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“Yurik, we have a problem.”
Yuuri exits the bathroom to find his husband shouldering the far hotel bed, mouth pulled tight, red-cheeked and grunting as he angles all his weight into the pliant mattress. “The bed’s stuck,” he announces after a full minute of fruitless, straining effort.
Yuuri blinks once, twice. “Yeah,” he agrees when his brain has recovered enough from the sight of Viktor’s flexing pecs—visible beneath the dip of his deep v-neck—to recollect the functions of spoken language. Yuuri sits at the foot of the nearest twin bed and pats the spot next to him. “They tend to do that in America.”
Viktor accepts his invitation and slumps into the vacant space, leaning his head on Yuuri’s shoulder. “But, why?”
“To preserve chastity?” Yuuri jokes, dabbing at Viktor’s dewy forehead with the cuff of his jacket. “They probably assume two guys reserving a room with a pair of singles aren’t in a relationship.”
“So they’re in the business of cuddle-blocking friends?” Viktor demands. “And what kind of straight person requires a chaise lounge and David Hockney prints?” He throws out his arm, exasperated. “Hockney, Yurik.”
Yuuri shrugs and Viktor flops back on the bed, groaning. “Americans are repressed.”
Yuuri pats Viktor’s knee. “Don’t worry, I’ll still check under your bed for sulfates before we go to sleep.”
“For the millionth time—” Viktor wraps his arms around Yuuri’s waist and drags him down next to him—“that’s not how they work.”
“I’ll protect you from the scary sulfates,” Yuuri persists, tousling his fingers through Viktor’s hair.
Viktor wrestles Yuuri under him, ruffling up his hair in retribution. “My only fear—” he says, trapping Yuuri’s head between his forearms—“is the poor night of sleep I’m going to have without you playing ‘The Tale of Zelda’ at my elbow till 3 am.”
Yuuri nudges at Viktor’s stomach with his knee. “You know it’s ‘Legend,’” he says, straightening his glasses when he’s released. “How do you think I’ll feel, having to sleep without you snoring in my ear?”
“I don’t snore.”
“So that recording was—”
“Bears, I told you.”
“Ah right, the famous Russian apartment bears.” Yuuri offers his hand to Viktor and pulls him up from the bed. “It’ll be tough,” he concedes, squeezing Viktor’s hand before releasing it, “but it’s only a few days. We’ll live.”
“You jinxed us,” Viktor calls from the bathroom the next morning, dabbing concealer into his undereye circles.
Yuuri turns his head into his pillow, mumbles something that sounds like, “technically, we’re not dead,” even though he feels like he is.
“Mmhmm,” Viktor hums. He plods back into the room and plants himself on the side of Yuuri’s bed, creeps his cold, roving fingers under the back of Yuuri’s shirt to trace the bumpy landscape of his spine. “Tell that to my complexion,” he says, leaning down to kiss him.
His breath smells like unwashed mouth and coffee and his stubble is rough against Yuuri’s cheek. It’s the most comfortable Yuuri’s felt since turning in three hours after Viktor the night before. His eyelids start to droop so he pushes himself up, fighting against every traitorous fiber of his being coaxing him to stay there—to trade being a functional adult for being a well-rested one.
“Vitya,” Yuuri grumbles the second night of their stay, “your elbow is in my ribs.”
“Your ribs are in my elbow,” Viktor rebuts. He sits up and runs a hand through his hair, sighing. He and Yuuri have spent the better part of an hour trying to negotiate the breadth of their shoulders in the space of one narrow twin. So far all they have to show for their efforts is a colorful collection of bruises from falling off the bed and increasingly thinning patience.
“What if we hold hands?” Yuuri suggests after he is nearly kneed in the crotch for the third time.
Viktor moves to the spare single and they stretch their arms over the bedside table, clasping their hands in the center. Yuuri smiles at Viktor from his pillow, and Viktor rubs his thumb across Yuuri’s knuckles. The arrangement works—uncomfortable but bearably so—until they actually start to drift off. Yuuri is sinking into a recurring dream involving a troupe of costumed, dancing bears when their joined hands slip and knock the hotel-provided phone to the floor, upsetting the silence of the room with a clamorous crash and proceeding shrill dial tone.
After that, they decide to separate for the safety of themselves and their surroundings—the consequence of which is another sleepless night, punctuated by intermittent sighs and at least one short-lived, exhaustion-born breakdown.
Yuuri zombie walks into the bathroom the next morning while Viktor fights a losing battle with his darkening eye bags. He wordlessly wraps his arms around Viktor’s waist, presses his face into his spine.
“Yurik,” Viktor pets the crown of his head when the telltale steady whistle of Yuuri’s sleep-breathing permeates the air. Yuuri raises his head—slow-blinking and disoriented—and Viktor pointedly ignores the wet spot of drool sticking his shirt to his back. “I’m booking us a different room.”
Yuuri shakes his head, rubbing a fist into his eye. “It’s a waste of money.”
“You can’t put a price on sleep hygiene,” Viktor argues because really, they’re not in their early twenties anymore. All the coffee in the world notwithstanding, they can’t rebound from an all-nighter like they used to.
“One more night,” Yuuri bargains for the sake of his frugal upbringing more than anything.
Viktor agrees because compromise is a cornerstone of healthy relationships, but he regrets it when he has to make a fourth call to the concierge, requesting yet another delivery of pillows with the excuse that he can’t sleep unless completely sequestered like an infant in the womb. He’d worry about his reputation, but it’s nowhere near the most far-fetched demand the media has purported he’s made.
“This isn’t going to work.” Viktor adds the newest bundle of pillows on the cushion mountain crammed between their two beds.
“It’ll work,” Yuuri assures him, spreading a blanket over the top to create the illusion of a perfectly flush bridge between them.
It doesn’t work.
Their bodies manage to sink into the chasm of pillows for a good six inches before the buoyancy of the cheap cotton catches up to them—springboarding Yuuri headlong into the bedside table and dropping Viktor to the floor in a newly formed crevice on the side.
Viktor scrambles to his knees, pushing pillows out of the way with one hand and rubbing at his sore back with the other. “You okay, angel?” He asks when he unearths Yuuri, hissing at the beet red welt swelling at his husband’s temple.
“Mm,” Yuuri groans his discontent, kicking a pillow near his foot. “Tired.” He leans into Viktor’s chest and Viktor wraps his arms around him, propping himself against the side of the bed. He rubs his hand up and down Yuuri’s back, intending to lull him into a drowsy enough state to be lured into bed and a restful night of sleep, Viktor cradling his head and snoring into his ear or no.
He recalls the old adage about the road to hell’s paving company when he wakes the next morning—sore and uncharacteristically drowsy—piled in a disheveled tangle of limbs on the floor.
“Yurik,” Viktor whispers, voice thin with exhaustion. He shakes Yuuri’s shoulder, brushing his thumb over the creased corner of Yuuri’s eye when he starts to stir. “Yurik, we fell asleep on the floor.”
Yuuri grumbles and takes Viktor’s hand in both of his, pressing it against his face.
“Can I book us a new room?”
Yuuri exhales. Viktor can feel the warmth of it against his palm. “You can use my card.”