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Rink in St Petersburg - Some time during the off-season, 2016
‘Yurochka,’ Yakov said with a sigh, ‘take five,’ he added as he stared at his, supposedly, top skater now that Viktor had flown to Japan to play coach. He scoffed at the thought and went to get himself a coffee. It was obviously going to be a rather long day.
Yuri got out of the rink, put on his safe guards and sat down on a bench to rest for a bit. He should have been able to land those jumps easily. He had been practising them for long enough! Even before he was allowed to. He took his phone out of his bag and opened a random app just to get distracted and try to clear his mind.
That was the moment Otabek Altin decided to saunter in as if he owned the place. Yuri gritted his teeth and kept his eyes down, burning an imaginary hole on the side of the rink in front of him. The Kazakh sat on the bench next to his, put on his skates and started doing laps around the rink as Yakov came back and yelled at him for being late, again.
‘Otabek! Where the hell were you?! I told you last time that if you were not here at 8 am sharp every day-’
‘That you would ship me back to Kazakhstan. Yes, I remember,’ Altin said, shrugging one shoulder, unaffected by Yakov’s threat. He circled back around and stopped in front of his coach, his expression blank as always.
‘You really don’t think I will make good on my promise?’ Yakov was getting red in the face. None of his protégés respected him!
‘You’ve been saying that since I turned fifteen. The threat kinda loses its meaning after a while,’ the now eighteen-year-old told him before drinking some water.
‘Whatever! It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve said it. You shouldn’t be late, period! How exactly are you going to bring glory back to your country if you disobey-’
‘I was up late mixing up my short programme music,’ Altin said as he stepped out of the ice and walked carefully to his backpack. He rummaged for a second until he found what he was looking. He handed Yakov a CD. ‘Here. Let me know if it’s good enough.’
His expression went from a blank stare to a more solemn one, and the change in attitude didn’t go unnoticed by his coach, who sighed before he spoke again.
‘I’ll listen to it in a while,’ the silent forgiveness hung in the air around them. ‘For now, warm up and continue working on yesterday’s step sequence.’
‘Yes, sir!’ he said in a mock salute and went over to the left side of the rink to continue skating around before diving head first into what Yakov had told him to do.
Yuri couldn’t believe his ears! This wannabe DJ was being allowed not only to choose but to mix his own damn music? What the fuck? Yuri was fuming by the time Yakov yelled at him to get on the ice again, whatever app he had opened long forgotten as he buried his phone on his bag and marched to the rink.
His green eyes could’ve easily been mistaken by those of a soldier in that moment. The anger boiling inside of him was all the fuel he needed. It gave him the strength to endure the day’s practice. However, he didn’t manage to land his jump combination… at least not with the consistency that Yakov expected from him.
‘That’s it, Yuri! Enough for today,’ his serious tone showed how disappointed he was by Yuri’s lack of improvement.
After giving Altin a few notes, Yakov left the rink, muttering something about ungrateful ex-wives as he went. He was off probably to meet Lilia.
Yuri, instead of leaving, stayed on the ice, breathing heavily still after having exerted himself. He was so focused on going over his moves and jumps in his head, he didn’t notice the Kazakh approaching him until he was standing in front of the blond.
‘What do you want, Altin?’ Yuri barked. He honestly didn’t want to deal with the other skater in that moment.
‘Nothing. Just had to come up close to see if the Russian fairy had in fact lost his wings,’ Altin taunted him, a clear air of superiority laced in his every word.
‘Excuse me?!’ Yuri said as he raised his eyes. He was met with Altin’s trademark cocky smile, the one Yuri had wanted to wipe off his stupid face with a punch since day one.
‘What? The fairy lost his wings and his ability to hear?’ the Kazakh was having way too much fun with this as he started skating in circles around him. ‘Let me make myself clear for your sake: you peaked at Junior’s, kid. There’s no way you’ll win any medals this year, not while I’m here.’
It was Yuri’s turn to get red in the face. He got so angry that words failed him, which, of course, was interpreted as either cowardice or lack of eloquence by his rival.
‘Oh, I guess you lost your tongue, too,’ Altin then skated away, not sparing him a second glance as he changed into his sneakers and left, whistling as he walked to the doors.
Yuri felt paralysed. Despite the fact that he knew what Altin’s intention had been, he couldn’t help but doubt himself and his ability. It wasn’t impossible. He had seen it before. Plenty of young skaters disappeared from the map once they finally reached the Senior division. Not everyone was like Viktor Nikiforov, the living legend.
Yuri lost track of time as he stood there and only moved again when he realised his fingers were numb from the cold. He approached the exit slowly, doing everything on autopilot, the routine ingrained in his brain after years and years of practice.
