CHAPTER SIX HUNDRED FOURTEEN

The walk back up into the stands felt like it took an eternity; a terrible, painful, miserable eternity. Nikki stayed ahead of the pair that had come to collect her, arms crossed and fighting every instinct she had to cry. With everyone else's eyes glued to the warm-up of two World Record holders, the side-halls were fairly clear, save the odd man out who'd been sent to replenish snacks and drinks.

"You used to be mad at me for not being around...now you're mad at me for being around too much," Mikhail said sullenly as he followed, "I can't win."

The young teen just scrunched-up her shoulders and said nothing.

"I'm not trying to be a bully you know."

Still nothing. She rounded a corner into the stairwell roughly, bumping the corner of the wall with one shoulder.

Yurio tried instead, "You don't have to-"

"You don't get a say." Nikki snapped immediately, turning around just enough to shoot daggers at him with her eyes, "This is your fault."

"What." He blanched, "I didn't even-"

"I didn't come get you because of anything he said; he was silent as the grave, actually." Mikhail assured her, though that just made her turn around and continue stomping up the flight, "I came down because I saw you on the big-screen."

Nikki just seethed and continued on. The elder sighed to himself and reached a long arm forward, tugging gently on the elbow of his daughter's sleeve. She knew to stop, though she still took another step away as she twisted around angrily, "You took me away from all my friends and everything I knew, and now you're keeping me from making something out of this new life I have to have. Why are you like this!?"

The words hit like knives, "Because the world is a horrible place at the best of times." He answered, "And I don't want to have to ruin more than is necessary to protect you from it."

"Protect me from what!? Everyone else is having a great time here! Why am I the only one who has to deal with this!?"

Mikhail opened his mouth-

"And if I hear one more time that it's because I'm young and tiny, I'm not talking to you again!"

He blanched, eyes closed, Why are teens so difficult? "It's not just about you." He answered instead, and bent down, hands perched on his knees to hold him up at her eye-level, "And it's not even just about Beka either. Although...in my defense of that, I don't trust him. I don't know him at all except that he's Yuri's friend and he's twenty years old; far too old to be hanging around with you."

"That's absurd! Yuri's barely a year older than I am and you let him be friends with Otabek!"

Mikhail paused, then turned to look back over his shoulder at the Tiger, "Are you gay for Beka?"

"Nope."

"Is he gay?"

"Super-nope. He dated Baba Yaga for a bit, remember?"

"BabaWh-..." Mikhail narrowed his eyes in confusion, but then widened them in realization, "Oh right; Mila." He shook his head and turned back, and straightened out his flat-cap, "Sweetie, you're young and gorgeous and really social. You want to make everyone around you happy and you want to be friends with as many people as possible. Garbage human beings exist that take advantage of that kind of thing. Unfortunately, you also happen to be the cousin of the world's best figure skater."

"Hey." Yurio balked.

Mikhail didn't pause, "And right now, he's catching some heat for being the only Russian that narrowly escaped getting banned from the Olympics. Not to mention, I just told-off a couple big-wigs in the RSF, to protect your brother from being forced to go back to Russia and dope-up. If they wanted to hurt us, you'd be easy pickings...and you just declared to the whole world that you're here and apart from us."

Even Yurio was caught by surprise by those words, "...They wouldn't do something like that because of Viktor."

Jade eyes looked back as Mikhail rose to his full height again, "They've gone to foreign countries to assassinate people who talked about Putin with a shitty attitude. Don't put it past them. Viktor humiliated Russia on several levels, and he's very high profile."

"...But the fact that he is high profile ought to be security in itself, right?"

"For now." Mikhail agreed, and looked down as he felt his daughter suddenly cling to his coat, thin arms wrapped around his lower back. He put one hand on her shoulder and pat her hair with the other, "I know it sucks, and I'm sorry, honey. I hope my paranoia amounts to nothing...I really do. But as long as I still think it's necessary to hire a security detail while we're in Russia, like we will be after this weekend...I just want to make sure we all have each other's backs."

