Work Text:
It’s strange, coming home for the holidays. The town feels the same, but there’s a new housing estate being built on the outskirts, those tiny red brick boxes that look the same as every other new build up and down the country. It’s the same in that the Rose and Crown is the only pub Yuri’s friends go to, and it’s the same with how the Lee’s is the only decent takeaway, and it’s the same in that Otabek is still here.
Otabek.
Yuri thought that going away to university would push all thoughts of them getting back together from his mind. The two hundred miles has done that all term, but now Yuri is sitting down opposite Otabek at their usual table in the corner of the pub, and he’s not so sure anymore. Otabek looks the same, better, even - he works at one of the stables in an outlying village, outside most of the day, and Yuri knows his muscles are going to be well defined underneath the plaid shirt he’s wearing.
“Alright?” Otabek asks.
“Alright,” Yuri replies. He takes a sip of his drink and looks around the pub. Leo, JJ, and a couple more of their friends are waiting to be served at the bar. The whole place is decorated for Christmas, lights wound round the exposed beams, garlands attached to the shelves behind the bar. A Christmas tree sits in the corner by the fireplace, flames crackling quietly in the grate. “So, how’s things?”
“Good, good,” Otabek says. He drinks some of his pint and gives Yuri a rare smile. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Yeah, same,” Yuri says. They look at each other for a long moment, glances that hold a thousand words and give Yuri the feeling it’s entirely possible he won’t be going home to his Grandpa’s tonight.
JJ collapses into the seat beside Yuri, his pint glass landing on the table with a thud. He surveys the scene in front of him and smirks. “When you’re done undressing each other with your eyes, how’s uni going, Yuri?”
Yuri tears his eyes away from Otabek and looks down the table, where the rest of their friends have joined them. They all stayed in town at the end of school, Yuri’s the first out of them to spread his wings and fly away. Although now he’s home, sitting across from Otabek again, he’s wondering why he ever bothered to leave the nest.
“Oh, yeah, it’s good,” he says. “Really good. I’m enjoying it, anyway.”
“That’s what we like to hear,” JJ says. Otabek is sullen again, not looking at Yuri. “Isn’t that right, Beks?”
“What? Oh, right, yeah.” He forces a small smile onto his face. “Glad you’re having a good time.”
By the time it’s last orders and they’re getting kicked out the pub, they’re all several drinks down, talking and laughing as they walk out into the cold December air. Otabek slings an arm around Yuri’s shoulders. Yuri automatically leans into the touch, closing his eyes and letting himself believe it’s August and everything is right with the world.
“Yuri,” Otabek says, stopping them in the middle of the pavement. JJ’s laughter fades into the night as he turns down the street that leads to his house. The clock in the town square strikes and the branches on the Christmas tree sway gently in the breeze. Otabek turns to face him. “Yuri Yuri Yuri. Yura.”
“Beka,” Yuri murmurs, and then Otabek is kissing him, and Yuri finally feels like he’s home.
There’s something about Otabek that has always felt inevitable, and Yuri doesn’t know how to feel about that.
He felt inevitable when Yuri was fourteen and Otabek kissed him for the first time. It was on a dare at a party, and JJ cheered and said something lewd, but it didn’t matter because Otabek was kissing him, and suddenly everything felt like it made sense.
Otabek felt inevitable when Yuri lost his virginity to him at sixteen. It had been awkward and fumbling but still special at the same time, Otabek holding Yuri like he was afraid he’d break him, both of them looking at each other like they both couldn’t believe they were here, and this was happening.
Otabek felt inevitable the summer before Yuri left for uni when everything in Yuri’s life was changing or being packed up into boxes to move to a new city. Otabek was there through it all, a constant in the way nothing else was, a constant that was there then and is here now, as Yuri wakes up in familiar sheets in a familiar room.
Everything’s changed, but nothing has.
Otabek’s room looks the same as when Yuri last woke up here back in September. The sheets are blue, his record player is in the corner, and the strip of photos taken in a photo booth of the two of them is pinned to the wall on Otabek’s side of the bed. He hasn’t taken it down. Yuri was the one that pinned it there back in June, and he’d half expected Otabek to put it away by the time he came back. But it’s still there, and Yuri’s in his bed, and it tells Yuri everything Otabek hasn’t had the courage to say.
There was no grand farewell at the end of summer, no spending weeks crying into a pillow. Things just ended, as these things do. There was a lot of talk about Yuri going to uni and them being at different stages in their lives and overall saying a lot of words without really saying anything at all. Yuri knew then Otabek especially didn’t want things to end, but no one wants to be the person at uni with a boyfriend back home, so he stood there and nodded as Otabek said things like, “I don’t know, Yura, but I think we maybe should…”
Going away wasn’t easy. Otabek invaded his thoughts, his dreams, his every waking moment. Yuri was constantly wondering about the what-ifs and the could’ve beens. Now Yuri is back home it seems even more prominent because Otabek is here and no longer a memory.
Yuri sits up and wraps a blanket round his shoulders. He looks down at Otabek and bites his lip. Maybe… but he can’t, right? They can’t.
He knows that nothing quite compares to Otabek. Over his time at uni since September, Yuri’s had a string of one-night stands, guys he picked up in clubs, Grindr hook-ups, that one guy from his politics seminar who hasn’t looked at him the same since. They were all meaningless, all attempts to fill that Otabek shaped hole in his chest.
Yuri picks his phone up from the bedside table. He unplugs the charger, the one Otabek produced last night without even being asked, and checks his notifications. There’s nothing much going on, just Mila sending him some TikToks he’ll watch later. It’s nine am. He should go home; his Grandpa will be worrying.
Yuri gets up, starting to gather his clothes from where they’re scattered all over the floor. He’s about to step into his jeans when he hears a rustle from the bed and sees Otabek wiping sleep from his eyes.
“Where’re you going?” Otabek asks with a yawn.
“Home.” Yuri pulls his jeans up. “Don’t want to worry my Grandpa any more than I already have.”
Otabek makes some sort of noncommittal noise as Yuri puts the rest of his clothes on. Then, just as Yuri’s about to pick up his jacket and leave, he says, “Stay.”
Yuri pauses. “What?”
“Stay. Ring your Grandpa or whatever, just stay.”
Yuri doesn’t move. Stay? Stay now, stay for the morning? Or stay in the way he didn’t in September, stay together?
“Please.”
It’s so quiet that Yuri almost misses it, almost misses the heartbreak that flickers across Otabek’s face when Yuri doesn’t immediately accept.
“Please, Yura.”
Yuri nods, and a small smile tugs at Otabek’s lips. He takes his jeans off again, lies down on the bed in Otabek’s arms, and he stays.
He doesn’t know what the future holds. He doesn’t know if this is them for the holidays and then Yuri will go back to university and the cycle will repeat. But he does know that Otabek’s bed feels warm and safe and nothing compares to how Yuri feels when they’re together.
Otabek presses a kiss to his head and pulls him a bit closer. Yuri relaxes, resting his head on Otabek’s shoulder, and he stays.
Because some things change, some things stay the same, and he knows Otabek will always be there.