This story will fit into The Real Podium Family universe. The first song is Riverside by Agnes Obel if you want to listen to it.

"Yuuri. Yuuri. I have something for you," Phichit says enthusiastically and Yuuri finally lets him down so that Phichit can drag him to his skate bag, where he pulls something out, "Happy birthday!" Phichit beams as he hands Yuuri the gift wrapped in blue paper, with a little paw-shaped note hanging off of it.

"You shouldn't have..." Yuuri says as he takes the gift.

"Nonsense, Yuuri. But I'm not as rich as Viktor, so don't expect that to be a trip to Hawaii or something."

Yuuri laughs, "I mean, Viktor gave me a song, so…"

"Viktor gave you a song?" Phichit exclaims, and then throws Viktor a dirty look. It makes Yuuri curious as he opens the gift.

The gift is a CD. But not just any CD, no, as Yuuri turns it over to look at the track list, he knows Phichit put this together. It's all the songs that have some sort of special meaning in their friendship (and that includes Phichit's favorite song from The King and The Skater).

"Riverside?" Viktor reads the first track out loud, as he looks over Yuuri's shoulder.

"Oh! That's a good story!" Phichit beams…

It had been a week since the newest member of Team Cialdini had officially joined them and moved his entire life to Detroit. That person was a young Thai skater still in the junior ranks by the name of Phichit Chulanont. Yuuri had exchanged few words with the boy, and their relationship was little more than that of acquaintances. Yuuri didn't know an awful lot about him, and had only watched a couple of his skates when Celestino had told them that he had taken a new student under his wing. The two of them, being almost four years apart in age, had never competed against each other before as Phichit had joined the junior ranks some time after Yuuri had turned senior.

Yuuri didn't feel bad about not getting to know Phichit better. He wasn't much of a people person, and Phichit clearly was, as he had quickly made friends with most of the people in the rink - even the woman who ran the reception seemed to suddenly be a close friend of his. Yuuri could hardly believe that Phichit was only sixteen. When Yuuri was sixteen, he had been even more of a recluse than he currently was and even now he had very few people in Detroit that he would consider friends. None whom he would consider close friends. In fact, the only close friends he had were Yuuko and Takeshi, and they were both back in Hasetsu. And with Yuuri being busy with both skating and college, while his friends had to care for triplets, it had been over two years since he seen them in person. Looking at how easily Phichit fit into the rink made Yuuri think that it would be nice to get along with everyone so easily. But Yuuri was content, he could make conversation with his rinkmates when he wanted to and there was no awkward tension like there sometimes was with his college classmates.

It was halfway through June when Celestino called the two of them over for a reason unclear to both of them. By this time, they had exchanged phone numbers and exactly three texts.

"There has been a mix-up," Celestino began, his students unaware of what he was referring to, "Since Phichit has an ice show next month, I called an old friend of mine to choreograph a new piece for you. I thought you could use it as your exhibition piece for the upcoming season."

Phichit nodded, clearly excited about getting a new program. He had been mildly dissatisfied with Celestino's choice of having him skate to a classical ballet piece for his short program, and while he had been slowly getting into it, a change of pace might be very welcome.

"However, I must have been unclear in my email, because the program she made is for Yuuri," Celestino explained and Yuuri glanced at Phichit to look at his reaction. He was quite disappointed to see that Phichit had no reaction at all. He was always so animated.

"I want to go over the program with the two of you, and let you decide which of you should get it. The style of it suits Yuuri much better, I will say, but with some changes, I believe that you, Phichit, should be able to make it your own."

"Ciao-Ciao," Phichit begun, and Celestino rolled his eyes at the nickname Phichit had given him within his first week of being here, and had never stopped calling him by, "Why can't we both skate it?"

"To the same program?"

"Well, you said we would change it a little if I took it, so it wouldn't be exactly the same. If Yuuri wouldn't mind, I'd love to do it," Phichit looked over to Yuuri like he was asking for permission, but Yuuri wasn't exactly sure why Phichit would want both of them to skate to the same music and program. Yuuri was a senior, and Phichit a junior. It would look worse for Phichit than for him.

"Why would you want that?" Yuuri asked bluntly, and Phichit looked, perhaps, a little startled.

"I thought it would be fun," Phichit said, slowly gaining more confidence in his stance, "And I would like to work with you on something. We hardly ever talk."

Yuuri resisted the urge to shake his head. Since they never spent time together, Yuuri had never realized that saying no to Phichit was a very hard thing to do. "Okay," he agreed, "We both do the exhibition."

