Chapter Text
“Ohmygod, this is a bad idea.” Yuri throws another shirt over his shoulder, and returns to rifling through his suitcase.
Otabek looks up from his phone. “So, then, why are we going?”
Yuri groans. “‘Cause Victor will never let me hear the end of it.”
“Okay.” Otabek looks back at his phone.
“And I’m trying to keep on his good side.”
“Right. His good side.”
“I want him to do another program.”
“ Right. ”
“Stop saying that like you don’t believe me or something.”
“Okay.”
“ Beka. ”
Otabek drops his phone onto the bed. “What do you want from me?” he says laughingly. “You don’t want him to choreograph for —”
“I do. I talk about it all the time.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“So, you should know I —”
“Want him to do a lot more than choreograph for you.”
Yuri drops a shirt back into the suitcase, having continued his search uninterrupted as he bickered back and forth with his best friend, and looks up at Otabek sharply, eyebrows shot up to the middle of his forehead. “ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For god’s sake, Yura.” Otabek gets off the bed and kneels a few feet from Yuri, by the shirts that have been discarded. “You want Victor to coach you, ” he says as he digs swiftly through the pile. “Everyone can see that but you.” He produces a tank top, holding it out toward Yuri. “Wear this.”
Yuri’s mouth is a gape. A humorless laugh bubbles out of him as he exclaims, “ Coach me?! You can’t be serious. Tell me you’re joking. Don’t be ridiculous. ”
Otabek raises his eyebrows. When he looks at Yuri, it’s like he can see right to his core.
Yuri doubles down. “ I have one of the most successful coaches in the world. ” Yuri punctuates this by snatching the tank top. “ Why would I want Victor who’s got three years and one student under his belt?” He holds out the tank top in front him. “Why this one?”
Otabek shrugs. “It’ll look good with the jeans.”
Yuri huffs. He takes the tank top, and the jeans he had picked out before, and goes into the bathroom. He leaves the door ajar so he can continue arguing while he changes. “ Also — what do you mean everyone can see it but me? Who else says this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who says this?”
“People don’t say it, they just think it.”
Yuri re-emerges from the bathroom, a hard look on his face that might come off as stern. “How do you know what people think?”
Otabek shrugs. “I don’t always. Only when it’s obvious.”
Yuri stares at him a little longer, and tries to identify for himself why that makes his stomach do a little flip. “Whatever,” he says, going to the full length mirror to do something with his hair. He frowns into his reflection. “You really think I should wear this?” he says, pulling at the holes in the sides of the top.
“It looks good with those jeans. Told you so.”
Yuri stares at the tank top in the mirror, thinks of ice on his back and Otabeck’s teeth against his knuckles, and huffs. “Whatever,” he says again. “Let’s go. I’ve sobered up too much.” He thinks he hears Otabek laugh softly as he whips around and stomps to the door, but when he holds the door open and looks over his shoulder, Otabek is following right behind him.
“After you,” Otabek says with a sarcastic air and a look that almost looks like a smile but definitely isn’t one, and Yuri can’t place a feeling on either of those things.
One of the elevators is down and the other takes a long time to arrive. Yuri spends a minute grumbling about this, pretending that’s what really has him on edge, before he turns to Otabek and says, “So what else can you just tell about me?”
Otabek laughs out loud at this, and he has a crooked grin as he shoots back, “I’m not sure you want to know.”
“ Beka! Now you have to tell me!”
Otabek keeps laughing at him. The elevator arrives, and they ride up to the floor where Victor and Yuuri are staying. Yuri badgers him relentlessly, but Otabek doesn’t let up. Yuri stands in front of Victor and Yuuri’s door, hands on his hips, and demands Otabek tell him, but Otabek simply reaches above him and bangs on the door. Yuri stands his ground, but the door flies open several seconds later.
“ Yurio! ” Yuuri gasps.
Yuri physically holds in a groan which ultimately escapes him anyway when Yuuri throws his arm around Yuri and hugs him tightly.
“Victor said he didn’t think you’d come!”
“Get off me, Katsudon!”
Otabek, the dirty traitor, is laughing at Yuri. ( Again! )
Yuuri finally lets go. Surprisingly, even in the privacy of his own room and as inebriated as he appears, he’s still only lost his jacket and tie. His shoes, as well, Yuri notes.
“Drinks over there!” Yuuri says as he’s whisked away by Phichit.
“Whoa.” Otabek is looking around the sitting room they’re standing in.
“Yeah, Victor can’t be fucking normal,” Yuri grumbles as they make their way to the drinks that Yuuri has pointed out. “Has to get a whole suite everywhere they go.” At the table laden with bottles, Yuri complains that Victor and Yuuri have only put out rosé.
“What’s wrong with rosé?” Otabek asks.
“I don’t know,” Yuri scoffs. “It’s just — wine?! I don’t know.” He pours himself a cup anyway. “And isn’t rosé, like, the weakest of wines?”
“I don’t think so?” Otabek pours himself a cup.
Yuri casts an angry, cursory glance around the room as he takes his first sip. “And it’s fucking fruity, ” he says. “How alcoholic could it be?”
“Enough for you, Yura.”
Yuri turns sharply because he thinks Otabek is laughing at him again, but he finds that Otabek is casting a cursory look around the room. “Who’re you looking for?” he asks sharply.
Otabek shoots him a look that’s just as sharp, his eyebrows raised at him again. “I think I see a place to sit,” is all he says, though, and nods toward a corner.
They sit and drink quietly for some time, Otabek observing one group of people at a time while Yuri spirals out of control.
“ Seriously — what do you think you know about me?” Yuri finally blurts out.
Otabek raises his eyebrows again. “This is really getting to you.”
“Did you think it wouldn’t?” Yuri snaps.
