GPF Banquet, 9 December, 2012 – Sochi, Russia

[fivetimechamp]

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.

Comments

[theglassheart]

The world is spinning a bit too much when the elevator jars to a stop, and Yuri has to put a hand on the wall.

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.

[fivetimechamp]

He doesn't admit, even to himself, the part of him that makes him look down the hallway, once he's made it through the few remaining throngs at what's left of the banquet: smiling and shaking hands has always come as easy as breathing, and he's always enjoyed socializing and honing his social skills and etiquette, but he's impatient, now. The few times someone attempts to draw him into conversation, he politely declines, and it takes only ten or so minutes to reach the door.

Ten minutes during which he's sure Celestino had dragged Yuri to an elevator and to whatever room he's staying in, because it would make no rational sense for them to still be just outside the door. There was no way Celestino wouldn't have tried to get Yuri as far away from the ballroom as possible, of course.



But he still looks, and he's still annoyed by the sinking sensation in his stomach when no one is there.



His own room is very near the top of the building: an excellent view, a spacious room all to himself, which he'd enjoyed over the last few days, but which feels strange and too quiet, now. No Maccachin gamboling to greet him, tongue lolling, no visitor to welcome in and while away the rest of the night with casual conversation over a glass or two of wine.

Only the warm light of side lamps, and his own reflection in the mirror.

Still nearly as polished as when he'd left, only his hair a little out of place, his shirt a little less perfectly tucked. But his same, familiar face, looking back at him like a stranger. Unrecognizable, after the course of the night.

Holding that gaze for a moment too long, before tossing his wallet and card key on the table beneath the mirror, and heading into the room, loosening his tie as he goes.

Outside, Sochi glitters. Still preparing for the Olympics, in just over a year, busily working to make their mark on the world. Golden lights glimmering hundreds of feet below. A city's worth of people, going about their lives, their jobs, returning home, unaffected by the fact that Victor Nikiforov is, for the first time that he can remember, troubled over something other than his career, his choreography, or his next performance.

His reflection a ghost in the glass, tie now hanging loose, the top button of his collar undone, and he watches it, for a moment: the marching golden ants of cars, the living, breathing city.

Maybe he should call Chris, after all.

It's enough of a thought that he reaches into his pocket to dig out his phone, but when he thumbs the screen into life, it doesn't open onto his usual background, but onto his camera: still open from when he'd been teasing Chris about documenting their dance-off.

Thumb hesitating only for a second, before he taps the thumbnail pictures at the bottom of the screen, and they flood into full-size: Yuri and Yuri, stretched out on the dance floor, faces flushed, one smiling, one fuming.

Surprising himself, when he glances up, by seeing the grin on his own face. Reaching up to touch the edge of that curve, with his thumb, before looking back at the pictures with a huff of a laugh, shoulders relaxing.

Idiot.

[theglassheart]

There's pressure on his shoulder, guiding him, and it's like being pushed and pulled by a ghost. He can't focus, even when he wants to, and shadows are harder. There differentiation doesn't work as well without effort and effort, right now, is dizzying. Even if bobbing along in the dark, where he's pushed and pulled, makes him feel like some strange ragdoll of a boat.

Before he's being pushed through the air, downward, and it feels too long, too far, it feels like the descent of gravity for his skates catch the ice, when there's those seconds where it twines to feel at once like he might never come down and at once like speed is coming with downward momentum, and he's going to break everything just the right way.

A memory flickers somewhere. Of his head jostling a shoulder, and the brilliant light of an enrapt, surprised face -- as his bare legs find the bed, and his hand reaches out to catch him. The bounce of the bed a twin to the horrible idea of the elevator, when it won't stop moving up and down. Feels like it's shaking his brain and his stomach with it, the bounces fading toward his center like an attack. But the movement doesn't cease, because he's being pulled down, pushed down, something.

Something soft finding his cheek, his hand moving under it and clutching up a pillow, as Celestino's disembodied voice said something about checking on him in the morning and something else, further away, across the dark ocean flooding into his eyes and curdling his guts about, he thinks, straining through confused sensations of coldness and softess and darkness, that voice grumbles that hopefully enjoyed himself, for whatever that cost.

The second sounding, he expects it should be labeled angry, but it isn't. It's softer. Almost sad.

He can't quite remember why Celestino should be angry. Why it should be angry.
Or why it is sad instead. It feels like he should know that. Not be able to forget it.


