Of Monsters and Men (yuri x otabek)

Otabek

Otabek's POV:

"You have to. And forget about yesterday too, I was acting like an idiot. Just keep doing what's right because you've done nothing wrong. Don't let the stupid, immature things that I do bother you. I'll get better, I'll focus more on skating, I won't do anything that will ruin your happiness. I won't do that to you."

"Good bye Otabek."

I want to say that I'm confused about what he told me then, and that I don't understand why he said those things; but I'd be lying to myself if I did.

I met Mila at an airport, she was coming back from America after visiting some family there. I immediately recognized her as Yuri's teammate from Barcelona. It had been a few months since the GPF's had ended, and Yuri and I had lost touch. I was the first one to break contact. Why? Well, it's simple, I was scared. I didn't know if he wanted to keep talking if we were going to be so far apart, I didn't think that he would want to see me again; I thought he maybe wanted to forget about me.

But, when I saw Mila, I had to find out how he was doing, I needed to know if he was OK. I just wanted to know something, anything. So we talked, she said he was doing alright, but I could tell that she wasn't interested in what I was saying. The way she looked at me, smiled, touched me, you could tell that she was flirting. I didn't care at all for it. I didn't really care about her to be honest. But, she pulled me in somehow.

I eventually fell into her spell, maybe it was to fill the emptiness that was eating me up inside. When she held me I felt comforted, when she kissed me I felt loved, when we made love I felt satisfied. She was like a shield that hid me from the harsh pain of reality. I held her close to me because I was scared that if I let her go, then I would fall back into a darkness that I didn't understand. That darkness was him. I didn't understand why, even though I had this beautiful woman beside me who kept giving me her unconditional love, why he was always in my head.

This boy, his smile, his eyes, his everything. Why was he still there? Why wouldn't he leave me alone? And why did I keep pushing him away? Was I scared to accept something that I thought was wrong?

Mila and I were together for about a year before I proposed. If I made her my wife I could forget right? Because I was making a commitment, I was giving my life to her, I-

"Will you move to Russia with me?"

Even then, I guess I couldn't escape-but was I not expecting this? I could have stayed behind in Kazakhstan, but I was running away. After my grandmother died, I fell apart. My mother had already left, my dad, he was dead. I was all on my own again. She was the one person that cared for me, so when she died, everything became unbearable. The country that I once wanted to fight so hard for became the country that I only wanted to desperately escape from, that's what I always told Mila. I just couldn't go back home. That's why she asked me to move in with her, because she knew I wanted to get away. But I was contradicting myself from the start. I wanted another place to go home to, because I wanted to escape from mine, but in that new home; there was still another thing that I wanted to escape from.

Him.

He was my new monster.

The boy that never left my mind, the boy that tormented my thoughts, he walked in before me that day, ready to destroy everything that I thought I worked so hard for. He came in and overshadowed everything, forcing me to remember when I was truly happy and not using someone else to fill my void. The boy who was and still is similar to me in so many ways.

"It doesn't matter, don't worry about it."

"Yeah, I guess we were, but that was three years ago. Stuff happened, and there are more important things we should be focusing on now."