Otabek shrugs, but smirks into his cup as he takes a sip of wine.
Yuri glares. He smacks his friend’s shoulder.
“ Hey. ”
“ Tell me.”
Otabek looks at Yuri a while, eyebrows still raised, and Yuri stares right back. Finally, Otabek looks on the precipice of saying something, and Yuri holds his breath — thinks with a triumphant glow, Got him.
Just then, someone turns the music up. There’s some eighties power ballad playing, and some people start a dance floor. Of course, Victor and Yuuri are at the center of it all, Yuuri’s shirt already less buttoned than when he greeted Yuri and Otabek at the door all of ten minutes ago. The awful song bursts into an intense bridge, and Victor lifts Yuuri into the air. Even more buttons come undone, and Yuuri’s chest is most exposed as he is spun around, laughing gleefully all the while.
Yuri rolls his eyes hard enough to hurt. “ God, ” he groans. “They’re just the worst. ”
Otabek is smirking openly now.
Yuri narrows his eyes at him, suspicious. “What?” he snaps. “What’ve you got to say now? ”
Otabek looks around to check for anyone who might be listening before he leans in and tells Yuri, “You think he’s so hot.”
Yuri grimaces. “Who, Victor? Ew. ”
Otabek chuckles, eyes still on the center of the dance floor. “Not Victor.”
Yuri furrows his brow as he follows Otabek’s gaze. His head snaps back to look at Otabek. “ Katsudon? ” he hisses.
“You want him so bad,” Otabek whispers.
Yuri scoffs loudly. “That’s ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. ”
Otabek shrugs his shoulders. “Whatever you say.”
“ What would possess you to even think that? ”
Otabek’s smirk is back, and stronger than ever, as he looks at Yuri and tells him slowly, “I can just tell.”
Yuri growls. “I fucking hate you.” He goes to sip from his cup, but finds it empty. “Fuck off,” he says, and even he’s not sure if he’s talking to Otabek or his cup as he stomps all the way across the room, pouring himself another cup of wine and slamming the bottle back down. He stomps back over and immediately starts on Otabek again. “I can’t even believe you’d say that to me. Even as a joke.”
“Mm. Not a joke.”
“ Otabek. ”
“I haven’t heard you give me one good reason why I’m wrong.”
“Because Katsuki’s fucking disgusting. Fucking annoying as hell. Who wants that? Victor. That’s who. Who’s also fucking disgusting and old. So.”
“Mhm.”
“ Hey, ”
“What? I was agreeing with you.”
“ No, you weren’t, and you know it! ”
Otabek only shrugs.
“Whatever. This is stupid. Let’s just leave.”
Otabek doesn’t respond right away, swirling the wind around in his cup and then draining it. “I’m going to get another drink.”
“ Otabek! ” Yuri almost shrieks, exasperated as his only friend disappears into a crowd. It draws people’s attention — they give him odd looks — but he’s too pissed off, or maybe just too drunk, to care. He sits and fumes for several minutes before he decides that he isn’t coming back , and fuck him, and I’m fucking leaving.
Yuri makes it about halfway to the door, gulping down his second cup of the stupid fruity and regrettably very tasty wine, before he is intercepted by a very drunk, and disgustingly cheerful, Victor.
“ Yuriooo! ” Victor grins from ear-to-ear, but knows better than to try and hug Yuri, even in his current state.
“Not my name,” Yuri grits out.
Victor laughs this off. “I could hardly believe it when Yuuri told me that you came!”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you would!”
“ You invited me,”
“Yeah! And you told me to —”
“Well, I had a fucking change of heart, didn’t I?” Yuri huffs.
Victor is taken aback for a moment, eyes wide and stupid. But then his face splits into another wide grin. “ Yes, ” he says emphatically, holding Yuri’s shoulders in lieu of pulling him into a tight hug. “And I’m so glad you did!”
Yuri looks into his face and has to hold in a tremendous sigh. He can hear his own voice ringing in his ears, telling Otabek that he’s only here to get on Victor’s good side — to get Victor to choreograph another program for him. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Me, too. I guess.”
Victor just keeps smiling. “Did you try the wine?”
Yuri shakes his nearly empty cup. “Yeah, it’s all you’ve got.”
“Oh, we never leave the hard liquor out anymore,” Victor laughs. “After Chris broke that table last year and we —”
“ I wasn’t allowed last year, remember?”
“You were still a baby! ”
That makes Yuri scoff, loud and exasperated. “ Fuck off! I was almost eighteen!”
“A kid, then.”
“I’m only eighteen now! ”
“Exactly!” Victor exclaims, and Yuri has to stop himself from yelling any obscenity that comes to mind at him. Victor goes on, still yelling, “Almost nineteen! Going to your first Olympics — oh!” He’s apparently overcome with emotion, throwing his arms around Yuri to hug him.
Yuri pushes him off, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to shout at him, only spitting out, “Yeah, whatever.” His face has turned hot enough to hurt, and he’s worried that it’s obvious. “Are you planning to show me where the good alcohol is or not?”
Victor gasps like Yuri has come up with a great idea. He takes Yuri by the hand to pull him through the crowd, and Yuri promptly wrenches himself from Victor’s grasp, following close behind him. Victor leads them to the bedroom and retrieves a bottle of vodka from the closet.
“I think we have cranberry juice… somewhere…” Victor looks around almost absently.
Yuri rolls his eyes. His head feels full of air, but he’s not nearly drunk enough to deal with a drunk Victor. “Never mind,” he says. He takes the bottle, pours it in with the little wine left in his cup, and drinks. He cringes at the taste, and has to stop himself from gagging after he’s swallowed it.
“Wow,” Victor says. He looks caught between being impressed and something else that Yuri can’t place.
“Yeah, whatever,” Yuri snaps again. “Let’s go.” He turns toward the door.
