Chapter Text
“I need to cut my hair,” Yuri stomped past Otabek on his way to the kitchen.
“Yes, please come in Yura! You can absolutely help yourself to anything in my fridge. No, you don’t even have to ask.”
“Shut up, you gave me a fucking key.” Yuri yanked the bottle of seltzer out—he needed something to settle his grossed out stomach—and began searching for a glass. Beka had been reorganizing everything, so glassware felt like it was in a new spot every single time.
“What’s wrong?” His boyfriend wrapped himself around him from behind, but it did nothing to tame Yuri’s mood. “Wait, your hair is—did you shower at the rink?”
“Yes, and now I’m fucking freezing.”
'Why did you shower at the rink in the dead of winter and then come home?”
“I forgot my hairdryer ok?” Yuri huffed, shoving him off gently to reach for the glass he wanted. “I didn’t intend to shower there.”
No surprise, Yuri tended to shower at home anyways.
“You going to tell me why you showered?”
“I felt gross.”
“Did something happen?” Otabek worried behind him as he went about finding a lemon because fuck it. He deserved a lemon in his water. Honestly, after this day, he deserved straight vodka, if to do nothing more than cleanse him.
“Kids happened.”
Yuri spun around as he snapped and Otabek stared at him a long moment before he started laughing.
“Teacher Yuri!” Oh god, she brought friends. Vera had two of her little skater friends, a boy and a girl because gender didn’t matter anyways but cooties didn’t exist when you were as young as they were.
“Did you have fun today?” Yuri hadn’t really taught their class, he’d come in to help here and there. Mila was back in Canada again because it was obviously the middle of the season, being the dead of winter, and Sasha needed help child-wrangling.
But, he hadn’t stayed the whole time.
“So much fun! You were so cool!”
“I meant in your class, not watching me. You should pay more attention to Sasha when he’s speaking.”
“Sasha is boring!” The little boy whined. “He can’t do quads!”
“Ok, but you aren’t learning quads so that doesn’t matter?” Child logic made no sense to him.
“But I want to!”
Yuri wanted to tell the other girl that she was three, probably wouldn’t stay with skating (none of his “friends” did anyways when he was her age) and didn’t need to learn how to land a quad at all to compete in lady’s singles, if she even made it that far.
“Ok.” He said finally with a shrug.
Sitting on the bench was a poor choice. The girls pounced on him, toying with his hair immediately, twisting it and tying it to itself. He didn’t have the heart to stop them, but it made him feel gross and weird.
“How about,” He offered desperately, after about three minutes of trying to get them to stop. Even the boy had joined in now. “How about I take my hair back and I braid my hair and teach you while you braid your own?”
The children, minus the boy, seemed to think it a fair trade. The boy didn’t agree until Yuri dug through his bag to find old, spare laces to work with.
“You’re upset because children braided your hair?” Otabek laughed.
“They touched me.”
“Mkay.”