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“Go pick a movie,” Otabek says once he’s taken Yuri’s coat out of his hands and turned to hang it up on the rack. “I’ll bring us some sweet tea.” He had mentioned at dinner that he had all his movies with him, so of course Yuri had to say something foolish about how they should watch one.
He is sorely regretting it. He’s opened the cabinet in the living room to what must be at least fifty DVDs with glaring red titles splashed gleefully along dark blue spines, or else shivery smoke-colored text etched into jet black cases. It is because of years of automatically averting his eyes at the first sight of these indicators that Yuri knows immediately that Otabek’s movie collection is actually a horror movie collection. He takes an involuntary step back, abruptly aware of the thudding of his heart in his chest.
In disbelief he shuffles forward again. Surely, he thinks, surely there’s a few normal movies in here. There has got to be some way to avoid mortification. A wayward Pride and Prejudice DVD. Seabiscuit. Blades of Glory, given as a joke. Something. After several minutes of frantically running his fingers across glossy spines he concludes that no, his fate is sealed. Every single one is a horror movie, and most appear to be slashers to boot.
“Did you pick one?” Otabek asks with no hint of impatience, excitement, or anything in between when he walks in from the kitchen carrying two cups. He places them down on the coffee table and comes to stand beside Yuri. He’s so close that Yuri can feel the heat rising off his bare arm. Now his heart is racing for an entirely different reason.
He’s nearly seventeen, he’s never seen a horror movie, and he’s totally flustered by any physical proximity to his friend. Yuri’s self-esteem is taking a serious hit in this moment.
“W-whatever, you pick,” he makes a totally uncool retreat back to the couch. He flops down and busies himself with his phone, inwardly cursing his sweaty palms and everything else. He doesn’t look up until Otabek has chosen a film and switched off the living room and hallway lights. Then there’s only light coming from the kitchen and from a faint street light outside. Yuri scrambles to sit a bit more upright as the older boy’s reassuring weight settles onto the couch beside him. The music is already swelling eerily.
Yuri’s heart is in his throat almost right away. He tries to make himself brave by needling Otabek, “Horror movies, huh? Do you really find these scary?” He scoffs.
“Sometimes,” he answers in his even, honest way. “Mostly I think they’re funny. This one especially, you’ll see.”
Yuri says nothing. He doesn’t think he’s seen Otabek laugh more than once. The most Yuri gets out of Otabek (and he really tries) is a wry grin, or a disarmingly warm little smile. As he tries to shake that thought from his head Yuri ventures, “So is he the doll for the rest of the movie? This is so stupid. What’s so scary about a little toy.”
As the movie continues on he pointedly avoids taking out his phone, in case Otabek starts to suspect he is scared or worse, he finds Yuri rude. He keeps casting glances at Otabek, trying to catch him smiling. To no avail. He starts to get drawn into the story. He wants nothing more than to close his eyes and block his ears, but he keeps watching with building trepidation until a big jump scare really gets him. He nearly falls off the couch.
His chest heaving and his face filling with color, he looks across at Otabek. Otabek is looking back with very, very slightly raised eyebrows. “We can watch something else,” he says.
“NO!” Yuri shouts, maybe even louder than usual.
Otabek looks at him, impassive, until Yuri turns and stares pointedly at the screen, waiting for his breathing to even out. Otabek stays characteristically silent and Yuri steels himself against further scary moments (in part by hugging his knees against his chest.)
The ludicrous story seems to go on interminably and the body count just keeps going up. Somewhere deep down Yuri acknowledges that the awkward shots of the little doll terrorizing and wounding fully grown people could be quite funny. But when the credits finally start to roll Yuri leaps up and beans Otabek’s stupid undercut head with a couch pillow. “You piece of shit, you didn’t laugh once!”
In response Otabek smiles just a little bit, though. “I’m gonna have nightmares,” Yuri says sourly as he drops heavily back onto his butt. He’s strategically just shy of admitting he was afraid, although he isn’t stupid; he knows it’s obvious by now.
Or, well, he thought it would be obvious. But either Otabek is trying to spare him embarrassment or he’s been abducted by aliens and replaced by someone who would be deliberately cruel to Yuri because he sets about business as usual. “Let’s set up your bed, we both have practice tomorrow.” Otabek has been training at Yuri’s home rink for a couple months now. Yuri is always welcome at his apartment, but on Yakov’s orders he may only stay very late on the condition that he sleep over on the fold-out couch in the living room. It could be dangerous for Yuri to make the trip back to Yakov’s apartment through the city at night. Furthermore, the two have gleaned from the sour expression Yakov makes whenever he sees Otabek arriving at or leaving practice that he does not approve of his motorbike.
Yuri fights rising panic as they push aside the coffee table and pull the cot out from the couch. Otabek retrieves a heavy afghan and a pillow from the hallway closet. His mind is already racing with possibilities—where to envision the awful little doll in the dark, waiting to pop out and stick a knife in him? He wants desperately for Otabek to think of him as the adult he knows he is. Why did Otabek have to break out his literal cryptonite, the horror movie?