There's a momentary flood of light, as the door opens and closes, a stab of light that feels like it digs into this head, into his guts, and then it's just the darkness swarming him again. The sudden certainty, alarming, like coming right at a wall too fast for your plan, that laying down is a bad. It's a terrible idea. Gravity is still turning everything upside down, even though he isn't moving, darkness pouring into his eyes, his lungs, that are trying to escape against the waves coming in, and it hurts when he pushes up on his left arm, not certain where anything is.

Not certain why his body feels like a rubberband a kid stretched to snapping, but unable to ask the question.

Not while rounding the bed, slamming his shin on the corner, and still trying to make it to the bathroom before everything is worse.

[fivetimechamp]

It's a good ten minutes later, when he finally finishes watching the last video (sent by Chris, along with a kissy-face selfie that Victor can't help but be amused by), and pauses it on the last frame: him, bent into a dip, laughing up into Yuri's face. Yuri laughing along with him.

Reaching up to brush his own fingers over the spot where those delicate ones had cupped his jaw and cheek, as he stares at his own hollow reflection in the window, silhouetted against the Sochi night.

If you change your mind...

Thinking, for a second before he's swiping out of this photos and videos and into his contacts, to frown as the names go scrolling by, until he gets to the end, and, really, it seems he has the number of every skater in the business except for Katsuki Yuri.

He's even got Ciao Ciao's, not that he thinks it would be useful. The man hadn't looked like he'd be willing to give Victor his skater's number, or sit idly by if Victor decided to take matters into his own hands and look up what room Yuri's in.

But...that look...

Like he expected to see Victor again soon. Like it was only a matter of time.

As Victor remembers, with a jolt, that if he could find Yuri's room, certainly Yuri could find his.

It seems likely, doesn't it? Yuri had been the one pushing all evening: it would make sense for him to keep doing so, even if – Victor laughs, to himself, a small sound in the quiet room – he's probably feeling a little less sure of himself, now. If Victor had had that much to drink, he'd be a useless puddle on the floor right now, and he'd be shocked if that isn't exactly how Yuri's feeling, now that the endorphins have worn off.

If he does come here, it would likely be to just pass out until the morning's hangover alerted him to a new day, and, it's crazy, but Victor's not even sure he cares.

Sure – as he undoes his tie fully, slips his jacket off his shoulders and sets it on the bed, before beginning work on his vest – he'd prefer something a little more active, but there could be time for that later. The Grand Prix Final is done: he has nowhere to be tomorrow except St. Petersburg, and no one would begrudge him a few hours off. Yakov is always telling him to take a break, now and again, after all.

But there's something soft about the half-smile quirking his lips, as he thinks of a dark-haired boy curled up and fast asleep against the crisp white bed linens and fluffy pillows. Can picture himself getting glasses of water, and Bloody Mary's in the morning.

After all, he's already been won over. He can be patient for the rest.





(Which doesn't make him any less impatient for that knock to come, even as he tells himself it might not.)

[theglassheart]

Everything hurts. The muscles of his back constricting tight. Arms biting into unyielding porcelain. Knees still throbbing from the drop, skid, half tumble into the floor and toilet in that absolute dark. That he would give his soul back to the attack of the darkness, dizzy and daunted, upside down, inverted, forever falling, if he had any control over anything left.

But he doesn't. Only seconds where he can hear his harsh breathing, and minutes where everything is acid and pain.

Champagne does not taste good coming up. Neither does anything else. He doesn't know how many desperate pleas to the universe happen, while nothing changes. While he's chained to that spot and wrung out until nothing else is coming up, vacating him like a fleeing flood of fans. Until it's just the rasp of his air, and the churn of his lungs, and he's not sure he's ever hurt this much, ever, and pain has defined his life in some amount for years on end.

Pain that was worth beauty. Pain that paid at the end.

There is no beauty in this. It's a miserable thing, almost without end.




Until it is. Cheek sweating against the rim, but his breath has calmed, even if his throat won't stop burning, but the idea of water is the idea of moving is the idea of torture. He just wants to curl up in a ball and die here. Right here. Against a toilet. In the dark. In a Russian hotel bathroom. Where his body won't stop trying to wring itself dry even though nothing is coming anymore.

Which he gives into for a while. The fugue of pain. The pervasive smell of vomit, that stays with him even though he finds the woozy strength to flush that toilet several times, fumbling blindly for the lever. He gives himself to the darkness, feeling more fragile than a leaf, every muscle in his body vanished, except when he shifts, except when it's a crescendo of pain that no piece of music or movement could properly express.


