The other skaters are still wearing their warm-up jackets, but Yuri has already shed his, leaving it in Victor's care until his performance is over and he needs it before the sweat chilling on his skin catches him a cold. It's back on a chair nearby, where it will soon be joined by the tissue box and water bottle, but first, Victor checks him over with a perfectionist's eye. "You look great."

He's a comma of black ink sloped against the rink wall, one lean line from the top of his head to the bottom of his skates. Victor is only human, but he tries to shove his appreciation for this picture (he wants it painted, he wants it emblazoned on the backs of his eyelids: his normally awkward and uncertain and endearingly mussed Yuri, slicked back into this sinuous creature) to the back, focusing instead on purely critical observation. " –– wait."

One of those laces is coming untied, and he steps quickly forward and sinks to a knee, trenchcoat puddling around him, as his gloved fingers make short work of the loosening laces. It's an unusual thing to do, but only when he stops to think about it –– he'd have taken a hand off if somebody had tried fiddling with his skates right before a competition –– but he knows Yuri.

And Yuri trusts him.

It's there in the bland way he watches Victor fix the laces, fingers tying a quick and solid knot, still leaning against the wall. There in how he meets Victor's eyes, and there's no question or worry, only firm determination, and Victor finds himself smiling back, a sharp, heated expression totally unlike his usual casual warmth.

Eros is a grenade, and Yuri is about to pull the ring out. Only the two of them know what will happen next, and Victor, kneeling here before his skater in front of live cameras and an audience of thousands and the entirety of his home country outside these few walls, is more than ready to let it all explode.