A funny word called Love

Chapter 17

The rest of Otabek's time with Yuri in St. Petersburg was enjoyable, and it was not long before he had to return back to Kazakhstan. After his time in St. Petersburg, though, he and Yuri either called or skyped every day. Even if they couldn't see each other in person, they could still keep in touch.

Over time they grew closer and closer, becoming more comfortable with each other and truly trusting and relying on one another to the extent where it felt like they could ask each other just about anything. Yuri decided that Otabek had truly put that to the test when he received a text that read, "Hey, odd question, but what does it feel like to have a crush?"

This came completely out of the blue, and Yuri's first reaction was to just say, "What the hell." If it had been any other person besides Otabek, he would've said, "What the hell." But instead Yuri ended up simply texting back, "Idk. Why?"

"Oh, it's nothing, kinda silly, just forget about it. Why did you say idk?" Otabek texted.

"First you explain why. I'm sure that it's not silly."

"It really is. It's just that it's kinda weird to be ace and aro sometimes, when the whole world focuses on romantic and sexual love, and values them more than anything. It just makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me or if I'm missing out or if it would be nice to love somebody the way everybody else in the world wants me to love somebody. I'm sorry, I know it doesn't really make sense."

"Okay, thank you for being so honest, " Yuri replied. They always thanked the other when they said something that was really honest, or otherwise seemed hard to say. It was like there was a mutual understanding of how hard trust was for the both of them. "I'm sorry. The world fucking sucks. All types of love are equally valuable and anybody who says otherwise is truly an idiot."

"Thank you, but now it's your turn. Why did you say idk."

"Because it's true. Because I don't know. You asked what it was like to have a crush on someone. As someone who's never had a crush on anybody, I simply don't know what it's like to have a crush on someone. I'm sorry that I couldn't have been of more help though. But yeah, I've never had romantic or sexual attraction or anything like that so I'm no help when it comes to the area of crushes. Go ask Yuuri or Viktor or someone like that if you want help in that area." Yuri texted, and then he received two images of two different flags, one striped black, gray, white and purple, and the other striped dark green, light green, white, gray, and black. Utterly perplexed, Yuri then texted, "?"

"Have you ever given any thought to your sexuality?"

"No, I don't have time for that. I tried figuring it out a couple of years ago but couldn't find a term that made sense because every single term required having had felt attraction to somebody in a nonplatonic way, and that had never happened and it frustrated me too much so I just gave up on it."

"Oh, right. I forget how much people like to erase identities. Remember when I was trying to explain to you that I meant love in a platonic way and that I was asexual and aromantic? Sounds like you might be too. I mean it's identity, if you don't want to label how you feel, cool, if you think that you're something else, cool. Just what you were saying sounds extremely like your ace and aro. And I know that you hate not knowing things, so I hope that this helped."

It took Yuri awhile to respond as he looked up the terms and figured out that they matched him perfectly. "Thanks Beka. You're right. I'm ace and aro as hell, and I hate not knowing things. Thank you!"

"You're welcome Yura."

The conversation having died off, Yuri returned to the internet, and discovered something called an ace ring. A black ring worn on the middle finger of your right hand as a symbol of asexuality. Yuri made a mental note to buy one as soon as possible, secretly thinking that wearing one would look badass as fuck.

The next time Yuri and Otabek skyped, Yuri had a black ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and Otabek told him, "Hey, that ring is pretty ace." And Yuri couldn't help but laugh at the terrible pun.