Chapter Text
As the night of the Moscow International Ballet Academy Exhibition Gala arrives, simmering with anticipation as always, Mila sits in front of the dressing room mirror, quietly finishing her make-up amidst the surrounding clamor.
She’s in the room for first through third-year girls, and it’s fine, if a bit noisy, but she wishes she could be with Sara or Anya right now—both for the moral support, even if each of their methods differs considerably.
Her piece is scheduled for the first act, near the end, which means she still has about an hour left. She makes use of this time by going over her choreography while the first-years gossip in the background. (There’s some kind of drama involving Kenjiro Minami, in the grade above them. Mila doesn’t know him well enough to follow the conversation—the most she’s ever heard is when Yuri complains about “that kid who’s always bouncing off the damn walls.”)
The hour passes, slowly at first, and then faster as she begins to feel nervous. Scouts from some of the best companies in the world are sitting in the audience right now, not to mention her parents, and her aunt and uncle, and probably her cousins, and maybe even her grandmother. A Babicheva, as the family saying goes, never does anything by half.
At about ten minutes before her scheduled time slot she leaves the dressing room. A Babicheva never does anything by half, so this performance had better be spectacular.
Mila doesn’t get stage fright. She gets nervous, sure—more nervous than she likes to admit—but any fear she feels is usually manageable. If she’s a little more anxious than usual tonight, then it’s because there’s more riding on this showing than there normally is.
“Mila.”
She turns around, and there’s Sara, standing with a grin at the top of the staircase.
“I have to finish getting ready,” she says, “but I wanted to see you.”
“I’m glad.”
“You know, in Italian we say ‘en bocca al lupo’ before a performance. And you respond with ‘crepi il lupo.’”
Mila repeats it for her. “What does it mean?”
“‘Into the mouth of the wolf.’ And for you: ‘may the wolf die.’”
With Sara’s words behind her, she takes the stage.
As soon as the music starts (as per the cliché), all trepidation vanishes from her mind. She doesn’t pay attention to the eyes watching her, or try to catch a glimpse of her grandmother in the second row. This dance is all there is, for minutes that stretch into the illusion of an eternity.
The applause is uproarious as she takes her final curtsey, and she exits with her ears ringing.
Her own performance finished, Mila lingers a while longer in the wings, waiting. Sara is due up soon, and Mila would like to see what she’s been working on. Sara has refused to show her anything during their practices together.
She’s dancing in one of the fifth-year directed projects; a six-minute solo to an aria Mila doesn’t know the name of. She watches as Sara takes center stage, giving a light curtsey to acknowledge her audience, the wry grin on her lips masking any nerves she might feel.
The piece is exquisite—Mila doesn’t know the girl who composed it, but she probably has a future in choreography—and Sara’s expressive style only serves to accentuate its more elegant features. The audience, too, is enthralled, Mila notes with pride, though she pulls her gaze away from those seated quickly, eyes drawn back to the performance.
Sara finishes with a flourish, to clamorous applause. Mila wants to join in, but if she so much as breathes too loudly backstage Lilia will hunt her down.
When Sara notices her she beams and rushes over, dragging her back to the greenroom to wait before curtain call. They sit off to one side, slightly apart from the clump of first-years clustered at the center.
“Your performance was fantastic,” Mila says.
“So was yours,” says Sara. “I have a confession to make to you: I’ve never actually seen Giselle.”
“You want to know something?” Mila leans forward, lowering her voice. “Neither have I.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I won’t deny it.”
“By the way,” says Sara, “you still haven’t told me what you’re doing next year.”
Her voice isn’t admonishing, only amused, and Mila thinks for a moment about how to explain herself.
“It took me a while to make the decision,” she says, “but here it is: I’m staying on next year to complete my education.”
Sara grins at her, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad. Maybe we could sign up for an elective together.”
“How do you feel about pas de deux?”
She laughs. “Is that even an option?”
