*

Victor clutches his silver medal in both hands as Christophe tries to peel one of them free to shove a flute of champagne into it. "Live a little, darling, you were a marvelous success!"

"I stood next to Yuuri Katsuki on the podium!" Victor looks at Chris with wild eyes.

"You did! As did I." He taps his bronze. "You even spoke to him!"

"I asked him for a selfie," Victor whispers, finally accepting the champagne and taking a desperate sip. "I think? But he ran away! Chris, why did he run away?!"

Chris laughs at him. "Well, the answer to that is probably two-fold." He guides Victor around a group of Italian skaters and over toward the big banquet counters full of finger foods. "The first is that whatever you asked him, it was in Russian, which he may or may not speak." Victor makes a dying noise in the back of his throat. "The second is that you got directly up into his face, and grabbed his hand, and you know Yuuri Katsuki is famously shy and anxious. He looked shell-shocked."

"I didn't mean to scare him!" Victor takes another sip of his champagne. "I just wanted..." Victor had blanked, is the honest truth. He'd taken one look at Yuuri Katsuki's nervous little smile and thick glasses and thought about how he'd been staring up at an old poster of him the last time he'd masturbated and it had been all downhill from there. "I just wanted to talk to him!"

"If it's any consolation, you had an amazing first Grand Prix! And no one else but Baby Yuri saw the absolute mess of a conversation you had in the hotel lobby."

"I dare you to call him that to his face," Victor replies, trying to settle himself. His champagne flute is empty, so he casts his gaze around until he finds a server with a tray of full ones and snags another.

"I've no desire to learn what it feels like to have the blade of a skate shoved up my--"

"Victor!" A slurred voice calls out to them, and Victor spins around to see the crowd parting for a drunk Yuuri Katsuki, whose suit is unravelling around him, top buttons undone at his throat and his tie hanging loose and unknotted around his neck. He's a vision, and despite the slight stumble, still somehow achingly graceful. Victor can still hear Yuuri's free skate music in his head as Yuuri tilts his head sideways, licking his lips. "I've been looking for you!"

"For me?" Victor clutches his glass in a shaking hand as Chris laughs behind him and, like the traitorous asshole he is, shoves Victor forward with a hand at the small of his back. "Why?"

"I'm sorry I..." He blinks, blearily, and Victor tunes out the whispers and shocked murmurs of sponsors and other skaters to focus on the gift of Yuuri Katsuki's full attention. Yuuri rests a hand on his forearm for balance, looking up at him. His head is just about at the height of Victor's chin. "I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you earlier. I was... You made me nervous, and I didn't--" He hiccups. "I didn't know what to say, because I was upset about something else and, well, I just didn't know what to say."

"I made you nervous?" Victor tucks a long strand of his unbound hair behind his ear, and then, daringly, leans into Yuuri's touch, delighting when Yuuri doesn't move away.

"You know, 'cause you said..." He licks his lips again. His glasses are smudged, and Victor barely resists the urge to slide them from his face and clean them. He'd have done it if it were anyone else, but Victor knows his tactile nature can make people uncomfortable, and no matter how close Yuuri Katsuki is standing right now, he's still, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. "'Cause you said that thing about my body making music. I didn't know what to say. No one's ever said anything like that before, and they weren't you, either."

He's rambling, and it's adorable. Victor's mental image of his idol is rearranging itself in his mind, blossoming like a spring flower into something even better than Victor had previously imagined in his most secret of fantasies.

"They weren't me? I... won silver, but the points weren't even close," Victor replies. "My technical scores were almost as good as yours but the PCS scores..."

"That's because you're missing something from that program," Yuuri tells him, and he lifts his hand from Victor's forearm, then reaches up and taps his chest, right above his heart. Yuuri's breath smells like champagne, and his eyes are luminous even behind dirty lenses. "You're empty. You're skating about wanting to hold on--" Another hiccup. "--About wanting to hold on to someone, but you don't have anyone you want to hold onto."

"Oh," Victor says.

"But you're so beautiful when you skate, Victor." Yuuri's hand slides across his chest to his arm, and then slides smoothly down his arm. "I've been watching you since you were in juniors, and you're so beautiful."

"You've been--" The strangled noise Christophe makes behind him is either a laugh or a scream, and the murmurs around them are getting louder. "Watching me?"

"Let's dance," Yuuri replies. "It's a tango. Can you tango?"

"You can tango?" Victor asks, as Yuuri interlocks their hands. Victor's probably having an intense fever dream. He hopes he either has it forever or dies of it.

"I can do any kind of dance," Yuuri replies. "If you can't, I'll teach you. I'll teach you whatever you want to know."

"Oh," Victor says again, numbly relinquishing his drink to Chris, (who is defintiely laughing, and definitely taking photos), and letting Yuuri drag him out onto the dance floor.

Yuuri dips him as the song crescendos, leaning him back so far that his hair dragging on the floor, one hand at the nape of Victor's neck and the other clutching at his thigh. "I won't let you fall," he says, alcohol breath and bleary gaze not doing anything to make Victor less enamoured of him. Victor's trembling, amazed, and he thinks he understands what Yuuri meant about being empty, because now his chest feels so full it's overflowing.

"All right," Victor says, and Yuuri laughs and swirls him into another dance.

