victor🍸: of fucking course i was
"what are you smiling at, yuri?" celestino demanded irritably, and yuri turned off his phone immediately.
"nothing. just something phitchit sent me, that's all."
his fingertip was bleeding from the glass fragments of the broken phone screen, caused by celestino kicking open yuri's bedroom door, pushing him down on the bed, tearing his phone out of his hands and hurling it against the wall where it landed with a crack.
"get off your phone."
babe🍬: victor i
"get off of your fucking phone and get ready."
yuri didn't have time to finish typing.
"phitchit?" celestino shouted at the top of his lungs, heavy boots thumping against the floorboards and making yuri wince at the memory of the bedroom carpet against his cheek and the pain of those boots connecting with his ribs. "phitchit are you fucking ready yet? i'm losing patience here."
those words made the boy upstairs move faster around his bedroom, and yuri had to flex his fingers out of the fist they were clenched in.
"is it a party tonight?" one of celestino's other "employees" - a new boy of only sixteen he had found in a rundown brothel in the darker side of town - asked yuri, who shook his head.
"i think you're staying here tonight, leo," yuri said, and the dirty look celestino threw at him made him push his phone back into his back jean pocket. "staying here with me. someone asked celestino for phitchit especially, and whenever that happens, celestino has to go with phitchit to make sure that nothing happens to him."
yuri wondered if leo de la iglesia would look up at him with wide eyes and ask "what? what do you mean, yuri? what could happen to phitchit?" but he didn't; leo only pressed both of his lips together and gave a nod of the head to tell yuri that he understood what he was implying. yuri realised that this boy must've seen what could happen to people like he and phitchit and everyone else who had been discarded to the streets that celestino had picked up in his porsche did for a living.
akio was right.
you are a disappointment.
if only you had worked harder.
you wouldn't have flubbed the jump.
you wouldn't have fallen.
you wouldn't have ruined it all.
you would still have akio.
you would still have your dream.
yuri felt the prickles of a
panic attack coming on, like water curling the edges of paper and spreading across, and yuri balled his hands up into fists and took deep breaths.
"yuri? what's the matter?" the new boy asked worriedly, and yuri slumped to the floor and put his hands over his head, trying to block out the whirring of the ceiling fan and phitchit's frantic calls of "i'm coming!" as celestino started to get more and more impatient and more and more angry.
"yuri?" he could hear leo calling, but it was as if he was floating at the bottom of a swimming pool.
"for fuck's sake," he heard celestino growl. "leo, get him the fucking pills from the bathroom. the blue ones, not the fucking prozac, christ."
leo ran back into the room and handed over the small plastic container to yuri, and yuri swallowed them down.
"jesus," celestino tutted, whilst yuri's breathing began to return to normal and leo was rubbing his back up and down. "a fucking fortune i had to spend on those pills and that fucking prozac bullshit after you pulled that stunt of slitting your wrists, katsuki."
celestino let out a dry chuckle, and yuri felt leo's hands slow down on his back fro a moment, before returning back to their motion of up and down, up and down his back.
"ain't it funny, kid?" he said to leo, whilst yuri kept breathing in and out, in and out until his chest started to loosen up and he reached he surface of the swimming pool.
"i said ain't it funny," celestino repeated, scratching at the back of his neck. "that my best paying boy has a fucking screw loose. those pills and that compulsory therapy at the hospital after he tried to top himself cost me a-fucking-lot. would've cost me less if he'd just cut deep enough," celestino laughed, slapping his thigh.
"you've got to pull yourself together, babe," he called over to yuri, "because it was bullshit like what you just pulled that caused you to fuck up your skating in front of the whole world, wasn't it? some kids never learn, do they leo?"
leo said nothing; yuri wanted to feel anger but had only the energy left to cry. he hid his face from celestino, so that he wouldn't catch sight of the tears running down his cheeks.
