Chapter Text
He sees his reflection in the cold glass of the hospital doors as his aching feet carry his aching body through the entrance, and at first, he cannot recognize it as his own face, his perception muddled by the sting of tears (Yurio never cried) seeping into the open cuts on his skin (Yurio never got hurt).
It was the face of a stranger--a decidedly not-Yurio stranger.
It’s late enough at night for him to be the only patient in the building, a small mercy he is grateful for as he absently drags himself to the front desk, where the nice lady is chatting enthusiastically on the phone, unaware of his presence. The part inside of him that is always demanding attention roars up inside of him, but when Yurio opens his mouth, the words burn like acid in his throat, and that part of him is silently tucked away beneath a layer thinner than the ice he skates on.
Instead, he hesitantly reaches out with a shaking hand, scraped knuckles and bruised wrists barely covered by his torn sleeve, and softly taps the woman’s shoulder, a feeble, too polite gesture he would have never seen himself doing in a million years.
Her face twists with annoyance for the briefest of seconds as she tells the person on the other side of the phone meaningless things (wait for one second, it’s probably one of those late night drunkards again, I hate this job) before she fully turns to look at him for the first time and her face freezes in an expression of horror that would normally seem funny to Yurio, had he not been the cause of it.
There is flurry of motion, then, as time accelerates around his frozen world and there are hands half-leading, half-dragging him into a white-walled room plastered with happy, colorful posters and sharp, pointed tools.
“What’s your name? How old are you?” the doctor asks, peering into his eyes with an annoyingly bright light, and Yurio thinks that these are useless questions--couldn’t they tell who he was already?
He refuses to acknowledge the voice of reason within him that tells him that he just doesn’t want to have to speak, and Yurio only shakes his head, shrinking further into himself as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.
The doctor frowns, writing something down onto his clipboard that Yurio knows will come back to bite him in the ass later. “Well, I...suppose asking what happened is out of the question, too…Do you at least have someone we can call? Your parents?”
Yurio closes his eyes, the painfully tight feeling in his throat worsening at the doctor’s probably well-meaning question, and he doesn’t know how to put into words how pitifully alone he is. He couldn’t call his grandfather--the old man had had a lifetime of dealing with the burden that was Yurio, and it would be plain unfair to dump even more problems on him, especially when he had his own bad back to worry about. He briefly considered Yakov, but tossed the idea away almost as soon as it came--he might die of shame if his coach saw him in this state. And of course, he would rather actually die before he would call his real parents.
“Here, it seems like you don’t like to talk, so you can just write it out.” The doctor hands him the pen and a piece of paper, and Yurio stares down at it, chewing on his already bloody lip, honestly considering just throwing the materials at the doctor and making a run for it when an extremely involuntary, unwelcome image of a fat, incompetent, Japanese, glasses-wearing, Katsudon-eating pig and Viktor pops into his mind. It’s a stupid idea, Yurio knows, one that probably wouldn’t make it past the first phone call and end in painful rejection.
Still, when the doctor frowns at the number he’d scrawled onto the paper and asks him if he knows that no such area code exists in Russia, that you’d only find this kind of number in Japan, Yurio just nods.
He regrets his decision approximately twelve hours later when he wakes up the sound of Viktor’s annoying voice calling his name and crushing him in a hug that Yurio feels could shatter him like glass. Then the other man pulls back and stares at him, blue eyes unusually serious as he looks over Yurio, who does his best to look normal, willing Viktor to ignore the obvious injuries on his face and neck and the ones hidden beneath the torn clothing that he’d refused to let the doctors remove during their examination.
“Yurio..,” Viktor starts softly, and he wonders why the other just had to stop being an oblivious airhead when it was least convenient for Yurio.
Yurio decides to distract him, pointing over Viktor’s shoulder where Yuuri is struggling with his limited Russian vocabulary to speak to the doctor, who is struggling with his nonexistent Japanese vocabulary to communicate with Yuuri.
“Ah, yes...I should go help him. But we’re talking about this later!”
