CHAPTER SIX HUNDRED FOUR

"...Okay...so let me get this straight."

Viktor was trying desperately to keep his laugh in. The projector screen was hovering over the thumbnail for 'Welcome to the Madness,' where the auto-play had been paused after the video clip ended. Nikki sat front and center, palms pressed together as she tried to digest what she'd just been shown. Minami was still a bit shocked by it as well, but his reaction wasn't the one the video had been shown for. His face was still a little bit flushed though; that Exhibition was every-bit the definition of the word. Phichit and Yuri had, of course, already seen it, so it was no surprise to see it again. Viktoria just shook her head, as though she'd expected nothing less.

Nikki drew in a breath, and lowered her hands forward as she gaped back up at the screen, "...After a Short Program about unconditional, pure love...and a Free Program to classical music...you did that." She assessed, and lifted her hands towards the screen, then turned towards Otabek and descended her clasped hands towards him, "And you let him put his fingers in your mouth."

Viktor lost it, and Yuri tried to stifle his cackles by squishing a pillow to his face.

"...Why." The teen asked, deadpanning, "Why in your mouth." She added, bobbing her hands to the beat of each word.

"It's an Exhibition." The Kazakh defended stoically, looking mildly startled, "The whole point is that you can do stuff you wouldn't normally do. I mean, that guy has done back-flips." He said, thumbing back at Viktor, who was wiping away tears from his eyes as he slumped against Yuri's back, "Those are absolutely illegal to do in competition."

"I don't recall seeing any shows where he stuck his fingers in anyone's mouth, or vice versa."

"You don't know I haven't." Viktor teased through his attempts to catch his breath and speak normally, "I've been skating for more years than you've been alive."

"That's beside the point." Nikki contested, and turned back towards Otabek, "I bet they were all salty and gross."

Yurio smirked deviously from his 'throne,' "With boogers. Just for him."

"Gross."

Both Russians were laughing at that point. Yuri could only shake his head in well-meant-but-half-assed disapproval. With Viktor trying to stifle his volume against his back, Yuri just leaned further into it, until he was draped sideways across Viktor's lap, and squished his face to Jiro's fluff in the corner beside them. The pup licked his forehead a few times and snuffled through his hair before turning his attention to his human's fingers.

"It's really not as bad as you make it sound," Otabek tried to defend, "I mean, the whole point of Yuri's show was to ooze sex-appeal."

"He was fiftee-"

"You're fifteen."

Nikki's face went pale in horror, "What. I'm more mature than every one of you guys put together!"

"I'm mature." Yuri contested from the silver-brindle fuzz.

"...Okay maybe more than everyone put together except you."

"Acceptable." Yuri mused, and relaxed again.

"Oh, we should show her the China Exhibition." Yurio suggested, lifting up the remote to do another video search, "That's the one where I fake smacked you."

"You would take some kind of sick pleasure in doing something like that." The silver teen huffed, and crossed her arms over herself, but kept her eyes up on the screen as Yurio loaded up the Exhibition clip.

"That was my idea." Otabek interjected, "It was my Exhibition. We'd been half-way planning on doing it for a while. I actually didn't think we'd get to until the Final, but he decided to come to China on a whim so it worked out."

"A likely story."

"Here, just watch it." Yurio goaded, poking his sister's shoulder with his foot until she swatted him away again. Eyes went up to the screen to behold the event, and the heavy metal sound of 'The Vengeful One' came into hearing. The beginning of the program featured just Otabek, but Yurio joined in rather quickly.

"I'm still surprised how you guys managed to pull that one off without having practiced it together before meeting that weekend." Yuri commented idly.

Yurio just waved him off, "Says the guy who spent half a day learning a whole program on the fly."

"Hey, Viktor dreamed the whole thing up; he practiced, I just did what he said."

Yurio quirked a brow at him, "That just makes it sound even more insane."

Viktor shrugged happily, "It's true though. I practiced it for months in the dream I had that night."

"Shht!" Nikki shushed at them all.

A few chuckles followed into the quiet, giving up the air for the music again. Viktor couldn't help but keep half an eye on his cousin though, since he'd already seen the show and knew what was coming. It was rather soon after that the 'fake smack' came into view, and Nikki had to put her hands over her mouth in shock at the sight.

