Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ARC ONE

*

May 2017

It’s raining again, quiet drops that dampen the London streets and chill the air. On the roof, the tiles grow wet, puddles forming with idle persistence.

Yuuri absently cracks his knuckles, shifts his fingers to keep them from going stiff, and replaces his forefinger on the trigger. A brief check at his wristwatch. 8.14pm.

He fits himself back to the scope, begins to regulate his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

He listens for his heartbeat, follows the ba-dump, ba-dump, and settles into the sensation.

Two buildings over, his target walks into view.

The wind blows hard, and the rain pelts down.

A creature awakens in the depths of his chest, a whisper across his skin that slides to his trigger finger. Here, before the scales of life and death, man in the crosshairs of his rifle, Yuuri’s gift hovers.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

He lines up the shot.

This man will die, he thinks, and he believes it.

Time shivers, and Yuuri places his finger on the scales. Tips it.

Fires.

A bullet shoots straight, an unforgiving, unnatural line.

Two buildings over, a man falls over, clutching his leg.

Yuuri swears, low and ugly, and lines up a second shot.

This man will die, he thinks again, and pushes himself harder into the belief.

Fires.

The man stops moving.

The CheyTac Intervention is disassembled in efficient, quick movements. Barrel, stock, silencer, parts all tucked into a gym bag. Yuuri shucks his black clothing, pulling on a Mizuno track hoodie, donning a pair of glasses and a face mask.

Three minutes and forty-seven seconds after he kills a man, Yuuri disappears into the throng of the London masses, all outward appearance the consummate international student on his way back from the gym.

It’s done, he types into his phone, a battered black-and-white Nokia.

Good, comes the near-instantaneous reply. But two shots?

Yuuri grimaces. Won’t happen again, he sends back.

See that it doesn’t.

He stares down at the message, then snaps the phone in half and tosses it in a bin.

Tugging his collar up, he joins the crowd descending into Piccadilly Circus station.

_____

September 2014

They’re on holiday, a carved-out fortnight on an airy beach house in Mauritius, courtesy of one of Victor’s friends.

Yuuri didn’t ask. Victor has many friends, not that he’s met any of them.

The night is still, the sort of hushed quiet that’s peppered with the stringing of cicadas and the crashing of waves to shore. The silence of civilisation, if you will.

Yuuri blinks groggily awake, gradually aware of the cool sheets beside him. Victor’s nowhere to be found, and the robe he’d left on the chair by the bed is gone with its owner.

In the gentle calm of the twilight hours, Yuuri can make out the murmur of music coming from the direction of the lounge, and he slips from their bed, stretching languidly.

As he rounds the bed to the door, he slips the coin lying on the bureau into his hand, thumb brushing familiarly, assuredly, over the stamped dog on the coin’s surface. He tucks the coin into the pocket of his pyjama pants, before nudging the door open, padding towards the lounge.

He yawns into the back of his hand, mind still bleary from sleep. The hum of music shifts then, a static hissing sharp and frantic, then switching to the flat, pre-recorded tone of a female voice. Startled, body slow to catch up to his brain, he rounds the corner to the lounge as the radio cuts to the high voice of children reciting snippets of some sort of nursery rhyme, then fades to muted static.

Victor’s sitting at the dining table, shortwave AM radio set in front of him, pen and paper - with words undecipherable at this distance - to his side, by his hand. His gaze is watchful. Wary.

Yuuri’s mind is snapped to wakefulness, a tense, taut disbelief running down his spine. He grapples for words, blurts the first thought that comes to him. “Where did you get that radio?”

The static is still humming in the background, and with a slow, deliberate movement, eyes still trained on Yuuri’s, Victor reaches to flick the radio off.

“It was in the storage cupboard,” Victor replies, folding the sheet of paper on the table into a precise square, tucking it into the pocket of his jeans.

Yuuri swallows. His hand clenches at his side, an involuntary action. He forces it to relax.

Victor watches, eyes shadowed in the dim of the room.

“This is why,” Yuuri says, trying for levity, “I told you we should’ve gone somewhere with wifi. Radios, honestly.” His smile is fragile, wholly unconvincing.

Victor’s answering grin is light. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You were the one who said he wanted to know what actual sex on a beach was like.”

Yuuri makes himself move, slow steps that bring him closer to where Victor remains seated at the head of the dining table.

“Well,” he says, coming to a stop before Victor, who turns to face him, head tilted up to meet his gaze. “I’d say we thoroughly accomplished that mission, then.”

Victor inclines his head in silent agreement, and his mouth slides into a softer curve, a smaller, pensive smile. Taking Yuuri’s hands in his own, he tugs him down to press their lips together, hands leaving to twine in Yuuri’s sleep-mussed hair.

Yuuri parts his mouth, deepens the kiss, and runs his fingers down the bare skin of Victor’s neck, soaking in his warmth.

Standing, Victor nudges them backwards to the sofa, and Yuuri’s knees catch on an arm and he buckles, landing on plush cushions. Victor chases after, lips and tongue and hands insistent and demanding, pushing, stripping, touching, a one-man force of nature.

Victor produces a bottle of lube, coats his fingers liberally, and there’s nothing else but the burn of the stretch, the delicious friction of skin on skin.

There are no more words beyond yes, more, please, moans that shatter the glass-sharp silence of the night, shadows that fall from moonlight-shaded bodies pressed close in desperate, brittle passion that culminates in gasping pleasure that hides the prick of needle.

When Yuuri wakes, his mouth is cottony, his head is pounding, and his ass is sore. The blare of a horn shocks him to full alertness, diving for cover by stained curtains that frame a paint-flaking window.

He’s been dressed in a simple blue shirt and jeans, the hem fraying. The former is Victor’s, the latter his.

A deep breath in, and a short breath out.

Yuuri shifts to peer out the window.

He bites at his lower lip, rips off a hangnail. He slams a fist into the wall next to him, rattling the frame.

Welcome to Nevada.

By the time he makes it back to their flat in St. Petersburg, just under seventy hours later, Makkachin is gone, and Victor’s side of the wardrobe is empty, his books and paraphernalia missing.

Yuuri combs every inch of their flat. Calls in a contact, ex-FSB.

There’s nothing left, not even stray strands of hair.

It’s as if Victor never existed at all.

_____

June 2017

“There’s someone I want you to meet.” Celestino Cialdini may be nominally retired, but you’d be a fool to think he was out of the game.

Yuuri’s no fool.