Mila shrugs. “First time for everything.”
“You know I’m always willing to duet with you, whether it’s in the studio or not.”
“Either way,” says Mila, “we’ll have to keep rehearsing together next semester. I think it really helped.”
“I don’t know,” says Sara. “What if I’m too distracting?”
Mila raises an eyebrow. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”
The door to the greenroom opens, and Mickey steps in. He falters when he sees them sitting together, but after a minute he pulls up a chair at the other end of the table.
“Did you watch his act?” Mila asks in an undertone. Sara nods.
“Serenade for Two,” she says. “Though he was the only one performing. I was…moved.”
Someone else comes flying through the entrance, much more energetically than his predecessor. Emil immediately finds Mickey and begins talking excitedly at him, mouth moving so fast Mila can’t quite tell what he’s saying.
“He’s making friends.”
“It’s good for him,” Sara says. “Maybe when we come back next year he won’t be such a wet blanket.”
Mila checks the time and is surprised to find that it will be Anya’s performance soon. That means they’re halfway through the second act already. She really should make an effort to watch her roommate’s piece (and more than that she wants to), so she stands, holding her hand out to Sara.
“Will you accompany me?”
Sara takes it. “To whatever adventure lies ahead.”
“You’ll be fine.”
Yuuri stands backstage, waiting as J.J. and Isabella finish their pas de deux. There’s only one more piece after theirs, and then it’s time for his showcase.
“You’ll be more than fine, actually. You’ll be good. Great. You’ll be great.”
Yuri stands off to one side, refusing to acknowledge either of them.
“Victor.” Yuuri spins around to face him. “I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but it’s bad luck to wish me well before a performance.”
“You’re right.” Victor offers him a sheepish grin. “Honestly, I’m a little nervous myself.”
“At least you can’t fall on your face in front of everyone and make a complete fool of yourself.”
Victor looks like he’s about to contradict him, but then remembers that he’s supposed to be superstitious and shuts his mouth.
“Fair point.”
J.J. and Isabella make for the wings, and now Yurio is due up. Victor and Yuuri watch him glide onto the stage, back arched, arms out, as the Agape theme begins to play. Yuuri wants to be able to focus on the performance, but even as he surveys the scene, he finds his thoughts circling back to his upcoming debut.
Yuri’s piece will be a tough act to follow. He can’t let himself be outclassed by a second-year. In the back of his brain he encourages the notion: if he focuses his attention on competing with Yuri, it distracts him from being anxious, even if it won’t make the feeling go away completely. Nothing ever will, not Victor’s reassurances or his own (though he finds it more difficult to hold onto the later). It is simply something he lives with, peacefully on some days, less so on others, but he’s come a long way this year and he’s determined to show that here.
Yurio finishes, and Yuuri steps forward, pulse pounding in his ears. Only a few seconds left now until he must begin.
“Yuuri.”
Victor is behind him again. Yuuri turns around, expecting to see a grin or another placating expression, but Victor’s face is serious.
“Merde à toi.”
Yuuri nods his thanks, and then the music starts.
Dancing to Eros, Yuuri is himself and not himself. He spent days—many of them, almost the entire semester—pretending to be a character in a story, as one often does on the stage. He would imagine he was someone more confident, more attractive, more alluring, someone worthy of seducing the great Victor Nikiforov.
The Victor Nikiforov who loses all sense of reason where his emotions are concerned and grins like an idiot whenever Yuuri—well, anything, really. The Victor Nikiforov who, this entire time, has only wished for Yuuri to play the part that intimidates him most of all.
To play himself, here, is a challenge he did not think he was equipped for when he came to Moscow. He never would have thought himself capable of charming someone as talented and popular as Victor. And yet Victor is only human, after all. A human he can bring to his knees, Yuuri thinks, with more than a bit of pride. He, Yuuri, and not just his sultry Eros self.
