Chapter Text
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WHERE THEY STAND:
Just met – just friends – apparently they’ve met before.
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“Beka?”
Yuri let out a teasing chuckle after hearing the name echo in his ears. He lifted his head back up towards his friend, eyebrows scrunched together playfully. The Kazakh just shrugged with a small grin tugging at the side of his mouth.
“My family used to call me that when I was a baby, and when my little sister was born that’s what she called me. It just stuck.”
Yuri had to admit, it was a little adorable, even though he hated literally everything about children. They have this weird tendency to touch everything and stick unknown objects in their mouth and it feels like they really serve no real purpose other than to keep him awake on a plane. It only made sense that he would want no part in that at all.
“Cute,” he mumbled, typing the name into the contact page as the two boys exchanged phones so that they can fill in the blank spot for a phone number.
“I’m sending a text to myself so I know it’s you, is that alright?”
“Of course.”
Otabek’s phone buzzed in his hand, the message notification folding down on the screen to show a simple text: meow bitch. He couldn’t help but snicker when they returned their phones to each other, and Yuri shot a text completely judging the message used to identify him. They didn’t want to stand up from the Barcelona steps yet, just watching the sunset before they would have to leave for dinner.
“So how many other siblings do you have?” Yuri asked, trying to make small talk.
The Kazakh just shook his head, “Just Tamara.”
Yuri only hummed in response, his mind buzzing with ways to start up a new conversation, as the one he tried to have was shot down just a bit too quickly. However, Otabek had no problem continuing speaking. “You got any siblings?”
The Russian shook his head, “Just me.”
“Must be lonely.”
He shook his head again, this time after making a face of halfway consideration. “Not really. It’s not like I would have the time to spend with them, anyway. If anything, I’m kinda happy that it’s just Grandpa and I. It lets me focus my time on him before he goes.”
Yuri may have never experienced direct loss – but he was not, by any means, ignorant. He had a firm grip on mortality, and he was fully aware that his grandfather was not getting any younger. Talking about it never hurt, neither did knowing that one day he would pass; however, he did know for a fact it was going to tear him to pieces when it happens. It was just a matter of time.
Otabek took notice on how the boy refrained from mentioning his parents, and he decided not to pry. Based on that alone, he knew that something probably happened and he would rather not talk about it. “How long has it just been you two?”
“Since I was about five.”
Yeah, something definitely happened.
There was a moment of silence, where the two boys just stared at the Barcelona sunset, watching the flames slowly extinguish behind the sky. They had to be leaving for dinner with the other skaters soon, and they knew this, but neither of them felt like socializing with the other skaters.
Oddly and ironically enough, they never minded socializing with each other.
“Son of a bitch –”
The phone slipped from Yuri’s hands, smashing to the ground following a desperate attempt to stop a collage of clatter and chaos following the bowls crashing down, cracking and creating a collection of broken ceramic on the tiles. He could almost hear Otabek on the other end of the line calling for him out of concern. Letting out a hmph of anger, Yuri quickly collected what he could and poured the remains in the trash – the smaller pieces swept up shortly after.
“You okay?” Otabek asked when a voice finally came from the other side of the phone.
“I just wanted a god damned bowl of cereal,” Yuri laughed, putting his friend on speaker as he set the phone on the table so he could eat at the same time. “I got an avalanche instead.”
A low chuckle echoed in the kitchen. “What cereal did you get?”
“Jack shit,” Yuri replied with a smirk that he knew only he would be able to see, sprinkling cinnamon on the bread in his hand before taking a bite. “I didn’t get any after that. I’m just eating cinnamon toast now.”
“Now you’ve got me wanting some,” Otabek let out a soft laugh through his nose, and noises of rummaging could be heard. “I haven’t had some since I was a kid but I remember how much I loved it.”
Cinnamon toast. A new bond.
“By the way, Tamara said congratulations on your gold,” Otabek’s voice was muffled from the other side of line, as if he was eating. Yuri grinned to himself when he heard the noise. He swallowed, then laughed, “She also wanted me to tell you Agape reminded her of Queen Elsa.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the Russian groaned, remembering that train wreck of a Disney film. “I was a little interested in meeting her but now I change my mind if she’s obsessed with Frozen.”
“It’s not that bad, honestly. Overplayed, yes, but I liked it.”
“You dare call yourself a Disney fan?”