“Yeah?” he replies, stripping the comm device from his ear and tossing it onto the table, the metal contraption landing squarely amidst the scatter of blueprints, dossier papers, and notes. Eyeing the disarray of his workspace, Yuuri mentally shrugs, turning to leave the planning room to meet Celestino and whoever it is he thinks is important enough to bring onto the job.

He cocks his head from side to side, pulling at the tense muscles of his neck, working out the kinks that’ve built up. In his right hand, he dances a weathered silver coin with a dog stamped onto either face idly across his fingers, just as he hits the button for the door that leads to the mess and rec room in Celestino’s private bunker.

“Great, you’re here,” Celestino calls over his shoulder, angling to face Yuuri from where he’d been bent over some schematics on the mess table. “Listen,” Celestino begins, and the edges of Yuuri’s gift prickle, a wisping oh, something’s happening you won’t like.

Crooking a cautious smile, Yuuri settles himself into one of the chairs around the mess, thumb and forefinger worrying loosely at the coin in his fingers, obscured from general view by the table surface. “That doesn’t sound good,” he says, aiming for lightheartedness.

A glance at Celestino’s expression confirms his suspicions.

Yuuri sits upright, faint frown marring his brow. “What is it?”

“You know this is a big job,” Celestino hedges, gesturing at the detritus of planning materials littered around them. “We’re being paid a lot of money by very important people.”

“Right,” Yuuri says slowly, not sure where the conversation is headed. “I’m aware of that. You wrangle everything together, I kill - I know how this works, Celestino.”

Celestino nods, fingers tapping a rapid tattoo on the table. The edges of sheets of paper within a couple of feet from them flutter loosely, an unnatural movement in the regulated climate of the bunker, stirred by Celestino’s gift. “So you’ll know I mean it when I say I tried to talk our employers out of it, but that they had the final say.”

Wary, something verging on dread building low in his gut, Yuuri halts the movement of his fingers, the coin falling still. “The final say in what?”

Sighing, Celestino sits himself down on one of the other chairs to Yuuri’s left. “They heard the rumours about your -  ” he sends a pointed glance at Yuuri’s hand, half-hidden under the table, and wiggles his fingers, “ - gift not working so well lately, and they got jumpy. Said they were going to send an independent contractor to make sure the job went off smoothly, one that would make sure you didn’t choke on the trigger.”

“What, with their gift?” Yuuri’s jaw is clenched, the plaguing feeling of inadequacy dogging his heels. “And my gift works fine. I get all my jobs done.”

Celestino raises his hands, palms up, the universal gesture for don’t shoot the messenger. “I know, I know. I told them that, but they brought up London. Your double shots.”

Yuuri jolts. “London? How?”

“Like I said, our employer is powerful. I don’t know who his sources are. I’m keeping feelers out, but they’ve turned nothing up so far.”

Yuuri’s gift churns under his skin, unsettled and spooked, his fingers almost twitching of their own volition. He has to fight to keep them still.

“As for their contractor…” Celestino trails off, expression immensely uncomfortable. “Hell, I don’t know how else to blunt the news. I’m sorry, Yuuri. It’s Victor. He’s meeting us here at noon to go over the plans.”

Two heartbeats.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

A quiet hum, a muted swing.

Somewhere, a pendulum arcs low, the force of fate driving its metal fist.

Yuuri’s veins harden to ice, scraping raw through his body.

A glance to the clock on the wall by the pantry. It’s 11.54am.

Yuuri shoves abruptly back from the table, chair scraping in a harsh screech. He tucks his coin into the pocket of his slacks. “I’m making tea,” he declares.

Celestino nods, watching with pitying eyes. Yuuri avoids his gaze, pretends not to see it.

The pantry is well-stocked with necessities, not luxuries, so all he manages to scrounge up are some tea bags, languishing in their box. Jerky movements have him setting the kettle to boil and yanking down a mug, dropping a lone teabag into it.

Behind him, Celestino clears his throat, awkward. “If there’s anything - ”

“I’m fine.” Yuuri cuts him off.

Back kept to the room, Yuuri shuts his eyes. Takes a steadying breath. His pulse roars loud in his ears. His gift throbs under his skin, threads itself through the disbelief he feels at Victor’s impending arrival.

I can’t believe Victor’s -

He shuts the thought down with a mental slap, sends his gift scurrying back, a recalcitrant child chastised.

The kettle clicks off, and Yuuri picks it up to add the steaming, frothing water to his mug, settling it back in its stand when he’s done.

A dart of his eyes to the clock. 11.58am.

“His gift,” Celestino adds. “You’re sure you can manage it?”

Yuuri nods once, ignores the anxiety fluttering in his gut to bare his teeth in the sharp semblance of a smile. “I’ll handle him.” Bitter threads of memory coil tight around his heart, catches at his throat and threatens to steal his breath. “I know what it feels like.”

He sips at his tea, the Lapsung Souchong heavy on his tongue, smoke and gunpowder-heady. He ignores the way his hands shake, the liquid in his mug shivering like a subtly spun spider’s web trembling with the barest touch.

If he closes his eyes, he can feel long fingers digging purple shadows on his hips, hear whispers of quiet things between entwined lovers breathed to life under the sheltering cloak of night.

If. If. If.

The ghosts of memory are poor companions, but most of the time they’re the only company he has.

His finger catches on a chip on the handle of the mug, a sharp, pricking pain. There’s no blood drawn, and the hurt fades.

At noon exactly, Victor arrives, stepping through the doors of the bunker after being let through Celestino’s exhaustive security measures.

Yuuri sets the mug down. Draws the coin from his pocket, spins it between his fingers.

“Victor,” he hears Celestino greet from behind him.

The coin stops, and Yuuri flicks it up and it soars high upwards in a long line. His gift stirs, an anticipation shaking loose, and the pendulum swings. Back. Forth.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

This coin is not going to hit the ground, he thinks.

Gravity catches up, and the coin slips down, straight into Yuuri’s open palm, landing dead centre.

His power rushes out of him in a breath, a gust that leaves him hollow.

Yuuri turns, looks away from his silver coin, and meets the glacier blue of Victor’s eyes for the first time in three years.

“Hello, Yuuri,” Victor says, his tone unaffected, expression carefully genial. “I’ve told Celestino we’re acquainted.”

“Acquainted,” Yuuri repeats, tongue feeling around the syllables, mouth quirking at the corners in a mirthless shift. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Oh?” Victor asks, head tilting slowly to the side, lone finger coming to rest on the edge of his bottom lip. There’s challenge in his eyes, a dare in the language of the wound lines of his body. “How would you put it, then?”

