CHAPTER THREE HUNDRED TWENTY

A few final words to event staffers and farewells to known members of the press, and the room was growing empty. Yuri pulled his arms out of his team jacket and cast it over one arm as they stepped through the doors to follow after where Yurio and Otabek had both gone minutes before. He noticed, awkwardly, that Viktor kept to his right side as they left the room, putting him between himself and the Rozovskys standing a short ways down the hall. He couldn't help but catch a glimpse of Nikki waving at them as they came out, and gave a half-wave back at her quietly.

"I know you don't want to talk to your Uncle, but your cousins would probably want to say bye at least." Yuri commented, slowing his walk to a crawl.

Viktor glanced up and over, making unexpected eye-contact with the young teen, and found her practically galloping over to them before he had a chance to look away again. Viktoria wasn't far behind. Yurio stayed where he was though; saying goodbye twice would be weird.

"Cousin Viktoooorrrrrr!" Nikkita hollered, waving her arms excitedly as she got closer. Much like she'd done to her father upon their reunion outside her school, the excitable youngster leapt like a winter deer, straight at the wide-eyed Russian. Unlike Mikhail though, Viktor caught the girl and stayed upright, though he did have to let his spouse go in the process.

Through disheveled hair and a stunned expression, Viktor turned his eyes towards the girl who'd mashed their cheeks together affectionately. He haphazardly turned his gaze towards Yuri instead, unsure what to say or do.

"It's going to be two whole weeks before we see you again!" Nikki started, glomping onto the Russian treasure like a cat on a catnip banana, "I already miss you and you're not even gone!"

"Two weeks will pass like nothing for you guys, I'm sure." Viktor finally managed, "You'll have to forgive me if I wish mine lasts forever."

"I don't blame you." She mused, giving one last hug before squirming to be let back down again, "I've been meaning to say since we met up, even though it wasn't under the best circumstances..." She started, keeping hold of one of Viktor's hands as she spoke, "Thank you for giving us another chance. We kind of caught papa by surprise when we turned up in Calgary before, so we tried to keep our heads down, especially after Sergio rubbed everyone against the grain. We were worried you'd be mad to see us again...so...thanks for not being mad...or at least hiding it well if you were."

"I wasn't mad." The silver Russian answered, his expression a bit softer then, "Maybe if your brother had been with you, but you and your sister did nothing wrong. You've done a lot to help Yurio, too, which is something I failed at for a long time." He leaned down and set his hands above his knees, coming down to eye-level with the young girl, "You've helped put off a lot of the worries I had about Yurio wanting to live in our same city, so thank you for that."

"Yeah, he seemed pretty cantankerous in Canada." Nikki agreed, "Like he was too good for us."

"He can get that way with people outside the skating universe." Viktor noted, about to rise back up to his full height, but finding himself stuck in place when his cousin put her hands on his cheeks. Blue eyes blinked in confusion at her.

"I know you and papa are mad at each other right now, but please don't hold so much against him." She started quietly, a worried look on her face, "The mistakes he's making aren't something he's doing on purpose. He just...gets excitable, and stops thinking things all the way through. We've told him before that he's the dumbest smart-person we know."

"...Sounds apt." Viktor agreed, pulling free again as he reclaimed his height, and spotting his namesake as she finally caught up to them.

"Thirty hours to get back home." Viktoria started, "I feel sorry for you two. That's a long ride for anyone."

"It's a lot of hurrying up and waiting." Yuri answered, "We'll be spending 7 of those hours sitting around at layovers."

"At least it'll be some quiet time for you." She retorted, "After this weekend, I'm not sure that's all bad."

"Nah, it should be okay. Might even be like when we moved to St. Petersburg last year, right? Viktor." Yuri glanced up at his partner.

"Maybe. I just want to see Makkachin and get into that hot-spring." He answered simply, closing his eyes and smiling at the memory of his last soak, "I can't wait~! Depending on how I feel when we actually roll into Hasetsu, we should probably just go straight to Yu-Topia."

"If we go to Yu-Topia first, then I'm getting over my jet-lag there, too." Yuri laughed weakly, "We'll just have to camp out until we're rested enough to actually get all our stuff to our house."

The two beleaguered skaters sighed deeply in longing for the end of their journey.

"Safe travels then." Viktoria mused, patting them each on a shoulder, "We'll keep our Yuri out of trouble so you can look down on him on the Silver podium in Moscow."

Viktor just laughed at that, and gave the older teen a nod, "It's the natural order of things." He raised his hand then and gave a casual wave at the two girls, "À la prochaine."

"Au revoir." They both said together.

Viktor huffed a smile at that, and winked at them, "I almost forgot you were Canadians. Nous devrions parler plus souvent en français."

"Oui."

"I have no idea what you guys are saying but I'm sure it's important." Yuri grumbled.

Viktor just smirked and slid his arms around the younger man's thin frame, "We're just saying we should speak to each other in French more often, since French is a common second language in Canada."

