4When the door shut behind them, Yūri thought that he was finally safe. After blinding flashes of the cameras, never-ending interviews for television, newspapers and internet, congratulations, hand-shaking and back-tapping, he could finally lock himself here and didn't need to see anyone. Not this evening, not this night, maybe even not tomorrow morning. The door isolated him from all sounds, as well as all other stimuli that could invade his personal zone. Here was quiet, soothing... yes, safe.
"Yūri...?" Victor's soft voice made him remember that the thought of a perfect shelter was, after all, quite naive.
The hotel room could protect him from anything but himself - and Victor, who shared it with him. It felt good to run away from everything else, to leave behind all that outer layer of life called the world, but he realised that he wouldn't stop feeling this tension accompanying him... for how long, exactly? An hour? One week? Since Victor had become his coach? Since he'd seen him for the first time?
He turned the lights on, took off his shoes and moved into the apartment. He brought only one thing with him - the silver medal of the Grand Prix finale competition, that belonged both to him and Victor. Even if Victor had said that he was only interested in gold... The thought made Yūri smile, although that funny feeling in his chest and that strange sensation under his skin didn't diminish, not for a moment. He unzipped his sweatshirt and grasped the disk; he couldn't just stop staring at it. He was still able to be happy with it; he still didn't feel sorry for those decimals that cost him gold. He wished he could stay like this… He wished he could forget that part of him that always called for perfection.
He took the medal off and placed it on the bedside table. He still couldn't believe it was really happening, this and other things. He still didn't take it wasn't a dream he would soon wake up from. Only... Wasn't it going to happen, really? He would rather think of the medal, for it seemed to him that if he started thinking of something else, he would, for some reason, fall to pieces. Even though the medal was a real thing, didn't it mean some kind of end...?
"Yūri," Victor repeated, but Yūri only shook his head and sat down on his bed, suddenly unable to look at the man.
Victor sat down, facing him, and said no more - and it distressed Yūri the most. He'd rather focus on himself, tried to dive into his own solitary world, yet silent Victor at the edge of the bed, at the edge of his visual field and consciousness kept distracting him. He wanted Victor to say something and, at the same time, he wished Victor didn't. Victor, who could babble of everything and nothing, convey the strangest truths about life with that merry affectation, beam like the sun and laugh like the happiest child in the world, and always, just always, say what he thought - that Victor was now sitting before him without a word.
Was he angry? Displeased? Disappointed? Yūri thought in the well-developed and practised for twenty-four years pattern that always urged him to place blame on himself. He could hardly remember what Victor had said just a few hours - an eternity - ago: that he would resume his career yet continue to coach him. He could hardly remember those months they had spent together - even though they were the most intense months of his life - as if they'd left no mark on him. He despised himself for it... and understood it, too. He'd always been ready for the end. For parting. For being pushed away. He'd always tried not to get involved. He knew that, had people knew who he really was, everyone would reject him. He was unable to like himself - so how could anyone like him? Impossible.
"I don't want you to hate me," he said unconsciously, wondering why he felt like his heart was going to stop. "I know it will happen one day."
He'd never got used to Victor's speed and to Victor always surprising him. The next moment Victor wrapped his both arms around his shoulders and crushed him in an embrace.
"Why do you think so bad of yourself?" Victor whispered in his ear. "Why do you think so bad of myself?"
"I don't think bad of yourself," Yūri gasped out through his clenched throat. "I'm just... scared."
He was scared. Of everything. He was scared of what was outside the door and what was between them here. He was scared of Victor and of himself. He was scared of change and of nothing ever changing.
"How can I ease your fear?" Victor asked, and Yūri felt tears flowing to his eyes.
Such words were the worst. They exposed him, tore down the barriers he'd been erecting for years. He couldn't trust those words, no matter how much he wanted.
But Victor kept going, "What do you want me to be to you?" he repeated the question from a few months ago, evoking the memory of the Hasetsu Bay, singing of the gulls and rustle of the waves on the shore.
Yūri pressed his eyes shut, his heart full of sweet pain and painful sweetness. He knew he had to resist it. He knew he had to protect himself from what Victor said and from Victor himself. He had to free himself from that embrace that defined his world and laid the foundations of his new life, while some part of him knew he couldn't trust it. If only he could lift his hands, put them on Victor's chest and push away... It was as feasible as a quintuple jump. He could only weep, and he despised himself for it as much as everything else.
