The season wore on, and it wore Otabek down.
The cloak of his mood didn't weigh as heavily on his shoulders as it had before – if Otabek had been underwater since the end of January, then last year he was six feet under the earth and digging himself deeper.
Otabek held that thought close to himself as he swam.
Another difference: sometimes, he could keep his head above the water.
"Beka, you look like you got hit by a truck," Yuri commented when the Skype call connected.
"Hello to you too, Yura." Otabek tugged his fingers through his hair and didn't bother to force a smile, but this time it was because he knew Yuri would understand without an exaggerated pantomime of emotion. "I'm trying a new look," he continued with a yawn.
"I think we should all hibernate through winter," grumbled Yuri. "My hair freezes. My sweaty hair. Through my hat. Oh, you have a March birthday, people say. A spring birthday. Must be nice and warm, they say. Fuck you, I'm Russian. We don't have spring, we have second winter and it's not even spring yet, so go stick a cactus up your ass."
Otabek smirked. "Is that your way of asking about your birthday present? Told you, I'll give it to you at Worlds."
"No, it was me being mad about sweat icicles."
"Okay."
Yuri began to fidget, and Otabek waited.
"Just a hint," he whined. "My birthday was last week!"
"Hmm, I guess that's fair," Otabek acquiesced. The retro-style polaroid camera was safely hidden in his locker at the rink – he didn't trust Yuri not to call Gulshat and bribe her into searching for it. "It's kinda small."
"Beka, I fucking swear-"
"It's green."
Yuri growled.
"It's prickly."
"Are you…" Yuri blinked. "A cactus?"
"You got me," Otabek said, and silently begged his eyebrows not to do whatever it was that gave him away. "I thought you might like to have one, since you seem to have a thing about cacti. And, you know, orifices. But your present, your business, whatever."
"Oh my god, Beka, you can shove-"
"Yura, I wouldn't do that with your birthday present. Who do you think I am?" He sighed. "Besides, that's your fetish."
Yuri buried his face in his hands and screamed.
:: :: ::
Though Otabek is left to stare up at the podium when the World Championships conclude, he doesn't look down on himself. He'd skated well enough to ignite a candlewick of pride, and the taste of near-victory was gasoline splashed onto the flame.
For a brief moment, Otabek met Yuri's gaze through the crush of cameras, bodies, and emotion that filled the lobby they'd been ushered into. He tapped his chest, a mirror of the point at which Yuri's silver medal rested as it hung from his neck, and smirked.
Next time, Yura.
Yuri grinned back at him, all flashing eyes and bared ambition, and mouthed come and get it before he was whisked away by his coach.
JJ offered a stiff handshake by way of congratulations, and Otabek wondered what the price of their friendship had been, what had finally toppled its wobbling orbit. Maybe it was the tiny but vital gap between their results, or the pressure of Otabek's teeth sinking into his lip and choking his shout of bonne chance into a strangled whisper. It would have been an empty wish. Otabek was no longer his lucky charm.
Chickens and eggs, loss and chance – he wondered if his luck deserted JJ when their friendship fell apart, or if it might not have been the other way around.
Instead of answering himself, Otabek replied to a hovering reporter who spoke to him in the language of home.
"It's an honor to represent Kazakhstan," he told her, and she beamed.
:: :: ::
The end of an Almaty summer sparkled around them, warm and dry.
"We're going to fall down the steps moving your stupid furniture and break every bone in our bodies," Yuri grumbled, tossing his head to move a lock of hair away from his eye. It fell back into place immediately. "We'll be watching the Olympics from our hospital beds. Why isn't your sister helping? It's her apartment too, for fuck's sake."
Otabek smiled over Yuri's shoulder.
"I am helping, my sweet little fuckwad," Gulshat purred from behind him. To his credit, Yuri jumped but didn't shriek. "If you fall, try to land on top of Beka. He's durable."
"Your concern for my wellbeing is touching," Otabek said, rolling his eyes as Yuri snickered. "The building has a lift, Yura. We're not carrying anything up ten flights of stairs."
When they reached the flat, Yuri dropped his end of the desk and began to inspect the empty cabinets and drawers. Gulshat tipped her head and shrugged at Otabek before opening the windows to air out the acrid odor of fresh paint.
"What are you doing?"
"What do you mean?" Yuri clambered onto the counter, peering at the top shelf, then glanced back at Otabek, whose confusion must have been written across his face. He laughed. "I'm making sure you don't have bugs or mice before you move all your shit in. Or mold," he added, jumping down. "Couldn't smell it with the paint."