“Yurio, are you okay?” Victor asks in a rush.
Yuri freezes. He turns back slowly to look at Victor. “What?”
“I just mean,” Victor says, and then takes a moment to go on. He sways on his feet. “Is everything okay?” he finally finishes.
Yuri’s eyes narrow. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he snaps.
“I just thought…” Victor says. “It just seems like —”
“Well, not everything is how it fucking seems, ” Yuri spits and storms out of the room and regrets it almost immediately. Victor is calling his name, but he keeps stomping further away until he spots Otabek standing on the outskirts of the crowd standing with Mila, who is laughing at something he’s just said. Yuri suddenly finds himself frozen in place.
“Yurio.” Victor stumbles to a stop beside him, nearly tipping over.
“ Jesus , Victor,” Yuri groans as Victor holds onto his arm for a support for a second, nearly taking him down, too.
“Yurio, what’s — ? Oh, Otabek’s here, too!”
Yuri grumbles.
Victor looks back and forth several times, between Yuri and Otabek, and then nods. “Oh, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“What?” Yuri says. “ What’s the problem?”
Victor blinks once, twice, and then says, “Oh, never mind.” He waves his hand.
“No, what were you going to say, Victor?”
“I think I hear Yuuri calling me.”
“No, you don’t — Victor! ” Yuri shouts after Victor as he disappears into the crowd without a care for the stares it earns him. “ Fuck him, ” he grumbles into his cup, for no one but himself, before gulping down more vodka than is probably smart. He does gag on the taste this time, earning himself a couple more odd looks that he shoots back at people. “Fuck him,” he says again, and he’s not even sure if it’s Victor he’s referring to anymore.
Yuri storms around the outskirts of the room, stops at the drink table to add more wine to his vodka, and he’s angry to find that the fruity taste of the rosé mixes well with the vodka and makes it much more bearable. He stomps up to Otabek and Mila, and says, “What the fuck is up?”
Otabek turns to him with wide eyes and raised brows, his mouth just slightly agape, and for a short moment Yuri feels like he’s won.
“What the fuck is up with you? ” Mila says, and then bursts out laughing.
Yuri doesn’t answer, but a second, Otabek is also overcome with laughter. Yuri watches him and feels his lips curling. “How drunk are you on the wine, Otabek?”
Otabek stops laughing sharply. He shoots Yuri a sharp look that looks… Yuri can’t really tell. Sort of angry, but then, maybe actually more confused?
Mila laughs at Yuri again. “What? You think I wasn’t the first one who sweet talked Victor into showing me where the good stuff is?”
Yuri glares at Mila, or at least, he means to. His head is spinning. He can’t keep his thoughts straight. He can’t think of anything else to say.
“Hey.” Otabek elbows Mila. “Lady Madonna at eleven o’ clock.”
Mila stops laughing at Yuri to look around expectantly. “Fucking incredible. Good eye, Beks.” She slaps Otabek’s shoulder before hurrying away across the room.
Yuri frowns at Otabek. “What the fuck was that?”
Otabek shoots back a practiced, neutral look and there’s no trying to read anything from his face anymore (not that Yuri was having very much success anyway). “What do you mean?” he asks Yuri evenly.
Yuri shrugs and sips his drink.
“Okay. What’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem?”
Otabek’s head tilts, just a little bit. “You came over just to yell at me. You were just yelling at Victor in front of everyone.”
“Well, what the fuck is your problem?”
Otabek’s eyebrows shoot upward. “Explain?”
Yuri scoffs. “Well, first of all, you think you know everything about me just by looking at me.”
“I didn’t say I know everything. ”
“Whatever. You said you know anything. Just by looking at me. Fuck off, man.”
“Yura, you’re drunk.”
“Never mind. You said I’ve got a crush on Katsudon. ” Yuri gags for good measure.
“I only said you think he’s hot.”
“Yeah. Gross. ”
“It’s not my fault,” Otabek huffs. “If you don’t want people saying it, then you shouldn’t look at him in public the way that you do. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“ Fuck you — I do not look at him any kind of way! ” Yuri crosses his arms, forgetting his cup and spilling a slosh of alcohol down his jeans. “Fuck.”
“All right. Can we go now?”
Yuri scoffs. “I’m not —”
“I think you’re sufficiently drunk, and I think you’ve done all you can to charm Victor tonight.”
Yuri raises his eyebrows as high as they’ll go and stares Otabek in the eye as he pours the remaining liquid in his cup into Otabek’s cup while Otabek fixes him with a similar look. “I’m just not going anywhere with you,” he says. “Not til you admit you know I think Katsudon’s ugly as fuck.”
Otabek keeps looking at him. He doesn’t say anything, and Yuri’s pretty sure he doesn’t blink once. When he finally breaks, he doesn’t speak but merely shrugs his shoulders and walks away.
Yuri stares after Otabek with his mouth agape, so taken aback that he’s frozen in place. He thinks about yelling after him the way he’d done to Victor, but the words don’t come. He regains control of himself, and huffs out a sharp “ Fuck him” to no one in particular. He goes to sip from his cup, then remembers what he did with the contents of it. He groans and abandons the cup on the first empty surface he can find.
Yuri makes his way to the door carefully this time. Victor is thankfully preoccupied talking to Yuuri and Chris at the moment, but JJ has just arrived with his wife practically attached to him, and Yuri thinks he must look stupid trying to avoid being spotted. At one point, he ducks fully behind the couch as JJ and Isabella pass by, earning himself wild and judgmental looks for those who see it happen. He’s too drunk to care. He also hates JJ too much to care.
At long last, Yuri has almost made it to the door when a small gaggle of giggling people nearby draws his attention. One of them effectively captures his attention as she proclaims to those around her, “You’re both wrong — Yuuri Katsuki is the hottest skater I’ve ever seen.”
