.
Except it doesn't feel like a story, does it? Or like a dance either? Not when there's a wall of muscle that skims him bare shoulder, being moved around, coiled like a snake, from under through to half over, and it's the only way. But it's not a dance. They aren't making a story of this. It isn't about art, or feeling. It's just . . . a game. This somehow hilarious, no stakes, game, that still becomes heart-poundingly confusing for a second now and then.
Where his hand goes, where are Chris's. Everyone needs the pole at once. There's only so much room.
That should be his focus but it isn't somehow. Somehow that grim determination is turning golden like Chris's hair.
It's all gold, even when he's stuck, with no other hand, and Chris seems to get it as fast as he does. An impossible hand, Yuri can't even tell how the man is balancing at all, because he's too busy having to let go of the bottle and flushing a little, wide-eyed and shocked, and on the edge of a laugh again, at Chris's devil may care glee as he takes it and just tosses it toward the crowd, without even looking toward them, yelling, "Catch!"
And someone must have, because there's a series of shrieks but no crash, but Yuri has no time to look, either, when his hand is being taken and pulled through, turning himself to glide and invert into it, fingers slipping, catching. Hand rubbing water, like the traces of ice from hands, cheeks, hair, away on his stomach, and too pleased, when his grip is dry and solidly perfect again.
Even when it feels like an empty slot that got skipped, important keystone that keeps the whole board from lighting up, he still feels charged by it still. Suddenly giddy in a wholly different way. When was the last time he did something just for fun? Just for the sheer stupidity and hilarity, and just the fun of it? Not that this was ever on the list. But when.
It would have been Phichit. It would have to be, wouldn't it? Before these weeks and months of competitions. Before the months leading up to it, when everything became hardcore practice for them only. Before that. Somewhere before. Drug out, and laughing, by the boy who refused to ever be put off, or give up. It blurs. Those faces. That laughter and simple smile.
Prickling him over with it, even when he's eying with calculation exactly where Chris's shoulders, thighs, hands are. An equation of positions that is almost too much like math for his brain right now. Where to fit, how to slide, glide, move around, and around isn't even. It's easier for under. He's smaller, lighter, lither compared to that height and the broad shoulders opposing and intertwining with him, but he's, also, stubborn. He doesn't try for what he doesn't know, and he doesn't want to be the damsel, doesn't want to be on Chris's arm, and Chris seems just fine to not care, to be just as glad to take it and run with it.
Every moment Yuri leaves him to roll his body out and do the more extravagant thing, using him more as base than display piece on Chris's arm. Or whatever body part it happens to be this time.
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Which doesn't necessarily make him feel better about why that bottle got tossed away.
Because Yuri needs both his hands. Because Yuri is wiping the condensation from the bottle off in streaks on his stomach, leaving long glinting swathes of wet that feel like they've been painted in parallel, in boiling water, across the inside of Victor's gut.
Because Yuri is making room for Chris to clamber up above him, leaving a moment where they're tangled as much around each other as the pole, and there's a sudden searing heat that starts in his belly and leaves him blinded for a moment in a fog of red, before it feels like someone took a knife and slitted along that same path, letting all his guys just spill out of him onto the floor.
He shakes himself, hard, eyes gone closed tight and negating, the way Maccachin does when he gets wet, like he can shake off that sudden...whatever it was, and get back to watching the show. Because it is a show. One that Yuri's enjoying, and Chris is, too, and Victor can't quite pinpoint why he isn't laughing and clapping anymore, even as he's as transfixed as ever.
Someone to the side, calling Yuri's name in a tone far different from the rest of the room: when Victor looks over, he sees Celestion, red-faced and frantic, waving Yuri's shirt in the direction of the pole and trying to get his skater's attention, but it doesn't seem like Yuri's listening, if he can even hear him at all.
Leaving Victor to turn back, and watch with narrowing eyes, arms crossing, as the bodies on the pole twine and tangle and support each other, and the crowd cheers and murmurs in disapproving tones, both, and Celestino's voice starts cracking from trying to get Yuri's attention.
It's gained too much momentum, now: there's not going to be any stopping them until they've both hit the floor again.
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But he tries to pay it no mind, tries to put it into the music . . . only to realize he hadn't even thought to stop at the beginning, and even listen, to what the music was this time, realizing, and it's - they're - there's no time to stop, to breathe it in. Not with their hands, and the slide of muscles. The constant movement that's become more gymnastic and declaratory, nothing like the earlier folding into and out of.
