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It’s so hot.
When Otabek messaged Yuri a few months ago, asking if he wanted to go on a backpacking trip round Europe, it seemed like a good idea. Weeks with his best friend in the sunshine, soaking up the culture and ignoring their responsibilities sounded fun.
Except now they’re sitting in a crowded plaza in Rome, and it’s feeling decidedly less fun. The sun is glaring down onto the cobblestones, his tank top is sticking to his skin, there’s conversations going on in about six different languages and the kid behind him has just started screaming.
Otabek is sitting opposite him, purveying the menu with a neutral expression. He looks as calm and unbothered as he usually does. Yuri is envious. He doesn’t think he’s felt more on edge in his life.
He pulls his Aperol spritz towards him and takes a sip. It’s started to go warm, the remnants of the ice cubes floating on the surface like the boats they saw on the canals in Venice. Yuri’s not even sure if he likes Aperol spritz - there’s something about the flavour that always seems just the wrong side of bitter for him - but they’re in Italy and it feels like the done thing, so he drinks it anyway.
“You okay?” Otabek asks as there’s a gurgle from the straw from Yuri draining his glass while it’s still somewhat cold.
“Just warm.”
“Yeah, you look it.” Otabek lowers the menu and brings his hand up to Yuri’s forehead. His face quickly settles into a frown. “Yura, you’re burning up.”
“Yeah, it’s fucking warm.”
“No, I-” There’s a scrape as Otabek drags his chair round the table so he’s closer to Yuri. “I thought your heat’s not due yet?”
“It’s not,” Yuri replies, but he scrabbles for his phone anyway, opening his tracking app. He stares at the screen. “See?” He turns the phone to his friend. The app clearly says 5 days until your next heat. They’d talked about it when booking the trip, because they had to, and they’re booked into a heat hotel near Pisa in four days’ time. Until then, they’re in a hostel.
“Are you sure?”
Yuri shuffles uncomfortably in his seat. He’s on scent blockers, so that’s not a problem, but everything else is pointing towards a conclusion that he really doesn’t want to make. He’d been putting it down to being tired from travelling, but there’s something with how on edge he feels that he knows is something else.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no, it’s not your fault. Come here.” Otabek opens his arms and Yuri gladly falls into the embrace. They’re just friends, but Otabek has been helping Yuri through his heats for the past year or so, and there’s something about his muted alpha scent that Yuri finds quite comforting. “Shall we go back to the hostel?”
Back at the hostel, Yuri hovers awkwardly in the door of their shared dorm while Otabek packs their things. Since they’re doing the trip on Otabek’s bike, neither of them has much to pack, which is definitely useful at the moment. If Yuri thought he was on edge before, that’s nothing to how he’s feeling right now.
They’re not going far: the hostel does have private rooms for this sort of thing. Sure, it’s not going to be as nice as the heat hotel they were meant to be at in a few days’ time, but they’re making the most of what they’ve got available to them.
Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones in the room. There’s another guy in there - some Canadian, who looks a bit like Otabek if you squint, yet a hundred times more annoying. Yuri hasn’t liked him since they met. He’s been trying to make conversation since they got back, and neither of them are in the mood for it.
“I thought you guys weren’t leaving yet?” the guy - call me JJ, Yuri remembers - says.
“Change of plans,” Otabek replies shortly. He zips his bag shut and moves on to Yuri’s. He frowns as he goes through Yuri’s things. “Yura, where’s your toothbrush?”
“On the shelf,” Yuri mumbles. He can barely think. It’s too hot in here. The window’s open, but it’s not exactly doing a lot. They’ve been assured that the private rooms have aircon, and Yuri can’t wait. His toothbrush seems immaterial at the moment. All he wants is to be in bed, preferably sitting on Otabek’s knot.
“Hey, man, you don’t look good.” JJ’s staring at Yuri, an intense kind of look in his eyes that instantly sets Yuri on edge. JJ is, Yuri belatedly realises, also an alpha.
