Chapter Text
It was two months before the Olympics and their coaches said they had to stop talking. They claimed they were too distracting for one another and there was too much danger of them giving away important details of their routines. They said it wasn’t healthy for competition to be too close before such a large event. They both agreed, Otabek more gracefully than Yuri; not about the closeness, but about the distraction.
On their last, supervised, Skype call, before handing over their log in information and devices, Otabek smiled at his partner sadly.
“I love you,” he said simply, because it was true. Yuri smiled ruefully back, eyes flickering to where Viktor stood over his shoulder, and Otabek knew he wouldn’t say it back in front of him. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, and when Yuri looked straight into the camera, he knew he knew it too.
“Hey Altin,” Yuri said as they were about to sign off. “You’d better learn how to skate with a boner, because that’s what my routine is going to give you.” The last Otabek heard before Viktor slammed the laptop shut was Yuri’s musical laugh and he was still smiling when his screen went dark.
It was two months before the Olympics and Otabek held onto that sound, already longing for the next moment he’d get to hear it.
It was six weeks before the Olympics and Otabek was screaming on the ice. He’d been getting extra practice time, filling the rink whenever it wasn’t in use. The Kazakh hockey team was favored this year and they had an ongoing feud over who needed ice time more. As soon as they headed to the lockers, Otabek was out, sliding over rough ice.
He didn’t mind sharing the ice with the Zamboni, it was worth it to get the extra fifteen minutes it would take. He liked to skate behind it, putting the first marks on that flawless, wet expanse. He practiced footwork lazily to warm up, and when the machine had more than half the ice cleaned, he started his quads. He was premiering a new quad for this Olympics, the quad salchow that had eluded him his entire career thus far. He still only had about fifty percent success in landing it, and when he did, they were underrotated, always leading him to the left. But when he thought about Yuri’s face, watching him land it, knowing how hard he must’ve worked to achieve it, it was easy to work through the frustration.
He’d started picking up speed, having enough space between him and the Zamboni to really start flying, gathering up all the momentum he’d need to truly fling himself up in that barely controlled explosion. He kicked up, tucking himself in tight, counting his rotations in that thoughtless, rapid-fire way born of only muscle and repetition.
He landed and immediately knew it was wrong. Skate sideways, he went shooting to the left, off course and too fast. He would’ve had a chance for recover, if he’d waited for the ice to be cleaned. As it was, he flew out of the Zamboni’s track, and caught rough ice. His toe bit and skidded, twisting his lower leg to the right. Everything else went left.
There were shards of ice in his mouth, and he thought he was probably screaming. He could see the Zamboni still driving, could see his coach vaulting the wall, and several hockey players pointing. By all accounts, it should’ve been loud, thunderous. But Otabek couldn’t hear a thing, not even himself. All he had space for was the blinding ball of white hot pain that used to be his knee, feeling like it was ready to melt right through the ice and drown him.
It was six weeks before the Olympics and Otabek looked at his backwards angle of a leg and he kept screaming until he ran out of air.
It was five weeks before the Olympics and Otabek didn’t know when he’d last gotten a full night’s sleep. He was a light sleeper, and even Yuri’s sleepy murmurings and fidgeting could wake him up. Sleeping in the hospital was impossible. He still had needles in his arm, and his leg was up in traction.
The doctors here were liars and he hated them. They said things like “complete internal separation” with sympathetic smiles on their faces like they were announcing bad weather. They said the first surgery went well but he didn’t believe them. How could it have gone well if he was already scheduled for two more before he was even released? They said that his tibia needed to be replaced at the same time as blood supply was returned to parts of his lower leg, but that his tendons couldn’t be operated on in the same procedure. And that his ligaments would only recover when his knee was strong enough to stretch them, and that the nerve damage would likely be irreversible.
He asked them when he’d be able to skate and they’d looked at him with tight smiles and told him to consider smaller goals to avoid disappointment.
The drugs were good, though, and he was always on them. Sometimes, he got worried that his knee could possibly hurt as bad as it did while on the medication. He didn’t think about what it would be like without it.
It was five weeks before the Olympics and he was losing days, hours spent staring at the hospital ceiling, drugged enough that he didn’t even feel them slipping by.
It was three weeks before the Olympics and after the third surgery he was back at home. Or, not exactly home, but out of the hospital. The doctor hadn’t approved him to return alone to his third floor walk-up in Almaty proper, so instead he was currently being driven to his sister’s cottage on the outskirts of the city where she lived with her fiancée.
He’d staunchly refused the wheelchair, glaring at the nurse as he tried to convince him of its benefits. He’d accepted the crutches that had been begrudgingly given to him, against all advice, and was not at all regretting his decision. Not even when the stem of the crutches knocked into his traction device, causing him to grunt in pain, a sharp burst forcing through the fog of drugs.
Aruzhan showed him to the guest room, hovering too close to his back, as if ready to catch him. He tried to lower himself gracefully onto the bed, but a crutch slipped and he collapsed backwards, jarring his metalwork. He hissed and watched a small trickle of blood slip from around one of the screws.
Every athlete has at one point worn a brace on the knee, and Otabek was familiar with even the more heavy-duty kinds. The ones that had metal supports down either side of the knee and thick straps around thigh and shin. But he had never seen anything like the monstrosity attached to his leg. Probably because once someone had something like this, they weren’t an athlete anymore.
A spider’s web of metal surrounded his knee. Bolted into femur and his brand new, steel tibia, the halos of titanium held what were essentially two completely separated pieces of a leg into a single line. It was explained that the weight of his lower leg would separate the repair done to his knee, so his thighbone had to support it. The skin around the screws was scabbed and ugly, and the tension caused a permanent ache.