The evening devolves from there, like the Gold Medalist getting smashed is a carte blanche for everyone else to follow suit, and Victor has photos on his phone of Yuri getting completely trashed in a breakdancing competition and Christophe hanging deviantly from one of the temporary support poles that had previously been festooned in celebratory balloons. Through it all, Yuuri Katsuki continues to surprise him, losing elements of his suit at each challenge and dancing like he's never even heard of an inhibition. It's nothing like the demure Yuuri Katsuki written about in the magazines Victor's hoarded over the years, and Victor knows that's in part because Yuuri is wildly drunk, but he still savors this knew knowledge, holding it as close to his chest as he had that first poster all those years ago.

"You're going to be even more stupid after this," Yuri mutters to him as he takes a photo of Sara Crispino and Yuuri dancing a foxtrot that doesn't even remotely match the music, both of them laughing. "I can already tell."

"He told me I skate beautifully," Victor replies.

"You already know that," says Yuri. "You won a silver medal in your first Grand Prix. What's it matter if some old guy thinks you're great?"

"Don't lie," Victor says, sparing Yuri the briefest of glances, "you're just jealous that Yuuri complimented my skating--"

"Go die in a ditch," says Yuri, and before Victor can feign hurt feelings Yuuri Katsuki is reaching for him again, and pulling him back into the fray, and into another dance.

"The way you're dancing now," Yuuri says, as the music changes to another tango, this one even slower, "is the way you should skate."

"What?"

"If I were your coach," Yuuri says, "I would tell you that you need to find something that you want to keep, so you can give Stammi Vicino the..." He struggles for a moment, like the English is escaping him, "the longing it deserves."

"The longing?" Victor's being spun, but his head would be spinning either way. Yuuri's more intoxicating that the alcohol, and Victor knows there's an element of hero worship in the way he looks at Yuuri, but there's also a simmering attraction low in his belly that has more to do with the power of Yuuri's lead as he guides him across the dance floor, and the way he talks about Victor's skating like he knows it intimately. Like he really had been watching Victor since he was in juniors.

"Yes," Yuuri says, his hand so hot below Victor's shoulderblades. "If I were your coach... Have you ever longed for something, Victor?"

I will now, Victor thinks. "You keep saying that. If you were my coach. Do you want to be a coach, Yuuri?"

"I'd be yours," Yuuri replies, in crisp, perfect Russian. "You could come to my hometown, Hasetsu. I have a rink." And Victor knows that, and he's about to say so, but before Victor can reply, Yuuri's being tugged away, out of his arms.

It's Yuuri's coach, Celestino, who looks absolutely gobsmacked by the wreckage of the banquet hall, and by finding his star skater in the middle of it.

"Yuuri, what in the world has gotten into you?"

"Champagne!" Yuuri says, cheerfully, and then he giggles, resting his head on Celestino's shoulder. He's still got a hand laced with Victor's own.

"Let's get you back upstairs," Celestino says, before he looks at Victor. "Sorry if he's been any trouble. His dog died before the free skate, and he's been an emotional mess."

"Oh," Victor says, and it explains the champagne but not the compliments. "Is he...?"

"He'll be fine," Celestino assures him. "Hungover like he always is when he goes off the rails, but fine."

And then Yuuri's gone, in as fast a whirlwind as he'd appeared, leaving Victor at the edge of the dance floor.

"Well, well, well," Christophe says. "Fascinating." He wiggles his phone. "And more importantly, documented."

"Send me all of them," Victor says, desperately, and Chris laughs.

"Of course, my darling." He grabs Victor by the medal. "Now, let's have more champagne and talk all about it--"

"Absolutely not," says Yakov, who has a handful of Yuri's jacket and a sour look on his face. "No more alcohol. This whole banquet is in shambles."

"Aww, but Yakov, it was so fun~!" Victor gives him is biggest heart smile.

"If there are any indecent photos of you cavorting with the drunk gold medalist tomorrow, Victor, I swear..."

"Oh, I doubt anyone will post them," Christophe says. "Looks like the party's over for you though, Victor~! Bed time, I suppose."

Victor pouts, but it's mostly for show. Yuuri's last words, I'd be yours, sound like a different sort of promise than coaching, and simmer low in Victor's belly. He wants to think about them, immortalize them, and he can't do that here. Going to bed sounds fine. Perfect.

"You're humming," Yakov says to him, in the elevator. "Why on Earth are you humming?"

"Yuuri Katsuki told me I was a beautiful skater," Victor replies. "I think it's worth humming about!"

"This again?!" Yuri snarls.

"You were in second place to him," Yakov replies. "Are you satisfied with that, Victor? Is that all you want? To be complimented?" Yakov pushes Yuri out of the elevator when the door opens, but waits for Victor to walk out on his own. "You can beat him if you try. Stop getting caught up in your crush--"

"Yakov, it's not a crush--"

"I wasn't born yesterday," Yakov says.

"Clearly not," says Victor. "You've already lost all that hair--"

Yuri snickers, and Yakov glares at him. "That's it. Mila and Georgi are my only skaters now."

"Yakov, the betrayal," Victor says, earning him an angry shout from inside one of the other rooms on the hall.

"Go to bed, Victor," Yakov says. "Before this migraine consumes me."

"Yes, Coach," Victor replies, and he's still humming when he climbs into bed, freshly showered, and falls asleep, memories of Yuuri Katuski leading him in a divine tango filling his dreams.

*