He finally left, his mind swirling with unwanted thoughts.
The next day was practically the same: Yuri arrived early, Altin arrived late, Yakov yelled at them both. The only added pain in the neck was that Mila and Georgi were also there.
The day before, he vanished the agonising thoughts from his head as soon as he entered the shower. Yuri Plisetsky, the Ice Tiger of Russia, was not a fucking fairy. He would prove to Altin and to anyone who dared say he was not good enough that he deserved to be in the Senior division. Yuri Plisetsky did not go down without a fight.
He managed to land 80% of his jumps during practice, a noticeable improvement, and was praised by Yakov, who told him to take a break so that Georgi could have more room to go over his routine so far.
For the first time in a while, he felt himself smile a little as he moved to his usual bench, where Mila was currently sitting, waiting for her turn after Georgi.
‘Well done, Yuri,’ she said, smiling happily at him.
‘Thanks, hag,’ he replied, his face going back to a neutral expression. It was enough that he had thanked her. He couldn’t let her think he actually liked her or something.
Her smile just grew, understanding the sentiment behind his features and turned to look at Georgi as the music started. Yuri winced as he sat down and put on his safe guards. Georgi had always been a bigger drama queen than Viktor and, since his break-up, he had been trying to channel all the despair he felt onto his skating.
Yuri was making mental notes, since they were still rivals, when he felt, rather than see, Altin nearby. Yuri couldn’t explain it, but whenever the Kazakh appeared, the air around him changed, along with his entire demeanour.
‘You know, kid, those paper wings may work for now but they won’t carry you further than the first few events this season. You’ll fall before you get to the Grand Prix,’ Altin said, that mocking tone of his making Yuri’s skin crawl.
‘One, my name’s not “kid”; it’s Plisetsky for you. Two, your attitude is getting real old, real fast, Altin. And three, I have no idea what wings you keep referring to because I don’t fly on the ice, I pounce,’ Yuri told him in a monotonous voice, his eyes never leaving Georgi’s body as he skated.
And the next thing that happened made Yuri finally snap after years of never-ending bickering. Otabek Altin, the Hero of Kazakhstan, laughed out loud so hard, he actually bent down and had to put his hands on his knees as he tried to get oxygen into his lungs again. Tears were falling from his eyes as he regained his composure after a minute or so of laughing non-stop.
And Yuri could not take it anymore.
‘That was-,’ Altin started saying but was interrupted by the Russian’s body colliding with his and he fell backwards on the ground.
Mila’s yelp of surprise alerted Yakov and he ran towards his two top students.
‘Yuri! Otabek! Break it off!’ he yelled as a few other skaters came around and separated them.
Mila grabbed Yuri and refused to let him go as Yakov stepped between the two and put his hand on Otabek’s chest to keep him from moving any further.
‘What the hell is going on here?!’ Yakov asked. He could feel a headache forming already as the two teens screamed at him, trying to get him to listen to their side of the story. ‘Shut up! D’you know what? I don’t care what’s going on nor do I care who started this! I want you both out of my sight until you can work this out! Do you hear me?’
‘And how are we supposed to do that if he’s constantly insulting everyone around him?!’ Yuri shot back, enraged by Yakov’s punishment.
‘I don’t know, but you’d better hurry up because the beginning of the season it’s getting nearer,’ he sighed and dropped the hand that had been pushing the Kazakh back. ‘You have a week to think of something. I don’t care how you work it out, skate together for all I care, but I will not tolerate violence in my rink, understood?’
Silence reigned as the two skaters nodded, and the curious eyes that had gathered around during the altercation left them alone again. Yakov went back to the rink to continue working with Georgi while Mila put her arm around Yuri’s shoulders. She was about to ask him something when Altin opened his mouth.
‘Yakov’s not coming tomorrow morning, Plisetsky, so you’d better be here early. I’m not throwing away everything I’ve worked for,’ and with that, he turned and marched towards the locker rooms.
‘Yuri?’ Mila finally spoke. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ he said with a nod and sat down to take off his skates. She was called by Yakov then and left him alone, a worried look on her face. ‘Just fucking peachy,’ he mumbled to himself once he put on his sneakers and left the place without another word.
The next day, both Yuri and Otabek met outside the rink before it even opened. Yesterday’s events were still fresh on their minds, and neither boy wanted to speak first, so they only nodded at each other in greeting. They waited for a few minutes until the employees unlocked the doors for them and they stepped inside.
