yuri_plisetsky | Moscow (and Milliways): Rostelecom Tea Time [1.08-1.09]

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Moscow (and Milliways): Rostelecom Tea Time [1.08-1.09]

He hadn't been certain that it would work. He's only ever reached this place through his bedroom door before, only in St. Petersburg, only at the end of the day. There's no guarantee that it would show up here in a random Moscow hotel room just because he wanted it to appear badly enough.

But it does. Perhaps because he does. When he swipes the keycard in his hotel room door and opens it a crack, the bar is on the other side.

There's no time to be surprised, or grateful, or concerned about what this might mean. Yuri simply pulls the door open wider and propels the Katsudon through it, steering him over to the nearest empty booth with one hand.

'Sit here,' he commands, with a touch of Lilia's steel in his voice. 'Don't you dare leave.' And he's off to the bar before he can hear a word of protest. Not that he'd pay attention to it if he heard it.

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Yuuri sipped his tea slowly, trying not to get mired in his own voice, the words that had come from his own mouth. Ones he could piece together, with some effort, but that weren't in the right voice. Except in his head. Victor, still not here. Not here to gasp, overdramatically, and cover his mouth, pretending to cry, like being evoked, or even copied, wasn't something half the world, or more, did.

Even if Yuuri knows he's not half the world, or more. (Not anymore.)
Like them, but something more now, too. Off the ice. (In Victor's arms.)

Something so fragile, and hazy, and new, and suddenly so, so suddenly empty in realization, connection, that it just aches to even cut a glance in that direction of tonight, with Victor slipping further and further away by the minute, Door or no Door, frozen time, or not, unhelping. (Like the thought of returning to that hotel room. Going to sleep alone. Waking up alone. Unbothered and uncrowded. All the silence Victor effortlessly smashed.)

It helps when Yuri starts talking, dragging his attention back to the conversation, in far too large part, because he doesn't get it.

He follows the words, but even when those are clear, he wonders if it means something different in Russian. The way Yuri is saying it means something different in Russia. Something about needing to remember how bad it was, showcase that ... as the reason for why he has to do so well? Even when everything isn't bad anymore?

Trying to piece that into any of skating he's seen Yuri do. As some backbone or side message to it?

It doesn't make sense, so maybe his voice quiet a little, even in refrain, "Then, you'll show them that tomorrow, too."

Edited 2017-03-06 17:17 (UTC)

It's...no. It shouldn't be enough, just to hear those words. Those were words that he'd wanted to hear from Viktor, not Yuuri Katsuki. But would Viktor have been able to say them truthfully, honestly, without the weight that both of them carried? Or would he have tried to ruffle Yuri's hair, and laugh it off with a cheerful you're overthinking things again, Yurio, and joke that he'd been listening to too many grumpy old men like Yakov, pining for their younger days when they'd been pampered by a system that was rotten to the core?

He doesn't know. He'll never ask. He already wishes that he hadn't said anything at all. But there's only one thing he can think of to say in response.

'Then you'd better bring everything you have to give tomorrow, Katsudon, because I won't lose to you in my own home.' He swallows another mouthful of tea, trying to clear the thickness in his throat. 'I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.'

It's still sore at the edges, where he doesn't want it to be, beading and lapping inward.

Like maybe it had been around his feet and he hadn't noticed, but thawing feels like falling toward it.

Slipping into cold water, even with his hands around the warm small cup, even with the warm tea slipping down his throat, familiar and home, when home is far away, further than just a few weeks ago, and his second constant (or its it really ... his first ... ever?) is gone now, too, further than a few hours ago, and he knows what he's saying maybe less than he doesn't.

Striving for someone else, for something else, from that all,
when it only tugs his heart further into the muddle of his guts,

shivering, shifting, nesting snakes, coiling up on it.

"I will." There's not as much conviction as the snap of sound that had come when Yuri insulted his own skating, his own placing, but he tries to push his own will into it. He has to. He has to for Victor. Find it in himself. Not slip, down and down and down, like he did at the Cup. Show them (show Victor) how much stronger he can be because of all he's learned, been given, been taught.

