Otayuri Oneshot Collection

1) The Hero and the Fairy

The first time he sees him, radiant in a beam of golden summer light, he knows.


Otabek is thirteen, attending a summer training camp in Russia, and deeply offended at being placed with the younger skaters, as only a thirteen-year-old can be.

He rakes a scornful and indifferent glare over them - these children - as he pants, straining to force his body into a stretch it refuses to do. He fixes his face into the impassive, intimidating mask he wears as armor and grits his teeth, pushing past the pain. He is nothing like them.

But then he sees him. The slim blonde boy, twisting his body into elegant, impossible stretches at the barre, looks up, shaking the curtain of hair from eyes so green they look inhuman, other.

He looks away after a moment, hair sliding back to hide those striking eyes, returns to stretching.

Otabek freezes mid-stretch, hand reflexively clutching at his heart. No, the space where his heart used to be.

This boy has stolen it away.

But if thirteen is far too young for such thoughts, ten is inconceivable.

Otabek attacks training with renewed determination. He wants to prove himself worthy. The boy never looks at him again; Otabek finds that he cannot look away.

This boy - this graceful, ethereal child who shines like nothing he has ever seen, whose impossibly fierce eyes burn with a determined fire that is more inferno than spark - this boy is a warrior.



He strides across the ice as if it were a battlefield; the other skaters parting around him, eddying in his wake. He executes flawless jumps with the solemn - no, grim - determination of a soldier marching to war. He polishes the blades of his skates as if they were made for slicing his enemies to pieces.



In a sense, they are.



Otabek returns to Kazakhstan with greater flexibility, higher jumps, increased confidence and determination. It is enough to give him an edge over his countrymen that is almost unfair. Almost.



He also returns without his heart.



As he rises through the ranks of Kazakhstani skaters, every move calculated to thrust him toward an eventual spot in the Grand Prix, he supposes that it is a fair trade - even if his dreams are haunted by glittering green eyes, and his family despairs of him ever falling in love.



He tells them he is in love with the ice, and they shake their heads but eventually leave him be. He neglects to mention that, to him, the ice will always have straw-pale hair, the greenest eyes he's ever seen, and unknowing possession of his heart. 



He doesn't tell them that he fell in love years ago.



He doesn't tell them that he skates now not to win his country a medal, but to meet his soldier-eyed Russian boy once more.



He doesn't tell them.



The next time he sees him, they are in a hotel in Barcelona, the night before the Grand Prix he has, five long years later, finally qualified for. Those green eyes catch his wandering attention from across the lobby, pull him with the siren song of sharp steel blades cutting through ice polished smooth as glass.



There isn't a shred of recognition in them.



He turns away, fiercely determined not to be surprised.



After all, his eyes aren't anything special.

And now those bewitching eyes have a name, a name he clutches to his empty chest, afraid to speak it lest it flit away through the hole where his heart used to be. 



Yuri.



He rescues his green-eyed waif, of course he does, riding up on his white horse - black motorcycle - to whisk the besieged princess - prince - away from overzealous fans.

And finally, finally, Yuri sees him.


While they are gone, the media explodes in a frenzy of speculation. They say the Hero of Kazakhstan kidnapped the Fairy of Russia. 



When he hears this, Otabek laughs.



He doesn't tell them that the fairy captured the hero a long, long time ago.

~The End~