"Ah." Otabek helped Yuri to his feet. "Thank you. I didn't know to look."
Yuri wiped imaginary dust from his jeans. "Yeah. Uh, I think you're good."
"I'm sorry, I didn't plan to make you help us move," Otabek said ruefully. "Housing here is tight, and we weren't expecting this to be available now."
"Oh, you didn't think about my bulging biceps and invite me over as unpaid labor?" Yuri snorted. Otabek elbowed him. "Damn, Altin, I'm disappointed in you."
"Yeah, drag him," Gulshat shouted from a bedroom.
"That's not how you use that," Yuri yelled back, and Gulshat cackled. "Beka, back me up."
Otabek raised his hands in mock surrender. "Neutral territory, I've never heard that before in my life. This is between you two."
The rest of the afternoon was spent shuttling items – mostly clothing and kitchen supplies, as they hadn't had time to buy new furniture – and mediating Yuri and Gulshat's good-natured bickering, until they established a truce and formed a united front to tease Otabek. He hid his smile under a put-upon sigh.
As evening drew in around them, Gulshat dropped the last of her boxes. "My arms are going to fall off, I'm done for the day," she said. Otabek nodded and stretched out his shoulders. Yuri, who was sprawled across the bare floor, groaned softly. "You two coming?"
"If anyone makes me move, I will use the last of my strength to murder them," Yuri growled. "Then I'll die and it'll be your fault."
"I'd like to unpack what I can," Otabek said. He nudged Yuri with his foot, prompting another mumbled curse. "Want to order dinner?"
"See you later, nerds," Gulshat laughed as Yuri shot up.
They sat on the floor to eat, balancing paper plates on their knees between stacks of boxes.
"I thought this would be easier than moving between countries," Otabek admitted. "But it's… different."
"It isn't?" Yuri asked through a mouthful of noodles. "How many times have you moved?"
"Russia, Colorado, Montreal, home," said Otabek, counting each on his fingers. "So this is the fifth time, except Russia technically counts twice. But I never really – my parents' place was always home, even if I wasn't there. I was only carrying some things around with me."
"Yeah." Yuri chewed on the edge of his Styrofoam cup, leaving a ring of tooth marks around the rim. "Twice for me. Or three times, when I went to my grandparents, but I don't remember that. Moving out of the dorms was kind of like this."
"You lived in the dorms? When?"
"From when I came to Moscow until last summer. So, four years."
"I assumed you were staying with a host family or something, because you have a cat," Otabek said, reaching for a napkin. "I didn't think any dorms would let you keep pets."
For a moment, Yuri went completely still – Otabek hadn't realized how much Yuri was synonymous with motion until his fidgeting stuttered and ceased for a split second.
"Guess you've been in shitty dorms, then." Yuri's knee started to bounce once more.
"Or you had a secret cat," Otabek teased. A pang shot through him; that was JJ's joke. "Not that I can ever imagine you breaking any rules."
Yuri shoved his plate onto the floor and stood up. "Or maybe I just had a damn cat," he snapped. "I'm going outside, this place reeks."
The door slammed behind Yuri, and Otabek sat still, staring at nothing and everything. A wave of nausea hit him, and he dropped his remaining food into the plastic takeaway bag. The leftovers were wrapped up as best he could and placed in the empty fridge, where they looked oddly lonely against the bare shelves.
I didn't do anything wrong, a small, scared part of Otabek's mind whispered. It wasn't my fault.
He closed the apartment's windows.
Yuri's discomfort would have been obvious, if he'd looked for it.
When he stepped out into the hallway, Yuri was hovering nearby with a pinched, tight frown. He glared at Otabek with the air of a cornered cat, hissing and spitting.
"I'm sorry," Yuri mumbled, the soft words belying his expression, though they were edged with tension. "For yelling. Fucking- I don't know."
"I wasn't listening to you before," said Otabek, letting the statement settle between them. "Thank you for apologizing. It's… okay." It was. The sting of disapproval, the pounding guilt of his heart, had faded.
"Okay." Yuri stared down at his hands, picking at the cuticles around nails that were perpetually bitten short. "Let's go for a walk. I don't want to go back in, the paint- it really does smell."
"It does," Otabek agreed. He followed Yuri, who was already making his way to the stairs. Not the lift, but the stairs. Ten flights. "Yura-"
"Whatever, I'll meet you in the lobby."