“He’s fine,” Otabek says. He stands up, bags in hand. He’s not as tall as JJ is, but he squares his shoulders and there’s something about it that feels more imposing, more protective. Otabek doesn’t often do the whole macho protective alpha thing - Yuri’s more than capable of fighting his own battles - but there’s something, when he’s on the edge of his heat like this, that makes Yuri glad of it.
“You sure you don’t want an extra pair of hands?”
Otabek gives JJ a very long look. The silence stretches out between them like the Apennines, and Yuri is desperate to say one of many curse words on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t. Eventually, Otabek says, “And what on earth made you think either of us were interested in sharing?”
“I - I was just joking, man, I didn’t —”
“Come on, Yura, let’s go.”
“Fucking asshole!” Yuri yells over his shoulder as they leave, just for good measure.
Their new room is on the top floor of the hostel, at the opposite end of the corridor to all the shared dorms. It’s quieter, the window facing an inner courtyard rather than the bustling street. It’s en-suite, which makes a pleasant change, and there’s only one bed.
“Oh,” Otabek says when he notices. “Fuck, I didn’t ask about how many beds.”
“You’re about to stick your knot in me for the next three days, it’s fine,” Yuri says. He dumps his bags by the wall, kicks off his shoes and collapses onto the sheets. Usually, when Otabek helps with his heats, he spends most of his time sleeping on Yuri’s couch, only joining him in the bedroom when Yuri needs him. “Means I’ll get to be close to you.”
Otabek lets out an awkward chuckle. “Right, well, if you’re okay here, I’ll go out and get snacks and stuff. Any particular requests?”
Yuri shakes his head. “Just the usual.”
“Sure. I’ll message you when I’m nearly back, okay?”
“Okay.” Yuri knows what that means, knows it’s code for please don’t be fingering yourself when I walk through the door. That happened once before, the first time Otabek had agreed to help him. Otabek got stuck in traffic, Yuri got desperate, and it ended up being rather awkward all round. That’s a distant memory now, though. They have a routine, an agreement, and everyone gets what they want.
Well, almost.
Yuri makes a nest whilst Otabek is out. It’s nothing like what he would have at home, with the piles of pillows and carefully draped blankets that take up residence on his bed most of the year, not just when he’s in heat. Here, he has to make do with the hostel’s over washed sheets and the limited amount of clothing he and Otabek have brought with them.
The nest he does manage to build isn’t going to win any prizes, but it’s better than nothing. Most importantly, it smells like both of them. No matter how much the adverts try to persuade omegas that they must have the softest, highest quality nesting materials available, Yuri thinks that it’s the scents that matter more than anything else. There’s a certain comfort in having your partner’s - well, that’s perhaps not the right word in their case, but even so - scent in a nest, one that even the designer nesting materials can’t hope to replicate.
Yuri can feel his heat building steadily. It’s already worse than it was in the square, what was the quiet crackle of kindling slowly burning every fibre of his being until it reaches the ultimate inferno where he can barely remember his own name and all he wants is Otabek. Well, if he’s being totally honest with himself, he wants Otabek now, always, and maybe forever. He’s never said anything for fear of ruining the friendship they’ve already got, but sometimes he can’t help but wonder and fantasise about what it would be like to be with Otabek properly. He loves being friends, don’t get him wrong. And he loves how they help each other with their cycles, how close it makes them feel, but sometimes he can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have… more.
Otabek returns after about half an hour. He’s carrying a bag from a local supermarket, filled with pre-packaged snacks and bottles of electrolytes.
“I couldn’t get the protein bars you like,” he says as he arranges it all neatly on the bedside table, “but I think we’ve probably got enough to see us through.”
“Thanks,” Yuri mumbles. He grabs one of the bottles of electrolytes, uncaps it and downs about half the bottle in one go. He knows he’s going to need it before long. In fact, when he thinks about it, he’s been absolutely ravenous the past couple of days. He really should’ve known this was coming.
