Learning To Count(Otabek x Yuri) [boyxboy]

Chapter Sixteen

The corridors were alive with chatter when Yuri finally returned to school the next morning. To begin with, he'd been absent for bordering on three weeks and on top of that, there was (quite naturally) rampant talk about him and his boyfriend. He hadn't confirmed it to many people, but he had no doubt that his friends had told everybody what he'd said and that screenshots had been spread like the plague. He barely made it to registration before he was accosted by a gaggle of girls from his science set demanding to know what that picture meant.
'It was just a picture,' He told them through gritted teeth, not enjoying the attention when their eyes were so accusatory. He'd known all along that given the area he lived in and the kind of people that went to his school there'd be people who berated him for being gay, but it was only now that he realised how hard it would be to deal with.
'But you were kissing him,' One of the girls pointed out helpfully.
'I hadn't noticed,' He remarked drily. 'Anyway, I have to register. See you in biology.'
He dashed away before they could even open their mouths to dispute his sudden departure, legging it down to his form room, where things weren't much better. A few guys wolf-whistled when he walked in and he ducked his head in humiliation, sitting down at his desk and pulling out his phone to pretend he had a reason to ignore their cajoling mockeries.
'Texting your boyfriend, eh, Plisetsky?' Somebody jeered and he flipped them off graciously, at which point Mr. DG waltzed in with a large file in his hands.
'Yuri, don't give somebody the finger in my class please,' He chided as he sat down at his desk, opening up the file. 'Right. Exam admin.'
A collective groan went up about the room followed by a discussion of how shitty exams were. He handed everybody's forms out and ensured that they had signed them, then made everybody check they were entered for the right exams.
'I think mine is wrong,' Hana, the girl sat behind Yuri, announced. 'It says I'm entered for maths.'
'You all study maths, so you're doing the exam.'
'Nah.'
He gave her a pointed look and she rolled her eyes before dropping her argument. The second the class dissolved back into chat Yuri's friends swarmed round him like a hive of bees.
'Everyone's talking about it,' Guang Hong told him and he wondered briefly if he could use a pen as a drill to dig a hole in the ground that he could bury himself in. 'You know, you and that guy.'
It was at this point that Yuri regretted telling people. He should've kept his damn mouth shut until he'd left school and moved to somewhere people would be accepting.
'I don't get it,' Mila sat on his desk. 'How didn't we see it? Wait, is that where you got those hickeys?'
He self-consciously pulled at his collar in a futile attempt to hide them, flushing bright red and scowling at the floor.
'Oh my god, it is! Are you sure, though?'
'Sure about what?' He pouted, not enjoying the newfound attention he was getting as much as he'd thought he might. 'Him? Yeah.'
'But you don't seem... The type.'
'Don't start. Seriously, don't.'
'I was only saying! It's not like you act-'
'Don't say it,' He sighed heavily, so tired with the way the conversation was headed. If this was the way people were going to treat him for the rest of his life he'd rather have kept his mouth shut...

