Work Text:
Yuri realizes that he’s in love with all the elegance of a dumbbell falling on his head. He’s slouched halfway over the rink’s railing, phone propped up in one hand on a break. It pings with a notification from otabek-altin on Instagram and he swipes at it reflexively. Otabek’s posted a new photo–no doubt on threat of death from his younger sister–of him against a balcony, the skyline unfolding behind him and the light casting a slight shadow on his face. I want him, Yuri thinks, fire coiled in his belly. Holy shit I want him in like a lovey-dovey-mushy-gushy way.
His first reaction is horror that he’s following in Viktor’s footsteps. His second is relief that out of anyone he could’ve fallen for, it’s Otabek. (Take that, Viktor, he actually has fucking taste.) Otabek’s fucking awesome, he has a motorcycle, he DJs, and he’s got a gold medal–what’s there not to love?
“What are you looking at?” Mila pops up unwarranted over his shoulder and Yuri shrieks as he shoves his phone deep into the recesses of his jacket.
“Nothing,” he bites out and then immediately kicks himself for it. Mila smiles like she smells blood in the water.
“Nothing,” she sing-songs and Yuri swipes at her but she ducks easily. “So another picture of Otabek?”
“No!” he yelps. His ears feel like they’re on fire and Yuri clamps his hands over them furiously, which just seems to make MIla laugh harder. Yuri hates everyone. He’s gonna murder everyone on this goddamn ice rink and then move to Kazakhstan.
“No need to be shy, Yurio.” Mila tries to ruffle his hair and Yuri snaps his teeth at her like a fucking pirahna until she backs off. “Everyone knows about your crush on Otabek.”
Yuri’s blood runs colder than the ice.
“Everyone…?” he echoes, hating the way his voice cracks at the end. Everyone includes Otabek. Cool, motorcycle-riding, DJ Otabek who probably hasn’t thought about his best friend in that way ever because he’s way cooler than him. Yuri mentally revises his earlier plan. He’s going to kill everyone in this goddamn ice rink and then himself.
MIla’s expression softens, ducking her head in to examine him closer.
“Are you okay? Do you have a fever?” She presses her sweaty palm to his forehead and that manages to drag Yuri back to this plane of reality, baring his teeth again like it’s a reflex.
“I’m fine! Fuck off!”
“You didn’t deny it,” Mila marvels. “Holy shit, are you finally out of your denial phase?”
Yuri’s shocked he hasn’t burned a hole into the ice with how much steam’s coming off his skin.
“WHATEVER!” he yelps, loud enough that Victor and Katsudon glance over from the other side of the rink which is great, just great. An audience to witness his emotional meltdown is exactly what he needs right now.
“You are,” Mila coos, slapping him on the shoulder. Because it’s Mila, he goes skidding half-a-foot across the ice, leaving a pale zigzag in his wake. Yuri brushes the spot on his jacket and tries to incinerate her on the spot with his glare. No such luck, unfortunately. “We should take a picture to commemorate this moment of emotional growth!”
“Fuck no!” Yuri squawks and ducks her outstretched arm. Mila’s grown another few inches in the past season though and she manages to snap a picture of his blurry face scowling at the camera, courtesy of her ridiculously gangly limbs.
“So,” she says after she’s uploaded the photo to the cloud and emailed it to her three burner Google accounts for posterity because of course she has three burner Google accounts. “What are you going to do now?”
“Now, I’m going to do a flawless run of my Free Skate,” he says like it’s obvious and she rolls her eyes.
“I meant about Otabek.”
Oh. Yuri hadn’t actually thought that far–he’s still in the exploding-like-a-goddamn-volcano stage and maybe he’ll be able to form a coherent plan once he stops gushing hormones everywhere.
“You gonna confess?”
“Of course,” he replies instinctively and then nearly chokes on his own admission. Mila arches an eyebrow at him as his palms go sweaty. Why is it so fucking hot in the rink?
“So… like sometime this century?”
“What?!” he yelps and Mila’s already half-turned away, one hand clamped over her ear preemptively. “N-Not now!”
“Why not?”
