Chapter Text
When Yuri wakes up with a scratchy throat, he makes and subsequently chugs a cup of instant coffee, as usual, and ignores how fast the relief of a nice, hot drink is gone. When his nose starts running in the shower, he figures he must be a little allergic to something in the new body wash he’s been using, even though this is at least the fifth time he’s used it. And when he starts coughing after brushing his teeth, he pins it on a hair-trigger gag reflex, even though it’s never been an issue in his 17-plus years of having teeth to brush.
Because he is not sick. He cannot be sick. He refuses to be sick. Nope. No way. Not today.
Not the day his boyfriend’s coming to visit for the weekend.
He and Otabek have been looking forward to this for months, a little glimmer of overlapping free time in their calendars during the competitive season, one night and two whole days of talking face to face, going out on real dates, doing all that mushy couple stuff that Yuri is so damn psyched for — holding hands, hugging, cuddling, kissing…
And making out. They can work in a lot of making out in one night and two days.
So, no, he’s not sick. Nope. No way. Not today. Not this weekend.
He coughs some more before heading out the door for practice. In response, he digs through his duffel bag for a pack of throat lozenges, pops one into his mouth, and as he sucks on it, he declares firmly, albeit silently in his mind:
I am not fucking sick.
Even though he absolutely is.
“Are you feeling okay, Yurio?” asks Yuuri, stopping in front of Yuri on the opposite side of the rink’s barrier.
“Huh?” Yuri mumbles, not looking up from his phone. He’s too busy looking at a photo Otabek just sent from the baggage check-in line for any further acknowledgement at the moment.
“You look under the weather,” Yuuri goes on, with a small frown. “Have you been eating well?”
“I’m fine.” Yuri sniffs, rubbing his nose against the outside of his wrist. “Just tired.”
“Too excited to sleep, huh?” Victor says slyly, his words sliding in much like the rest of him — he easily skates up behind a distracted Yuuri and wraps him up in a bear hug so tight it’s almost certainly cutting off circulation somewhere.
“V-Victor!” Yuuri blurts, trying to squirm out of an embrace that, once more for emphasis, probably requires jaws of life to free him from. He does stop resisting, though, probably out of a combination of capitulation and realization. “Wait, what’s exciting?”
“None of your business,” Yuri seethes, directing the answer more at Victor than Yuuri. The hoarseness of his voice makes him sound angrier, though he assumes it’s the anger that’s causing the hoarseness instead. Because he is not sick.
“Don’t you know?” says Victor, quick to ignore Yuri. “Yurio’s getting a very special visitor today!”
“Oh? Yurio, is your grandpa coming to visit?”
“Yuuri…” Victor sighs, nuzzling his cheek into his oblivious fiancé’s hair.
“Otabek’s coming, okay?” Yuri cuts in, and insistently adds, “No big deal, so drop it.”
Well, yes, big deal — very big deal for Yuri. But it’s only okay for him to make a big deal out of it.
“That’s great, Yurio!” Yuuri’s face lights up at the news. “You haven’t seen your friend in awhile, have you?”
“He hasn’t seen his boyfriend in awhile,” Victor corrects, with such a self-satisfied smile that’s just begging to be punched. “You really need to pay attention to your rinkmates more, Yuuri.”
“Or you could learn to mind your own goddamn business, you creepy old fuck,” Yuri spits out. Both Victor and Yuuri, more than desensitized to Yuri’s less-than-polite outbursts, don’t even react to this one.
“We’re just concerned, is all,” says Victor, leaning closer to Yuri, and consequently pushing Yuuri forward with him. “You’re… prepared, right?”
“Huh?” Yuri’s eyes narrow in a combination of confusion and very, very deep suspicion. “Prepared for what? ”
Yuuri looks equally confused. Victor just keeps smiling.
“For all the time you’ll be spending in bed , of course.”
“Huh?” Yuri pauses, actually processing what he just heard. As he does, the grip around his phone starts to threaten the device’s continued existence as a single, whole piece. “Huh!?”
“O-Oh,” Yuuri stammers, catching on. His discomfort at the topic is evident, but his concern must be greater than his misgivings, because he goes on to say, “Are you using protection? It’s really important, Yurio.”