Once they finished warming up on opposite sides of the rink, they met in the middle to discuss how they would go about proving to Yakov that they didn’t want to rip each other’s throat. They decided to try and come up with a pair-skating routine to perform at the end of their week-long “hiatus”.
‘Do you have any music on your phone?’ Altin spoke after a few minutes of silence.
‘Yes,’ was all Yuri said as he skated to the exit and retrieved the device from his bag’s pocket. ‘Why? Don’t you have a million songs on yours?’ he asked, as he hooked it up to the rink’s main stereo system.
‘Exactly,’ the Kazakh replied before moving to stand next to Yuri as the Russian opened the music player on his phone. ‘If we use mine, we’re going to be here all day just browsing and, I don’t know about you, but I want to get this over with so that I can go back to practising.’
‘Fine,’ Yuri said, with a shrug, handing the device over to the other boy. Of course he wanted to finish as soon as possible so that he could practise normally again, but that didn’t mean he liked having Altin, of all people, going through his music collection.
‘You have quite a few interesting choices here,’ Altin mumbled, considering a few and committing the names of the songs to memory. ‘How about we each choose a bunch of songs, put them in a new list and set it to shuffle and just… skate? Then we can make a decision.’
Yuri considered it. It wasn’t a bad idea, although he wasn’t going to say it aloud in front of him. But, it was true that in that way, they could narrow down the options a lot faster. He finally nodded, and Altin started browsing again, choosing quickly.
‘Five each?’ he proposed as he deposited the phone back down on the edge of the rink.
‘Sure.’
Most of the songs were turned down almost immediately. Either because one of them thought it didn’t work for their current task, or because it was too quick, or too slow, or too something.
It was on the seventh try, both fully aware that their list was about to end, when they managed to agree that maybe that song was going to work. They went over the next three just to make sure, but returned to the previous one, deleting the list in its entirety except for that one.
It was a song Altin chose, one that Yuri had actually forgotten that was there in the first place. He had downloaded it because Mila had gone through one of her many music phases and was always singing it, until it ultimately got stuck in Yuri’s head, too.
They listened to it a few items, trying to memorise the lyrics and get their skating to sort of match the rhythm of Depeche Mode’s “People are people”.
They worked separately at first, coming up with different step sequences and spin combinations. The jumps, they had decided, they were going to work on together at the end.
However, their indecisiveness at the beginning and long warm-up session made them waste most of their morning and they had to leave in a rush after Mila told them Yakov was parking his car outside, also letting them know that he was going to look for them before they started practice.
So, they met again, and again, and again. Until, during the fourth day of practice, on Monday morning, they finally settled on a somewhat decent choreography and began the tedious task of incorporating a few more spins and jumps.
That wasn’t the hardest part, though.
The worst aspect of it all was working together in their coordination. Even if they had the same coach, their styles were completely different.
‘This is pointless!’ Yuri yelled, as they messed up on their timing before a spin combination yet again.
‘Let’s take a break,’ Altin conceded, exhausted beyond belief. They had been working on this routine non-stop for four days, and today was going to be the longest practice yet since Yakov had already said he wouldn’t come back from who knew where until the following afternoon.
Yuri was taking a sip from his water bottle when the Kazakh sat next to him on his bench.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Altin?’ Yuri told him, although having had to converse with the guy without insulting each other all the time made Yuri’s comments lose a little bit of the bite they usually came with.
‘Sitting next to you, Plisetsky,’ Altin replied, his blank stare in place. ‘We’re skating together now, would you chill for a second? Not every conversation needs to turn into a fight.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if I find it a little hard to believe that the guy who has been insulting me since as long as I can remember wants to be civil with me,’ Yuri said, putting his water bottle back into his bag and raising to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s finish this.’
The Kazakh sighed. He had tried, at least. During the last couple of days, he had come to realise that he and the blond were not that different from each other, each wanting to excel in their own way and make a name for themselves in the sport they loved.
The afternoon training session involved trying to get their jumps right. Since it would be impossible to expect them to jump simultaneously and perfectly in time with the music, they decided to incorporate them in a different way: instead of going for synchronised jumps, they would do them one right after the other in succession, one each.
Yuri, who was still riling from their chat earlier, was having troubles jumping. But, he ploughed through his anger, as he always did. However, since he wasn’t skating alone this time around and actually had to follow another person’s lead, he ended up falling and hitting his left hip in the process.
His body collided hard with the ice. He cursed under his breath as he heard Altin approaching him. The older skater knelt down next to him.
‘You okay?’ he asked, real concern lacing his tone. ‘That was a nasty fall.’
‘Yeah, I know, Altin. I was there, you know?’ Yuri replied, not able to stop himself. He was surprised to hear his rival sigh in response.