The pauses for a position, that actually involve even more flashes from phones now.
Catching the beat, the base, in those seconds, but even Chris isn't staying with the music.
This is the spectacle of them. A game like that color dot spinner one Phichit had found once. Except without yellow, red, green dots on the bar, or on Chris' body, which somehow he's getting used to touching, turning, pulling, leaning into or pulling toward, through, against himself, in the same kind of daze that is already doing it, moving through it, blurring, shifting, while still not even certain whether the shock has passed that his fingers had landed on the man in the first place.
Touching Christophe Giacometti. Like he just can. It's not even a thought.
Except that's only a thought as long as it takes to think it, too. The man moves, the bar does, Yuri does. All three in tandem. Dominoes in constant reaction and action to each other, faster than thought. But it's building. There's a crescendo building somewhere in the back of Yuri's head, the base of his spine. A race he's running that's trying to tell him it's running out, and he keeps pushing through, pushing past, denying, deny, denying.
While his muscles whine in his arms, when Chris's whole weight falls this time, with his head, and the line of his spine, the full front of his chest, splayed backward, all of it on the curve of Yuri's arm, the grip of one high hand, and only one thigh, one curled knee, because the other has the small of Chris's back, right beneath his arm, foot flat on the bar to make a platform. Nothing, nothing, nothing but him, his body, between Chris and the call of gravity. The single hold has on anything, only on him, only the fingers curved around Yuri's neck and inner shoulder.
The haze in his vision like it's creating its own tempo, its own challenge, its own demand. Hold, hold, keep holding. Leaning into it but don't let go. That they hold what feels like an eternity. An actual one. Arm tensing and shivering as everything become a roar of noise and his own refusal to let go. To slip, to slide, to do anything but hold the line.
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Skin slick, chests heaving: Chris bent like a bowing flower across Yuri's thigh, that hand supporting him at the widest stretch of his back, and, fine.
Yuri's drunk. He'd dance with anyone right now. Dip anyone. Stare into their face, and break into a breathless and brilliant grin, too pleased with himself not to.
Maybe just a playboy rolling in, after all. Targeting one unsuspecting fool after another, and dropping the latest conquest to move on to the next. He wouldn't have expected it, from what he knew of Katsuki Yuri before tonight, but then, he just keeps being surprised, doesn't he?
On the pole, Chris is gracefully sliding down, laughing acceptance of his pants from a pink-cheeked fan or friend, before looking over with that sly wink of his, like he knows. And maybe he does. Victor's aware that Yuri and Chris aren't the only ones to put on a show tonight: that he'd been maybe a little too oblivious to the rest of the world, that maybe he'd gone a little overboard, himself.
Making him just give that wink an exasperated look, before offering a few polite golf claps, that make Chris laugh, as he comes to stand nearby, flipping his shirt back to the right side out, sweat glinting at his temple and sticking his hair to his scalp. "What? You think you could do better?"
Victor's eyebrows lifting, unimpressed, over taken aback. It's been years. But...
A stormwind of thoughts rolling through, making him chuckle. It's not what he would prefer, but it might not be a bad start.
Amused confidence warming up his voice, as he shrugs, even if he isn't discounting it. The thought.
"Do I have to beat you a second time tonight, Chris?"
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Against the spots in his vision and the throbbing in his arm. His back. The muscles across his chest, his side.
There's no wall to put his hands on, and maybe even his head, and his hand left the bar behind, so it's not even that.
His name is everywhere mingled with Chris's, but he looks for where Chris went, and he finds Victor. Chris's back, yes. But Victor, standing there, all removed and glorious, perfect, poise and shine. Removed from this world. Etheral. Gorgeous. Crossed arms and that laughter that invades on Yuri's brain, better than the champagne, better than the cheers, better than air, as he catches Victors word, and the whole of everything slides back, slides away again.
Becuase .... Victor?
Victor out there?
He doesn't even know if that joke is meant about him going out himself, or with Chris, or with himself? And he's not being left behind. Not by either of them. Not having come this far. Not having shown them. Shown them both. Shown them all. He can take this as far as it needs to go, and it's all bubbling, boiling, pushing, shoving upward, coming out as a laugh and a bubble, slightly too high "You shou--" before there's suddenly something yanking him back, an arm around his neck, elbow, hand on his arm, like gravity is on its side, and suddenly there is Celestino's face.
