Yuri - Age 22

The post was short and straight to the point. A picture of a couple empty bottles, lined up across what was clearly a bar counter, with the caption "fuck". No hashtags. This prompted many comments from fans, and personal messages from people who actually knew him, but Yuri Plisetsky had let his phone battery drain that night. He woke up the next morning with the hangover from hell. Here he was, with slightly more than two decades under his belt, waking up on the floor of his childhood bedroom, at one in the afternoon, in the same clothes from yesterday.

The twenty-two year old pushed himself off the carpet with a grunt. He fished through his jeans pockets for his phone, and jammed the end of the cable from his bedside table into the charging port. After making sure he was stable enough on his feet, Yuri trenched down the hall and over to the bathroom. He was careful not to make too much noise. His reflection was horrible, so he didn't stare at it long. Pain killers for the headache and anti-nausea medication for the way the floor was still spinning were kept in the medicine cabinet. With the help of drugs, and one long, steamy shower, the figure skater was finally starting to feel human again.

He didn't bother getting fully dressed, only yanking on clean underwear, before tearing through every drawer to find at least one article of clothing that didn't bring back memories of him. Yuri ended up finding an old "I 3 NY" tshirt he had gotten when he competed in Skate America a few years back. Once partially clothed, he threw himself into his bed, burying himself in blankets, before grabbing his phone. Now that it had some charge in it once more, Yuri was bamboozled with text messages and missed calls from various people trying to contact him. He went through, sending a quick reply to those who were legitimately concerned, but for the most part, he didn't want to talk to anyone.

Right before he locked his phone again, right after closing out of all open apps, Yuri caught a glimpse of his home screen background, and suddenly was overcome with tears. It was a picture of him and that guy. That stupid, stupid, stupid guy. Words played through the blond's memories like a broken record as he sobbed into the pillows.

It's not you, it's me.

The fuck was that supposed to mean? Three years. Yuri had been with that damned french boy for three years. Three years, after meeting him in an art gallery that his grandfather dragged him to in Moscow. Three years, after countless stupid dates and 'I love you's, and taking him to competitions. One year after they had decided to take the leap, and Yuri had moved in with him. After so long, this boy had the nerve to not only stomp all over his heart, but also kicked his ass to the curb before the figure skater had even had a chance to speak. So Yuri had nowhere to go but back to his grandfather's house, and yes, he had gotten "a little" drunk last night. But he figured he down-right deserved to drown his sorrows at least a little bit.

He honestly didn't even know what went wrong, and that was the worst part. Yes, he had to travel a lot for skating competitions, so he was pretty MIA for four months out the year. But he would come too. All the time actually. The guy was a photographer for fucks sake. He got to go travel the goddamned world with Yuri, and he got to do it for free half the time too. How was that so bad?

Sure, Yuri would be the first to admit that he had a temper issue. It had gotten better as he got older, but it was still prevalent when he got angry. Unfortunately, thinking about that brought every memory of every fight they had ever had into his head. Some were stupid couple fights about doing dishes, taking out the trash. Others were more serious. The worst fight they ever had was about Yuri missing a particularly important exhibit because he got too into choreographing his free skate. It wasn't his fault he lost track of time. It wasn't like he had a watch when he was on the ice. Remembering that fight in particular make the young russian choke up once again. He pulled the pillow more into his face. Maybe if he held it tight enough the lack of oxygen would suffocate him?

His phone vibrating one more time forced the male to remove his tear stained face from the pillow beneath him. Yuri let a little bit of the tension go from his shoulders when he saw the name of the sender. Beka Altin, aka a totally different headache considering the context. Still, that was the one person he he couldn't leave a message from waiting, so he quickly conjured up a half-assed reply. Within seconds, he received another message from the same person. Yuri didn't know why it happened, or how for that matter, but the conversation managed to completely avoid the cause of Yuri's distress, and instead focused solely on trying to come up with ways to make it better.

Apparently, even after a few years without seeing each other, this damned kazakh still knew him just way too well. It was a very Otabek thing to do; to never touch on the personal matters that people wanted to keep to themselves, but still provide streams of logic to help connect the person in question to short-term solutions. He never actually asked what had happened, only asking if Yuri was ok or not; he asked if Yuri was safe, or had people where he was who could support him. So when Yuri had mentioned that he was technically now homeless, he really shouldn't have been surprised by the next message to pop up on his phone.

"Come to Almaty."

It didn't take much convincing. It was April, so he wasn't worrying about any upcoming competitions. He didn't exactly have other friends to spend time with, only his rather obnoxious ring mates. Now he didn't have to worry about paying rent anymore, so that wasn't holding him back either. He could easily get someone to take care of his cat while he was gone, just like when he went away for competitions. Plus, he had visited Otabek before. It had only been once, and years ago, but still. The only thing that was nerve wracking about spontaneously buying a one-way plane ticket to Kazakhstan, was that he hadn't actually met Otabek face to face in about four years. They had met at the Grand Prix Final then, but then the kazakh man didn't make it to the finals again, and then faced an early retirement. Yuri still didn't know why. It didn't seem like Otabek wanted to talk about it, so they didn't. Now it had been so long since either of them had met in person, despite messaging so often. Life just seemed to always get in the way of doing much more than that.

The feeling of the painkillers kicking in and dulling out his headache was a blessing. With that throbbing done with, Yuri was finally able to get comfortable beneath his blankets. He had a feeling his grandfather wasn't about to bother him. Yuri curled himself around one of the pillows in his bed. He didn't feel like doing anything today. Was it possible to sleep off a breakup? Guess he was going to find out…