When he can finally move, though can feel the wrong word, when he's all but crawling to the bed. Water is too, even a few feet from the toliet, but the tile is too cold under his knees and the porcelain hurts under his cheek. He wants the softness. He wants to curl up and just die. Dying has to be worse than this. He really doesn't know how he makes it to the bed, crawling like a massive slug lump of himself, across the floor and then somehow, traversing gravity, as it pulls at his stomach again.

Except he makes it. Somehow at least on top of the blankets, in the muddle he'd thrown back to get to the bathroom. Unwilling to move to straighten those covers, or cover himself. Breathing still acrid, and using far too many muscles, making his whole body throb.

Eyes closed, just breathing, just existing in that malaise of darkness that tangles around him in loops.

Coalescing, and pulling him down, down, down.



While something tickles at the back of his head, the base of his neck. Soft, but annoyed, it flickers. Filters through in his name. Yuri... Soft, but drawn out and annoyed, too. Except not annoyance. Playful annoyance? It's hard to make any stick, have definitive lines, but he knows that voice, knows the face that shapes and shades his world.

Knows almost better than his own. He's looked at it more than his own, it feels.

Bluring, blending blue and green, perfect grey and silver, a smile like gold, brighter than a flood light, when it slides through his ears, through his whole body, like wind and rain and cherry blossoms dropping in spring and the gentle rain of monsoon season, never ending, forever clinging to you. Words, slipping through on it, until they in his very muscles, his very bones, every agonized breath and that darkness growing so heavy on him everywhere, blacking out the world.

You're leaving me already?



How cruel.

His eyes blink, and droop, even harder, hand reaching for a light beyond him, even as his shoulder screams, creaking like a door coming straight off the hinge. "I'm right here," hoarse and unhinged, and barely more than a whisper. Reaching, reaching, reaching, but never finding, sliding through the light, like it dances from him, darkness sliding, sliding, sliding, everywhere. But he needs to tell, has to tell, panting, unable to reach, to speak, grasping sand in ghost-like fingers as it falls through him -- "I'm right here."

But just soon as they form, desperate and softer than snow fall, he isn't, too.

[fivetimechamp]

In the end, he waits longer than he'd ever admit to.



There's a chair by the window that he takes, once his vest is undone, and the top few buttons of his shirt are loosened, and his shoes and socks are left by the side table, and maybe it's a little bit on purpose, sure. Maybe he knows how he looks. He's always been particular with his appearance, with what it suggests, what it implies, as well as what it declares, and this: a little undone, but still dressed up, still taking care, is carefully constructed to appeal.

He knows that sitting by the window, with the lights of Sochi scattered along the ground below, and the dim lamps in the room, scrolling through his phone, it's nearly romantic, like a prince waiting in a tower to be delivered.

(Well, he's always had a flair for the dramatic.)

It's an hour later when he decides that he may as well shower, get the sweat off, and change into something more comfortable than the dress pants and complementing shirt: he puts it off for longer than he should, but in the end, he gets up to strip the vest off, the shirt following directly after, undoing his belt as he heads to the bathroom and flicks on the lights.



He showers with the bathroom door ajar.

(Just in case.)




But there is still no knock by the time he shuts the water off ten minutes later, hair streaming, and eyebrows furrowing, slightly, first at the door, and then at his own reflection, foggy in the bathroom mirror.


The hot water makes him tired, so he digs out a pair of sleep pants, a soft t-shirt, and puts them on, pretending he isn't tuned like a tripwire for the sound of a faint knock, or someone stopping outside.

Winding up back in that chair, after shaving, brushing his teeth, folding his clothes and packing them, drinking a glass of water, opening his suitcase to first unpack and then repack his clothes.

Holding off for five minutes, only, before he gives up, and turns the light out.




But, just another five.




Surely, in only a few minutes...?




Until he looks at the clock, and realizes it's well past two, and that if Katsuki Yuri was going to come to this room and make good on every promise and insinuation he made on the dance floor, he would already be here.



It's not often Victor feels like an idiot, but there's a degree of viciousness in the way he switches off the bedside lamp, and something of self-pity in the way he curls into his extra pillows, wishing they were Maccachin, who didn't have a fickle or unloyal bone in his body. Trying his best not to imagine how the weight of a dark-haired head would dent them, or to listen for the quiet, even sound of someone else breathing. The rustle of sheets, as someone else turns.

Not closing his eyes, and picturing someone just out of reach of his fingertips, but close enough to warm them.

(But it's still another hour or more, before he sleeps.)