Because Yuri hasn’t crafted a confession beyond you’re cool, i’m cool, what if we were cool together? in a romantic way in case it wasn’t clear because apparently i have a massive fucking crush on you. who would’ve thought? and that accompanied by its lackluster form of an Instagram DM is just asking for a rejection. Yuri would reject that type of confession. Unless, of course, it came from Otabek because it’s Otabek. In fact, it would solve a hell of a lot of his problems if he got something like that from Otabek.
“B-Because!” he splutters helplessly. Mila, unimpressed, makes flapping chicken-wing motions at him. Yuri is going to rip her hair off with his teeth.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, HAG!” he hollers and great, now Victor and Katsudon are definitely making their way over, Victor because he’s attracted to drama like a bloodhound and Katsudon because he’s attracted to emotional vulnerability like a… like another bloodhound. Whatever, there’s a reason Yuri specializes in skating and not literature. “Beka deserves better than a shitty confession over text anyways.”
Mila blinks at him, stunned.
“Wow, I think that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“I’m fucking awesome at romance,” Yuri says. “Because I’m awesome at everything.”
“Humble, much?”
Yuri whips out his phone and begins aggressively hammering into the search bar. Because he is much better at this shit than Victor, he does not start his Google search with “how do i seduce someone”.
“Oh my god, no, don’t do that to him,” Mila says as he pulls up the going rates for a mariachi band.
“He’ll take what he gets and he’ll love it,” Yuri snarls because his taste is immaculate, fuck everyone who says otherwise. Speaking of, he should get him and Otabek matching tiger socks–no, NO! That’s slipping into dangerously domestic territory like Victor and the last fucking thing Yuri needs is another step towards his looming legacy.
Mila watches the whole ordeal with a growing crease in her brow.
“I’m beginning to think Otabek is the one who I should have been worrying about this whole time.”
Turns out that you can’t pay for a mariachi band unless you’re 18 which is such a dumb and fucking stupid rule. Yuri’s got his own fucking line of TV commercials for some shitty skincare product–why can’t he buy one mariachi band for the afternoon? Bureaucracy is a stupid fucking nightmare.
He relays all of this to Otabek, who hums in commiseration at all the right moments and listens to his whole rant without interrupting. This is why Otabek is his friend. His only friend, not counting the pseudo-adoption situation he has going on at the rink. Katsudon keeps trying to bait him over with the promise of free food like some anxious mother hen and Yuri’s only fallen for it once. Twice. Maybe a couple times.
“Why do you need a mariachi band?” Otabek asks and Yuri’s blood runs cold. He opens his mouth, closes it and then opens it. Think for god’s sake! He’s a fucking world champion, can’t he come up with at least one fucking lie?
“It’s… a new intimidation tactic,” he settles on lamely. “I’m going to get them to sing a song about how old and bad Victor is before the competition.”
“Hm,” Otabek says, nodding sagely. “I see.”
“Speaking of, he and Katsudon were a nightmare today. They were flapping around the rink like a bunch of parrots, giving–” Giving Yuri completely unsolicited and horrible love advice, most of which had to do with buying golden rings and sparkling glitter. Yuri got a front-row seat to their complete shitshow of a meet-cute, he has no idea why either of them thinks they’re in a position to be handing out advice. “--I mean saying stuff. Yeah. Talking really loudly. It was super annoying and I’m going to kill them.”
Yuri gives himself a mental pat on the back for the close save.
“Do it at the banquet. It would be easier to pass off as an accident and I can help you hide the bodies.”
Yuri’s heart is hammering in his throat and he’s sure his face is getting slowly redder, pixel by pixel. He only hopes the lighting is bad enough that Otabek can’t tell.
“You’d do that for me?”
Otabek frowns at him, a crease forming in his brow.
“Of course, Yura.” He says it like it’s a fact, like it’s obvious and Yuri buries himself deeper into his pillow like he can hide from his embarrassment. Otabek shouldn’t—shouldn’t just say these things, it’s not good for his health.
He looks at Otabek’s stupidly symmetric face on his stupid phone screen and thinks about how easy it would be to just tell him now. Hi i’m in love with you please love me back or else i’ll have to change my legal name, move to the other side of the globe and pick up roller-blading. The words are on the tip of his tongue but he can’t get them out into the open, the syllables stubbornly glued to the roof of his mouth.
“Good night, Beka,” he manages finally and faceplants straight into his pillow. Otabek’s light chuckle emanates from his phone’s shitty speaker.