During his life, he has heard many different expressions that purport to describe what it truly is to dance. Out of them all, flying may be of the more generic variety, but that’s what it feels like now. Yuuri soars across the stage, lighter than air, lighter than he has ever felt.
Tonight, it does not matter what will happen tomorrow, or next semester, or next year. It does not matter if Victor moves far away and Madame Baranovskaya decides to kick him out of the Academy (and in the heat of the moment, he thinks: she can try .)
The future can wait. He has been fortunate these past months—more fortunate than he thinks he deserves, sometimes, but that doesn’t impede his gratitude. Whatever else happens, he has had this.
He receives his first-ever standing ovation from the audience. He bows graciously, ducking back into the wings as the curtain lowers. He has just a few moments before he needs to go back on again for the final curtain call, but before that he needs to see for himself the most important reaction of them all.
“Victor! I did great, right?”
Somehow—and this is cheesy, Yuuri admits, his ears burning just at the thought of it—somehow, when Victor beams at him, it’s the best praise he could receive.
After the bows have been made and the curtain closes for the final time, Yuri attempts to melt into the crowd and find one of the few people he knows who aren’t wholly insufferable.
This proves to be as difficult a task as ever, as random audience members keep coming up to congratulate him on his performance. (“Such beautiful unconditional love!” “I was deeply moved.”) He doesn’t mind the praise—enjoys it, really, after all the hard work—but it’s still tainted by Victor’s saccharine subject material.
If he’s honest with himself, though, there was a moment—not more than that, but up onstage it’s difficult to tell how long a moment really lasts—in which he thinks he might have realized why exactly Victor would want to pick this theme.
And he’ll never admit it to anyone, not even to Otabek, or to Yuuri, who is a little too good at subtly coaxing out information, and least of all to Victor. (But from the way Victor congratulated him in the wings just after the performance, with that damned twinkle in his eye and everything, Yuri thinks he already knows.)
The crowd slowly meanders its way to the reception hall, where refreshments and music have been prepared in honor of the occasion. Here Yuri at last runs into his grandfather, who has to leave soon but gives him a firm hug, murmuring about how proud he is. Yuri ducks his head to hide a flushed smile and pretends there isn’t a lump welling up in his throat.
Mila comes up to him and gushes about his piece for a while, and in return he grudgingly admits that she didn’t do too bad herself.
“I hear you’re staying next year,” he says.
She nods. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“You wish.”
They continue like this for a while, and then Sara comes up and whisks her girlfriend away. Yuri makes obscene hand gestures at Mila while Sara’s back is turned, and she rolls her eyes at him.
Bored with hanging around the fringes of the party, he’s almost resolved head back to his room so he can finish packing when there’s a light tap on his shoulder. Thinking it’s another admirer he whirls around, and draws up short when he comes face to face with Madame Baranovskaya. She speaks before he can open his mouth.
“You did well tonight, Yuratchka.”
He blinks, the words swimming in his ears.
“Th—thank you,” he stutters out, face burning.
“If you keep working hard to put on performances like that,” she says, “then next year I will allow you to pursue that accelerated course of study you’ve been begging me for.”
His jaw hangs open. “Are you serious?”
She raises a stern eyebrow at him—Yuri Plisetsky, when have I ever not been serious?—and then she smiles. The expression seems out of place amidst the harsh angles of her features, but Yuri is oddly moved.
“It will not be easy for you,” she says.
“If I wanted easy,” says Yuri, “I wouldn’t be here.”
“Good. I shall keep in touch over the summer about drafting your schedule.”
“Lilia.”
Yakov elbows his way between them, pausing briefly when he notices Yuri.
“You did well tonight.”
Even after all this time, Yuri thinks, the two of them still talk alike, the same as when he was a kid. He thanks his teacher, and Yakov returns his attention to the headmistress.
“Vitya would like to talk with you about his decision to sign with the Mariinsky.”