“Do you need more medicine?” Aruzhan asked, holding the pill bottle as if it were actually meant to fix him, not just a bandage over the wound. He grunted and held out a hand, accepting the pain pills tapped into it, swallowing them dry and lying back. He needed to sleep.
It was three weeks before the Olympics, Otabek’s right leg was more metal than bone, and the extra weight drug him into dreamless sleep.
It was two weeks before the Olympics and Yuri hadn’t called.
Of course he hadn’t. He didn’t know. He had no way of knowing that Otabek hadn’t taken a step under his own power in a month. He didn’t have his phone to call Otabek and talk him through a panic attack when his pain medicine ran out and he had to live through the four hours it took his sister to get more. He didn’t have anyone to let him know that Otabek’s third surgery went well but they’d found a shard from his former tibia lodged in his calf muscle and infection all around it.
He didn’t know because why would he? Otabek was a distraction. Being with Otabek now would just make him worse. Would keep him from practice, from doing his best, from winning.
So when Aruzhan offered to get in touch with him, to tell Viktor what had happened, to go through Katsuki if she had to, Otabek told her not to.
Because it was two weeks before the Olympics and if Otabek couldn’t skate, Yuri would have to do well enough for both of them.
It was four days before the Olympics and Otabek’s phone finally rang.
It had been so long since his picture ID had filled Otabek’s screen that he just stared at it. Let it ring through until the picture went away. With the drugs making everything slower, he realized only after that that had meant Yuri was right on the other side of the screen, finally with his own phone back in his hands, and calling Otabek was probably the first thing he’d done.
He picked up his phone from the couch and swiped sideways to call him back.
“Beka!” Yuri shouted, answering after only a single ring. His voice sounded so good Otabek stopped breathing, not wanting any sound to keep him from hearing it. Aruzhan sat across from him in the small living room, her hands going still where she’d been petting the cat, having been watching him carefully since she’d heard his phone vibrate.
“Yura,” he answered, and his voice sounded foreign in his own ears. He realized he hadn’t spoken in days. Aruzhan held a hand over her mouth and her cat jumped off her lap, bored.
“What part of the village is Kazakhstan in?” Yuri asked, and Otabek could hear the bustle of an airport. He’d just landed. “If Russia’s is nicer, which it probably is, you should stay with me. I have my own room, perks of having a married loser for a coach.”
Otabek couldn’t speak. He both didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to miss a moment of hearing his voice. Tears welled in his eyes and he hadn’t cried since he’d been drug off the ice.
“Otabek?” he asked, apparently needing a response, but Otabek had already forgotten the question. “Are you still there?”
“I miss you so much,” Otabek croaked, and he hadn’t felt this poorly since his doctor renewed his prescription. Something in him ached and for the first time in weeks it wasn’t just his leg. His chest felt crumpled and heavy and he couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not.
“I missed you too, dumbass,” Yuri said, but he’d lowered his voice like he hadn’t wanted anyone else to hear, and Otabek barked out a laugh that didn’t quite fit in his mouth. “So where are you? I’ve seen Kazakh jackets, so I know you’re here somewhere.”
Whatever brief elation Otabek felt at having this lifeline thrown back to him was cut off abruptly as his slow moving-mind wrapped around what would have to come next. That heavy feeling in his chest hardened and sank and soured his stomach, already weak from not keeping anything down.
“I’m,” he said, stalling, scared. “I’m in Almaty.” He finally said after a pause that was too long.
“You’re in Almaty,” Yuri repeated dryly. “Well when are you getting here? Why didn’t you come with the team?”
“I’m not coming, Yura,” he said, voice quiet, but sounding booming in the silent cottage, under his sister’s eyes.
Yuri was quiet on the other end. Waiting for an explanation. But what could he say?
“You’re not coming?” Yuri repeated, giving his words back to him again, as if a second chance would change their meaning. “Why the fuck not?” He was scared, and his voice wavered with it, and Otabek knew that when the boy was really, really scared, every part of him shook. He’d held him during his grandfather’s heart surgery, he’d held his hand the first time he’d admitted he loved him, he’d drug him out of the apartment when Viktor and Katsuki had a screaming match. He’d felt him, felt the way his hands and legs and bottom lip always shook whenever he was well and truly scared. And Otabek knew what a little wobble could do. He looked at the ugly scars on his skin and he lied.
“I tweaked my knee, and my trainer says if I skate this week, I might do permanent damage.” The words were pretty and false, like plastic flowers, and they left a manufactured taste in his mouth. “So my coach pulled me.”
“Fuck,” Yuri breathed on the other line, and something in Otabek’s heart broke when he believed it all to easily. “I’m sorry, Beka, that sucks.”
“It could’ve been worse,” Otabek closed his eyes and lied through his teeth and his sister began to cry.
“So, you’re not competing, that sucks, but you’re still coming, right? To see me?”
It was a reasonable thing to assume. They hadn’t seen each other in months, ordinarily, Otabek wouldn’t let anything keep them apart, Yuri knew that. He wanted nothing more than to be standing by his side on the podium, but he would settle for clapping wildly at the boards.
“No,” he said, the word scraping out of his throat. “It would be too hard.”
“It’s a four hour flight from Almaty,” Yuri said, voice like tempered steel. “It’s Beijing, Otabek. I’m not asking you to come to fucking Salt Lake City.” He was angry, and he had a right to be. But Otabek couldn’t tell him that his doctor warned him that if he flew, the pressure could cause the blood clotted around his bolts to dislodge and block his heart or brain, or both. Otabek couldn’t tell him that he couldn’t stand on his crutches for more than thirty minutes and that walking was a chore. Otabek couldn’t tell him that he couldn’t legally travel with the amount of opioids he had to take to get through a week. He couldn’t tell him that he had biweekly doctors appointments that he couldn’t afford to miss if he ever wanted to skate again. If he ever wanted to walk again.
