CHAPTER THREE HUNDRED FOURTEEN

Refusing to let Yuri walk on his own, Viktor carried his husband through the gap in the rink wall proudly, pausing and leaning only to let the man grab for their jackets and blade-guards before walking back into the Players' Club proper. Onlookers smiled and shook their heads at the pair, many musing about how much things had changed in the last year, watching the once-social-butterfly and the once-fly-on-a-wall focus so much on each other. By the time the pair found their way back to the couch they'd claimed with the rest of their things, Yuri had tossed his team jacket over both of their heads, creating a sort of flimsy wall between them and everyone else, and it was all too easy to guess what they were doing behind it. Viktor at least managed to sit them down again so they wouldn't run into anyone, wedging themselves into a corner of the couch with the jacket draped over top.

Yuri still held onto the black and red Russian team jacket, but as he felt the cushions come up under his back, he lost his grip on the four rubber bars he tried to hold in one hand, and all of them went tumbling to the floor at the silver legend's feet. He let go of the coat soon after, hands clinging to the man's back instead. His legs were still together where he'd been carried before, curving up against his spouse's side, careful not to move them anywhere and risk bumping naked blades against something or someone unsuspecting. He felt an eager hand coming down his ribs though, sliding past his hip and down the underside of one thigh, only to stop there, the passion of those hidden kisses coming to a halt as well.

"What's the matter...?" Yuri wondered nervously, feeling that the moment had been ruined by something he wasn't aware of yet, like Viktor was going to break some kind of devastating news. He could feel the warmth of the man's breath on his lips, but Viktor had effectively become paralyzed...at least, until he started moving again, lifting up onto his hands and pushing away from him. The jacket slipped off the Russian's silver-haired head, leaving it slightly messy as those blue eyes stared intently forward.

"...What?" Viktor asked stiffly, giving a smile that could kill.

"There's literally three performances left before we all go out there and you picked now to start making out?" Yurio asked defensively, standing about four paces away, staring at the both of them. He'd changed while the duo were on the ice, and stood before them in black pants, a white shirt open to mid-chest, a black t-shirt under it, and black suspenders, "Go get ready!"

Yuri pulled the jacket off of where it had landed half-covering his face, tilting his head back to spot the blonde. The unimpressed visage on the teen's face was obvious even if he was upside-down from Yuri's vantage, "...Sorry..."

"Where's your shadow?" The elder Russian asked, speaking the words in a tone like Yurio had better go find her (but more importantly, to go away,) and went to pull the dark colored jacket up again to sneak his head under it.

The blonde just deadpanned the both of them, giving a mental countdown from three before stepping forward and grabbing Yuri by one of his upturned legs...and pulled him down the length of the couch, right out from under the jacket-shroud and Viktor's affections. Yuri, to his horror, could only make a face and let it happen, going limp as his leg was tossed over the opposite arm-rest. Emerald eyes hawkishly looked down at the both of them again, and the teen crossed his arms, spying one of Viktor's eyes peering, unimpressed, through a gap in the jacket, "As slow as you two go, we'll never make it out onto the ice. You'll end up doing the Team Skate in the same outfits you're wearing now."

"Would that really be so horrible...?" Yuri asked nervously, still lying limp on his back, hands up on either side of his face, "It's just a different shirt for me, and him not wearing that vest." He pointed a finger at his husband, who by that point had resigned himself to his fate and had propped his wrist up under his chin.

"Go get changed already!" Yurio insisted again, pointing at the big restroom door not too far away, "You can do whatever you want to each other when we're done!"

Viktor was pouting, about to mutter something under his breath as he heard the familiar pitter-patter of small feet coming up behind him. Without moving where his elbow was perched on the arm-rest, he pivoted his head and looked at his cousin flatly, "Young lady, your charge has escaped from your authority."

"My what's done who?" Nikki asked with a squeak, "I'm not responsible for him!"

"She's younger than me." Yurio added, "I'm 16. I don't need a 14 year old watching me everywhere I go or telling me what to do."

"I'm turning 15 next month, thankyouverymuch."

Viktor turned his gaze back to the blonde behind him, "If there's anything or anyone who can tell you what to do, it's girls. Yuuko did it, Lilia did it after her...Minako's gonna be doing it soon, and that leaves..." He lifted both hands and presented the silver teen, "Nikkita Mikhailovna Rozovsky."