"Yūri, what should I do to make you believe that I love you?"
He blinked. In his mind, the lights went down and the shadows died - only Victor's face was left and those words still hanging in the air. So unexpected, so easy...
It was different from those compliments Victor would shower him with. Different from those sneaky and subtle strokes that Victor would tease him with. Different from that kiss Victor gave him out of his incredible perversity. All that was Victor's way of being, part of his personality, that had fascinated Yūri since ever, so integral as his smile, as his laugh. All that was just a joke.
But those words, spoken here and now, sounded with a steely confidence, and no matter how much Yūri tried to convince himself it, too, was a part of the play, the gaze in Victor's eyes was dead serious.
Did he expect an answer? How could one even answer that?
"If needed, I'll spend my whole life, every day, every hour convincing you of it," Victor said, and there was still that force in his voice that kept amazing Yūri. "But you have to give me a chance. You have to be there, here, beside me, next to me, so that I can convince you."
Yūri blinked again, suddenly realising everything seemed to escape his perception. His heart was pounding like mad in his chest, making him tremble all over, making it hard to breathe. Had Victor just said...
"Can you repeat it?" he whispered.
"I love you," Victor said without hesitation, looking him in the eye.
Yūri kept staring at him and felt empty. He'd imagined this scene so many times. He'd dreamt of Victor Nikiforov saying those words to him. And now that it was happening... He didn't believe; he didn't want to believe, which was just the same. Now that Victor had really said it, he, Katsuki Yūri, could think only of himself.
He was the most wretched being in the world.
He shook his head and started to move away, but Victor grasped his hands.
"I'll tell you this in ten languages and convey in thousand other ways. Stay with me."
"Why me?" Yūri whispered involuntarily.
Victor looked at him as if he'd said something ridiculous.
"Because it's you, Yūri," he answered, although it was no real answer. Then he lifted his left hand, still grasping Yūri's fingers, and turned it so that the light glistened on the golden ring. "Why did you give me this?"
Yūri opened his eyes wider and shook his head again. He didn't know, not this moment, although two days ago it seemed so obvious.
"I consider it your wish for us to be forever together," Victor answered for him. "A promise. A wow we made to each other. Do you want to stay with me? Can I stay with you, Yūri?"
Yūri was staring at him and couldn't comprehend the words. He only felt the barriers he'd worked so hard to build being shattered one by one. He knew that the last one would fall soon, and nothing will be left to protect him.
And Victor wouldn't pull back. He would never retreat. He leaned towards him and touched his forehead with his own.
"Sometimes I can't understand you, but I want to always support you nonetheless. Sometimes I don't know what's going on in that head of yours, but I still want to always be within your reach to be able to comfort you. I want to be by your side in any way you need. You're much more complex person than I am, Yūri, and getting to know you isn't an easy task, but I do want to learn about you, want to know you through thick and thin. Not to hate you, Yūri, but to love you even more, although at this moment I love you as much as possible. But I want to love you more tomorrow, and even more the day after that. That's because, Yūri, you only need unconditional love."
Yūri twitched. Something stirred inside him, some long-forgotten desire.
"There's no such thing as unconditional love," he said in a quiet voice. Never before had he been certain of anything as much as this... and never before hadn't doing so filled him with such a despair.
"You're right," Victor agreed, and that truth hit Yūri like a gale. "But I have only one condition: stay with me."
Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me. Victor kept repeating this, and it banged against his last barrier like a hurricane until Yūri could hear nothing else.
"Don't push me away, Yūri. I can't imagine anything worse than that."
The wind stopped. The silence fell, and the air turned crystal. Everything was filled with the gentle blue - the colour of real and perfect calm that Yūri hadn't really known. It suppressed all defiance, extinguished all arguments; resisting it was destined to fail, even though he senselessly attempted. His heart was fighting his mind, and his mind was fighting his heart, and he didn't know which was right, which was trying to protect him - but now it no longer mattered, for Yūri understood. He knew better than anyone that being pushed away was the worst thing in the world, and it always governed his decisions. He couldn't do it, not to Victor, who was his only light. He might be the most wretched man, but he couldn't hurt Victor. This one was obvious to him.