“Sleep well, Yura.”
Yuri gets assigned to Cup of China and Otabek’s got Skate America but they both get sent to the NHK Trophy. Yuri has a paper calendar on his wall with the date circled in red that he will deny under threat of death.
At the Cup of China, Katsudon beats him to gold by two points and Yuri can feel the full weight of it in his blood, tearing at his skin and rushing through his veins all at the same time. Guang-Hong, starry-eyed and red-cheeked, takes bronze to the deafening roar of the stadium.
In Skate America, Otabek edges JJ out by half-a-point, Phichit taking third, and Yuri thinks that he has never loved Otabek more in that moment, watching the familiar wave of anguish, then disappointment and finally resigned acceptance crest over JJ’s face in the span of two seconds. He should get one of his Angels to clip it and make an edit of just that over and over again.
congrats!!!!, Yuri texts him, complete with a picture of Potya meowing happily from atop his pillow.
Thanks, Otabek sends him back later that evening. Are the exclamation marks because I beat JJ or because you’re happy for me?
Yuri cracks a smile in his room, fully aware that he looks like a pining idiot staring at the screen of his phone.
can’t it be both? He sends back and pulls up Instagram to see if anyone’s added that edit of JJ yet. (He’ll take an Otabek highlight reel if not.)
Otabek gets dragged away after that to the banquet but he manages to send him another photo halfway through, a blurry shot of Phichit, JJ and someone else, maybe Leo, doing some weird recreation of the human knot.
You should be here. Phichit’s trying to goad them into a dance-off. If Yuri squints, he can pretend that the second half of that message doesn’t exist and because he’s lost all of his fucking dignity, he does exactly that and nearly chokes on the warmth that floods his chest.
wish I was there, he sends back and waits exactly 10 seconds before firing off his next message. cause i’d fucking destroy all of them.
I know you would, Otabek sends back, not a trace of sarcasm in his tone, and Yuri thinks fuck, I’m going to marry this boy. Never mind that he hasn’t asked him out yet.
The days inch forward towards the NHK Trophy at torturously slow pace, leaving Yuri with a dry mouth and clammy palms as he watches the number on his phone change digit by digit. It feels like it’ll never come as the hours of practice bleed into one another, one slow, never-ending dance on the ice.
And then it does.
Yuri always forgets how much of a shitshow it is to fly with Team Russia until they’re strapped into the tiny-ass seats, the countdown on the screen stretching out into infinity. Mila has somehow managed to sweettalk the attendant into giving her a glass of champagne before they’re even on the runway, Georgi keeps pressing tissues to the corner of his eyes and blaming it on allergies when it’s the wrong fucking season and Yakov is studiously pretending like he doesn’t know any of them. The only saving grace is that Victor’s not on the fucking plane, too busy mooning over Katsudon somewhere. Probably.
Yuri pulls out his phone and opens Instagram. He refreshes and stares at the crappy loading circle for an embarrassingly long time before the app tells him that he has no new messages. Again. Like the last ten times he checked. It makes sense because Otabek’s probably mid-transit at this point and even if he isn’t, he has better things to do than doomscroll Reels. It’s fine. It totally makes sense. They’re fine. He’s fine.
God, really he needs to pull himself together. Two-time world champion and he’s a fucking mess over this shit like a damn elementary schooler.
He taps out a totally cool c u soon and sends it, clamping down on the reflexive urge to scream as he watches the message turn blue. There. That’s a perfectly acceptable message to send to your competitor-slash-best-friend-slash-maybe-only-friend right before you see them. Much better than the pick me, choose me, love me audio that has been playing on loop in his head ever since Mila sent him that stupid TikTok.
Whatever. It’s fine. Yuri can totally do this. He slides his phone back into his pocket and looks up to see Georgi leaning over the armrest at him, half-falling out of his seat. Yuri does not scream because he’s the Ice Tiger of Russia not the fucking Ice Banshee of Russia, but it’s a close thing.
“Georgi!” Yuri snaps when he’s finished blowing out most of the air in his lungs like a tea kettle. “What the fuck are you–”
“Ah, young love,” Georgi says, wiping real tears–how he hasn’t dehydrated himself at this point, Yuri has no clue–out of the corner of his eye. “I remember when Anya–”
Yuri has never put on the shitty airline’s headphones faster in his fucking life.