Yuri freezes in place. He urges himself forward, but feels stuck to the floor as more than a couple of the other skaters gathered in the group agreed with the first. He so does not want to hear about Yuuri’s eyes and his ass and certainly not his “slutty little waist”, but he can’t make himself move. Someone starts talking about “Eros” and Yuri almost swears aloud.
Because Victor and Yuuri are a pair of pathetic, sentimental losers, they’ve chosen to bring back both of the programs that Yuuri skated in his first season training under Victor for the upcoming Olympic Games. Unlike everyone else, who’s been practicing their Olympic programs in private, Yuuri has been skating them both all season in order to have them in top form. It’s been like Yuri’s own personal hell. At least a few years ago, he only had to see “Eros” at competitions and could usually avoid watching Victor watching Yuuri. Now, Yuri is training at the same rink as Yuuri every day, and there’s no escaping either. Victor is practically hard in the middle of practice, and Yuuri looks downright unseemly while everyone — even Yakov — is looking on from the sidelines. It’s disgusting.
“Yuuri is sexy — there’s no doubt,” says a pairs skater.
Yuri wrenches himself toward the door.
“But Otabek Altin, ” the pairs skater goes on, and then he whistles, long and low.
Yuri whips around as an inexplicable urge to start yelling at all of them bubbles up inside of him. He doesn’t know what he’s going to yell, or why, but he feels it coming and he knows already that he won’t be able to stop it, no matter how much he’ll regret it afterward.
Like a violent strike of karma, Yuri gets stopped from yelling whatever he was going to yell — he supposes he’ll never know — by a hard clap of someone’s hand between his shoulder blades. He jolts forward from the combined force of weight and surprise, and an unmistakable laugh rents the air. Yuri looks up and comes face-to-face with the very man he had just hidden behind furniture to avoid.
“Your Royal Highness,” JJ says dramatically when he manages to stop laughing, and he bows deeply, his arms extended gracefully outward. His wife is sent into a fit of giggles.
Yuri rolls his eyes hard enough to hurt. “Fuck off.”
JJ sticks his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Oh, you’ve usually got a better comeback for me than that, princess.”
Yuri is pretty sure he actually growls as he shoves JJ’s chest, and storms past him, back into the thick of the party. He pours himself another cup of wine. He curses himself. He could have just walked out the door. He gulps from his cup, and thinks about sneaking into Victor and Yuuri’s room to get more vodka.
“ Yuuuuuuuuri, ” JJ’s voice sneaks up behind him.
“ Fuck off! ” Yuri snaps again.
JJ appears beside him. “Yuratchka.”
“Don’t fucking call me th—”
“I am hurt, ” JJ goes on as if Yuri hadn’t spoken at all.
Yuri gives up trying. He sips his drink, and yells into his cup.
“That you would resort to unsportsmanlike behavior and try to injure me right before the Olympics. ”
Yuri pulls his cup from his face fast enough to splash a little bit down his front, and he doesn’t even notice. He points his free hand at JJ. “I don’t need to resort to violence to smoke your ass at the Olympics the same way I smoked your ass this week, and last month, and in March, and —”
“Yuratchka,” JJ says dramatically.
Yuri’s hand tightens around his cup, and he takes a very deep breath, and he focuses very hard on not throwing his drink in JJ’s face or hitting him.
“You are a superior skater to me,” JJ goes on. “I have always said this.”
Yuri feels like he’s stopping in his tracks even though he’s standing still. He’s pretty sure his eyebrows shoot all the way up his forehead. He’s vaguely aware that a few people have gathered to watch this go down. He sips his drink again, murmuring into it, “ This I gotta hear.”
“I mean, it would be hard to deny.” JJ is performing for the small crowd and his wife who laughs at every quip. “I’ve managed to beat you how many times since you’ve been in the division? Four?”
“ Three, ” Yuri snaps.
JJ waves his hand. “Details. My point is, I won’t deny you’ve — what was it? Smoked my ass in the past — many times —”
“ Many, ” Yuri emphasizes.
“I just don’t think you’ve been accounting for the Olympic Nerves.” JJ turns to address a pair of ice dancers who had been listening since they first heard JJ say the O-word. “Am I right, or am I right?”
“Olympic Nerves?” said the woman. “They’re the worst.”
“They hit when you least expect,” the man says toward Yuri. He seems to think this was a helpful thing to say.
Yuri ignores both of them. “I’ll be just fine,” he snaps at JJ. “Don’t you worry.”
“Oh, I’m not worried.” JJ shakes his head, grinning. “After all, you’re the favorite to win. And with Victor re-retired, you’re Russia’s only — excuse me, the Russian Olympic Committee's only shot at a gold in Men’s.”
A couple people hanging around nearby laugh.
Yuri takes more deep breaths. His cup is still half full, but he turns to fill it again.
“You sure you haven’t had enough to drink, princess?”
Yuri slams the bottle down, and whirls around streaming, “ JJ! ” without a clue what will come out after that. His cup is back in his hand. He’s scared he’ll throw it at JJ.
“Yurio!”
Yuri can’t tell if that’s Victor or Yuuri, and he feels an odd and terrible mix of emotions boiling in his chest; it feels like he’s grateful that one of them’s come to stop him from whatever he’s about to do, but somehow at the same time, he feels like if one of them tries to stop him, he’s going to splash a drink in their face.
“Oh, JJ and Isabella — you, too!”
Yuri looks up, and finds that it’s not Victor nor Yuuri but Phichit who’s called his name.
Since when does he call me that? God, it’s spreading.
“We’re doing a game of spin-the-bottle,” Phichit goes on. “Want to join?”
“Oh, can we join?” one of the ice dancers who had tried advising Yuri on so-called “Olympic Nerves” asks.