“You okay for now, or…?”
“Yeah,” Yuri replies. He knows his body, he knows he can hold out for a few more hours yet. “Can we watch Netflix or something?”
Otabek agrees, so he kicks off his trainers and grabs his iPad before joining Yuri on the bed. They settle in to watch some more of a series they’ve been watching whenever they’ve had downtime over the course of the trip so far. Usually, this has consisted of Yuri clambering into Otabek’s bunk and splitting Otabek’s AirPods between them, but today it’s different. They don’t have to be right on top of each other, but they still are. They don’t share the AirPods and instead let the sound play directly from the iPad’s speakers. Yuri slowly moves closer and closer to Otabek until his head is resting on the alpha’s shoulder, and Otabek doesn’t react one bit.
They get two and a half episodes in before Yuri really starts feeling restless. He starts fidgeting. He can’t focus on the episode. He’s convinced that Otabek has never smelt as good as he does right now.
He can feel that he’s starting to get wet.
After a few minutes of Yuri’s relentless shuffling, Otabek pauses the episode and puts his iPad away. “It’s time, right?” he says, and it’s all Yuri’s got in him to nod.
As heats go, it’s one of the better ones Yuri’s had. It’s not too intense, doesn’t leave him feeling completely strung out at the end of a wave. Otabek seems even more on it that he is usually, tending to Yuri’s every need, sexual or otherwise, sometimes before Yuri even knows what he needs himself. He knots Yuri at a consistency that seems maybe more than usual, but it’s not like Yuri’s complaining. He loves the feeling of being full, being stretched out, that closeness with another person that only knotting can truly provide.
And oh, Otabek is more than happy to provide. Day turns to night and turns to day again as Yuri loses himself in the feeling of skin against skin and his and Otabek’s mixing together to the point they’re barely distinguishable from one another. It passes in the haze he’s familiar with from heats past, a haze of wanting, needing Otabek in the most intimate of ways.
Yuri wakes up slowly after his heat. The neediest has faded away, and now he just feels gross and sweaty and in desperate need of a shower. Otabek’s still sleeping, so Yuri extracts himself from the alpha’s arms and walks across the bedroom to the ensuite.
It’s not until he’s cleaned his teeth and is halfway through brushing his hair that he notices it. There, on his neck, are a series of bites, blooming purples fading to yellow around the edges. It’s not a bite bite, but it still hurts when Yuri presses his finger against the mottled skin.
“Ow,” Yuri mumbles, and goes back to brushing his hair.
Otabek’s never bitten him before. He’s always been so careful not to leave marks. It was one of the first things they discussed when they started helping each other out: no marks, because they could make it look like the two of them are something they’re not, and they’re just friends, right? Yuri’s not angry about it, though. It’s a heat, these things can happen in the heat of the moment. Like how when they first started helping each other out, Otabek muttered some half-baked notion about not knotting Yuri, but in reality, that went out the window in a flash.
Yuri, for one, has never complained about that. He wouldn’t admit it to Otabek, but his friend’s knot is quite possibly the best he’s ever had, to the point where Yuri started to believe the notion about how you can have an alpha that really fits you in a way no one else does.
Showered and feeling slightly more human, Yuri pulls on some clean clothes before heading back into the bedroom. Otabek has now stirred, sitting up in bed scrolling idly on his phone.
“You okay?” Otabek asks.
“You bit me,” Yuri blurts. It’s the only thing on his mind right now. Otabek bit him. That’s not nothing, no matter how he tries to play this off.
“Shit, sorry.” Otabek puts down his phone and goes over to Yuri. He peers at his neck, running his fingers over the faint outlines of his teeth marring Yuri’s skin. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s fine,” Yuri replies. “It is what it is. Heat of the moment or whatever, right?”