"i said do they, leo?" celestino repeated, with an edge like a knife's to his voice. leo was a smart kid, yuri could tell; he knew what to say and do, even if it wasn't what he wanted.
"they never do," leo laughed obediently. celestino chuckled to himself again, and yuri leant into leo's chest to cry silently, as he had taught himself to do since he'd ended up off the streets and in the apartment without hot water and his prozac in the bathroom.
"phitchit, hurry the fuck up," celestino bellowed, and phitchit quickly apparatus in the living room, with a made-up face and outfit that showed off his caramel legs that yuri thought should be saved for someone who cares for him and appreciates his body.
"you better not pull any of the panic attack shit tomorrow at victor nikiforov's party," celestino warned yuri. yuri knew that his body was all too precious to celestino, and that's why his name had been taken off of the list for requests online that night. celestino needed him for the parties such as victor nikiforov's to bring in the money from an unknown bedroom and from unknown hands and mouths.
hearing his name being spoken by celestino made yuri draw in his breath quick, as if celestino had kicked him in the lilac ribs once more.
"bye," phitchit called quickly, before celestino hurried him out of the door. leo, sighed and rubbed his eyes, whilst yuri slipped his phone of out his pocket and started to type a new message to victor.
he still had a fantasy that he had clung to like his mother's photo stashed under his mattress away from celestino - a fantasy he had in his head since victor nikiforov whispered the words "you're not nothing" and kissed him on that grey couch as no one had kissed yuri before - not after akio had.
with love, want and appreciation, as if yuri were as fragile as glass, and not with grubby lust at a party where he was there for a use, like cocaine sprinkled on glass coffee tables.
"i'll be one fucking minute, phitchit," celestino called, grumbling to himself about forgetting his phone and running back up the stairs. through the rain-stained windows - the raindrops likes diamonds on the glass, yuri could see the boy he had tried so hard to protect from the monster upstairs checking his eyeliner in the car's mirror beside an unknown driver, and yuri felt the same surge of protection he had felt the time celestino first raised his hands to phitchit.
as protective as his elder sister mari had been before her car skidded off of the road one winter in hatsetsu when she and his mother were driving in mari's old car that had the scent of jasmine and cigarettes.
victor💍: hey yuri
victor💍: shine bright like a diamond
the diamonds on the window brought him away from the icy roads of the home he missed and back to his fantasy of leaving celestino's grasp and a silver-haired, blue-eyes boy kissing him with love, want and appreciation.
he never said that he loved you, yuri.
he didn't even reply.
he said it before as a joke.
he's bored.
he's rich and bored.
he's playing with you.
yuri pulled out his phone and typed out the text to victor who's reply he was depending on as if it were prozac on those dark days he had.
babe🍬: do you love me, victor nikiforov
"for fuck's sake, yuri, who are you texting?"
at the sound of celestino's heavy boots on the stairs, yuri quickly deleted the conversation with victor, remembering what celestino would do to him if he found out he was still talking to him.
he only just managed to click block contact "victor🍸" before celestino marched up to him and snatched his broken phone away from his grasp, cursing at yuri as he did so.
"you ain't supposed to be on this, are you, babe?" he growled like a rabid dog. "or have you forgotten that you've been a bad little boy, yuri? huh?"
yuri winced at how close celestino was to him, and celestino laughed, clearly delighting in the power he held over yuri katsuki and the frightened looking leo de la iglesia, before he staked out of the door with yuri's broke phone in hand and slammed it shut behind him.
yuri hadn't sent the text to victor, and rubbed his arms as if he were cold as phitchit was driven away from him to a stranger in a strange hotel room. but really, yuri was only so lonely, and was longing for his fantasy to be a his reality.
he doesn't love you, yuri.
celestino is right.
he doesn't love you.
he didn't reply, yuri.
it's only a fantasy.
it isn't your reality.
you think the last chapters have been angsty? just you guys wait for victor's party oh my god