"Itlookslikeyoureallyhithim!" She whisper-barked into her cupped palms.

"I felt the wind on it, that's for sure." Otabek added, giving the first glimmer of a smile at the description. Still, he had his arms folded over his chest as he kept watching, but Yurio spotted him and felt quite a bit more emboldened by the whole thing. The blonde hopped up to sit on his toes on his chair, and feeling the energy of the memory flowing through him like adrenaline.

Their side-by-side triple Salchow came and went, followed by the hydroblade, each skater arcing away from the other from the center of the rink, only to come curving back towards one another again. Their hands smacked together, and Yurio slid out into a circle around Otabek, who started to pivot on a toe-pick where he was. Yurio dipped down low with one boot in the air, the tips of his horns and hair tracing over the ice until he was hoisted back up to standing again and moved away, with the inertia powering him forward. A few lines later, they leapt through a pair quad Toe-loop, landing again in perfect sync with each other.

Minami's eyes warbled behind desperately-held-back tears. Phichit looked at him skeptically, but the teen mumbled in a quiet, squeaky voice, "I can't do half that stuff."

"Whaaaaat is that!" Nikki said, louder, in awe at the unexpected lift on the screen, "Look at that! You're even still turning while you've got him perched up there!"

"He weighs next to nothing." Otabek explained, "That was easy."

The demonic-looking Yurio on the screen pointed out at the audience from his perch on the Kazakh's shoulder before being spun back down to his own blades. It was only a few seconds before Yurio was lifted a second time, this time literally upside-down against Otabek's back.

"Holy cheeseballs. You're lucky he didn't drop you on your head." Nikki huffed, elbowing her brother's knee.

"I trust him with my life." He answered simply, watching as the image of himself was spun back around rather dangerously, and plunked back onto the ice like normal, "I wouldn't let anyone else lift me like that."

"I dunno, Mila could." The Kazakh teased; Yurio hadn't gotten to go far before his likeness on the projector screen pulled the blonde closer and then flung him upward into a triple twist, "Nikki saw that herself, first hand."

She waited a moment before commenting, watching in surprised silence as the Exhibition came to its close with a pair of butterfly kicks, before finally coming to an end with both skaters heaving for breath, standing back to back with one another. "Oh yeah, that lady from Team Yakov." The young silver remembered, and gave a goading sneer at the Russian Tiger, "She hauled you up over her shoulders like it was nothing. Otabek had to figure out how to get you down again, like he thought she was going to drop you on your head somewhere."

"Mila Babicheva-" He just bristled, squishing into himself, "More like Mila Baba Yaga."

Nikki deadpanned him, "What's a Baba Yaga?"

"Aren't you half-Russian? Shouldn't you know this?" Yurio taunted.

"Baba Yaga is a Russian folk-tale about a woods witch who lives in a house that moves around on giant chicken legs." Otabek explained stiffly, "Instead of flying around on a broomstick, she flies around on a mortar, and wields a pestle, and is sometimes said to be a cannibal."

"So you dated a witch." Nikki stated flatly.

Otabek tried not to react, but his stiff demeanor betrayed him and he cocked his head back to avoid smirking, "For like five minutes."

"I could've told you that." Yurio scoffed, "In fact, I think I did. Often."

"In a manner of speaking."

"Were you trying to sabotage him?" Nikki wondered, waggling an accusatory finger at the Tiger.

"I didn't have to. He was in Almaty. She wasn't. It sabotaged itself." Yurio defended, eyes closed as he avoided the judging looks, "...I...may have just helped it towards its obvious conclusion."

"I'll have you know, it wasn't so obvious to start." Otabek pointed out, "In person, things were just fine."

"I'm not sure how that could be the case." Yurio scoffed, "When Nikki and I told you to put yourself out there more, we literally just meant in public. You marched off to claim your woman like some damn caveman. It's no wonder it only lasted like five minutes."

"She already had a thing for me." He defended, looking a bit grim, "At least that's what Sara said. I gave it a chance but it wasn't the right fit for me. I don't know."

Viktor's ears piqued at the mention, "Mila did have a huge crush on you; I remember that." He ho-hummed to himself, looking up in thought, "Now that I'm thinking about it though, I can't think of any other time where I knew you were dating anyone."