Yuri had thought his friends saying ignorant things would be the worst part of his day, but as it turned out there was far worse to come. All afternoon a boy from the year above with a reputation for being something of a thug had been giving him the eye. Not just the eye, but the evil eye. It was disturbing to say the least, but when he mentioned it to his friends they just told him he was being stupid and nobody cared as much as he thought. He realised how wrong they'd been when he was walking down a flight of stairs to sixth period and he felt somebody shove him hard. His weak legs went from beneath him and he grabbed for the banister just in time to save himself from hurtling headfirst into the hard floor at the bottom of the stairwell.
'What the fuck?' He spat, whipping round to meet the eyes of Jude Castor, the boy who had been staring at him all day. 'Shit.'
He tried to leg it, but a gnarly hand yanked him back by his collar.
'Where do you think you're going, little fag?' Jude snarled into his ear, making him freeze up in terror. This definitely wasn't looking good for him. 'I'd be doing you a favour to beat it out of you...'
'Just let me go,' Yuri tried to sound forceful and threatening but it came out as more of a squeak. Jude shoved him hard again, this time smacking his head against the wall. He groaned and tried to run again, but Jude grabbed onto his hair and yanked at it, dragging him back and jabbing him hard in the stomach. Yuri doubled over in pain and at this moment Jude brought his knee up into contact with Yuri's jaw, making him yell out in pain as he was flung backwards like a rag doll being tossed aside. He pulled himself up from the floor and tried his best not to fall whilst Jude began to pummel at his face until his vision began to blur, partially from blood seeping into his left eye and largely because he could barely breathe after being winded so many times. He bit hard on his tongue to stop himself from crying because he got the feeling that if he allowed tears to permeate his eyes he'd make the situation worse for himself. As Jude relentlessly beat into him, he thought to himself with what was almost a sense of relief that this might just kill him. His body was so weak already that this could really be the end of him, and he was strangely glad. If he died now, he didn't have to face a slow torturous death as his organs failed on him one by one and he slowly turned into a rotted skeleton. This was the sole reason that he didn't try to defend himself; it never even occurred to him that it was physically impossible to win this battle anyway.
'Get off!' He could barely make a noise anymore and his words began to slur as Jude kicked him one last knee in the stomach. The final blow came in the form of a kick to the face that connected with his cheek as he went down and made him retch from the pain. He succumbed to the numb sensation creeping across his mind and crumpled to the floor, curling into a ball and whimpering softly through the pain. He was in absolute agony and it felt like he'd been stabbed multiple times. He must have lain there in inextricable agony for at least half an hour before he heard what must have been footsteps. Voices floated down the stairwell and he was sure he could recognise one but the other eluded him.
'Well, I just had to redo the module and then- Jesus Christ!' They exclaimed when they came across Yuri all beaten and bloodied. 'Yuri?'
He moaned and tried to sit up, but hands kept him where he was.
'Go get the nurse,' The voice he half-recognised instructed, followed by the sounds of footsteps retreating quickly down the stairs. 'Yuri, what happened?'
'What do you think?' He mumbled, his voice cracking.
'Who was it?'
He pursed his split and bleeding lips and refused to talk. He didn't want news getting out about this. Obviously there'd be talk because he was aware he was going to be black and blue but he was keeping mum about it however much he was pressured to talk. Truth be told, he was humiliated. He'd have to tell the teachers why he'd been attacked and while for a short while he hadn't minded his friends knowing, being affronted like that had scared him off ever telling anyone again. He'd been blindly led to believe that there wasn't blatant hate in his world, but he had been wrong and this had cost him dearly. Now here he was, practically bleeding out on the floor. He knew he was overstating things a little and that he wasn't really going to die, however scary and life threatening the pain had seemed in the moment.
'Please don't make a fuss over this,' He choked out, keeping his voice as level as he could manage- which was about as shaky as America's politics. 'It's nothing.'
'Nothing? Try to stand and then tell me it's nothing.'
Yuri blinked hard until the face swimming in front of him came into focus. It was just his luck that it would be Phichit Chulanont, the head of the student committee. Of course it was. Fortune did not seem to be on Yuri's side that day- or any day, for that matter. He tried to stand and Phichit rolled his eyes and held him down with a firm hand on his shoulder.
'I didn't mean it literally,' He sighed. 'I need you to tell me who did this. They'll probably be expelled.'
'I doubt it,' Yuri knew there were incidents like this relatively often at his school and there was very little recompense for the perpetrators' actions. It was the mandatory and frankly inconsequential three day suspension and then nothing. In more serious cases expulsion was brought up, but never put into effect. The school just didn't want to admit it had a problem with violence and, only occasionally but all too frequently, hate crimes. You only had to look inside a toilet cubicle to see the extent of harassment going on right under the teachers' noses that went largely ignored.
'It's Yuri, isn't it?' Phichit interrupted him mid-thought train.
'How do you know my name?' Yuri heaved himself into a sitting position, wincing heavily as his entire body was pincered by pain. He was surprised to say the least that somebody he'd never given so much as a thought to would know who he was.
'You remember when you fainted? I get informed every times there's an incident concerning student welfare. Student committee, you know.'
'Oh. So you know everything about that?'
'Yes.'
Yuri grimaced and tried not to think about it. This was another case of things he just didn't want people to know but that had gotten out because of his own ill-thinking and lack of impulse control. He opened his mouth to announce that he was going home, which was completely his intention after such a traumatic experience, but before he could speak the nurse showed up.
'Christ alive,' She shook her head and squatted down beside him. 'You are in quite bad shape, young man.'
'Shouldn't we call an ambulance?' Phichit was already pulling his phone out. 'He got hit in the head- he could have a concussion.'
'The school doesn't need any more legal problems!' The nurse admonished him, regarding the phone with a wary gaze.
'Seriously? I'm calling an a-'
'He doesn't need an ambulance. I am a nurse, I know what I'm doing,' She stared Phichit down, unwavering in her opinion.
'I don't need an ambulance,' Yuri agreed, nodding furiously and trying his best to ignore the horrific ache it brought him that made his mouth water and his jaw tense. The less faff the better in his view; if an ambulance was called the police would probably get involved because this was a serious safeguarding issue. 'I just fell down the stairs.'
'Now, there's no need to be like that!' Phichit chided, scowling at him with a ferocity so intense he flinched.
'The school already has enough of a bad reputation, I'm not going to damage that. I fell down the stairs, that's it.'
'Well, if you're sure,' The nurse replied in a nonplussed way.
'What?' Phichit was almost concussed himself by this terrible handling of the situation. 'But this is a safeguarding issue! He's been beaten up by another pupil and you're just pretending he fell down the stairs!'
'If he's adamant that that's all that happened, I am obligated to believe him,' The nurse shrugged as if she was helpless. All three of them knew he'd been attacked, but two of them weren't willing to admit it.
'And I'm adamant,' Yuri added. 'It's not even that serious. I fell down the stairs and just bashed my face a bit, that's all.'
He gripped at the handrail and laboriously pulled himself up, his eyes screwing tightly shut and a gasp of pain escaping his lips.
'I still need to administer medical care,' The nurse told him, but he was already making his way down the stairs.
'I think I'm just gonna go home,' He answered with a quiet tone and continued to walk. They let him go, dumbfounded and both almost equally shocked by everything that had just occurred. The nurse was furious with herself for going along with the school's policy of avoiding the media's eye at all costs and Phichit was livid both that he hadn't done more and that the school was doing nothing. This was a crime- this was aggravated assault on a minuscule boy with anorexia. He had known some people in the school could have a tendency to be a tad cruel, but mostly fights broke out on equal terms rather than senseless attacks such as this- didn't even attempt to think that it might be a fight in this case-  but he didn't think anybody could be this evil.
It seems evil lurks even in the places we feel safest in for those who society has railed against for so long.