A funny word called Love

Chapter 4

Yuri then preceded to listen to music and just stare into space, letting him think through his anger, causing it to slowly taper off. However, a ringing pierced through the noise of his thoughts. 'What the hell??' Yuri thought, 'Nobody ever calls me! Ugh it's probably Yakov calling to tell me off for leaving practice early. Ughhhh I should probably answer it or else I'll get yelled at even more tomorrow.'

He went over and picked up his phone where it had been left, and saw that the call was not in fact from Yakov. Surprisingly enough, it was from Otabek. "Hello?" Yuri answered.

"Oh, hi, I wasn't uhm expecting you to pick up!" Otabek said, sounding genuinely surprised, although pleased, that Yuri had answered.

"Why not, it's only 8 here, I'm more surprised that you called me, I mean, it's 11 over there, right?"

"Yeah, that's not that late!"

"It's pretty late for an athlete who's training for the Worlds!"

"I mean I guess so, but oh well. And the reason why I called was because you didn't text back. It was only 7 your time when I texted you, so I figured that you would be done with practice for the day, and wouldn't have anything else going on. And then you didn't reply. You just always reply practically immediately, even when it's at a time when I know that you're probably practicing! I uhm, I just got worried," Otabek said calmly, albeit a bit awkwardly.

"Oh! I'm, I'm sorry," said Yuri, stumbling over the apology. He wasn't used to apologizing, normally he just glared at someone until they went away, which he guessed caused more problems than it solved. "I've just had a really long day, and had thrown my phone against the wall and hadn't gone to check it when it buzzed, figuring that it was the same people who had caused me to throw my phone at the wall in the first place," Yuri finished, beginning to relax into the conversation.

"Oh, okay. Are you alright? I mean if you don't want to talk about it that's fine. I hope whatever was angering you resolves soon."

"Eh, it's fine, my rink-mates were just being assholes today, that's all," Yuri said, suddenly putting his guard up once again. Nobody ever asked how he was doing, or even if he wanted to talk about what was upsetting him. They just assumed that they should stay clear of him and let him cool off. Nobody except for his Grandfather actually tried to help talk him through his rage, even if Yuri wasn't willing to talk through it.

"Okay, I hope everything gets better with them soon, let me know if there's anything I can do to help!"

The two started having mindless conversations, asking each other about their music preferences, things that they enjoyed to do when off ice, talking about their childhoods, what it was like for Otabek to live in so many different countries, what it was like for Yuri to live with Yakov and Lilia leading up to the Grand Prix Final. The conversation was a haze of chatter, laughing, and smiling, and it was by far the longest Yuri had talked to his friend.