They’re bickering at baggage claim when Yakov approaches them, looking about as put-out as the time Victor and Yuuri earned the whole team a noise complaint in the locker rooms. Yuri’s stressing the very real possibility that someone made off with his luggage because it looks fucking awesome while Mila is yelling at him that the whole contraption is an affront to the fashion industry and you couldn’t pay a person to walk off with it but they both go stockstill at Yakov’s expression.
“Yuri,” Yakov grunts, dragging Yuri’s luggage behind him. “I have to speak with you.”
“Aren’t we speaking right now?” Yuri snaps and Yakov spares Mila one tired glance before deciding that he’s not paid enough to deal with this. It’s a look he’s worn ever since Yuri arrived on his doorstep, rugged skates in hand.
“I need to know if this… thing.” Yakov says the word like it’s a bomb and he’s scared of detonating it. “Will affect your skating.”
There’s a giant, suspicious-colored stain spread on the linoleum of the airport floor. Yuri scrubs at it with the tip of his sneaker.
“What thing?” he snaps because flights–and enclosed spaces with Georgi–always make him cranky. If possible, Yakov’s complexion pales another two shades. He should’ve hit the airport bar harder like Mila does.
“This thing… with Otabek,” Yakov spits out, like each word physically pains him. Yuri has exactly two seconds of blissful silence before the embarrassment hits him like a freight train, Mila’s cackling laugh going off in the background like an unappreciated train whistle.
“No! Of course not! What! Who told you that?” Yuri feels like a tea kettle, steam churning out of his ears and red-faced to the roots of his hair. Tip him and he’ll spill boiling water everywhere. Preferably on Mila, who’s still laughing her ass off. He screws up his face in a scowl. “Was it you, hag?! I–”
“It was you, Yuri!” Yakov hollers, pinching the bridge of his nose. “With all your yelling. And as long as–as long as your skating is fine, we don’t have to discuss this.”
“Good,” Yuri huffs. “This conversation is over. Forever.”
He wrenches his luggage out of Yakov’s hand and stomps over to the exit, not caring if anyone’s following him. If the rest of Team Russia wants to stay in the airport and commiserate over non-existent relationships, so be it. Yuri can win a gold all by himself.
Behind him, Yakov puts his head in his palms and sighs.
“Look what you’ve done!” Mila chastises, slapping his shoulder. Yuri nearly falls down the fucking escalator because she’s a monster. “You’ll make him go bald!”
“He’s already halfway fucking there!!”
Yuri paces the length of the hotel lobby once, twice, three times for good measure and bites the edge of his fingernail, even if Lilla would have him flayed and beaten if she knew. He’s right on the precipice of wanting to see Otabek–in the flesh instead of across some crappy phone signal–and seeming hopelessly, transparently vulnerable. After another two laps, the fact that he hasn’t seen his best friend in six fucking months wins out.
He fires off a where are you text and prays that the monoscript black-and-white font masks some of his desperation. Yuri also flicks his gaze around the lobby once more, terrified that one of his angels or worse, JJ, is going to appear around the corner any second now. His phone buzzes with a reply less than a minute later.
Otabek, like the complete grandpa that he is, sends him a picture of his tablet propped up in his hotel bed. He’s wearing the standard-issued bathrobe in a display of domesticity that should send Yuri into a fit of nausea but instead has his palms sweating and a swarm of butterflies beating their wings against his ribcage. God, he fucking hates this romance shit. Going over my routine, Otabek’s texted back. You?
waiting for you to come pick me up!!!! Yuri holds his finger on the exclamation point for a solid 10 seconds for emphasis and then pockets his phone before Otabek can reply. He paces the length of the wall again, realizes that he doesn’t want Otabek’s first sight of him in months to be him as an absolute nervous wreck, sits down in one of the crappy chairs with fuck-all for cushioning, realizes there’s no way to look cool sitting in a chair with patterns that belong on one of Mila’s hideous sweaters and shoots back up just in time for Otabek to emerge from the elevator.
