Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/9095710.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Yuri!!!_on_Ice_(Anime)
  Relationship:
      Otabek_Altin/Yuri_Plisetsky
  Character:
      Yuri_Plisetsky, Otabek_Altin
  Additional Tags:
      blowjob, handjob, Established_Relationship, Long-Distance_Relationship
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-12-28 Words: 2821
****** Erotes: Pothos ******
by drfeels
Summary
     Pyeongchang, February 2018. Yuri Plisetsky arrives, and for the first
     time in his life is on the same place on earth with Otabek Altin for
     longer than just a few days. This is just the start of adding days
     spent together to their long-distance relationship, the relationship
     they've kept buried.
Notes
     I wrote this fic with more of a homophobic undertone because at the
     time I hadn't seen Kubo's tweet about the world being more one
     without discrimination. I'd read it as one much like what we tend to
     experience, in which sometimes we are not subject to blatant bans on
     ourselves but that subtle kind of suppression of certain parts about
     us. The fact the commentators would call Viktor's ring kiss a
     "prayer", things like that, made me laugh a little because at the
     time it seemed like they were just coming up with excuses for him to
     get away with it. The rings were directly addressed by Phichit, which
     made me feel like it was very ignored overall except in those pockets
     with other athletes also undergoing the pressure, who they can be
     themselves with.
     I personally had a lot of Russian classmates in the immigrant school
     I attended who were the same when I would talk about my partner, they
     would only acknowledge her when directly necessary but otherwise it
     wouldn't really exist. So here, I took that experience of myself and
     largely how a lot of sports tend to be, with "don't ask don't tell"
     policies implied, and wrote a Yuri yearning to have Viktor's
     immunity, but also one who still can't relax in his own head. I hope
     you can keep this in mind and feel what I hoped, which is something a
     bit anxious, a bit bittersweet, but overall hopeful.
     Thank you for reading.
There are no gays in Russia.
That is the “official” stance handed down to the Olympic team. It is not new,
and while it’s the official stance, it would be stupid to think any ounce of
truth is bred into it. Figure skating is more full of this than anywhere, the
quiet hiding of it all.
When you’re still only 16 verging on 17 you can’t get away with anything.
Just over the cusp of 29, though, that’s a different matter. It takes over 10
years to really be an adult, to have anything like that. Viktor can kiss Yuuri
Katsuki in front of a hundred TV cameras and it will be like nothing has been
done. A free pass. It merely does not exist. The internet will notice, fans
will notice, it will be a footnote in his Personal Life page on Wikipedia, but
the punishment will be nothing.
You can’t disown national heroes like that.
But Yuri Plisetsky is not yet a national hero. National heroes have Olympic
golds. National heroes have more than one case of trophies. To be a national
hero is to be so loved that nothing will test it, even death.
His itching, anxious heart climbs up his throat and threatens to burst out his
mouth.
Stupid.
He’s only gotten one message he’s bothered to read since arriving. The two
months since the Grand Prix have felt more like an eternity than the end gap
between spring and summer, more than the slow-ache turn to August to September
to the final weeks of October where his head is so full of everything that it
might as well be blank.
There are only ever two-day intervals they get to even be near each other.
They are not boyfriends.
They are not anything. Two months ago, in a blank canvas of a city, deep in
December, a dark evening in a darker hotel room, he let Otabek touch him in a
way he’d never let anyone. He still has fever-dreams about it, hot fingers on a
cold night, and then over so fast with no time to savor it.
Otabek had not pushed. Otabek had not asked. But Otabek wanted, he knew that,
he knew it and deep down there was a restless itch within him that wanted too.
Things the other skaters sometimes whispered about in the practice rink’s
lounge, stories they tell on the long plane flights to kill the time, stories
that are probably too inflated to actually be the truth.
Even woven with lies, these things itch within him.
Everyone his age has sex.
Everyone his age has sated their desire.
Desire is normal.
