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Georgi cries over anything and everything. Even just seeing an ex can trigger his tears. It’s rarer for Viktor to cry, but when he does it’s always off-camera but still surrounded by people. Always over the little inconsequential things, always things Yuri knows, Yuri can tell don’t really matter to them.
Yuri yells. He yells and yells, because those tears just seem for show. He yells because Yakov is yelling too, and that seems to get them to stop. Sometimes. No one stops him from yelling, Yakov practically encourages it. So does Mila but her opinion doesn’t matter because she told him that when he yells too much his voice starts to sound like a baby kitten trying to get its mom’s attention.
So Yuri yells.
No one ever tells him not to.
And he learns. People only cry for attention. He watches Viktor. Insecurities are something you make up for the camera to get people to sympathize with you. He’s a quick learner.
He gets older. Becomes “a younger version of Viktor” and “the Russian fairy” though the rest of the world sees him as a tiger. As they should. Yuri is not a younger Viktor because he doesn’t feed the cameras lies, “insecurities”. He’s not like the other skaters, who win and then cry.
Otabek Altin doesn’t cry either, but he also doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t have social media and has a habit of disappearing as soon as he leaves the rink and the camera leaves him. Yuri almost envies him, he can’t do that with Viktor and Georgi and Mila there at all times.
Yuri grows. He’s not the youngest skater at the rink anymore. He doesn’t notice how far away the younger skaters stay from him.
One of them falls on the ice and stays there, and Yuri can hear soft, choked hiccups from where he stands. He’s ready to yell, he doesn’t need to deal with any more of this, he just got Georgi to shut up less than five minutes ago. But he turns and the kid on the ice has a leg that’s bent at a weird angle and he’s the only other person there at the moment. Yuri rushes over, and they’re shaking and brushing away tears and trying to hide from him.
He rests a hand on their shoulder. He didn’t know he could be gentle like this, but he’s seen the others be gentle when it comes to injuries and he’s a quick learner.
They’re trying not to cry. Yuri moves closer, so he’s sitting on the ice next to them. “It’s okay to cry.”
They look at him, wide-eyed with tear stains running down their cheeks.
“You’re injured. It’s okay to cry.” When you get hurt bad enough the tears become impossible to stop.
He’s tried.
And it’s not really crying. Just involuntary tears, but Yuri isn’t sure there’s a word for that so he just goes with “cry” even though the word tastes disgusting in his mouth. He tries to help the kid get off the ice, but he’s small, short, he knows that, and the kid’s bigger than him despite being younger and he’s not strong enough. So they sit down again and he yells. The kid flinches so Yuri covers their ears and yells for Mila because she’s strong enough. She once threw him into the air and he hated it, he hated it because suddenly he was lifted off the ground with no warning at all but there’s no point saying that, it’s just a little discomfort, he’s not Viktor or Georgi (and Yakov has said many times that he’s glad for that). And Mila comes and gets the kid off of the ice and eventually they’ll be okay, but they’ll have to skip the rest of the season, and Yuri turns away so he can pretend he doesn’t see their tears so he won’t have to go yell at them for crying.
Yuri grows and yells and he makes a name for himself and he learns to win and refuses to lose and Viktor’s going to choreograph his short program for his senior debut, and then there’s Katsuki.
He’s crying in a bathroom stall and Yuri’s confused because there’s no one there besides him (and Yuri too, now) but he’s still crying and Yuri doesn’t think he’s injured because why would he have gone to the bathroom? And so he does what he does best. He yells. And that should be the end of it. But it isn’t because of course it wouldn’t be.
And nothing’s alright and Viktor isn’t going to be choreographing his short program now. They had a promise. But Yuri does his best not to make a big deal out of it because he isn’t Viktor and so he leaves for Hatsetsu without telling anyone. And he meets Katsuki and is so confused because Katsuki cries alone and is insecure when there’s no cameras on and it feels different from the acts some of the other skaters put on, and he almost always seems to shy away from the attention but Viktor throws him towards the cameras and he’s obviously uncomfortable but trying not to make a scene and Yuri doesn’t understand.
Yuri watches him and decides he must just be a better actor because he remembers The Thing That Happened Last Year (which Katsuki seems intent on ignoring, and that just makes Yuri more suspicious).