“I know!” Yuri snaps. “So knock this shit off, we haven’t even—“
He bites his tongue, stopping himself.
“You don’t need any condoms for tonight, do you?” Victor asks and oh god why won’t he shut up. “We always bring some with us everywhere, just in case, but I’m sure Yuuri wouldn’t mind sparing a few for someone in need.”
Yuuri, already a bit pink, immediately goes beet red. “Victor!”
“Ugh, you guys are so frickin’ gross.” And, to not provoke the headache that he’s starting to get, Yuri does what he should have done in the first place and walks the hell away.
Speaking of gross, it suddenly feels like there’s a waterfall pouring out of his nostrils, his least favourite part of the bucket of fun that is catching a cold. Even so, he’ll take the doubtful explanation that what he just went through is making his brain start to leak out his nose over the much more probable explanation that he has a cold, because he is still not sick .
But he is really sick of those two, seeing them together all the time, constantly stuck at the hip or wherever else they want to be stuck together ( don’t picture it, don’t picture it, don’t—ugh) , always acting so lovey-dovey. And even when Yuri’s not forced to physically be with them, his feed gets flooded with status updates about what they’re doing and photos of them together, and not just in Victor’s incredibly obnoxious style; he also gets to deal with Yuuri’s more subdued, sometimes genuinely sweet glimpses into their shared life.
He’s so jealous of them.
No, scratch that, he’s not jealous.
Why would he be jealous?
Okay, maybe he’s just a little jealous.
Okay, fine, maybe a lot — but Victor and Yuuri get to spend as much time apart as Yuri and Otabek get to spend together, so he can be as goddamn jealous as he wants to be.
But at least he gets a weekend of not needing to be jealous.
Beka [3:07]: About to board
Beka [3:07]: See you in 5 hours.
Beka [3:08]: I love you.
Yuri curses when he checks his phone, at 3:15, when Yakov calls the practice and Yuri beelines it to his personal effects. Great — he left Otabek hanging, where he will remain hanging for five hours and 2200 miles. But, as pissed as he is for missing his chance to send his love back, it quickly gets overwhelmed by the pure, bubbling excitement of knowing that Otabek is on his way, that he’s actually getting closer and closer with each passing second.
Yuri’s condition also getting worse and worse with each passing second, evident by how his metro ride back home is marked by a continuous and progressively louder chain of sniffling and snorting. He’s already gone through all his tissues, which is yet another blaring warning sign that he’s ignoring, because he’s busy going over and double-checking all the plans they’ve made — places they’re going to visit, restaurants they’re going to eat at, shops they’re going to hit, landscapes he’s going to get to see from the backseat of Otabek’s rented bike… Right now, he's well distracted from how much he actually feels like death is approaching. In any case, Yuri has no time for death right now. He and Otabek have goddamn plans.
Yuri has his own plans too.
And, because those plans in specific are on his mind, the first thing he does after getting home, after finally getting to blow his nose, is go to his room, open the drawer beneath his bed, and grab the box of condoms he bought a couple days ago. Then he… does nothing, really. He has no idea why he rushed right here — did he think they might have disappeared? That someone broke into his house and only swiped a 3-pack of condoms?
He turns the box over in his hands, hearing the contents shuffle a bit as he does. His eyes scan all over all the words printed on it. “Ultra-thin.” That’s a good choice, right? But what if it’s too thin? Can a condom even be too thin? Does that make them easier to break? Should he have bought something more basic for a possible first time? Or something way fancier? Will three be enough? Is three too many ? What if they’re too big? What if they’re too small? Too big or too small for, wait, who exactly? How do you even figure out—
He sneezes, suddenly and violently, three times in succession. Besides luring Potya into the room, presumably so she can see what’s wrong with her owner, it interrupts Yuri’s train of thought. It gives him a second to calm down.