“Yeah!” Phichit exclaims.
Yuri doesn’t even know how to tell Phichit how little he wants to join this game of spin-the-bottle. He feels frozen in place again, wondering if this is always what goes on at these parties.
“Count us out, thank you,” Isabella says as JJ’s putting an arm around her.
“Yes, we don’t like to kiss other people,” JJ says.
Someone laughs, and Yuri’s head is spinning trying to figure out how to tell Phichit to fuck off in the nicest way possible, and how to escape JJ, and why someone is laughing so hard at what JJ’s said. He finds himself walking toward Phichit, and vaguely agreeing to play the game just so he can get away from JJ, who laughs at him as he goes. Yuri flips him off over his shoulder, without looking at him, and feels childish.
“All right,” Phichit says, stopping at the perimeter of a steadily forming circle. “Sit where you like.”
“Right, I —” Yuri says, at this point prepared to just tell Phichit he only wanted to get away from JJ, when his eyes land on Otabek, sitting almost on the opposite side of the circle.
Otabek is sitting next to Mila, and talking to her. Again with Mila. Yuri hadn’t thought they were close enough to be hanging out this much until now, or to be speaking so emphatically with her, and he can’t make sense of it. He finds himself thanking Phichit, and then slots himself into the circle between two people he doesn’t immediately recognize. He sits still and watches Otabek. He watches Otabek throw his head back, laughing at something Mila said. He feels like he wants to yell again. He wants Otabek to see him at the same time that he hopes Otabek doesn’t notice that he’s joined the circle.
Mila spots him. “Ooh, the kitten’s going to play?” she sing-songs.
Otabek’s eyes find Yuri’s in an instant, and for a terrible moment that feels like it’ll never end, they just stare at each other. What is Otabek doing? This is the last place Yuri ever expected to find himself tonight, but this is also the last place he would have ever expected to find Otabek tonight. And with Mila, laughing at her jokes! Yuri could be sick.
“ Yuuurio! ”
Yuri groans. And he had thought things couldn’t get worse tonight.
Victor and Yuuri are seated directly opposite him. Victor is waving at him, with Yuuri in his lap. Once again, Yuri could be sick.
“Are we ready?” Phichit calls, and most of the circle responds loudly in the affirmative as he places an empty wine bottle at the center of them all.
Chris yells as he puts an arm around the man sitting to Yuri’s right, “Oh, that’s got some spin to it!”
Yuri wants to leave, but he doesn’t. He finds he’s looking at Otabek again. For maybe the first time in Yuri’s life, he thinks he just wants to see what might happen.
“Shall I take the first spin?” Phichit says, and some people cheer while others don’t seem to care. Phichit winds the bottle up, and spins it.
The bottle does have some spin on it. It takes a long time to stop, finally coming to a halt almost between two people, but most of the circle agrees it’s landed on Victor.
Yuri is just thinking to himself that Yuuri seems more excited about this than Victor or Phichit does when he hears whispering somewhere behind him, followed by a high-pitched trill of a laugh. Yuri turns to find JJ, arm still around his wife, talking to a woman Yuri doesn’t recognize. Yuri turns back to see Yuuri cheering while Victor and Phichit kiss deeply at the center of the group, and he thinks it’s disgusting but at the same time his brow and his ears burn hot. Victor leans down to spin the bottle and Yuri can’t believe he has to watch Victor kiss someone else, but JJ is whispering again and Yuri wants to jump up and punch him.
The bottle goes careening sideways, and most of the circle shrieks with laughter, including Victor. It crashes into Otabek’s foot, and Otabek grabs it.
“I do believe that means it’s you, Beks,” Mila says, and most of the circle agrees.
There’s a weird, sinking feeling in the pit of Yuri’s stomach that he can’t quite identify. He just knows that he doesn’t like this one bit.
Otabek is on his feet.
Yuri can’t read his face.
Victor says something to Otabek, too quietly to hear over the noise of the room.
Otabek looks up at Victor with this wild look in his eyes that Yuri can’t place, and then he smiles , and a soft chuckle emerges from him like it’s escaped.
Somehow, some part of Yuri feels betrayed.
Victor makes a show of taking Otabek by the shoulders and kissing him. Most everyone in the circle cheers except for Yuri. Victor glances at Yuri afterward, before hurrying back to sit with Yuuri. Otabek doesn’t look anywhere but the wine bottle, but —
Yuri frowns.
Otabek’s cheeks are red as he’s leaning down to place the wine bottle back where it had been, and spin it carefully.
An odd and terrible and confusing cocktail of emotions bubbles up from Yuri’s stomach and into his chest.
The bottle lands pointing at the woman who had said that Yuuri is the best looking skater she had ever seen. Otabek kisses her and hurries back to sit in his spot without looking up.
Yuri loses track of the game as it flies from one side of the circle to the other and back again. He forgets to keep his fingers crossed that the bottle doesn’t land on him because all he can think about is Otabek kissing someone right in front of him. The image of him kissing Victor and the image of him kissing that woman flip-flop in his mind’s eye until they’re practically one. He blinks hard, trying to make it go away as if it were a sun spot.
The people sitting around Yuri yell, “ Oooh! ” and his eyes fly to the bottle, heart dropping as it slows down more and more, but it passes him and the next person. He sighs in relief as it lands on Chris.
The circle seems to find it particularly amusing that Chris and Sara Crispino of Italy have to kiss. People laugh and cheer. Yuri finds Otabek to see if he’s applauding like the rest of these idiots and is pleased to find that he isn’t. Yuri is less pleased to find Otabek watching him from across the way. He wants to drop his gaze, but he doesn’t.
Otabek frowns, and Yuri expects him to look away at any moment. He doesn’t. At least, not until people are cheering his name again, and he and Yuri break their stare-off to look at the bottle, pointed like an arrow at Otabek.
