One and Two
Scene Two: Teenage Wasteland
In the end, Otabek insisted on giving him a ride back to his hotel. Well, actually, Otabek looked down (way, way down) at him as the glass café door swung shut, thankfully blocking out Katsuki's uncomfortable giggling at wherever Victor's hand was, and told him, "I will drive you back." It was a statement, not an offer, and Yuri was hard-pressed to disagree. Besides, Yuri secretly thought that Otabek's bike was totally cool, and he hoped the biting wind might chill whatever flash-fire delirium was raging around in his head today.
He had Otabek's extra helmet jammed on his head and his face pressed into Otabek's back, which it didn't really need to be, but it filled his nose with strong leather and the inexplicable, comforting smell of what Yuri could only call ice. The sky was darkening, and there were nightlights blinking into life all around and above, and Yuri could hardly stop staring. He was dangerously close to contentment.
And that was when he saw it.
"Otabek," he said emphatically, practically shouting to be heard over the general cacophony that came with motorcycling, "pull over."
Otabek did pull over, hard, responding with the same blind discipline of an infantryman responding to his commander. His tires screeched up next to the sidewalk and he leaned fluidly onto one leg, craning back towards Yuri with mild but serious concern.
"What? Are you all right?"
But Yuri had already whipped out his phone and leaned precariously off the bike to start aggressively Instagramming the kittens playing in the lighted shop windows. "Omigodlookit," he said, with feeling. They had ribbons around their necks. Yuri was a dead man.
Of course, what he wanted to do was barge in and buy twenty. But the kittens for which Yuri had broken the "look, don't touch" rule had ways of ending up in his grandfather's house for life. And while his grandfather was tolerantly willing to maintain the mystery of these "ways", he had mentioned emphatically that he wished they would take a break. Yuri was also far away from home, after all, and he was (reluctantly) morally opposed to involving Otabek in an international kitten heist.
He wondered off-handedly if Chris had ever learned the "look, don't touch" rule, while Otabek blinked the rapid blink of the bemused but quietly resigned. "Oh. Is that all?" he said.
Yuri suddenly snapped himself forward-facing again, sitting as high and indignant as could be managed on his motorcycle perch. "What do you mean 'is that all.'"
He angled one of his elbows over Otabek's shoulder-damn, that broadly muscled back made his arms look short-to proudly show the impassive Otabek his new pictures. "Is that all. Do you have any idea what you're say-"
Yuri dropped his phone.
"Agh-"
He lunged for it in a desperate save, and Otabek responded automatically by curling himself back into Yuri in a sort of cradling motion, trying to stop it from falling into the street. They both caught it, luckily, Otabek right against his leg and Yuri with his hand, uh, also right on Otabek's leg-on his thigh, really.
In his lap. And it was a very firm catch.
The natural reaction would have been to get extremely flustered and possibly temperamental, in true Yuri fashion, but there was some unidentified urge which, while it couldn't override Yuri's teenage instinct to hold onto his phone like his life depended on it, encouraged Yuri to take a moment to a moment to really get a feel for Otabek's thighs, full of sinew, dedication, passion-
That unidentified urge made his throat very dry, and then twitched his hand towards where the zipper of Otabek's pants was. That same unidentified urge in turn awakened the start of a possible issue in his own tailored, tight pants.
It was at this perilous moment, on the verge of completely uncharted territory, that Yuri happened to glance dazedly to his left. And, right there in the window, staring straight at him, was a tiny gray kitten with wide, wondering blue eyes-innocent. Curious. Judgmental.
That single instant reminded him very horribly of all the other eyes that might be trained on them, and Yuri came crashing back to rushing, chattering, night-life reality, blushing with such force that he wobbled a bit on Otabek's bike from momentary dizziness.
"Uh," he said, not quite sure how to extricate himself from Otabek-at this point, he'd already stayed in place for much too long to play it off as a momentary accident. Even Yuri, never exactly a paragon of social nuances, knew this much.
Yuri quickly began to cast around in his mind for something suave and Victorish he could say that would explain this whole situation away as happenstance, even whilst straddling another man from behind as he tickled Yuri's nose unfairly with the aromatic, sexy-sweet tinge of coffee on his breath.
"You have very nice thighs," Yuri said angrily, because he said everything angrily. Then he listened to himself.
Oh. Oh, bloody hell. Yuri mentally punched Victor in the dick for being a bad role-model with boundary issues.
And Otabek? Otabek didn't say a word, just watched him intently-probably making sure that Yuri wasn't going to lose his balance again and swan-dive into the street. When Yuri stayed perfectly frozen in place, Otabek gently and gentlemanly retrieved both Yuri's phone and his hand and then conjoined the two, waiting patiently for Yuri to regain his faculties enough to keep his own grip. Yuri eventually did, numbly-the exchange had lasted so awkwardly long that the phone screen had gone black.
He stared at in in incomprehension, unable to fathom looking at anything else-especially Otabek. But something strange prompted him to do it anyway, like he could somehow telepathically interpret that that was what Otabek wanted him to do.
"I think you have nice thighs, too," Otabek said with the utmost sincere dignity, and just the slightest caramelly hint of laughter.
And then Otabek revved up the engine and pulled back into the lulled street, Yuri clinging instinctively on to him from behind him-or at least, that was how Yuri assumed he got back to his room that night. It was all mostly post-panic static in his brain.
It was time, Yuri acknowledged later, laying wide awake and still shell-shocked in his bed, to call in the big guns. He would have to ask Victor for advice.
I can't believe I wrote this many words about kittens and touching thighs. Also, another fair warning: I know nothing about Instagram or social media.