He yells at Katsuki and Viktor gets defensive and he doesn’t know why but he does know now that he’s lost.
And he doesn’t cry because he’s not the same as the other skaters, and crying doesn’t get you anything except people liking him and he doesn’t want people to like him (he’s convinced himself of this); and anyways he has a terrifying number of fans that he avoids at all costs because that’s not something g he wants to deal with.
(Yuri doesn’t notice his that yelling has a habit of calling attention to things and making a it big deal. He’s so used to yelling now that it’s something that just happens.)
Yuri gets a friend in the form of Otabek who no one really knows much about and never cries, and doesn’t give the camera false insecurities. Yuri has a soldier’s eyes and he doesn’t know if he’s ever been complimented in a way that doesn’t relate to his skating or his feminine body that he both loathes and loves (he wants it to disappear as much as he needs it, needs it to win) by anyone other than his grandpa and it’s… it’s a nice feeling.
Jj tells him “ladies first” and he screams at him, and later his eyes burn, they’re so dry they burn and Yuri goes to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water, and the water that should be falling from his eyes doesn’t, it’s been so long Yuri wonders if his body would even remember how to cry.
Viktor is coming back to the ice, back to Russia, and he’s dragging Katsuki along behind him. Yuri doesn’t know what he’s going to do, he’s hardly able to handle Georgi.
He thinks he liked it better when all the younger skaters were scared of him but Mila said that he’s like a snarling kitten and he’s not allowed privacy or personal space anymore.
He’s managed to go a week without talking to anyone but Otabek and his grandpa, and Yakov and Lilia when he has to. Mila’s called it unhealthy, but he pretends not to hear it because he’s not talking to her, not listening to her, ignoring her completely. At least Viktor he still flips off and groans at.
Yuri tries to talk, actually tries to talk to the other people at the rink for the first time in what might be a month. When he gets home his voice is hoarse from screaming.
Viktor had made a big deal and been so ”emotional” about it, talking about how “he’s so glad Yuri’s talking again” and how he happy he’s “doing okay”. Yuri hated it. He thinks he’d heard someone mutter, “I think I liked him better when he wasn’t talking,” and he resolves himself to yell as much as possible out of spite, just as he had been staying quiet out of spite.
Yakov likes Katsuki, he likes him a lot even though he cries and has “insecurities” pouring from him and Yuri doesn’t understand, which is common enough when it comes to Katsuki. He shouts at him and thinks he sees Yakov shake his head disapprovingly which doesn’t make sense but nothing makes sense anymore.
Yuri is yelling and Katsuki is crying and now Yuri is screaming and his hands are balled up into fists and Katsuki’s allowed to cry and Yuri gets yelled at for yelling when he doesn’t know what else to do and suddenly Yakov is yelling which is normal, and he’s yelling at Yuri which is also fairly normal but now Viktor’s yelling and that’s not normal at all. And Yuri’s being shoved away and he doesn’t know what’s happening and really Viktor should know to be more careful when pushing past someone in the ice and Yuri hits the ground hard, hits his head and there should be tears and distantly he thinks he should be crying but he isn’t because he can’t and he looks at Mila who looks at him and then away and she looks (disgusted?) and Yuri tells himself that’s okay, it’s just Mila, he doesn’t care what she thinks, he doesn’t need her but he does need someone to explain what’s going on because nothing makes sense right now, and Yuri would text Otabek but his phone is in his bag and he’s not sure he’d be able to get to it. Even if he could Otabek’s going to be on a plane until late tomorrow so he won’t see it until then.
Yuri forces himself up, off the ice.
No one helps him. No one’s even looking at him. It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t need them. His eyes are so dry they burn.
He gets off the rink, onto a bench, and still no one notices him.
They’re all crowded around Katsuki but Viktor and Yakov shoo them back to give him some space. Still no one looks at him. He’s a bit dizzy.
When Georgi cries, Yuri yells and it’s okay and Yakov just shakes his head but there’s none of the disappointment that was there a few minutes ago. (Was it minutes? Yuri doesn’t know.)
When Viktor makes a big deal out of nothing Yuri yells and half the time Yakov is right there with him.
When Katsuki cries Yuri yells because that’s what he’s learned to do, and it’s wrong even though it’s always been fine and Yuri just doesn’t understand.