Chapter Text
Yuri gagged to himself as another round of laughter came from the kitchen.
He didn’t dare look over the top of the couch he was laying on in fear of seeing Victor and the pig all over each other.
What could possibly be so funny about making lunch?
He left the Twitter thread he was reading and texted Mila demanding to know why she wasn’t rescuing him.
Out of morbid curiosity and in order to confirm his suspicions, Yuri sat up and glanced towards the open kitchen.
Sure enough, Victor had his arms around Katsudon, pinning him against the counter as the shorter man worked on the chicken salad.
They were whispering to each other before Yuuri gently smacked Victor’s chest and they laughed again.
God.
“I’m right here,” Yuri sneered. “Christ, get a room.”
“Oh, you mean like our bedroom?” Victor asked innocently as he tightened his grip around his fiancé. He buried his nose in the other man’s dark hair. “What do you say, Yuuri? I think that sounds like a great idea.”
“Ew, God! Gross.” Yuri immaturely covered his ears.
“Victor.” Face red, Yuuri untangled himself from the taller man’s hold. “Don’t tease him.”
“But it’s so much fun,” Victor pouted.
Yuuri raised a brow at him before turning to pull a few plates out of a cabinet. “We’re sorry, Yurio. But lunch is ready.”
Yuri frowned at the hated nickname and pushed himself off the couch. “I’m going out with Mila.”
“Oh. Now?”
“Yeah.” Yuri went through the hall of the apartment to grab a jacket from his room.
It was early February in fucking Georgia, so it wasn’t exactly cold – Yuri was Russian for Christ’s sake – but the jacket went with his outfit, so he kind of needed it.
Entering his room, Yuri gasped when he found the goddamn dog on his bed. “Hey!” he rushed over and shooed off the large poodle. “Get off!”
Makkachin whined at the interruption to his nap, but eventually jumped off the bed and trotted out the door.
Fuming, Yuri looked around his (rather messy) room and spotted Potya lounging on his desk chair. “I’m sorry, Puma,” he cooed as he gently picked up the fluffy Himalayan. “Did that dumb, stinky dog steal your spot?” He gave her head a kiss before placing her on the comforter.
The cat sniffed around, pawed at the bedding, then promptly curled up and closed her eyes.
After taking a few (read: ten) pictures of her sleeping form, Yuri grabbed the leopard print jacket draped over the back of his chair and slipped his arms through the sleeves as he left his bedroom.
“Victor!” he shouted as he made his way back over to the kitchen. “Tell your stupid dog to stay out of my room.”
Victor gasped from the table. He got out of his chair and kneeled by the dog that was now laying pathetically on the kitchen floor.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he told the poodle, who’s tail began to wag from the attention. “You’re very smart. He didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You can’t blame him!” Victor gave him those big, annoying eyes. “If the door is open, he thinks it’s okay.”
“I have to keep it open for Potya. Just teach him to stay out.”
With a loving kiss between the ears of said dog, Victor sat back at the table across from Yuuri. “Well, you know what they say about old dogs.”
“You’d know something about being old,” Yuri mumbled.
“Hm?”
“Nothing.” He pulled out his phone to check his messages.
Mila had responded.
Yuri went to the door and buzzed her into the building.
Only a minute later, there was a rapid knocking on the door and Yuri pulled it open.
“Uncle Vitya!” Mila called out, pushing past him into the apartment.
“Hey!” Yuri closed the door and crossed his arms.
“Mila!” Victor sung out as he stood up. He crossed the room and pulled her into a hug. “It’s been so long!”
Yuri rolled his eyes. “It’s been like a week.”
“Yuuri!” Mila broke away from her hug to slightly dance across the room to Yuuri.
“Hey, Mila.” Yuuri gladly accepted her hug with a smile.
“Well, can you blame us?” Victor asked Yuri. “You always go over to her house. We miss her!”
“That’s because her parents don’t dry hump on the couch. I have perpetually horny guardians.”
“That was one time! And we said sorry. We thought you were asleep.”
Yuuri cleared his throat awkwardly and let Mila go, his face flushed again. “Do you want to stay for lunch?” he asked her, clearly trying to change the subject.