“Right,” Otabek says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He clears his throat and picks up his phone again. “So, I’ve been thinking about the rest of the trip…”
They don’t speak about the bites again.
Another of their stops is at a vineyard in the Italian countryside, tucked between rolling hills and gorgeous villas. Otabek’s bike shudders to a stop on the gravel, and they both clamber off the bike and make their way inside.
“Buongiorno,” says the guy at reception. He’s about the same age as they are, with tanned skin and brown hair. “Welcome to the Crispino Vineyard. You are checking in?”
“Yes,” Otabek says. They pull their passports out from the inside pocket of their bags and place them on the counter. “The room should be under Otabek Altin.”
The guy nods and taps away slowly on his keyboard. He’s clicking about on the screen when a girl appears from the door behind the desk. She’s clearly related to the guy - siblings, if Yuri had to guess. Maybe even twins.
“Buongiorno,” she says with a wide smile. “Michelle has sorted you out?”
Michelle says something in Italian and the girl steps forward, peering at the computer screen. She looks up to them, back down to the screen again and also says something in Italian. The two share a look that almost seems a bit mischievous, and it makes Yuri feel a bit nervous.
“Is something wrong?” Yuri asks.
“No, no, not at all,” the girl says. “So you are staying for the one night, and will be joining us for tonight’s wine tasting, yes? Excellent. My name is Sara, I will be leading tonight’s tasting, and I will show you to your room once Michelle has checked you in. Do you have any questions?”
“Not at the moment.”
Once Michelle has handed back their passports, Sara hands them a key and motions for them to follow her. They get what feels like her entire history as she leads them through the villa. It’s her and Michelle’s grandparent’s, apparently. She and Michelle live in Naples normally but come up here to help out during the summer season. Yuri was right: they are twins.
“Anyway, this is you,” Sara says, gesturing to the door of a room at the end of one of the corridors. Otabek puts the key in the lock and opens the door to their room. In keeping with the rest of the property, it’s fairly rustic affair, but it’s clean and well kept. The furniture is all made out of real wood, Yuri can see a glimpse of the claw foot tub in the ensuite, and there’s a handmade quilt draped across the end of the bed.
Bed. Singular.
Yuri is very careful to not react. It’s fine. Friends share beds on trips, right? It doesn’t have to mean anything. The fact that friends don’t usually sleep with each other like they’ve been doing for the past year is neither here nor there. It doesn’t mean that they have to sleep with each other this time round. Although if that did end up happening… Yuri can’t say he’d complain.
Otabek, too, doesn’t react. “Grazie,” he says. “We’ll be down later.”
The wine tasting takes place on the patio outside the dining room, overlooking the rows and rows of grape vines. They take seats on a table at the back. There are about twenty other guests present, and he and Otabek definitely skew the average age down by quite a fair bit. Yuri doesn’t mind. He’s sure they’re going to have a good time either way.
Sara is brilliant. She explains all about how the grapes are grown and processed, the different notes they can expect in each wine. Some of the patrons nearer the front are talking earnestly about earthy undertones or whatever the fuck, while Yuri isn’t really getting any of that.
“What do you think?” Yuri mutters to Otabek.
Otabek picks up his glass, swirls it around and sniffs it before taking a sip. “Tastes like… wine.”
“Hmm,” Yuri replies. He repeats he same motions, making more of a dramatic show of it than Otabek did. “Yes, I would agree. It’s wine.”
They look at each other and dissolve into a fit of giggles. Sure, they might not know the first thing about wine, but they can still have a good time. The rest of the evening passes in a similar vein, trying to listen to Sara but also mostly using it as an excuse to get a bit drunk. It’s like they’re back to normal again, before the heat that changed it all.
By the time they’re stumbling back to their room at the end of the night, they’re both kind of tipsy. Yuri gets the door open and Otabek closes it behind them as quickly as he can. He grabs Yuri’s wrist and pulls him close.
“What?” Yuri asks.