"Starting to wish I was more than bi-lingual." Yuri pouted anyway, though only half-seriously, leaning his head back against the Russian's shoulder while the man was there.

"Maybe we'll teach you French while you're teaching me Japanese." Viktor offered, kissing a cheek quickly before looking back at his cousins, "We really should be going though. Be safe. See you in Moscow."

"Byyyyeeeee~!"

Yuri looked beyond the two girls to where Mikhail and Yurio had been waiting in the far background. He offered a wave, and received one in turn, but the awkward feeling of knowing Viktor was avoiding the older of the two made the whole thing hard to linger on, so he turned around soon after that. As they waited for the elevator that would take them back down to the lobby level, Yuri found his husband's hand, leaning against that shoulder, "Minako-sensei and Mari-nee-san should be in the air again by now. I'm kind of envious that they got such a big head start."

"Sou da ne..."

The elevator dinged and a set of doors opened, and the duo stepped within, finding their corner to wait for the descent.

"Their first big layover was just across the border in Toronto," Yuri continued, "But they got on their connecting flight while we were in the conference. Then they land in Haneda rather than Tokyo, then to Fukuoka. If they get there on schedule, it'll probably be dinner-time in Hasetsu when the train gets there."

"And we won't get there until the next morning." Viktor sighed dramatically, pushing off the wall as the doors opened to the lobby.

The concierge desk wasn't too far off, and Viktor reached for the luggage ticket in his long-coat, needing to wait only a minute or two before getting to the front of the line. Yuri looked at his phone while their things were brought up from storage behind the counter, checking Instagram for the first time since the weekend got off to its stormy start.

"Anything good?" Viktor wondered, looking back at him even as he was grabbing their three rolling suitcases.

"All of it's pretty good." Yuri answered, "It'll take hours to get through all of th-"

"...What happened?"

"...JJ DMed me." He said quietly, clicking into the message curiously, "A few times. First was to congratulate me on Silver, then he sent another one a few minutes later to say Gold instead. He...also says to tell you he's sorry."

Viktor quirked a brow, pausing at his task briefly before returning to it, "If he thinks he gets to take responsibility for how things turned out, he's dead wrong."

Yuri kept reading, "I think he's just apologizing for putting you through the trouble of what happened to me, not necessarily that he thinks he's the reason you stepped down at the end." Eyes continued tracking back and forth across the screen, "...He says he meant to say something when I went to see him in the hospital, because he knew why you weren't there with me, despite almost never leaving my side otherwise. It just took him all weekend to get the nerve to do it because he also knew I'd tell you what he said."

The Russian just huffed contemptuously at that.

"What was that for...?"

Viktor side-glanced before pulling up the telescoping handle of each rolling bag, handing one off before moving back towards the elevators with the other two dragging behind him, "The way he tells it, it's like he thinks he can't trust you, or that he would've expected you to keep his messages from me under different circumstances."

"...He didn't actually say that was why." Yuri made a face, "He said it took him all weekend to get the courage to figure out how he wanted to word his apology. I figured it was because he knew I'd tell you what he said." He put his phone away and hopped a few steps to catch up to his partner's longer stride, "Sorry to mention it."

The Russian stayed quiet after that, simply pulling the luggage along to take the elevator down for the parking garage. It took until all their luggage was stowed in the car and the two to get into their seats before he spoke again. He pulled the seat-belt across and clicked it into place, and then paused, hands on his lap rather than the wheel in front of him, though he did stare at it rather intently.

Yuri clicked his belt as well, and sat back, face turned slightly towards his sullen partner. He wasn't sure what to say or do, so he stayed as he was and waited nervously, hands lightly cupped together.

Viktor drew a long breath, eyes straight ahead still, "...You know what's happened to me over the course of my life." He started, lowering his gaze a little, "You've met the men who caused me so much trouble, and the man who put me in the hospital once for it. I'm the last person to brag about the kind of abuses I dealt with...but I think I would be justified in saying that those things were significant. Being so scared of what was happening that I completely blacked out during my NHK Short Program. But...of all the things I've gone through, of all the things that have happened to give me nightmares and flash-backs...nothing compared to how scared I was when I saw you hurt. I would rather relive all those past years a hundred times over again than...go through those ambulance doors and not know when or if you'd wake up. Not knowing if you'd even remember me, especially after you had that moment of amnesia back at Worlds..." He raised one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying not to let the tears escape his eyes, "I can handle a lot of things. But the one thing I can't do is lose you. If JJ thinks he can just DM you and say sorry like he thinks it will make everything okay again..."

Yuri reached across the center console and slid his fingers around the upheld right hand, pulling it closer to kiss the ring upon one finger, "I don't think he's that naïve. I do think it's a nice gesture that he was willing to apologize to you though."

Slate eyes glanced aside, but then turned forward again as Viktor curled his fingers around the thumb in his palm.