"Here's hoping Prophet Boy doesn't get his gift of foresight from your side of the family." Yurio grumbled, and carried on around the pair. He lead their way back into the stands, and spotted Minako right where they'd left her. Somehow, their row of seats hadn't gotten taken, and she waved them over.

"Was wondering when you'd come back. Everything okay?" The ballerina asked, seeing the look of frustration on the youngest's face, though it had a bit of relief in it anyway.

Mikhail let Yurio in first to sit on Minako's far side, then Nikki to sit on the other, and finally sat down himself on the aisle's end, "Everything's good. We've come to an...understanding of sorts."

"Did you get to clean up?"

"Yeah. Yura made sure I took the time." He answered. Eyes went pensively down to the ice as the warm-up continued into its final few minutes. Each of the athletes took the whole thing rather seriously, though he noted how Yuri wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as the rest, "...I hope he's just holding back because of being sick. I'd hate to think I worried him."

"Probably a mix of everything, hun."

"Where'd they put Jiro if they're both out there, anyway?"

"Oh, Yuri passed Jiro off to Phichit and the others. They're riiiiight over..." She scanned the lower section and pointed when she spotted them, "There."

"Ah, okay." He nodded, and pulled out his phone. He typed a quick message and put it away again, just in time to hear the announcer overhead call for the warm-up period to conclude.

The Nikiforov duo looked up when they heard it, and quietly made their way to the exit with all the others, minus the one who would be starting things; a particularly ornery figure. Viktor slipped his hand behind his partner's back as they stepped out, and with blade-guards on, they returned to their perch in the audience to reunite with their Security Pup and the Squad.

"Starting things with Group 2, representing South Korea...Seung-gil Lee!"

"This is the last competition you have to maximize your scores before PyeongChang, Seung-gil," Coach Min-so explained stiffly, "It's up to you now to show the world why the Winter Games are being held in our country."

He simply nodded and set his Olympic jacket - a slim white puffer-coat with the right sleeve in blue, a red stripe under it across the chest, and blue cursive letters reading 'TEAM KOREA' on the opposite white sleeve - over the wall. There was no love lost between coach or student in their cold correspondence; it was well-known that their relationship was strictly business, and there was little, if any, warmth between them.

Yuri pulled Jiro up onto his lap as he and his partner returned to their seats in the audience. The smol Akita wagged his nubby curled tail happily and lolled his tongue out as he got some much-needed attention from his humans. It would only be for a few minutes, but the pup was still happy for what he got.

Seung-gil took his place in the middle of the rink; he wasn't half as colorful as he'd been in his previous season's SP, but what he lacked in color, he made-up for in shimmer. He wore a gunmetal-grey tailed coat, sworls and vines of colored stone embroidered all over the sleeves, shoulders, and back. Black pants with dark grey stripes were below, and at both the knees and elbows, dark blue ribbons were tied, with two, foot-long extensions from each that flew as he glided by.

['NEVER' - WANNA ONE]

Even watching the upbeat presentation with its K-Pop music, Yuri couldn't quite shake the sad look on Nikki's face when her father appeared earlier. There was some small comfort in Jiro's attempt to get comfortable on him though, sitting in his lap, propped up against his chest with his cold snoot pressed right up under his ear. The pup wasn't sure if he wanted a nap or a cuddle though, so even though he was comfortable, he quickly lifted his head and looked all around with that pink tongue hanging out.

"My love," Viktor commented, phone out even as he joined Jiro in using Yuri as a good lean-to, "Papa Mimi says not to worry about Nikki. He says he talked to her and she understands."

"...Understands what though?" He asked, "How do you tell a teenager that their crush is off-limits?"

"By explaining that they're jail-bait to said crush?" The Russian surmised, "I mean...if I were going to discourage her, saying 'hey, Otabek might end up arrested' would be my go-to."

"I feel bad for her," Yuri went on, and tilted his head slightly to park his ear against his husband's silver crown-fluff, "I mean, she's got three full years to go before Mikhail could theoretically be asked to back down. If it turned out that Otabek liked her back...who's to say he'd wait? I mean, he's popular, and he lives nowhere near Hasetsu...he could easily find someone else, and Nikki would never have a chance. It would just be this pointless one-sided crush that goes nowhere."