People in the circle and in the crowd of onlookers laugh almost jeeringly, proclaiming Otabek to be “the one”.
“There’s always that one person the bottle just can’t stay away from,” Chris explains as Otabek comes to meet him in the circle.
“Yeah, you would know, Chris!” Victor calls out above the noise of the crowd, and then he’s pressured into telling a long, dramatic, and far too detailed story about one party, years ago, when Chris tried rigging the game by super gluing a magnet inside the neck of the bottle and dropping another magnet into his cup. Victor’s story dissolves into an argument between Victor and Chris over the efficacy of this method.
All of this would usually piss Yuri the fuck off, but just now, he has his fingers crossed that this will derail the game enough that he won’t have to see Otabek kiss Chris tonight. A little voice in his head asks why he even cares, but he squashes it. Chris is disgusting in the same way that Victor and Yuuri are, and Otabek is his friend. Watching Otabek kiss Victor has been the worst part of Yuri’s night — which is saying something — and he doesn’t know how much more he can handle.
Yuri watches Otabek, willing him to go back to his spot in the circle.
Chris ends the argument by throwing a creative combination of obscenities in Victor’s direction, which they both promptly laugh at, then he turns to Otabek. “Sorry to keep you waiting, mon cheri, ” he says.
Yuri grimaces and waits for Otabek to do the same. Instead, Otabek laughs out loud. When Chris kisses him, Otabek breathes it in sharply. For a moment, his hand falls on Chris’s shoulder, and there it is again: a twinge in Yuri’s guts like he’s just been stabbed in the back.
Chris takes his seat.
Otabek finally looks at Yuri. Just for a second, like he’s checking his reaction.
That only makes Yuri angrier.
Otabek leans down to spin the bottle.
“Phichit!” several people cry, as if they weren’t all watching the bottle point at him together.
Yuri doesn’t watch Otabek kiss someone for the fourth time. He stares at his shoelaces and tries to devise a plan to get himself out of here. He supposes he could just leave at any time, but he imagines the attention that will draw and wants to recoil just from the thought of it.
Around and around the bottle goes, and once again Yuri is sure there is nothing that could make the night any worse.
Chris has just kissed the pairs skater who argued that Otabek is the most attractive skater there is, and now he’s reaching down to spin the bottle again, and Yuri just thinks, What’s the worst that could happen? Beka has to kiss him again? It doesn’t. It lands almost between Victor and Yuuri, but ultimately it’s agreed that it’s inclined more so toward Yuuri. At the beginning of the night, Yuri would have thought it a terrible misfortune to have to watch Yuuri and Chris kiss while Victor watches ecstatically in the background, but now it just sort of goes over his head. He had to watch his best friend kiss Victor. He wishes there was someone who he could impress upon how awful that was for him.
“That was amazing!” Victor exclaims over the cheering crowd as if Yuuri and Chris have performed a miracle when they finally come up for air.
There’s whispering and giggling behind Yuri again, and he wants to yell again. He just doesn’t know who he wants to yell at.
Yuuri sways on his feet just a little, a deep flush in his cheeks, as he reaches for the wine bottle.
Yuri looks at Otabek, and is again grateful that he isn’t applauding and whooping as all their acquaintances take turns kissing one another like the rest of the idiots playing this stupid game.
The bottle spins and spins.
Everyone’s watching it in anticipation, leaning in with bated breath, but Yuri can’t take his eyes off Otabek; he can’t stop willing Otabek to look at him again. Maybe then he can finally figure out what Otabek is thinking. He can always tell when they’re alone.
The bottle slowly comes to a stop and, this time, no one cheers. There are a few gasps. Several let out a low, “ Ooooh. ” JJ laughs loudly, obnoxiously, and it cuts like razor through the sudden quiet of the room.
Yuri had stopped worrying about himself, caught up in the discomfort of watching Otabek kissing someone again and again. Yuri had stopped crossing his fingers in the hopes that the bottle would slide past him. Yuri had forgotten that he might have to kiss any one of the people sitting around him.
Yuri stares into the neck of the bottle like the barrel of a gun.
Victor breaks the tense quiet. “ Noooo. ”
Yuri looks up, not at Victor, or even Yuuri, but at Otabek. Victor keeps talking, but his voice is nothing more than buzzing in the background to Yuri. His eyes are locked in on Otabek who is very obviously — fucking asshole fucking traitor — doing his best not to laugh, lips sucked into his mouth and pulled into a tight smile. Yuri watches Otabek's nose scrunch up, seemingly pained by the effort of hiding his amusement.
Yuri climbs to his feet, staring into his drink as he does, focusing hard on not spilling it again. He doesn’t dare check to see what face Otabek is making now. He turns his gaze on Yuuri, who had been inching back toward his spot but freezes, eyes wide, as Yuri fixes him with an intense stare.
Victor’s voice cuts through the haze in Yuri’s brain. “Oh my god, no.”
Finally, Yuri looks at him. Victor, who called him a baby and cooed at him over his first Olympics. Victor, who saw Otabek and asked Yuri if that was the problem — whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. Victor, who made a spectacle of kissing his best friend in front of everyone they know. Victor, who looks like he may be sick if he has to watch Yuri kiss his husband right now.
Yuri wants to yell. At Victor, and Yuuri, and more than anything, he wants to scream at Otabek. He just doesn’t know what he wants to say to any of them.
Yuri looks back at Yuuri.
Yuuri’s eyes are still wide and staring. He looks scared.
Yuri’s brow shoots up into his hairline. “ Well? ”
Yuuri’s mouth opens and closes quickly, wordlessly. He turns to glance at Victor, whose hand has flown to cover his mouth, and turns back to Yuri, and comes toward him slowly.
