Most of the time, Otabek Altin was what most would consider a regular, mild-mannered motorist. Sure, he also had his fair share of mishaps, like that time when he had tried to beat the red light to get to class on time, or that other time when he had accidentally gone over the speed limit because he'd had a little to drink. (Okay, so those were the only two times.) At the very least, in the three years he has been in possession of his hard-earned non-professional driver's license, he has not run over anybody yet, nor gotten into a fight with anybody over road problems.

Until today, that is. Almost.

He hadn't seen the petite blond girl at all until she had been right in front of him. (Curse this stupid ten-wheeler to his left for blocking his view. Curse the faulty stop light for not turning red three seconds ago. Curse the brakes for not working on time.) Her green eyes widened ever so suddenly as she raised her hands to brace for the impact.

(Most of all, curse this stupid bitch for crossing when it's not yet time to cross the street.)

Fortunately, the car skidded to a stop just in time. Otabek sighed (very, very much) in relief. Car horns honked all over, and people stopped to help the poor girl who had almost gotten hit. She angrily refused the proffered hands and attempted to right herself.

Most of the time, Otabek Altin was what most would consider a regular, mild-mannered motorist. Not today, however. Today, he was an angry-as-hell motorist who needed to be early for his morning exam, and the death glare he sent the girl was a clear indication of it.

The girl-

(Wait. That is definitely not a girl, and Otabek's own eyes widened ever so slightly-)

The petite blond guy glared back at him with the piercing gaze of an angered, ferocious lion, mouthing a certain two-syllabled profanity and raising his middle finger before quickly walking away.

.

"You WHAT?!"

Yuri covered his ears on instinct as Mila's unholy screeching pierced the silence in the room. Many of the (rather full) library's occupants turned their attention to the corner table he and his friend shared, some sending irate glances for longer than is appropriate. The redhead immediately clapped her hands to her mouth on instinct, but it was more of in shock to what her little brother had just narrated than of stopping herself from screaming further.

"I said 'Almost,' Mila," the blond teen half-whispered in anger and annoyance. "I'm here now, aren't I? And I'm not your little brother, you hag!"

"Oh, that doesn't matter, Yura," she dismissed, also whispering back. "Anyway! So instead of helping you, this jackass only glared at you? And and and- you-"

"Yeah, yeah, flipped him off," Yuri waved his hand lazily, "and I feel damn fulfilled, if I do say so myself. You should have seen the look on his face!"

Mila laughed ever so slightly. "Your grandfather's not gonna be happy to hear that."

"I know, which is why I'm telling you this instead of him. I don't want him to worry too much." Yuri took up his pencil and calculator. "Teach me this part again."

Yuri's always been sensitive when it comes to his grandfather, and Mila knows this all too well. So she dropped the matter entirely and proceeded to tutor him in advanced maths for the next two hours. The silence is good for academic progress.

Except when it's not.

They were already preparing to leave when a young, (attractive?) dark-haired and pale-skinned guy with an old Vaio laptop approached their table. (Who even uses Windows these days, Yuri wondered. It was an unfair assumption, but still.)

"Excuse me," he asked in his deep voice, "may I use that power outlet over there? I need to charge my laptop."

"Sure thing, we were just leaving." Mila slung her book bag over her shoulder and beckoned Yuri to follow her. As he nodded to the guy in parting, their eyes met, and the younger blond suddenly felt sick.

Staring back at him are those unmistakable narrowed eyes that gave him that unmistakable death glare at the busy crossing, where he almost got run over just earlier this morning.

"Fuck," Yuri Plisetsky uttered for the second time that day. Mila dragged him away before he could say anything more, shaking her head.

.

Considering all the misfortune that had befallen him today, Otabek had still counted himself lucky. Maybe.

As a result of the mishap he had gotten into this morning (the traffic enforcer had fined him and given him a stern lecture on road safety), he turned up late for his morning exam. The professor allowed him to take it, but only for the last five minutes before the papers were handed in. By sheer luck, he was able to finish all but three items, and found that, upon checking, he had gotten most of the answers correct. He knows he could have scored higher, but oh well, these things do happen.

During the lecture proper, though, Otabek had discovered that he'd forgotten to charge his laptop the night before. He normally kept it at full battery whenever he could; he just happened to forget last night, with all the studying he had to do. As he needed to conserve the power, he could not use the laptop to type in his notes. He settled for good old pen and paper (extra paper courtesy of the very generous Leo de la Iglesia, who surprisingly always comes in extra-crazy prepared all the time, it drives even his Chinese boyfriend crazy), and he felt the most accomplished in his many months of note-taking with his laptop. He, of course, promised Leo that he would transcribe these ten scribbly pages of small Cyrillic penmanship into proper lecture notes for the class compilation. Both in Russian and in English.

