Chapter Text
❝ sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart. ❞
”Be good.”
It was hard to be good when all you wanted to do was sob. Scary big kids and grown-ups whizzed past you on the ice, giving you curious looks as you stood stock-still in the centre of the rink. Your mother wasn’t able to go with you today but had insisted you go alone—but you were too scared by yourself. What if you fell? What if people laughed at you? No, you couldn’t. It was a mistake to come here. You would make your sitter take you home right now—
“Oi.”
The gruff scowl about set you off into tears and you turned slowly, your toe pick scraping the ice as a boy glared at you. He had hair so blonde it looked white gold, and his crystalline green eyes seemed to shift colour the longer you looked. You cringed away from him, drifting to the rink board and clutching onto it like an anchor.
“Sorry,” you whispered meekly. The boy’s brow furrowed.
“English?” he asked hesitantly. His accent was heavy and clipped the vowels oddly. You realized that you’d been speaking in your native tongue and mentally berated yourself.
“Yes,” you replied, just as slowly in weak Russian. Your accent was probably mangling the words and you sniffled nervously. He scoffed, the action bringing a puff of foggy breath in front of his red nose.
“How old are you?” he demanded. You jumped in panic when you recognized the question. The words were harsh in the unfamiliar language and you racked your brain, counting from один to… what was after три again? You gave up trying to remember at held up six gloved fingers instead. He nodded, seeming to understand, and held up seven.
“English is hard,” he muttered, along with something else in Russian. You were born to an English mother on English soil, but your father was a Russian official. After six years in the United Kingdom, your dad’s job called him back to the motherland, and you were having a hard time coping.
“Skate?” he spat at you, surprising you by not leaving you behind to do his own thing. You didn’t know why the boy was so interested in you. He looked like he was plenty fine on his own, too. Taking a closer look, you noted that his hair was frazzled and he wore a t-shirt with a purring kitten printed on the front. Nothing about you was exceptional. But he looked at you expectantly anyways, as if you were. You could’ve left him behind or ran away, but you found yourself hesitating again. There was something about him, a mysterious charm—like he was some stellar being that had graced you with his appearance. Your knees were quivering and you nodded, once, and then more firmly.
“Da.”
He pointed at himself. “Yuri Plisetsky.” The finger turned to you. You stared at it before looking back into his eyes.
“...[Name] [Surname].”
“OK,” he said, nodding once with authoritative approval for a seven year old. He blinked and his facial expression softened into curiosity as he held the same hand out to you. “Skate?”
You looked at it again, but it took you much less time to take it.
“...okay.”
That was how you had met Yuri Plisetsky, the most stellar boy you had been graced by. And that rink was where you lost him, too.