Phichit then proceeded to make a sound that was definitely not human, and Yuuri could only compare it what he had always imagined a baby pterodactyl would sound like. When Yuuri didn't join him in his joy, Phichit jumped at him and gave him a hug, which Yuuri didn't know what to do with. Even if he wanted to return the hug, Phichit had his arms locked in place by his sides, and Yuuri awkwardly tried to pat the part of Phichit's arm he could reach.

When Phichit finally let go of him, Yuuri gave him a forced smile. He didn't know Phichit all that well, but he thought that he would soon, whether he wanted to or not.

They began to practice for their somewhat shared exhibition the very next day. The music they were skating to was Riverside, and to make the music feel different, Yuuri got to skate to the instrumental version of the song, while Phichit got it in its original form. Yuuri preferred the instrumental anyway. He had never been good with skating to lyrics.

There was only one planned jump in the entire piece (a clear indicator that this was made for Yuuri), and Yuuri choose a triple axel - his favorite - while Phichit choose the triple flip, which Yuuri would assume was his best jump. As Celestino worked them through the choreography, Yuuri noticed that Phichit paid a lot of attention to Yuuri and what he was doing, which was… odd. They wanted to make these exhibitions their own, so it would make more sense for Phichit to keep to himself and not be influenced by what Yuuri was doing, yet there he was, looking at Yuuri intensely as he worked through the choreography.

Yuuri didn't want to say that it was annoying, but it was at least distracting to have someone look at him like Phichit did. It took Yuuri one week of Phichit (more or less) silently looking at him, before he just asked him.

"Why are you paying so much attention to me?" Yuuri asked, trying not to sound annoyed. Despite his outgoing nature, Phichit was still just sixteen and Yuuri tried his best to keep that in mind.

Phichit rubbed the back of his head and smiled shyly (that couldn't be right) at Yuuri, "I like your skating," he explained and Yuuri had to stop himself for blurting out why?

"Thanks," he muttered instead, and then the awkward silence followed. But only for a short while, because Phichit was a talkative person.

"Part of the reason I came to Detroit was because I wanted to skate with you," Phichit admitted, and Yuuri was sure he looked very visible confused right at that moment, and he didn't know if that was why Phichit kept talking or if he just normally gave people his entire life story once they were on speaking terms, "I have admired you since you won silver at Junior Worlds, so when my coach suggested that I should perhaps go overseas to skate, well, I thought I would train here with you. Of course, Ciao-Ciao is a great coach, but I really admire you so… I was really excited about doing the same exhibition.

But man, you really are so much better than me," Phichit sighed, "There are so many things in this exhibition that are so hard, but you seem to do it so easily! I didn't get why Ciao-Ciao didn't just give me the program even if the choreographer didn't know it was for me, but I understand now. That last part is harder than any step sequence I have ever done!"

"I could help you..." Yuuri offered without thinking, but he was just so overwhelmed by someone saying that they admired him. Who would even admire him of all people, when there were skaters like Viktor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti and Cao Bin? It seemed ludacris to Yuuri, but Phichit was such an honest person, it seemed unlikely that he would lie to him.

"Really?" Phichit beamed at Yuuri, looking up at him with sparkles in his eyes, and Yuuri almost regretted offering. Almost, because Phichit was less taxing of a person than he had anticipated someone like him being, and maybe it wouldn't be bad if they got along.

"Yeah, I don't mind."

Phichit jump-hugged him again, and though he was reluctant, Yuuri returned the hug this time.

"You can do a quad flip?" Phichit exclaimed, his eyes shimmering again (Yuuri had learned that Phichit's eyes were usually full of life and admiration) and Yuuri looked away, not really wanting to disappoint Phichit, who apparently looked up to him.

"Not really..." Yuuri replied slowly, still feeling Phichit's eyes on him.

"Liar!" Phichit yelled (or… not really yelled, more like his voice was loud, but playful and enthusiastic, and Yuuri still didn't know how to characterize Phichit), "I just saw you do it!"

"Oh...yeah..." Yuuri said intelligible, "That."

"Are you going to do it competition?" Phichit squealed (yes, actually squealed) and moved a little so that he could look Yuuri in the eye again, "Viktor is the only one who has done it, and he doesn't even land it half of the time!" Phichit began rambling, "How amazing would it be if you could do it too!"

"But I can't," Yuuri said slowly, and Phichit looked at him almost sadly.

"But you just did it."

"Competition is different," Yuuri shook his head, "You've seen my quad sal-"

"Which is also amazing by the way."