The provocation in his stance stiffens Yuuri’s spine, makes him set his jaw. “Friendly, at the very least,” he ripostes, keeping his tone deliberately light, acerbically tart.

Victor takes a half-step forward. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

Celestino sighs, forcing an end to their terse standoff, hand pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Enough. Is this going to be a problem?”

Yuuri shakes his head, holds his gaze to Victor’s. “No,” he says. “I’m a professional.” He realises his fists have clenched, and he relaxes them with effort.

Victor nods once, a sweeping incline of his head. “So am I,” he echoes. “And after all,” he says, hand gesturing expansively at Yuuri, “We’re friendly, aren’t we?” His smile is biting, a white slash that cuts across his face.

Yuuri grins back, caustic. “Very.”

_____

(The ghosts of memory are poor companions, but they keep your secrets and tell no lies.)

_____

January 2015

Their line of work begets few real human connections, fewer still true friendships.There’s no understating how grateful Yuuri is to count Phichit amongst that latter paltry number.

Ueno Park is empty at this time of night, snow eddying around them in gentle swirls. Nature is blanketed in white, the colours pressed and faded.

Yuuri sighs, his breath fogged before him.

“I should’ve known,” he says, and every word is curled into mist, admittance and recrimination set slowly free to the twilight air.

“He’s one of their best,” Phichit replies. “How could you have?”

The photo clipped to the front of the slim manila folder doesn’t do him justice, Yuuri thinks. Victor’s face is in profile, mouth stern, jaw set, eyes hard.

“Maybe,” Yuuri concedes. He clears his throat, drives a thumbnail into the yielding flesh of his forefinger. The pain grounds him. “But I believed it.”

Phichit’s expression softens, though there is consideration in his gaze.

“Someone like him would never just run into someone like me,” Yuuri adds.

Phichit knows that words of placation and sympathy are hollow comfort, so he holds them back.

Yuuri cocks his head, and the movement throws half his face into shadow, the angles of wan streetlight rendering his expression a monochromatic chiaroscuro, contrast that pronounces him severe and brittle. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Pursing his lips, Phichit nods, knows that there is always harsh solace to be found in truth.

Yuuri studies him for a long moment, then glances away. “He has a gift, doesn’t he?”

Reaching out, Phichit taps a finger on the manila folder clutched in Yuuri’s hands, a wordless entreaty to read it.

After a hesitant, wavering second, Yuuri slides his finger until it catches on the cover of the file, and with a bracing breath, flips it open.

He reads the agent profile.

Shuts his eyes.

When he can find his words again, his voice trembles, and Phichit is kind enough not to draw attention to it.

“Emotional manipulation,” Yuuri breathes.

He inhales, and his breath shakes. Something inside of him splinters, a final string of hope pulling taut and snapping.

In the low lamplight, a killer looks like any other man, and a man who cradles his sniper rifle can just as easily cradle his face in his hands, pads of fingers pressed to damp eyes.

Under the rustling boughs of the trees, tremulous sobs are fainter. Between the whistling rushes of the wind, unsteady inhales are conceded.

In the twilight hours, the fallibility of man - of a man - is more easily forgiven, more readily allowed.

_____

(“Back then,” Yuuri asks. “Did you love me?”

The cigarette hangs low, tucked between Victor’s lips. The end glows steadily orange, devil eyes on a coal-black night.

“Did you believe I did?” Victor replies. Fingers come up to bracket the cigarette. A slow, smooth inhale. A wisping, twining spiral of smoke.

Yuuri looks away. “I think so.”

“Well,” Victor says, and the edges of his smile burn bitter, ashes ground to dust. “Then I must have, mustn’t I?”)

TBC

Chapter Text

March 2005

Yuuri kills his first man at the age of fifteen.

It’s not even the objective of the mission. It’s supposed to be a simple in and out, a quick lifting of valuable documents.

But there’s a guard, drunk and stumblingly patrolling where he shouldn’t, and he sees them. Yells. Starts shooting, and searchlights click on, and more booted feet hit the ground below the catwalk where they are, teams of black-clad men swarming like ants furious their nest has been kicked.

“Move, Yuuri,” Minako hisses, swinging round, pistol in hand, to take aim at their alarm-raiser.

A bullet ricochets off the metal bars of the catwalk by their feet before she can, and they scramble for cover.

“Sniper, eleven o’clock,” Yuuri whispers, frantic.

“I can’t get him from here,” comes Minako’s answer, curt with urgency. The guard advances on them, gun out, and Yuuri’s heart is thumping, his breath stuttering with panic, and they’re cut off from the exit, a solid forty feet from the ground.

“There’s nowhere to run,” the guard taunts. “Come out with your hands up, and maybe the boss’ll have pity on you.”

The set of Minako’s shoulders is determined, the line of her mouth somber. She takes out a second pistol, cocks it. “I’ll distract them,” she murmurs, tone grim. “You make for the exit, you hear me?”

“I’m not leaving you,” Yuuri cries, taken aback. “I won’t!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Minako hisses. “You’re young, I’m not going to let you die like this.”

A moment stretches, beats of his pulse loud. The coursing of blood through his veins makes itself known.

“We’re not going to die,” he says, and the strength of a command laces itself into his voice, a resonating string plucked by greater hands. He throws himself from cover, into the path of the guard.

Yuuri’s arm is outstretched before he knows what he’s doing, fingers straining as his hand is flung out. He doesn’t even know what he hopes to achieve. He doesn’t even know what he can.

Except -

Except he thinks, these men should be dead.

A second creeps by, a tentative quivering of time.

Something unravels inside him, shaking free the dregs of sleep, an unspeakable power that grips him tight and raises him up.

He inhales.

Exhales.

And with grasping, terrified desperation, he believes.

Minako’s guns don’t need to fire. The man slumps over, frothing at the mouth, clutching at his throat. The sniper falls, his rifle clattering onto the concrete, four floors below.

They run then, adrenaline and bewilderment flooding his limbs, fuelling his every step and leap over fences and walls.

Afterwards, Minako sees him with new eyes, a dawning watchful, wary realisation. Yuuri rubs his hands on the tops of his thighs, avoids looking at her. He studies the lines of his palms, as if they might yield answers to the stirring that leaves him restless, that dares to shake the scales of fate.

“You know, Yuuri,” she says, finger tapping a considering tempo, gaze thoughtful on his hands, on him. “You’re going to go far.”

