CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY TWO

There were only two halls that separated where Viktor had been from the place he was going, and while Sophia skulked about 15ft behind him, he pulled his phone back out from his pocket. He quietly admired the phone-case for a moment before pulling up the contact information for the person half of it belonged to, and set the device against his ear.

Yuri was down a different corridor when he felt the familiar buzz in his pocket, pulling out his phone and looking to see it was Viktor calling. He stopped where he stood and tapped the touch-screen to answer, holding it up to the side of his head, "Hey."

"Oh, there you are. I can see you from here." Viktor answered, causing the younger skater to lift his head and look around, "Other way. Warmer...warmer...ah!, there...see me?"

Relieved, Yuri clicked out of the call and pocketed the device again as he came trotting over. He hardly slowed down as he came in close, snaking his arms around his husband's chest as he collided with the man, and buried his face against his shoulder and neck.

"Don't look now, but..." Viktor whispered, returning the hug as well as he could with his phone-hand, "Sophia's a car-length away to my left."

Brown eyes shot open, but Yuri did his best not to look like he'd heard the words. His fingers clamped down a little harder around where they held to the Russian's coat though, at least until he consciously forced them to let go. He pulled out of the hug a little bit, just enough to bring his right hand around to cup around his husband's cheek, fingers curled slightly around the back of Viktor's neck, barely touching silver hair as he looked into those blue eyes, "Does she know that you know she's there?" The younger skater asked quietly.

"Da, I told her to follow." The older one answered, still whispering, "That's why I called you. I had a feeling that my uncle couldn't keep you tied down for long, and I didn't want to talk to her unless you were there."

Yuri felt a wave of relief, and he lifted himself up onto his toes to kiss his husband right there in the middle of the intersection of hallways. Both arms came up over the Russian's shoulders as it went on, and it emboldened the young skater when he fet Viktor's own arms coming around his frame to pull him closer. Viktor loved every second of it, especially when they heard some passers-by whistling at them.

Sophia was just looking away nervously, one hand up with fingers to cheek and forehead as she shielded herself from the sight. It almost seemed like forever before they finally stopped, since she glanced up three times before they were done. Her face had gone a little red when she thought she'd seen tongue involved, but she wasn't about to look again just to be sure.

The Asian skater reached to pull at the rolling suitcase in his left hand as he took his husband's with his right, and they quietly started walking back towards the Russian team's benches. Viktor looked away only to set his phone to silent and put it back in his coat pocket, and he turned his eyes behind him just to see if Sophia was even still there. To his wry amusement, she was, but she was looking at the ground and fidgeting with the microphone in her hands as she followed. A small part of him felt a little bad for subjecting her to the kiss, but the feeling was fleeting, and it was gone entirely when he saw Yurio and Mikhail in their little corner of the hall.

"See?" The elder Russian pointed out to Yuri, "Nothing happened."

Viktor tried to stifle a laugh, but chortled to himself quietly a little in spite of his efforts. Yuri just smiled, stepping aside just enough to give Mikhail a clear view of the woman behind them.

"...Mhm. Insert foot in mouth." The Russian said, mostly to himself as he deadpanned the situation.

He watched quietly after that as Viktor set his things down by Yurio's, and sat down as Yuri pulled the rolling case in front of himself. A few clicks, and the hard plastic cover was open, revealing the dark-leather boots with their Russian-flag insignias on the heel and their golden blades. As Viktor pulled one ankle over his knee to start untying to laces to his shoes, his words went out to address the pensive woman still standing at a slight distance.

"So you interviewed Yuri yesterday. That means your English has gotten better since we last spoke." He started, turning blue eyes up as he pulled the first shoe off, "Am I right?"

"...It has."

"Mh. Your accent is still pretty thick though." He nodded, moving on to the other foot as he handed the shoe to his husband, "But you didn't know Yuri's situation, which makes me wonder what you've been doing the last year or so."

"I haven't paid a lot of attention to skating stuff for the last 6 years." She admitted, stepping a little closer so they wouldn't have to speak as loudly, "The last event I actually watched was the GP Final in Sochi, and that was only because a friend made me. The announcer had said you'd just won your fifth consecutive year there, so it seems like you've done well for yourself."

Yuri felt a pit in his stomach to be reminded that anyone watched that event, especially this particular 'anyone.' But, he waited quietly, sitting on the bench next to Viktor with one leg on either side of it as he waited to take the second shoe. The suitcase with the skates was open next to his right leg.

"Yeah, the five years before then were pretty good." Viktor followed, trading the second shoe for the first skate, "You don't sound like you know what happened after that though."

"I've been busy."

"Da?"

Sophia got a little anxious and looked up, crossing her arms so she held to her elbows in front of herself, "My daughter started kindergarten, an-"

"Daughter?" Yuri was making a face at her, his tone accusatory.

Viktor laughed, but nudged him slightly, "Kindergarten is for 5-year-olds, not 8. Relax. I might've been stupid when I was younger, but by then I wasn't that stupid."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was I a huge mistake for you then?" Sophia growled, looking straight at him with her brow furrowed.