She just stood there quietly with an awkward smile on her face, cheeks a bit pink for being singled out, "...Mikhailovna...?"

"The music from the Pair Skaters is cutting off already! You have two shows left! That's like 10 minutes!" Yurio barked, hands gesturing towards the curtain.

"Why are you so worried about it?" Yuri wondered, twisting over a bit to fumble for the blade-guards scattered on the floor, "You haven't been this adamant towards us since you kicked Viktor and I out of the kiss and cry at Rostelecom last year."

They could practically see the smoke rising from the Russian Tiger's ears as his brain started to short-circuit from frustration.

Yuri just rolled over and dropped off the couch though, lazily 'standing' on his knees before crawling forward a bit to reach for that last blade-guard. He gathered the two up into one hand and turned again, sitting with his back against the seat of the couch and one elbow over his husband's knee, "Alright, alright...we'll go. But you should know..." He held up the two rubber guards in his free hand, pointing them directly at the perturbed teen, "...One day, when you've found someone, and you're in the middle of loving on them...one of us is going to come up and interrupt the heck out of it in the most embarrassing possible way."

Unsure how to answer to that, Yurio just pointed a tense finger at the bathroom doors again, snapping his arm out so fast it almost broke the sound barrier, and then abruptly started moving off again. Skates thunk'd along the wood-plank flooring as he headed back towards the curtain that lead to rink-side, leaving Nikki behind in his haste.

Viktor let out a dramatic sigh and leaned forward, his elbow sliding along the arm-rest until he was able to reach his free hand for the blade-guards still held by his partner. He slid them onto his skates, and sat back to unbutton the front of his vest, "I dunno what's gotten into him. He's never nervous before a show, but he's super nervous right now."

Yuri nodded and pushed up off the floor, sitting sideways against the front of the couch, about to say something but seeing the nervous look on Nikki's face just past Viktor, and paused, looking at her curiously. Viktor saw it and glanced up at the young teen as well.

She could feel the eyes on her though and turned to look back at them curiously, "I'll go after him in a minute. I'm curious though...why did you call me by the name Mikhailovna? That's not my middle name."

The Russian huffed a laugh, the last button undone, and he leaned forward just enough to shrug out of it, then sat back again, "Because that's what a Russian daughter would be called when her father's name is Mikhail. Sons do the same, but it's -vich at the end instead."

"So your full name...?"

"Viktor Konstantinovich Nikiforov." He answered, "I guess your dad hasn't told you anything about Russia."

"Aside from saying that's where his accent came from...not really." Nikki answered, as though suddenly that became a point of shame for her, "Anytime we asked, he always got really evasive, so we never asked for long. I'm kind of nervous for how it's going to be when we're all there in Moscow together tomorrow, especially since Minako's not coming."

"Given how thoroughly we've both faced the past there, it's probably not going to be as bad as you think." Viktor answered, "A lot of the issues that probably made him anxious about it have recently been resolved. The fact of my existence notwithstanding."

"So you had a rough time in Russia, too? You would've been right there in the middle of things as the Soviet Union collapsed."

Yuri leaned back against the seat, pressing his shoulder against the cushion as a hand went forward to settle on his partner's leg. So soon after NHK, I'm not really sure how he's processed how it all turned out. He's still coming off of 27 years of hiding how he really thinks and feels about things, and there's been so much else to think about lately... He gave a reassuringly gentle squeeze, one that the Russian watched before turning his attention back to his cousin.

"I was sheltered from a lot of the worst that went on." Viktor explained, "I know the facts of it all, but I can safely say that the worst of what happened was far away from where my family lived. My little town fell apart over the years, but no one was starving to death in the streets there. My papa did everything he could to maintain what we had even as things changed."

"That's probably the only real thing my papa ever really said about Russia. How worried he was for the people he left behind while everything fell apart, and he was safe and far away. He said once that it felt like lightning struck twice for his luck in avoiding catastrophes, but not for everyone else."

"...Twice?" Yuri echoed, "What was the other thing?"

"The Chernobyl disaster in 1986." She said grimly, then thinking, "...Cousin Viktor's almost 29...so that means..." She pointed at him, "You would've been born probably within months of it."