_____

July 2017

“The mission doesn’t require that.” The words fall unwittingly from Yuuri’s mouth, unbidden. A dusting of snow belying an avalanche of emotion he refuses to categorise.

Victor’s sitting at the mess table, legs crossed, arms folded, leaning back against the chair. There’s an insouciant tilt to his head, a visceral, unkind delight at Yuuri’s clear discomfort. “Why, Yuuri,” he mocks. “And here I was thinking you’d understand that needs must.”

Off to the side, leaning back against the pantry counter, Celestino sighs, shaking his head as he turns away to leave them to their fight.

“I have boundaries,” Yuuri snaps back, hand coming to slash through the air with emphasis. “I don’t need to fuck someone or emotionally twist them to be successful at what I do.”

The fury in Victor’s eyes is glacial, a cutting cold that takes no prisoners. “No, of course not,” Victor sneers, saccharine, “Because we all know your gift works in wonderfully ethical ways.” He feigns laughter, acerbic. “Handy thing, that belief of yours.”

Yuuri’s coin is out, flipping, jumping between agitated, restless fingers. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. “You want to talk about ethics? Do you really think I haven’t heard about your jobs in Barcelona? In Riga?”

“And you’re a regular assassin with morals, aren’t you,” Victor scoffs. “You’re a one-trick pony, Yuuri, don’t fool yourself. Pulling a trigger from a distance doesn’t take much skill.”

“Because getting your dick wet for information does?” Yuuri spits, and the anger churning in his gut, building in his balled fists, is a living, breathing, raging thing, twisting under his skin and searing him alive.

Victor’s hand darts out to circle hard round his wrist, and Yuuri’s not quick enough to draw back. There’s a feeling that slides over him, like a weight that’s been draped over his shoulders, and then there’s a jolting, shifting moment when something inside of him is forcefully tugged, and he’s vividly, overwhelmingly aroused, an unnatural, consuming want for Victor rising, spiking up to nearly choke him.

At Yuuri’s visceral response, Victor drops his hand, and the weight recedes, the intense feeling of arousal cutting out like a light.

Victor withdraws, settling back into his chair, and he bares his teeth in the semblance of a smile. “Say what you like, Yuuri, but we both know you were always easy for me.”

It’s dismissive, deliberately tailored to hurt, and by god, it rankles that it does. Yuuri steps back, pulse unsteady, breathing uneven. His coin is between his thumb and forefinger, a slow back and forth before he clasps it in his damp palm.

Celestino must be returning soon, he thinks, and his gift, unchecked and reins slack, leans out to nudge the strings of fate.

Behind him, the door to the mess slides open, Celestino returning from wherever it is he’d retreated to.

Victor spears him with a knowing look, the timing of Celestino’s reappearance abnormally fortuitous, the sort of convenience that only ever plays out in scripted movies or contrived novels. Yuuri ignores him, sets himself to reestablishing the equilibrium Victor’s always, always been an expert at unbalancing.

We both know you were always easy for me.

Under the harsh fluorescence of Celestino’s bunker, Yuuri feels wrung out, overexposed, a film strip that’s been left in the light and lost all meaning.

He can sense Victor’s gaze on him still, trace the lingering arousal that rasps and chafes in the confines of his skin.

It’s not -

This isn’t the right time.

In the charted terrain of his mind, Victor and Yuuri is a city long burning, set ablaze one summer night lifetimes ago. There’s a whole other person he’s since become, a whole other life he’s since lived.

Victor and Yuuri is a city burning, two years of his life he’s clawed out with trembling, weeping hands. Three years he’s walked on, back steadfastly kept to the flame.

There’s a story in the Bible about a city and God’s wrath, and a command from angels to flee and keep going. But Lot’s wife, the senseless, sentimental fool, turned as they fled, and as she looked back she was turned into a pillar of salt.

A life traded for a single backwards glance.

Yuuri can’t look back.

If he looks back, he is lost.

_____

August 2013

Their phone is ringing, an insistent shrill that startles Yuuri from deep, dreamless sleep. The phone is closer to Victor’s side of the bed, so he kicks him in the shin and rolls back over onto his stomach to doze, entirely unrepentant.

There’s the rustling of sheets as Victor grumbles about being so unceremoniously woken, then weight being lifted off the bed as he leaves to answer the call.

An indeterminate length of time passes, Yuuri drifting lightly in and out of sleep. When Victor returns, bringing with him the warmth of Makkachin curling up over their legs, Yuuri cracks an eye open.

“Who was it?” he asks, voice heavy, dusky with sleep.

“Your parents,” Victor chuckles, settling a warm hand on the nape of Yuuri’s neck, a gentle pressure that buoys him, keeps him present.

“Hmm?” Yuuri hums. “What did they want?”

“Just checking in to see how we’re doing,” Victor answers. “I think they still worry about the strange foreigner who’s whisked you off to St. Petersburg.”

Yuuri laughs, pressing his face into the pillow, arching his back to encourage Victor’s hand to move. Victor obliges, and his hand works over his back, a comforting touch that leaves Yuuri drowning in bone-deep contentment.

He thinks, there is nothing in the world better than this.

“They adore you, you know,” Yuuri replies, picking up the conversation again. “Probably more than they like me, I think.”

Victor’s grin is pleased, quietly bashful. In that moment, there’s a near-boyish sweetness about him; a beauty that, when cast in the right light, lends itself to perfection. It’s in these unguarded, unadorned snatches of time that Victor steals his breath away over and over again, a piercing, startled disbelief that he’s here, with Yuuri.

Victor nuzzles close, feathers kisses along Yuuri’s shoulders, tracing the prominent line of his shoulder blades with his lips. “I love you like this,” he says, and there’s a note Yuuri can’t quite place in his voice, almost wistful. Longing. His hands trace nonsense patterns over the bare skin of Yuuri’s back, loops and circles and curves that send shivers up his spine. “You’re all warm and happy.”

“I am?” Yuuri teases. “How do you know? I could be sad. Devastated. Crying inside.”

“No,” Victor responds, and his smile is audible in his words. When Yuuri cranes his neck to peer at him, Victor’s smile is a small, gentle thing, infused with quiet pleasure. “You’re happy. I know you are.”

“Yeah?” Yuuri says, voice muffled as he mashes his face back into his pillow, luxuriating in Victor’s attention, unwilling to think about the world beyond the sanctuary of their bedroom and them. He stretches out, hip bumping Victor’s. “You know, I think you’re right.”

_____

There’s a phrase, not in his mother tongue, but in the working language he’s had to learn to be the razor-honed killer that he is.