“No.” Yuri answered for her before she could respond. “We’re leaving.” He slipped on his high-tops by the door.
“When will you be back?” Yuuri asked.
“Later.”
“Have him back by six please!” Victor told Mila.
“Will do!” She grinned and went back to the door.
“Six?” Yuri’s arms fell to his sides in disbelief. “It’s Saturday.”
“You have that history project due Monday…right?” Yuuri asked from the table, his voice going quiet as he sat down.
Yuri narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. So?”
The other Yuuri couldn’t keep his gaze.
Victor stepped in with a slightly forced smile. “So, I thought you should get a start on it tonight so that you don’t save all of your work for tomorrow.”
“I’ll get it done, alright? Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back later.”
“You’ll be back at six.”
“Victor!”
“We just thought it would be better if we didn’t have a repeat of last weekend,” Yuuri spoke up.
Already utterly annoyed, the pig’s unnecessary comment only pissed Yuri off more. “Stay the fuck out of it!” he snapped. “No one asked you to speak!”
So what if last Sunday’s homework meltdown was a little worse than usual? It was a bad night, sure, but it was none of that pig’s business. Yuri could take care of himself. He didn’t need some random loser sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.
“I’ll be in the car,” Mila said in the sudden silence. “Bye.” She waved quickly and slipped out the door, escaping the awkward atmosphere.
“I…you’re right. I’m sorry,” Yuuri said quietly as he looked down at the table.
“No.” Victor’s voice was unusually stern. His eyes were icy as he glared at Yuri. “You will not talk to him like that. Apologize.”
Yuri actually scoffed. Like hell he was about to apologize; he was in the right! The pig had no right to act like he had a say about anything in Yuri’s life. “Get off my ass, old man.” He turned for the door, but Victor grabbed his upper arm. It wasn’t tight enough to hurt, but it kept Yuri in his spot.
“I mean it.” Victor’s typically dumb smile had turned into a thin-lipped line. “Apologize to Yuuri. Now.”
Yuri furrowed his brows and yanked his arm out of Victor’s grasp. “Fine.” He turned to the other Yuuri and practically snarled, “I’m so sorry that you can’t keep your fat ass out of my business!” He threw open the door before Victor could stop him.
“Yuri!” The older man yelled after him, clearly upset.
Yuri slammed the door behind him and rushed to the elevators.
Damn. He hadn’t heard Victor sound that pissed in a while; he never used his real name unless he was angry. It was always that dumb nickname.
Yuri just didn’t like being told what to do. Especially not by his second cousin’s fuck buddy. Fiancé, if he was being technical. Whatever.
Who the fuck was Katsudon to talk to him like that? Like he was his mom or something.
Yeah, right.
Yuri smacked the down button as soon as he reached the elevators and glared at his sneakers.
~~~~~~~~~~
“I hate that you guys get along,” Yuri said over the noise of the food court as he bit into a fry.
“Hm?” Mila looked up from her phone, then smiled. “We all just like to make sure you’re taken care of,” she mockingly cooed as she reached over the table to tousle his hair.
Yuri nearly hissed as he pushed her hand off. “I’m serious. They’re so goddamn annoying. Always telling me what to do. Being all lovey and gross in front of me. It’s disgusting. As if I need to see that.”
“Poor Yurochka.” Mila took a bite of her orange chicken. “It must be awful to be trapped in a well-adjusted household with a steady income and two loving partners.”
“Suck a dick.”
Mila only smirked and sipped her coke. “Not on my schedule for today, but thanks for the suggestion.”
Yuri had met Mila a year before, when he was a freshman. She’d put off her foreign language requirement until her last two years of high school, so she was the only junior in his Spanish One class.
When he found out she was also from Russia, they struck up a conversation – in Russian – and it went from there.
She was super annoying a majority of the time. She loved to tease him and lean her arms on his head since she was a full head taller than him.
She could also be a real bitch and shot back whatever Yuri threw out.
She was kind of awesome. Although he would never tell her that.
They had a bit too much fun talking shit about other students in Russian so no one could understand what they said; not that Yuri ever held back from talking shit to people’s faces in English, either.
It was also really great that she had a car so he could escape whenever the apartment of three guys and two pets felt too crowded.
