One and Two

Scene Three: The Best Part About This Is That No One's Stopping Me

Actually, that was a lie. Who in their right mind would ever do such a thing? Victor was a crazy man with a talent for making split-second decisions that would affect the rest of his life. But that was what happened anyway, in the least helpful way possible.

Yuri was walking skittishly along the moderately busy street outside the hotel, keeping an eye out for any possible threats to his sanity (so really any of his ice-skating acquaintances) when, from right behind him, Victor's long-fingered hands descended onto his shoulders like spiders pouncing elegantly onto their prey.

"Come, let's have lunch together," Victor urged as Yuri waited for his spirit to come back into his body. Apparently Victor was used to people gasping like they were having heart attacks when he started talking to them. Yuri glared at him suspiciously-Victor was smiling with the down-played exuberance of a man running across a former student in a genuine accident, rather than the intensive rooftop stalking Yuri was convinced he'd been doing instead.

Yuri managed to get enough breath back to respond. "No," he said.

Except "no" did not work on Victor Nikiforov.

Yuri found himself being ushered enthusiastically (read: coerced) into a little deli just across the street from where they were, which Yuri hadn't noticed before. It was packed squarishly between two shops and had a vacant second floor crouching morosely over it, but the inside was clean, rustic, and homey, and had one of those tinkling door-bells that amused Victor so.

Remembering his time at the coffee shop with Otabek, Yuri got himself a glass of water, with ice. No worries about being drained to the dregs there-if he found himself needing to do something to deflect the awkward, even if the water ran out, the ice would melt into more water. Genius. There was no possible way that Victor could make him think about sex, or other men having sex, or him having sex. Sex with Otabek. Wait, what?

Curses. That was half of his water gone already.

"So, how are things going?" Victor pried coyly-or at least, that was probably what he meant to do, but as far as Yuri was concerned after the previous day's "nice thighs" incident, every time Victor opened his mouth he committed a war crime.

"Things," Yuri growled back. "What things?"

Victor chuckled, like a young, fit, metrosexual Santa Claus. "Oh, things," he repeated, like he found Yuri's mistrust adorable and misplaced. And then he added, in the same breath, "Things with Otabek."

"There were no things," Yuri blurted out in immediate defense. "And it was an accident."

Victor's eyebrows went up and Yuri knew instantly he'd said too much.

"Ah, but Yurio, there are no accidents in love," Victor declared, so heartfeltly that the people from the next table over started looking their way. "There are only the natural and fortuitous responses of your body to the subconscious."

The second Victor stopped talking about skating, Yuri usually stopped understanding what he was saying. Now, for instance-Victor was still talking animatedly, but Yuri had no idea about what. He almost knocked his own sandwich off the table with his sweeping hand gestures.

"Wait," Yuri's mouth said for him, making him suddenly blanch. "What do you mean 'in love'?"

But like many of the people who for some inexplicable reason had stopped being afraid of Yuri, Victor completely ignored him and carried on like Yuri had agreed with him.

"And you," he said, still too loudly, "well, your body can respond in many ways-you're trained in classical ballet, so you ought to be very flexible. You know, my Yuri-"

The one you sleep with, Yuri supplied in his mind.

"-is much more…malleable. Shapely, even. But you aren't like that-you're much more…whippy." Victor snapped his fingers when he found the word, obviously pleased with himself. Yuri was less than.

"What do you mean-"

"Ha, ha, see? Look at you snap." Victor snapped his fingers a few more times and laughed at himself for longer than was warranted.

"Now Otabek, on the other hand," he said after he recovered, and Yuri hated that his interest piqued at that, "is quite different. He has some more bulk on him. Very solid legs-very nice."

Victor gave him that slit-eyed birds-singing-in-the-trees smile and flapped the tail of his scarf at him like a lady's fan. "Many skaters have nice legs. Wouldn't you agree?"

Oh, dear God.

Yuri wanted Victor to stop looking at him like that. He wanted Victor to stop looking at anything like that.

Just as he was debating whether it would be better to try and drown himself with his water or hurl it at Victor and leg it out (oh, God, legs), a miracle happened. Or more accurately, a miracle came jogging over like a bouncing puppy, calling and waving for Victor.

The sexual tension immediately ratcheted up by ten degrees as all of Victor's attention diverted instantaneously to the other Yuri (the one he sleeps with, he thought again) and he stood from the table to affectionately greet him, but Yuri didn't care because it gave him an effective way out of this situation. He made use of that flexibility Victor had so discomfitingly described to crab his way out from between his chair and the table, while his two very questionable idols did that weird standing-too-close-to-each-other thing that couples did.

But he didn't get far.

"You know," Victor called after him with mischief in his eyes, "like teacher, like student!"

