#ty dina for the prompt

[beautifulterriblequeen]

FIVE. FIVEFIVEIFBEIDBE

“Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?” Ethari’s voice emanated from beneath a mound of covers. Unlike his touch last night, his voice ran cold, like a distant icy stream.

Runaan froze in the dark, back to Ethari and the bed, hands clutching the small vial of nightsoul he didn’t think his husband even knew about. The assassin always took a sip early in the morning on his way out to train, when Ethari was still abed. Rayla had been living with them for a month now, and he’d never commented before. 

“Runaan. I asked you a question.”

His hands tightened around the little glass container. “I heard you.”

“And?”

Runaan scrambled in the shadows, fearing what Ethari’s beams of light would reveal--to both of them. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

I really don’t. He could mean many things. I’m just not assuming I know which one--

“Your vaunted quest for honor is driving me crazy, love. You’re never here anymore.”

...Oh. Not the nightsoul, then.

But Ethari wasn’t finished. Blankets rustled softly as he sat up. He drew a swirly on top of a sleeping potted mushroom on his nightstand, and it woke with a cool bluish glow. It cast Runaan’s shadow large on the wall in front of the assassin, and Runaan stilled amid his own darkness, not wishing to be seen. “The day we wed,” Ethari continued, “you said you were giving your heart to me. But we both know it already belonged to Xadia. I’m just your side piece. But it’s getting old watching you sneak out of my bed every morning to go spend all day with him instead.”

Runaan blinked at the unexpected metaphor. “Xadia has my heart,” he allowed slowly. “But I don’t kiss it on the mouth.” He pivoted, hiding the nightsoul vial behind his back.

Ethari’s eyes dragged down Runaan’s person, coolly appreciative of his bare chest and hip-hugging pants. The sight roused the craftsman from his blankets, but as he stepped closer, his expression was taut. “You’re letting it fuck you over, though.”

Runaan’s eyes widened at Ethari’s language.

Ethari shrugged one big shoulder. “Couldn’t be helped. It was punny. But my point still stands, Runaan. You’re more Xadia’s bitch than my husband right now, and I kind of hate it a little bit.”

Runaan stared, stricken, at Ethari’s tired anger. “I... I’m sorry...”

Ethari studied his face for a long moment, and a realization passed over him like the trailing edge of a dark cloud, lifting his brows and softening the lines of his mouth as the moonlight returned once again. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m angry with you. I’m not. Not really.”

“With Xadia, then?” Runaan asked softly. With my entire purpose for existing?

“Maybe a smidge.” Ethari eased closer, sliding warm hands down Runaan’s arms, drawing him into a hug. “I could never be angry with y- What’s this?” he asked, as his fingers found the vial Runaan had been hiding behind his back.

Runaan panicked and clutched it tightly, giving away its importance. Don’t see this. Don’t see me like this.

But Ethari’s fingers had always been quick. He had the vial liberated in half a second. Runaan didn’t know whether to parry or flee, so he tried to do both. A soft gasp of dismay fled his lips as one hand caught Ethari’s wrist, and his back foot retreated toward the bedroom door.

Ethari tightened his grip on the little container. His dark brows tightened into his analytical expression as he studied it, completely ignoring Runaan’s grip.

Runaan’s shoulders slumped. Still panicking and giving myself away around this elf, I see. Couldn’t ever hide anything for long.

Ethari turned the little vial around until he spotted the etched rune that held the nightsoul’s unnatural efficacy in place. His mouth fell open, and then he froze. Ethari was always in motion, even in his sleep. He was an elf of life and light and love. He couldn’t not move. But in that moment, Runaan saw all the light in his husband’s soul leave him, and he went still.

No. That’s my job. Come back.

He squeezed Ethari’s wrist hard. “I can explain.”

“You can’t even come close,” Ethari murmured through numb lips. “You know what nightsoul did to my uncle.”

Runaan did. He’d been the one to find him, lost within his own mind, wandering the Forest during a new Moon, shrieking like a soul being actively damned, unable to hold to his physical form any longer as the Moon’s power waned away. He’d watched Ethari’s uncle splinter into smoky shadow, still howling, until he blessedly vanished with one final anguished cry, released from his torment at last. And then he’d been foolish enough to tell Ethari the truth of what he’d seen.

“I know what I’m doing,” Runaan said. “It won’t end like that.”

“You’re saying he didn’t know what he was doing?” Ethari challenged.

Runaan’s gaze sharpened. “He didn’t. He used too much, too soon, and he-”

“He was eighty-four, Runaan. That’s not ‘soon.’“

“He wasn’t an assassin, either,” Runaan shot back. “Do you really think I have fifty more years in me, at the rate I’m going? I have to run full tilt across Xadia whenever Avizandum says so, and if I so much as sneeze wrong, the wrong people will die, and I might be one of them. I. Must. Be. Perfect. For as long as I have. I must be perfect. Do you see?” His chest heaved with too many emotions to name, and his eyes clung to Ethari’s, demanding understanding.

