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Here is the thing: Victor makes wearing a three piece suit with a peacoat and gloves look like he's half-naked on a bed. Victor makes being half-naked on a bed look like wearing a suit and peacoat and gloves. Victor is as fussy as a cat with his clothes and also wears practice shirts ripped at the elbow and clinging, transparent with wear, to his back.
Victor is unexpected and confusing, a mystery Yuri hardly dares hope he will ever solve.
"You confuse me too," says Victor to Yuri, calmly wrenching Yuri's leg into the furthest split Yuri has ever been in.
Yuri grunts in pain, and the words don't really click until Victor finally has mercy and lets his leg down to rest in a position that Yuri had thought was impossible but now feels normal and relaxed. Then he blinks. "How?"
"Hmm?" says Victor, and puts his hands on Yuri's shoulders, pushing down until Yuri's chest is flat on the ground. He leans over Yuri, holding him in the stretch with his presence rather than his weight. It's nice, though: Victor's warm, sturdy body covering Yuri's back, protecting him, but not entrapping him. Victor's hands are braced on either side of Yuri's. If Yuri really wanted it, he could tip his head back and Victor would nuzzle into the side of his neck with a tiny, delighted sigh.
"How do I confuse you?" says Yuri. He thinks he's pretty straight-forward, especially compared to Victor, who smiles and smiles and shows nothing. It used to be part of Victor's mystique for him. Now it's just another part of him, dear and cherished, and sometimes annoying. Yuri wouldn't change it though, not for anything.
It's really nice, knowing Victor like this, as a real living person who hates chocolate and sleeps with his dog in his arms like a teddy bear. That he's obsessed with the perfect selfie and remembers that Yuri doesn't like carrots. All of those things about Victor, that Yuri gets to find out every day, over and over again.
Victor sits up again, and Yuri is snugly enfolded in his presence as they lean back, back, until Yuri's chest is against Victor's back and Victor is resting on the ground. Victor smells like expensive cologne, even after a workout, an expensive, tobacco-y scent that keeps working its way into Yuri's scarves and coats even though Victor swears he's not touching Yuri's things. Yuri likes it, even as he pretends to complain about it. It's a shivery, secret pleasure to bury his nose in the neck of his shirt and smell the combination of his laundry soap and Victor's cologne, like they're a couple.
"You don't like getting up in the morning but you always are up and stretching at five am and trying to smile about it," says Victor. "You skate like you were born there on the ice, but then you trip walking across the room."
"I don't think that's confusing at all," mumbles Yuri. "I have to get up anyway, so why be annoyed by it. It's for skating."
"See," says Victor. He sits up again, so they're just sitting on the floor of the dance studio together. Victor pushes Yuri's legs together, so they are straight in front of him, and Yuri is leaning into Victor's chest.
If Yuri was braver, he'd admit they were cuddling, but it feels really nice and he's scared to think about what this means, Victor's arms around him, safe and warm, like they can stay like this forever, just them, in this little circle of light. His heart beats in a higher, keener throb than anxiety, like he's full of birds ready to take flight.
"I feel like a penguin," he blurts out.
Victor stills, and then lets out a huff of laughter that blows tingles into the side of Yuri's neck. "See, there you go again."
"I mean -- " Yuri hesitates, and then covers his eyes with his hands so Victor can't look at him. "We used to - Phichit and I - go to the zoo in Detroit and watch them sometimes. The penguins. They'd just, just waddle around on the ground squawking at nothing, it seemed like, and then when they went into the water it was --" He pulls his hands away from his face and describes the swoops and turns of the penguins flying under the water.
Victor reaches out and curves his hand under Yuri's and they make the swoops in tandem before Yuri drops his hand again.
"I never thought of it," says Victor, "but of course you're right."
"Eh?" says Yuri, twisting back to look at him, but Victor shoves his face forward and says, "Back to stretching! When I was your age I could put my legs behind my head and lick my own thigh."
"...please tell me you never told Chris about that," says Yuri.
"I'm not that stupid, even if I didn't go to college," says Victor. "Stretch, stretch!"
Yuri groans.
Makkachin likes steamed buns, Victor, digging up nasty pieces of dead crab on the shore and rolling in them, and also, rather surprisingly, Yuri.
For instance: Victor is practicing his (dreadful) Japanese on one of the guests, who finds it charming. Makkachin has climbed into Yuri's lap, all 20 kilograms of her, after dropping her brush pointedly on his hand, which stings like hell and will probably bruise. "Don't you get brushed enough?" says Yuri to Makkachin, but he picks up the brush anyway and begins making long sweeps down her back. Vicchan had adored being brushed too. It makes Yuri a little sad, missing Vicchan, but brushing Makkachin is relaxing after a long day. He nudges her and she flops on her back so he can brush her stomach. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is lolling open in a blissful dog smile.
She needs clipped soon. Maybe Vicchan's groomer is still in business. They could take her down there and get her done before the qualifying competitions and then when -- if -- Yuri starts the Grand Prix rounds, she'll be okay until they're back again.
"Ah," says Victor, looking toward them. "Makkachin really loves you, doesn't she?"
"Makkachin is a good girl," says Yuri, scratching her topknot gently with the brush. Her tail thumps against his knee. "Who's a good girl? You're a good girl."