Above him, to the side of his face. Tall and long hair and ... an unhappy face, not quite to yelling, but headed there, but Yuri is not quite paying the right attention. Because Victor is right there, and the thought of Victor, all long lean lines, and pale skin, pale skin everywhere, twisting and turning, his perfect, graceful movements and strength, back with Yuri, back where Yuri had been, Victor, it's every single thought there is.
Trying to pull away already while Celestino is doing his best to shove Yuri's shirt back on, and it's so much better with a shirt. "No -- I need -- just one --" Everything. There's a dizzy, drunken whirl of thoughts. About Victor's skin sliding along his, Victor's hands on his skin, hand against his cheek, lips centimeters away, turned into that, where he'd been, what he'd been doing with Chris, but more, with Victor, lighting paths of fire, and distorted seconds where he forgets to even fight the buttons, is shoving at his tie, somehow on his neck but above the shirt, shoving it higher, because there's nothing in the world like the thoughts in his head.
Nothing like Victor. Nothing. No one. Nowhere.
Which is why his hands are hitting Celestino's away and trying breaking back that direction, thinking he needs a new coach, a new world, a world with only Victor in it, he needs someone who understands, he needs to never leave this space, he needs to get back to Victor, needs to say yes this time. Not let anyone stop him, slow him, get in the way, and so maybe he accidentally collides into Victor first.
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He can beat Chris. He can always beat Chris. There's not a competitor in their sport in this world he can't win against, he's proven it again and again. Five Grand Prix golds. Aiming for a fourth at Worlds, and another back here, in Sochi, next February. So far at the top of the game that the next closest still looks like an ant from this height.
So Chris is annoyed, but Victor would say it again, and mean it, and if this comes down to a competition between the two of them, then he knows which way the pendulum will swing.
And so does Chris.
But even as Chris opens his mouth to respond, there's a flurry right in front of him, and then –
"Oof!"
Something small and soft and warm and solid connecting with his front, and his eyes go down as his hands go up, in surprise, because people don't touch him, they don't tackle him and embrace him, they don't run into him without looking, and yet Katsuki Yuri has done exactly that.
Now back to wearing his shirt, if more rumpled than ever, buttons mismatched and his tie askew, and Victor glances up to see Celestino going first pale and then red in the face, and then start stalking over, wielding Yuri's pants like a threat. "Yuri! Come on, we have to go!"
While Victor just stares down in utter astonishment, not sure where his hands should go, or what's happening, taking it all in in flashes: Yuri's flushed face, his too-bright eyes, the warmth pumping off his skin, too surprised to say anything at all.
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And Yuri doesn't want to move, even though everything in him is, and Celestino is yelling, people are shifting everywhere around them. A high of confused, surprised voices all over. But. Everything is alive in his skin, heated to a boiling point, that has suffused his skin and toppled his brain, and he never wants to leave, never wants to let Victor leave. Even if he has to at some point. Victor has to win the world. Again. He has a season. He'll have to leave. At some point.
Which just seems to make the rest of his body graft to all of the parts of Victor's body he's pressed to.
Want, delirious, overwhelming want everywhere, in everything. It's all that his veins have. The blood is gone.
But he needs something good enough, something golden, and he hasn't even been home in five years, but it comes pouring out of his mouth is absolute ownership and need to impress. "Victor." The name, sliding in his mouth, said against the man's chest, when he's pressing his cheek into into, a world of movement and a world in movement. "After the season ends, my family runs a hot spring resort, so please come." Please, please, please. There are a hundred pleases in his head.
But it's not enough, okay. It's not enough. Nothing is enough. He'll earn it if he has to, one more time, or one hundred. Eyes turning determined, but glassy toward Victor's face, again. That perfect, perfect face. The fringe of bangs, half hiding him, this look of, he can't tell, he can't. He wants. It has to be more. There has to be something else. Something that would make it so Victor would never have to leave. Never. And no one would get in the way.
"If I win this dance-off..." And it's brilliant. It pops like lightning, so perfect. Every minute, every day, morning to night. Better than winning him with a promise of a hot spring. "You'll be my coach, right?" And instead of waiting, because that would be obvious, the answer, right. Victor wanted him to come with him. He'd said that. Breath against breath, foreheads nearly touching, and Yuri throws his arms around the man's neck, jumping up even higher, gravity forgotten, pushing his face there, before descent starts. "Be my coach, Victor!"
