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Yuuri can feel the ice on his back long after he gets up again. He’s high with it, dizzy with it, all through the gauntlet of congratulations, through the eyes on him and the fingers pointing at him and his name on everyone’s tongues. He can feel it. The ice, beneath him.
Victor, above him.
The day is a blur, and he lets it be that way. Only when the hotel elevator’s door closes behind him does he force the world into focus again. Because now, for the first time since the ice the kiss the podium the interviews, he and Victor are alone.
Victor smiles. “Good day, huh?”
Yuuri doesn’t pause. Doesn’t hesitate. Just reaches out, draws Victor close, and kisses him. Kisses him hard, with everything he’s got, savoring the feel of Victor’s shoulder blade under his right palm, Victor’s neck under his left, the way Victor’s lips part, the way his hand comes to rest on Yuuri’s waist, until Yuuri’s pulse is pounding so hard that he has to come up for air.
He pulls away, just a little—and Victor laughs. He laughs. Yuuri just kissed Victor, and Victor is laughing at him.
A cold ball of dread settles in Yuuri’s gut. Here he is, just blindly assuming he can go around kissing Victor whenever he wants, because, hey, if it happened once, it can obviously just keep on happening, and—
“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping away. “Oh, no, no, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” says Victor, suddenly serious.
Yuuri tries for a smile. “It’s just that I’m kind of an idiot sometimes, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but Victor clearly doesn’t take it that way. If anything, his expression grows even more serious.
Yuuri licks his lips and begins to explain: “I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” says Victor.
The elevator pings as it reaches their floor, and Victor steps out into the hall. Yuuri follows, and everything is quiet except for his heart pounding in his ears. He shouldn’t have kissed Victor. More than that, he shouldn’t have assumed the kiss on the ice was anything more than Victor putting on a show. Drumming up more publicity for Yuuri. Drumming up more publicity for himself.
Their rooms are just down the hall from the elevator. They reach Yuuri’s room first, and he pulls out his key card. This is where he would say goodnight, usually, but tonight he just says, again, “I’m so sorry.”
Victor raises one delicate eyebrow. “For what? For kissing me, or for second-guessing yourself after you kissed me? Because I think it’s the first one.”
Yuuri is going to die. He is going to melt into a puddle of goo and seep into the hotel rug and get vacuumed away in the morning. He slips the key card into the lock; a short eternity passes before the green light appears and lets him open the door and step inside.
“But,” Victor adds, “I think it should be the second one.”
Yuuri turns around. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean you have good instincts. You should trust them.”
“I… ah…”
Victor moves closer. Across the threshold of the hotel room and right into Yuuri’s space. Their faces are inches apart. Into Yuuri’s ear, Victor whispers, “What are your instincts telling you to do right this minute?”
Well, that’s easy. Yuuri’s instincts are drawing him forward, toward Victor. If instinct had its way, Yuuri would have already shoved Victor up against the papered wall of the hotel room and started kissing the living hell out of him again.
He fists his hands, trying to push the image aside, because there’s no universe in which he can tell Victor all that. The telling is even more impossible than the doing, and the doing is already too much to even consider.
He says, “Um.”
“No, not ‘um,’” says Victor. “‘Um’ just means you were thinking something that you didn’t want to tell me—so what was it?”
“I was… thinking… that I should get some sleep. It’s been a long day, and—”
“No.”
Yuuri blinks. “No?”
“I’ve been your coach for how long?” Victor says. “You think I can’t tell when you’re lying?”
Yuuri wishes he could see Victor’s face, but the room’s light switch is further inside, and Victor is backlit by the hallway light. It’s making a shadow of his face and a halo of his hair, and for a second Yuuri wants nothing more than to reach out and touch them both.
He doesn’t. Obviously. He doesn’t move at all, and he certainly, certainly doesn’t answer Victor’s question.
“What were you thinking?” Victor asks again. “And what are you thinking now? What are you feeling, Yuuri? What are you wanting?”
“I… I don’t know, I just—”
“You do know,” says Victor. “You want something now, just like you wanted something in the elevator.”
“But you didn’t!” says Yuuri, before he can stop himself. “So what’s the point?”
“Ah-ha,” says Victor. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What is it you think I didn’t want?”
Yuuri huffs. Isn’t it obvious?
“Me, kissing you. You laughed at me, so can we just stop talking about it and—”
“I didn’t laugh at you,” says Victor. It’s only five quiet words, but it shuts Yuuri right up. Victor’s head, still haloed by the hallway light, tilts slightly to the side. “I was laughing because I was happy. Couldn’t you tell?”
Yuuri’s heart catches in his throat.
“Or,” Victor continues, “maybe you could tell, but you’re so used to second-guessing yourself that you just couldn’t help it?”
“I’m not used to—”
“Yes, you are.” Victor moves even closer. They are just as close now as they were on the ice, and Yuuri can feel Victor’s chest rising and falling with his breath. “You said so yourself. You told me you lack confidence. You meant confidence in your skating, but it’s confidence in your own brain, too. And in your heart. All of it, together, because they’re all connected. Not just connected. They’re all the same thing.”
Yuuri doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think he could, even if he wanted to.
“But today, in your free skate?” says Victor. “You changed the program. You acted on instinct. You surprised me, and I think you surprised yourself, too. And it was the best, most beautiful, most honest performance I’ve seen from you yet. What does that tell you?”
“I’m… not sure?”
“It tells you that you should listen to your instincts.” Victor taps his index finger against Yuuri’s bottom lip: one tap for each of the last four words. “So, I’ll ask you again: What are your instincts telling you now?”
To run. To hide. To kick Victor out, lock himself in this room, and never come out again. But, once Yuuri acknowledges and discards each of those thoughts in turn, he finds another one hidden beneath them. One little thought that’s not nearly as loud as the others, but far more honest.
Yuuri steels himself and says, “I need to ask you a question.”
“Good start,” says Victor, his usual grin audible in his voice. “What is it?”
“You have to come inside first.”
Victor allows himself to be led inside, and the door swings shut behind them just as Yuuri finds the light and turns it on. He turns and faces Victor once again, and he straightens his spine and his glasses, and he takes a deep breath and asks:
“Were you putting on a show, or do you really want to… to be with me?”
“Both, obviously,” Victor replies with an easy shrug.
“Victor. Come on, stop joking. I really need to know. Do you want me?”
Victor’s diamond-edged grin fades into a soft smile: a thousand times less sparkly, a thousand times more sincere.
“More than anything,” he says.
The air hangs still between them, and for a second Yuuri can’t breathe.
Then he makes himself say exactly what he feels: “Me, too.”
“Really?” Victor asks.
Yuuri nods. “More than anything.”
Victor’s expression grows sly. “More than katsudon?”
Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Yes.”
“More than your precious, delicious, sexy katsud—”
Yuuri silences him with a kiss. And another, and another, on Victor’s lips and his cheeks and his jaw and shoulders and collarbone and he doesn’t give himself time to think, he doesn’t let himself second-guess, he just tastes and tastes and tastes—and Victor lets him. Victor holds him and touches him and guides him.
And Victor laughs.
This time, Yuuri laughs with him.