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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.

Comments

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.

[theglassheart]

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.

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.

[theglassheart]

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.

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.)

[theglassheart]

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.

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.