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“Yurio,” Victor sing-songs, and already, Yuri is angry. Not that he wasn’t angry before: Victor has been eating his food and drinking his good wine for hours now, and if Katsudon’s flight back from Japan gets delayed one more time, Yuri is going to drive to the airport himself and demand Nippon Air explain. Every time Victor checks his phone, Yuri’s heart jumps in his chest—but no, apparently no update yet, because Victor leans back in his seat again like he’s on the beach of some five-star resort and drags on his cigarette, admiring his nails as he breathes out smoke into the chilly St. Petersburg night. He’s always been such a dupe for glamour, and it’s only gotten worse now that he has a whole creative empire designing shows and costumes and programs at his disposal.
“Yurio,” Victor sings again, sliding his phone back on to the balcony table. “I have a very important question to ask. Can you finally admit that you and Otabek are perhaps in love?”
“Fuck off with your disgusting shit, Victor,” Yuri snaps. “Just because you swoon like a teenager any time a pork cutlet bowl looks at you across the rink doesn’t mean we’re all like that. We’re friends. Otabek is my best friend. That’s all.”
“How long have you been married now?” Victor muses, raising a finger to his lips in exaggerated thought.
Yuri knows he’s taking some kind of bait, but pushes the sliding door behind him open anyway.
“Oy, Otabek,” he calls. “How long have we been married? Vitya won’t stop bugging me about it.”
Otabek doesn’t take his eyes off the chessboard in front of him. He’s on his third game of the night with Irina, who demanded to stay up with the grownups, and who, to Yuri’s surprise, relented to Otabek’s condition that to do so, she had to play a grownup’s game.
Across the table, the two are mirror images, wrapped in on themselves like ramparts: legs crossed, one hand locked around an elbow, the other grasping pensively at the jaw. Yuri catches the smallest glimpse of frown through Otabek’s fingers. His dark eyes draw battle lines across the grid in front of them.
It’s almost painful, Yuri thinks, to see his heart broken in two like this. Just by looking at them, he wounds himself. Why would he ever tell anyone else what they mean?
“It was just signing some papers. It’s hard to remember,” Otabek says, nudging a pawn forward with his index finger. “Ten, eleven years, maybe?”
It’s wrong—it’s a ruse—but Otabek is convincing enough that it stings. Thirteen years, Yuri thinks, swirling his glass. He frowns and takes a sip, narrows his eyes, but Otabek doesn’t look up. Thirteen years ago, on the banks of the Neva, he had brought up the idea. A whim, he insisted—but really, the end of the line, the trump card in a long string of desperate attempts to explain to Otabek how much he had brought to Yuri’s life.
On the banks of the Neva, then, Otabek had looked much like he did now: Some dark mystery, disappearing into himself while Yuri stood by, horrified by the possibility of losing something he wasn’t sure how to have in the first place.
“It was practical,” Otabek adds.
“It was practical,” Yuri repeats, turning back to Victor like he’s won some argument.
“This again.” Victor takes another puff of his cigarette and waves the smoke, Yuri is sure, directly toward his face.
“We pay less taxes, less rent,” Otabek says. He advances a piece, palms one of Irina’s and sets it delicately among the ranks of the fallen. “I don’t have to go back to Kazakhstan every few months. We spent all the time together anyway. Practical.”
“Practical,” Yuri says.
“You had a child together,” Victor whines. “What could darling, perfect Irochka be other than a symbol of your undying love?”
This gets Irina’s attention. To Yuri’s unhidden horror, she preens under Victor’s compliments, smiling shyly at him and waving her legs under the table.
“Ira, don’t encourage him,”
“What does that word mean?”
“Nothing. Otabek, explain it to Vitya. Again.”
“Declining population. Government incentives,” Otabek says, ticking his fingers off and trying to keep a straight face through this well-worn script. “Plus, we never see any of you anymore now that you’re traveling for shows all the time. We needed someone to keep us company.”
“Besides, Ira is way cooler than you and Katsudon. Who else would wrestle with me and let me teach them cool skating tricks? Not you old men.” Yuri turns and sticks his tongue out at Otabek. “Any of you.”
“It’s true,” Otabek says, moving a piece. “If I could take the metal rod out of my leg, Irina wouldn’t have been necessary. We needed Irina purely to keep Yuri busy.”
“Dad, that’s mean.”
“Men seni suyemin, qozim. Your move. Watch your rook.”
Ira moves her knight, smiling triumphantly. It’s promptly broken when Otabek pounces, pushing a bishop and claiming the aforementioned rook.
“That was your knight, dear.”
“Dad, that’s mean. Do over,” Ira whines. Otabek just laughs and shakes his head. Ira is well aware that do overs aren’t allowed. Yuri knows from first-hand experience.
“Yurio,” Victor echoes. “You’re so mean. I just want to know you’re happy and cared for and loved. Is that too much to ask?”
“Why the fuck does it matter to you?”
“Language,” Ira calls before Otabek can. Yuri doesn’t look back, but he can still see Otabek’s smile.
“Why does it matter to you?”
Victor goes sly. “What if I told you I overheard you telling someone how beautiful you thought they were before I knocked earlier?”