Yuri’s heart, already pounding against his ribs, quickens. He tries to find his breath.
“Um,” Yuuri says as he gets close. He drops his voice, but the room is too quiet to go entirely unheard. “We… really don’t need to do this.”
Yuri stands still for a moment that stretches on and on as he considers taking Yuuri up on that offer. It would be so easy, so why does it feel so difficult? Yuuri’s standing there, his hands held out in a weird sort of surrender, and handing him an out.
Just take it, he tells himself over and over. He tries to open his mouth and say it.
“You know, you can just…” Yuuri goes on, even softer. “You can just say no.”
Yuri’s eyes narrow sharply. He tries to put his finger on why he wants to yell again. He doesn’t figure it out before he snaps at Yuuri, “Are you gonna play the game or not?”
Yuuri looks at him for a few seconds, and then smiles softly — barely — and looks at him sort of like he understands (which Yuri hates deeply).Yuuri kisses him quick — doesn’t even get close enough to touch the cup that Yuri purposefully holds in between them — and Yuri presses his lips together more than against Yuuri’s. People still clap, and more than a few of them laugh, but it’s not the cheering and fun laughter that everyone else got. Yuri thinks that’s probably fair given the circumstances, but it still manages to piss him off.
“Shut the fuck up,” Yuri snaps at Yuuri as quietly as he can.
Yuuri hasn’t said anything, but he doesn’t protest. He actually nods, and then turns to go back to his seat in the circle.
Yuri keeps his gaze carefully trained above everyone’s heads as he turns. He doesn’t want to see anyone’s face right now, except for maybe Victor’s. He would actually really love to see the look on Victor’s face right now, but he can’t risk catching a glimpse of Otabek. He’s wondering if he can find his way back to his spot with his eyes closed when Phichit calls out, “Oh, Yurio, you spin the bottle now!”
When Yuri finds Phichit in the circle he already looks like he regrets speaking.
Yuri nods curtly.
As he leans down, he focuses again on not spilling wine on himself or the floor. His fingers are pressed into the hard plastic of the cup, forming deep indents in it. He only looks at the bottle for a second to twist it. He stands straight up right away, almost jumping back. He doesn’t watch the bottle turn. He looks down to stare into his cup, but squeezes his eyes shut without meaning to. The room feels like it’s spinning with the bottle, the sound of the glass against the hardwood floor loud in his ears; the room slows with the bottle, and Yuri’s heart sinks into his stomach.
The odd and terrible mix of laughter and cheering and every inflection of “ Oooooh ” that bursts around Yuri tells him what’s happening before anyone shouts the name of who the bottle has chosen.
Stupid fucking fruit wine. Yuri wants to shout it, but he has just enough sense left in him to keep his mouth shut.
Yuri looks at Otabek, already angry, expecting to find a horrible, smug look on his friend’s face. For a split second, he’s a little bit pleased to find that Otabek looks stricken. It doesn’t last long, though, and then Yuri is angry at him again.
The room is abuzz around them while the two of them stare-off again.
Yuri doesn’t know what he hopes Otabek will do. He thinks he’ll be angry either way.
Otabek leaves his drink behind when he stands.
Mila lets out a long and high-pitched cheer, and JJ is probably laughing. Yuri can’t hear JJ, he just knows it. He swears he’s going to hit JJ one day. Maybe when they’re retired and he can’t get in trouble with the ISU.
Otabek comes toward him.
Yuri’s heart doesn’t just beat hard, but in every inch of his body. He doesn’t know why this feels worse. Probably because he knows Otabek better than he knows Yuuri. That makes sense.
Otabek leans in close.
Yuri’s breath stops cold in his throat.
“Do you want to?” Otabek’s lips barely move. The words are barely audible.
Somewhere, deep in Yuri’s stomach, there is some warm blossom of gratitude for Otabek. For how he doesn’t make Yuri feel like a child even though he’s a couple years older and acts like an old man sometimes; for how he is really, genuinely so good. But on the surface, he is still angry.
“What?” Yuri trains his face into a glare. “Are you scared?”
Several emotions flash across Otabek’s face in a matter of moments, none of which last long though for Yuri to decipher their meaning, and then he nods curtly. He looks like he’s accepting a challenge as he takes Yuri by his upper arms to pull him in. Yuri is worried for a moment about spilling his drink on Otabek, but the cup and his arm get trapped firmly between the two of them as Otabek kisses him.
Yuri has heard of kisses that stop time and make the world around you fall away, and he knows that’s complete and utter bullshit. Everyone Yuri knows is watching him kiss his best friend, and nothing short of dropping dead could make him forget about that. Also, he’s kissed a few people in his time, and he’s never really understood what’s so fun about it. He’s considered that he might just not be very good at it, or that the people he’s kissed weren’t very good at it, but he’s always had his doubts. Maybe everyone who has waxed poetry about the joys of putting your mouth on and in someone else’s mouth was just a stupid idiot. This makes the most sense to Yuri, perhaps because he has had the misfortune to overhear Victor talk about kissing Yuuri on more than one occasion and it was nothing short of repulsive.
This feels free from all of that. It’s not groundbreaking, and he can feel everyone’s eyes on him still, but after a moment he sort of doesn’t care. It’s not repulsive. It’s not anything like any kiss he’s had before. It makes that small bit of gratitude in his stomach spread into his chest, then down his arms and legs, and into his face. It makes his hand around the cup loosen and his free hand unfurls from the tight fist he hadn’t even realized he was holding. And he thinks, as Otabek pulls back and lets go of his arms, that it makes him want more.
The two of them freeze like statues sculpted to stare at one another; to reside in a stalemate forever.
Yuri thinks he’s just not listening to what’s going on around them until JJ’s voice cuts through thick, dead silence. “Look at you go, princess!”
