Work Text:
“Come on, Beka. What does it say?”
Otabek lets out a tired sigh. “I… haven’t looked at it.”
Wait. “What?”
“I haven’t looked at it,” he repeats, turning his gaze to Yuri. “Not since I got my first letter. Soulmates weren’t my priority at the time, and I didn’t want to waste any time worrying about who it might be. So I didn’t look.”
If he hasn’t looked at his soulmark ever since he got his first letter... then there’s still a chance, right? There’s still a chance that Otabek has his name written somewhere on him, and they can finally end the suffering he’s been going through for the past month. He still has a chance. For this brief moment, he allows himself to hope.
He casts his best glare at him, trying to ignore the nervousness that settled into the pit of his stomach. “Well, it has to be complete by now. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore. Don’t you wanna look at it at the name of the hag you forgot about?”
“Not really.”
“Beka.”
He sighs in exasperation. “Alright, fine. You can look, but I won’t.” He sheds his suit jacket and drapes it on the balcony railing and rolls up his right sleeve. Immediately he looks away from it, but he extends his arm to Yuri.
And, just as quick as he let his hopes raise up, it breaks down just as quickly.
Right on Otabek’s bicep, in neat, loopy handwriting (which, he could tell right away, was not his own handwriting at all), is Юлия Ниязовой. Yulia Niyazova.
They even have similar first names, they even have the same first letter, just like how he knows the Otabek tattooed on his left inner elbow isn’t the Otabek he wants. It absolutely kills him.
“Yura? Are you done?” Otabek’s voice breaks him out of his trance, and he manages to nod before the name disappears as Otabek pulls down his sleeve. He wishes it would disappear forever.
“... How come you still don’t want to look at it?” he ends up asking, keeping his voice as nonchalant as he can. “I mean, it’s not like you have to wait in suspense for any more letters. And you don’t have to drop everything for some bullshit soulmate quest, like Viktor. You just... know. Is that bad?”
His face hardens again, and he notices how he isn’t meeting his eyes. “It really doesn’t matter to me, Yuri. Having a soulmark almost feels like... a burden. Never mind the fact that skating keeps me too busy for a relationship - what if I don’t want to be with my soulmate? What if I end up loving someone else? I don’t want to be stuck with someone I don’t care about just because destiny says so.”
Funny. In that moment, that’s exactly how he feels with his own soulmate right now. “So you’re just... pretending that you don’t have a soulmate?”
“... You can say that,” he sighs tiredly. “And again, keeping up with my skating while trying to get into a relationship sounds too difficult for me. It’s just easier this way.”
“Well, if you say so, then I guess I won’t push it,” he says with a shrug, and he hopes that they’ll drop the subject there.
But for some reason fate is really out to get him today, because then Otabek says, “Hey, you still haven’t shown me your mark. Fair is fair, you know.”
He feels like throwing up. The thought of Otabek seeing his mark and knowing that it isn’t him makes him feel uneasy. He clutches at the spot where his mark is subconsciously, but immediately moves his hand to his forearm to avoid suspicion. “I don’t think you should see it.”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Otabek points out, and he pales. “And you looked like you really wanted to show me, anyway. What changed your mind?”
Oh, nothing. Just the fact that I’ve been pining for you for the past month and now that I know we’re not soulmates I’d rather get kicked in the nuts than let you see my mark.
“What, I can’t talk about this kind of shit with my best friend?” he says instead. “It’s just something that happened to me that I thought was important enough for you to know. But it’s not like you have to know everything.”
“... I suppose so,” Otabek replies, and he feels relief wash over him. “I’m just... not used to you being this secretive with me. Is your soulmate JJ, or something?”
He chokes on air. “Fuck no!” he sputters, and despite the heavy atmosphere, Otabek laughs. “I’d rather never step foot on the ice again than having that shithead’s name anywhere on me! Fucking gross, Beka.”
There’s still laughter in his voice as he replies, “Well, since you’re so protective over it, I just assumed it was someone you hated.”
“Well, the answer is no. It’s not him, and thank fuck for that,” he spits out, and Otabek lets out another chuckle. “And anyway, it’s not about whether I like them. It’s about how you’d react if you saw it.”
“... About how I would react?” he repeats, and fuck, Yuri’s said too much now. He can practically feel how the light atmosphere that the topic of JJ brought in disappear, letting the tenseness from before remain. “Yuri, what do you mean-”
“Nothing,” he responds, a little too quickly for it to sound natural. “We should get back in there. Katsudon and the old man would never let it go if we end up ditching the whole reception.”
He’s already halfway across the balcony and approaching the door when he hears, “Yuri, hold on a moment,” and he curses himself for being able to disobey everyone but him. He stops, refusing to look back.
“What now?”
“You know I won’t judge you or anything for whoever your soulmate turns out to be, right?” he hears footsteps approaching him, but it stops before he gets too close. “It’s not like you chose to have that person's name as your mark.”
That’s true. If it were up to him, he would choose Otabek to be his soulmate without any hesitation. “Yeah, I know.”
“Then what’s the problem?” his question was blunt, but his tone stays gentle; it always is when it comes to Yuri.
“The problem,” he starts, turning so that he’s face to face with Otabek, “is that you’re not letting go of it. Look, I thought I was ready to tell you, but I’m chickening out, okay? It doesn’t mean I’m leaving you in the dark forever. When I stop being a fucking coward, I’ll tell you. I promise.”
For just a few moments, both are quiet. Then finally, Otabek sighs, "Alright. I’m sorry I pushed you, Yura. It wasn’t very fair of me.”
“S’alright,” he mumbles, before forcing on half a smile. “C’mon, if I’m lucky then they’re having another dance-off and I can record some videos as blackmail material without getting dragged into it again.”
Otabek laughs, and they walk back to the ballroom, side by side.