“I mean,” Otabek let out a one-breath laugh as he spoke. There was no set emotion behind it – if anything it was rather humourless. “I haven’t seen any other Disney movies, so…”
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A SMALL TECHNICALITY:
He had watched the first quarter of “Mulan” before falling asleep.
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“What? Beka, you know what, I’m giving you homework.” Yuri stood, grabbing a pen and tearing a sheet of paper off of the refrigerator notepad. When he returned to the table, he started writing down names of his favourite Disney movies. He had a number one – The Lion King, to nobody’s surprise – and the rest were in no particular order. “I’m going to send you a list of movies you need to watch, and you watch them, okay?”
Otabek just chuckled, “Sure, Yura.”
There was a pause, and Yuri looked over at the phone with an eyebrow raised. Clearly, the Kazakh caught on with what he said as well, because he apologized for any discomfort shortly after. There was a pause again where Yuri just sat in thought, mulling over the name a few times before he smiled softly to himself.
“Nah, it’s alright,” he replied, finishing writing down the last movie he could think of on the list. “I like it.”
Yuri took a picture and sent it through text message. There was a moment where he could hear Otabek reading through the films on the list and giggling to himself at his options. Finally, he said, “I’ll start with Beauty and the Beast. I heard that one’s a classic.”
“The remake’s just as good, too. Granted, a couple of the actors were nothing but autotune, but it was still nice on the ears, at least.”
“I’ll just stick to the originals before I start moving onto remakes, if that’s alright,” Otabek laughed.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Beka.”
The list was scribbled and the paper was an overall mess – clearly, Yuri’s doing. Beauty and the Beast had smudges of cinnamon on the words.
Yuri had seen his fair share of PDA in his life, but Viktor and Katsudon really took the cake in grossing him out the most. They just would not stop touching each other. He never understood how in those shitty romance novels on Amazon he would find would always start off with the two love interests slowly building up to each other until they become a couple; then they just explode and get all grabby; it never felt natural. No couple on the face of this planet would be all over each other the moment they get together. Those two were the literal incarnate of all of these couples put together and it was disgusting.
“Lift me higher, Vitya!”
“Hey, Vitya, let’s see if we can try this one!”
“Yuuri! Try to catch me!”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they were fucking playing tag in the rink. At first, Yuri tried to ignore them, but seeing them skating around with those stupid ass grins on their faces only became more and more difficult to mute – and more and more disgusting.
Yuri never believed in love. Considering that his father used his mother until she gave herself up to him and ditched her immediately after finding out she was pregnant, it left a sour taste in his mouth at the very least. Not only that, but what few years he did live with his mother were enough to show him everything about the reality of love – or, in this case, lack thereof. It was absolutely sickening watching those two.
“Can you two knock it off?” Yuri shouted from the other side of the ice rink, after watching Mr. Infinite Stamina himself tackle a very exhausted Viktor to the ice. The annoyance was clear in his tone, even when the couple started to profusely giggle while they lied down on each other. He let out a groan, feeling a vibration on his hip.
Beka.
He would have to check it later, but right then he had to focus on his routine. He decided to focus on other music that did more than emphasize that he was the embodiment of elegance on the ice. Granted, ballet was what he did best, but he had to branch out of his comfort zone and try other forms of skating. Welcome to the Madness helped start shed the image of a “fairy” that he had, and his goal was to be so different and unpredictable that not even Viktor Nikiforov could compete. The only problem was that Yakov wasn’t too keen on the idea.
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THE OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF YURI PLISETSKY, 2017-2018
SP: Plus Je T’embrasse – Quartet Jazz Manouche Ft. Bianca Gallice
FS: Luminous – Max Richter
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He was shocked that he found a jazz song he actually fell in love with. Perhaps it was the lyrics being in French – adding that much class to an already old-fashioned type of music. Either way, he may have liked jazz and never had a problem with swing music, but when it came on his Spotify radio, he knew had to skate to it.
Yuri wanted to veer off of what he did last season – he originally wanted to do the tango, but Lilia refused because it was “too sexual” for a sixteen-year-old; he was lucky he managed to pry Plus Je T'embrasse out of Lilia, considering she wanted him to do something along the lines of Tchaikovsky, but she finally gave in when she remembered ballet could easily be incorporated into Plus Je T’embrasse since Yuri would be dancing the Swing – but when it came to his free skate, he was stuck.