The cup crunches in Yuri’s grasp as he turns his back to Otabek. He sees nothing but red and JJ. JJ’s laughter rings in Yuri’s ears, and it feels sharp inside his head. The wine doesn’t make a satisfying sound as it soars from the cup and splashes all over JJ’s front, so he crunches the cup hard and throws it as he storms out into the hallway.
Yuri presses the elevator button repeatedly, focusing on the click click click click to drown out any thoughts that may pop up. He shakes his head hard like he’s trying to shake JJ’s voice out of his ears along with the memory of —
He hits the wall, and yells through clenched teeth.
Behind him, a door opens and shuts. He whips his head over his shoulder and locks eyes with Otabek as the elevator dings and the doors pop open.
Yuri turns and stomps into the elevator. “What do you want?” He turns and leans against the back wall, arms crossed tightly, in time to see Otabek surging into the elevator just before the doors pop shut again. They stare-off for a few moments that stretch on, causing Yuri’s chest to grow tight, and he can’t stand it. “ Well? ” he snaps at Otabek.
Otabek continues to stare for another moment before he raises one eyebrow, pointing to the wall beside him. “Are you going to pick a floor?”
Yuri glares, but reaches to punch the fifth floor button with his thumb.
Otabek watches Yuri, unreadable as he’s been all night. Yuri narrows his eyes at him, and he squints back. He looks like he’s trying to figure something out about Yuri without ever asking him, and Yuri hates it. More than that, he hates standing in such close proximity, staring each other down like opponents while they’re boxed in. It makes him feel like they’re about to kiss again, and that causes a hot flash of excitement to burn in his stomach, and that makes him feel like he’s going to be sick.
Yuri pushes past Otabek to get out of the elevator as it’s still opening onto his floor, stalking quickly toward his room. He glances up as he’s fumbling with the key card to make sure that Otabek has followed him into the hallway. He has, but he still lingers just outside the elevator, just fucking watching Yuri.
“Well?” Yuri says again, halfway through the door. “Are you coming or not?” He steps all the way into the room with a heavy huff, but waits and holds the door until Otabek is stepping into the room. He thinks about letting it go now, and letting it hit Otabek, but their eyes meet and Yuri stays very still. A terrible sense of dread washes over him.
Otabek takes the door. “Thanks,” he says, closing it softly behind himself. He walks into the room, while Yuri stays lingering by the door. Otabek wrings his hands, which Yuri has seen him do maybe never.
Yuri watches Otabek with the oddest and most terrible mix of hope and fear. There is something in the air — he can feel it — and he can’t tell what he’s hoping for or against. He thinks this is all so stupid, and he doesn’t. He wants to sink into the floor and disappear and he wants to be locked inside this room forever. He really wants — but no. He’s too scared of that. He can’t admit it to himself. He won’t admit it. It’s stupid.
“Yura?” Otabek finally speaks.
Yuri is frozen. He thinks, suddenly, that Otabek was right. He can read Yuri. He does just know things about Yuri. He can read Yuri’s mind right now, Yuri is sure.
Which isn’t a problem. Yuri has nothing to hide. He tries hard to convince himself of this.
And maybe — just maybe — Otabek will ask to kiss him again.
Which Yuri doesn’t even want.
“What?” Yuri says.
It looks as if Otabek is trying to solve a really complicated puzzle, and Yuri can’t even find it within himself to be mad at him for this because he feels just the same.
“Just…” Otabek looks nervous. Not like he does before he gets on the ice or when he’s waiting for a score, when Yuri is the only one who can even tell he’s nervous, but openly, obviously nervous. “Can nothing change? Please?”
This washes over Yuri like a wave free of the moon’s control, crashing down as slowly as it pleases. His brain twists and turns, trying to make sense of it. “What?” he says again.
Otabek’s eyes do something, and his jaw jumps. He swallows hard, and says, “We — we kissed — and I —”
“It was just a stupid game.” The words fly from Yuri’s mouth before he even knows he’s thinking them.
Otabek nods. “Right. It’s just you kind of stormed out of —”
“Yeah, well, fucking JJ, ” Yuri huffs, and that’s not untrue, he reasons with himself. He threw his drink in JJ’s face so it’s not at all like he’s defending himself. Definitely.
“Right,” Otabek says again.
They stare-off, and Yuri thinks it’s the worst one yet. He tries to think of something to say to fill the silence, but he’s so focused on not dropping his gaze.
Otabek beats him to it, finally asking, “So, we’re good?”
Yuri nods until he can find his voice. “We’re great.”
Otabek nods once more. “Great.”
“Great,” Yuri says. Then, neither of them has anything else to say, and Yuri can’t bear to dwell in whatever weird mix of feelings is sure to creep up from his stomach, through his chest and throat, threatening to burst from his mouth before it ever reaches his brain. He asks quickly, “So, what did JJ do?”
Otabek keeps looking at Yuri sort of solemnly for another few seconds, but then he finally cracks a small smile. “Yeah, he was pissed,” he chuckles. “It was dramatic. Yelling and swearing, talking about reporting you.”
Yuri’s stomach sinks.
It must show on his face, because Otabek hurries on. “There’s no base for it. You splashed a drink in his face. The worst he could do is make it public, and you might have to issue an apology.”
Yuri scoffs. “Apologizing to JJ might be worse than getting banned.”
Otabek laughs, and when it’s silent for a moment after, he suggests they watch something on TV. So they sit on the bed and scroll through the guide, debating what to watch, bickering over certain options. It feels normal.
It’s good, Yuri convinces himself. He tries to, anyway. But it’s hard to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and the sharpness in his chest, and the thickness in his throat. It feels like something left unsaid that’s now stuck in his body, trying to escape but with nowhere to go.
Yuri thinks — and tries to dispute it, tries to reason with himself — it feels like disappointment.