The Mariinsky. That reminds Yuri, he should really—
“Yura.” Victor claps an arm around his shoulders. “Are Yakov and Lilia giving you a hard time because of how amazing you were at the gala?”
“No,” he says, shrugging out of Victor’s grasp. “They’re talking about you. As usual.”
“What do you think?” he asks Madame Baranovskaya. “They want me to be a coryphée.”
They move past Yuri as they continue their discussion. He’s just decided to go find Otabek and complain at him for a while about people being annoying, and then he hears someone shouting his name.
Yuri sighs as he catches sight of Katsuki waving at him only a few paces away and heads grudgingly in his direction. There are two girls with him. One appears to be his sister, Mari, who Yuri recognizes from all the Skype calls he’s burst in on, and the other is unfamiliar to him.
“You’re Yuri Plisetsky, right?” The stranger is around Yuuri’s age and looks like she’s in danger of pinching his cheeks at any moment. “You were incredible.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles. He frowns at Yuuri. “You were okay too, I guess.”
Katsuki actually laughs. “Thank you, Yurio.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
Mari folds her arms. “What’s wrong with the name Yurio?”
He knows she’ll never let him hear the end of it if he continues to protest now, so he acquiesces.
“Yuuri Katsuki.”
“Madame Baranovskaya.” Yuuri hastily corrects his posture at her approach. “Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to work with Victor this year.”
“You pair well together. I hope there are more collaborations in your future.”
His cheeks redden, and he ducks his head, murmuring another expression of gratitude.
“If you will excuse us,” Madame Baranovskaya says, “Mr. Katsuki and I have some things to discuss.”
Yuuri’s face makes it clear he has no idea what’s going on, but his sister, smirking a little, gives him a push forward, and he trails after the headmistress. Yuri takes his leave, mind turning to the one person he hasn’t yet been able to find, when—
“Otabek!”
He hurries forward, then draws up short as he realizes his friend is deep in conversation with a suited figure. Otabek catches sight of him and makes some polite, apparently amusing remark to the stranger, who laughs and claps him on the back before moving on. Otabek walks up to Yuri.
“Your piece was brilliant,” he says, before Yuri has a chance to ask him anything. “I had no idea you and Victor were putting something like that together.”
“That was the plan,” says Yuri, “surprise the school.”
“It worked.” Otabek smiles softly at him, and Yuri feels a tug in his chest, the kind that has become unsettlingly frequent ever since Otabek started giving him that look more often.
“Who were you talking to just now?”
“Oh.” He shifts, smile fading a little. “That was one of the recruiters they sent from the Mariinsky.”
“Then…I take it your performance went well?”
“Our performance,” Otabek corrects him, and Yuri thinks there’s a spark of pride in his eyes. “And yes, it did.”
“When do you leave?”
“As soon as I can, but I’m in no hurry. I’ll have to figure out what to do with the apartment. They say they can help set me up with a new one in St. Petersburg.”
“That’s great.”
“You sound very enthusiastic.”
Yuri scowls at him. “It is great. I’m happy for you.”
“I know you are.”
Otabek looks troubled, now, and Yuri feels guilty because he doesn’t want to ruin the night for him. He starts to turn away, but Otabek’s hand catches his shoulder, and he dips down to speak close to Yuri’s ear.
“Let’s go somewhere a little less crowded.”
Yuri nods, grateful, and Otabek cuts a path through the room for them. Out in the hall it’s quieter, but there are still a few people scattered here and there, so they head down another darkened corridor.
“If you want the truth,” Otabek says, “I can take care of the apartment and leave for St. Petersburg in a couple days. But…I don’t have to.”
He’s making a deliberate offer. Yuri considers it carefully.
“I think you should go when you need to,” he says.
“I told you I’d to teach you how to ride my motorcycle.”
“You can do that next time.”
“I promise there will be one,” says Otabek. “A next time.”
“I don’t need you to promise me anything, Beka.”
“But I do.”
