Friends First

Otabek hits the ice hip first, hands shooting to grab around his left knee as he groans and rolls onto his back. "Fuck," he mutters, throwing a quick thumbs down when his coach calls out to him.

"Can you get off the ice on your own?" his coach asks, and Otabek drags him to the wall and pulls himself up, skating to the rink's exit and leaning his weight against the older man. "You good, Otabek?"

"I think this is going to be my last season," Otabek grounds out, sitting on the bench he's guided to. "That jump really did a number of my knee."

"Your partner isn't going to be happy to hear that."

"I'm aware of that," Otabek sighs, "and I'm not excited about it. Yuri isn't going to take the news well."

"Didn't he basically break down when Viktor retired?" Otabek nods, fingers digging into the groove of his joint to try and alleviate the pain. "Fuck, man, I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Otabek forces a smile. "Nothing you could do to stop it."

True to Otabek's word, Yuri doesn't take the news well when Otabek confides that he wants to retire.

They're on Skype when Otabek breaks the news, and Yuri goes silent, to the point where Otabek is afraid that the call stalled, before screaming out a curse and ending the call himself. Since then, Otabek has sent an army of messages, but Yuri hasn't responded. He figures it's a good idea to just let the blond release his anger on his own.

He's sitting in his living room of his apartment with ice on his knee when the front door slams open. It's sudden enough to make Otabek jump. "Guess who?"

"Oh, my god," Otabek groans, throwing his head back against the couch. "JJ, what the fuck?"

"I'm here, too!" Leo pokes his head around the Canadian, grinning widely. They both have a single suitcase at their side, and they toe off their shoes by the door. "We heard from our coaches that you wanted to retire so we came by."

"We're friends before rinkmates, but that second part is just as important." JJ plants himself down on the couch next to Otabek and places a box on his lap. "Retirement gift."

"What did Yuri say?" Leo sits on the arm on Otabek's other side. "Did you tell him?"

"Yeah," Otabek replies, ripping the box open. He pulls out a pair of expensive headphones and thumbs through a few CDs at the bottom of the box. "He hasn't replied to any of my messages in days. I'm letting him blow off steam."

"Poor kid," JJ mutters, throwing an arm across the back of the couch behind Otabek's head. "Skating is everything to him, you know? Hearing that all the people closest to him are retiring is probably freaking him out."

"When Viktor retired he wanted to be selfish and ask him to not to. When Yuuri retired he cried for days. I wasn't expecting much a difference." Otabek leans back a little more when JJ runs his hand through his hair. "What am I gonna do?"

"Go visit?" Leo suggests, and Otabek huffs out a chuckle.

"Yeah, just waste a couple hundred on a plane ticket to go visit and make sure Plisetsky isn't angry with you, great thinking Lee," JJ jokes, and Leo reaches over to sock him in the hand.

"I thought you and Yuri didn't like each other," Otabek says, and JJ curls his fingers in his hair. Otabek growls in anger and the Canadian loosens his grip.

"I don't have a problem with him. Yuri was always the one that gave me shit." JJ shrugs. "I honestly wanna see the kid happy. He's good at what he does."

Otabek opens his mouth to say something when his cell phone starts vibrating on the coffee table. He grabs it and answers it when he sees the I.D. "Yura, guess what. JJ actually likes you."

"You fucking dick!" JJ yells, yanking Otabek's hair while laughing, smiling when he hears Yuri yell on the other line.

Neither sees Leo snap a quick selfie.

❤️️ phichit+chu, v-nikiforov, +guanhongji+ & 3,274 others

leodliglesia friends comes first w/ otabek-altin and jjleroy!15 #rinkmates #bestfriends #kingjj #iusethattagbchelovesit

984 comments

author's notes
ok so like breath of the wild ruined me
oops
im not sorry