He looks surprisingly put-together for someone who’s been summoned from their hotel room five minutes prior. Otabek’s ditched the bathrobe–probably for the best in terms of Yuri’s health–in favor of his leather jacket, a loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans. Yuri wishes he could roll out of bed and look this good–well, he always looks good because he’s fucking Yuri Plisetsky but Otabek? Otabek’s on a whole different level.
“Hi Yura,” he says, only slightly out-of-breath. Yuri, on the other hand, feels like his lungs are going to fucking collapse on him. “I wasn’t aware we had plans.” Because they hadn’t. While Yuri is nowhere near as impulsive as Victor–a fact that everyone seems to conveniently forget all the fucking time–he’s not the best at planning this shit beforehand either.
“We do now,” Yuri says and makes for the door. He pauses after a couple steps to turn around and jerk his head forehead. “Coming or not?”
“Always,” Otabek replies and the single word knocks the wind out of him like a punch to the gut. Yuri whips his head forward to hide the blush rushing up into his cheeks and charges out the front door.
“Where’s your bike?”
“Garage,” Otabek says and helpfully pulls Yuri in the right direction when he starts surging towards the wrong end of the street. The contact isn’t even skin-to-skin, the thin layer of his jacket between them and yet Yuri feels like he’s been burned at the spot. Otabek tosses him one helmet as he unbuckles his own from the handlebars and he somehow manages to make such a little thing look cool, even in the garage’s fucking ugly fluorescent lights. Yuri swallows the admission like a stone and struggles to breathe when Otabek’s gaze slips onto him.
“Any requests?” Otabek asks and Yuri shakes his head as he gets on the seat behind him, rests his head on his back and thinks about when the last time he held someone like this was.
“Anywhere is fine,” he says as Otabek hits the gas. Anywhere is fine as long as it’s with you.
“Beka,” Yuri says, rubbing at his hands. His fingertips have gone bright red. Otabek turns to look at him, the moonlight landing gently on his face like some sort of Disney princess.
“Yeah?” His mouth is soft around the syllable and Yuri thinks about telling him right now, of letting loose the secret bundled to his chest like a pile of stones but the words get stuck in his throat.
“I’m cold as fuck,” he admits finally and the ends of Otabek’s mouth twist upwards in a wry smile. His breath crystallizes in front of him in a misty white smoke.
“Me too. Let’s go back?”
Yuri nods and races him back to his motorcycle.
“Yurio!” Victor hollers, charging towards him like an angry bull after the short program and Yuri blinks once, then twice to make sure he’s not fucking dreaming. Katsudon’s sheepish presence by his side is all but confirmation that this is reality though and Yuri settles for hissing like an angry cat instead.
“Don’t call me that!” he snaps on reflex but Victor disregards this immediately, going in for a hug even as Yuri tries fruitlessly to squirm his way out of it. “What the fuck are you doing here? This isn’t either of your events!”
“We came to cheer on a friend,” Katsudon says, blinking innocently at him. Yuri’s seen the way he looks at Victor though after a full performance of Eros, he’s not buying any of that shit.
“Is the friend in the room with us?” he spits out and Victor laughs like he’s said the funniest thing ever.
“And we came to help you with your… dilemma.” He says the last word in a conspiratorially low whisper and Yuri feels the incoming dread even before he sees it. Victor withdraws an honest-to-god red rose from his jacket pocket, never mind that there’s a fucking news crew less than twenty feet to their right, and holds it out to him.
“FUCK YOU–” Victor takes advantage of his open mouth to jam the flower stem between his teeth and then Yuri’s too busy simultaneously choking up petals and attempting to strangle him, five-time champion title be damned. It only ends when the rose is reduced to a withering mess beneath Yuri’s boot and Katsudon, who has been biting his lip on the sidelines the whole time, anxiously steps in and picks up Victor one-armed to drag him back.
“I’m sorry, Yurio, he said he left the flower in the car but I should have checked,” Katsudon stammers, like this is all his fault somehow and Yuri is torn between feeling guilty at his apology and absolute anger at him for having an idiot of a husband.
“Yuuuuri, you can frisk me all you want back at the hotel room.” Victor says and Katsudon flushes a horrible shade of red.
“W-We’ll be going now! Good luck, in all respects.”