His gaze is fierce, stubborn in that way they both share. He moves forward, and Yuri takes a reflexive step back, unaware of the motion until the blades of his shoulders hit the wall. He can no longer escape from the truth of things.
“Otabek,” he whispers, and the other boy brings his hand to Yuri’s cheek, brushing a gentle thumb across his lips. He scans Yuri’s face, a flicker of hesitation running across his eyes as he realizes how close they are.
“May I—
Yuri pulls him forward by the collar of his button-down shirt. (It’s crisp and white, loosely tucked into his pants and set against actual honest-to-god suspenders, and Yuri just wants to—)
And then he doesn’t have the space left to think about the end to that sentence, because Otabek’s fingers have found their way through his hair, teeth scraping across Yuri’s lower lip. Something about this has felt inevitable for a long time now, Yuri realizes, but he doesn’t stop to consider it further as Otabek presses him back against the wall.
Footsteps at the other end of the hall bring them back to reality.
Otabek is the first to break away, and there’s an almost guilty tension in his features before he schools them back to something that tries to resemble tranquility. There is no sign of another person in the vicinity, but the two boys have been reminded that they’re very much in public.
“Always an interruption.” Otabek smiles, a little ruefully. Yuri has the immediate urge to pull him back in again (by the straps of those suspenders, no less), and—
He forces out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, squaring his shoulders and looking Otabek in the eye.
“Like you said. Next time.”
Otabek nods. He considers Yuri for a moment, and he can’t hide (or perhaps doesn’t care to) the quirk at the corner of his lips.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Otabek sighs. “I should find that scout.”
“Yeah.”
Here they are again, daring each other to make the first move, neither of them wanting to.
“Beka.”
Yuri pauses, then tentatively threads his arms around Otabek’s waist, burying his head in his shoulder.
“I’ll miss you.”
“I know.” Otabek strokes his hair, pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
“And someday we’ll dance together again.”
“For the whole world, if you want to. Or for just us.”
“Do you promise that too?”
Otabek doesn’t say anything, but Yuri knows what his answer is all the same.
“You won’t forget?”
“Not for as long as I live.”
“Sap,” Yuri mutters, shoving him away, but he’s smiling as he follows Otabek back down the hall.
Three days after the gala, Yuuri leaves for home.
Mari and Yuuko have already headed back, but they’ve given him use of their hotel room, since the dorms have closed along with the school for the summer. Phichit stays with him on the first night, before he hops on a flight back to Thailand.
“You could always come visit me in Bangkok,” he says. “My family would love to have you.”
“I think I need to go home for a while,” Yuuri tells him. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good, ‘cause I mean it.”
He sees Phichit off at the airport, and when he returns the hotel feels too quiet. He decides to call Victor, who’s staying in a room of his own until he leaves with Otabek for the Mariinsky, the same day that Yuuri’s flying out.
Victor comes over and they while away the time playing cards at the coffee table, the day’s news flashing across the screen in the background. Yuuri doesn’t invite him to stay the night. He doesn’t need to. There are two beds in the hotel room, but they only use the one, curled close against the dark.
That night at the gala, as they walked back to the dormitory together, Victor pulled Yuuri aside to tell him that he’d chosen to sign a contract with the Mariinsky.
“I’ll be leaving soon for St. Petersburg,” Yuuri remembers him saying, voice light and careful. “It will be good to be home.”
“I’m happy you made a decision. How did Lilia take it?”
“She told me it was about time I got out of her hair.”
Predictably, there were several companies that offered Victor a contract after the performance, scouts that had been keeping an eye on him since his international tour years before. The Mariinsky has both reputation and rigor, and that, Victor told Yuuri, is what matters.
Yuuri thinks it over, lying next to him in bed. If Victor moved overseas it would be easier, maybe—the New York City Ballet is doing some very innovative things, Yuuri hears, and that’s always been the sort of thing Victor enjoys. It’s why he stayed on at the Academy, even after he got a taste of professional work.