Come with him, never leave him, not another minute. He'd win. He'd win this, and the next, and everything, if Victor said to.
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Talking. Saying. Something about a hot spring. So please come.
Come to...Japan? To his family's hot spring resort? To see him?
(Don't you want to come with me?)
Words aren't making themselves known: they're all drowning in stunned surprise and the awkward hold of his hands, that can't figure out where they want to, or even can go, almost pinioned to his sides, unable to either reach out or push away, and he's not sure which he would do, so he can only stare in bewilderment as Yuri turns his face up to him, utterly confident in way the boy hadn't been all season. If he...
You'll be my coach, right?
He'll be –
If he wins –
Coach???!?
There's nothing but astonishment. He just sticks on the word like a record needle hitting a scratch: Coach. Coach. Coach.
You'll be my coach, right?
As if that was –
As if he could even –
As if that was something he could offer, that might be on the table, that – his career, he can't coach someone else –
But Yuri doesn't care, only tosses it at him again, in pure delight, like it's the best idea he's ever had in his entire short life, and then he's throwing himself at him, and all Victor can do is catch him, once his arms are free. Hands coming to Yuri's ribcage like a reflex, to hold him steady, while Yuri's face buries first into the side of his neck –
(he shivers hard)
– and then into his shoulder, leaving Victor wide-eyed, with his arms full of Katsuki Yuri and a skull full of exploding question marks – but –
Coach. Yuri wants him to visit. To see his family's resort.
Yuri wants him as a coach.
The soft, surprised, gasp as realization hits. The surprise not vanishing from his face, or eyes, but melting into a soft flush high across his cheeks.
He's used to being wanted. He's used to attempts at seduction. But no one –
– no one –
– has ever wanted anything like this from him.
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Like earlier, but better. Pressed to his chest, while Victor draws in breath, heart pounding against Yuri's chin.
It's perfect. This is perfect. This is what perfection feels like. Bubbly, certain, everywhere.
Right before he rips back. The center of the back of his shirt yanked like its going to come off the front of him and tear at his shoulders, the buttons threatening to go popping everywhere, and Celestino looks like he's turned shade of red so deep it's going back to white. Muscles so tight in his face there isn't any room for blood to floor into and around them.
When he's being pushed back, behind the man, pants and shoes shoved into his hands, even as he's wobbling, making some kind of noise. He doesn't want pants. He doesn't need pants. He needs to dance. (He needs Victor.) His skin is cold, so hot, but without Victor it's gone cold. Where he'd been pressed tight and warm. Celestino, whom he can't seem to get past, who has a death grip on one of his shoulders, thumb roughly into a collar bone.
"Apologies, Victor." It's a shaking voice. Confusing Yuri, who still isn't more than holding those pants. Certain Celestino is mad, and uncertain why he's mad all at once. Concern fighting with the rush of his blood, the need to get right back where he was. Muddled with Celestino's voice.
"It's time for Yuri to leave now. Again, I'm--" There's a look of murder shot down at him, as Yuri made a noise to begin a retort about not needing to go anywhere but back to Victor, back to the pole, back to wherever he needed to prove himself, but that hand is digging in even harder taking his air, before Celestino was looking, "--we're very sorry."
Already starting to push him, quickly, even pantless, in the opposite direction, not letting up that death grip in the slightest.
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Only knows that, a half an hour ago, he had still barely ever even spoken to Katsuki Yuri, and now, it feels like his heart is bursting.
Everything else is a fog of mystery, from what his hands should do, to what he should say – there's no way he could ever agree, would ever offer, being Yuri's coach would never have come up as a prize to be won, not in a million years, and he has no idea what made him think it could – to whether he should maybe just tip his face up and kiss him now and get it over with –
But then there's a hand rough on Yuri's shoulder, hauling him back, and leaving Victor with empty arms and the same befuddled expression he's had for the last two minutes straight. Eyes widening as they follow Yuri, only to be interrupted by Celestino, superimposing himself like a furious god between them.
Apologizing through gritted teeth. Shaking Yuri and stuffing clothes and shoes into his hands at the same time as he's barring Yuri from getting back to Victor.
