Underheard

Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice
Title: who can sing both high and low
Pairing/Character Focus: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky (Yuri-centric)
Author: infiniteandsmall
What makes this a gem:

It’s startling to watch videos of his practices and see angles where he’d seen straight lines, broad shoulders where he’d seen a waist that had made him think sometimes, in a cool quick flash, girl.

Yuri on Ice takes place in a world without homophobia, and a couple fanwriters have taken that idea and run with it: why not consider it a world without transphobia as well? What if you tell a story about someone figuring out their gender, and the only difficulty they face is in finding the right version of themselves? This is that story for Yuri Plisetsky, who's now eighteen, a lot taller and broader, and starting to miss the days when he was encouraged to be pretty. The narrative voice is perfectly suited to the story; it's vivid and opinionated and gentle, all at once. And the compassion in Yuri's relationships with the important people in his life is like a balm to the soul. As a bonus, I really love this version of Otabek, who is warm and patient and wry and shows pictures of Yuri to his mom.

This is the second story in a series, but it stands alone pretty easily--you get all the context you need in the first couple paragraphs. That said, of course, the rest of the series is well worth reading too!

(Hi mods! Could I get an Otabek/Yuri tag for this post? Thanks!!)