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.

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[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