“Nothing, just come here,” Otabek says, and presses a soft kiss against Yuri’s lips. Yuri can barely believe this is happening. He’s going to go with wherever this takes them.
Otabek pulls back. “Shit, I shouldn’t have -”
“No, it’s fine. Want it, Beka,” Yuri mumbles against his lips. “Want your knot.”
“Fuck, fuck, yeah, okay.”
It’s different than when Yuri is in heat or Otabek is in rut. They both feel more present, less ruled by their instincts and emotions. They’re doing this because they want to, not because of some purely biological need.
And fuck, does it feel good.
It’s always felt good. Yuri knows that, knows how Otabek’s mouth feels on his cunt, knows how his cock feels inside of him, knows how his knot fits him in just the right way. Hell, even knows what it’s like to have Otabek cum inside him, fill him up properly to the point where he’s praying that his birth control is still doing his job because he doesn’t think either of them are ready for that.
It’s always felt good, but it feels even better this time round.
“Beka,” Yuri whines as he starts to feel Otabek’s knot expand inside of him, “Beka please -”
Otabek’s teeth find Yuri’s neck. They bite the skin that’s barely healed and give him fresh bruises that make this feel all the more real. Yuri tells himself it’s instinct.
He’s also not sure how much longer he can carry on telling himself that particular tale.
They don’t talk about it again in the morning. Otabek barely speaks to Yuri as they’re getting up, darts around the room opening windows and running the shower so the scent of sex fades from the air. It felt like something last night, but in the cold light of day, maybe Yuri was getting ahead of himself.
“Beka,” Yuri tries as they’re having breakfast, “do you think…”
“Can you pass the milk, Yura?”
Yuri dutifully pushes the jug across the table and doesn’t say anything else. He’s quietly seething, but he doesn’t want to make a scene in front of everyone. Instead, he presses his fingers against the fresh bruises on his neck, the only reminder he has right now that any of last night was real.
In Milan, Yuri suggests that they spend the day apart. Otabek agrees, mumbling something about needing something for his bike, so as soon as they’ve taken the obligatory picture in front of the cathedral, they go their separate ways.
Yuri wanders around the shops, his mind swirling. He can’t get what happened at the vineyard out of his head. Sure, they were kind of drunk, but it was still the first time anything happened outside of a heat or rut, and that has to count for something, right? It felt good, right, even. There’s something about this trip that’s making all sorts of things possible in a way they weren’t before.
It’s daunting, especially when Otabek was so cold with him the next morning. Does Otabek regret it? Does he not? Could he at least give Yuri something more to go on, for fuck’s sake?
The clothes shops aren’t inspiring him, so Yuri grabs a drink from a cafe, finds a bench on a relatively quiet part of a park, and FaceTimes Mila.
“Yuri!” she says when she picks up. She’s at home, curled up on her couch and wearing an oversized hoodie. “How are you? How’s Italy? Are you still in Italy? I can’t remember what your plan was.”
“Yeah, we’re still in Italy,” Yuri replies. “Milan at the moment, actually. It’s good, but…”
“But?” Mila prompts. She sits up a little straighter on the couch, clearly eager to hear more. “Has something happened?”
“It… I… we…” Yuri trails off again, staring off into the distance as he works out what to say. Well, how to say it. “I went into heat while we were in Rome.”
“Oh ho,” Mila says, eyebrows raising. “Otabek help you like usual, I take it?”
“Yeah,” Yuri replies. “And it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary, until I woke up after and I found out he’d bitten me. Not - not like that!” he adds hurriedly at the horrified look on Mila’s face, “but we never usually mark each other, so this was different.”
“I’ll bet. What else?”
“We didn’t really talk about it a whole lot. He apologised and we carried on with our journey, but then we got to the vineyard, where there was only one bed and we ended up sleeping together again.”
“Wait, what? To clarify, not when you were in heat?”
“Yeah,” Yuri says. “Which was… new.”