He puts the box back in its hiding place, shuts the drawer, and turns his attention to Potya, who’s now rubbing her head against Yuri’s leg. He gives Potya an always well-received scratch on the chin as he thinks about how he’s overthinking this. Since making this purchase, even before, Yuri’s been telling himself that they’re part of the plan for the weekend — but only if it feels like it should be part of the plan. Because even with all the flirty texts and suggestive pictures they’ve sent each other since he and Otabek have started dating, they’ve barely done anything in person. Heavy kissing and light groping, that about sums it up. So he’s not really sure if he’ll even get to put these into action, even though he wants to. At least, he thinks he wants to? And he thinks Otabek does too, maybe?
Well, whatever. If the mood’s right and the moment comes, he just wants to be prepared.
Prepared. Ugh, that’s the word Victor used. He’s going to blame reliving that whole encounter in his mind for the headache that’s really starting to gnaw at him. Like, really getting its hooks into every nerve above his eyes. He still has at least four hours before he needs to get ready and go meet Otabek at the airport, so he takes off the shoes and jacket he didn’t bother to remove before, pulls Potya up onto the bed with him, tosses his phone within his reach, coughs into his pillow, and settles in for a quick nap.
He wakes up in a groggy haze to his phone ringing, with barely enough mental faculties to figure out what to do with a ringing phone. Eyes still half-shut and useless, he manages to accept the call, get the phone more or less where it needs to be, and let out a husky, “Hello?”
“Yura!” There’s a relieved sigh from the other side. “Finally got ahold of you.”
“... Otabek?” Yuri mumbles, a little more awake but not any more aware. “What’s up?”
“I'm at the terminal. I don't see you anywhere. Where are you?”
“I'm at ho…” he trails off. His consciousness is coming back. It's not liking where this is going. “Wait, you're… are you at the airport?”
He is vaguely aware that it should be impossible, but Yuri’s about 95% sure he just heard Otabek’s brow scrunch up in that way it just does.
“Yes…?”
“In… Almaty?” There is barely any hope inflected in the question, because even the most wishful-thinking-est corner of his brain knows that Otabek’s answer is going to be:
“Yuri, I’m in St. Petersburg.”
And that should be the sentence that instills in Yuri such an incredible joy that would render him unrecognizable to mostly anyone he's forced to regularly interact with, but instead makes him feel more or less like that time he drank too many energy drinks in one afternoon and thought his everything was going to explode. He swings the phone away from his ear to see the time. 8:58. 8:58! Why is it 8:58!?
“Oh, shit!” he pretty much screeches, stumbling out of bed, immediately scrambling around his room for pants, despite already having pants on. “Oh shit, shit, shit, shit! ”
“What's going on? Is something wrong?”
“I just took a nap and—shit!” His frantic search continues even when he starts to hack into his palm so hard his eyes start to tear up. “Just gotta,” he says, strained, “gotta find clothes and—”
“H-Hey, Yura,” Otabek interjects, repeating himself until he actually gets Yuri’s attention. “Yura, calm down, it’s okay.”
“I slept through you getting here!” Yuri instead insists, because it is very not okay .
“Please don’t worry about it. It’s okay,” Otabek reassures him, and his voice is so even and calm that it's starting to rub off on Yuri. A little, at least. “I can take a cab.”
Yuri worries at his lip for a moment, letting his panic take itself out of one part of his body instead of all of it. “Okay. Yeah. That works.”
“I’ll go grab one now.” Otabek pauses. “Is everything okay, though?”
“Yeah,” Yuri answers quickly. But, feeling that an instant answer might not be enough to quell his concerns, he goes on, “It’s just… I’ve been looking forward to this and…” He sniffles. “I dunno, being really excited just messes me up, I guess?"
It makes him feel vulnerable, opening up to say stuff like this to someone. But that doesn't feel so bad. It's weird. Sort of nice.
And it’s just audible over the chatter and bustle of the airport, but he can definitely hear Otabek’s soft, warm laugh, and picture perfectly the smile he must be making right now. It makes Yuri’s already-pounding heart pound, but to a different beat, something more pleasant, more welcome.
“I understand—oh, wait.” Otabek keeps speaking, but not to him. It’s muffled, hinting to Yuri that he’s moved his phone well away from his face. Yuri’s able to make out a fuzzy “Yes, thank you” before Otabek’s focus returns to Yuri. “Ah, sorry, I’m on my way, be there soon.”