And then they’re gone, Victor apparently too happy at being manhandled like a sack of potatoes to offer any more awful love advice. Someone steps next to him and Yuri turns, half-an-insult already formed in his mouth before he sees who it is. Otabek cocks his head at him, sweat still matting pieces of hair to his forehead, and Yuri forgets how to speak.
“Everything alright?” he asks and Yuri nods once mutely. Otabek frowns, peering closer at him and then–oh god–he’s leaning into Yuri’s fucking space and running his fingers through his hair. Yuri’s plastered to the spot, unable to move and simultaneously begging that this moment lasts forever.
Otabek withdraws eventually, holding a little scrap of red between his fingers. He peers at it curiously.
“Sorry. You had a petal in your hair.”
“Y-Yeah,” he says and hopes he can blame the shakiness of his voice on his performance. “Victor’s s-stupid idea of a prank.”
Otabek hums once, accepting this, and Yuri has never been more grateful in his fucking life. Across the way, he can see Mila absolutely losing her shit in the stadium and Yuri flips her the bird behind Otabek’s back.
Otabek takes gold after the free skate, beating Yuri to it by a third of a point and Yuri can’t even find it in him to be mad because he deserved it, god had he fucking deserved it. He’d slammed all of his quads into the second half of his program, landed them all with a breathtaking cleanliness and strength and even as Yuri had been waiting in the kiss-and-cry with Yakov for his score, he knew who’d scored gold. Yuri had felt the wave of anguish and exhilaration, all twisted up in one ugly knot and all he could think about was how badly he wanted to get out there again on the ice to skate with him again.
Eventually, they get ushered through the eager crowd of reporters to the podium. Otabek’s already there, standing tall in the middle, when Yuri clambers onto the platform to his right. Someone offers their hand out to help and Yuri nearly bites it out of the audacity. He doesn’t because the energy has been drained out of him from his performance.
Otabek flips him a weary thumbs up, his face twisted in relief and pain as he leans heavily on his right leg. Yuri’s halfway to returning the gesture but it feels insignificant somehow, not fully representative of the wide span of his emotions. He thinks of motorcycle rides and Skype calls that cross timezones and a non-stop stream of text messages like an oasis in the fucking desert and he thinks he doesn’t know enough metaphors to explain the depth of how he feels.
“I love you,” he blurts out. Wait, what the fuck? Yuri’s simultaneously hit by the trainwreck of relief that he’s finally, finally said it and the sickening realization that he’s finally said it. This is so lame! There’s not even a mariachi band!
Otabek remains completely impassive in the face of this lifechanging revelation and Yuri wonders if he’s even heard him at all because it’s so fucking loud in this stadium, which might be a blessing in disguise.
He’s frantically trying to remember where he stashed his passport in case he needs to flee the country for the next 5-10 years from sheer embarrassment when Otabek turns to face him, mouth flat.
“Okay,” he says and then turns back, staring blankly into the cameras. Yuri flips his shit because he hasn’t been having an emotional crisis for the past few months just for–just for this lackluster response.
“Okay?” he yelps as a camera flash goes off straight in his face. God, it’s like the universe is trying to screw with him. “Okay?! That’s your response?!”
Otabek turns back towards him, frowning. Another flash bulb goes off in their faces.
“I love you too,” he says, no heart palpitations or trembling voice, unlike Yuri who has been choking on the words for weeks. “Wasn’t that obvious?”
Yuri feels all the wind knocked out of him like he’s just finished a performance.
“Wasn’t that–are you serious? No! No, it wasn’t obvious you–”
Otabek leans down, grabs a fistful of his shirt and then they’re kissing. Yuri feels all the tension drain out of his body, a split-second of hesitation before he digs his fingers into Otabek’s scalp and wrenches him into a better angle. They’re both sweaty after a performance and Yuri’s ankle still hurts like hell from the landing on the quad salchow but he has Otabek in his arms on the podium and he thinks this might just be the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to him.
Otabek only lets him go after another flash bulb goes off in their face and Yuri stares at him, red to the tips of his ears and panting.
“There. Obvious enough?” Otabek says and the bastard has the audacity to sound smug about it, the edges of his mouth curling into a smile. Yuri launches himself at him to kiss him again and they go flying off the podium, crashing straight into Leo.
The media shitstorm that consequently hits Twitter–courtesy of Phichit and a dozen trigger-happy reporters–has the Internet talking for days.