‘Come on,’ he said as he helped Yuri up, and they skated together towards the edge of the rink, Yuri’s arm around Otabek’s shoulder, while the Kazakh held onto Yuri’s right side with his other hand.
Once Altin let him go, Yuri sat down on the bench and took off his skates, checking his feet to make sure he hadn’t hurt himself too badly.
‘Everything’s alright, it seems,’ he mumbled relieved, more to himself than to anyone else.
‘What about your hip? It received most of the blow,’ the Kazakh pointed out.
‘It’s fine,’ Yuri dismissed the comment quickly as he tied his skates again, ready to go back to practising.
‘Plisetsky, let me see,’ Altin insisted as he followed Yuri onto the ice.
‘No, it’s fine, really,’ he touched his left hip to prove he was alright and couldn’t hide his expression as a new wave of pain hit him. He even hissed a little, too.
‘Yeah, totally fine,’ Altin said with a roll of his eyes as he came closer to Yuri and waited for the other boy to give him permission to look.
Yuri nodded, and Otabek lifted his shirt and touched his hip gently.
‘Ouch,’ was all he said as he checked his pale skin, a bruise already forming. ‘Let’s try to finish this quickly today so you can go home and rest. You should put some ice on it, too.’
‘Yes, thank you for the advice, doc,’ Yuri told him sarcastically as he swatted the other skater’s hands away and pulled down his shirt. ‘Are we gonna practise or not?’
He turned around, hiding the sudden blush that had come over his cheeks at Altin’s close proximity and soft hands on his skin. What the fuck had just happened?
By the time they showed Yakov their little routine –which was by no means perfect; far from it, really–, they had most definitely learnt how to be around each other without hating the fact that they were breathing the same oxygen. They weren’t best friends, of course, but they could at least tolerate the other.
Yakov nodded at them, making no further comments about the situation other than the fact that he expected them both to go back to their regular training hours the next day and went on to work with Mila on her SP.
Yuri and Otabek exchanged a smile for the first time ever that day. Yuri was the one who broke the eye contact, though, feeling his heart beating erratically all of a sudden.
Yuri heard Otabek skating to the exit, but the Kazakh stopped halfway through and turned to face Yuri again.
‘You know what, Plisetsky? You are not half bad,’ Altin told him, a smirk plastered on his face as he went out first, leaving Yuri behind on the ice once more, but this time, Yuri was trying to get both his breathing and heartbeat back to normal.
Yuri and Otabek’s apartment in St Petersburg - Some time during the off-season, 2022
‘Yura, it’s almost time for dinner,’ Otabek shook him awake, effectively bringing him back to the real world.
‘Beka?’ Yuri asked sleepily while rubbing his eyes. Otabek just smiled at him and ruffled his already tangled locks, before offering his hand to help Yuri get up from the couch. ‘I don’t remember falling asleep.’
‘You said you were going to give that documentary Viktor told you about another try and the next thing I knew, you were snoring up a storm.’
‘Excuse me?’ Yuri stopped walking and dropped Otabek’s hand. His boyfriend turned around, mirth clear in his features as he tried not to laugh at Yuri’s annoyed expression. ‘I do not snore,’ the younger man told him, his tone defensive.
Otabek said nothing as he continued the short path to the kitchen and picked up his phone from the counter where he had left it. He touched the screen a few times, turned up the volume and showed Yuri the screen.
There, on their couch, was Yuri’s sprawled body, his toned stomach on display, since his shirt always seemed to ride up while asleep, and one foot dangling just above the floor.
‘Did you really-’ Yuri started asking until video-Yuri snored loudly.
The recording went on for a good three minutes, the snores filling the silent apartment as Yuri’s face got redder and redder, and Otabek was unable to contain his laughter any longer. It wasn’t even that funny. Yuri snored, so what? Big deal. Otabek knew that, they shared a bed. But the fact that this was new information for his boyfriend just made it sound hilarious to the Kazakh.
‘You know what, Beka? Dream-you may have been an asshole but, somehow, he was a lot nicer than you right now,’ Yuri said and went back to sit on the couch. ‘And a lot hotter!’ he added at the end for good measure.
‘What?’ Otabek’s voice echoed a little in the barely furnished kitchen. ‘Yu~ra! Answer me!’
Otabek followed his boyfriend into the living room then and sat down, a confused expression on his face.
‘I had a dream, which was really strange and way too long to explain now, but I think I know what song we’re going to be skating to during the next exhibition we have together,’ Yuri told him excitedly, as he grabbed his phone and searched for the song he had completely forgotten he had stored in there for four years.