Otabek shrugged and followed him. He, too, would be better off if he burned away some of the nervous energy twitching under his skin.
Almaty was beautiful at night. Not for the first time, Otabek wished that words came easily to him, so he could tell Yuri what it felt like – that every wall of glimmering lights set on the backdrop of a darkened sky took his breath away, that the city wrapped itself around him until Otabek couldn't tell where he ended and Almaty began.
"Being here feels like skating," Otabek said instead.
Yuri nodded. "It's your home," he replied quietly.
"I didn't know how much I missed it until I came back." The admission was bittersweet: he might never have known Almaty, known himself, had he not left them behind.
"I wasn't dissing your apartment earlier," Yuri announced, and Otabek blinked. Yuri's mind skipped between subjects like hopscotch squares, and it often took him a while to trace the path. "I didn't mean it was a shitty flat and was going to be moldy and gross. I just- it was habit."
"I thought it was a smart thing to check," Otabek interjected, but Yuri didn't appear to hear him – he twisted a strand of blond hair between his fingers and chewed on his lip, seemingly caught in an internal debate.
"It was my job to check the cabinets and the pipes when I was a kid," Yuri continued, still picking at the scarred skin around his fingernails. "Dedushka was always taking care of my grandma, and his back isn't good. Stuff broke a lot. We had to make sure there wasn't a water leak rotting the walls away, though I guess there's fuck all we could have done if there was."
Otabek didn't say anything as he let the new information trickle in, shifting and reshaping, bringing Yuri into a sharper focus in his mind. He guessed that this story wouldn't involve a cat, either.
"I wanted you to come meet Dedushka, but he doesn't travel much, and I didn't- the house is better now but it's not great. It's still kinda shit." Yuri kicked an empty bottle left on the pavement. "But that's… that's home for me, I guess. I knew it wouldn't be what you were expecting."
"No," Otabek admitted. "I forget that I'm… lucky."
That his own luck wasn't limited to trailing behind.
"You thought I just had an entire army of obsessed fans too, didn't you?"
"Don't you?" Otabek glanced over at Yuri, who wore a dry grin. "I definitely rescued you from them at some point."
"Oh, I have them. Social media, lots of interviews, let them call me a fairy, respond to letters." Yuri rolled his eyes. "Have an official fanclub with merchandise."
Otabek narrowed his eyes as he pieced the words together. "You planned it. You created them?"
"Mhmm," confirmed Yuri.
"Why?"
"Of course you'd ask that, Beka," grumbled Yuri, and he poked Otabek in the ribs with fond exasperation. "Money. Sponsors. When I got to the senior division, I knew I'd be competing with everyone else. With Viktor. Having thousands of people who'd buy anything with my name on it gives me an edge. Selling autographed posters in juniors let Dedushka fix his car."
He stopped talking and curled in around himself.
"Shit," breathed Otabek, and Yuri giggled at the curse. "I don't know whether to be impressed or terrified, because I think you could take over the world."
"Both, dumbass," Yuri told him. "And maybe when I retire."
:: :: ::
Spending a week of early January in Russia with Yuri was on its way to becoming a tradition.
"We're not talking about it unless we're both drunk off our asses." That was the first thing Yuri said to Otabek when they met in the airport. Otabek agreed, and hissed in pain as his foot slipped on the icy pavement outside.
Viktor Nikiforov drove them to the Baranovskaya house, and a bit of Otabek's haggard mind clamored against his skull that he was being chauffeured by a living legend. Yuri propped his muddy shoes on the back of the seat.
The ghost of a smile whispered across Otabek's face when Yuri snatched his backpack from his hands and insisted on carrying it into the house. He suspected that Yuri would have tried to carry him, too, had they not silently agreed to let the remainders of their dignity die in peace instead of actively murdering it.
Yuri did, however, shove Otabek onto a kitchen chair as soon as they were inside.
"Ice it," he commanded, shoving a coldpack into Otabek's hands.
"In a minute." Otabek hated the touch of frost against his skin, letting it seep through his muscle and bone. Irony, he thought, had its own sense of humor. He busied himself coaxing off his sock and the heavy brace.
"If you don't, I'll tell Lilia," threatened Yuri.
"You will tell me what, Yura?"
Yuri squeaked. Otabek slammed his elbow into the corner of the kitchen table and moaned softly as Lilia strode into the room.
"Yura, put on the water, if you will." She sat down across from Otabek, and Yuri reached for the kettle without complaint. "Your flight was pleasant?"