Desire is human.
There are no gays in Russia.
All the things he’s been blatantly lied to about, all the things he knows are
not true, but all the things he’s swallowed so many times that they churn in
his stomach.
He can’t believe the truth when he hears it from himself.
Everyone his age lies about sex.
Everyone his age has too much desire and not enough time.
Desire will eat you.
Desire will kill you.
He is part of Russia.
Otabek never asks about this, maybe because they’ve seen each other so few
times since that first motorcycle ride. This has been nearly two years, but if
you count up the days you’d have enough fingers and toes to name them all. Days
strung together by long text chats of pointless things. Otabek seems to have
some sixth sense, whenever he finds himself unable to think of what to say,
what to send, though he wants to talk, it seems Otabek is always thinking the
same. Before he can press send on the most inconsequential “rain today. gross.”
Otabek has sent a song, or a picture, or something to save him from the
embarrassment.
It’s always so few words, but still just enough to know what needs to be said.
His phone is a museum archive, his Alexandria, filled up with every song, every
picture Otabek has ever sent.
And now, just as he’s about to send, “where are you”, Otabek sends him a
picture of the neon Coca-cola sign near the entrance to the Olympic Village.
He pockets his room key, wallet. His ribs thrum like each of them contain a
new-plucked harp string. His stomach trembles. Outside the lobby door, the neon
lights of PyeongChang beckon.
                                     * * *
Otabek has a roommate who is mysteriously, fortunately absent from the room
after their dinner. Yuri reaches in his coat pocket and devours a menthol
pastille so fast he feels likes he’ll choke to death.
Did you set this up, he wants to ask, but he feels like he doesn’t want to know
the real answer to that. The way Otabek locks the door behind him, sets the
chain, tells as much. It’s smaller than his room two floors down in the Russian
commune, but the same size beds. Otabek pulls one of the chairs over from the
table in the corner and sets it down, flicks on the TV.
This is different from the last time, last time in the darkness of Marseille.
Darkness lit by Christmas lights, spotlights on long-standing cathedrals. This
is the burning flicker of a quiet TV.
Last time there was no pretense and it was all instinct, they had checked into
that small hotel room with every intention of what was about to happen. He is
not even sure what he wants to happen, he knows what can’t happen, not until
over a week from now, when everything is over and he doesn’t have to worry
about every small ache in his bones costing him the gold.
He lays back on the bed and pulls at Otabek’s warmup jacket sleeve. Otabek
mutes the TV and hesitantly comes with him, lays next to him so only the barest
amount of their skin touches. He’s warm, he always runs warm. His cheeks are
hot as he presses his face into the curve of Yuri’s neck, gently, slowly, and
he hovers, stiff until Yuri feels his own body relax and then Otabek follows
and lets his head sink into the pillow underneath. His lips are large, soft
with a gentle coating of vaseline, lately he’s always got a tin in his pocket.
It’s good for soft lips, chapped cheeks.
Two months ago it was good for other things, too.
Fingers slick with vaseline inside him, Otabek’s gentle weight bearing down,
pressing their hips together with friction.
His cheeks go hot now as he remembers, he’s remembered so many times before,
alone, but now he’s remembered with Otabek laying next to him, Otabek’s exhales
drifting across his carotid, his jugular, his trachea as his breath quickens.
A soft, damp kiss against the base of his throat, and when he turns his head
Otabek is watching him with dark eyes that blur and fill his vision as Otabek’s
hand gently pulls his head closer and their lips meet. Soft, slow.
Impatience.
He pulls away and kneels and pulls Otabek out of his jacket, his t-shirt,
fingers crawling up inside against the seams and he can feel all those hard
muscles, the heat that burns his fingertips into cinders through Otabek’s skin.
Otabek returns the favor, pushes the edges of his shirt up and helps Yuri rip
it off in a whirlwind and everything gets tossed aside at the chair Otabek was
sitting in a few minutes ago. He’s over him on his knees, leaning, long strands
of blonde hair draping across Otabek’s chest.
