Chapter Text
They’ve come a long way from Barcelona, JJ reflects, signalling to the bartender for another drink.
If anyone had told him back then that he would become best friends with Yuri and Otabek, he’d have laughed it off. But a year had passed, then two, and all of a sudden they were the veterans of the skating circuit, sitting together during competitions and muttering assessments of the up-and-coming young skaters (not bad, but nowhere near a threat, was Yuri's judgement each time). And then they'd taken part in the same tours, and the same charity events, and somehow they'd ended up...here.
'Here' being, in this case, some semi-respectable bar with worryingly greasy glasses, but alcohol cheap enough to make up for it. It's the off-season: they can afford to kick back a little, enjoy themselves.
He yelps loudly when Yuri kicks his shin impatiently (mostly for show, but partly because ow, damnit). Some things, it seems, would never change.
"I'm getting there!" JJ exclaims, mock-wounded. Then, "Never have I ever...pined for more than a month over someone else."
It might be the mellowing effect of the beers he's had talking, but he's infinitely glad that they're here, that they've cleared the air between them.
A good few seconds pass before it dawns on him that neither Otabek nor Yuri were going to do anything more than stare at him, glasses untouched.
Maybe they haven't, then, JJ thinks, pushing the urge to bury his face into the counter. Still. How they haven't, how they could possibly come to accept him as their friend but not realise their own glaringly obvious mutual attraction, is beyond him.
But hey, he's JJ. It's his duty to help his friends out, even if they're utter, oblivious fools.
Even if he's been trying for the past two months straight, not to mention the two years he's spent watching them making endless adoring faces - but only ever when the other's back is turned.
He's tried being subtle, asking them within earshot of each other whether they'd found that special someone yet; weren't their days feeling just a little bit empty? Their nights oh so cold and alone?
(Yuri had shut that down in a blink, snorting that JJ could hardly pretend to be the worldly one when he'd stuck out the whole 'pure until marriage' thing for ages before he'd finally won Worlds. By the merest fraction of a point that time, Yuri never fails to add.)
He's printed out multiple self help leaflets (How To Confess Your Love In One Simple Step - Just Take The Plunge!) and left them casually lying around his apartment whenever he invites them to Montreal. That had ended up in Otabek pulling him aside one evening, face deadly serious, and asking with characteristic bluntness whether things weren't working out with Isabella.
He's slipped 'you have a secret admirer!' notes under their hotel doors at competitions, signing them 'A Good Friend'. He's also dropped by Yuri's room post-competition to find them crumpled up in the trash; he'd briefly gotten excited the first time he'd prodded through Otabek's bin and not found them, before he discovered that he was only keeping them for recycling.
Surely all those efforts would've been enough for anyone, but apparently not.
Maybe it's time to up his game.