"I've been busy. Jumping into Seniors took up a lot of time."

"...Jumping in?" Yuri echoed, "What do you mean?"

Otabek looked over, "The year you fell apart. That was my first year in Seniors."

Yuri just looked back vacantly, "...Why does everyone use my Sochi collapse as a milestone?"

"Cuz it's memorable." Yurio puffed, grabbing a pillow to toss at him from the nest, only to pause and look back to Otabek, "Wait...you only just got into Seniors that year?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You won Bronze at Worlds that year, that's why."

"And yet I was still being called a dark horse the year after."

Viktor mused at the memory of it, "Ah yeah, you were all super quiet and awkward at the champions' table for the post-competition interview."

"You and Chris are friends." Otabek pointed out, "I was the odd man out up there. It felt weird."

Minami collapsed into the pillow pile, trying not to be noisy as he sobbed, "I'm never gonna be half as good as all these guys."

Phichit leaned slightly closer, "I know those feels-"

The small teen just flailed and sat back up again rather dramatically, "You've made it to the Final two years in a row!"

"...and I was going to add that as long as you keep practicing, and keep trying really hard, putting everything you have into your performance, it'll pay off." Phichit explained, "When Yuri and I trained together in Detroit, I don't think either of us had any expectation that we'd ever get to the Final. We went four years without a whisper of a hint that we'd make it. Then, suddenly, Yuri got there on the 5th try. He came in last place."

"Hey-" Yuri grumbled.

"And then the next year, after everyone thought he was going to drop out forever, he not only came back, he got Silver at the Final...and then set a new World Record in Helsinki! You gotta keep your chin up!"

Yuri could feel his cheeks flushing even as he looked off indifferently while Phichit finished, but he felt Viktor shift under him slightly, and he looked back to the pair in the nest with the pups. He sighed and nodded, "...Phichit-kun is right. Plus, you're still pretty young...you've got the potential to go far, and you have plenty of time to get there. I mean, if you followed my timeline, you'd still have four years to wait before anything started to pay off. And I still have four more years before Viktor will let me think about retiring again."

"You owe me four more World Championship Gold medals." Viktor nodded sagely, "Otherwise, I'll have to send you a bill for all the coaching hours I've put into you."

Yuri deflated where he laid and smiled nervously, "H-hai...Biktoru-kōchi..."

"Oooh~! There's the accent again!" Viktor teased, reaching around to snuggle his beloved a bit closer. Yuri just whined and laughed and flailed at the ticklish touches going into his t-shirt.

"...It's going to be so strange to compete at the international level again." Minami added quietly, in part only to himself, "I mean, I did the Junior Grand Prix and Junior Worlds...but competing against kids is almost a joke, even if a handful of them turn out to be shockingly good."

"I thought I'd never hear the end of it from Yakov. Don't do this, you'll mess up your growing body. Don't do that, you'll screw yourself up for Seniors. Blah blah blah." Yurio complained, "It was endless. Not getting fussed at constantly by Okukawa is weird."

Viktor smiled but deadpanned at him, "Careful, Yuri, your head is going to get too big to let you out of this room later."

"You're the last person who gets to say that, Viktor." The Tiger retorted, only to settle back down into his seat and waggle the remote around again, "So are we going to watch something else or not?"

"I completely forgot what I thought we could watch, too..." Yuri said, still trying to calm down from the tickle-assault a moment before. He flipped over and pressed the back of his shoulders to the arm-rest, with Jiro squished into the small gap under his back, "I defer to my esteemed colleagues, so long as it's not another horror movie."

"What time is it anyway?" Yurio wondered, looking around.

Viktor pulled his phone up from a side-table, and clicked the face on, "Just about 8pm. Enough time for one more before I have to put my sick husband to shower and then to bed." He stated simply, and put the phone back down, "Right?"

Yuri huffed, "Among other things."

"Ooooooooo." Phichit laughed.

"There's children." Yurio harped, gesturing at Minami.

"I'm older than you are." The teen quipped nervously.

"Tut, nonsense. Shhh."

"Oh~ We may have to retire early in that case." Viktor teased.

Nikki just rubbed her temples, mumbling to herself, "More mature than him at least and he's twice my age."