He couldn’t say any of that. So he fought the bile in his throat and kept lying.
“I don’t want to be there if I can’t skate,” was the best he could come up with, and he knew what Yuri would say before his furious voice crackled through the international connection.
“That’s really fucking selfish of you,” he hissed like an alley cat, and Otabek could imagine his hackles raised, teeth bared, eyes bright with hurt and pain and embarrassed fury.
“I know,” he said, but the line had already died, a single tone stillness that sounded too much like the coldness of the hospital for him to keep listening to.
It was quiet in Kazakhstan and Otabek just stared at his phone, a dead bird in his hand that once sung so sweetly to him. His sister opened her mouth to say something but he just held out his hand instead.
“Pills?” he asked, dropping his phone from his limp hand and not caring when it landed on the floor not the couch.
“You’re not due for more for another few hours,” she said, getting up and coming to his side.
“Zhan, please,” he whispered. “It hurts.” She dropped a few more into his palm and helped him back to his room. She told him dinner would be ready in a few hours, as if she actually thought he was going to leave his bed again today.
It was four days before the Olympics and the words “it could’ve been worse” were circling through his head because no, it couldn’t have, and Yuri wasn’t even here to hold his hand while he cried.
It was the day of the Olympics. Men’s singles, the only event that meant anything, the rest of the week didn’t matter, this day out of all of them, this event, these skaters, this was the Olympics to him.
He missed the first two routines, having denied Aruzhan’s fiancée’s help in getting out of the bathtub, promising that he could do it himself. It had taken a long time, and something popped menacingly in his hip and still she was there waiting outside the doorway, ten minutes later, with a palmful of pills and an anxious smile on her face.
Otabek took half and pocketed the other, not wanting to be too out of it to appreciate the art. He made it to the couch, dry and dressed, just in time for Leo’s routine. It was good, he was growing a lot. Still, Otabek had to look away when the camera showed Guang Hong waiting in the kiss and cry, applauding loudly, supporting his boyfriend in a way that Otabek couldn’t.
“Do you want something to eat?” Sezim asked and he said no. He was never hungry anymore. He thought idly that that was probably better than getting fat, though it wouldn’t matter either way, not if he could never skate again.
He closed his eyes and thought about nothing until she nudged his arm, whispering that Yuri was up next.
The music was one of his own mixes, and he could see plainly that Yuri resented that now. He could read the choreography easily, could see how flirtatious and playful the piece was supposed to be, something unlike Yuri’s usual style enough to garner appreciation and shock. But the first half was not playful, because Yuri was not. Otabek could see it in the tight hold of his brows and the bend in his knee before a jump, the sharpness of his wrists. There was nothing playful about the way he glared at the ice, every move was aggressive and spiteful and barbed.
By the middle of the technically flawless routine, Yuri began to loosen, closing his eyes and letting himself be sucked into the music and the memories of hard training hours. He played the part of the flirt, putting the extra swing in his hips and the lightness to his steps. The second half was sexy and sweet and a little dangerous and Otabek would’ve loved to see the whole piece like that. But it was too little too late, and Otabek knew that his performance at the beginning would affect his score.
He laid down on the couch as soon as the music ended and told Sezim to wake him when the medals were being awarded. She did, and he wished she hadn’t, because the look in Yuri’s eyes when they slipped a silver medal over his neck was as dead and cold as Otabek had felt all these weeks. It was his fault. Even from Almaty, he was able to poison Yuri’s performance. He made him worse. Even without telling him the truth, he’d made him worse and Otabek began to realize that that would become the new normal for him.
It was the day of the Olympics and Otabek took a dose and a half because suddenly the pain felt a lot deeper.
It was three days after the Olympics and Otabek was only awake because he had a doctor’s appointment to get his traction device removed.
He had a new physical therapist, one who had a bright smile and short hair and a sharp wit. Her name was Sabine, and she told him he had to stay positive, and that his body would give up as soon as he did. He told her that his body had given up the moment his leg decided it didn’t want to be a leg anymore. She punched him in the arm, hard enough to hurt and told him to stop being a pussy and asked if he wanted to walk again. He liked her, just a little. She reminded him of someone.
Someone who hadn’t called. Someone who was holding a grudge, someone who didn’t know the truth. And he never would, Otabek had decided. He wouldn’t tell Yuri the truth about him. There was no point. Either Yuri would abandon his career to come take care of him, or he wouldn’t and he’d leave Otabek heartbroken and alone. Either way, they wouldn’t be happy, and one of them would always resent the other.
So Otabek planned excuses for when Yuri called next, reasons why they couldn’t see each other, reasons why they couldn’t Skype or visit. He told himself that as soon as he could walk, he’d fly to Russia. He just needed to keep Yuri away until then.
It was three days after the Olympics and Otabek left physical therapy covered in sweat, with a new, better ache in his leg, and the smallest smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.
It was one week after the Olympics and Yuri called. The Skype call was immediately decline, and he called him back with a regular audio call, not willing to let Yuri see him as he was. Yuri picked up and it was quiet for a few breaths, both unsure how to start.
“I’m tired of being mad at you,” Yuri finally said, and Otabek didn’t know what time it was but he was pretty sure it was late.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he was and that was all he knew how to say.
“I figured you probably are. I mostly just started to miss you again more than I wanted to hate you, so, yeah.”
“I miss you, too,” Otabek said, and the words felt right in his mouth but hollow in his chest. Of course he missed him, but that didn’t change anything.
“It’s been a really long time since we’ve seen each other,” Yuri said.
“I know,” and already this was the longest conversation Otabek had had in months.