He can still smell the menthol on his own tongue as he breathes in. Otabek is
wearing jersey pants with a waistband that rolls down easy under his thumbs.
He’s only done this once before, in all the added-up parts of their time
together it was probably only ten days ago, but in the reality it’s been nearly
a year.
He wets his lips and devours.
He doesn’t like it, really. He feels like he’ll choke when it hits the back of
his tongue. The taste of skin, sweat, it’s unpleasant, it stagnates on his soft
palate. At least this time his tongue is half-numb from the cough drop and his
throat feels cold when he swallows down some of what Otabek is leaking,
something he can’t taste. He doesn’t like this at all, it’s purely mechanical
acts, means to end. There is nothing appealing about this sensation.
But he repeats it because what he liked last time, what he likes now, is the
noises Otabek is trying to swallow back down. The movements of Otabek’s thighs,
his stomach, his hands gripping for traction against the bed cover. Soft lips
let go of heavy breaths. His thighs tremble. He breathes louder, harder. More
of that, more, hotel walls are always too thin but this time the hotel is so
filled that the noises meld together and it’s impossible to divine what
language they’re in, where they’ve come from. Even now, if he snaps himself
away from Otabek he can hear shouts, televisions, the clatter of plates.
He tries to go too deep and he coughs. He has to pull back, take another breath
for a moment and wipe his lips on the back of his hand. Otabek’s hand is there,
instantly. He half-sits up with a furrowed brow that is nearly imperceptible in
the flickering light of the muted TV.
“You don’t have to go too hard.”
He pushes him back down with a hand. “It’s fine,” he says, and he pushes a bang
out of his face, extends the length of his tongue and silently curses himself
for not bringing a hairband.
Otabek’s fingers weave into his hair, brush it back behind his ears as he goes
back down and tries to take him back into his throat like he’s seen on the web.
It seems he hasn’t done this enough, and what enough is he’s not sure but it
has to be more than twice. The ridge of the head hits his soft palate and he
can’t, the tears prick at his eyes as he pulls back and just laps at it, lips
pulled tight over his teeth. Otabek’s fingers tighten and all the muscles in
his body contract. The only sound echoing in Yuri’s ears as he tries to keep
composure is those deep, heavy breaths.
When he pulls up Otabek has a tissue waiting. He’s not a swallower. It tastes
disgusting, and the texture is even worse than that. He spits into it and
scrapes his tongue with his teeth and balls the tissue up on the nightstand.
Otabek pulls him back for a kiss.
“It’ll taste gross.”
Otabek runs a finger along his bottom lip. “You spit it out,” he says. “It’s
fine.” He pulls them tight together and their skin meets, and he hadn’t felt
cold before but he does now, against how Otabek burns. Even his lips are hot
against Yuri’s neck, his collar bone as Otabek helps him slip out of his pants.
“Do you want me to do it for you?”
“Just your hand,” he mumurs.
Otabek has not been down there yet with his tongue, and part of him still
cannot parse the idea of that. Only in the dark, only his hands, that’s the
farthest he’s let Otabek go.
Back at the rink, under inflated lies, if he was the type to tell stories he’d
call it sex. They wouldn’t ask who, they tell stories without genders, without
faces, and they never ask who. He’s felt they can always tell, they can smell
it on him, even when he says nothing. He has not yet had what is considered sex
with Otabek Altin but he has been had with those fingers, he has let Otabek
open up his body.
Now he gives it up again, opens himself but Otabek just strokes him off with
his hand while he breathes, closes his eyes, tries to let his mind unravel. The
slow-evolving monster blooms inside his head. Blank space and reflex and his
legs are moving, moving, moving on their own, one curling over Otabek’s hip.
