Moscow: Pirozh-katsu!...and the Rostelecom Cup Free Skate (1.09)

[yuri_plisetsky]

To say that Yuri had been able to go back into his room and go to sleep after leaving Milliways was an accurate but misleading statement. He had indeed gone back into his room, spent ten minutes staring out the window at the Moscow lights as he iced his aching hip with the bag of fresh ice he'd grabbed at the bar, half-assed some stretches, taken a shower in water turned up as hot as he could stand it, pulled the blackout curtains over the windows, checked his phone alarms, and flopped into bed. Between the day's physical (and mental, and emotional) exertions, the scalding shower, and the several cups of mint tea he'd consumed, it was only a few minutes before his eyes closed. But the sleep that came over him was less like sleep and more like simply not-being-awake: it was a heavy, overwhelming sort of blankness that wasn't particularly restful or refreshing.


When his alarm goes off, shrill and disorienting in the darkened hotel room, it takes a moment for him to resurface from the blankness into a groggy half-awareness as he paws at his phone to shut off the noise. As consciousness trickles in, it brings with it a steady flow of memories of everything that had happened the night before -- Viktor, Yakov, Katsudon, the hotel, the bar, the door -- and Yuri grinds his teeth hard enough to hurt as he rolls over and pounds the lumpy hotel mattress twice with his fist.

Idiot. You idiot. Could you have fucked things up any more than they already were?

On any other day, he'd pull the covers back over his head and give himself five more minutes to wallow in his own misery before hauling himself out of bed. But Lilia is expecting him at her door in fifteen minutes, with all of his gear and a polite good morning for her. He can't sit around and sulk. Besides, there's still an asshole Canadian who needs taking down a peg or two or twelve -- and considering how badly he'd screwed up yesterday (on and off the ice) he can't afford to think about anything else.

Comments

[theglassheart]

Yuri doesn't take any offense or affront, or even show any embarrassment, in listening to how Yurio corrects the Russian in the first half of the word. Catching the the addition of the harder middle consonants of the original word with attentive interest. He knew where to shorten his own language, but not the Russian, and the word repeats a little giddily in his head, as Yurio looks surprised and pleased even as he tries the word out.

That makes his own smile soften, to something whisper small, but so genuine. The softest of echoes of it's earlier startled delight. Settling less in his face and more in strange new looseness of his shoulder, and the pink flush that finds Yuri's cheeks, without chagrin as he starts coming down. "да, do!"

They are delightful and Yuri's stomach rumbles with actual hunger with his unexpected seconds of happiness, even as everything quiets for The fact Yurioi has seen his grandfather (his ... De-ed-a-kah, his mind tries turning over the word) and it makes his next question a tentative assumption, based on Yurio's lingering brightness, even as he furtively looks away and back. "He came today, then?"

He knows, Yuri does, what it is to push yourself,

to shine like a star, willing to burn alive,




for the right person watching.

[yuri_plisetsky]

'Yeah.' Quietly, sending a little cloud of breath rising into the frosty air. 'I didn't think he would, but....'

Eat them, and do well in today's free skate, Yuratchka.

He had. He'd tried. (Do you have a death wish? Yakov had said, but he couldn't have been further from the truth.) And he had done well -- to a point. A personal best, but not the Rostelecom gold. But his grandfather had been there to see it, and when Yuri had come out of the locker room with his hair still damp from the showers and his silver medal stuffed deep into his jacket pocket, there were three people waiting for him in the arena's public lobby.

No words of congratulation or commiseration or critique from his coaches could compare with Nikolai Plisetsky's hand on his shoulder and the little understanding squeeze that had followed.

The cold air is dry, and Yuri has to clear his throat before he can pick up his train of thought again. 'I wasn't expecting him to bring those, either,' he says, nodding at the bag. 'But he likes to experiment with new things. I was telling him about katsudon in the car, when he picked me up from the airport the other day. Must've given him the idea for it then.'

He tips his head back, looking up at the small flakes of snow still falling from the sky. 'I mentioned that I'd had it at your place.'