“You should come to Russia,” Yuri said, forgiveness clear in his voice, hopeful youth and eagerness. Otabek paused, trying to remember the lie he had planned for this. He rubbed one hand over his eyes. It was hard to think, he always doubled his pain pills before he went to bed.
“I can’t,” he said after a while. “I have a wedding to go to, my cousin’s.” It was true. He wasn’t going, because he couldn’t stand, but there would be an Altin wedding this month.
“I’ll come to you,’ Yuri said too quickly, faster than Otabek could remember the next set of half-truths. “I can keep you company at the wedding, I know you’re not super close with any of your cousins, and I bet Zhan and Sezim are going to be so gross and romantic together, weddings always do that to engaged people, it’s gross.”
“No,” Otabek said, trying to cut him off, “Don’t come.”
“You don’t want me there?” Yuri asked, after a beat of shocked silence.
“It’ll be a traditional ceremony, all in Kazakh, you wouldn’t understand it.”
“I’d still get to see you,” and for the first time, Yuri was the one that sounded vulnerable and weak.
“It’s fine, we can try again in a couple weeks,” Otabek said with finality, fighting a yawn as the drugs tried to do their job and pull him under. Yuri was quiet and Otabek started to drift off.
“It must be easier for you,” the Russian spat suddenly, taking Otabek by surprise. “You got to see me on TV, at the Olympics, where I won a silver medal. Which you didn’t even send me a ‘congratulations’ text for, by the way. No one was filming you, sitting on your ass in Almaty feeling sorry for yourself. So I’m sorry if I want to see my boyfriend, but it’s been a lot longer for me.”
He hung up before Otabek could tell him he loved him, and he swallowed one last pill so he wouldn’t have to feel sad about that.
It was one week after the Olympics and sleeping was the only thing Otabek was good at anymore.
It was two weeks after the Olympics and Otabek left physical therapy sweaty and furious. There was so much that he couldn’t do. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, or lack of motivation. He took the bare minimum of pills, knowing they made him cloudy and apathetic, and he knew he needed energy to work hard. But no matter how hard he worked, if he leaned too much weight in the wrong direction, his knee would buckle and there wasn’t anything he could do to fix it.
Sabine said it wasn’t about “fixing” his limitations; it was about accepting them and working within them. Otabek had never been good at that, he’d always been ready to struggle through. Where other people had had natural talent, he’d had determination and stubborn-headedness. And now he’d hit a wall and there was no way around it.
He’d gotten an extra prescription and filled it without telling his sister. This one he would keep for when she was being obnoxious about counting pills and hours, and making him eat first, and making him get out of bed. She was being a bitch about it, treating him like a fucking child, like she forgot he was the older one. Sabine had suggested anti-depressants and he’d told her to go fuck herself. It’d be another bottle of pills his sister could make him jump through hoops for like a show dog. Of course, telling Sabine to go fuck herself earned him twenty one-legged pushups, and he just snarled more as she counted them obnoxiously.
On the way back to Aruzhan’s house, Otabek refused to engage in conversation, stewing over his failures at therapy, frustrated at his achingly slow progress. He hobbled away from her as soon as the car stopped, the forty minute commute out of the city long enough to make his overworked knee feel stiff and angry again. She followed him, trying to talk about something she thought was important, until he shut the bathroom door in her face. She shouted that she loved him through the door and then finally walked away. It didn’t make Otabek feel better at all.
He turned on the taps and sunk into the tub, taking some pills and lying there while it filled up. The screw holes circling his calf and thigh were finally healed, and the incision from the last surgery had closed in a thick, red line of scar tissue, so he was able to lift his leg up and drop it in the water with him for the first time since the injury. He leaned back as the water turned his tan skin pink, watching the level rise on his thighs.
He was sure his left thigh was smaller, from lack of exercise, no time spent in the gym or on the ice, muscle going soft. But his right thigh. His right leg didn’t even look like it belonged to the same body. His foot hadn’t touched the ground in so long, his muscles were withered, no matter how much physical therapy he did. And the scars were thick over his knee, wrapping above and around, no man’s land between.
He thought about what Yuri would say, when he finally saw the scars. If he’d want to touch them or wouldn’t be able to look at them, like Otabek couldn’t. He stopped thinking about it, because it might not matter. Yuri might never see them, if therapy kept going like it did that day. If Otabek couldn’t walk, he’d never be able to keep up with that blond ice storm. It was all starting to matter less and less.
It was two weeks after the Olympics and Otabek took another handful of pills and sunk down into the water until only his nose was safe from boiling.
It was three weeks after the Olympics and Yuri called him in the middle of the day. He was drug out of a heavily medically induced sleep by the ring tone, a tiger roaring, and when he finally fumbled his screen into view, he saw that it was the third time Yuri had called.
“Yura?” he answered, unused to speaking again, as it had been a few days since his last physical therapy appointment.
“Fuck, Beka, hey,” he said, sounding out of breath.
“What time is it?”
“Russian, Beka, speak Russian,” Yuri panted and Otabek’s slow moving brain wanted baldy to drift back to sleep. “You know I think it’s sexy when speak Kazakh, but I can’t understand you.”
“I was sleeping,” Otabek said, this time in Russian, trying not to be annoyed. It had been a long time since Yuri had called, the boy held grudges like backbends, pushing through even when they started to hurt.
“What are you wearing?” Yuri asked, breathing into the line.
“Yura, what are you doing?” Otabek asked, one arm tossed over his eyes.
“Come on, Beka, please? Just talk to me for a little bit. I need it. I miss your voice,” Yuri whined, and if Otabek listened hard, he could hear slick sounds through the line. “It’s been months, don’t you miss me?”
I, uh, yeah,” Otabek said, slowly. “Of course I miss you.”