“New,” Mila repeats. “Sure, we’ll go with that. So now your feelings are all muddled and Otabek is probably still not saying an awful lot and you’re calling me because you don’t know what to do?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“You like him, right?” she asks. Yuri gives her a small nod. “Okay, I thought so. And you’ve not told him this why?”
“Because I don’t know if he feels the same way,” Yuri replies. “And if he rejects me, it’ll just make the rest of the trip awkward as fuck, which I don’t want, and it might change everything for the worse, which I also don’t want.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t feel the same way? Like, he’s starting biting you, that’s not exactly… platonic friend behaviour, you know?”
“Yeah, but…”
“You don’t want to lose him. Got it.” Mila goes quiet for a moment. “At the vineyard, who initiated things? You or him?”
“Well, I guess I said what I wanted, but he kissed me first.”
“And again, you’re sure he doesn’t like you?”
“It’s complicated, Mila.”
“Is it? I think it’s worth a shot, you know. You might be pleasantly surprised.”
Yuri nods. Maybe it is. At least then he can say he tried. It’s certainly given him a lot to think about. “Anyway, what’s new with you?” he asks. Mila starts filling him in on everything that’s going on in her life, chattering away for so long that she has to find her phone charger. It’s as she’s scrabbling by the outlet that Yuri’s phone starts ringing. Beka 🐻 fills the top of his screen, and Yuri feels nervous all of a sudden. Fuck, he’s going to tell him soon, isn’t he?
“Beka’s ringing, I’d better go.”
Mila laughs on the other end of the line. “Go get your man, Plisetsky.”
It comes to a head in Monaco, of all places.
They’re not actually staying in Monaco, but Nice and then taking Otabek’s bike in. The morning before they make the short drive down the coast, Otabek stops off at a local garage, where he spends more time than Yuri expected when it’d first been mentioned that morning cleaning his bike. Otabek is meticulous in his work, bike gleaming in the early morning sun, while Yuri plonks himself down on a piece of crumbling wall and watches.
It’s quite unfair, really, how good Otabek looks when he works. Or anytime, really. His arm muscles flex beneath his t-shirt and Yuri has to take a very long drink of his Red Bull to bring himself back down to earth. He can’t afford to get turned on now, that’d just be embarrassing.
By the time Otabek is done, the bike is the best it’s looked since they set off. He picks his helmet up from the wall and holds his hand out to Yuri. “Right then,” he says. “You ready to go?”
“As ever,” Yuri says, and picks up his own helmet to get on the bike.
Monaco was more on Otabek’s list than it was Yuri’s, but then again, Yuri isn’t in the habit of spending half his Sunday afternoons throughout the year watching cars drive round in fancy circles. He’s only vaguely aware of F1 through Otabek, and even then, would be hard pressed to any of the drivers apart from the really big names like Hamilton and Verstappen.
Yuri can’t take it anymore. They’ve had a lovely day, biking and wandering around the streets of Monaco. They’ve driven around the F1 circuit, done some museums, looked at all the yachts in the harbour they’ll never be able to afford, and may or may not have seen Russian superstar athlete Victor Nikiforov coming out of a shop with his partner.
They’ve had a lovely day, but Yuri can’t take it anymore. His mind is going a hundred miles a minute, lost in a loop of longing after his best friend and wondering, hoping if it’ll ever be anything more. It’s eating him up inside, and he is about to hit breaking point.
They’ve parked the bike and are now walking through the Jardins Saint-Martin. It’s coming up to early evening; it’s not long before they’ll head back into Monaco for dinner at a restaurant that’s while not the most expensive or exclusive the principality has to offer, definitely a step up from their usual supermarket sandwiches, cafes and trips to McDonald’s.
The gardens are compact but beautiful. They wind through the limited space between the cathedral and the aquarium, full of different species of plants and trees, the pathways lined with benches and statues. Otabek looks as unfairly good as he did this morning, and Yuri has the distinct feeling that it’s now or never.