And it was maybe possible that she was the first person he came out to.
Victor and Yuuri would be overly supportive, which would’ve been obnoxious, so Yuri just let it slip at lunch as they did their typical shit talking. When Mila brought up her ex’s – both boys and girls – and how much they sucked, Yuri’s “I think I’m gay,” was rushed and cut off her sentence.
Mila just shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, I kind of figured. Anyway –”
Yuri actually smiled as she continued her hypothetical hit-list.
Mila gave no fanfare when it really mattered and annoyed him just to the edge of his breaking point.
Yeah, okay. Maybe she was his best friend. Whatever.
“Can I stay over at your place tonight?” Yuri asked, dragging his finger through the water ring his paper cup had left.
“Are you kidding me?” Mila asked incredulously. “And have Victor hunt me down? No thanks.”
Yuri groaned and threw his head back dramatically. “They’re always on my ass about everything.”
“Do you want to come to college with me? You’re so small I could definitely fit you in one of my suitcases.”
“Only if you actually manage to get into college.”
Mila whined and stabbed at her plate with her fork. “It’s not my fault! That asshole broke up with me in September. Of senior year. Who does that? So yeah, maybe some of my grades dropped and my entrance essays were a bit of a mess, but I actually heard that your grades in junior year matter the most, so I’m fine,” she rambled. “Right? Yeah. I applied to ten different schools, so at least one has to accept me, right? But especially SCAD, right? They’d be crazy not to accept me, right?”
The Savannah College for Art and Design was the top choice for most of the art students at their school – Mila was in AP ceramics and never shut the fuck up about it. It had a shit ton of buildings scattered throughout the city, both dorms and class buildings alike, so Yuri had probably passed multiple of them without even knowing. He did see a lot of the student art showcased around, though. Some of it was shit, others were alright.
It seemed like a good school. Or, it would have if Yuri cared about that kind of thing anymore.
“Yuri, tell me I’m right,” Mila pleaded.
“Would that make you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Then I won’t.”
“You’re so –” Mila cut herself off as her eyes caught sight of her phone. “Oh! Message!” she announced excitedly and snatched up her phone.
Yuri chewed on his straw and rested his hand on his palm.
He knew that reaction: she was talking to someone she was interested in.
The said asshole who had dumped her at the beginning of the year was some dumbass football player, so Mila had sworn off athletes. Then, she had a short fling that ended badly with some girl in AP chemistry, so she’d said she was done with science students.
“Are you still talking to that guy?” Yuri asked. It wasn’t like he was interested in relationships. He wasn’t interested, just…curious.
“What guy?” Mila glanced up from her phone as she frantically typed.
“I don’t know his name – that one who smokes weed in the band room.”
“Oh, God no.” She wrinkled her nose and put her phone down. “That was just a hookup.”
“So, who was that?” he asked, glancing at her phone.
“Oh, who knows?”
Yuri just stared at her. “Huh?”
“I mean, I’m talking to like twelve guys. I can’t possibly remember the names of all of them.”
“…You’ve officially lost it.”
Mila just waved him off. “It’s just Tinder, so it doesn’t really matter.”
That made Yuri pause. “You have a Tinder?”
“Yeah, like everyone does. I am so over the guys at our school.”
“Let me see.” He grabbed her phone before she could respond.
“Don’t open any messages. It might be too intense for your young, virgin eyes.”
Yuri just flipped her off as he opened her phone (she always picked the easiest passwords) and tapped the Tinder app.
He looked through her profile – she was pretty enough, he guessed – before scrolling through her page of conversations. “Jesus Christ, Mila.” He looked up at her, not sure whether to be alarmed or impressed. “Twelve? There are like thirty guys here.”
“It’s fun!” Mila defended herself as she stole her phone back.
“And you – you don’t actually meet up with all these guys, do you?”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “What do you take me for? My body count is only like five! Obviously, I don’t meet these guys. That’s what makes it so fun.”
“Sounds like a lot of work for nothing.”
“My sweet, little Yurochka.” Mila gently patted his head again before Yuri smacked her hand away. “That’s what you’re just too young to understand.”
“I’m not too young! So explain it!”