Even if the thought of it, even the trying for it, alone now, just tightens and sours everything even more in his center.

'Good,' Yuri says firmly. 'Because I'll be watching you. And I'll know.'

It's a threat, of course. He's not going to let Katsudon think that he, Yuri Plisetsky, is going to hide away until it's all over. But it's a simple fact as well. He's going to watch every second of it. He needs to know, first-hand, what he's really up against.

Today, the short program, was all about Viktor. (Ugh, what a fucking narcissist, Yuri grumbles to himself, as his tired brain makes the connection for the first time.) Eros and Agape. Seduction and selflessness. His steps, his jumps, his stories, all acted out through them. But tomorrow they're skating to show who they really are, to tell their stories instead of his.

(And to grind that prick JJ's face into the ice while they're at it. Can't forget that.)

There's enough tea left in the pot for one more refill, and without hesitation Yuri picks up the pot and empties it by topping off Katsudon's cup.

'You need more?' he says, a little gruffly, holding up the empty pot. Time doesn't pass properly here; they'll arrive back at the hotel no later than when they'd left it. It'll still be a long night for both of them.

Yuri goes right back to hard nails and threads, which (even if Yuuri's mouth tightens in the unexpected surprise of it coming so suddenly) does not hit with the same kind of power as more than half of Yuri's threats and posturing do. Not when it's only seconds ago Yuri looked as uncertain and young as he never had before.

Speaking about what had tripped up his ever constant unflappability. His grandfather. His country.

Maybe Yuri didn't understand entirely. Maybe it was something lost in translation. But it still changed things, too. That moment's glance (not stolen, not blundered on to, but given to him) at something between and under all the sharp edges and defiant demand of the world.

Something fragile -- no, important enough to shake everything,
and to need, maybe even more, the sudden sharp demand for control, to be met.

It's not that he won't be watching, not like he won't know, but it just comes differently to Yuuri's ears, his head, watching Yuri pour the tea, before asking that question and Yuuri shook his head. "No. I should probably try to sleep after this." That with a faint movement of his now, once, again, full cup.

Even if sleep felt like the last thing that would come to him, he should try.
Victor would want him to. His performance would need him to. And it ...

... it just might be easier to take this back to that empty room, where Victor wasn't,
and just put his face in his pillow until there was some update or the morning, and the free skate, came.

Yuri's shoulders twitch in a shrug of acceptance. At least the Katsudon doesn't look as disoriented anymore -- he can probably take care of himself from here. (Probably.) And considering how his own hip is starting to throb, it might be a good idea to get some ice from the bar when he takes the tray back.

'Yakov's room is two down from mine, to the left as you leave,' he says. 'Though he'll probably be stuck dealing with some of the old drunks from Rostelecom and Minisport tonight, and he sleeps like the dead, so unless you have an emergency you're better off waiting until morning to talk to him. We'll be down in the lobby early -- don't think we're going to come kick you out of bed.'

Rostelecom and the sports ministry. Yakov had mentioned to him that regardless of the outcome of the cup, the sponsors would want to speak with him and Mila after the free skate...with a look in his eye that said that Yuri would be in serious trouble if he was anything less than scrupulously polite during their conversation. Bad enough to be in third after the short program, with a fall right at the start. Worse to think of how polite that conversation will have to be if he can't place higher in the free skate.

(And if Katsudon doesn't qualify -- )

There's a confusing mass of something weighing on his chest, something that's probably nerves and definitely exhaustion and more than a little bit mint-scented, and he's already babbled about enough things tonight to have him cringing everytime he replays this little tea party in his mind. So he sticks with the simple, the basic, the obvious:

'Do whatever you have to do.'

Except that isn't what he'd do, is it?

He's not that person. He's never been that person.