All of it happening so fast, that Victor's still just finding words, as Celestino is starting to push Yuri away, towards the door. "It's – "
What?
Is there a word that conveys anything he's feeling? Anything at all?
Hands lifting, unsure if he's trying to placate Celestino, or wave it off the way he would if his usual composure hadn't been shattered like brittle ice. "It's – it's okay."
Is it? He's not even certain anymore, whether it is or isn't, how he feels about this, what might be the correct response. "It's alright, Celestino, don't worry about it."
But Celestino is already moving away, leaving Victor to watch after him, eyes on the retreating form of Katsuki Yuri, and wondering just what on earth he was supposed to do with himself now.
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"If you change your mind, just give me a call." Celestino is still talking, and Yuri hasn't the smallest clue why. What's happening.
When they've made it too far, and Yuri can't be looking back toward Victor, and forward toward the doors, and at the storm cloud of his coach, and the pants that are slithering in his hands, and a jacket, he hadn't realized there was a jacket of the same color in the pile the first time, its getting everywhere, too, and at his bare feet, that don't seem to want to work, not unless he's looking down at them to make sure they are working still, not that the hand on his shoulder seems to care about any of these.
But he keeps trying to do all of them at once, and ends up with little more than being drug across an endless space. Even when tries to yank back, slow down, unable to deter that hand or the steps dragging him behind them, and all he has left is his voice and this desperate overwhelming need screaming in his ears, in his chest, as he's losing everything, losing everything again, and it's not the Gold, it's Victor this time, Victor who had the Gold but wanted Yuri, asked Yuri to come with him. "Don't forget!"
Voice raised and hitting the whole room, and not a hard job at that, when the whole room has gone deathly silent,
all of their eyes on him, already before that, with only the softest of surprised or disapproving whispers.
He's at the tables - those tables, and the water, that Victor mentioned earlier - and how did they get this far? Victor is so far behind him. A dwindling, dimming light, that feels like the further and smaller he gets, the more part of the crowd and the less specific, and overwhelming the more certain something in Yuri's chest is that he was stabbed hard there, and then his heart was yanked out still attached to the blade, left over there. His heart. His lungs. His stomach.
Everything he needed. Wanted. All part of that dimming grey-silver candle,
away.
And then the door is slamming, and he's pretty sure everyone right inside the door can hear it, when Celestino face and voice finally finds him, "What were you thinking?"
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It didn't seem possible. Even with Chris getting in the way, at first, and Yuri's need to take on each and every comer, and all the people here. He could swear he'd known how this was going to go:
The puff of breath shocked out of a chest, as a back meets a wall.
Fingers on his throat, and jaw, and lips, and collarbone. A mouth against his, and the inability to breathe, or think, or do anything but set the world on fire.
But now: nothing.
Nothing except Yuri calling out to him, to give me a call, and. A moment later, arrowing him in the chest:
Don't forget!
As the door is slamming, and Celestino's voice comes muffled and furious, and Victor is still hung on those two words: don't forget. Don't forget. Don't forget.
When he thinks it's been burned into his chest, his ribs, his skin. Wondering how he could.
Blinking, as an elbow comes to rest on his shoulder, and Chris, shirt now on, but still hanging loose and unbuttoned, leans his weight there, following the tangent of Victor's gaze. "Hey, Victor."
Those green eyes tracking back towards him, but Victor can't look over just yet, is still caught on that scratching record, feeling like he's suspended mid-air in a jump, and forgot how to come back down, even as Chris nudges him, and keeps talking. "What did you do?"
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Victor - Victor Nikiforov - had melted into his arms, and gone where he shifted him, and it been like magic in his hands, like melted music cuped in his palms, melting him to the same, molded by the hands he'd watched all his life. Victor Nikiforov had laughed, and smiled, at him, with him. Victor Nikiforov had asked him if he was going to join, and had been about to join them on the floor again; not even an inch from his mouth; his thumb rubbing Yuri's bottom lip, with such promise, eyes hooded with such want, that the room dissolved into flames, and that question, from those eyes, that mouth.
Victor Nikiforov. Victor Nikiforov. Whom no one in the world, with eyes, or any capacity to see, said no to.