The older boy neatly spreads the blanket onto the bed and Yuri’s eyes catch and follow the movement of the fine muscles in his forearms, allowing his brain to short-circuit out of the irrational fear loop for a moment so it can explore other avenues regularly attributed to the reptile brain. “Beka,” he says and the Kazakh looks up at him with a searching gaze. “I’m gonna have nightmares.”
“Yuri...we didn’t have to watch it.” He’s finally catching on and looks genuinely sorry. “You should have told me.”
In no mood to be admonished, Yuri looks away from Otabek as he says, “I’m embarrassed enough telling you now! Shit, just...sleep here, with me? Or else I won’t sleep at all and my whole day will be thrown off tomorrow.”
“No,” Otabek says flatly but before Yuri can crank his state of being all the way up to livid, he goes on to say, “this bed is too uncomfortable. It’ll have to be my bed.”
“...Oh—kay—okay.”
“If that’s okay.”
“Yeah it’s okay,” Yuri does another very uncool maneuver where he whips out his phone and turns around to try to hide the color that is again rising to his cheeks.
“Okay,” says Otabek behind him, and Yuri hears his bare feet pad off down the hallway. His stupid hand is shaking too much to even unlock his phone. He gives himself a moment to breathe and then hurries after Otabek, grabbing his backpack and clicking off the living room light as he goes. His heart thuds in his ears as he passes through the dark kitchen and by the open bathroom door into Otabek’s bedroom.
There are already two pillows on the bed, which is suddenly looking rather narrow. Otabek is picking clothes up off the floor and putting them in a hamper. Yuri murmurs something about getting changed and promptly barricades himself in the bathroom. He pulls on a clean sleep shirt and sweats and tries in vain to stop feeling like he’s steeling himself before a skate. Why does Beka have to make him so ridiculous, alone in his head?
When he walks back into the bedroom Otabek passes him with one of those warm little smiles and heads into the bathroom. Yuri glances around. The furniture is plain and dark, the walls white but appearing an inviting yellow in the warm light from a single lit lamp. There is a photo of Otabek’s rather large family in a frame on the dresser. The room smells like Otabek. Yuri approaches the bed, which smells even more like Otabek. He decides to settle down under the covers on the far side of the bed, facing away from the door.
He presses his face into the pillow and takes a deep breath and feels a thrill go shooting down his spine to burst into butterflies in his belly. He thinks he is pathetic but his heart is too elated to concur.
Yuri hears Otabek step over the threshold, watches him come around the bed to click the lamp off. He seems to look towards Yuri then, but Yuri can’t see his face in the sudden darkness. When he settles into the other side of the bed he is slow and patient, hardly even jostling Yuri. As the Russian skater lays there looking into the blank dark of the room it’s like he can’t even remember the scary images and sounds from the movie—he’s far too delighted by this compromising position. Otabek’s body is so warm at his back.
Feeling brave and heady, he rolls over without really having a plan. His eyes are adjusting to the low light; he can just make out the shape of the back of Otabek’s head. Yuri thinks about their shoulders and legs bumping together sometimes when they sit side by side on a bench in the rink or in the seats on the bus. Yuri thinks about the older boy’s gaze following him as he skates and lingering on him everywhere from the locker room to the street. He thinks about the other day, Beka reaching up to skim his fingers across a line just above his shoulder blades and telling him his hair is getting long. The sheets whisper as Yuri shifts, and puts his hand decisively on his bed-mate’s waist. Otabek tenses completely.
Then he rolls over gently. Yuri lifts his hand, and puts it right down on his waist again when he comes to a stop. Otabek has shifted closer; his warm hands, curled loosely in front of him, bump against Yuri’s chest. Yuri figures he can probably feel his heart racing. He can see Otabek’s eyes glinting right there in the darkness. Then they disappear as Otabek presses a kiss to Yuri’s lips.
The feeling of it finally happening makes Yuri tremble from head to toe. Otabek is already pulling back so Yuri follows him right across the place where their pillows meet to press their lips together again. He isn’t sure of exactly what to do and forgets to breathe for a minute. Otabek ends up taking control, peppering his lips and chin and nose with soft kisses and then cupping his cheek. Yuri lets himself be guided as well as he can. And when Otabek’s tongue teases the seam of his mouth he is all too happy to open up for him.
Yuri is trying his best to kiss back but finds himself lost in the hot, wet sensation. He feels completely turned around by how little he had predicted about the experience—not that he had even thought to try until very recently. Just as soon as it is happening, it seems, Beka is pulling away, with a heavy hand on Yuri’s cheek keeping him from following. After a moment he slides that hand back to the nape of Yuri’s neck, another completely disarming sensation, and says with a smile in his voice, “Do you think you can sleep now?”
“Asshole,” Yuri grumbles.