"I said I was stupid, not you."

"That's not what it sounded like."

"You weren't a mistake." Viktor said, his tone a little exasperated, lifting his head from where he was tying his laces, "I was referring to the Pair Skater I had a fling with when I first got into Seniors. I'm sure I would've heard something about it by now though if anything unintentional came out of it." He turned his eyes back down to his skate and continued pulling the loops through the eyelets, "In either case, you were saying...you've been busy. You have a kid now."

"Oui." Sophia answered, still a bit tense, but trying not to give herself away, "The last thing I heard from the skating world was that you'd quit and moved on to other things, so I was a little surprised to find out you were competing here."

"I took time off; I didn't quit." Viktor clarified, tying the laces and taking the second skate from Yuri, pulling it onto his other foot, "And I did that so I could be a coach. His coach." He nudged his head to his husband, "If Sochi was the last thing you watched then you know how he performed back then."

"Yeah, he performed like most other skaters. His score was only bad compared to yours."

"...It was a 100 point difference..." Yuri grumbled to himself quietly, crossing his arms as he narrowed his eyes, "More than an entire Short Program..."

"Then how do you feel about how he took Silver at last year's GP Final and then Gold at Worlds after that?"

"I guess that means you're as good a coach as you are a skater." She answered, "Shocking no one."

Viktor huffed a laugh to himself, tightening the loops on the second skate, "And what if I said I was a competitor at that particular World Championship?"

"You're saying he beat you?"

"He did. Fair and square. I set a new World Record and he knocked it out 10 minutes later."

Sophia had nothing to say to that.

Viktor had slipped his arm over to pull Yuri closer, nuzzling against his hair, "He broke my old Free Skate record too last year." He pulled up a little to thumb over at the blonde not far behind him, "That one broke my Short Program record. It was a really weird year."

"You broke it again at Worlds, idiot. You and your quad Axel can bite me." Yurio grumbled, lacing his own skates.

Mikhail laughed at that.

"...Quad Axel?" The woman echoed, "Seriously?"

"Yeah...I'll show you when the rink opens for warm-ups." Viktor said, rising back up to his full height to start stretching out his legs, "I don't do it in my actual programs now."

"Why not? It'd be worth more than any other jump."

"Yuri asked me not to." He shrugged, "Don't you remember how hard it was for you to do the triple?"

Sophia narrowed her eyes at him slightly, "How could I forget? The triple ruined my career."

Yuri looked up quietly from where he was putting his husband's shoes away at the bottom of the suitcase, trying not to look conspicuous.

...The triple Axel is one of my favorite jumps...

"You're the one who pushed me to do it." She went on, "I was content with the double."

"...If I knew your knee was going to blow, I wouldn't have suggested it." Viktor said, letting go of where he held his foot up behind him to stretch his quads, "Have you been blaming me for that all this time?"

"...A tiny little bit."

"That's hardly fair." Yuri blurted, but then sitting up and putting a hand over his mouth like he had meant to think it rather than say it out loud.

Two sets of blue eyes looked down at him after that.

He just grit his teeth, closed his eyes, and crossed his arms, resigning to take responsibility for his words, "I wanted to learn how to land a quad flip and Viktor supported me, so now I can land that and a quad Lutz. When he came to be my coach though, I couldn't even land a quad Salchow. I had to beg a teenager to teach me that; one that hadn't even made his Senior debut yet at the time."

"Yeah, you were pretty terrible." Yurio commented, rolling out his stretch mat on the floor, "How did you even make it to the GP Final the year before that when all you could land was a quad toe-loop anyway?"

The Asian skater pointed at him, feeling a slight surge of confidence, "Let's not forget that I can do more jumps than you can now, Mr. 'I just learned to land a quad Flip this season.'"

"Tsch...as if I have anything to feel bad about. Did you even have quads in your repertoire when you were 16?"

Yuri deadpanned him, and he slouched comically, "...That's so cold..."

Yurio's teasing dug in deeper though, "Viktor had to talk me down from doing quads at my last Junior World Championships."

"That's because you wouldn't listen unless you were bribed first." Yakov pointed out, not even looking up from the newspaper he was reading while the whole conversation was taking place.

Viktor huffed a laugh as he heard it, leaning slightly to grab his other foot by the blade and slowly inching it up his back as he stretched it out, "You make it sound like it made winning Gold that year so difficult without quads."

"It would've been a lot easier."

"Hmph, maybe." He shrugged, the blade-guard just behind his head by that point. Slate eyes turned back to the anxious woman standing 6 feet away, "Anyway...given how you'd been acting this whole time, I've guessed that it wasn't your idea to come to this event."

"And you'd be right."

"So how'd you get here? Between you and your entourage, it looks to me like none of you are even versed in this sort of thing." He let go of his skate and pulled that same knee up in front of himself instead.

"I'm on temporary assignment. The crew is borrowed." She explained, looking away as Viktor switched legs again, "I normally work behind the scenes. I've never done interviews before."

"Why now?"

The woman held her arms closer and looked down, drawing in a sharp breath before looking the Russian straight in the eyes, "Because Linette told everyone at work that you'd been assigned here for the Series and made a huge deal out of how we used to be together. She normally does the on-camera reporting..."