He nodded. It required all his strength to do so. The relief in Victor's eyes was so honest, so real that he wondered how could anyone feel so happy - and because of him.
"Can I stay? Can I spend this night with you? And my whole life?"
Yūri nodded again, and it was easier this time. Although he still wasn't sure about that 'whole life'... It seemed too long time to decide about it with just one word.
Victor stared at him as if he hesitated about saying more - he? hesitate? how strange - and then, of course, decided to do it. "Then, even if it takes twenty, thirty, fifty years," he stated with resolve, "I won't stop trying and hoping that one day... you would say the same."
Yūri straightened his back and looked at him in disbelief... and then he lowered the last barrier.
"Victor, are you stupid?" he asked without thinking, but even as the words escaped his mouth, perplexing Victor completely, he knew it was the right thing to say. "I've been loving you for half of my life already. You can't expect me to stop now? To ever stop?"
It took him a while to realise it was one of those rare moments he could surprise Victor. And then he saw Victor's eyes fill with tears and almost felt confused. Stupid Victor, there was no reason to cry... But Victor moved his fingers over his own cheek, gathering the moisture before it made it way down to the jaw and dropped on Yūri's lap.
He shook his head, embarrassed. "I'm so..." he started.
"Happy," Victor said, looking at him with an absolute admiration, and Yūri decided the man was right.
Victor took his both hands to his lips and kissed them. "Me too," he said, and his smile was brighter than sun. Then, however, his gaze became deeper and almost pained. "Then... What do you want me to be to you? Tonight, now, this very moment?" he asked softly, but no words could be more clear than that.
Yūri took a deep breath, suddenly feeling like the strongest man in the world. He moved closer to Victor's face and touched it with his trembling hand, just like he'd always wanted to do. And the he kissed his lips, tasting new tears, but he no longer felt mortified about them. He shook his head and dared the greatest impertinence.
"I am much more experienced in this love, Victor," he whispered. "Thirteen years. I loved you already when you didn't even know about my existence. Just today, let me give you a little part of those thirteen years... though I've no other experience," he finished more softly than a breath and kissed him again.
"I think we'll manage," Victor said after another moment of eternity filled with sunlight, and his voice rang with laughter.
Yūri's lips twitched in a smile. He could believe the sun would never set.
They managed. They did things Yūri had always desired and things he'd never imagined. Things that made him wish the ground would swallow him up and that he wanted to shout out to the whole world. Things that made him laugh and cry, embarrassed him and gladdened him, and above all filled him with happiness as immense he feared he wouldn't be able to contain it. Victor took him in the place with no-one but the two of them, place that fear and doubt had no access to, with only delight of being together and sharing one with the other, warm and perfect like the sunlight. In that place Yūri could believe it was all real and would last.
"Thirteen years, hmm?" Victor murmured in his hair when they were lying in the bedclothes, and the world had again shrunk or expanded to the hotel room.
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Then you already know what unconditional love is, Yūri."
Yūri blinked and then looked at him in disbelief. Yes, sure, it had been unconditional love - but was there anything strange about it? No, it;d been perfectly obvious. Since it was Victor. Victor, who just had to be loved. Perfect, bewitching and adorable Victor, who deserved only love. How could one compare Victor to him? The very thought was absurd.
Victor read his expression correctly.
"It's exactly the same with me," he said.
"But... it's completely different," Yūri said weakly.
"It's not different. It's exactly the same, Yūri."
"But..."
"Exactly the same. You'd better believe it, for a start."
There was a funny sensation in Yūri's chest. Victor hugged him tighter.
"I don't know about the others, but for me, Yūri, you are the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most loveable person in the world... No-one else, only you."
Yūri stared at the darkness, knowing that taking that truth in would last a longer while. If he managed, it would be like a first step on the way to his own salvation. Victor had to have the final word anyway.
"I'll make you believe it one day," the man who was his whole world and whose words and actions had a power to heal, said to him. "I promise."
"All right," Yūri replied and realised he couldn't have answered any other way.
He decided it was a good day to start believe the promises.