Yuri is, with a ruthless and bare lack of shame for that fact. Yuri, over there, with his uncaring shrug, who keeps reminding Yuuri, just by existing, over there, trying to look suddenly icy aloof and untouchable: that he isn't at all. There are lines even Yuri doesn't want crossed or to have to cross, things he doesn't want to give up and do without, himself.

He took a sip of his tea, grateful it was cool enough not to fog the bottom of his glasses, even as feeling torn settled into a too perfect, even if not perfectly felt, answer. "I'll do what Victor and I have been practicing all this time, as though he were still right there on the other side of the wall."

It's the right answer. Even as it's sour in his stomach and on his tongue, he knows its right, too. That it should be enough. Has to be. They've practiced these routines thousands of times. Over and over and over, until he could do them in his sleep, and in costume like it was his very skin. Until his muscles and his bones knew it at least as well as his mind, better -- in case they had to carry where focus couldn't.

Right there. On the other side of the wall. And doesn't Yuri know what it's like to try to imagine that the one person you want to be watching you is really there, even when they aren't?

Stupid Viktor. That damned dog of his had better be well enough to do triple toe loops by the time he gets off the plane at Fukuoka.

Yuri leans back a little in his seat, swirling the dregs of his tea idly with one hand. 'At least one of us has to kick JJ's ass tomorrow. Better if we both do it.' He gives Katsudon a final hard stare, as if to drill home exactly how much he expects out of both of them tomorrow, and then looks away. 'So...good luck.'

Don't make me regret this. A quiet pang, like the memory of a bruise. I don't want to regret this.

That was what he'd said to Yuri, wasn't it?

What felt like a million hours and days ago, even though he knew it wasn't. It simply felt like it suddenly had become that. Like everything between now and what had come before now was somehow somewhere somewhen else.

But he'd said that, hadn't he? When he wasn't entirely sure what else to say when Yuri stopped his elevator and pushed into it. It wasn't exactly not-filler for the silence, but he hadn't not meant it either. Even if Yuri was all prickles, and Yuuri wasn't positive he wanted to be trapped in an elevator with him, it'd been good to see him, too.

Even if all Yuri said was that he would suffer a crushing defeat here.

There's a second of silence even after that, maybe making it a touch too long, but even still, "You, too."

He knows -- picking up his cup to finish off the tea in it -- that Yuri means it, this time, about the luck, about placing, about beating JJ, and he knows he means to do his own best, too, even if ... Even if. It's the only option if he's going to make the Grand Prix Final. To get the medal he's sworn time and time again he'll get. To even have a reason for Victor to stay after tomorrow.

This is all fine and dandy and probably a historic triumph for international figure skating diplomacy or some shit, but it's getting them nowhere fast. 'Suppose I'd better open the door for you,' Yuri says with a sigh, as he starts to slide out of the booth. 'Or who knows where you'd end -- '

He has his eye on the door and one foot on the floor before the real implication of his statement catches up with him, so suddenly that it knocks the breath out of his lungs.

Even as his words die out in mid-sentence, his mind is already racing so fast that his head is spinning, because he knows exactly where Katsudon would end up. If Yuri had been desperate enough to succeed in finding the door to this place anywhere other than his bedroom in St. Petersburg, who's to say that it won't work the other way, for someone who was equally desperate -- even more desperate -- to be somewhere else? Why shouldn't the door open up onto one particular random storage closet in Yu-topia?

Katsudon could go home.

(Why the fuck hadn't this occurred to either of them earlier?)

It would make absolutely no sense for Katsudon to show up back in Hasetsu when he ought to be in Moscow, but does that even matter right now? The thought is overwhelming, almost frightening, and Yuri's sure that some of his uncertainty must show on his face as his gaze flicks from the door back to Katsudon. If it does, he's past the point of caring.

'The door,' he says, under his breath. It's the only way he can keep his voice under control. 'If I open it, it'll be the hotel. If you open it -- '

He doesn't even want to finish that thought. He's not sure what would be worse: if it didn't work, or if it did.