Mila smirked and tucked a short strand of red hair behind her ear. “It’s hours of entertainment. I can just talk and flirt with guys with no commitment. And if I do decide to meet up with one, then I’m guaranteed free food. And if the date goes well, then who knows?” She grinned as if she was telling some sort of great secret. “And if I get bored or someone’s being really creepy, I can just block them. It’s kinda fun to fuck around on it when you don’t take it seriously. That’s why I filtered it so I only see men – I don’t like messing with girls like that.”
“You are insane.” But it sounded…a little entertaining? Yuri didn’t know. It caught his curiosity, though.
He didn’t have any experience when it came to that sort of thing. He was only fifteen to be fair, but he also wasn’t exactly a ‘people person’. He knew he hypothetically liked guys, but he couldn’t imagine actually tolerating someone enough to be in a relationship with them.
Plus, Mila was right: all the boys in their school were annoying as shit.
But the idea of practicing, so to speak, with some stranger he could just block was tempting.
Mila finished the food on her plate and pointed her fork at him. “No, they are. You would not believe how many guys are into Russians. I guess they have a mail order bride fetish or something.”
“Huh.” Yuri mindlessly chewed on his last fry. “Maybe I should get one.”
Mila’s joking expression fell. “Um…you’re fifteen.”
“God, Mila, I’m not going to do anything! Just sounds fun.”
“It is, but you have to be eighteen or older to play.”
Yuri rolled his eyes and stood up, grabbing his trash. “You’ve only been eighteen for like two months.”
“That’s all it takes. Besides, I’ve dated before, so it’s not like I’m new to anything.”
“I’m not that innocent,” Yuri insisted.
“Oh please, you’ve never even kissed anyone.” Mila stood up and followed him to the closest trash can.
“I could totally kiss a guy if I wanted too; I’m hot as hell.” Yuri shoved his trashed in the bin, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “But the guys at our school all suck.”
“I’ll give you that one.” Mila threw her trash away before looping an arm through the crook of Yuri’s elbow. “But you’re still a baby; you’ve got plenty of time!”
“Shut up.”
They made their way out of the crowded food court and into the open area of the mall.
“Where are we even going?” Yuri asked, allowing Mila to pull him along.
“First, I have to go to Sephora because they have this incredible moisturizer, then –”
“You know that’s not going to get rid of your wrinkles, right?”
Mila flicked him on the forehead.
~~~~~~~~~~
“See you Monday!” Mila sang from the driver’s seat as she pulled away from the door of the apartment building.
Yuri gave a single wave before he used his keycard to enter the building.
The large lobby glowed brightly compared to the already dark sky. It was only five-forty, but the early February evening was dim.
Mila had wanted to make sure they’d got back on time, so they’d rushed back to the point where they were twenty minutes early.
Yuri stood in the lobby with his hood up, peaking through his blond fringe. He didn’t want to go back up. He leaned against a wall and crossed his arms, his shopping bag crinkling from the movement.
Victor and Katsudon would be up there all happy and gross and expecting him to apologize. Yuri didn’t want to deal with it. With them.
But he got bored after only five minutes, so he sighed to himself and headed over to the elevators.
He pulled his hood off as he got in the elevator and took his phone out to scroll through Instagram for the short ride up. He slid his phone in his back pocket when the door dinged open and made his way to the apartment.
Quietly, Yuri unlocked the door and slowly opened it, sticking his head inside. He expected to find the two men in the living area or kitchen, but the large room was empty.
He gently closed the door behind him and toed his shoes off.
Voices drifted from down the hall.
As carefully as he could, Yuri stepped over the carpet as he made his way to Victor and Yuuri’s room at the end of the hall.
“…you something?”
Yuri heard Victor’s voice muffled through the cracked door.
“No.” Yuuri’s voice was low. “I’m fine.”
“Yuuri.”
Yuri heard sheets rustling, like someone was sitting on the bed.
Victor spoke up again. “I’ll make dinner tonight and we –”
“No.” Yuuri’s voice was stern. “I said I’m fine, Victor. I’ll just…wait here.”
“You need to eat something.”
“Then I’ll grab something and eat in here.”
There was a pause; then, “…You really don’t want to come out that badly?”
