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Three months into his pregnancy, Yuri wakes up to Victor slipping out of bed. Yuri hasn't really had morning sickness, but he has had god awful heartburn, and Victor's movement is tilting the delicate equilibrium of his stomach.
Yuri makes a crabby sound as his stomach sloshes to a halt again.
"Sorry, bunny," whispers Victor. "I'll be back in a minute."
He'd better be, or Yuri is going to pout the rest of the night. Yuri manages to get settled again, and is just nicely drifting off to sleep, when Victor returns. Yuri spends one sleepy moment enjoying the return of his Russian space heater, before his brain processes what his nose is urgently screaming about.
"EURGH," he says, reeling back, hands clamped over his mouth.
"Bunny?" says Victor.
Yuri is too busy scrabbling out of the bed and toward the bathroom to answer him. Victor tries to follow him, but Yuri slams the door in his natto-scented face.
The next ten minutes are ones that Yuri prefers not to remember.
When he opens the door again, he finds Victor and Makkachin huddled on the floor together with equally tragic expressions of confusion on their faces. Victor is holding a sleeve of saltines like an offering.
"Brush your teeth," orders Yuri.
Victor slinks into the bathroom, with his metaphorical tail between his legs, and Makkachin follows Yuri. Makkachin has a dog's fine instinct for when Victor is about to be banished to the far end of the bed in disgrace. He watches with great interest as Yuri builds a pillow wall in the center of the bed, and hops into place as Victor returns from the bathroom.
Victor takes in the pillow wall and Makkachin already smugly cuddling with Yuri, and gives Yuri the saddest possible expression. "Bunnnnyyyyy," he whines.
"I don't care," says Yuri. "Why on earth did you eat natto at --" Yuri checks the clock "-- two am?"
Victor pouts. "It sounded good suddenly!"
"Next time, brush your teeth," says Yuri flatly. He cuddles up to Makkachin, and refuses to look at Victor for the rest of the night.
Victor seems chastened the next morning, but Yuri's sufferings are definitely not over. He goes to the rink to exercise in the gym there. Going to the gym by their apartment is currently a nightmare of people staring at VICTOR NIKIFOROV'S AMBIGUOUSLY PREGNANT OMEGA FIANCE!!!! and failing at being secretive when they Snapchat him on the treadmill. He's just pregnant enough to look fat and not quite enough to look actually pregnant, and he feels every stare like a knife in his back.
Victor says he looks beautiful. Victor is objectively full of crap, but Yuri appreciates him anyway.
But all around Yuri prefers to exercise at the rink gym, under the mostly benevolent eye of the Russian team's physical therapist. She's a little creepily invested in how Yuri is incubating the next generation of Russia's glory, but really pretty nice.
(Yuri was privately determined that the baby would only skate if they really wanted to. He hasn't really talked about it with Victor, but from the way Victor's mouth goes when someone makes a comment, Victor agrees with him.)
The only problem with the rink gym is the way that Madame Lilia keeps drifting past like the witch from Rapunzel, apparently waiting for him to express a craving for rampion so she can immediately produce it in return for his first born becoming a dancer.
Still, he's more or less managed to avoid her all day, and he's feeling pretty good after an hour of yoga with the PT lady. He goes to the rink to see if Victor is ready for lunch. He doesn't know what he wants, but he's pretty hungry, and it makes him happy to eat with Victor.
"Bunny!" says Victor, as soon as he sees him. He zooms across the rink and leans over for a kiss. His mouth tastes a little like he's been religiously chewing peppermints all morning.
"Hi," says Yuri, as Victor leans precariously over the boards to pet Yuri's stomach and coo in Russian. "Do you want to go for lunch?"
Victor makes a face. "I have to help Katya," he says. "But Yurio should be taking a break now, anyway."
"I'll fucking take a break when I want one, shitty old man!" roars Yurio from the center of the rink. Yurio is in the middle of a growth spurt and deeply unhappy about it. He's already sprained his ankle once, and Yakov is talking ominously about making him take a season off, which Yurio acts like is a fate worse than death.
"Don't swear in front of the baby!" yells Mila from the ice.
"I'm ... not sure the baby has ears yet?" says Yuri."But if Yurio wants to have lunch with me, that would be great." It's kind of lonely not being at the rink all the time, not that he would admit it to Victor. He's gotten used to the bustle and the hockey players following him around offering him their jackets. It was like being back in Detroit.
"Why would I want to have lunch with you!" says Yurio, coming to a stop and covering Victor with snow.
"That's not very respectful of the ice," says Yuri, because apparently he's already turning into his mother.
Yurio scowls at him. "Are we going or not," he says.
"If you can't be polite -- " begins Victor.
Yuri cuts in before they can start squabbling again. Victor is in a weird hormonal state of protectiveness about Yuri and Yurio is -- Yurio. "I'm ready if you are, Yurio."
"UGH," says Yurio. "Give me a minute." He steps off the ice and Yuri hands him his blade guards. He clomps off toward the locker room.
Victor, still leaning against the boards, laughs. "He's such a baby alpha," he says fondly.
Yuri decides he doesn't want to know what Victor is talking about.
Yurio comes back five minutes later bundled up in a hooded parka and a ferocious scowl. "Are you ready or what?" he says.
Victor kisses Yuri. "Have a good time, bunny!" he says, and then pushes off, headed toward a ten year old girl waiting nervously in the center of the rink.