"What's done is done. He can't undo the past anymore than we can. Recognizing the mistake he made and telling you he's sorry is more than I expected, especially from him." Yuri went on, "All things considered, at this point, he's suffering worse than I am. He had to leave the competition, and he won't be back this entire season. He's losing out on the Olympics, too, and that opportunity will be lost for the next 4 years. He was too young to go to the last one. This is costing him."

"Rightly so."

"...Rightly so..." Yuri echoed quietly, lowering the hand in his grasp. He drew a deep breath and shook his head, "I don't want you to be mad because of this. We're about to leave. We should be relaxing, not brooding."

"...Sorry."

"Hey."

Viktor turned his head slightly, looking in Yuri's direction, but almost too ashamed to actually look at him. He felt fingers on his chin though, and he let them guide him around to the kiss that followed. He lingered in it as long as Yuri allowed, and opened his eyes again only after his husband pulled back.

"I'm okay." Yuri said, hand still cupped around his partner's cheek, "We are okay...and everything is going to be okay." He reassured, tilting for another kiss before returning to sit in his seat normally, and lowering his hand to its rightful perch on his husband's leg, "So let's go home."

The anxious Russian nodded, quietly drawing another breath before finally putting the key into the ignition and turning the car on.

.

.

.

31 hours, 27 minutes later...
Location: Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan
Local time: 9:42am

Hazy and travel-weary, the beleaguered skating duo finally disembarked from their last plane. They strode up the proverbial hamster-tube that connected the passenger area to the arrivals terminal, and immediately darted to the side as soon as they could, stretching arms and legs and backs and butts and shoulders.

Yuri rubbed his eyes, pushing his glasses up in the process, yawned, and reached for his phone, "I'm sure Yuu-chan and the rest are going to be here to meet us like before." He said, still yawning, eyes watering from how tired he was.

"And the entire JSF welcome home brigade." Viktor added, smiling despite his own fatigue. He looked out through the big windows that lined the exterior wall, the sun shining in over the plane and onto his face, giving his skin something of a morning glow, "I'm sure the crowd will be as big as it was when we came back from Worlds. Maybe even bigger."

"It's too early for that kind of attention." Yuri half-whined, slouching as he started walking forward, phone finally connecting to everything again after having been out of service while in the air. Unsurprisingly, he had missed calls and texts.

Surprisingly though...there were dozens of them.

"What in the world?"

"What is it?" Viktor wondered, pausing where he stepped, "Are the Nishigoris not coming after all? Or did we somehow beat Minako and Mari here?" He mused.

Yuri lifted the phone to his ear and listened to one voicemail in particular, a nervous look coming over his face, like all the blood was draining from it. He ignored all the other calls, and looked straight at his husband, "That was Yakov. He told me to make sure you call him before you do absolutely anything else."

"Yakov...?" Viktor was incredulous, "But it's..." He checked the time on his own phone as it booted up, only for him to be inundated by messages, too, "...Nearly 4am back in Moscow right now."

"He said to call as soon as we landed, no matter what time it was. It sounded pretty urgent."

"Yeah, he called me, too. I'll just ring him and find out what's going on." The Russian signed and grumbled a little, getting past all the clutter on his screen and ringing up his former coach. A flutter in his gut overwhelmed the hunger he felt, and the dial-tone played four times before it finally clicked and he heard the gruff older man's voice, "Yakov, it's me. What's going on? Why are you having to call Yuri to get me on the line?"

Yuri waited patiently, but anxiously. The butterflies in Viktor's stomach were nothing compared to the tornado of ICBMs flying around in his own.

"...Oh." Viktor said simply, "Why did they call you about it? They should've tried to call Yuri, technically."

The younger man quirked a brow, but then rifled through his voicemail inbox, looking for unknown numbers, but not seeing any. They were all from family, friends, Yakov, and numbers he knew were from the JSF. That just made him worry more though.

"I see." Viktor went on, "...Thanks. ...Yes, I'll be fine. Yes, it's fine. We just have the train left before we get home." His tone shifted from normal to irate, then normal again, "Of course not. This is Yuri's big shindig. I'm just his coach again."

Yuri swallowed nervously. The 'not knowing' was killing him.

I'm sure half of my unread and unheard messages are about whatever Yakov is calling about, but I want to hear it from Viktor, whatever it is...

"Of course I will. I...yes, obviously. Thanks. Bye." Viktor ended, finally clicking the phone off and putting it in his pocket.

"What was that all about?"

The silver legend shrugged, "The RSF kicked me off the team."

Yuri felt his heart drop through his stomach, "...What?"

"Or rather, they're sanctioning me for the rest of the season, and expect I'll retire at the end of it. I won't be competing at Nationals, or Euros, or Worlds...and I'm definitely not getting picked to compete for Russia in PyeongChang." He went on, explaining it matter of factly. He drew in a sharp breath through his nose and shrugged again before turning to find his husband's hand, "I guess that just solved all our problems."

"...But..." Yuri stammered, his voice barely a whisper. He felt a tingle in his head, and his hands went numb, such that when Viktor took one in his own, he couldn't even feel it to move his own fingers, "...I don't...understand..."