I can’t see the forest for the trees.

There’d been a job, a year or so ago, when he’d had to work with an infiltration team - a fire-gifted man and his hand-to-hand expert partner.

They’d both been affable enough, Guang Hong and Leo, the two of them jovial and fairly inseparable.

Then Leo’d been taken by the Mexican cartels for leverage, stashed in one of the numerous drop houses in the middle of the Lacandon jungle. Five days passed without word, all their contacts turning nothing up. Guang Hong’d sat at the table in the Tijuana warehouse serving as their mission base, eyes set, fingers clicking fire, a non-stop, constant metronome of flame.

Click. Click. Click.

On the sixth night, Guang Hong’d gone out, and when he returned, Leo was with him, collarbone broken in two places and left arm dislocated and alive.

The both of them smelled of smoke, of the crisp edge of fire that licks fierce and foreign.

“What did you do?” Yuuri’d asked, and the look in Guang Hong’s eyes had him taking a step back.

The smile on Guang Hong’s face had been satisfied and vicious, the echo of flame dancing in his eyes, wild and free. “I burned the forest down.”

_____

(He can’t look back, not at their city burning.)

_____

July 2017

Yamada Akiko is an attractive woman, Yuuri can readily admit that. She’s tall, statuesque, and curved in all the right places, and next to Victor in his bespoke Zegna, they make an enviable pair.

Through the scope of his sniper rifle, the lush glint of her black hair makes for an easy target to spot. It’d be a laughably simple shot to take, too, his gift rearing and jostling for purchase, eager to help drive a bullet through her beautiful, hateful forehead.

Yuuri shoves it down, steels himself for the wait. This leg of the mission is all Victor’s, a charm and stun that’ll get them access to the private floor of her father’s tower. Yuuri’s here as backup, nothing more.

At the bar, Akiko tinkles a laugh and places a hand on Victor’s forearm, angling forward as she does. Victor leans into their conversation, covering her hand with his, bending to proffer an ear as Akiko comes in close to whisper, conspiratorial smile on her face. Whatever she says elicits an appreciative laugh from Victor, and their heads are bent cozily together, an eye-catching couple in juxtaposition.

Yuuri’s finger twitches on the trigger.

Four minutes past midnight, two hours into the operation, Akiko and Victor stand from the bar, Victor tossing down enough to cover both of their drinks. Akiko tiptoes to murmur something in his ear, expression coy, and though Victor’s back is to Yuuri, his answering nod is clear enough, one hand coming to rest intimately low on her back as they depart.

As they round the bar to the exit, Akiko’s bodyguards trailing them as they go, Yuuri startles as Victor glances up to where Yuuri’s sniper nest is.

The fucker winks.

It’s after three in the morning when he hears from Victor again, a simply-worded En route, ETA 20 mins.

Celestino hadn’t come out to Tokyo for the job, so Yuuri’s alone in the hotel room they’re using as a base when Victor saunters through the door, shirt tails untucked, suit jacket rumpled and slung over a shoulder with a hand.

There’s a suckled mark high on his throat, lipstick stains on the collar of his shirt. His trousers are wrinkled, and his feet are bare in his leather brogues.

Yuuri turns away.

In the reflection of the mirror, the hickey on Victor’s neck blooms purple, a mottled reminder that he’s never had Victor for himself.

The ashes of a burning city stir, a grey beast writhing, and the shadows of their shared room paint the walls. Yuuri’s glasses catch the faint light, fleeting muzzle flashes. There’s a stirring in his chest, a quiet force rearing its head, pounding the perfect ache of an emotion he’s never been able to name, except that he’d once thought it love.

“Did you get it?” he asks, and is grateful that his voice holds steady.

Victor shoots him a look, disgruntled. “Of course I did.” He tosses over the key, one of the only two in the world that opens Yamada Shirō’s safe room. “I’m headed to bed.” Victor crosses the room, draping his jacket over the back of the chair at the desk.

“Shower first,” Yuuri snaps, unable to stop himself.

There’s the barest pause in Victor’s step, the silver of his fringe flicking as he tilts his head to glance back at Yuuri. His lips part, retort clear on his tongue, and Yuuri shuts his eyes briefly, nails digging crescents into his palms.

“Please,” Yuuri says, and it’s not a broken sound if he doesn’t think it is, surely. He turns away, busies himself with checking over his rifle.

Behind him, the door to the bathroom clicks shut, and he hears the faint sounds of water running.

_____

(No one wins in love and war; history is written by the side that loses the least. The terrifying thing is that most days, between the two of them, Yuuri isn’t quite sure who that is.)

_____

February 2012

It’s a clean job.

Yuuri gets in, nests down to wait, and three hours and one bullet later, Kawasaki Keisuke, Chairman of Kawasaki International, is dead, slumped over a pile of rapidly reddening documents at his desk.

By the time he steps off the shinkansen at Hasetsu station, the full payment for the contract’s been wired to his account, and he’s received the all-clear text from Celestino, and a second one to the same tune from Phichit.

His parents are ecstatic to see him, his mum chastising him for not letting them know he’d be visiting.

“You’ve gotten so thin, Yuuri,” she pronounces, once the hugs and greetings are dealt with, prodding at him in disappointment. “This is what happens when you don’t visit us regularly. Not enough katsudon in you.” She bustles off to the kitchen, and when she returns, it’s with a literal pot’s worth of the dish.

Yuuri boggles. “That’s too much, okaa-san, I can’t finish that!”

“You will,” she orders, and places two fingers on the lip of the bowl she’s set down in front of him, nodding when she’s done. “I’ve warmed it up for you some, and it’ll stay warm the whole time there’s still food in there. Now eat.”

His mum’s gift means letting food go cold has never been a viable excuse in their household, so Yuuri buckles down to set himself to the herculean task of demolishing the entire katsudon in front of him.

It’s startlingly easy to settle back into the routine of helping around the bathhouse, fetching linens from place to place, helping with the dishes in the kitchen, and attending to the needs of the various guests.

If Minako hadn’t - If his dad hadn’t been diagnosed with -

If.

Yuuri wonders, that’s all.

Three days pass with him running around Yu-topia on errands and being force-fed gargantuan bowls of katsudon at regular intervals, a latent, pleasant lethargy making itself known to him on the sleepy streets of his hometown.

Yuuko stops by to catch up once word gets round that he’s home for the next while, bringing her triplets with her.