“I was just talking to Ira,” Yuri says, sinking deeper into his seat and wrapping his hands tight around his glass. He glares at Otabek out of the corner of his eye, but he is looking down at the chessboard, unaware. This is his fault, for wearing a tank top while retrieving the good salad bowl—heavy, handcarved wood, and, to Yuri’s benefit, stored inconveniently at the top of their cabinets, forcing shorter men to either to stand on tiptoe and display the perfection of their back and arms for the rest of the household to admire—or to seek out said rest of household in slightly embarrassed comeuppance. Occasionally both, when, as some would claim, the cabinet was suddenly an inch higher.
“Irochka’s voice has gotten so deep, then! Taking after her fathers, I see.”
Yuri slides down his seat until he’s practically lying on his back on the cold concrete. He had been particularly smitten, earlier today. Particularly sweet. Why did he have to take a shot of vodka before dinner? Oh, that’s right. Because Victor was coming over.
“Vitya, I swear to fucking God—”
The sound of a chair scraping against wood cuts Yuri off.
“That’s not fair!” Irina says, stomping across the carpet and throwing herself down on the couch. Otabek’s cool has blown right off of her, and no matter her genes, Yuri’s fit is on full display. He’s proud of her, proud of the way Otabek’s frown slides up into a smirk as he watches her. “ That's not fair, dad. You’re supposed to go easy on me.”
“I might,” Victor says, eyes sparkling as he takes the last drag of his cigarette, ”have even heard someone say I love you.”
Yuri turns back to Victor. “What the fuck, you’re not allowed to eavesdrop through our front door. That’s creepy as hell.”
“Okay, that’s enough wine for everyone,” Otabek says, nudging the game’s casualties off the table and into the box. It must be some kind of hell for him not to laugh like Yuri knows he wants to. “No sore losers in this house. Bedtime, all of you. I’m sorry Yuuri couldn’t make it, Victor.”
Victor raises his hands in defeat and stubs his cigarette out before standing and stretching. Yuri sulks, rolling himself up into a ball on the plastic seat, glass clutched possessively in the curve of his chest.
“Gonna fucking tell Katsu that you’re smoking those cancer sticks again,” Yuri mutters.
“Always so helpful, Yurio. I should shower before Yuuri gets in...”
Yuri stands and gathers the remaining glasses off the table before following Victor inside, where Otabek has hoisted Irina, already half-asleep, into his arms. When Otabek brushes his nose through the fall of her hair, Yuri cringes, because he swears the entire room must hear his heart crack under the tenderness of the movement.
“Not fair,” Irina mutters again, clutching her arms around Otabek’s neck and burying her face in his shoulder.
“Next time, Irinka,” Otabek says, walking over to Victor and Yuri, “don’t use the same strategy for every game. It makes it very easy to win. Now say goodnight to Uncle Vitya.”
Irina waves sleepily without looking up.
“Beautiful, brilliant Irochka, may you dream the sweetest of dreams,” Victor says, pocketing his wallet and keys and pressing a hand to Irina’s back. “I will see the dearest of your dads tomorrow at the ice rink. Otabek, good luck with the motorcycle sale in the morning. Toodaloo!”
Victor disappears out the door, and Otabek disappears deeper into the apartment.
“I thought we’d never get him to leave,” Yuri says when Otabek appears back in the hall. He slides his glass across the kitchen island and collapses his head into his arms on the cold surface. He should say goodnight to Irina, but he’s not done with his own fit. “Why the hell did Katsudon’s plane have to keep getting delayed?”
“Because Katsuki’s entire purpose in life is to annoy you, Yura. You know this. I’m sure he organized this delay with the airline beforehand, just to ruin your night.”
When Yuri looks up, Otabek is leaning on the counter, too. His face is close. Its sweetness overpowers any sour reply Yuri hoped to muster.
“Yura. Bed.”
Otabek stands, and then his arms are around Yuri’s waist, pulling him up, drawing Yuri closer to whatever secrets are hiding in the dark of him. There are none, Yuri knows, but still he circles, testing for weaknesses, noting any refuge he can find in the cool walls of the only other human he would think to call home. Otabek is only refuge.
“Beka,” Yuri says suddenly, twisting around to face Otabek. “You know how long we’ve been married, right?”
Otabek’s lips twitch into a smile, which is cool when it brushes Yuri’s ear. “I’m too good at lying.”
“You’re a fucking stone wall.”
“It’s a good thing that thirteen years have taught me not to be offended.”
“Whatever, old man. Stop seducing me. I need to tell Ira goodnight.”
Otabek snorts, sending Yuri’s hair flying into his face, and moves to the sink to start rinsing dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. Absurd, Yuri thinks as he always does, another mystery, but he stays silent and instead basks in the peace of the evening—the stale smell of cigarettes ghosting through the air, the clear black and white grid of the chessboard winking up from its home on the dining room table, and the warmth of it all, the source of it all—the person who, even as they scrape left over salad into the trash and pick through the chaos wrought by a life in mis-matched couplet, a life that has improbably given life, helps Yuri understand the deepest wonders of the word “friend.”