The weeks after the wedding are busy, what with Viktor and Yuuri’s honeymoon and Yuri moving in with them at their insistence once they return, but he doesn’t forget about his soulmark. His rate at getting the rest of the mark has slowed, but he does get the first letter of the surname - a К. Not an A, like he wanted, but he already knows that he and Otabek aren’t soulmates anyway.
Knowing it doesn’t make it any less painful.
At least their relationship remains the same, despite the argument they had the night of the wedding. While their calls become less frequent, they text almost all day, from Otabek’s good morning text at 10 AM to his own good night text in the middle of the night.
But, since he’s pretty sure now that the world is out to get him, all good things have to end in disaster eventually.
Otabek flies to Russia during the off-season, a few months after the wedding, at Yuri’s insistence. The idiot couple are happy to lend their guest room to him, and Mila and Georgi are just glad there’s going to be a new face at the rink for a while.
Yuuri and Viktor leave the house for (another) date night, leaving Yuri and Otabek in charge of Makkachin and his cat. He figures this will be another night of video games and listening to music they could use for next season’s program, all while keeping the two animals out of trouble.
His mistake is choosing to wear a t-shirt, leaving his hoodie alone, and not covering up his soulmark beforehand.
Neither of them notice at first. They go a solid two hours without the subject of soulmates crossing their minds. Then they’re sitting on the living room floor and Otabek asks Yuri to pass him a DVD and he gives it to him with his left hand instead of his right, and he sees him freeze the second his eyes pass over his inner elbow, and he knows he’s dead.
“Beka, I-” he starts, just as Otabek says, “Is this why you never-?”
They both fall silent. Then, slowly, Otabek reaches for his hand, taking his wrist and pulling it towards him. As always, everything he does to Yuri is gentle. His thumb brushes against the mark (‘Отабек К’, not the A that he so desperately wanted) and Yuri hates how just that makes him want to melt into the floor.
“Is this why you didn’t want me to see? During the wedding?” he asks quietly. He’s not meeting his eyes.
“I... yeah,” he admits. “I just thought you were my soulmate, I guess. I was gonna tell you, but then...”
“You saw my mark.” his voice sounds unusually pained, and it hurts Yuri to the core.
“Yeah,” he says again, voice now down to a whisper. Otabek sighs before putting Yuri’s hand back down, slumping against the sofa beside him. He’s never seen him looks so... distraught before.
“I knew it,” he says eventually, and Yuri’s attention snaps fully back to him.
“What do you mean?”
“Back when I was eighteen,” he starts, covering his eyes with his forearm, “and I got my first letter. When I saw it, I immediately thought of you.”
October 31st, two months before the Grand Prix Finals. “Had we even met then?”
“No. But you know that I’ve admired you for a long time, even when you didn’t remember me. I didn’t know the extent that admiration went, but I did still think of you and... I didn’t want to think that you’re my soulmate then end up disappointed if it turns out you’re not. So I stopped looking at it.” he lets out another sigh, more pained than the last. “Turns out I was right.”
“Wait, hold on,” he says, a little frantically, "Admiration? Do you mean-”
“Yes, Yuri.” He removes his arm from his eyes, and it just hits Yuri how tired he looks. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time now. There was a reason I wasn’t accepting any dates from anyone. You already took my heart years ago.”
“Oh,” he says, for lack of anything better to say. Even with the tense atmosphere, he can feel his cheeks warming at Otabek’s words. “I, uh. I think you’ve already figured out that I feel the same way.”
Asshole still has the audacity to chuckle at Yuri’s awkwardness, and he nods.
In another life, he’d probably be ecstatic. He’d happily say that he returns those feelings, and they’d end up even mushier than Viktor and Yuuri. Here, however, the words carried a certain emotional burden.
“Hey,” he says, and Otabek’s eyes turn from the ceiling to him. “Say we give it a shot. Would you be up for it?”
Otabek’s eyes widen, sitting up straight up turning to face Yuri fully. “You would be willing to try it out...? Even if we’re not-”
“Oh, who gives a fuck about soulmates anyway,” he huffs with a roll of his eyes. “There are tons of people who don’t end up with their soulmates and are perfectly happy with it. You said you love me, and, well, you already know how I feel. Why can’t we be like them?”
“I don’t know,” Otabek starts, but then quickly continues once Yuri shoots him a pained look. “I’m not saying I don’t want to be with you. Of course I do. But... how long will we last? What if we meet your soulmate, or mine? Do we just break it off and act as if it never happened? Because... I don’t think I can handle that.”
“And what if we never meet them?” he counters. “That happens to people, too. They wait and wait for someone who’ll never come and they end up dying alone and unhappy. I don’t think I can handle that, either.”
“I see your point, but...”
“Come on, Beka,” he tries, and though he uses the nickname often, Otabek still flinches. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Even if we do break up, we’re not going to be like those dumb fucks who stop being friends just because they stopped seeing each other. We’re better than that. So... just give me a chance. Give us a chance.”
The seconds of silence that follows is absolutely agonizing, but then Otabek smiles and gives him an, “okay,” and leans in to give him the smallest of pecks on the lips. And as Otabek laughs at him again as his face turns multiple shades of red, he realizes that any pain that he felt for this man the past months has been completely worth it.
Years later, he goes to a tattoo shop and asks the artist to cover up his soulmark. Then, he asks them to write ‘Отабек Алтын’ just below the original mark.
A week after, he find out Otabek did the same. ‘Юрий Плисецкий’ is on nearly the exact same spot as his actual soulmark, which is now covered up completely. (He’s not going to lie; the sight of his name on Otabek’s skin almost brought him to tears. Almost.)
And no, it’s definitely not the path that fate designed for them, but neither of them care. After all, they love and will love just as deeply.