"Speaking from experience?" Viktor teased.

Yuri sputtered slightly, but then just made a face, "Well, I ended up with better...so at least for me, it worked out. But the hurt doesn't change. Those were a lot of years that made me feel hopeless. I guess I empathize with her. It's hard to watch someone you like be out of reach, whatever the reason may be. Even you know what that's like."

"I suppose that's true, Captain Oblivious."

"I'm just grateful you had the patience to wait for me to figure it out."

"You want to go play Big Brother and ask Otabek about it?"

Yuri hesitated, but then lifted his head off his husband's noggin and shook his own from side to side slightly, "I don't want to make it awkward. I'm not even sure what he thinks of her. Nikki's right in that age-range where being Big Brother might be the default for most decent guys, just like how he sees Yurio as a little brother to watch out for. Being nice to Nikki and helping her out, even being protective of her...that may just be his instinct, and that may be all it is. In which case, she'll be hurt anyway...it'll just take longer to figure out."

"Sounds like we should go talk to Otabek about it." Viktor mused, and popped up to sit at the front of his seat. He twisted in place and put his hands on his husband's knees, "This is exciting. Let's go."

"W-What!? Viktor-"

"I'm serious! Isn't this so much more interesting, since it isn't us for once?"

"Er...I mean, sure, but..."

"Let's go find him!"

"We could just as easily make it worse though..." Yuri pointed out, "I mean, you wanted to be with me that whole time you were coaching me before...and I had no clue. Isn't it almost universally true that the one being loved is clueless until it's spelled out?"

Viktor smiled and shrugged slightly, "I guess so, but..."

"If we tell him that Nikki's got a big crush on him, he may distance himself, which will just upset her, because she won't know why."

"So then what should we do?"

"...I think we should stay out of it." He answered, "She's not gonna be with him either way...so we should just be kind to her."

Viktor paused and thought on it, but then nodded, "Alright." He agreed, and turned to retake his seat properly, though he kept one hand on his partner's leg and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Seung-gil's program finished out its last minute, and it's 92.5 score seemed acceptable to him. The next skater up was an older Asian athlete, in the same range as the SkateHusbands.

"The next skater on the ice, representing Malaysia...Malik bin Shukri."

"I should go do final stretches." Yuri commented, "You wanna stay here and watch or...?"

"Watch skating instead of my husband stretching? Perish the thought." Viktor teased, and rose up to his feet. He looked over at the Squad as he helped his beloved rise as well, pup still in arms, "We bid you farewell, then."

"Ganba, Yuri-kun!" Minami cheered, "Even though you're sick, you'll do great!"

"Don't push yourself too hard," Phichit added, and snapped a photo of the pair and their pup as they turned to look his way, "You can make it up in the Free tomorrow if you give yourself breathing room."

Yuri blinked from the flash, but then nodded, "I'll try. It's weird getting tired so fast...I'm sure I'll be forced to slow down regardless. See you guys after, then."

The remaining three waved as the duo departed, and the music for the next show began.

['Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' - Tchaikovsky]

"Oh, that sounds familiar," Yuri teased as they descended into the underbelly. He paused at the top of the stairs to put Jiro down, and let the growing pup trot alongside his skates, "You sure you don't want to watch and compare notes?"

Viktor puffed a laugh, "I did this ten years ago, and a hundred other skaters have done it before and since."

"Alright alright..."

The silver spun around on one blade-guard, but then kept walking backwards towards the prep-area, "You're trying to keep me behind, you sly dog."

"Perish the thought." Yuri retorted, repeating those words from a moment before, "Why would I do such a thing?"

"To keep me from pestering Otabek anyway," He laughed, then put a hand over his heart and held the other up, "I promise, I won't."

"Mhm." Yuri shook his head, but stepped in and pressed a kiss to the man's cheek, "Promise for Nikki. I'm not the one who will get hurt if someone meddles."

"I promise for Nikki."

"That's just what I like to hear." He finished, and pulled down the upturned hand, sliding his fingers into it as he walked along, "C'mon, I've got two minutes left before showtime."