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Yuri is fifteen years old, and he is sick and tired of people talking about seeing in color like it’s the most amazing thing that could ever happen to a person. Viktor had completely lost his fucking mind over it, dropping his entire life to fly to Japan with no notice and then not even having a conversation with Katsudon about it. Idiot. Yakov talks about it with a bit more cynicism--after all, he and Lilia had clearly not managed to make it work. Only lately, he’s been grinning and humming to himself when he thinks no one is around, like living with Lilia again is making him just as happy as it is terrifying him. Which is gross, and Yuri should not have to live in these conditions.
And recently, after seeing Yuri skate the Agape program Viktor had choreographed for him, his dedushka had actually brought up his grandmother for the first time in a long time, saying slowly, “What I want for you, Yurachka, is that you will find someone who can be every type of love you are able to feel, all at once. Someone who can show you parts of the world that you have not yet been able to see.” Then he had chuckled a little. “I know that you are young, and you have no interest in these things right now. But I hope you allow yourself to be open to it when it comes.” And, of course, Yuri’s dedushka was still his favorite person in the entire world, even if he was being irritating right now, so Yuri had just muttered something noncommittal, embraced him, and hurried upstairs to bed citing a completely fictional headache.
No one knows the truth until Otabek. They’ve fallen into a companionable silence, staring at the sunset with what seemed like the entirety of Barcelona spreading out beneath them, and Yuri blurts out, suddenly, “It’s beautiful up here.”
Otabek glances at him and smiles slightly. “It is.”
“Do you--see all of it?”
Otabek looks away again, wordlessly recognizing that Yuri would rather not be looked at right now, and says, in a casual voice, “Do you mean the colors?”
“Yes.” Yuri Plisetsky does not fidget. Ever. But now he picks at a loose thread on the hem of his tiger hoodie, wrapping it around his finger tight enough to cut off the blood supply.
Otabek keeps his gaze on the horizon when he answers. “Yes, I do.”
“Oh,” says Yuri, and it’s not that he’s disappointed, exactly, because he’s known Otabek for all of, like, an hour, so that would be weird. But he’s...surprised, maybe. No, that’s not quite right either. But he doesn’t have much time to keep puzzling out what the hell emotion he’s feeling, because somehow, without making the conscious choice to do so, he’s asking, “so, they know about you?”
“No,” says Otabek. “I don’t think so.”
Not relief. “How could they not?” It comes out more aggressively than he’d intended, and he tries to dial it back a little when he speaks again, “Wouldn’t that be the kind of thing you’d notice?”
Otabek shrugs one shoulder. “All it takes is meeting the person’s eyes for a moment, really. And if you meet the person in a group of strangers and they’re focused on something else, they might not re-realize”--and it’s a brief stumble, but one that Yuri can already tell is unusual for someone like Otabek, who clearly spends time thinking about the words that are coming out of his mouth--”which person it actually was who made them see in color.”
“But you could tell for sure.”
“Yes,” he says, so emphatic that Yuri’s breath catches for a moment.
“Have you seen them since?”
“Yes.”
“You should talk to them! You should tell them. They deserve to know.”
Otabek turns his whole body to look at him, now. His face is impassive, but there’s a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Do you see in color, Yuri?”
“Yes.” He wets his lips briefly. “But you’re the only one I’ve ever told, so don’t say anything, okay?”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to the person?”
“I didn’t know who it was,” Yuri admits. “I don’t even quite remember the moment that it happened. It was years ago. I was a kid, and I must have been in--in a class, or something.” He hears his own voice change as something occurs to him, his heart picking up speed as though it has realized what’s going on here before his brain could. “Otabek,” he says suddenly, urgent. “Where were you when you first started seeing in color?”
“I was in Russia,” says Otabek, carefully.
“How do you know who it was?” The words are practically tripping over themselves in Yuri’s haste to get them out. He’s never understood the lure of soulmates before, but suddenly, now that the possibility is here, it feels different.
“I would have thought you had the eyes of a soldier regardless,” says Otabek, “but it was a comparison helped by the fact that they were the first time I ever saw the color blue.”
Yuri’s breath leaves him like he’s been punched. “It’s you,” he says, and the words are more breath than substance. “It was you. Why wouldn’t you just say something?”
“You were ten years old, and you barely even looked at me,” Otabek replies, without a hint of bitterness. “Why would I tell you then?”
“I meant now. Why wouldn’t you say something now? I was the one who brought up the colors.”
“Because you didn’t even remember meeting me,” Otabek sighs, “and I wasn’t sure that I was your soulmate,” and oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yuri has heard before of people whose soulmates had another soulmate, or people whose soulmates died before they’d had a chance to meet, or people who just flat out weren’t compatible with their soulmate. The fact that those were even a possibility had seemed to render the whole thing kind of pointless when he’d first learned about it, but now--
“It’s got to be you, though,” he says. “I mean, you’re right, I was ten and I was focused on my skating, but it would make sense, if it were you.”
“We don’t have to assume that,” says Otabek quietly, “if you don’t want to.”
“It doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to assume,” Yuri says, offering him a grin.
But Otabek has more to say. “But now you’re fifteen and you’re focused on your skating, and I don’t want you to feel like that has to change.”
“I don’t see why it should have to,” says Yuri, whose heart is pounding hard in his throat. “You said you wanted to be friends, and I wanted to.”
Otabek’s face doesn’t fall, but it does something, and Yuri realizes that he may have miscalculated that particular statement. “I just meant,” he adds, moving closer so that his hand bumps Otabek’s gently, “that I can focus on my skating and have a person in my life at the same time. And so can you.”
Otabek links their fingers together and squeezes. Yuri will hate himself later, when he remembers how utterly cheesy the thought had been, but when Otabek smiles at him then, it puts all the colors of the stunning sunset to shame.