But Ethari was horrified. He thumbed the etched rune on the vial’s glassy surface. 

One part deathberry extract, one part moonberry, and one part forbidden new moon magic, nightsoul was an accursed potion that had no business existing at all. The fact that it had to be coaxed into remaining in the world should have been a warning flag to all. But the desperate always found ways around the rules. Ethari had never expected his law-and-order husband to be one of them.

“Runaan... every time you drink this, you use up one day of your future.”

Runaan’s nod was crisp. “Yes. Exactly.”

“You’re shortening your lifespan.”

“I’m ensuring that I have a lifespan. This is just what it costs.”

Ethari’s bottom lip trembled. His eyes lingered on the vial in his hand, then they lifted to Runaan’s, revealing a watery shimmer. “Your life is not a currency to be spent, my heart.”

Runaan blinked in surprise. How could he not know, after all this time?

I am an assassin. 

I am a tool. 

I am Xadia’s will. 

I am justice. 

I am balance. 

I am the sword. 

I am the Way. 

I am Moonshadow.

I am an assassin. 

With steady brows and a tight jaw, Runaan murmured, “Ethari. My life has always been currency to be spent. I’m just choosing to spend a little of it for myself, before others choose the price for me. Because someone will, someday.”

Two tears slipped down Ethari’s cheeks, losing themselves along his blue markings. “But why? Why do you want to leave me sooner?” he begged.

Runaan’s control snapped, and he clutched at Ethari’s arms. “I don’t! I don’t,” he blurted. “Moon and shadow, Ethari. I take this so I’m good enough to come home my family at the end of every day. So I can survive long enough to train Rayla to survive everything the world will throw at her. So I can do the job, and spare anyone else from having to do it in my place. I take this so I can live to see as many days with you as I can wrest from my fate. I take this so that when I fall...” But he faltered, not wanting to speak of such things so blatantly.

Ethari let out a hurt growl. “No, there’s no stopping now. Say it. When you fall...” he prompted.

Runaan’s gaze dropped to Ethari’s pendant. “When I fall,” he dutifully continued, “I will have the bright memories of as many good days with you as I can carry. When I fall, whether to blade or shadow,” he added, tracing a finger lightly along his husband’s cheek, “I will have known thousands of days of your voluminous and refulgent love. And then, because of you, I will be worthy of dying a good death. Because of you, I will be ready to meet it.”

Ethari clapped a hand over a sudden sob. His head shook from side to side, hating Runaan’s soft words, hating Xadia, hating fate. Runaan gently pulled him into a hug and held him softly, feeling his shoulders shake. Ethari dug his fingers into Runaan’s ponytail and squeezed it, and his hot tears ran down Runaan’s chest as he buried his face against his husband’s neck.

“It’s not so bad, my heart,” Runaan said soothingly. “Every day, you have two of me at once. Twice my love.”

Ethari snorted wetly against his neck. “That explains your stamina last night.”

Runaan stiffened in surprise at Ethari’s unexpected direction, and he barked a sudden laugh. “That, too, my heart.”

Ethari stood straight again and wiped his eyes. “I’m never going to grow old with you, am I?” he asked in a trembling voice.

Runaan took a deep breath and felt the air of a future day fill his lungs. “Such was never our fate. My destiny was set long before I loved you.”

Ethari studied the vial of nightsoul with thoughtful brows and pursed lips. “I can’t bring myself to give this to you. But I will hold you while you take it.” 

He opened his palm and let the vial rest there. Its dark liquid swirled ominously, promising twice the life for twice the cost and then some.

Runaan stepped into the circle of his free arm and let himself be held. Then he plucked the vial from Ethari’s hand, bit the stopper free with the side of his mouth, and spilled a measure of the dark concoction onto his tongue.

Ethari’s sudden kiss, hard and eager and moonlit with complexity, was everything he had ever wanted.

[zolotayafeya]

For the prompt thing: 11 or 16 for Otabek & Kadyr? And 27 or 28 for Otabek/Yuri? :D

(28 after the end of 16, beneath the cut)

16) things you said with no space between us

(Aha fun story I wrote a completely AU to NPM thing between Kadyr and Otabek that I intended to keep between only myself and two other people but since you’ve sparked an ask… DM me if you’d like a link to the Google Doc. Open invitation to any interested parties.) 

It’s quiet in Almaty. Kadyr thinks it must be the snow, because the city doesn’t sleep; he can see the headlights of cars flashing as they drive past. But this snow is thick and fluffy, and when he clenches his glove around a handful, it crumbles apart in his fingers in near silence. 