“Why’d you say it like that?” Yuri pouted, and Otabek could imagine the way his fat bottom lip would poke out. He tried to find anything like desire inside himself, but he couldn’t. Only numbness.
“Like what?” he asked, frustrated, not thinking fast enough. “I miss you.”
“So talk to me, get me off,” Yuri pleaded.
“I don’t want to,” Otabek said, too honestly. “I can’t.”
“Goddammit, Otabek,” Yuri cursed at him, suddenly furious, so angry Otabek wondered if he’d even been aroused in the first place. “Is there someone else?”
“What?” Otabek asked, trying to sit up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You never call me, you never open my snapchats, you don’t want to see me and you won’t fucking talk to me,” Yuri cried, despairing, spiraling so rapidly Otabek couldn’t keep up. “Are you fucking someone else? What did I do wrong?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Yura,” Otabek said, haltingly. “It’s just, I just,” he stalled, and Yuri took it as a confession.
“It was only two months, Otabek,” Yuri screamed at him. “Two months! You were supposed to be training, not fucking other people. How could you do that?”
“Yura, I wish I could tell you,” he said, stuttering, because there was so much he couldn’t say. He couldn’t tell him that he hadn’t even touched himself since the accident, that he couldn’t even imagine having sex, couldn’t even pretend to want it.
“Fucking save it,” Yuri hissed at him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”
“Yuri, wait,” Otabek said, the heel of his hand pressing into his eyes until green spots appeared in the darkness.
“Fuck you, Altin,” Yuri said, and when he sniffed Otabek knew he was crying. The line went dead and when he called back, his number couldn’t be reached. He’d already been blocked.
Otabek fell back against his pillows, drug one over his face and screamed. Every part of him hurt. His chest felt caved in, his head felt too small, and his lungs were tight like he’d just come out of surgery again. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe enough to scream. He recognized, distantly, that he was panicking. And there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t call Yuri back and ask him to talk him down, to listen to his soothing voice tell him everything was going to be okay, because it wasn’t, and it never would be, and the worst part was that it wasn’t even fucking surprising anymore.
It was foolish of him, really, to think that he’d be able to keep him. That Yuri would stick around, would want to be part of his endless shitshow, his cycle of surgery after brutal surgery, his ugly scars and weak body, his hands shaking from too much or too little of the drugs that he couldn’t stop taking.
He fumbled for his bottle now, the one he kept behind Yuri’s picture on his bedside table. He shook some pills into his hands, and then a few more, and then more than that, and he took them all, coughing when they got stuck in his throat, dry from gasping for air he didn’t deserve. He choked them down and stared at the ceiling until he didn’t see anything anymore.
It was three weeks after the Olympics and instead of feeling heartbreak, Otabek felt nothing at all and he couldn’t tell which was worse.
It was three weeks and twenty hours after the Olympics and Otabek was still asleep. He finally woke up to Aruzhan standing over him with an overturned mixing bowl and water all over his face.
“What the fuck?” He sputtered, sitting up so fast that she stumbled back, bowl clattering to the wood floor jarringly.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Otabek?” she screamed at him.
“I was asleep,” he protested. Surely he wasn’t doing anything wrong in his sleep.
“You’ve been asleep for a whole day!” she shrieked. “You wouldn’t wake up! There was puke on your face, and I don’t even know how long you’ve been like this. And then I find this,” she throws the empty bottle at his head hard enough for it to bounce off. “What the fuck were you trying to do?”
“Nothing, I was just trying to sleep,” Otabek protested, wiping his mouth and feeling a thin trickle of bile crusted onto his cheek. He looked between the yellow stain on his pillow and the tears bursting onto his sister’s cheeks. Sezim was watching from the doorway, hand clenched tight around her phone, the other wrapped around herself.
“You don’t take a bottle of pills just to sleep, you asshole,” she said, hands balled into fists and Otabek knew she was barely holding back from shoving him, like they used to do when they were kids.
“It wasn’t a whole bottle,” he defended, shoulders hunched against her hostility and anxiety, his head still feeling fuzzy, his heart still beating too slowly.
“How many was it?” she asked, scrambling to pick up the bottle again from the bed, reading the label, franticly wiping tears out of her eyes.
“I didn’t count them,” he said, shrugging, pulling the edge of his shirt up to wipe over his wet face. When he looked back, she was even more livid.
“You don’t count them?” she hissed. “This is why I’m supposed to have them, why you shouldn’t have them. You just sit around in your drugged up haze all day, so fucking out of it you don’t even count how many pills you put in your mouth.”
“I can’t walk,” he screamed back at her, fury in every word. “Of course I sit around all day, I can’t fucking walk”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she said, snatching a pillow from behind his back just to throw it at his face. “Your physical therapist tells me how well you do in training.” Aruzhan’s eyes were wet with angry tears. “She has to tell me because you don’t fucking talk to me anymore. I know you don’t take this many pills for therapy, so don’t fucking tell me you need it. You like it, because it means you don’t have to be sad all the time. You can just feel nothing instead.”
“I do need it,” he said, very aware of the pain radiating out from his knee. “I broke every part of my knee, it fucking hurts.”
“You think I don’t know it hurts?” she challenged, stepping into his space, looming over him where he sat and making him feel very small. “I see everyday how much it hurts you, when you take your pills and fucking shut down, because you’d rather feel nothing at all.” She raised her hands and for one, panicked second, he thought she might slap him. But she cupped his face in her hands, hands that trembled with fear. “I know it hurts. But don’t you think maybe you should feel it? Just for once, could you maybe just try? Please, stop doing this. Stop numbing yourself to the world and actually feel something again.”