"But I have never landed it in competition," Yuuri finished. The quad flip was a lot of fun, but he felt like that fun would be ruined if he ever attempted it in competition. There was no way he could do it. He would fall, underrotate, pop it or all three. No, the quad flip was for practice and nothing more.

"If you can do it in practice then why not in competition?"

Yuuri looked wildly at Phichit. Was he one of those insane people who didn't feel pressure? "I just can't." Yuuri said, trying to end the conversation. Phichit's smile faded slightly until he let the topic go and asked Yuuri to help him with the exhibition again.

"You don't have an instagram?" Phichit asked outraged, when he had asked what Yuuri's handle was and Yuuri had lied and said he didn't have one. It was a bit of a reflex, since the account he had was both private and more of a fan account. He had no posts, but he followed all his favorite skaters and occasionally, because no one know it was him, he would leave a comment on something. He had been cautious about commenting on Phichit's posts in fear that he would find out that it was him. No, lying was the best thing for him to do here. Besides, no one needed to know that he went under an embarrassing Viktor Nikiforov fan name.

"We'll have to change that," Phichit said, but before he could get a hold of Yuuri's phone (which had the instagram app in it), Celestino graciously walked through the door and Yuuri could honestly say that he had never been happier to see him.

That same night, Yuuri made his official instagram account (without Phichit), and cleverly called it katsudon-yuuri, since all other variations of his actual name had been taken. Just to be on the safe side, he made a new account for his twitter as well, because his fan account on there was a very active one, and Phichit really didn't need to know about it. To avoid getting caught, he immediately shared the new accounts with Phichit, who became his first follower.

"Yuuri," Phichit said again a couple of days later, "Having an account isn't enough. Why haven't you posted anything?"

Yuuri looked at him questioningly, "All I'm doing is figure skating practice. That's hardly anything worth posting about."

"Oh yeah?" Phichit responded smugly, "And what would you post then?"

"I don't know, meeting the queen," Yuuri tried, and Phichit rolled his eyes.

"What queen? The queen of England?"

"Sure."

"Yuuri, you just admitted you were never going to post anything. Ever." Yuuri shrugged, and Phichit magically got a hold of his phone, "Smile!" He exclaimed and leaned in close to Yuuri, taking a selfie of the two of them, which he immediately posted to Yuuri's instagram before giving Yuuri his phone back.

The photo was slightly awkward. Phichit was smiling brightly, winking at the camera and had his arm around Yuuri's neck, his fingers forming a peace sign. Yuuri's smile was more shy, and it was clear from the picture that Phichit had dragged him into this. He also looked like a mess. His hair was sticking up everywhere, ruffled from spin practice and there were definitely drops of sweat on his face - sweat which should have been on Phichit's face as well, but somehow didn't show in the picture. The caption Phichit had chosen was a mere finished practice with phichit-chu and then a bunch of random hashtags.

"There," Phichit said proudly, "Now that you've ripped off the band-aid, you can post whatever you like."

Yuuri looked at Phichit and wanted to shake his head. Yuuri's next post was two months later at his first grand prix assignment in Canada. The picture was of the rink, ice just surfaced and Yuuri about to enter it. The first comment was made by Phichit: I'm so proud of you.

Yuuri, unsurprisingly, didn't make it to the Finals that year, but he did win Japanese nationals for the second year in a row so that was something. What was surprising was when Phichit came up to him after New Years, looking slightly conflicted and without any prompting just told Yuuri what was up.

"My roommate is dropping out of high school," he explained and Yuuri could only nod in sympathy, "I'll be so lonely."

They still weren't the best of friends, but Yuuri was slowly getting fond of Phichit, especially as they had worked on their exhibition together. Yuuri was surprised that only a few number of people had picked up that they were using the same exhibition, but he supposed that by now they looked quite different from each other. But the exhibition had made them friends, and Yuuri was in a bit of a pickle himself.

"You know," he began, "I don't know if it's allowed, but my roommate is finishing his degree overseas, so by the end of the month, I don't have a roommate either."

It took Phichit a couple of seconds to fully get what Yuuri was offering to him, but when he did, he got a little teary-eyed.

"Can I move in with you?" He asked, just to confirm that Yuuri wasn't playing around and Yuuri nodded shyly, not wanting to admit that it was just as much for Phichit as for himself as he didn't want to get to know a new person who would be moving in with him. Letting Phichit move in with him was a whole lot easier for them both, and since their schedules were quite alike, it would probably make it all much easier.

From the beginning of February, the two of them were officially roommates.

The story will have 12 chapters so look forward to more :)