Which brought him now to the library. Almost all the seats were taken - at least, all the seats located near the power outlets. He desperately needs to get this done before tonight; they have yet another long exam first thing next morning. (Which he absolutely cannot be late for. Absolutely not.)

Luckily, he spotted a couple of students by the corner table (he knows where all the power outlets are, he just does), just about preparing to leave. He immediately darted over to reserve the spot ahead of the rest of the gadget vultures he just knew were waiting to transfer seats to charge their own devices.

As Otabek was about to settle down, however, his eyes met with that of the redhead's blond friend, and he stopped himself from sighing in exasperation for probably the twentieth time already that day.

He really wasn't going to catch a break today, was he?

.

(For the record, Otabek did finish transcribing his handwritten notes before lunch time.

He did not, however, expect to see the blond boy and his redhead friend standing behind him in the lunch line. They ended up sharing a table due to lack of space.)

.

Yuri was about to open his mouth before Mila kicked him in the ankle from under the table. "Language, mister," she mouthed to him. He shifted his glare at her for thirty full seconds (he counted), before returning it to the guy seated across them.

Both the guy and Mila, however, had started to ignore him in favor of making small talk.

Otabek Altin - he can't keep on referring to the guy as 'the guy' forever - is an exchange student from Kazakhstan, and is three months into his six-month advanced curriculum as a senior in their dime-a-dozen high school in St. Petersburg. Meaning, he's already taking university courses while still actually being in high school. Meaning, he's being a thousand times more awesome than little freshman Yuri can ever dream of being someday.

Meaning, Yuri's jealous as fuck.

(Mila's actually taking the same curriculum as Otabek, but she's just Mila, so.)

Mila was now apologizing profusely for her younger friend's actions, and offered to pay for Otabek's lunch as recompense. (No, no, no! The blond teen screamed in his mind as he repeatedly kicked Mila's ankle, but she paid him no mind.) The good Kazakh guy graciously declined the offer, however, instead directing a pointed reminder to Yuri himself to "be careful when crossing the street next time."

(No, his cheeks and ears are not flame-red. They simply are not.)

Yuri swallowed once, then apologized. A ghost of a smile passed Otabek's lips as he accepted the apology.

The conversation eventually moved on to lighter topics, from the fickle changes in weather to the upcoming Figure Skating Grand Prix Finals in December. Having no interest in either topic, Yuri picked at his food instead. He didn't care how much Mila loved Tazusa Sakurano's latest (and probably last) skating routine, nor about that retired Chiyuki girl who was said to have committed suicide recently. (And why are both of the skaters the hag idolized from Japan anyway?)

Okay, so maybe he did care a little. (Just a little, mind you.) Next to his dear, dear grandfather, Yuri loved Mila very much like an older sister. Not that he'd admit to it, anyway.

And from the looks of it, it seemed that Otabek was also genuinely interested in the topic, as well. He'd mentioned a Nikiforov and a Katsuki from the men's singles division, and how the two were rumored to be dating or something. (At least one of the names involved is Russian this time. Finally!)

Again, not that Yuri cared or anything, but he was definitely not going to join this conversation. Definitely not.

In any case, Mila seemed to be interested in spending more time with Otabek, probably trying to get him to open up more and befriend his Russian classmates, because "it's good to make plenty of memories, right?" The man eventually relented after much persuasion, and was considering bringing his coursemates from the special international class, as well. (Yuri vaguely recalled a Leo and a Guang-hong being mentioned.) To this, Mila whooped in joy, promising to get back to him someday about this before leaving for her afternoon classes.

Leaving Yuri alone with Otabek for the rest of the afternoon.

(Why didn't he have any classes scheduled today, of all days, the teen lamented. He hates awkward situations.)

Before he knew it, he'd agreed to spend time with the Kazakh student until the latter's next class at five in the afternoon. He hoped the pirozhki stand was open, for starters.

.

Otabek smiled as Yuri let out a "Hell Yes!" before turning back to his own screen, which showed his character soundly defeated by the blond teen's just moments earlier. He felt proud of the boy, in fact, carbohydrate high or not. No matter his competition's age in real life, Otabek took them all seriously, and never went easy on them.

(It was even better because they both loved this particular game. It was a childhood favorite, in fact, on Yuri's part. Button mashing was love.)