“I…” Yuuri sighed. “I just don’t think he wants to see me right now.”
“Yuuri –”
“It’ll be easier for everyone if I wait out in here for a bit.”
Yuri turned his head in order to hear better.
“He’s probably already forgotten about it,” Victor said. “I know he sounded angry, but he always gets over it quickly.”
“I just…” There was a slight catch in Yuuri’s voice. “I can tell he still doesn’t like me very much. I – I don’t know what to do.”
“Hey.” Victor spoke soft and low as Yuri heard another rustle of sheets.
Yuri couldn’t see them, but he could easily imagine Victor holding the other man, placing his head atop Yuuri’s.
They were always so touchy-feely.
“This arrangement is still new,” Victor continued. “You only moved in here less than a year ago. These things take time.”
“I know…”
“And he’s still trying to adjust, too. It’s been a tough few years for him.”
“I know that. Which is why I don’t want to make anything worse.”
“I am so happy you’re here. Honestly…if it weren’t for you, I don’t know how I would have handled everything. You are nothing short of incredible. He’ll see that, too. He will.”
Yuri left after that. He felt weird; he didn’t want to listen any longer.
He silently went back to the front door and opened it before slamming it shut immediately after. “I’m back,” he announced.
Victor emerged from the master bedroom and smiled. “Yurio!” he exclaimed, his tone lighter than it was only a moment before.
Yuri sidestepped Victor as the older man came to greet him.
“Oh, what did you get?” Victor asked, eyeing the shopping bag.
“Is this an interrogation?”
Victor hummed to himself. “Just a question.” Another question seemed to linger on his lips, but he didn’t ask it. “So,” he traveled to the kitchen and leaned on the granite countertop, “we were thinking dinner in an hour.”
“Whatever.” Yuri turned to go down the hall before Victor stopped him.
“Yuri.”
Yuri sighed in frustration. “I know. I’ll start on my homework now, okay?”
“No.” Victor’s gaze was pointed. “Are you okay?”
Yuri didn’t like how he seemed to look straight through him. “I’m fine.” With that, he went towards his room.
He paused before he entered and looked farther down the hall to the master bedroom. Victor had left the door open when he’d left it. Before he could stop himself, he passed his own room and went there instead.
Makkachin was napping on the wide bed and Yuuri was sitting with his laptop open at their desk.
“Hey. Katsudon.” Yuri stood in the doorway. He shoved his hands back in his pockets, the bag bumping his thigh.
Surprised, Yuuri turned around in his chair. “Oh, Yurio…hi.”
Uncomfortable, Yuri avoided eye contact and looked at the paintings on the wall. “I, uh –” He wasn’t one to apologize. He didn’t really know how. After a pause, he settled on, “Earlier – what I said. I didn’t mean it. Okay?”
Yuuri gave him a soft smile. “Okay.”
That was the most Yuri was willing to give, so he ducked out of the room and went to his own, closing the door behind him.
He dropped the bag of new t-shirts on the floor before collapsing on the bed.
Potya – who’d barely moved since he’d left earlier – made a small sound at the disruption. Pulling her into his arms, Yuri buried his face into her soft fur. She allowed it for a minute before she started to squirm in his grasp. He let her go and she trotted to the end of the bed before she sat down and began to bathe herself.
Yuri said that he’d start his homework, but he didn’t feel like it, so he rolled over and opened his laptop, which was resting precariously on the edge of the bed.
He fucked around online for half an hour until he put on a dumb Youtube video and went back to his phone.
Between checking his Instagram comments and starting a Twitter fight, a text from Mila popped up at the top of his screen.
Afterwards, Yuri laid on his back and stared at his phone.
So, Mila was actually meeting up with one of those guys? He knew she wasn’t going to last long.
But it was another high schooler, so he was at least glad she hadn’t completely lost her mind and started seeing old guys.
Chewing on his lip, Yuri decided to bite the bullet and see what was so great about that stupid app. He went to the app store and downloaded Tinder.
Naturally, the first thing it asked for after his phone number was his birthdate.
So, just as naturally, Yuri lied.
He picked a random day and after putting in that he was born November twenty-third, nineteen ninety-seven – making him eighteen – he had a Tinder account.