But privately, in his heart of hearts, Yuuri doesn’t want him so far away, and he’s grateful that next year he and Victor will remain in the same country.
When they do leave Moscow it’s together, even if they’re bound for separate destinations.
Nikolai Plisetsky drives them. He sits up front with Yuri, silent but for the occasional murmured Russian comment to his grandson. The remaining three boys are crammed together in the back, Victor in the middle with his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, Otabek staring out the window and looking marginally uncomfortable.
Yuri’s grandfather waits in the car while the rest of them head into the airport. Victor and Otabek’s flight is first, so that’s the terminal they set out for. Victor and Yuuri walk ahead, with Otabek and Yurio side by side a few paces behind.
When they reach the security checkpoint near the entrance they stop, knowing this is the place to bid their farewells but not quite knowing how. Otabek and Yuri share a long look, and something passes between them, inscrutable and so intensely personal that Yuuri averts his eyes.
“Yuuri.”
Victor wraps an arm around him, pulling him in tight.
“I adore you,” he says, and Yuuri curses his heart for racing so easily at the words.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How about this: in a couple months I’m coming for a visit.”
“What?” Yuuri backs away, trying to discern any hint of teasing on Victor’s face. “Are you serious?”
He nods, smiling.
“I’ve checked the rehearsal schedule the recruiter gave me,” he says. “I have a week off in August, so I booked a flight to Japan. I hope you don’t mind.”
Yuuri shakes his head. “Won’t you want take that time to see your family?”
“I’ll already be living in St. Petersburg, so I can see them any old time.”
“You’re really coming.” Yuuri smiles, then. “I’ll let my parents know so they can prepare a room for you at the onsen.”
“If the two of you are done being sentimental idiots,” says Yuri, “Beka and Victor should get lost, or they won’t make it through security on time.”
“Right.”
Yuuri looks up at Victor, a little shyly—they are in a crowded airport, after all, though no one seems to be paying them much attention. Victor pulls him into a tight embrace, wrapping his arms snugly around his waist.
“Two months isn’t that long,” he murmurs. “I think I can make it. You’ll have to call me every day.”
“Every day?”
“Too much? Then however many days you want.”
“Every day doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
Victor guides his chin up and they kiss, while Yuri makes faces of disgust in the background and Otabek stares pointedly at the ground. They pull away too quickly, reluctant but aware that they are very much in public, and the airport is not like the bar they visited a few months ago.
“I’ll miss you,” Yuuri says.
“And I you.”
Yuri walks up and jabs Victor in the chest. “You’d better keep an eye on Otabek for me. If you don’t I’ll hunt you down.”
“I’ll live in fear of your wrath nightly.”
“And you.” Yuri turns to Otabek. “Make sure Victor doesn’t do anything stupid like he always does.”
“I will consider it my duty.”
“Good.”
Yuri turns his back on them and begins to walk away. Otabek and Victor exchange a glance, and Victor shrugs. Yuuri chases after him.
“Don’t you want to say goodbye?” he asks quietly, though the others are out of earshot.
“Katsuki,” Yuri says, pulling a face of long-suffering exasperation, “does it look like I want to say goodbye?”
“You’ve got me there.”
“We already spent the past ten minutes on goodbyes anyway. Better to just get it over with quickly.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Yuri grits his teeth. “You’re an insufferable menace, Katsuki.”
Bracing himself, he dashes back to where Otabek and Victor are still waiting, throwing his arms around his friend. Otabek stumbles back a few paces from the unexpected force, but recovers himself quickly.
“You’d better come visit me, asshole.”
“I did promise.”
Yuuri can’t see Otabek’s face, but he hears the grin in his voice. He also knows without having to look that Yuri is blushing furiously. He turns to Victor.
“We’ve already had our passionate embrace.”
“What’s one more?”