"I have to get back," Yuri said, forgetting entirely what the question had been. This answer was more important. His answer to Victor's question. How had he still not said it, when every atom of him screamed it? He was trying to turn back for the door. For Victor. For the banquet. The banquet he'd hated so fiercely until ... well, he couldn't' quite remember when. But it had changed. It had all changed. He didn't want to leave, and they were still moving away. Getting further and further from the doors he needed to stumble back through.
To find Victor. In that crowd, and tell him yes. Agree to --
"You aren't going anywhere but to bed," Celestino answered, rough, and with a rounded shake of his head, pulling Yuri into an elevator. "Were you trying to cause the biggest scene the GPF has seen in more than two decades?"
When had they even gotten to the elevator? Wasn't it down two hallways? Maybe even more of them? But he's here. He's in the little silver box and he deflates, unable to breathe, stomach trying to throttled straight into his throat, with no gloriousness, as it shoots upward, nothing like his own careful, controlled loss of gravity and for a moment he thinks he might be sick.
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He rarely does, after all. Has never either felt the need to initiate something like this, or had the inclination to. He's always been too busy, never really cared about it. And, for all he'd gone along with it tonight, he hadn't started it now, either.
The soft snort to his left tells him Chris does not share his thinking. "Right."
His weight pressing in a little harder, before it suddenly vanishes, and Victor finally looks over to watch him button up his shirt, shrugging with that devil-may-care smile of his. "Well, this party is over."
Tipping his head to indicate the people who are, yes, leaving, all around them: there's quite a lot of hushed conversation, and more than one discreet glance in Victor's direction, so...
Chris is obviously not the only person here to come to the wrong conclusion, but Victor's not sure he's in the mood to defend himself, or correct them. "Looks that way."
It feels that way, too, and he probably would have left soon even if that didn't seem to be the general consensus, to go back over the events of the evening, and figure out what happened.
Buttons finished, Chris tucks his shirt front back into the waist of his dress pants, and nods towards the door. "It's still early. Let's find the pool. Or a bar; I think I've had enough champagne tonight."
Making Victor's mouth thin into a wry line, but he lifts his hand, shakes his head: No.
"I don't think so, Chris. Maybe another time."
Patting him on the shoulder, and turning towards the doors himself, without waiting for Chris to try and persuade him. He doesn't want to find the pool, and pose like he's having fun. He doesn't want to drink –
( – and he wants to drink himself into a stupor – )
– he just wants to go to his room, and figure out what the hell just happened.
Lifting a hand in a casual, but definitive wave. "See you later."
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He forgot how solid walls were. Walls are incredibly, helpfully, so very solid and still. But it isn't, too. It's still shaking just enough. A metal box on strings, that hates gravity and moves way too fast for his stomach. That still feels like it's being shot skyward too fast, and even though the elevator stopped moving, it hasn't.
It roils uncontrollably even as Celestino is guiding him out now. There's an arm on shoulder, and it's more conciliatory, maybe a partial reward for not hitting every button in the elevator, or even wanting to stay in it for the thought of going down again. Which just thinking about made him want to hug his shoes to his stomach.
Celestino was grumbling something that's lost on him, as he's just focused on forward. Even though every thought between those gulps of air and weaving steps is ricocheting and plummeting feeling. His stomach going up. His heart going down. Meeting in the middle in an obliterating, nauseating explosion that made him want to drop to his knees because it felt like his lungs were shredded by the tulmult. He kept seeing Victor's face. Every weightless pause between the step and rebound of his weight, shifting across his frame, shaking pennies and rocks in his head.
Victor's face. When he'd been laughing. When he'd been close. When he'd been wide-eyed and cheeks colored.
He needed to do something. He remembered that, distantly, against the tide, as he watched Celestino open his door. Card and key. He didn't even know where those came from. Couldn't remember the last time he'd seen them. Beep. Shift of color. Click of the lock, and he walked into a room like winter. A shiver as his more than half of him still uncovered met the cold air, and goosebumps prickled, dizzying him more as the feelings seemed to shout from everywhere inside of him.
The darkness didn't help. Blurred everything worse than when he didn't have his glasses. Shadows barely making sense. The niggling thought he wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't he had somewhere else to be. He still had to get back. It was important. It was ... dire. It felt like he might not be able to take another breath if he couldn't follow through on it. Some kind of promise, some kind of answer.
Even in the dark, the black, directed by unseen hands, everything seemed to be shifting more to blue-green. Calling.
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