Setting up his profile was actually kind of fun.
Yuri wasn’t exactly modest; okay, he knew he was attractive, so he had plenty of pictures of himself to choose from. He picked some of his favorites – good selfies, pics taken with timers – and filled in any information he felt like adding.
What he wrote in the profile wasn’t really important, so it didn’t take long and once he finished, he started swiping.
He had filtered who he saw to only guys between eighteen and twenty within the city, but holy shit it was never-ending.
He swiped left on most of them – they all looked like losers or douchebags – but some of them seemed okay enough,
“Yurio!” Victor threw open the door and Yuri threw his phone in surprise.
“Jesus Christ, Victor!” Yuri sat up as Potya jumped in alarm. “Fucking knock!”
“Language.” Yuri poked his head into the room.
“Dinner’s ready,” Victor told him.
“Could you set the table?” Yuuri asked.
“Have you been working?”
“Do you need any help?”
“What are you watching?”
“Oh my God! You two are so annoying!” Yuri threw a pillow in their direction which they both easily avoided. “Get out!”
“Are you coming though?” Victor asked with an irritating, expectant smile.
“Yes! Now leave!”
They left with matching grins and Yuri fell back on his bed with a huff.
They were being obnoxious just to piss him off, but whatever was cooking in the kitchen smelled really good.
Yuri’s stomach grumbled, so he rolled off the bed and picked up Potya. “Come on, girl. Let’s get you fed, too.” He walked out into the hall as the cat rubbed her head against his chest.
There was a crash in the kitchen, followed by Katsudon’s voice. “Makkachin, no! Bad dog!”
“Don’t yell at him!” Victor whined. “He doesn’t know any better! He’s just a baby!”
“Vitya, he’s like fifty in human years.”
“Well how is he supposed to know that?”
“This is what happens when you coddle him; he doesn’t learn boundaries.”
“He’s sensitive, Yuuri.”
Yuri promptly turned around and put Potya back in his room. “Let’s wait another minute.”
Potya meowed in agreement and settled herself back on the bed as Yuri picked up his phone to wait out the dog parenting discussion.
He opened Tinder to find that he already had a few matches.
~~~~~~~~~~
Yuri sat in the hall with Mila and her other friends, since he was well known as one of the few underclassmen cool enough to hang with the seniors.
He’d made it clear the first day of freshman year that he was not one to be fucked with and his reputation only grew. Even before his his sophomore year began, everyone knew better than to get on the bad side of Yuri Plisetsky. Despite his small stature, he could be scary.
The one junior who tried to shove him into a locker once ended up with a foot down his throat. He couldn’t look at Yuri anymore without cowering.
It also didn’t hurt there were rumors floating around that he had ties to the Russian mafia.
So, yeah. Yuri could sit with the seniors.
He also joined them on Fridays when seniors were allowed to leave school for lunch; even the security guards didn’t dare try to stop him.
But it was Wednesday, so they spent their lunch hour sprawled out in a corner of the school by the chorus rooms.
Yuri ignored Emil’s animated story about his experience at a silent disco as he scrolled through Twitter. The rest of the group laughed at the story, while Mila and Sara, Emil’s girlfriend, giggled at something on Mila’s phone.
Sara’s hand lingered on Mila’s knee.
Yuri rolled his eyes and went back to his phone as he bit into a chip.
God, those two were flirting all the time.
Emil was too much of a dumbass to notice his girlfriend’s wondering eye, so Yuri couldn’t really feel too bad for him. Granted, Mila and Sara had never actually done anything – Mila would have spilled it immediately – but they’d been playing that stupid pretend-they-aren’t-into-each-other game for two goddamn years.
Yuri wished they’d just hookup already.
He got a notification from Tinder and switched to the app to find a new message from some guy named Derek.
Did you get your pants from space? Because your ass is out of this world.
Yuri actually snorted; that was so lame. He showed it to Mila and Sara, who laughed at its ridiculousness and told him how to respond.
Mila was right – Tinder was fun.
In only four days, Yuri had talked to so many guys he lost count. He fucked around with them and flirted for fun, but then ghosted or blocked them when he got bored or grossed out.
A large number of messages were guys asking him to sit on their face or proudly announcing their dick size, but there were some funny ones and he had a few genuinely good conversations.