Yurio watches as Viktor slides up to the ailing duo and wraps his arm lovingly around Yuuri’s waist, surprised at the lack of hatred that usually arises in him whenever he sees their disgustingly public displays of affection. Viktor says something to Yuuri in that filthy Japanese language that probably has something to do with dealing with the lump of trash that had interrupted the happy couple’s life because Yuuri is suddenly taking a seat next to him, giving him a look of pity that fills Yurio with the need to scream insults at him, to get up and snap his fat neck, to run away and never show his shameful face to his ex-rival again. But he cannot force the words to come out, and his body refuses to move no matter how hard he tries, and he’s just so tired of being angry when he’s not even sure anymore of who he’s angry at, so he merely lets out a long breath and tries to listen while not-really-listening to whatever garbage the doctor is telling Viktor.
“...he won't talk?” Viktor’s head is tilted, confusion written all over his dumb face and Yurio curls his hands into fists, wishing he had the strength to prove Viktor wrong.
He doesn't.
“Not to me, at least. He wouldn't respond to my questions and I had to have him write down your phone number. There doesn't seem to be actual damage to his vocal chords, so…” The silver-haired Russian frowns, looking back at Yurio, who looks away, pretending that he hadn't been listening.
“I see...what--what else?”
The doctor shakes his head, looking sympathetic. “There's really not much else we know. We couldn't really get a good look at him.”
That had been mostly his own fault, he knows. He'd probably scared every nurse in the building away when he had tried to bite off the hand of the doctor who had suggested he might have more injuries underneath his clothes. The man had been right, of course, but Yurio didn't need anyone but himself knowing that.
It is then that Yuuri decides to become the boneheaded pig he was destined to be, as he turns towards Yurio with eyes of gentle warmth and carefully pats him on the head. “Don’t be so upset, Yurio. We’ll take you home soon enough.”
Home? As in, their house?
Yurio realizes that he had woefully miscalculated the results of his plan, as he had essentially expected them to either reject the claim of being his “parents” outright or would come to pick him up to get him out of the hospital and part ways with him immediately afterwards. But now, it seemed, he would be stuck with them. Perhaps he needed to stay in this hospital for a while longer, if only to allow them to find some cure for idiocy.
“Yurio?” Yuuri’s voice drags him away from his mildly panicked thoughts and the sound of it gives him the strength to retreat behind his barrier of hostility once more as he shoots a sadly ineffectual glare at Yuuri’s still smiling face. Perhaps this was his rival’s sinister plan after all, to bring Yurio into their little love-nest and mock him with close up demonstrations of their disgusting saliva exchanges.
Before he can tell--or rather, show--Yuuri what he thinks of this sudden turn of events, Viktor is upon them, having signed the discharge papers and finished speaking to the doctor.
“Let’s go, then!” he enthuses, grabbing Yurio’s arm with one hand and Yuuri’s hand with the other and hauling both of them out the door. Yurio screams internally, futilely trying to escape Viktor’s grasp, but the Russian man has been trained from years of Makkachin-walking to have a strong hand and does not relent, happily clinging to him like a monstrous, but overly-friendly octopus.
We’ll talk about this later, Viktor had promised, and while Yurio knows that that is something he has to avoid at all costs, he cannot summon the energy nor the willpower to fight the inevitable and allows himself to be docilely led to the flight to Japan like a sheep being led to slaughter.
He just wouldn’t talk at all, then.
He has to concede that Yuuri is not as horrible of a being as he continues to avow to himself in his mind sometime after their first successful dinner together in which Viktor devoured no less than four bowls of katsudon and Yurio managed to sit somewhat peaceably at the table for the entire duration. Admittedly, Yuuri could make tasty katsudon, and even if his questions about Yurio not eating much of it were annoying, they saved Yurio from answering even more annoying questions from Viktor about what had happened to him in the first place. He honestly isn't sure why they haven't just gone and kicked him out yet after three days of this ridiculousness and it's beginning to drive him crazy, trying to find out.