As expected, Yuri wouldn't have it any other way, either. He'd probably never had any rivals this good in his age group, so challenging the much more experienced Otabek had proven to be much harder than he'd thought. It took the boy more than twenty attempts, a couple of smashed keyboards and a string of irate Russian profanities before he finally defeated the Kazakh man at his own game. The young gamer warrior's loud cry of victory was sweet.

And just like that, four hours at the PC center quickly flew by. It was, in a word, satisfying.

As both guys crossed the street on the way back to the campus, Yuri solemnly turned to Otabek. "Thanks for not going easy on me, man," he begins. "I really appreciate it."

A content smile on his face, Otabek faced the teen and looked him directly in his eyes. Staring back at him were the eyes of a soldier who never gave up and rose to the challenge again and again, despite having been beaten many times already. "I wouldn't dream of it, Yuri," he answered just as seriously. "It's what friends do."

At this, Yuri's eyes widened, his ears three shades redder. "F-Friend... Beka, I..."

Otabek smirked, brushing aside the fact that the teen had just blurted out his nickname for some reason, despite him not ever having mentioned it. He isn't nearly this obvious when Mila's around, it seemed. It was quite cute, actually. "Are we friends or not?"

When they reached the end of the crossing, he got a nudge in the elbow in response.

.

Most of the time, Yuri Plisetsky was what most would consider a problem teen. Not problematic in the sense that he was bad at everything he did - he was one of the good kids in their high school (grades-wise) in fact. It's just that he was very, very prone to antagonizing everything and everyone when he's agitated (which, to his grandfather's horror and frustration, was most of the time.)

Fortunately, he leaves the cats alone. He loves cats.

It was a miracle he hadn't gotten suspended yet for causing trouble. He'd heard of a certain redheaded bully-hunter from some Japanese middle school who got demoted to the lowest class for beating up school bullies into submission. (Not again, what's with this country and its penchant for attracting all the troubling news?)

Today, however, Yuri was in a perfectly good mood, as he sat beside Beka in the front passenger's side of the car, passively tuning out Mila's animated babbling from the backseat while Beka waited for the red light to turn green.

Alas, however, it was not to last for long.

The car lurched forward to a sudden stop just as it was about to start moving again. (Curse this day for suddenly turning bad in three seconds.) "The hell, Beka?!" Yuri started to grumble, but was cut off by Mila reaching forward and directing a nod to the scene before them.

"Look, Yura. A marriage proposal."

All around them, pedestrians cheered while motorists sounded their car horns in celebration. Beka, too, had his hands off the wheel, predicting that this would take a long while.

Dumbfounded, Yuri watched the scene unfold as a tall, silver-haired man dropped to one knee, a gleaming gold ring in his hand. His boyfriend, a plain-looking, black-haired Asian kid with glasses, wiped the tears continuously streaming down his cheeks as he nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, Viten'ka, yes!" he shouted happily, loud enough for the trio in the air-conditioned car to hear.

Viten'ka then proceeded to put the ring on his now-fiancé's right finger and embraced him tightly, whirling them both round and round in the middle of the crosswalk. Horns honked, music played, people cheered, and Mila's tears stained Yuri's headrest. Even Beka was clapping, albeit showing no expression.

The angry teen was the only one not happy about it. (Curse this goddamned day to hell, dammit.)

Most of the time, Yuri Plisetsky was what most would consider a problem teen, whose saving grace was that he loved cats. And today, he was that same problem teen with an even bigger problem with the city and the world - and most of all, with this stupid lovey-dovey couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other in the middle of the goddamned road in the middle of the morning.

So Yuri reached out and sounded Beka's car horn, giving it one, good, long, annoyed press. Almost immediately, silver-haired Viten'ka whipped his head fast in their car's direction, not letting go of his still-sniffling fiancé. The angry teen attempted to press at the horn again, but Beka caught his hand with a firm grip and forcibly put it back down on his own lap.

Around the same time, the light turned green, and the Asian boyfriend walked him and his Russian man to the sidewalk as the cars started to move again. Mila rolled her window down and shouted her congratulations to the newly-engaged couple as their own vehicle started to speed up. And because he was pissed as hell, Yuri wasn't going to let the chance to have the last word slip away.

He raised a middle finger to the couple, which Mila attempted to block from their view in alarm. Beka drove even faster as a result, muttering something about not wanting them to get in trouble with some Nikiforov or something.

Yuri's good mood was restored for the rest of the day.