It's like tripping without moving.

It catches him like -- he doesn't even know what like.

Like the boulder the snakes were making of his guts, of his already entrenched anxiety about today, about tomorrow, and now Maccachin, and Victor gone, and Victor if Maccachin isn't ... , decided to drop on to the floor. Hitting his feet, gluing them, for just a moment too long, to the floor of the bar, when his eyes suddenly went to The Door, bypassing Yuri altogether.

Just as innocuous and simple as it has been the whole time since they walked in.
Yuuri isn't even certain he'd looked at it until now. Not while coming in. Not while sitting.

Except nothing like that now. Innocuous. Simple.

Tangling his ribs right into his lungs. Branches and grates becoming iron bars pressing in and in and in. Even when he can't breathe it. Can't even think to breathe. Because that must be impossible, right? Except that he's never been quite sure that word applied here. With its magical bar of appearing and disappearing nearly everything, so far as Yuuri can tell.

(Not to mention the nauseatingly unsettling window. The existence of it entirely.)

None of it sticks. Nothing. Yuri is talking. Again. But Yuuri can't make his eyes track away from it at the right time. His shoulders turning, but his eyes refusing to leave it except for a second. Long enough to be certain, not of what Yuri is saying exactly at first, but more just that his mouth is moving. He is talking. Before his eyes are back to the door again.

Impossible.

(Possible?

Who is he to say?)

And if it did --

How did that thought finish. It drags. It's a sharp pain like cutting his palm on a blade unexpectedly. It's want and denial so vast it feels violent. Bigger than his body. Than the bar. That Victor could be on the otherside of an inch or so of wood. Close enough to touch. To just launch himself into the arms of, lose himself to.

(Victor's head tucked down against his hair, those long arms wrapped all around him tight. Laughter filtering through Yuuri's ruffling hair as he spoke through it, through Yuuri's very skin, weaved into his words, his voice, no matter which language.

He could be there. With Victor.

Victor wouldn't have to be alone either.
No matter what might happen there.)

Except.

Except.

Except. It's all wrong. Too.

All the wrong place. Something upended in the nest of his stomach is an even harder rock hardening at that. Obstinant. Terrified. Sickened at the vehemence of his own flip, his own reaction. Desperate want. Because he's not supposed to be there. Not in Hasestu. Not even if he wants to be. (Not even if he wants Victor beyond an understanding of the word want. Of anything that could ever try to compare in so small as four letters. When the space Victor filled is empty for the first time in almost a year.)

He's supposed to be in Moscow. He needs to be in Moscow.
He has to skate. Has to compete. He doesn't hide.

Not anymore. Not since Victor.

( ... not even without Victor?)

He can't place. Can't get to Barcelona.
Can't keep Victor at his side.

If he isn't here.

Except.

Except he can see his hand

( -- when did he start trembling?

And ... when did he make it to the door? )

In the air

( -- even if it does
-- even if he doesn't

-- does

-- might

-- can't)

Trembling, in the air, imposed over the door knob

( He has to know. )

Right before it, and The Door, vanishes entirely when his hand settles on it.

Quite a lot happens all at once.

Yuri's not sure that he's ever seen Katsudon move that fast off the ice. It's entirely possible that he's never seen anyone move that fast, on or off the ice. One moment, he's watching Katsudon's expression shift into something that makes his own hands clench reflexively because it's too much to look at directly (he wants to rip that look off his face, it shouldn't be like that, no one should have to look like that), and some misplaced fight-or-flight instinct that he's never been good at suppressing makes him dig his nails into his palms to provide a kind of insane counterpoint to it. The next moment, he's out of his own seat a split second too late, because it's just in time to watch as Katsudon reaches blindly for the door handle...and to Yuri's eyes, his fingers seem to pass right through it.

Like it's not there.

Like it had been there for him, and then it wasn't.

Like he'd seen it disappear before his eyes.