“Yurio, you can sleep in the guest room next to ours, you know.” Yurio shakes his head vehemently at Yuuri’s offer, burrowing himself further into the couch. He really didn't need to be kept up all night by whatever nefarious activities Yuuri and Viktor engaged in inside their bedroom.
Yuuri sighs, running a hand through his messy black hair, and Yurio can see how tired he looks, probably from having to play nursemaid to him for the last 72 hours. He's surprised when the other comes closer but stops nearly a foot away, as if he's afraid to get closer to Yurio. He couldn't blame Yuuri. “I know...you really hate me. But the Grand Prix is over, and I'm no longer your, um…’rival,’ so...why do you still hate me?”
The look on Yuuri’s face is genuinely, honestly hurt, and Yurio can’t understand why his opinion would matter so much to Yuuri, who had already earned Viktor’s attention all the way in fucking Japan when Yurio couldn’t do it right in front of his face in Russia, who had such a large family that loved him so purely and unconditionally, who could fall back on his family’s funds anytime he wanted, even if he didn’t want to. It wasn’t as if he actually hated Yuuri anymore. He was still bitter about the many things he’d come to associate with the other, but even Yurio, in his anger-muddled mind had to acknowledge that the fact that the number he’d given to the doctor had been Yuuri’s said enough.
Yurio only picks at the frayed threads at the end of his too large sleeves, shrugging in what he hopes is an apathetic gesture. He’d already widened the divide between them too far with his past actions, and even if he wanted to (which he most definitely did not) repair it, there was no way Yuuri would accept his apology and allow Yurio to maintain the last shreds of dignity he has left at the same time.
Yuuri stares at him for a long moment, and Yurio shrinks further into himself, willing the stupid man to just give up and go to bed and do whatever nasty things he wanted to do with Viktor already.
“Yurio, if you want to talk to anyone...about all this..,” Yuuri fiddles with his glasses, scrubbing at the lenses almost sheepishly before returning them delicately to his face. “I could...could listen?” He’d forgotten how bold Yuuri had gotten ever since his first saliva exchange with Viktor, and his nails scratch tiny crescent moon marks into his palms as the floodgates open, as the anger rushes up, as he opens his mouth, ready to reject Yuuri to the lowest circle of Hell.
But it won’t come out.
Yuuri’s forehead creases in concern, and Yurio needs to tell him how fat his face looks when he does that, how foolish his brown eyes are right now--there’s a million things that need to be said, and Yurio can’t say any of them.
What was wrong with him?
Yes, his self-imposed vow of silence on the point of his incident was still very much a thing, but it did not apply to daily, healthy, normal activities such as shouting down a pig with every expletive in the book and then some.
Yuuri is coming closer to him now, taking a seat right next to him, and Yurio feels every bone in his body tense at how wrong this entire situation is, with him, the supposedly indomitable Ice Tiger of Russia unable to even muster up even a pitiful meow.
He stands up abruptly as he sees Yuuri’s hand move out of the corner of his eye, attributing his reaction to the fact that Katsuki Yuuri was a fatso pig unworthy of laying a hand on him, and not because Katsuki Yuuri was a older, stronger man alone in a room with him.
“A-ah, sorry, did I...uh, scare--” Yurio leaves before he can finish his ridiculous, impossible sentence and slams the front door hard enough to drown out Yuuri’s worried calls of his name and to properly convey his message of “I’m pissed off, so shut up.”
The night air in Japan is surprisingly warm against his skin, and the soft glow of the streetlights light up the ground in fluorescent blue and white, but there is a most unnerving, annoying prickling feeling underneath Yurio’s skin that he can’t get rid of--one that was definitely not there some three days ago. He thinks about going back inside, the tiny, rational part of him practically screeching in agreement as it attempts to haul him back to a place where he knows is warm and certainly safe. But he’s always clung to his pride with a sort of stubborn perseverance that has carried him through the harsher times of life, and now is no different as he takes a sort of odd comfort in it like a blanket. Yurio stops his hand from reaching the door knob, pushing it into his pocket before it can betray him further, ignoring the tremble in his fingers as he forces himself away from the house.
He really needs to skate.