Work Text:
A single line makes a difference
“I admire you,” Yuri Plisetsky spits, "But with a skate like that, I think there's no need for two Yuris in the same bracket. You should just retire, you fool."
Yuuri is far, far more fluent in English than Yuri. He's also fifty degrees of stressed and desperate to finish his walk of shame back to his hotel room and hide in his bed until his flight in two days. It's the kind of stressed and stretched thin that makes him fixate on a verb tense instead of standing there, shell-shocked.
Yuri Plisetsky, Russia's yankee, current Junior World Champion is all he knows of the youth in front of him. But now he tacks up an admirer there too without much thought.
"I'm disappointed in myself too," he manages to say. It's probably the worst thing to say to a fan (he doubts the existence of any major fanbase, but here Plisetsky had said admire not admired) but it's all he can offer right now.
Plisetsky's rage and annoyance melts into something that looks foreign on his face. Even when he skates, he looks focused, eyebrows furrowed in a way that could almost be mistaken for rage, like he's fighting with the ice to carve out his routine rather than dancing on it. But now there's something... vulnerable. "If you're disappointed, then don't cry in a goddamn bathroom stall! Just do better next time!" Plisetsky stamps his foot down as he says so, and then falters, words stopping in his throat.
Something claws up Yuuri's throat, something much different than the despair and guilt and loss he's felt the past few days because of Vicchan's death. Something like a promise. "I will." He unconsciously straightens his back and runs his hand backwards through his hair, feeling himself relax minutely as he does so.
Plisetsky steps back, the foreign emotion gone from his expression, but his lips are tight like he wants to say more. Yuuri knows from intimate experience that even though he wants to say more, he probably won't. So he nods, and walks out of the bathroom, eyes still red and tear tracks still on his face, but-
Plisetsky might have said Yuuri should retire, but he can tell that that was out of frustration. Yuuri would be frustrated too, maybe, if he found Victor crying in a bathroom after a horrible skate (only, just frustrated that he couldn't do anything to help Victor in this hypothetical situation) but someone had cared to come up to him.
I admire you, Yuri had said. Present tense. Somehow, he's still admired.
It's this thought that keeps his back straight as he walks out the stadium, that he smiles minutely at Morooka when he pleads don't give up, and takes a picture from Victor Nikiforov.
If he offers a smile to Plisetsky when they're closer and Plisetsky ducks his head, almost shy, well, that's no one's business but their own.