“The Ice Castle’s doing great, Yuuri,” she gushes. “We were in the red for the past year, but then we got a grant from Monka-shō and we’ve been able to run some skating camps and new programmes.”

There’s no such grant. But when Yuuko had sobbed into Yuuri’s shoulder, three toddlers to feed, business on the verge of failing, he couldn’t not do something. So he’d gotten in touch with people who owed him favours, wrote a cheque, and made the money look like it came from officially-sanctioned channels. He’s not a good person by any measure of the word, but he tries, inasmuch as someone like him can.

(He knows it’s not enough.)

“You should come by to skate sometime, Yuuri,” Yuuko continues, and Yuuri startles out of his maudlin thoughts. “You were amazing. If your import-export business hadn’t taken off, you could’ve really gone pro!”

It’s something he thinks about more often than he’d like.

If. If. If.

But there are callouses on his fingers from handling his guns, bullet scars littered over the canvas of his body. On frigid days, the shoulder of the arm he’d broken aches with a dull, throbbing intensity. His body is a testament to the life he’s had to live, and wishful thinking is little more than a relentless jailer.

“I might,” he replies, because there’s no harm making Yuuko happy. “Though I’m not sure how long I can stay this time.”

They’re interrupted then by his mum, heaped laundry basket in her arms, expression harried. “Yuuri - hello, Yuuko, I’m sorry to cut in - there’s a guest in the baths requesting assistance, can you attend to him? I’ve got to get the laundry done, your otou-san’s out, and who knows where Mari is.”

“Of course,” he answers immediately, standing from the chabudai. He sends an apologetic look to Yuuko, who waves him off in understanding.

“Go on, I know how it is, you think the triplets are easy to wrangle?” she laughs, getting to her feet. “I should be going, at any rate. I’m not sure Nishigori can hold down the fort by himself for that long.”

Yuuri sees her out the door, then heads for the pools to see what their errant guest requires, donning a Yu-topia haori before he enters so it’s clear he works at the bathhouse.

The steam from the pools fogs his glasses, and with a huff of annoyance, he removes them to wipe off on his sleeve.

“Ah, you’re here,” comes a distinctly male voice ahead of him, accented Japanese that lilts in strange ways. Yuuri squints at the flesh-coloured figure, bobbing his head and waving his glasses in apology, haste making his movements inelegant when he finally manages to perch it back on his face.

When he can see clearly again, he isn’t sure where to look. The man - a foreigner, clearly, from his skin and pale eyes and silver hair - stands from the pool, entirely unconcerned by his nudity, hand extended in greeting.

He’s the most beautiful man Yuuri’s ever seen, and the instant attraction is punch straight to his gut.

Blush burning hot on his cheeks, Yuuri approaches to take the offered hand, shaking it in greeting. It’s a quick touch, a firm clasping of palms and fingers, but the man smiles brighter after, a pleased, almost sly look in his sky blue eyes.

“You must be Yuuri,” the foreigner says. “Your mother mentioned you’d be stopping by.” Long, tapered fingers come up to run through damp hair, rivulets of water running down a broad chest and - and further yet downwards. A smile again, laced with charm. “I’m Victor, Victor Nikiforov. It’s good to finally meet you. I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy my stay here a great deal, wouldn’t you say?”

There’s heat in Victor’s eyes, a ripening promise that has Yuuri’s gift at attention, baying for release.

Yuuri nods, and Victor’s answering smile is a slow, secret thing.

_____

(”Back then,” Yuuri asks. “What was the point?”

The cigarette’s burnt low now, a stub that flirts burning-close to the tips of Victor’s fingers.

There’s a hollow laugh from him, glacier eyes pinprick points in the tar black, unquiet dark. The butt is flung to the ground, glow-bug end killed with a leather loafered-heel.

“You, Yuuri,” Victor says, and the words are flat, unwinding and tugged free with each step they take. “It’s always been about you.”)

TBC

Chapter Text

September 2015

Phichit’s waiting in the Taoran Pavilion in Taoranting Park, amidst the throng of families pushing prams and tugging errant children along, toting lanterns of dizzying shapes and sizes. Colours thrown by candlelight from lanterns held in hands young and old spill kaleidoscopic and faint across the path, gentle watercolours that flirt with the shadows of evening.

Lush and ripe, dropped low in the sky, the moon folds white over the rippling waters of the lake, perfect and full.

Yuuri shivers with the evening chill. As he draws up behind Phichit, he notices the paper lantern held in his hands, dancing flame casting a quiet glow.

“Ah, Yuuri, there you are!” Phichit’s greeting is delighted, his grin warm.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri apologises, grimacing at his watch. “Traffic was a nightmare.”

Phichit waves him off, unfazed. “It’s no trouble, I know how bad Beijing’s rush hour gets.” He shoots Yuuri a sly look, a glinting smile. “So, the gift. Did you like it?”

“About that,” Yuuri begins. “It’s great, you know it is, but I can’t accept it. I asked around, and Phichit, are you insane? You can’t just give that to me! It costs twenty grand!”

Phichit shrugs, unrepentant. “Why not? I’m not the best outfitter in the trade for nothing, and we both know that’s not such a large amount of money, not in our line of work.”

In the dim of the evening, there’s a moonlit sharpness to Phichit’s features, an angled cut to the line of his jaw that reminds Yuuri that for all their friendship, his best friend isn’t someone you ever want to cross. “It’s a beautiful thing, the CheyTac. Use it to shoot that bastard on my behalf, will you?”

Yuuri looks away, towards the lake. Along the path that runs alongside it, the Mid-Autumn Festival light installations glow, bathing the park in a warm lambency, sending bright reflections bobbing across the water. Toted paper lanterns sway in the distance, a menagerie of animals and characters and shapes. The high laughter of children ring, carried by the whispering wind.

He swallows hard, grits his teeth. Wraps an unsteady hand around the banister of the pavilion.

Phichit sighs at Yuuri’s silence. “I named the rifle, you know.”

“Oh?” Yuuri’s response is hesitant. “You didn’t tell me.”

Phichit nudges his shoulder, an action that has Yuuri meeting his eyes again. “It’s named Victor.”

The sharp hiss in answer is involuntary, a reflexive pain response that has Phichit wincing.

“Tell me you’re joking,” Yuuri says, hand coming up to lift his glasses out of the way to press cool fingers to his eyes.

“No, I’m not,” Phichit replies, and there’s a firmness to his tone that has Yuuri capitulating.

“Alright,” Yuuri allows. “I’ll bite. Why?”