He never talked to a guy for more than a day if he bothered to respond at all, so it was just some easy entertainment.
After telling Derek that he hadn’t heard that pick up line yet, but it was still lame as hell so he didn’t get any points, Yuri went back to the main page.
“I’m surprised so many guys are falling for this,” Sara said. “I mean, who would actually believe you’re eighteen?”
“Fuck you,” Yuri said as he swiped left on a guy posing with a dog. “I could totally be eighteen! It’s not my fault I’m short.”
“She’s right, Yuri.” Mila nodded in agreement. “You’re the definition of jailbait.”
“And fuck you, too. It’s just talking, so it’s whatever.”
Mila rolled her eyes playfully, then went back to her not-flirting-but-definitely-flirting with Sara.
Yuri ignored them along with whatever Emil was enthralling the group with and focused his attention back on his phone.
He sighed outwardly as he swiped past the third guy in a row holding a fish. What the fuck was it with men and fishing? Anyone with a picture of a dog or a fish was an instant pass.
Pulling his knees to his chest, Yuri brought his phone up to his face and kept swiping. He paused when he suddenly met with a pair of dark eyes.
Yuri found himself staring at the photo of the new guy on the screen: his hair was as dak as his eyes, and he had a strong jaw and an intense gaze.
Yuri swiped through his pictures, brows shooting up at one where the guy was leaning on a motorcycle.
Holy shit.
Yuri went through the guy’s photos again. He had a few candid shots of him in parks and city sidewalks. There was a photo of him DJing, too.
Jesus, he could DJ?
He also had a really nice mirror selfie; a half-smile lined what looked at be a rather stoic face.
Yuri bit his lip unconsciously.
The guy on the screen was attractive.
No, he was hot.
Then, doing something he almost never did, Yuri actually looked at the guy’s profile instead of just his pictures. He didn’t really know why. He’d seen plenty of hot guys, but this one was –
Well. He was probably an asshole like the rest of them, but Yuri liked his eyes. So, he took the time to read his profile.
Otabek.
His name was Otabek. He was nineteen and a freshman at – holy shit. He went to SCAD.
There was an emoji of a flag in his profile that Yuri swore he’d seen before. He studied the small flag. Light blue with – was that a sun in the middle? And something else? It was too small to tell, but it looked familiar.
Otabek certainly wasn’t an American name, so maybe he was from another country, too? That would be cool.
Shit, everything else about him seemed unbelievably cool already.
“Baba.” Yuri smacked Mila’s arm to get her attention. “Baba, baba, baba, look at this one.”
Mila leaned over to look at Yuri’s outstretched phone. Her eyes immediately brightened in interest and she grabbed the phone from his hand. “Ooh, he’s hot!” She swiped through his pictures with a grin.
“He’s okay, I guess,” Yuri supplied nonchalantly. “He goes to SCAD, too.”
“What?” Eyes skimming across his profile, Mila’s mouth dropped. “Oh my God. How have I not seen him yet?”
“Maybe he filtered out old hags.”
Mila waved him off and continued to look through Otabek’s profile. “Yuri! He says he’s bi! I have a shot!”
“Hey!” Yuri reached for his phone, but Mila held it out of his reach. “I saw him first!”
“I’m not done reading!” She gasped with a smile when she looked back at the phone. “Look at that, we’re neighbors!”
Yuri paused. “Huh?”
“Look.” She held the phone to his face and pointed to the small flag emoji. “That’s the flag from Kazakhstan. We’re country neighbors!”
Kazakhstan? Right, that’s how Yuri knew it. It was located right below Russia. What were the odds of that? That was…kinda cool.
“Oh my God,” Mila said again, her hand flying to her chest dramatically. “This is fate. I’m destined to marry this man.”
“Gimmie that!” Yuri snatched his phone back.
“I have to find him. It must be a new profile.” Pulling out her phone, Mila mumbled to herself as she opened the app and started swiping.
Seeing Mila’s attention completely taken by her phone, Sara pouted and leaned against Emil.
Yuri went back to looking at Otabek’s pictures again. Why not give him a shot, right? It was just talking.
He swiped right. It was a match.