(It's a small, twisted, wretched, helpless feeling, dredged up from a time almost before memory, when he'd tried to help set the table and a too-full glass of water had slipped out of his fingers and shattered on the floor. It's liquid spreading inexorably across tile and light reflecting off the fragments and a pleading voice that at first he doesn't recognise as his own. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it -- )

(But it doesn't make the glass any less broken, does it?)

When he reaches Katsuki's side, he doesn't hesitate to take hold of the door handle. The very solid, all-too-real door handle that will give at the slightest pressure of his hand. But he doesn't open it, not just yet.

'I shouldn't have brought us here.' His voice is a cold half-whisper. His gaze is fixed on the door handle as if he could melt it from the force of his glare alone. 'Go back to your room.'

Because there's nothing more he can do. He's not what Yuuri Katsuki needs, or wants, and what more proof of it is there than this?

So he turns the handle, and the sterile light of a Moscow hotel corridor floods in around the edges of the door as it opens a crack.

It hits like --

-- it should have --

-- fingers finding nothing but air.
Eyes nothing but blank wall.

And. He can't breathe. He's not sure he ever was. But he can't. At all. Now. Relief and insane panic feel like slamming the ice. There's only coldness and something so hard slamming every part of his body, unable to breathe. The weight of impact. The bite of ice. Burning everywhere. Freezing everywhere. The shock. Panic. Dread. Shame. Embarrassment. He can't tell if he wants to tear up. Or breathe out. Or pound the wall. Or say no until he can find or lose his voice. If he wants to be aware he'd wanted this, too.

When nothing holds. Nothing stays. Except the wall. Except. Inside his head is a kaleidoscope suddenly.

Victor's face above him when he woke up this morning. The walk to the rink, an arm thrown over his shoulders. Skating back to him after warm-ups. Fighting in the hallway. The worried look in Victor's eyes. About Maccachin. (About him.) The knowledge Victor hugged him tight before leaving, but everything is a wave of cold numbness. He can't feel that in his head. Victor's arms. (The last time Victor kissed him.) Can't hear the sound of his voice.

For a moment everything is White. Brown. Grey-Silver. Blue-Green.

Silence screaming from every pore. Numbness spreading like a disease.

Before, just as suddenly, in what must be seconds but feels like years, feels like making Yuuri reorient with more unprepared pain for the shift of the wall, again, when Yuri pushes inward, grabbing the empty air (and suddenly it isn't, suddenly the door is back, suddenly the knob is turning under his small pale hand), and Yuuri can't tell if being sick might be easier.

Easier than watching the knob turn. Easier than hearing the cold-bite to Yuri's voice has returned.

(He's made a fool of himself. He's not supposed to have wanted. Not supposed to have gotten up. Not supposed to--
Everything is too bright, too solid. Except him. He feels so small. Paper thin. Insubstantial. The idiot Yuri always calls him.)

The door opens on the hallway they'd come from, when Yuri pushed them in here instead of into his own hotel room. Yuri ordering him away, and the insult (to his being weak and being it in Yuri's presence again) is there, he's sure it is, even when, for some reason, Yuuri can't ask about or look to or point at, he doesn't tack it on to the beginning or end of either of his hissed sentences.

Yuuri nods, whether he meant to speak completely irrelevant to his mouth --

(He will go to bed. He will skate tomorrow. Victor or Mari or his parents will call when they can.
Even he doesn't believe his own lies, even if none are lies, when he says them this time.

Everything will be the way it was always supposed to be before they came here.)

But he doesn't move.

And there it is at last: the anger. Beautiful, blissful anger. It burns away enough of Yuri's extraneous emotions to show him an escape route, a way out for both of them -- the second in as many hours. He's got one chance to make this moment work .

His free hand catches hold of the upper back part of Katsudon's arm, right below the shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make it clear that this isn't a opportunity to do anything but listen.

