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Mila looked at the clock on her mobile phone and then up at the arrival board at the airport. The airplane from Japan had landed half an hour ago, so it shouldn’t be too long before Yuri came through the arrival gates. She watched and waited as tired and happy passengers walked past her and into the arms of loved ones who were waiting for them.
It wasn’t hard to spot him when he came, despite the fact that he was trying to hide under his hood and behind his dark sunglasses. His huge leopard print suitcase gave him away. He was hanging his head and didn’t see her, so she waited for him to walk right past her before she called out after him.
“Hey, loser!”
He stopped dead in his tracks, then turned around to look at her. His face had gone bright red. It was hard to know if it was from embarrassment or anger. Probably a little of both.
Mila caught up to him and flung an arm around his shoulders. “Back from Japan all alone, huh? Victor threw you away like the piece of garbage we all know you really are?”
Normally Yuri would flip out at her for saying something like that. He would stomp the ground and clench his fists before he would get right in her face and yell and scream first grade insults at her with such force, Mila would have to wipe his spit off her face afterwards. Sometimes he threw things too. Actually, he threw things quite often. She was pretty sure he had gone through three mobile phones so far this year.
But this time Yuri didn’t say anything to her. He just stood there, shrinking under the weight of her insult.
Shit , Mila thought to herself, this is really bad.
When Yuri stopped talking, or stopped yelling, you knew there was something wrong. Yuri was like a wild animal in the way he acted. Normally he was the angry, feisty tiger that was ready to pounce on anyone and everyone and tear them apart with his sharp teeth and claws. But sometimes he was the injured tiger that slunk off with his tail between his legs, to go hide somewhere dark where he could lick his wounds all alone. He must have taken the loss in Japan even harder than Mila initially thought.
Just to be sure, Mila took another stab at him. She removed her arm from around his shoulders and poked him in the side as annoyingly as she could instead. “So, how does it feel to be Victor’s second favourite Yuri?”
Mila didn’t think Yuri’s shoulders could sink any lower, but it turned out they could. He let out what sounded more like a whimper than anything else and started shuffling away from her with his suitcase squeaking behind him.
Oh crap.
“Yuri, where are you going?” she asked him with a sigh.
He stopped again, and without turning around he answered her in a barely audible voice: “I’m getting the bus.”
Mila rolled her eyes. “No, you’re not, you little freak. I’m here to pick you up. You’re going home with me.” She took his suitcase in one hand and Yuri in the other, and dragged them both with her out of the airport terminal.
When Mila had put Yuri’s suitcase in the trunk of her car, she got in the driver's seat and waited for him to get into the passenger seat. But instead of getting in, he just stood unmoving next to the car.
Seriously?
This was so ridiculously unlike him, she was starting to think he was doing it just to mess with her. Now that would be way more like the Yuri she knew. Mila leaned over the passenger seat, opened the door and yelled at him: “Get in the car, Yuri!”
He finally got in, his face wearing the biggest pout she had ever seen.
“You’re seriously more pathetic than JJ’s style right now,” she told him as she backed out of the parking lot.
Yuri grunted and mumbled back at her: “Shut up…”
Oh!
He had told her to shut up. It wasn’t a very passionate shut up, but it was a shut up none the less. He was coming back to her! Mila suppressed a smile as she turned on the car stereo. KISS blasted out of the speakers, and as they got onto the highway, she could see Yuri quietly tapping the rhythm of the music on his thighs.
When they got home to Mila’s flat, she deliberately pushed Yuri through the door first. The reason why was because there was a small black kitten waiting for them inside. When the kitten saw Yuri, it meowed at him as loudly as its tiny voice would allow it.
Yuri froze when he saw the kitten, staring at it with an open mouth. Then he squatted down in front of it and carefully reached his hand out towards it. Mila quietly walked past the two as they got to know each other, and into the kitchen where she turned on the oven.
Not too long after, Yuri came into the kitchen holding the kitten in his arms.
Bait taken.
“I can’t believe you got a cat,” he told her accusingly. “Who’s gonna look after her when you’re not home? Have you thought about that? Having a pet is a big responsibility, you know. You can’t just dump them like you dump all your dumbass boyfriends.”
Mila was glad she was standing with her back against him, busy taking a couple of pirozhkis out of the fridge, because if she wasn’t he would have seen her smile at his little rant.
She ignored everything Yuri had just said and instead told him: “Her name is Miyshka.”
“Well, that’s a stupid name,” Yuri burst out as Mila put the pirozhkis in the oven. “Typical you to do something as dumb as naming a cat mouse.”
“I think it suits her,” Mila said, stretching her hand out to pet the kitten in Yuri’s arms. As she did, the kitten climbed up Yuri’s chest and snuggled into his neck under his hair.
“See? She totally resents you for it,” Yuri told her, held onto the tiny kitten as he walked over to Mila’s sofa and sat himself down on it.
Mila pretended to be busy in the kitchen while waiting for the food to warm up, but in reality she was paying close attention to Yuri out of the corner of her eye. He was petting Miyshka with gentle hands. Seeing him like that you would never have guessed he was really a foul-mouthed, rude teenager lacking an inside voice.
The oven dinged and Mila took out the pirozhkis, put them on two separate plates and brought them with her over to the sofa. She cut a piece from one of the pirozhkis and lead the fork towards Yuri’s mouth.
“Open wi-ide!” she told him with a huge grin.
He stared at her with a disgusted expression. “What the hell are you doing?!” His voice was gaining in volume.
“Since you were so depressed earlier you couldn’t even get into the car, I took it for granted you needed help eating as well,” she told him with that calm, mocking voice she knew he hated.
Mila could see Yuri’s face change colour right in front of her before he exploded. “I DON’T NEED YOU TO FEED ME, YOU STUPID HAG!”
His hand whipped out and hit the fork, making it and the piece of pirozhki fly across the room. Strangely enough, Miyshka didn’t seem to mind his sudden outburst.
Aaand he’s back.
“Good to know. Then I don’t have to worry about having to wipe your ass when you need the toilet later,” she followed up.
He scowled at her with dark eyes from behind his blond hair: “Just shut up and let me eat!”
They sat in silence for a little while, eating, before Mila decided to pull out the final card she had up her sleeve for the day.
“Sooo… Do you want to watch compilation videos of Victor falling on the ice? There are tons of them on Youtube.”
Yuri looked like a chipmunk as he froze mid-bite through his pirozhki. First his eyes widened, then they narrowed. And then he nodded.
Soon enough both of them were crying with laughter, halfway on top of each other on the sofa, as they watched Victor repeatedly fall on his ass on the ice, accompanied by strange memes and crazy music.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen!” Yuri snorted while drying tears of laughter from his eyes.
“I can’t! It’s too much!” Mila wheezed. She was struggling to breathe.
They watched all the humiliating videos of Victor they could find, some several times, and they both cringed and laughed until their stomachs ached and cheeks hurt. Yuri had multiple very loud outbursts about Victor: some about his hair for some reason, some about revenge, but most of them about sticking it to him and Japanese Yuri in the upcoming Grand Prix.
At one point Mila realised she couldn’t hear Yuri’s laughter anymore, and when she looked over at him, she saw that he had fallen asleep, Miyshka curled up right next to him.
Mila got up from the sofa, found the leopard print blanket she had bought earlier that day and draped it carefully over Yuri. As she did, he mumbled to her with eyes still closed: “Hey baba…”
“Yes?” she answered him.
“You suck,” he told her in a whisper, yawned, and hugged the blanket tightly.
Mila smiled, leaned down and kissed him on his forehead, and then said in a soft voice: “You suck too, little freak.”