alwaysthequietones

It's different, he learns, actually being friends with someone on the ice.

It's not just Yuri, either-- Viktor's friendship kind of ends up being this weird package deal with that that he wasn't expecting and Yuuri's follows and Yuuri seems like one of those people everyone just likes for some reason and so everyone else seems to follow suit. He's not really much of a people person-- people tend to find him too quiet and get bored and he finds small talk pretty exhausting, himself-- so "friendship" in this case might be too strong a word for what any of them feel towards him, but he's invested now, enough that every now and again, he'll even post something on Instagram or like a few scattered posts here and there.

He and Yuri talk more often than that, but it's still just a smattering of texts here and there and he's no better at pleasantries on the internet than he is in person, but Yuri really doesn't seem to care, so it works out okay. It's... nice. Having someone to talk to. He's spent most of his skating career not being very good at... well, most of the things other skaters were good at. Dance, talking, smiling for the camera. He's not unaware of how sullen he looks next to Viktor and Chris in some of those pictures when it was the three of them on the podium. He's just not really someone to smile and play nice with a bunch of reporters. He prefers to mean it, when he smiles.

He doesn't smile a lot.

But that's okay, too. He's an athlete. He's good at what he does. It's enough. ... Except now he's getting out there, competition after competition and skating against people he knows and one person he knows in particular and it's... different, now. He feels things more. He's still a solid skater, does the same things he's always done, just better. He's getting silver suddenly, more than bronze, though the fight to land on the podium at all is getting rougher and he misses it more than once.

And then, on the first competition to the Grand Prix Finals, suddenly he's standing higher than everyone else, and it's just qualifier, but it matters, because it's Yuri with the silver around his neck.