[theglassheart]

He doesn't exactly love how he can feel the delight giving way to weight, as the topic turns the thing that holds it. The Cup today. The skate today. The paths closed and those left open for tomorrow, and next month. Not even if he started it. Not even if, without a word, it makes him relieved. Like a breath gets both let out and held in. Yurio had his grandfather today, and he'll probably have him tomorrow, and so maybe he can stop feeling guilty, too, for going.

But Yurio, also, did another thing for him. Last time an escape.
This time a gift. A birthday, and celebration for winning, gift.
A gift from his grandfather he was under no need to share.



But still had. Without anything to be gained.

It's enough to make that guilt well from a different spring.

"In one day?" Yuri's words are a quiet amazement. There's not a single thing he thinks he could make that he's been handed, aside from that open breakfast sandwich, that he's eaten since touching down in Russia. But to not even know what it looked like or to have had it, and he made it and made it like this? "He did a very good job. It's very much like it. He could use more--" But Yuri chokes a little at catching himself in offering to help correct or even imply any error of the man who did this for Yuri, without knowing it. Sullying any notion of his gratitude.

It's a little softer, even trying to push on, as an idea strikes him quietly in the next second. "There are some spices and ingredient if he's still testing it. If he can't find them here, we could probably have them shipped here?"

The internet was probably full of places Yurio could find them if he needed them, and recipes to tweak, too. But Yuri loved his mother's best, and if he was going to even pretend anyone knew better than the internet, it would have been her. She'd know what he needed, or they needed. (She'd love knowing all about this.) If they ever wanted any help to begin with, and he hadn't just stepped over the line unwittingly.

[yuri_plisetsky]

Yuri could be offended. It wouldn't take much effort; it never does. But Katsudon's still clutching the bag of pirozh-katsu like it's something incredibly precious, and he sounds so surprised (and even a little awed, maybe?) to learn more about it that it's worth giving the suggestion serious thought, rather than dismissing it outright with a cutting remark.

'I'll ask,' is what he says after a moment. 'I've only got an extra day here at home, after everything, so there wouldn't be enough time to have anything sent while I'm here. But Dedka...he'd want them to be the best. Like how your mother makes it. So...so I'll ask.'

One extra day. He's not free yet. Even after the exhibitions and the gala, there'll be press-cons and meetings and some awful dinner with the sponsors, where they'll be drowning in a sea of overpriced caviar and Yuri knows he'll eat next to nothing and let Yakov do most of the talking. Maybe he'll stare at some of the old drunks a little too long, just to see if he can make them squirm in their seats. (If that one piece of scum who was ogling Mila the other night is there, he'll definitely be in Yuri's sights.)

But it's only two more days. Two more days, and he'll be free. Yakov had promised that he could fly back to St. Petersburg on his own, have that precious extra day at home, if he behaved himself. And for that Yuri will be obedience incarnate...or nearly so. It's not like he's going to run off to another country again any time soon, after all.

The thought of Hasetsu strikes a dull note in his mind, and when he looks back at Katsudon there's a different sort of thoughtfulness in his expression. 'You're going home tonight,' he says. It's a statement, not a question.

[theglassheart]

Its the uncanniness, without quite having its own emotion, of how Yurio says it. Statement, not question. With no real indication of his thoughts behind it. It's that which makes Yuri's fingers tighten, shoulders push in, and his voice twist softer than it had been, even with a small nod, and he wonders even as he says the words, how it's possible to sound like he might both be apologizing or apologizing about not apologizing.

(He's going home to Victor.

He lost, but won. Narrowly.)

"In a few hours." And a good half a day, or a whole day, depending how you counted. Too long still, standing here in the snow, with the uncertain feelings of different guilts and yearnings, and the echo of delight drifting away with the falling snow, all tangled up together. In his head and on his tongue. Making him use Victor's words, like it somehow isn't a cover. "I should be there in time for us to watch the exhibition still."

[yuri_plisetsky]

'Like anyone who isn't a judge needs to watch that prick JJ for a tenth of a second longer than they absolutely have to.'