'So now you have our schedule, yes?' he says in firm English, forcibly overriding any lingering translation magic provided by the bar. Their shared second language sounds rough and crude after the fluidly translated Russian he'd been speaking for the past however many minutes, but that's most of the point. It's unmistakably Yuri Plisetsky's voice ringing out in English in the empty hotel corridor, deliberately pitched for an unseen audience. 'If you're late, we'll leave without you. Now get the fuck out of my room -- I want to sleep.'

His grip shifts, switching to a hand at Katsudon's back. And there's just enough pressure to propel him forward, into the corridor, without actually shoving him head-first out the door...which, coming from Yuri, might as well be gentle guidance.

All the same, he doesn't shut the door just yet. He waits, one hand on the door and one on his hip, allowing the anger to settle on his face in his natural flat stare. It remains to be seen whether he will have to literally kick Katsudon's ass down the hall and fling him into an elevator before they can both pretend that they'll be getting any sleep tonight.

(Viktor would have handled this better. Made it look easy. Made it look natural.)

(Viktor isn't here.)

Edited 2017-03-21 13:47 (UTC)

Contact is a shock. Another in the dozens and dozens that seem to be buffeting through him like strong, bone-cold, winter wind. But the pressure (real pressure, not quite to pain, but real, unimagined, this time with a location, a reason, a pintpoint exactness, when his eyes find the hand on his arm) helps. Oddly.

Easier not to question why. Answers haven't been forthcoming for minutes.
(Even Milliways, the impossible place where nothing is impossible, said no.)

The English is rough, ruthless in his ear, all harsh Russian accents (nothing like the glide of Victor's inflections). Demands his attention like the hand on him. On his arm. Then his back. Not asking, because Yuri never asks. But even more than the original, hard order, made even harder.

Because Yuri wants him out of his room, his space, near him, too. Like he's sullying even the air. There's a part of him trying to say that's absolutely normal. The same as every other time he's been near Yuri. The same as Hasestu months ago, and those seconds right before his skate today.

Except.

Minutes that feel like more years. He remembers that face. The one Yuri made.
He remembers the tea, and Yuri talking about them together. Wishing him luck.

(Except.

It doesn't want to hold either.)

It doesn't matter (or it matters more than he knows how to translate with everything else he doesn't know how to translate, suddenly feels like it's all in a language he's never been taught) because he's already stumbled the propelled steps in the hallway. Found motion again. The lights too bright for late night, and there's only one place to go.

(Their room.
The one Victor arranged.
The one Victor won't be in.

The one Victor won't return to.)

Not yet.

Or is it -- not still?

He looks back over his shoulder, searching for something, the words Yuri had just said maybe. Newest insult jangling ice shards into everything else nebulous and overwhelming everywhere -- he's suddenly so tired, in every bone, made of bricks (not music) even if he's sure sleep won't come easy. But he remembers anyway. The words. The insult.

"I'll be there." It's deflated, even unwavering.

Before he does turn back toward the hallway and start walking back to the elevator.

Edited 2017-03-21 14:42 (UTC)

Yuri watches him leave. Stands there in the doorway, making sure that Katsudon doesn't turn around, doesn't need anything else from him -- but then again, why would he?

'Fuck you, Viktor Nikiforov,' he whispers in Russian, the barest exhale of breath, and he has to close his eyes because they're starting to burn. From exhaustion, of course.

When he steps back into the bar and shuts the door behind him, everything feels detached, slightly out of phase. But he can't leave just yet. He started this whole thing, and he has to finish it. The empty teapot and cups go back to the bar proper. While he's there, a muttered request for a bag of ice, which appears without fanfare or comment. The coldness radiates from it into his hand as he carries it back to the door, and he takes out his room keycard again.

Outside. Close the door. Hear the locking mechanism click with an unpleasantly final sound. Look around, pretending as if he'd heard a noise or something.

(Katsudon's gone.)

Swipe the keycard. Open the door...and it's an empty hotel room once more.

The next time he gets a bright idea about helping someone out, he'll keep it to himself.

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Moscow (and Milliways): Rostelecom Tea Time [1.08-1.09]

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