"Yuri's always been good with dogs," says Yuri's mom, setting another container of sake in front of Victor. "Vicchan just loved being with Yuri. He'd even go to the rink with him!"
Yuri freezes.
Victor turns around and stares at Yuri. "What was that Mama said?"
Please stop calling my mother Mama, thinks Yuri despairingly. "I - she says my poodle liked me too. He used to go to the rink with me."
"But she said 'Vicchan'," said Victor. "That's what she calls me, right?"
Yuri buries his face in Makkachin's fur and takes a deep breath of clean, warm fur smell. "I, um. It's a nickname for Victor."
Victor is not stupid. He stares at Yuri for a second, mouth parted slightly, and then a slow blinding smile creeps over his face. "Did you name your dog after me?"
Yuri tries to suffocate himself in Makkachin's fur. He knows he's blushing, because anything makes him blush, especially around Victor, and thanks to the way he spent most of his time in ice rinks instead of outside getting healthy sunlight, it was always very obvious that he was blushing. "It was before I knew you!" he says. "I wouldn't do it now!"
"Yuriiiiii," whines Victor. "How could you! Mama, Yuri's being cruel to me again!"
"Yuri!" says his mother, as disapproving as she ever gets. "Would Vicchan want you to be mean to Vicchan?"
Yuri hugs Makkachin resentfully and doesn't answer. Makkachin licks his ear. Makkachin understands him.
The thing about Victor that Yuri never quite realized, though, is that he makes everything look easy and beautiful and graceful by sheer hard work. For every moment Yuri is on the ice, Victor is there with him, and when they're not on the ice half the time he's learning Japanese or reading books in Russian that turn out to be about coaching when Yuri secretly image-translates the cover, or exercising, or practicing at the barre of Minako-sensei's ballet studio. Victor practices everything, every movement, every motion of his wrist, every flick of his hand. Yuri isn't willing to swear he hasn't caught him staring into the mirror and flicking his hair out of his eyes repeatedly, with different smiles and expressions.
Then he goes on the ice and turns on the music and floats over the ice for five minutes as if he hasn't danced until his feet bled and his soles have bruised from the impact of his landings. Like he's Apollo, immortal, bringing the sun with him.
It's even more impressive to watch when you know the work behind it. Yuri watches him, heart beating faster than it ever had when he had watched Victor at twelve, at fifteen, even at twenty and twenty-two. It's beautiful because now he knows how Victor fights his own limitations every day, how Victor fights the relentless press of time like there's nothing between him and the dream of perfection that all of them, the entire sport, strains for every day.
"I don't think he ever gets tired," says Yuri to Phichit, when they're talking on Skype. "I think he sleeps about four hours a night."
"Well of course he must get tired," says Phichit. "We get tired. Everybody gets tired. Ciao Ciao gets tired."
"I don't know," says Yuri, rolling around on his bed. "He just doesn't seem to want to rest much. It's weird."
"Dude," says Phichit. "He's 27. He's won five Grand Prixes in a row. If he sits down, one of us is going to use his actual head as a stepping stone. Of course he doesn't want to rest."
"Rest when you're dead?" says Yuri.
"Rest when you retire," corrects Phichit.
What neither of them say, even though they're both thinking it, is that being retired is almost like being dead. Leaving the ice would kill something in them. They both know it.
Victor must know it too.
It creeps up on him, this feeling. By the time he realizes it's there, it's so deeply rooted that he knows he would never pull it out. He never wants to let it die.
One day he's looking at Victor skating aimlessly around and he thinks, "when I retire, it would be nice to teach kids, so Victor could coach them when they got old enough to compete."
The thought is so quiet and natural that it takes a moment to register that he's thinking something like that, and then he blushes clear to his chest.
"Yuri?" says Victor, skating close. "What's wrong? You're all red." He slides to a stop next to the boards, and touches Yuri's cheek. The coolness of his hand feels good against the heat of Yuri's skin, and for a second he leans in to it before he jerks away.
"N-nothing," says Yuri. "Just - I had a weird thought."
Victor studies him closely. Yuri's afraid he's going to tease him about it, or make a joke, but instead Victor says, "Come out here, let's skate together!"
"Eh?" says Yuri. The next thing he knows, Victor pulls him toward the entrance of the ice and taps at his ankle to make him lift his feet so he can take off Yuri's skate guards. He straightens up and catches Yuri's hands in his own and leads him onto the ice. They glide out, as close together as pairs skaters. Yuri's never skated this close to someone. It's thrilling and terrifying all at once, like landing a quad for the first time. Victor seems to be thinking the same thing, because he lets go and then moves behind Yuri, catching his hands again in a close dancing position.
"Victor!" says Yuri, as Victor leads out with increasingly fast, sweeping motions. Their feet are only centimeters apart. Yuri is sure that their skates will be tangled, but all he can do is clutch at Victor's arms. "What if we fall!"
Victor is silent for a minute, even thought he keeps up the pace, swirling in fractal curves over the ice. Then he laughs, a short, almost unhappy sound, and says, "я, похоже, сам втюрился."
"Eh?" says Yuri, trying to look at him. Victor turns him back gently, making him look at the ice. "What was that?"
"Nothing," says Victor. "I won't let you, all right?"
Yuri takes a deep breath. He relaxes into Victor's grip, and chooses to believe that Victor will never let him fall.