A funny word called Love

Chapter 43

"I'm retiring," Yuri told Otabek over the phone flatly. It had been a few years since that wonderful christmas, and he and Otabek were still incredibly close.

"Wait what?" Otabek responded.

"Oh don't sound so surprised, you retired last year!"

"Yeah, but I was 27 when I retired, you're only 25 right now, you still have a couple of years before your body should be forcing you to retire."

"It's forcing me to retire now. Maybe it wouldn't be if I hadn't ignored pulled muscles and crap when I was younger, but whenever I injured myself I would just push through it, and often try to train even harder, and it seems like all that idiocy has caught up to me. My body just isn't what it used to be."

"What're you going to do. Coach?"

"Coaching sounds like hell, I have no clue how you do it."

"Well, somebody's got to try and get more people to skate in Kazakhstan!"

"Is it worth it?"

"Yes. So what is it that you're going to do?"

"I'm going to judge."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the ISU offered to let me start judging as soon as I retired, and so I think I'm going to do it."

"Okay, you'd be good at that."

"Wow thanks."

"It's supposed to be a compliment!"

"Sure. Well, I just thought I should let you know before I have to tell the goddamn press tomorrow. Wish me luck."

"Good luck!"

And so, Yuri became a judge at skating competitions across the world. It was amazing. He got payed to be judgemental and hyper critical, he got payed to travel across the world. However, it was quite lonely, for skating competitions were separated by long expanses of free time and boredom.

A year after Yuri started his new job, he and Otabek were skyping, and he noticed something. Otabek looked nervous. This wasn't normal. Why was Otabek nervous? "Otabek, is something wrong? You look kind of nervous," Yuri asked.

"I'm not nervous," Otabek said, a little bit too quickly.

"What's going on."

"I'm sorry, I just have a question for you and I don't know whether I should ask it or not."

"Well what's the question."

"But I still don't know whether I should ask or not."

"Well if you don't tell me now I'll make sure that you tell me later because now I'm way too curious to be able to let this go."

"Okay. Have you ever heard of a qpr?"

"No."

"Well, it's an acronym for quasi-platonic-relationship."

"What does that mean."

"It's like being in a relationship, except everything's completely platonic."

"Oh, cool. So What about it."

Otabek remained silent for a moment, not knowing quite how to ask this, and still not knowing if he even should, but he continued nonetheless, "Would you like to be in a qpr with me?"

Yuri's face broke into a smile, "Of course. On one condition."

"What's the condition," Otabek responded.

Yuri had been trying to figure out how to ask this for a while now, and Otabek had just set him up perfectly, so he said, "My condition is that we move in together."

"Huh?" Otabek said, surprised.

"I mean, if you don't want to, that's okay, we don't have to move in together!" Yuri said quickly, now regretting his impulsiveness..

"No, no, I'd like that. As long as you're the one moving, not me. I have too many students here to be able to leave."

"Okay! Yeah of course. When should I move in?"

"As soon as you can work out immigration stuff?"

"Sounds good!"