And because it had been seventeen hours since he last took any medication, he did feel it. He felt the shaking of his sister’s hands as they held his cheeks so gently, even though she was so angry. He felt the throbbing and the stiffness in his knee and the tightness of his skin. He felt the crater sized hole in his heart where he used to keep everything he hoped he might have in his future with Yuri. He felt himself shaking, just as scared and heartbroken as he’d ever been, all at once.
He leaned his cheek into his sister’s hand and let a tear slip free.
“Yuri broke up with me,” he said, wrapping one, weak, shaking hand up around her wrist.
“Can you blame him?” she asked, and it hurt. She might be right, but it hurt, and the pain was sharp like a muscle spams in his ribs. “You haven’t been a person, Beks, and he doesn’t know why.”
“Fuck,” Otabek breathed, letting his head drop, hanging between his shoulders.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she whispered down to him, kneeling, holding the sides of his neck in hands that were still shaking. “You almost died.” Her voice wavered. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, because it was true.
“No more drugs,” Aruzhan said desperately. “You can’t keep doing this. You’re not getting better, they’re making you worse. That’s what made you like this. Not the knee, not the surgeries, it’s these fucking pills.” She was crying again, and Otabek thought that was okay because he was, too.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.” She was right, and he knew it. He’d been medicating pain that wasn’t purely physical anymore, and it kept him from doing things like staying awake for more than eight hours, and picking up his phone when his partner texted, and being able to speak when he did pick up a call. It wasn’t the accident that had done this to him. He’d done it to himself.
“You’re right,” he said, again, wiping his face. “No more drugs.”
“It’ll be hard,” Sezim said from the doorway, looking nervously at the mess of scars decorating his knee. “There will still be pain. And withdrawal. It’s been a long time, Beks.”
“I know,” he said to his hands, folded around his phone in his lap, staring at the picture of Yuri he had set as his wallpaper. “But Yuri is gone. I want to feel sad about that.” He looked up at Aruzhan, feeling lost, but at least it was something. “It feels right, to be sad about it. I don’t want to feel nothing anymore.”
Aruzhan pulled him into a hug, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tightly to her as he cried.
It was three weeks and one day after the Olympics and Otabek started feeling again, even if the first thing was misery.
It was four weeks after the Olympics and the worst of the withdrawal was still keeping him up at night. Sweating, nausea, constant shaking and the headaches, it all kept him from sleeping, kept him craving. Thinking of Yuri made it worse, going to physical therapy made it worse, talking to his family made it worse, but for all those reasons he was getting better.
He told Sabine and she was so proud of him she punched him in the arm and slapped him upside the head. He still liked her.
He told his new Narcotics Anonymous group and they welcomed him. One grizzled old man looked at him and asked what a young kid like him was doing in a place like this. Otabek pulled the leg of his sweats up and showed him the gnarled mess of his knee, still pink in places from the last surgery. The man stared, and then pulled up his sleeve to show a knot of scars clinging around his elbow. They nodded at each other and Otabek felt understood in a way that his sister and his therapist just couldn’t offer.
It was four weeks after the Olympics and every day sucked, but at least he had something to feel.
It was five weeks after the Olympics and he was down to one crutch, instead of two, and had a prescription for anti-depressants in his pocket.
He finally signed back onto his social media accounts and the first picture he posted was of a swan gliding through icy water. Which he took while on a walk. It felt weird to wear shoes again, and he still wasn’t used to walking with the cane, but the feeling of moving on his own two legs again was something that, after a while, he didn’t think he’d get back. Even though it was too cold for his metal joint, he went on walks whenever he could.
He thought of Yuri. Thought of his promise to himself; that his first steps would be towards Russia, towards Yuri. But that’s not where he went, not now. He still laid awake at night, knowing that Yuri thought he’d found someone else, and everything in him called out to his fingertips to tell him that that wasn’t true, that there would never be anyone else. But. He wasn’t sure there was a him, yet. That maybe Yuri was right, he did find someone else, and it was a different Otabek.
An Otabek who walked with a limp now. An Otabek who mixed softer songs and cooked more. An Otabek who had a future ahead of him that was unplanned, but for the first time since he was eleven, that wasn’t scary, it was just a space for possibilities. He was different. He wasn’t always happy about it, but he was different.
It was five weeks after the Olympics and Otabek decided that when he found Yuri and explained to him the whole truth, he would need to know who he was.
It was seven weeks after the Olympics and he was moving back into his apartment. Aruzhan was still on speed dial, and his younger brother was coming to stay with him for a couple days. He was thirteen and didn’t care that Otabek couldn’t walk very fast. He just wanted to sit on the couch and play video games, and call his brother an old man whenever he lost. Otabek thought that was okay.
The cane still didn’t feel natural in his hand, but his therapist said that was a good sign, it meant he wouldn’t be using it for the rest of his life.
That is, his physical therapist said that to him. His other therapist was there to listen, not to work him until he collapsed and then send him home to do it again. No, this therapist talked to him about being more than an athlete, about finding meaning in life that wasn’t based on tangible things, about life after the ice. And about Yuri. Always about Yuri.
About how he wanted so badly to reach out, to make up for all the lies he told with every truth that he knew to be true, but that he couldn’t. They talked about his feelings of incompleteness when he thought of a future without Yuri, and they talked about how miserable it made him that there was no future with Yuri. Otabek told her that he didn’t think he had a place in Yuri’s world anymore, he told her about how he worried that Yuri wouldn’t want him like this, wouldn’t recognize him. There were still some days he had trouble recognizing himself.
He had another surgery, but he had discussed his addiction with his doctors and they promised they could accommodate him. He had been nervous going in, but they offered low dose treatments of a very different type of pain medication, an opioid antagonist that wouldn’t cripple his progress. He stayed in the hospital until he was well enough to leave without medication. The scars stopped being quite so ugly when he stopped being quite so empty. They felt more like medals now, like something he earned every time he fought to keep working.