His whole body curls in on itself, centering on those thick fingers, that hand,
that burning warmth. Then, expansion, outward, his back arches and Otabek’s
forearm is against his back to steady him so he doesn’t tip over off the bed.
He breathes heavy as Otabek grabs another tissue and cleans off his hand,
crumples it next to the other one on the nightstand.
Yuri runs his tongue over his teeth and prays he’s got another menthol pastille
somewhere before he pulls his socks off the floor and starts with those. Otabek
is laying on his stomach, running his other hand through his hair.
“You can stay a while,” he says. “Roommate won’t be here until late, he took a
different flight, he’s just left. Won’t get in until four.”
“In the morning? Shit. Sucks.”
He pretends he hasn’t heard the first half of the sentence.
But Otabek knows that, because this isn’t the first time he’s said it, that
soft hint, you can stay, even though he’s yet to ever do anything except leave.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to sleep in the same bed yet. He can’t.
Maybe if he can pull Olympic gold he’ll earn a night where he can escape
without too many questions. As it stands, it is still eight days too soon for
Otabek to ask him to stay.
Eight days is also nearly half of their entire relationship.
This stretch of weeks will be the longest they’ve been in the same place
together since the summer Otabek spent in Russia. This may be the longest time
they have in a while. He pulls on his jacket and checks the pocket. No
pastille.
He checks the bathroom, where Otabek’s still yet to unpack half of his
toiletries. Travel sized mouthwash is next to the faucet, still sealed in
plastic. He gags himself trying to rinse with it, downs a cup of water to
mellow the burning on his tongue.
Otabek’s got a shirt on now, and warm-up pants again. The chair is back where
it belongs. The TV screen is engulfed in bright red, a McDonald’s commercial.
It reflects in the whites of Otabek’s dark eyes as they flicker to him.
“When do you skate?”
“Thursday, you?”
“Wednesday. Do you want to get coffee Tuesday night?”
“Monday,” Yuri says, because it’s only Saturday now, and days here will be
long. Yakov has assured them of that, nobody gets out of 12-hour practices,
warm-ups, health checks, post-practice muscle stretches, ballet exercises.
Every day is going to feel like a week. “Do you have a bike?”
He steps into his shoes.
“I made sure to rent a spare helmet.”
He ties them.
“I’ll text you.”
The door closes with finality. He sets a notif on his phone calendar while the
elevator slowly creeps down and opens. Georgi is there, leaning against the
back wall. It’s too empty. He glances at his phone. Midnight. He’s overshot the
time by over an hour.
“Yakov was looking for you earlier,” Georgi says, as though there is ever a
time Yakov is not trying to keep him under lock and key. He sidles up with a
slight grin. “You smell...fresh. Up to something? Finally enjoying your first
Olympic experience?”
The menthol bites his tongue as he hisses out, “Fuck off.”
Georgi opens his mouth to guess something stupider but the doors open with
mercy. He chews his tongue and kicks himself internally. With only two floors
for the ride, that’s all Georgi has time to press him about, but it’s more than
he wants. No names, no faces. No details. No answers. No stories.
He shoves open the door to his room.
When he’d left it’d been still light out, but now the view is the vastness of
those city lights. His roommate is still out. They’ve barely even met. Yakov
has had the mercy of rooming him with someone he doesn’t know and doesn’t have
to know.
He lays back on the fresh hotel sheets, courtesy of the maids. He flicks on the
TV and considers a shower. His phone buzzes in his back pocket.
 
 
     goodnight.
>>reply
 
 
     night._
His ribs thrum again. It will take eight years to become a national hero, but
eight days to become an Olympic one. If you add it all up it’s just twenty-
seven days spent on the same piece of earth. Twenty-seven days he’ll never tell
the truth of to another soul, not even once he’s a national hero and long dead.
He will have that gold around his neck, and for one night he will have his own
terms.
There are no gays in Russia. That can continue to be what they agree to.
But he is in a small hotel room in Pyeongchang, counting the minutes to Monday.
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