Shattering Glass

Chapter 1

Yuri wove through the party, a glass of champagne in each hand, searching for his husband. They'd been invited to the World's banquet after placing gold and silver, a normal occurrence on its own but saddened slightly by the announcement of their twin retirement. Though many were upset by the news that their favorite two skaters were leaving the ice, Yuri and Otabek didn't see it that way-- merely excited to embark on the next chapter of their lives together.

Yuri had been invited to join Victor and Yuuri's coaching staff, running a joint ballet and skating school -- similar to Sambo-70 but without the severe, frankly dangerous coaching methods the Tutberidze group employed -- and Otabek had finally accepted a DJ position with a record label -- something he'd been hounded about for months before at last agreeing to in the absence of competitive skating.

Needless to say, the pair were both happy with their decisions, even if the rest of the world was upset, and they made sure to stress the fact that they'd return to all the big competitions -- hell, they'd already had invitations extended to them to be guest speakers at next season's Rostelecom Cup.

As Yuri made his way through the crowd, dodging people and trying valiantly to avoid spilling any champagne onto himself from the jostling skaters around him, he searched it with his eyes. He and Otabek had lost each other earlier in the evening, Yuri vowing to grab some drinks and being unable to find his partner after he got them. Close to ten minutes later, he was still looking and seriously wondering how big could this place possibly be?

The 2029 World Championships had been held in Toronto, Canada and JJ had generously offered to host the reception at his family home. Jesus Christ, what a show-off.

The house, if it could be called that, could easily fit three of Victor and Yuuri's house within it and the couple's dwellings were far from small. With a young daughter and infant son, the pair had long ago left Victor's (disproportionately large, granted) apartment and bought a nice, three-story home in an upscale neighborhood not far from the rink -- nor Yuri's own house, for that matter.

He and Otabek had been married for four years and had lived together for eight, moving in together when Yuri had turned twenty and Lilia had finally agreed to him living with his boyfriend. No matter that he was legally above even the US's age of consent and Lilia herself had admitted that Otabek was "a very kind, dependable boy", it had taken two years of begging for her to cave and let Yuri, to his delight, move out. Secretly, he thought she'd just wanted to keep him around for longer -- most likely seeing him as a son of some sort, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't think of her as the mother he'd never had.

Even now, Yuri still kept in close contact with the woman, working with her and Yakov even past their retirement last year to finish out his final season as a competitive skater. Lilia had even set Yuri up with some of her contacts at ballet schools around the country, telling him to think about starting as a teacher for some beginner classes and maybe even trying to enroll in some of the more advanced ones himself. Despite the fact that he was 28 and a (newly) retired skater and his window of opportunity to become a professional ballerina had closed, Lilia had still (grudgingly) told him that she thought he was an excellent dancer and she would be very disappointed if he gave it up.

Yuri'd relented, after some coercion, and agreed to take a few adult ballet classes just to get her off of his back -- not knowing of course that she was good friends with the instructor and that she'd end up teaching half of the lessons herself.

So much for her retirement.

Now, though, Yuri was dead-set on finding his husband. Crowd be damned, he would get him this champagne without spilling it on himself!

Finally, as he entered a segment of the house that wasn't so crowded, he could walk normally again without trying to compress his already lithe frame to squeeze through throngs of party-goers, and caught a glimpse of a dark undercut from a room a bit ahead of him.