"I...
I'm going home to Kazakhstan, my flight leaves tomorrow."
Yuri's throat felt dry and his stomach churned like he was on a roller coaster drop.
"Uh... oh w-why? For how long? When are you coming back?"
"My little sister." Otabek paused to let out a deep breath of air.
"My sister..." he repeated.
"She had cancer when she was younger, but ended up beating it... but my cousin just told me that the cancer has come back, and this time spread to her brain." The way his voice cracked every time he said a pronoun shattered what was left of Yuri's heart.
"They-" he covered his face with his hand to muffle a sob.
"They said there is only a 5% chance that she'll live."
It seemed as though Otabek's calm and composed nature had melted away in an instant.
heavy streams of tears running down his cheeks from under the shielding hand.
He could see Otabek's teeth clench as he choked back another sob.
"Oh my god-" Yuri wanted so badly to comfort the man.
"So... I won't be coming back to Russia."
"Y-"
"So-"
Otabek clenched his fist against his face.
"So it's over..." he choked out, those words shot out like a pistol.
Yuri could feel the wrenching pain arise from the pit of his stomach.
"-What's over??"
The question only seemed to make Otabek cry harder.
"Us, we're over.
Im- fuck..." he breathed
"I'm breaking up with you.".
Yuri couldn't even process those words.
"....You're .....what"
Otabek held his other arm up to his chest tightly while the other one still desperately tried to conceal his crying.
"Please don't... please dont make me say it again" he sobbed, barely even able to form words at this point.
Before anything else could be said Yuri had locked himself in the small storage closet.
Yuri cupped his face into his hands, he was leaning against the door curled up into a ball.
The tears felt like lava on his icy skin, everything hurt, his throat, his chest, his eyes stung from crying and it even hurt to breathe.
He wanted it to be nothing but a horrible dream, a nightmare of which he would wake up from, and he'd still happily be together with Otabek.
He sat there, in that small dark closet, for hours. Every time he thought he was done crying he'd think about what Otabek just said.
'I'm breaking up with you'
rung in his ears with no sign of falter.
He thought that maybe he should be mad, but he wasn't, not the least bit.
He was just so overwhelmingly sad, in a way that words could not describe.
At the same time he also understood why Otabek had done what he did, he couldn't even find it in his heart to blame him.
But that didn't stop it from hurting, it hurt so much he could barely even cry anymore.
Yuri hiccuped, trying to choke back the now dry sobbing.
"Please..." he whimpered.
"Please,please ,please ,please"
He didn't even know what he was pleading for, but at this point it's all he felt that he could do.
---
Otabek watched as Yuri stumbled down the hallway, he wanted so badly to just hold him in his arms.
But it was too late, it was over between them, whatever it was that they had is over.
They may not have had a name for their relationship, or an official confirmation, they were just together.
That's all they knew, that they loved each other and that's it.
It's not that he didn't love Yuri anymore, he knew he would always love him and nothing could ever change that.
It's that he couldn't bring himself to put Yuri through that, all the pain that came with the complications of his situation.
