Work Text:
Yuri’s ten when he sees colour for the first time.
He’s at Yakov’s summer camp in the middle of a ballet lesson when the door opens and a boy he’s never seen before is pushed into the room. “This is Otabek Altin,” says the woman behind him. “We think he might be better off in this class.”
She says something else about how he was struggling in the class he was first put in, how he couldn’t keep up with the others, but Yuri isn’t listening because the world is no longer in black in white, there’s colours he’s never seen before seeping into his vision.
He’s ten and he has no idea what it all means, only that it has something to do with the boy who’s just walked into the room for the first time.
Yuri is fifteen before he sees Otabek Altin again. Yuri found out after a lengthy conversation with his grandpa that seeing colour meant you had met your soulmate, but as he hadn’t known at the time, and Otabek had slipped out of his life after camp was over as easily as the way the colour faded from his vision into black and white again.
He’s fifteen and standing in the hotel lobby when the colour starts to creep back into his vision. Otabek is there, as beautiful as Yuri remembers, perhaps even more so now that he’s there in real life rather than on television.
Except Yuri is scared, so when Otabek acknowledges him, Yuri snaps at him instead of running into his arms or whatever it is you’re supposed to do when you meet your soulmate.
It’s not until he’s running away from his crazy fans and Otabek turns up on his motorbike to rescue him that he realises that he can’t ignore this forever.
Yuri’s eighteen when Otabek asks him to marry him. The ring is gold and the roses are red and Yuri’s eyes are still the brightest green Otabek has ever seen.
The world is in screaming colour, and for them, it’s going to stay that way forever.