"Delayed, but yes, thank you."
"Aeroflot?" He nodded, and she clicked her tongue in disapproval before glancing at the neglected coldpack. "Ice."
Otabek held the ice against his foot.
"You have a competent doctor, I trust?"
"Yes," confirmed Otabek, half certain that Lilia would drag him to the hospital herself if she wasn't convinced. "It's only a minor fracture. Hopefully, I'll be able to compete by Worlds."
Yuri slammed three mugs down by the stove with slightly more force than was necessary or advisable.
Later that evening, Yuri leaned into Otabek as he reached over to adjust the laptop screen. Their cocoon of blankets shifted, and Otabek grumbled as a draft of chilly air snuck in.
Yuri muted the video they'd been pretending to watch and stayed where he was, curled into Otabek's side.
"I know I said alcohol, but you look like you wouldn't share."
Otabek let out a huff of breath that wasn't exactly a disagreement.
"Fuck Russia," Yuri spat. "Fuck the Olympics, fuck growth spurts, fuck your foot, fuck this stupid fucking year." He paused. "Am I missing anything?"
After a moment's thought, Otabek added, "Winter."
"Fuck winter," Yuri agreed vehemently. He pulled his phone from deep within the nest of blankets and turned it over in his hands, then dropped it onto the floor before clicking his tongue.
By this point, Otabek was no longer surprised to hear Potya's answering chirp and the approaching pad of his footsteps, nor that Yuri produced a cat treat from thin air.
"Do you just keep them in your pockets?" Otabek asked.
Yuri blinked as he lifted the cat onto his blanket-covered lap. "Yes."
As Otabek reached over to stroke Potya's silky fur, he wished the numbness that permeated his body and mind would retreat. The sharp ache of his heel was nothing in comparison to the dull throb of emptiness echoing in his heart. Yuri was warm next to him, but Otabek couldn't puncture the bubble that he was trapped within – the invisible film separated them, coating the world in a layer of fuzzy distance.
"This fucking sucks," Yuri repeated, his voice cracking. Otabek put his arm around Yuri's shoulders. "Everyone keeps saying it's not the end of the world but I can't do anything, I just- I'm- fuck." He hid his face in Potya's fur, and Otabek could barely make out what he said next. He wasn't sure he was supposed to hear. "They know they have the rest of the season, next year, the next Olympics if people don't screw it up."
He wasn't sure whether saying the wrong thing would be better or worse than saying nothing, but Yuri seemed to understand anyway.
"I thought I'd be able to act normal this week, but I'm- ugh," Yuri continued. "If you don't want to deal with me, whatever, go ahead."
"Yura, I'm not exactly at my best either."
Yuri twisted to look Otabek in the eye. "They let me keep a cat in my dorm room because it was better than having me melt down every other week," he said in a bitter monotone. "Keep the stupid kid stable enough to skate, problem solved. It mostly worked. Sure you wanna deal with that?"
A threatened cat would hiss and scratch, and Otabek wondered how much of his life Yuri had spent backed into a corner, lashing out at the relentless anxiety that penned him in.
All of it, he thought, thinking of the dark cloud of depression that trailed behind him like a devoted dog. All of it.
"Yura, can you hand me my bag?" He wanted to reach out and soothe the quick flash of fear behind Yuri's dismayed snarl. Otabek unzipped his backpack and dug through until he found the thin paper box, which he passed to Yuri. "You deal with me, too."
Otabek didn't watch as Yuri examined the label and the plastic-bubbled pills within, and for the first time, he thought it might be better if they weren't so alike.
:: :: ::
The heat of summer couldn't erase the scars of winter's frost, but Otabek welcomed the sunlight nonetheless as he watched Yuri swoop across the rink before halting in a spray of glittering ice chips.
"You did that on purpose," grumbled Otabek.
Yuri grinned down at him. "You can't prove anything," he retorted, before spinning away. He glanced over his shoulder, calling, "What, you're just gonna let me get away it, Beka?"
His blond hair had begun to escape its braid, and frizzy tendrils tickled his cheekbones. Otabek started to skate after him, but then Yuri laughed and he stopped to let the world settle around him.
People called Yuri beautiful to make him into something they could understand, decided Otabek. The angles of his face were too sharp, so they sanded them off, the gleam in his eyes demanded more than they wanted to give; they called him pretty and pretended that was it.
Otabek didn't have the words to describe him. He didn't need them.