“Because Victor is a tool.” The answer is immediate, as if Phichit’s been sitting on it for some time.

At Yuuri’s look of reluctant affront, Phichit huffs. “Not in that sense, not entirely.”

He leans in to tap at the small of Yuuri’s back, fingers hitting the two short blades Yuuri keeps hidden. “Victor is a weapon. He’s a killing, honed tool, and the only thing he’s good at is ruining people.”

Yuuri’s mouth sets in a wry line. “That sounds a lot like me, if we’re going to be throwing stones.”

Phichit’s denial is fierce, vehement. “No. You’re a good person, one of the best people I know. You pull the trigger, and the gun fires, but you feel, and I know you grapple with that. Victor doesn’t. Victor is the weapon, you understand?”

He gestures, fervent emphasis on the heels of ruthless, unforgiving truth. “From the minute you became his mission, it was never about you, not really. It was never personal, not for him.”

Yuuri’s hands flutter on the rail, stops when he presses one over his chest, pushes down. A pressure that weighs him with an ache that sours his blood, runs through his veins with a beating that’s only ever come to life for one man.

“Do you know how long we were together?” he asks, and his voice doesn’t waver, not even when he drops his hand to his side.

Phichit shakes his head, quiet and watchful.

“Two years.” His finger curl into a slow fist, his pulse pounding a quivering rhythm. “I don’t know what that means.”

A moment stretches between them, and Phichit rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I engraved the name onto the CheyTac, under the trigger. So you don’t forget.”

Incredulous, Yuuri raises his eyebrows. “Victor’s name is on my gun?”

Phichit waves his mild indignation away, scoffs. “Not Victor, not like that. I wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction of ruining a masterpiece like the Intervention. I hunted around for a suitable diminutive. I think you’ll like this - it’s Vicchan.”

Yuuri comes up short, eventually settles for a slight nod. “That’s - fair enough, I suppose.”

Phichit studies him, and whatever he sees in Yuuri’s expression must fail to mollify him, because he sighs again, almost exasperated. His hand slides off Yuuri’s shoulder, and the other comes up to wave at their surroundings with his lantern, the paper confection skipping with the movement.

“There’s a tragedy buried here,” he says, and Yuuri has to blink at the sudden turn of conversation.

Phichit forges on. “Gao Junyu and Shi Pingmei, both great revolutionaries of their time. Gao was a married man, but fiercely in love with Shi. He divorced his wife to be with her, despite knowing that love to be unrequited. The only gift she ever accepted from him and kept - ” Phichit’s eyes dart to the pocket of Yuuri’s slacks, where Yuuri knows Phichit’s aware he keeps his coin, and Yuuri’s heart, the weak thing, clenches, “ - was an ivory ring, which matched one that he wore. They’re both buried here, in this pavilion.”

Frowning, Yuuri glances at Phichit. “Interesting trivia, but I’m not sure I get your point.”

Shaking his head, Phichit turns to rummage through his backpack, emerging with a paper lantern that he opens with a flourish and presents to Yuuri.

Yuuri accepts the lantern with a half-hearted shrug.

“The point,” Phichit says, producing a matchbox, “Is that you need to let go.”

They face each other, two brothers on the edge of a lake, one lost and the other offering a map. The Beijing night is grey and cloudless, the lone moon the sole offering in the sky.

There are things Yuuri wants to say, words to express the halcyon days he spent with Victor, sentences and phrases to detail the warm hours, the quiet mornings, the lazy affection that had to mean more, surely, didn’t it?

His gift trembles, and the scales shiver with uncertainty. Belief cuts him like a knife he never learned to wield.

The things he wants to say would lose their meaning, trickling water in a cracked bowl, the moment he put them into words.

“I’ll try,” he concedes.

Phichit nods, satisfied, and jostles the lantern in his hand. “Now are you going to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with me or not?” He winks at Yuuri, and Yuuri rolls his eyes, cracking a smile in response.

In the centre of his lantern, a candle sits pristine, ivory wax moulded and whole. Next to them, a young girl lights her own lantern, guided by the hands of her mother. There’s a reverence to the process, a careful offering, supplicants to a shrine of their own making.

“Come, Yuuri,” Phichit nudges. “Light the match.”

Yuuri sets the match to the sandpaper, grinds it down. Between his fingers, the lit end jumps, hypnotic.

He inhales.

Exhales.

Yuuri holds the match to the candle, and in his mind, a flame sears harshly to life in a crumbling temple in the heart of a city he isn’t sure he can live without.

The annals of the temple are old and dusty, and Yuuri will find no answers in their hollow corridors, not tonight. But there lives a twisting, unsettled creature in him, one that manifests itself in belief and holds him hostage, that’s bent the lines of truth and certainty and set itself into the worn stones of the streets, woven itself into the tapestries that hang from the city walls, a herald crying Victor, Victor, Victor.

His gift rears its head, slams itself against its bars.

In his lantern, the fire burns.

_____

July 2017

“It’s a very short window to take him out, get out of your nest, and into the building’s safe room,” Celestino cautions, his voice tinny through the comm device. “Maybe half an hour. Tops, and that’s being exceedingly generous.”

“I can do it in twenty,” Yuuri repeats, pausing mid-way through the assembly of his rifle.

“If you’re sure,” Celestino responds, unconvinced.

Yuuri bites back a retort.

“I’ll make it happen,” Victor adds, and Yuuri’s gaze cuts sharply to Victor, standing by the next column of the service floor.

“I don’t need you to do anything,” Yuuri snaps, even as he drops to a crouch, checks his sights.

He hears Victor draw near, and he can feel the way his body involuntarily tenses. Yuuri forces his muscles to relax, bringing his finger to the trigger.

“Not an option,” Victor says, and his voice is way too close to Yuuri’s ear for comfort.

Over the comms, Celestino sighs, long and loud. “He’s right, Yuuri. Our employer wants you iced for the job.”

“And I’ve told you my gift works fine.” It’s a lost cause, Yuuri knows, but he’s raw, and miserable, and frustration coils tight around his spine, an unsettled fury without purpose, unspent vengeance void of meaning.

“Orders, Yuuri,” Celestino reminds him, and if his tone is softer, more sympathetic, no one comments on it.

“Fine,” Yuuri snarls, rolling his shoulders with unhappy tension. “Do it.”

Victor curls his lip, sneers a smile that Yuuri catches out of the corner of his eye. “Your enthusiasm is infectious.”

“Just get on with it,” Celestino gripes at them.