With the gardens being small, they soon come to a stop at a wall that looks out onto the ocean. Otabek turns to Yuri, a slight frown in his brow, and says, “Right, what’s up? You’ve been weirdly quiet all day.”
He has been quiet, Yuri will admit that. He is definitely usually the more talkative one out of the two of them. While today he could put some of that down to them being in Monaco and Otabek geeking out about seeing the circuit in person, as much as he doesn’t know if he’s ready to admit it, Yuri knows there’s more to it than that.
“Nothing,” Yuri replies.
The thing is, he doesn’t want to ruin the friendship. It could all go so wrong so quickly if he says what he really feels. Otabek is his oldest friend, his best friend, and Yuri doesn’t want to lose him just as much as he wants their relationship to develop into something more.
Otabek raises an eyebrow. “Come on, Yura, I know you better than that. Is something wrong?”
“It’s… well, it’s… I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do know,” Otabek says. “Come on, what is it? I promise I won’t judge.”
Yuri sighs and looks out to sea. He’s really doing this, isn’t he? He could make up something about being homesick, that he’s missing his Grandpa and his cat, but he also knows that Otabek isn’t going to buy that.
“Fuck’s sake,” Yuri mutters, and turns back to face Otabek. “It’s… Right, I need you to listen to this, okay? Because this is - well, you’ll see.”
“Okay,” Otabek replies. He gives Yuri an encouraging smile, and Yuri nods, takes a deep breath, and starts his speech.
“I know this is a lot, but I’ve been thinking about you and… and us, I suppose, for a while now. Since Rome, if you want to be picky about it. I know we’ve been helping each other out for a while now, and I don’t have anything bad to say about that, before you start panicking - but then I woke up Rome with bites all down my neck, and I don’t know, it felt different then.
“At first, I tried to tell myself it was just hormones, the last of the heat leaving my body or whatever. You know how it goes. But then we left Rome, and you might have apologised, but the feelings didn’t change. If anything, they got stronger. I didn’t want to be the first to say anything, though, so I didn’t.
“By the time we got to the vineyard, I was starting to let myself wonder a bit. And when we ended up sleeping together, it was the first time we’d done anything more than, fuck, I don’t know, hug or me occasionally borrowing one of your hoodies, outside of my heats or your ruts. I really did let myself wonder after that night, but then you were so closed off the next morning, barely said anything more than ‘pass the milk’ - and I thought okay, maybe not then.
“Not that it made the feeling go away, though. I rang Mila when we were in Milan in an absolute state, told her everything, and she said I needed to tell you. So I’m telling you, Beka. I’m telling you that I like you, more than as a friend, and I want to be with you, properly, not like we are now.”
For a moment, all Yuri can hear is a distant conversation in French. Otabek’s face isn’t giving anything away. The panic starts building inside Yuri until he nearly starts thinking that he’s made a massive mistake and there’s no way they’re ever going to recover from this.
Otabek, though, beats him to it.
“Fucking hell, Yuri.”
Oh no. Maybe this was a mistake after all. Yuri’s heart is hammering out of his chest. He wants to run. He can get the train back to Nice or something, he doesn’t need to rely on Otabek at all, he can make other friends, it’s fine -
“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that.”
Oh.
“Really?” Yuri whispers. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he blinks them away furiously. He’s not going to cry about this.
“Yes, really,” Otabek says. He’s smiling now, a proper smile, the type of Otabek smile that only comes out when he’s around people he’s truly comfortable with. “Come here.”
He wraps his arms around Yuri’s waist and pulls him close. They’ve kissed so many times before, but this is different. It feels like the start of something, it feels like coming home, and most importantly, it feels like love.
The sun’s setting by the time they head back to Nice. Yellows fade to oranges to reds on the horizon, and Yuri watches it through the visor on his helmet with a smile on his face in the knowledge that he can hold onto Otabek all the more tighter from now on.