“No.” Yuri breaks away from Otabek, glaring at the pair of them. “You’ll be late enough as it is.”
“He’s right,” says Yuuri.
“I suppose he is.” Victor sighs. “Goodbye, Yuuri.”
“Goodbye, Victor.”
They stare at each other until Yurio takes Yuuri by the arm and hauls him away. Victor doesn’t turn around, offering instead a last wave.
Eventually, he is no longer in Yuuri’s view.
It’s only until August, he reminds himself. He thought, upon awaking this morning, that he might cry and make a scene in front of everyone, but he feels strangely calm. Perhaps none of it has sunk in yet, or perhaps he’s simply relieved to catch a break for a few weeks.
Just not for too long.
After he ran into Yuri at the gala, when Madame Baranovskaya drew him aside, she told him she was pleased with his progress over the course of the past year.
“I’d like to have you en pointe again in the fall. I believe we have many new horizons to reach for.”
Yuuri remembered, at the time, something Yuri Plisetsky had once said to him. Why leave the Bolshoi?
“Madame Baranovskaya?”
“You’re wondering why I bother with all this.”
Yuuri dropped his gaze to the carpet, embarrassed, but the headmistress was perfectly calm.
“It takes a great dancer to be prima ballerina at the Bolshoi,” she said. “It take a brave one to start something new.”
They reach Yuuri’s terminal, and now it’s time for the second round of goodbyes. Yuri kicks at the ground.
“See you in September, I guess.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Yuuri says earnestly, and the younger dancer snorts.
“Sure.” He pauses. “I would’ve made you pirozhki, but I didn’t think they’d let you take that past security.”
“It’s a nice thought, at least.”
Yuri nods. They stand there awkwardly, feeling as though they should say something more but neither quite sure as to what that could be. Finally Yuri screws up his face, eyes squeezing shut as though his next words pain him intensely.
“Take care of yourself.” He adds in a rush: “I don’t want you getting lazy over the summer. Next year it’s going to be me who gets the final performance slot at the gala, not you.”
“I’ll be a fifth-year,” Yuuri says. “Maybe I’ll direct something like Victor.”
“Yeah right. You’d better not start spouting any more of that love garbage, or if I throw up on you it’s your fault.”
Yuuri smiles at him. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Yuri grants him the tiniest of grins in return, fleeting but wholly genuine.
“Now you really should leave.” He hesitates again, and then he pulls out his phone. “Here. Put your number in and I’ll message you so you can call me in case you can’t understand what someone’s saying to you.”
Yuuri is pretty sure that an airport in one of the world’s biggest cities has translators available, but the gesture touches him. He types out his contact information, putting a smiley-face next to his name. Yuri looks at it and rolls his eyes.
“If you don’t leave now you’ll miss your flight.”
“I know.” Yuuri wavers a moment, and Yuri glares at him suddenly.
“You aren’t thinking about trying to hug me goodbye, are you?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Good.”
But it seems silly for them to just walk away from each other, so they settle on a stiff handshake.
“Goodbye,” Yuuri says.
For once there is no trace of either scorn or annoyance on Yuri’s face, his irate expression replaced by a sober calm.
“Until next semester.”
Yuuri makes it through security without having to call him, though he does send a message as his plane is idling on the concourse to let Yuri know he boarded safety. The text the younger boy sends in response is curt, but obviously relieved.
After living for nearly a year in this city, Yuuri thinks, trying to catch a glimpse of the skyline through the tiny window, it will feel strange to leave it. He’s almost forgotten what it’s like to be in a quiet, sleepy small town where the grocer knows his name and his parents and their parents before them.
He thinks about what Madame Baranovskaya said, about greatness and bravery.
Next year Victor will come back, but in his absence it will be up to Yuuri to become the fifth-year prodigy. After he graduates he can join Victor in St. Petersburg, or Paris or London or New York, or wherever else they’d like to go.
Maybe, he thinks, they will start something new.