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THE IRONY OF ALL IRONIES:
Yuri had no inspiration.
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Yakov had never been so damn pressing. Luminous was going to be his song that allowed him to keep that ballerina signature he had been branded with, but it also allowed him to tell a story with his body, something he wasn’t quite able to do in previous seasons. However, beautiful as it was, and no matter how moving the piece was, he couldn’t think of a story.
Storytelling can suck my ass.
Yuri knew that the story had to be beautiful, enticing, captivating – practically every ounce of emotion he had in his body had to be reflected in his program. He just couldn’t think of choreography for it, and he didn’t want to have someone else choreograph it this time. Thankfully he was focusing on his short program at the moment and didn’t have to start worrying about his free skate until next week (after much pleading and promising that he would have at least a rough idea for choreography done by then). However, next week was creeping up much quicker than anticipated, and he had done nothing to prepare.
I can probably ask Otabek for suggestions, he thought.
Otabek may not be able to execute the movements as well as Yuri could, but that didn’t stop him from having vivid ideas that he would sometimes send to the Russian at random intervals – typically they were ideas that he knew he could never pull off, so he would share them with his friend in hopes to see them executed one day.
Yet, no idea has ever topped one that came to Yuri’s mind that he wanted to do – he had seen it once, in a dream, and he had theories on how he could land this jump, but he’d be damned if it wasn’t dangerous. He had decided on pushing the jump to a later season just so that way he would have more time to practice it; but the jump wouldn’t leave him alone, replaying in his head over and over again as if it were screaming at him to do it right now.
It was just so beautiful.
Until then he had to figure out every other movement in his choreography to convey this story he had to think on practically overnight. All exaggerations aside, Yuri was supposed to have started working on the choreography for his free skate two weeks ago – meaning that everybody knew he had to work overtime to where his routine wouldn’t be sloppy, and it would have to be a miracle for him to work out every finite detail about the piece until it was finally mastered.
Yuri remembered he managed to pull off his exhibition skate within only a few short practices, but it was also something he was passionate about and had pictured in his head over and over again so that it could be easily rehearsed and perfected on the ice. With Luminous, he was so stuck he didn’t even know where to begin.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“Your mother called.”
Yuri’s jaw stopped moving in mid-chew, his body frozen in place as his eyes trail up across the breakfast bar to look his grandfather in the eyes. There they paused, the brief moment of silence drifting through their ears with weight, the glaze over his iris revealing he was being serious. With a deep breath, he slowly let out one final clench of the jaw and swallowed his food, staring back down at his plate for just a moment before resuming as if the sentence had never been said.
“She wants to schedule a visit.”
“That’s nice,” Yuri didn’t look up, cutting a section from his eggs and eating it with a bite of sausage. His voice was cold and calculating, the lack of inflection in the chords gave enough emotion that was needed to convey his tone.
“Yuri,” Nikolai started, but quickly ended when his grandson looked back up to him. He sighed, not saying another word and turning to his own plate. He couldn’t necessarily blame the boy, after all. For all he knew, if that were his mother then he probably would feel the same way.
The sounds of quiet clinking and even quieter eating echoed for what felt like thirty years. It was only thirty seconds – at maximum.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa. I know she’s still your daughter.”
They didn’t say anything more. They didn’t know if they even could say anything more. The guilt started to devour at Yuri when Nikolai just nodded, pretending that she wasn’t. Fuck, he was going to have to do it again. The things he did for his grandfather – the things he was willing to do – and he couldn’t stop himself from going through hell if it meant keeping the man from cracking.
She still was his daughter, and it must have been heartbreaking for things to turn out this way. Yet, a part of him wished that his mother would just die – it would be easier to move on. It would be easier to hide behind pain of loss rather than the pain of what she’s done, what she’s become.
What he has to face.
Yuri kept his head hung low, his voice quiet and his breaking shaky. He had to face it.
“…When?”
There was something about the Skype calling music that became more and more irritating the more often he heard it. It was catchy, but it became the annoying kind of catchy quickly – like the kind of commercials that get stuck in one’s head after having the unlucky fate of having to listen to it over and over again.
Yuri waited, being unfortunate enough to listen to the ringing for over a minute, until it finally stopped and he heard the distinct clicking and cutting voices that came with the connection.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, but I can’t see you.”
“Gimme a sec.”