"Da."

Yuri gave a nervous look, "...I know a bit about that. Should we be worried...? All the stuff they've said just about Fukushi-"

"Worries for another day." Viktor cut him off and set a hand on his partner's where it was still on his thigh, feeling those fingers clenching a bit, perhaps without realizing, "The area I grew up in wasn't contaminated that badly."

"But it was still contaminated...!?"

The Russian reached his arms around his husband and tried to soothe him, stroking the side of his head, "Don't get so worked up. Nothing about me has changed. There were places in Sweden and Finland that got hit harder than my area. Besides..." He turned to face his nervous spouse and kissed the tip of his nose, "If Mikhail's not worried about it, then neither will I. The experience he had with his late ex-wife would give him more reason than any of us to be extra cautious about that sort of thing."

The worried look on Yuri's face wouldn't go away though, and his eyes drifted a little. He suddenly closed his eyes though and shook his head, looking past Viktor towards the young lady still standing nearby, "Nikki, I...we didn't mean to-"

"It's fine, really-" She waved her hands back and forth, "It'd be more worried about forgetting to change before your Team Skate."

"Oh!" Panic settled in even faster after that, and Yuri was up like a whirlwind, flinging his clothes off right there in the middle of the Lounge. Mercifully, it was just a required shirt-change, but being half-naked was still half-naked.

Viktor reclined back against the corner of the couch and watched adoringly, settling an elbow back into place and resting the edge of his jaw against the palm of his hand, crossing one leg over the other casually. It was fun to observe the hapless skater rifling through bags to find the garments he needed, having no clue how much or little time he had left. Still, Viktor smiled, "Behold, a more perfect man can't be found." He said quietly, gesturing out to his husband with a free hand, slate eyes turning slightly towards his cousin, "I found and claimed the best one."

Yuri suddenly lifted his head, realizing he was being gawked at, arms halfway through the white undershirt he was trying to get over his head, "...W-what...?" He asked pensively, feeling like a lab specimen under glass.

"Keep going." Viktor urged happily; Nikki was looking, too, but she was giving a nervous, uncertain look, unsure whether her older cousin was giving her permission to oogle or if she should just nod and smile at his descriptions, "Or you can take more off. I warn you though, if you do, we might not get onto the ice at all..."

The younger skater's face just went red, "Try to keep it PG13? There's minors around." He pleaded, finally getting his arms through the shirt and pulling it down over his athletic frame.

"No worries. I'll take great pleasure in undressing you myself later."

"I'm starting to wonder if you have a count-down going somewhere." Yuri huffed, a hand on his chest as he hunched over a backpack.

"That's not a bad idea." Viktor laughed, sitting forward to find the backpack with his phone, "How long do you think we'll be here? Thirty more minutes? Then ten back to the hotel..."

"You're about to get put on the naughty-list."

"There's a naughty-list?"

"There will be!"

The camera-flash half-blinded the young skater for a moment, and Yuri abruptly realized Viktor had taken a photo.

"LET'S GO!" Yurio's frantic voice suddenly yelled at them, "THE ICE DANCERS ARE ALMOST DONE."

"Shimatta...!" Yuri went back to panicking, pulling out the white button-down and frantically threading his hands through the sleeves. Buttons became impossible to do-up with his hands moving so fast, but mercifully, pale fingers came forward to stop him. Breath caught in his throat and he looked up to see those sea-foam blue eyes looking back at him, taking the task of those buttons from him and calmly threading each one through its respective hole.

"Calm." Viktor said quietly, "They aren't calling us up yet." Another few buttons, moving down gradually from neck to naval, "Deep breaths. I'm denying you permission to worry about things you shouldn't be worrying about anyway."

"But-"

Viktor leaned forward, the last button threaded, hands settling on his partner's chest as he moved in closer to one ear, "The only thing you should be worried about is how much I'm going to mess you up later."

"...Why do I get the feeling you're going to be buying me apology flowers again...?"

The Russian smiled innocently and kissed him, then reached for his hands, finding them just as Yuri had finished stuffing the hem of his shirt into his jeans, "Let's go show everyone what we've been planning since Bordeaux."

Nikki blinked at them as the pair headed for the curtain, "...Oh boy..."