Yuri follows Yurio out of the rink complex. "Where do you want to eat?" he says when they get to the street. "I'll pay." Yurio's growth spurt means he eats everything in sight but he's also sending every cent possible home to his grandfather. Yurio is too proud to accept help from most people, but he's just young enough to secretly like being taken care of by an omega, so Yuri can get away with stuff that not even Yakov dares to try. Honestly, Yuri gives him six months before he goes full buck alpha. He's already terrible to the hockey players and Victor, but Yuri figures the baby will keep him from being completely terrible to Yuri.
Alphas were so odd about babies.
Yurio chooses a small café near the rink and keeps a little in front of Yuri the entire way there. Not close enough to be near him, exactly, but not so far that he couldn't shoot nasty looks at an alpha who paused and sniffed the air, and then looked at Yuri with great interest.
She looks a little like Gal Galdot, so Yuri is kind of flattered, but also not flattered enough to not growl softly at Yurio for being rude. Yuri keeps doing stuff like that, and it's a little unnerving.
"I'm not a baby," hisses Yurio, but he behaves pretty well after that until they got to the cafe and he gets all weirdly officious and insists on taking Yuri's coat and making him sit down while Yurio orders for him.
"Wait, Yuri--" sayes Yuri, and fishes out his wallet. He holds it out to Yurio, who stares at it with a constipated expression for a long moment, and then sighs deeply and takes it. He slouches off to the counter, and Yuri represses a strong urge to tell him to straighten his back. It was bad enough to become his mother, without also becoming Minako-sensei in the bargain.
He texts Phichit while he's waiting. They're having a sort of desultory conversation about cute dogs they've seen and baby clothes that Phichit's found -- mostly hamster stuff, but he's also found some really cute poodle themed stuff. He looks up as Yurio slams down a tray of food. There's some piroshki and some soup that smells so horrible that Yuri finds himself clamping his hands over his mouth and rushing for the bathroom for the second time in less than twenty four hours.
The bathroom is very small and smells like Lysol and old lady flower perfume. Yuri spends more time than he wants to think about there praying for death.
When he comes out again, Yurio is being verbally eviscerated by the auntie who runs the café. Yuri's Russian is still pretty elementary, but he's almost sure Yurio is being called an idiot. The auntie finishes up by shoving a mop and a bottle of disinfectant at Yurio and pointing at the bathroom with a look of scathing scorn.
Yurio slinks with surprising meekness toward the bathroom, and the auntie turns her terrifying attention toward Yuri. Her face transforms from terrifying to lovingly concerned in a split second, and she bustles Yuri to a table and gives him toast and broth and coos over him until Yurio slinks out of the bathroom again. The auntie looks at him like he's a roach in her kitchen, but slams a sandwich in front of him anyway.
"What was that stuff anyway?" says Yuri.
Yurio scowls. "It's rassolnik," he says. "It has pickle brine and --"
"Never mind!" says Yuri quickly.
Even this is in the normal range of Russian weirdness (well - Victor's unashamed and honestly creepy love of natto would be weird no matter what) and Yuri doesn't pay much attention beyond making sure that he's not around if Victor decides he wants to eat kimchi or sauerkraut. The baby is very picky.
It continues like this until one night Yuri wakes up at 3am because there's no Victor with him in bed. This is clearly unacceptable, so Yuri drags himself out of bed, goes to pee, and then goes to find his fiancé.
He hears the sound of rattling dishes before he gets to the kitchen. It's a weirdly furtive sound, but then again Yurio is staying with them overnight so he and Victor can get an early start to an ice show the next morning. Yuri sighs deeply. He doesn't really want to do it, but it's always a terrible idea to leave Victor and Yurio unsupervised. Victor is currently the stereotype of a crazed nesting alpha and Yuri always seems to feel like anything Victor can do, he can do better. Including driving Yuri insane.
When he shuffles into the kitchen, two guilty pairs of blue eyes lock on to him. Makkachin's asleep on Victor's foot, but wakes up enough to look guilty too. There's bowls in front of both Yurio and Victor, and Yuri makes the executive decision to stay where he is. "What are you doing?" he says.
"Nothing," says Yurio.
"Having a snack," says Victor.
Yuri nods slowly. "And what's in this snack?"
"Nothing ... weird ...." tries Victor.
Yuri crosses his arms and looks at them.
"I found like four recipes for it online!" says Yurio. "So it's not weird!"
Yuri waits.
Victor breaks first, because he's much weaker than Yurio, let alone Yuri. "It's just leftover curry ... on oatmeal...."
Yuri briefly imagines the texture and his stomach heaves. "I didn't hear the microwave," he says, because he's an idiot.
"We're eating it cold," says Yurio.
"...why," says Yuri.
Victor tries pouting at him, but Victor also made him think of cold oatmeal and leftover curry together, so Yuri isn't in the mood to let him puppy-dog eye him. "Don't you find you think weird things sound good now?"
Yuri considers this. "Well," he says finally, "I didn't like kale chips that much when I first had them. But they taste pretty okay now."
There's a long, drawn out silence, while Victor and Yurio look down at their bowls and then back at Yuri. Yurio shoves a defiant bite in his mouth.
"Are you --" begins Yuri. "Are you having cravings instead of me?"
"WHY WOULD I," says Yurio, spitting out oatmeal and curry as he speaks. Yuri cringes back.
"I'm going back to bed," he says flatly. "Don't bother coming back until you've brushed your teeth, Victor."
"Bunny!" says Victor, looking like he's about to cry.
Yuri points at him. "You can cry when you're pregnant!"
Victor subsides.