"Linette..." Viktor repeated, thinking it sounded familiar, but then realizing, "Oh, she was the one who told me, as I recall the words, to 'screw off and leave you alone' with your own phone."

"No, that was Anthy. I felt terrible about it for a long time, too."

"You never said anything."

"She blocked your number before she even gave me my phone back." Sophia explained, "Told me to let you go once and for all instead of dragging it out like I had been. Anthy wasn't a skater so she didn't know who you were. To her, you were 'just some clingy ex who wouldn't move on.'"

Viktor paused, unsure how to respond to that. His eyes went down and to the side a little though.

Yuri just glared from where he was still sitting on the bench. When he saw his partner's head turn, he rose to stand and wrapped his arms around the man, continuing to glare at the woman who'd spoken the words. If he were a cat, his ears would be flat against his head and he'd be spitting hisses by then, but since he wasn't, all he could do was stare.

"Her words, not mine." Sophia explained, not that it made much difference, "Anyway...Linette was supposed to be here with me to do all the actual talking, but she got strep-throat and hasn't been fit to come, leaving me to do this by myself. I tried to get off the hook, but her boss was too excited about the whole thing to let me go. Next thing I knew, they had posted a big ad on the site about you being here, and I was told that if I bailed, it would make the network look bad, which could cost me professionally."

"You've been mostly avoiding me since you got here." Viktor pointed out, patting where Yuri's arms came around him so he could let go, "I overheard how you'd keep going out of your way to make sure we never ran into each other, especially after we did yesterday."

She sighed and nodded, "I thought if I avoided you, I wouldn't get in trouble later. No one can say I wasn't here, but you're perpetually swamped by ISU and actual sports media...if a little local journalist couldn't get close, that wouldn't be my fault."

"No one would believe that." The Russian huffed, crouching down on one side as the opposite leg stretched out next to him.

"Maybe."

"Do you really hate me so much that you'd put your career at risk just to avoid talking to me?"

"I don't hate you."

Yuri got anxious again, Here it comes...

"Then why be so passionately against meeting with me?" Viktor asked, casually sliding over to switch legs, fingers balancing him on the ground as he looked down.

Sophia got pensive again, turning side-face, "I never wanted to leave you to begin with. But you were falling apart when my knee thing happened. You never wanted to admit it, but you only ever had one true love in the world, and that was the ice. Who was I to stand between you and that?"

The woman's choice of words made Yuri think back on things Viktor had told him. When he saw the man's eyes glancing back at him just then though, and then felt one hand coming to rest on, and gently squeeze his knee, he knew it was true.

...He loves me more than skating.

The younger skater softly returned the gesture by placing his own hand over his husband's, then let him take it back so he could keep doing his exercises.

Sophia looked up at the ceiling, "I tried to move on after that...found someone else for a little while, tried to start a family, got a regular job that entirely took my mind off of what had happened before...but Linette just brought it all back. Even after all this time, I knew I'd eventually have to face it. I just didn't think I'd have to do it alone."

"What did you think was going to happen? That I'd beg to have you back?" Viktor said, almost too stiffly for anyone's tastes, "And you'd have to find some way of saying no, like it was so hard for you?"

"I don't know that I would say no if you did." She answered, equally as rigid, "But you're already married so what difference does it make?"

"None, I guess."

"Would you have wanted to pick things up again?"

"That's a shitty thing to ask when Yuri's right there." Yurio pointed out, not even looking up from where he was leaning down against one out-stretched leg.

"No, I wouldn't have...and I don't." Viktor answered rather quickly, like it took no thought at all.

His response took Sophia by surprise, but not Yuri; though he was glad to hear it. The not-really-a-reporter watched quietly as the Russian stood back up again to tug an arm in front of his chest and pull on his shoulder, "No?"

"The fact that I'm in love with Yuri now doesn't change the fact that you threw me out before." He explained, keeping his eyes down as he rolled that shoulder before pulling the other in front of himself, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. What would I have gained from trying to restart a relationship that had already failed once before? I would've spent the entire time worrying you'd just do the same thing to me again at the slightest hint of a problem." He paused for emphasis, but then stared at the woman straight-on, "I can't trust you the way that I did back then."

The words stung, and Sophia looked a little hurt, but she shook it off as well as she could, "Then why the tears yesterday?"

"You hurt me in a way that no one else ever had. Seeing you just reminded me of that pain, and for a little while, those wounds were fresh again. That's all."

"...Oh."

"The ice rink is now open to all athletes of Men's Singles Group 1. Will Group 1 please make their way down to the arena floor." An announcement came through the overhead speakers.

Viktor rotated both arms in slow windmills, then twisted his back a little bit before turning to his husband, "Time to go."

"Mh."

The Russian looked back over his shoulder as Yuri rose from the bench, "I'll do your interview after my Free Skate, if you want."

"...Okay."

"À tout de suite." He said simply, then turning away to put his hand lightly to the small of Yuri's back as they headed with Yurio and Yakov to the rink-side doors.