It still hurt, there was still so much pain, and some days he couldn’t leave his bed. But he felt it. He felt it, and it was real, and he was living again, even if it wasn’t anything like he had planned.
It was seven weeks after the Olympics and Otabek was finally a person again.
It was two months after the Olympics and Otabek wrote the announcement his coach would give at the press conference.
He was very specific that it must be delivered in Kazakh. It was, after all, Kazakhstan that he was apologizing to. His coach had fought him on parts of it, but ultimately promised to do whatever he said. He watched the live stream from his apartment, just to be sure that they did it justice.
He watched as they straightened their blazer and tapped the mic. It was a small gathering at his home rink, just enough Kazakh sports news teams there to cover their athletes. He listened as his coach announced his retirement, glossing over the details of his injury and focusing on his hope that he had done enough to make his country proud.
More hands rose than he thought, and he watched with bated breath as his coach took questions.
“Will Otabek Altin ever return to the ice?” was the first one, and his coach smiled a small, tight smile.
“We are focusing on recovering a full range of motion, for now,” they said and even more hands rose. Otabek’s hands flexed around his cane, where he liked to rest it over his knees, the line of it getting more and more parallel to the ground everyday as his legs got strong again.
“What will he do next?”
“He is a popular DJ around Almaty and would like to start producing music,” his coach answered, a fact they were quite proud of and had been nothing but supportive of.
“Does this have anything to do with the recent posts Yuri Plisetsky has made on social media? Is their relationship over?”
Otabek’s cheeks went pale and he was glad he hadn’t let his family come over to watch with him. He’d shattered his phone in the worst of the withdrawals after seeing Yuri post a picture of himself draped over another boy, so Zhan had taken all of Yuri’s accounts off of his social media, so he wouldn’t see anything else. He hadn’t thought it would come up. Clearly, his coach hadn’t either. They took a moment to frame their thoughts, and Otabek held his breath as he waited to hear the answer, feeling as though he were as clueless as the reporter.
“They are, unfortunately, broken up, yes,” they answered delicately.
“Did Yuri Plisetsky dump him because he couldn’t handle the baggage of a career-ending injury?” another reported interjected.
“No, certainly not,” his coach answered sharply. “Otabek wanted to focus on getting better and he didn’t want Yuri to be distracted from his career. That is all.” The reporters started buzzing but they kept going. “Otabek still supports his friends in Russia and has great love for them.” Otabek swallowed hard and blinked through the tears in his eyes. He cried easier since stopping the drugs. “He hopes that his fans will choose to support Yuri, as he still does.” They looked directly into a camera. “And he does, he still, truly, does.” Otabek closed the laptop, blushing fiercely because it was embarrassing and it was true.
It was two months after the Olympics, and Otabek’s career as an international athlete was officially over.
It was two months and two days after the Olympics and there was a very angry human banging on his door.
Otabek made his slow (but every day improving) way to the door, cane moving with his right leg. He opened it carefully, wishing it had a peephole. He pulled it open only a few inches and peered out.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” he heard before two very familiar hands were pressing flat to the door and shoving it the rest of the way open.
Four months ago, Otabek probably would’ve just stumbled back. But the Otabek behind the door today fell, the door crashing into his good leg and sending him collapsing heavily to the floor, cane clattering out from under him.
“Holy fuck, Beka, are you okay?” he asked, immediately kneeling in front of him, moving with a grace that Otabek’s memory couldn’t ever have truly done justice.
“Yura,” he breathed, wondering fleetingly if he had hit his head and was currently dreaming of an angel while burglars robbed him of all his earthly possessions.
“Fuck, oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he said, anger forgotten entirely, snow-pale hands landing gently on him, on his neck and his thigh. “I’m so sorry.” And then Otabek was sure he was dreaming because Yuri Plisetsky never apologized.
“I’m dreaming,” he said it out loud, even as he wrapped his hand around the hand tenderly touching his neck. He held it tightly and it felt so real.
“You dream of getting knocked on your ass?”
“By you? All the time,” he answered with a smile, trying for charming. It turned to a grimace partway through as the throb of his knee became impossible to ignore. “It usually hurts less, though,” he admitted.
“Here, let me help you up,” Yuri murmured, grabbing him firmly by an arm and helping haul him to his feet. He walked him carefully to the couch, before turning back to close the front door.
Otabek admired him while his back was turned. His hair was longer than it had been four months ago, which made sense. He was glad he hadn’t cut it off in a post-break up moment of impulse. He wore what Otabek immediately recognized as his lucky backpack and he realized in that moment that this wasn’t a dream and that Yuri Plisetsky, love of his life, was in his apartment again, with clothes spilling out of his lucky backpack.
“Why’re you here?” he asked, breathlessly, when Yuri came back to sit next to him.
“I saw your press conference,” he said, staring at the cane still lying on the ground near the door. “I had no idea it would be so bad. You said you just tweaked it. And then your couch announces your retirement?” He looked back at Otabek and angry confusion was plain on his face. “You lied to me.”
And Otabek had, about so many things, and he didn’t know which was the worst in Yuri’s mind, but he knew which one kept him up every night since.
“I never cheated on you,” he said firmly, insistently, needing him to know. He hated that Yuri ever had to think that, that he had given him cause to think that. “When you called, I was on so much pain medication that I couldn’t explain myself. I never wanted you to think that. I was such a mess then, I couldn’t even touch myself. I could never be with anyone but you. I would never do that to you. I couldn’t.” Otabek held Yuri’s green gaze for as long as he would let him, and he would be perfectly content if that meant they sat there for the rest of their lives.
“What happened? Why wouldn’t you tell me?” The anger was back, clenching up in his fists and gritting his teeth. “Did you think I would leave you? Like that reporter said?”