Clicking around, a final connection, two screens, a short lived “yay” that was masked as either sarcasm or disinterest. There were some chuckles, too, thrown in for good measure. Yuri adjusted his screen accordingly to where he can lay down and still talk to his friend, while Otabek didn’t even budge.
It’s always the first subject that’s the hardest to get the ball rolling – something that would allow them to just start talking and trailing off onto other subjects and not stop until the sun would trickle into the bedrooms of Kazakhstan. They wouldn’t last to that point, however; the Russian would always fall asleep sometime in the middle of the call.
Time zones: they really fucking suck.
“Did you hear the piece I sent you?” Yuri asked with a sigh, his laughs calming down after some funny story that happened with Otabek that day.
“I did, actually,” he replied, reaching across his desk to grab a small notepad and flipped open to a page where he had taken a few notes while listening to the piece. “It’s unique. It’s not like it’s Agape where it’s clearly about love, this has other emotions incorporated in it which makes it all the harder to do.”
“I could have pointed that out,” Yuri chuckled. “I was just really lost on where to go and how to interpret it. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Otabek shot him a look through the cameras, before letting out a playful tsk and returning to the notepad. “I’ve managed to narrow it down where it starts innocent and carefree, then it moves onto something loving and heartfelt, building until it breaks into something … heartbreaking. That’s when it just stops and carries for just a moment before stopping altogether. It just cuts off.”
“Well that’s a start,” Yuri mumbled, even though he had most of these ideas down already, but not with those kind of emotions behind it. “I have to tell a story with my body about this one.”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you skate anyway?”
“I conveyed emotions, not a story.”
“Fair enough.”
Otabek looked back to his notes, various story ideas he could run past his best friend and a few moves that would be absolutely perfect in the skate. He knew some ideas were just spur of the moment creations, while there were some stories that probably would stick if Yuri could get ideas based on it.
“Alright,” Yuri breathed out carefully as he adjusted his position so that he could write a few ideas before his inevitable unconsciousness slips over. “Throw them at me.”
Some ideas were easily garbage, either because they couldn’t be easily translated on the ice or simply because it sounded good in theory and as the idea was being spoken, the confidence behind the idea would deplete before Otabek would just stop, fur his brow together and scribble it out, moving onto the next idea as if it never came to mind.
Then there was one.
“Alright, innocent and carefree – that’s childhood, most likely a childhood friendship. Loving and heartfelt – clearly, falling in love and being in love; they probably fell in love with their friend. Then the heartbreak – either rejection or death. But based on the way it just cuts off at the end, it suggests that it’s a mixture of the two. Like, the love interest leaves for someone else, then dies, cut off like how Death cuts off Life,” Otabek by this point was rambling, not even paying attention to the Russian’s intrigued reactions.
“Or what if, the person in love kills them self?”
“That’s awfully fucking dark, Yura.”
“As if the close friend rejecting for someone else and dying wasn’t dark enough?”
Otabek just grinned and shook his head.
Yuri yawned, looking through the ideas, laying back down and nodding slowly. “I’ll think on that one. It probably will be what I’m going with, or some variant of it…thanks, Beka.”
The Kazakh just nods with a small smile. They continued to talk about other things – even planning a future meeting in St. Petersburg – until it reached to the point to where Yuri had his eyes closed, humming slightly from time to time to indicate he was listening. It was then when Otabek paused for just a few minutes, waiting and knowing that doing so would cause the Russian to slip under, not having to think about trying to pay attention.
It was only three minutes passed when Otabek gently called out for Yuri, not receiving a response at all. Practice must have been brutal on the boy.
That’s when the Kazakh took a deep breath, leaning back in his chair as he did and kept his eyes on the Russian three hours behind him sleeping so peacefully. He watched as his chest would slowly rise and fall, as his fingers curled just slightly as they lied there, listening to the soft breathing and the calmness about the boy while he wasn’t awake. A few strands fell in front of his face, covering the eyes and across his mouth.
Otabek’s arm gently reached forward and touched his screen, picturing being there to push the locks behind the blond’s ear, his thumb stroking across his cheek as he would do so. His fingertips softly rested on the boy’s face for a few moments, before taking one last deep breath – one last deep look – and then closing down Skype altogether.
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SOMETHING OTABEK KNEW FROM THE START:
He was in love with Yuri Plisetsky.
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