He likes to think he can see the stars past the clouds and the light pollution, here on top of the roof, the tops of the pine trees reaching for the edge of the sky and catching the snow as it falls. This is the kind of weather in which his mama would say Kadyr, you silly boy, come inside before you get sick and die, and it’s also the kind of weather in which he instead invites over all of his friends to leap off the roof on saucer sleds. If he’s going to get sick and die, he might as well have good company while he does it, right? 

It had ended with the six of them huddled together by the chimney in their winter coats, knit hats crammed over their heads and limbs tangled together in a web of familiarity. He’s missed this, this closeness; the year has taken Denis to London, threatened to spirit Amir away to California and been delayed, promised Dina a spot in Saint Petersburg and Otabek a life of constant travel chasing on the winds of success and ambition. Soon, he thinks it’ll just be him and Nura and sometimes Otabek, here and there; if things go the way he wants them to go, he might flee to France on the winds of Roxane’s laughter and never see any of the rest of them ever again. 

The quiet thunders ominously loudly in his ears. 

Gently, he lifts his head, listening for something beyond the steady breathing of his slumbering friends and the dampened sounds of humanity muffled in the snow. He squints in the darkness. “Beks?” 

“Mmf,” Otabek grunts, and Kadyr drops his head back to the roof, the cold biting into the leather of his jacket. 

“Do you ever get the feeling that… we missed something along the way?” Kadyr asks the black sky, orange streetlights mirrored in the clouds. “Like, I don’t know, we did all this fun, risky shit, but we’re fuckin’ grown-ups now, and we’re supposed to act like we know what’s going on, but I don’t know, I just-” He stops himself and sighs. “I don’t know, I’m just being sappy or whatever, but here we are, and tomorrow we’re all going to be going in different directions and that might be it, you know?” 

“Hey,” Otabek says. His clothes rustle as he sits up somewhere above Kadyr’s head. “This isn’t it. You corrupted us all too much for that.” Kadyr snorts, but it doesn’t match up with the storm brewing in his chest, sitting like a rock beneath his sternum. “Yeah, okay, but.” He clenches his fist again. “How’s Yura?” 

Otabek shifts again. “Fine,” he answers. “Stressed. But he’s learning. How’s Roxane?” 

“She was happy, the last time I called her.” Kadyr fumbles for his phone, flipping on the flashlight and pointing it at his collarbone, pulling aside his shirt and shivering as the cold air bites into his skin. “What’s it look like?”

Otabek leans over him, his hair dislodged from its slick under the black beanie pulled over his ears and poking out over his eyes. He scrutinises the mark for a moment. Kadyr can feel Otabek’s breath ghosting over his skin too, but he refuses to shiver again. “Green,” Otabek says after a moment. “And pink. Maybe a little bit of silver.” He pauses. “She’s probably sleeping now, hmm? I hope she’s thinking of you.” 

Kadyr bats at him and Otabek leans away to avoid it, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Kadyr tries to return it and finds that it’s a lot harder to make his face muscles work right. Otabek’s expression falls back to default. In the dark, without the phone flashlight, it’s impossible to tell if he’s thinking anything by the look in his eyes. 

“What?” 

Kadyr swallows and drops his head to the roof again, crossing his hands over his chest, like he has something to protect there. Which is absurd, because his heart’s not even here; it’s in a student flat in Paris, protected by an intelligent, funny, beautiful girl with the stars in her eyes. But it aches, sitting here in the quiet. 

“I’m going to miss this,” he says quietly, just in case someone else is awake. It seems too truthfully painful to speak out loud. “All of us here like this. Like we’re just… us, trying to do something else rebellious, something that would make Amir’s mama have a, a fucking heart attack or something. Having you to myself. Just… being here, in Almaty, like nothing’s changing.” 

Otabek says nothing. 

It takes Kadyr a solid five seconds to figure out why, and when he does, he swallows hard and closes his eyes, flinching from his words. “I mean, not, like, myself, I meant us, I meant us having you, us having each other-” 

“I know what you meant,” Otabek says quietly.

Kadyr does his best to swallow his tongue and fails. The mark on his collarbone burns, and for a moment, all he can think is fuck, I hope she’s not looking. 

It feels like years before Otabek’s gloved hand drops to his shoulder. Kadyr jolts hard enough to make Denis shift in his sleep, grumbling something unintelligible before he buries his face in the back of Amir’s coat, and with that the spell’s broken, tying Kadyr’s tongue back down to his jaw where it belongs. 

“What happened to wild nights?” Otabek asks when Kadyr doesn’t respond. “Pre-gaming before the clubs? Drinking too much vodka before the sun sets to ever be considered healthy?” He huffs softly. “I think we are growing up, Dyr. You just don’t realise it.” 

Ha, growing up. If Kadyr was actually growing up, he could handle this situation like a fucking adult, he thinks. Aching he doesn’t want to think about right here, right now, in the dampened sound of a city pretending it knows how to sleep when the snow falls. 