While Yuri sputtered, Victor winked at him, several times in succession-wasn't the once enough?-and then leaned into the arm that slithered seductively around his waist. Yuri added that to the list of things that needed to stop happening: Katsuki taking advice from Giacometti. Someone had got to be in charge of Katsuki, and clearly it should not be Victor.

Yuri spun on his heel and stomped out, not able to stop himself from feeling bitter about how Victor and Katsuki could make everyone around them feel awkward while being completely comfortable with themselves and each other. That was a state of being that had become very, very foreign to Yuri over the past few days, and he sulked about it the whole way back to the hotel while he wondered why.

Nearly half an hour later in the hotel garden, he still could not find an answer. That was where Otabek found him, glaring at the topiaries and frightening the other guests into avoiding him.

"I was looking for you," he said, slightly breathless, and even though Yuri had been keeping his hood up and his head down he could see a flush on Otabek's cheeks that was just obvious enough for him to imagine that maybe Otabek literally had been looking for him, searching through the streets and shops, and he hadn't stopped until he'd found him just now.

He paused like he was about to continue, but the pause just kept lasting, and it struck Yuri for the first time that maybe Otabek didn't really have any idea what was going on with them, either. Otabek, after all, had spent years of his life worrying about what Yuri thought of him and probably wouldn't have had any idea to approach him about it if Yuri hadn't happened to need to escape from a pack of rabid she-wolves. And anyway, Otabek was very straightforward-but that was because Yuri would never know what he was thinking if he wasn't.

Shrugging his hood back, Yuri cocked his head slowly and cattishly to one side to scrutinize Otabek through narrowed eyes, the very first inklings of something beginning to dawn on him-something about how Katsuki and Victor looked when they stood beside each other and something about that word Victor had said that Yuri hadn't liked.

After Otabek had stopped talking, he had stumped up to Yuri's shoulder, and now he was standing stolidly with his hands in his jacket pockets, breathing so close to him that he was disturbing a few of the flyaways Yuri had created when he took off his hood. He still smelled faintly of sweet coffee and misconceptions.

"Hey, Otabek," Yuri started to say, not sure where he was going but becoming more and more convinced that Otabek wasn't sure either.

But out of nowhere, Otabek interrupted him.

"Would it be all right if I kissed you?" he asked, and then seemed very surprised that he had-"very" for Otabek meaning "barely discernably".

"I would still like to be friends," he added in a stilted non-sequitur, and if Yuri tried hard he thought he could read a stoic but somewhat vulnerable discomfort off his blank features.

"Okay," Yuri said after a short but weighted silence, because he understood what Otabek meant this time and what else was there to say? But Otabek started in place like maybe he thought differently.

"What?" he said, with a voice crack that made Yuri flash back to younger, less fortunate days.

"I said okay," Yuri clarified angrily, because he still said everything angrily. "To both of those things."

Otabek still seemed like he didn't understand what was going on, but Yuri was done with that. And since he'd been meaning to bring it up anyway, just before Otabek did, Yuri half-turned right into Otabek's personal space and kissed him.

It was not a good kiss. Yuri had never done it before, and it was impractically executed because Otabek didn't accommodate him at all and he was quite tall compared to Yuri (everyone was quite tall compared to Yuri). It was also a tad bit forceful. But it tasted the way coffee smelled and left his senses blending into each other in a way that made Yuri certain he would have fallen off Otabek's bike if he was sitting on it right now.

"There," Yuri said, taking a pitbullish stance. "We're still friends."

Otabek, the dark horse of the Grand Prix, looked down at him with obsidian eyes. "Ow," he said.

Yuri raised an eyebrow that could very well have been Victor's. Otabek shuffled around slightly, visibly tried to come up with something to say, and then visibly stopped himself from saying it.

"I don't have to become your coach, do I?" he said finally. "Because I doubt I could instruct you in skating."

"It's fine, whatever," Yuri huffed, unhappily accepting that Victor Nikiforov was going to be a part of his love life forever. "I'll teach you."

For some reason, this made Otabek get a kind of silly look on his rugged face-a subtle version of the of dazed grin that Yuri sometimes unwittingly inspired in various overenthusiastic female fans. Somehow, Yuri didn't mind it so much on Otabek, and in fact, would not have minded seeing it again soon.

"Okay," said Otabek, because that was something they both understood.

And just like that they were back to standing in the hotel garden with ugly topiaries, Otabek with his hands in his pockets and Yuri with his hood back up and no words left between them, but this was a very different beast. This was Victor and Katsuki's beast, except less irritating. This was the art of doing nothing yet dancing perfectly-like a free skate choreographed and practiced until it was flawless, but with no planning or point system. And that, Yuri realized, was just love.

"Hey," he said to Otabek. "Have you ever been to an onsen?"

Holy abrupt tone change, Batman!

Well, now you all know what I've been doing with my spare time. This is the only non-D. Gray-Man piece I've ever posted on my account, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'd love to know how you feel, though.

Cheers to the readers!