Is it bad, that that's the first thing he thinks of? The first words that come out of his mouth? If you're going to eat your heart out about it, do it somewhere other than the podium, Yakov's stern voice echoes in his mind. But if it wasn't right on the podium, it isn't any better here. It doesn't feel right in his head or his heart. And it's in the effort of casting around for something that does feel right that the next words out of his mouth come out with a sudden vehemence:

'He shouldn't have left you here alone.'

[theglassheart]

Yuri feels something, somewhere soften at the first words. He's sure, involved with watching it he'll watch whatever JJ's exhibition is, and even Michele's, not that either had been the point. It will be more because they are there, and because they will be bookends to the only reason he cares about the exhibition at all right now.

There's some part of him aware, he wouldn't really care otherwise.
He probably wouldn't watch it live, if he'd lost and he'd known no one here.
He'd have found it a day or two later, watching it with his blanket over his head.

It's a strange feeling. All of this, wherever they are now, that is still in the snow the side of a road, but is somehow changed, too. Especially when it comes a step out of context, and then, again, when Yurio suddenly snaps those words, and Yuri's eyebrows shoot up too high for a second. Not certain how to take it, or consider it something that ever held an option. Not even now, with how it turned out. There was only one option ever.

There's something solemn, even if it tinges disappointment. "He had to."

Not disappointment in Victor.

Disappointment in himself.
Responsibility for all that came after.

He should have done better. He should have found a way. Somewhere before he was in the middle of Yuri on Ice, gripping his performance like he'd never had to before. Before he was in fourth place, and sliding into the Grand Prix Finale on a five-hundredths of a point, and his earlier Silver. He has to do better in the next month. He has to do better at the Grand Prix Finale. There's no question that either now. Not if he's going to get the Gold.

But he has tomorrow, and whatever lecture Victor will have ready, and the next month for that.

"He called earlier." A point that might not need making. But. "Maccachin is going to be okay."

[yuri_plisetsky]

Bullshit, is Yuri's immediate internal response, and it wavers slightly when Katsudon mentions the dog but rehardens just as quickly. Yuri doesn't have to forgive anyone, excuse anyone, pardon anyone. He knows what he saw in the bar last night and on the ice this afternoon, and this familiar anger with its unfamiliar source has a weight like a silver medal around his neck.

'It still wasn't right.' Said with a fifteen-year-old's absolute, unflinching conviction in the proper order of the universe, in which Viktor Nikiforov's consignment to the outer darkness is the only fitting punishment for his sins. 'He left you here alone, and I couldn't -- '

There's no good place to go with that thought, because it spirals out in too many directions, none of which lead to anything he wants to dwell on. He's tired of feeling defeated. So he stops, and looks away.

The snow's starting to thin out, or perhaps the wind has shifted slightly.

[theglassheart]

If he's not entirely certain what to do, what to say, how to feel about last night and today where it comes to this. This dramatic, snapping, denial ridden, defense of himself before himself, but Yurio of all people, shift. That feels ... as fragile ... as undefined as Yurio's face shutting away to a side. It's not that he doesn't agree. He doesn't see that there was ever a choice, ever a chance Victor would stay, ever any possibility he would have ever told Victor anything but to go.

But it isn't right. Whatever the amorphous unshaped 'is' is. It hasn't been since Victor vanished into a taxi.
A bruise he's pressed his fingers to, just to feel the pain, feel anything real for hours and hours, while so much else went on.

It's the background for the confused surprise at Yurio's last word before he looks away. I, like Yurio (Yurio?) ... had to save him if Victor wasn't there, couldn't? Like Yurio ... had tried? Last night in Milliways. Before swearing and ordering him away, and ignoring him entirely until now. And Yuri doesn't think he's wrong, he's somehow impossibly positive in the confusion of feelings. That Victor is wrong. That Yurio would have watched him tomorrow, whether it was here or somewhere else, whether he'd made it, himself, or not.

And when did that happen? How ... and where ... and why?

But he did, they both ... cold comfort, but truth all the same and the only words that form -- "We both made it."
For better or worse, nothing is over yet. (And Yurio has his dead-kah. And soon Yuri will have Victor back.)