“No,” Otabek rushed to say, but that wasn’t entirely true and he was tired of lying. “Yes, sometimes. I didn’t know what you would do. As far as I saw it, even if you didn’t leave me, there was no happy ending.” It was hard to explain it logically, just like it was hard to explain depression. “I couldn’t tell you, not when it happened. You were training, the Olympics were in just a few weeks, I knew you wouldn’t be able to focus if you knew I was in the hospital, in and out of surgeries.”
“How many?” Yuri asked, hands flexing around his arms where he gripped onto himself tightly
“Four,” he said, watching Yuri’s hands move, wishing they were curled around his. “There will be more.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Yuri snarled, arms crossed over his chest. “What about after? I medalled at the Olympics, I could’ve taken a break afterwards.”
“You don’t know how to take breaks,” Otabek told him with a shallow smirk. Yuri stared at him harshly, silently demanding a true answer. Otabek sighed. He didn’t deserve half-truths and jokes. He deserved to know everything. “I was in a really bad place, Yura, and I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“I don’t care about whether or not you can skate, I care about you,” he insisted, and if his tone had been sweet instead of furious, Otabek would’ve been sure it was a dream after all.
“It wasn’t just my leg,” he said, sinking back into the couch, into himself. When he’d lain awake at night, thinking of all the things he wanted to say to Yuri when he saw him again, this was always the worst to imagine. “I was sick, after the accident,” he managed before he was interrupted.
“You should’ve come to Russia,” he barked, too loudly. “We have the best doctors, I would’ve made sure you saw the top surgeons in the field.”
“It wasn’t the doctors, the doctors here are fine,” Otabek said, picking at the knee of his sweats, glad they covered the scars. “It was the drugs. I had a problem with the drugs.”
“Were you allergic?” Yuri asked, and it broke Otabek’s heart how much faith he had in him.
“No, Yuri, I was an addict.” He forced himself to meet his gaze, to face the judgment, whatever it might be. Everyone in his life so far had been so forgiving, and his therapist had told him he needed to stop seeking out punishment for something that wasn’t his fault, but if anyone would make him crumple in shame, it would be Yuri. “That’s why I never called. That’s why I barely spoke, why I couldn’t text. That’s why I couldn’t…” he made a vague hand gesture, face heating in shame every time he thought of that horrible night when Yuri called him masturbating and hung up on his crying.
He cleared his throat and continued, promising himself he’d get the whole truth out, all of it. “I didn’t do anything. I was depressed; I was always either sleeping, or taking enough pills that I couldn’t feel anything while I was awake. I couldn’t even remember what it was like to want something. I was just. Dead. I wasn’t a person, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to be with me.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Yuri breathed, tears in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have been alone. I would’ve come.”
“I couldn’t let you.” Now they were both crying and Otabek felt more out of control than he had since he started going to therapy. “I was so sick, Yura, and so ashamed of everything. I couldn’t walk until just a few weeks ago. I nearly overdosed once. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“What about me?” he shouted at him, bottom lip quivering. “I was alone, too, because of you. And I didn’t get to choose, you chose for me. I thought those two months were the worst, when we couldn’t talk to each other. And then you didn’t come see me at the fucking Olympics, like I didn’t matter to you at all. And you wouldn’t ever call me or text me. Do you know what that felt like? I felt like I meant so little to you that it only took two months for you to forget about me completely. Like you’d never loved me at all.” He was crying openly now, just as angry as when he’d shoved open the door. “You should’ve told me the fucking truth. Then I would’ve known why you were treating me like shit. I would’ve come and taken care of you, instead of us both being fucking miserable.”
“I’m sorry, Yura, I didn’t think about that.” And he hadn’t He hadn’t thought about what him shutting down would mean for Yuri. He had just known that it couldn’t be worse than him knowing the truth, but that wasn’t true and it wasn’t fair, and he didn’t know when he’d forgive himself for putting Yuri through all of that.
“You never get to lie to me again,” Yuri said, fiercely, like he did everything. He fisted his hand in Otabek’s shirt and pulled him close. “You will never shut me out like that again.”
“Yura, I’m different now,” Otabek cautioned him, wrapping one of his hands around his wrist, holding the narrow limb in his grip. “How do you even know you still want to be with me?”
“Maybe I don’t,” he said, and Otabek’s heart stopped beating. “But I should get to decide that. Not you.”
“Okay,” Otabek agreed too readily, agreeing to his own heartbreak too quickly. “Do you want to stay?”
“Oh, um,” Yuri said, blinking, the last of his angry tears falling to his cheeks as his eyes widened. “I don’t know, I guess so. I kind of just threw some stuff in a bag and ran to the airport.”
“You can stay here, if you want,” Otabek said, and it was foolish of him to offer, but the words were already out of his mouth. He had been starting to wonder if he would ever see Yuri again. Now that he was here, in Kazakhstan, in his apartment, he didn’t want him to go. Even if maybe he wasn’t ready for Yuri to really see all the ugly sides of his new life, he was willing to risk it. Even if it cost him everything.
“I want to, but…” Yuri trailed off, wiping the tears from his cheeks and sweeping back a few strands of hair nervously. “Are we together? Are we still broken up?” He looked at him from under his blond lashes. “Can I kiss you?”
“You can definitely kiss me,” Otabek breathed and he leaned desperately forward, sighing when Yuri met him halfway.
Kissing Yuri was both like they’d never been apart and like it was the first time all over again. The slide of his tongue was familiar, his rhythm a known constant, and Otabek knew exactly how to kiss him. And yet, the feeling of complete awe and hopeful disbelief was so much like the first time Yuri had let him kiss him, so many years ago.
It was two months and two days after the Olympics, and Otabek thought that maybe he had a new date from which to count the days.