He closes his eyes again. Behind them rests a younger Beka, cheeks flushed red with too much vodka and something unsaid, smiling unfettered, murmuring Kadyr, I want to try it, see what all the fuss is about—

He opens his eyes. “We should probably wake them up, or we’ll actually freeze to death out here. Come on, I’ll throw a bunch of blankets on the floor or something because fuck if I’m driving anyone home this late.” 

Otabek hums in agreement, his hand hovering. Kadyr refuses to search for something that won’t be there in Otabek’s unwavering gaze. Eventually, Otabek shifts his fingers to gently shake Nuralia awake. 

27) things you said on the phone at 4 am

(Or, five times Otabek told Yuri to go to bed and the one time he didn’t)

“Do you ever wonder if some things were just meant to get screwed up?” Yuri asks the ceiling, his phone jammed against his ear and Potya purring hard enough on his chest to make his ribs vibrate. “Like, I dunno, flubbing a jump here and there and having to improvise the shit out of the rest of your routine to make up for it and all that make up comes out better than the original program. You know? Or like… like, fuckin, Viktor and Katsudon and their dumb ice dance program ready to steal the show and because of it we had to go running around looking for costumes and choreographing and splicing music together and shit, you know? Like those things, they’re just supposed to happen?”

“Go to bed,” Otabek says. “You’re thinking too hard.”

“Yeah, whatever, but what do you think?”

Otabek’s end of the line is silent for a moment. “I think that nothing’s meant to happen,” he answers, and yawns loud enough for Yuri to hear. “I… would hate for things to be so out of my control. Go to bed.”

“Yes, mother,” Yuri snarks.

~

“Beka,” Yuri says, and yawns hard enough that he sees stars. He blinks for a moment, disoriented, before he rolls over to keep himself from passing out. “You fucking, deserved bronze, you know? Like fuck the points system, I was so angry, fuck JJ, fuck the ISU, give him a goddamned medal, he deserved bronze.”

“Thank you,” Otabek says. “Now go to bed.”

~

“I’m drunk,” Yuri declares.

“I see,” Otabek says.

“No no no, you hear,” Yuri corrects, waggling his finger at his phone screen. “I’m drunk. I’m drunk.”

“I hear,” Otabek says. Yuri thinks he must be smiling on the other end, and it makes his whole body suddenly feel warm. Wow. Otabek smiling. Someone report it to the FSB and get that man arrested, because that should be illegal. It’s probably brilliant. Gorgeous. Fucking hot. And Yuri can’t even see it, the fuck?

“You have to earn it,” Otabek says, and wait, did Yuri say that out loud? Whoops. “Go to bed, Yura.”

“Never,” Yuri says, and passes out the moment his head hits the mattress.

~

“I want to move to Almaty,” Yuri decides. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. How do I start figuring out how to do that?”

“You don’t want to move to Almaty,” Otabek says, oddly quiet. “What about your coach? Your rinkmates? Your grandfather?”

“I mean yeah, but I don’t really see my grandpa all that often anyways and I think I’m a good enough skater for any coach and I miss your friends,” Yuri rambles, kicking his heels up the wall. “I miss you.”

“Go to bed,” Otabek says, and pauses. “And… I miss you too.”

“Knew it, I’m gonna move,” Yuri says, and smiles.

~

“I’m sorry, I just-” Yuri takes a gasping breath, curling his arm around his knees. “This is really fucking dumb but I haven’t been able to sleep and I just, I just wanted to talk to you because I shouldn’t be nervous about a, a fucking Challenger competition. I’m Yuri fucking Plisetsky. I’m the Ice Tiger of Russia, dammit! But I…” He swallows hard. “What if I’ve peaked already and I’m just… done and don’t know it yet?”

Otabek says nothing at first.

“Go to bed, meniñ altın,” Otabek says seriously. “You are capable. You are a hard-worker. If you don’t do well at this competition, do you truly care? It is the Grand Prix that is important. Euros. Worlds. The Olympics. So long as you skate carefully and avoid injury, your scores tomorrow will not matter. But rest today. You will win tomorrow.”

“How much you want to bet?” Yuri asks, his stormy heart settling a little.

“Anything you want,” Otabek says. “I know I will be right. Go to be-”

“Alright, alright, shut up, I’m going.”

~

“Yura,” Otabek murmurs. “I’m sorry. I know it’s late. But I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Yuri warns, his heart thundering away at a million miles an hour at Otabek’s tone. He checks the clock. 4:23. “I can talk for hours about shit you don’t care about. I can always tell when you’re not paying attention.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Otabek says, his voice low and gravelly. “I’m paying attention now.”

“Oh, you’d better be,” Yuri says, and kicks Potya off the bed.

Give me a number and a pairing!