“Okay, love”—the speaker blips and goes quiet—“you…”
Yuri stands in place for an uncertain amount of time, before falling back on his bed, avoiding colliding into Potya with any of his limbs but disturbing her and earning her temporary scorn nonetheless. The mercurial fluffball hops off the bed and escorts herself out of the room, leaving Yuri alone with his thoughts — and a pile of unread text messages.
Beka [8:35]: I’m here.
Beka [8:35]: Just got through customs.
Beka [8:36]: The official called her superior over and I thought I was in trouble
Beka [8:36]: Just a fan. Asked me for a photo. So I still get to spend the weekend with you instead of in a Russian jail.
Beka [8:38]: Where are you, btw?
Beka [8:41]: Yura?
[missed call]
Beka [8:49]: I’m still at the terminal.
Beka [8:50]: By some blue benches and payphones.
[missed call]
Beka [8:55]: I guess you don’t have reception right now?
Each message makes the grimace on Yuri’s face more pronounced. He worried the hell out of Otabek, might have made him think he’d been kidnapped or murdered or in a traffic accident or some other equally terrible and nightmarish scenario. Now it’s just embarrassing that he was just dead asleep instead of actually dead, because at least then he’d have a real excuse. God, how long did his quick nap last? Four, five hours? And he doesn’t even feel any more rested or refreshed, he’s just achy and tired and… really, really sweaty. Fuck, Otabek’s going to be here soon, actually soon, and every inch of Yuri is just drenched in sweat.
Okay. No time to waste. This can be fixed. Struggling out of his wet clothes as he moves, Yuri rushes to the shower, not even giving it the couple minutes it needs to warm up before hopping in.
Everything is okay. The majority of the weekend in still ahead of them; it can still be salvaged and thoroughly enjoyed. After all, Yuri Plisetsky is not sick .
He's barely dried off and back in his underwear when he buzzes Otabek in, giving him the time it will take Otabek to make it up to his floor to get dressed. It takes him no time to pick out the embroidered tiger hoodie that just popped up in a box at his door one day, all because Otabek saw it in Almaty and thought it belonged in St. Petersburg with Yuri. It takes him longer than expected to find it, though, so he ends up pairing it with the first thing he grabs off the floor, a pair of running shorts that hardly peek out from the bottom of the hoodie, leaving plenty of long, bare leg. But it's fine! They're dating! But maybe he should put on some pants!
No time! As soon as Yuri hears knocking on the door he wills away that gross-feeling (and still completely unexplained) congestion out of his chest to bolt to his front door, yank the locks free, and throw open the door with such force that it gives Otabek a start.
And there he is, standing at the threshold, the extended handle of his carry-on suitcase in hand. It’s the sight he's been waiting for for what feels like forever. It's almost dizzying.
“Hey,” says Otabek.
“Hi,” says Yuri.
In the same instant that Otabek lets go of his luggage, Yuri rushes forward into his opened arms, wrapping his own arms around Otabek’s middle, throwing his face into his leather-clad shoulder. In turn he is embraced, without delay and without reserve, tight against Otabek’s body, held like something that would hurt to let go of.
“I've missed this.” Otabek’s hand, sturdy in its pressure, moves up Yuri’s spine, up until his fingers are in his hair. “I've missed you.”
“You live too goddamn far away,” Yuri mumbles into leather, fingers gripping into leather.
The hand at his nape trails to his cheek, bringing to it both the warmth of Otabek’s skin and the coolness of the water droplets from Yuri’s hair. They part only far enough for their eyes to meet. Otabek moves in to kiss him. Yuri’s throat seizes up.
“Wait!” he manages to croak out as he holds Otabek back, before twisting his body away. He's quick enough that he's coughing towards the floor and not directly into every orifice on Otabek’s face, but the relief that provides turns out to be pretty meager. He has just run out of time to be delusional about this.
Otabek rubs his upper back until Yuri can more or less catch his breath. “Yura,” he says, hands on his shoulders. “Are you sick?”
Yuri looks up, seeing Otabek go from a vaguely Otabek-like blur to actual Otabek as he blinks the water out of his eyes.
“Yup,” he chokes out, gravelly and bitter. “I'm fucking sick.”