[yuri_plisetsky]

Again, Yakov's voice provides the unemotional counterpoint: Save it for Barcelona.

Because it's true. They'll both be there. And so will Viktor.

(And when he wins, everyone will be watching him.)

There isn't that much more to say apart from the obvious. 'I have to get back. Yakov doesn't know that I left.' But he lifts his chin then, and continues in a more admonishing tone, 'A taxi from here to the airport shouldn't cost more than 2500 rubles, maybe 3000. Fixed rate. Anything more than that is a rip-off. Get the hotel front desk to call for it, and don't let the driver touch your bags or he'll try to make you pay extra.'

He knows his city. Katsudon doesn't. And Viktor's not here.

[theglassheart]

The snow is still falling, catching in his hair and on his glasses. Melting into the smallest of blurs, while he stares. Confusion and curiosity, and uncertainty. Familiar weights, familiar gateways to every that he slipped for a second. Curling phantom fingers on his wrist, and this ankles. Stealing that cold stillness of the Russian night, and Yurio, into his chest.

Only staying there when Yurio says he slipped Yakov for this.

Except. Didn't he slip Yakov to come to Hasetsu, too? Isn't it nothing new?

"I'll ask," he says, and he means that he will (and means that he's still going to watch, and JJ has nothing to it, that it is all he can do now). But. He still tries to find something else, fingers still tight and secure on the bag in his hand. It doesn't feel enough, even as he means it. "I hope the rest of your time here is good."

Is less stressful.

With only one last skate, for winning.
With his grandfather, there and once it's done.



( ... with Yuri not here, giving him some -- misplaced? Is the word misplaced? Or is it, he doesn't know -- giving him a reprieve from Yuri's mental weakness, and Victor's sudden absence ... and this. Whatever this is. That is, or isn't? )

[yuri_plisetsky]

It is, perhaps, a bit different to be slipping out from under your coach's nose to go a few blocks from the well-lit competition hotel in the city of your birth, versus emptying your own bank account for a twelve-hour international flight to a town that most people couldn't find on a map. Yuri still doesn't entirely want to find out whether Yakov already knows he's missing.

(At least he can say that he was making sure that Katsudon figured out how to get to the airport by himself. From what little he saw of that incident in the kiss-and-cry this afternoon, he suspects that Yakov is going to be a bit leery of being in close proximity to Yuuri Katsuki unless a certain irritating Russian skater-turned-coach is with him.)

'It's home,' he says simply, with a small shrug. 'Doesn't have to be anything else.' He stuffs his hands deeper into his jacket pockets -- it's not the best outfit for the weather, but whatever -- and starts to turn to go. 'Later, Katsudon.'

He's not really leaving Katsudon alone this time, he tells himself. He's done what he came out here to do.

[theglassheart]

Yūri's bye is belated and quiet enough he's not sure it actually reaches the boy, through the snow or the sound of the cars driving beside the railing, anyway, as he stares at the shoulders retreating from him. There's some, also, belated to catching up with him, irony, that they would have to both go the same way, back to the hotel, but he doesn't move or even consider trying to catch up with Yurio.

He stands there, bag still tight, in one hands, watching him walk further and further away,



wondering if he has less of a clue what just happened as Yurio fades from view.

[yuri_plisetsky]

About an hour or so later, not that long before Yuuri's plane leaves the gate, a new Instagram post pops up on yuri-plisetsky.

It shows a unmade hotel room bed, with a white-blue-and-red Russia team jacket tossed on the turned-back covers. Yuri's silver medal lies on top, and there's a glint of light reflecting off it -- possibly from the camera flash, or the bedside lamp.

The caption starts with a string of little flag icons. The Russian flag first, of course. Then the Japanese one. Swiss. Thai. Kazakh. And last, the red maple leaf of Canada.

The text that follows is simple: Ready for Barcelona #КубокРоссии #Ростелеком #ФиналИСУГранПри #mосква #RostelecomCup #moscow #russia #gpf