Yuuri offers a hand, sleeve drawn up to bare his wrist. Victor ignores the proffered limb, coming to crouch low beside him, hand darting to tug his collar aside to press a deliberate hand to the vulnerable underside of Yuuri’s jaw.

Stunned, Yuuri bristles and jerks, but Victor’s grip is firm. An unyielding pressure that has him by the throat, nails him to the post of the sins of his past. A thumb brushes over the rabbiting of his pulse, a barely perceptible touch. Yuuri’s gift jolts.

The attraction hits organic and low, and Yuuri has to swallow hard, keep his expression carefully blank. Victor’s gaze is knowing, the tilt of his lips smugly sardonic, and then there’s the faintest sensation of a weight settling across him, a foreign presence that’s been spread lightly over his mind. Victor, balanced low on his haunches, shifts on the balls of his feet.

It’s a damp fog that rolls over, a chill that sweeps in and rattles the windows of the fortress of Yuuri’s thoughts. The familiar pre-job anxiety is dulled, his worries muted. A calm forcefully settled over a churning, restless, fitful city, Troy the night before the fall.

Victor’s hand withdraws. He stands and retreats, wooden horse delivered.

“Yuuri?” Celestino says. “How are you doing?”

“Good to go,” he replies, and his voice is flat, an emotionless monotone that he wonders at with academic distance.

“Alright, I’m turning the job over to you both. Check in when you’re done. Celestino out.”

Behind Yuuri, Victor takes up position by a neighbouring column, checking the chamber of his pistol.

Without anxiety gnawing at his throat, without nervousness catching his breath, Yuuri’s gift surges like a tide, eager and jockeying for release. He winds threads, counts heartbeats.

He sets himself to his scope, bows his head, prophet to the god of his power. The altar of fate lies plangent, oblations for the taking. The scales of life bend under the weight of his mortal belief.

One building over, Yamada Shirō walks into the crosshairs of his rifle.

Finger on the trigger, he strokes the engraved word under it. A superstition. Vicchan. The rifle in his hands is a brand, the lingering touch of a hand on his throat a weapon in itself.

This man will die, he thinks, and makes it real. A bullet shoots true, shoots straight, shoots headfirst.

The jaws of his gift snap shut, red threads fraying and severing.

Yamada Shirō dies, and Yuuri feels nothing but calm in his veins.

They move fast, disassembling and through the doors to the service stairway. Yuuri hands off the cello case with his gun, swaps out his black outfit for a postal worker’s uniform.

“The icing I put on you will hold for another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes,” Victor warns. “Work fast.”

Yuuri nods, aware of the seconds ticking past. Twenty flights of stairs blur by.

At the bottom, Yuuri about to exit, Victor grabs his arm.

“Stay safe,” he says, and there’s a tight line to his mouth, an expression Yuuri can’t decipher.

Yuuri glances at the cello case in Victor’s hand, draws his eyes from the case to the man, smiles serrated edges at the weapon.

“I always do.”

_____

June 2014

They’re sticky with sweat and come, pants loud in mutual staccato exhalations, bare skin spread and limbs entwined with unabashed abandon.

Yuuri threads a hand through the hair at Victor’s temple, and Victor turns his head, cranes his neck, and warms a kiss to breath-chilled lips. Benediction poured through the devout seal of their mouths.

When Yuuri tugs away, Victor’s smile is unbearably fond, eyes liquid and soft in a way that makes Yuuri’s heart tremble, blessed. They curl together, the only two souls who matter in the cradle of their bed, reverent touches feathered and spread between the church of their bodies, limber and loose.

Time passes, indeterminate and unwelcome. An hour, maybe two. A minute, maybe less.

Victor post-sex is a tactile creature, and he noses a kiss to Yuuri’s forehead, traces lines onto the eggshell underside of his wrist. “I have a gift for you.”

Yuuri rises onto his elbows, brows raised as Victor slips from the bed. “What’s the occasion?”

Victor returns with a small square box, flat and about an inch high. He shrugs. “I missed you.”

A blush heats Yuuri’s cheeks, and his chest tightens with an emotion neither of them have truly voiced, four letters and dangerous. “What is it?” he asks, taking the box as Victor rejoins him.

Victor tugs him back to settle against his chest, a long line of unbroken contact. “Open it,” he urges, mouth to Yuuri’s ear, and Yuuri leans up to nose at the line of Victor’s jaw before turning his attention to the wrapped box.

Careful with the paper, Yuuri folds it into a square and sets it on their bedside table. The blue box is nondescript, stamped with the eagled insignia of the Moscow Mint.

Curious, Yuuri works the lid open to find a silver coin, slightly bigger than his thumb, nestled in velvet lining. Makkachin is stamped on either side, ears flopping, tongue lolling in metal eternity.

He brings a hand to his mouth, carefully lifts the coin from its case with the other.

“Do you like it?” Victor asks, and there’s a note of nervousness to his tone that has Yuuri laughing, a short burst.

“It’s perfect,” he replies, lifting the coin higher to study it in the dim light of their bedroom. “I love it. But why? You didn’t have to, you know it’s not my birthday.”

Victor bends to press a pleased kiss to his shoulder, arms coming round to bracket Yuuri, sharing in running a quick thumb along Makkachin on the coin’s raised surface. “You’re always away for your job, I wanted you to have something to remind you of home.”

Yuuri angles himself to catch a glimpse of Victor’s face. “I’m not the only one that always travels,” he grins, shaking his head.

Victor chuckles, bends his head in agreement. “No, but it’s different when you go.”

Victor plucks the coin from Yuuri’s fingers, sets it back in the box and away on the bedside table. Yuuri’s attention undivided, Victor’s hands curl slyly around his half-hard cock, firm strokes that have Yuuri’s back arching, cock filling. In the church of their bodies, he swears every breath up to god.

“Different?” Yuuri manages to gasp, fingers curled into their sheets and Victor’s thigh.

“Well,” Victor’s lips fit to the shell of Yuuri’s ear, “When you go, I don’t know that you’ll be back.” His hand tightens around Yuuri’s cock, a delicious pressure that has Yuuri hissing pleasure. “I have to find ways to make sure you don’t forget me.”

“You keep doing that,” Yuuri pants, thrusting into the ring of Victor’s fist, pious worship in the strain of his muscles, in their mingled breaths and sweat, “And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.”

_____

(God would never be so kind.)

_____

July 2017

Back in their hotel room, four hours after the job, Celestino offers his congratulations over the encrypted video call. “Fine job, Yuuri.” His eyes are appraising, but not unkind. “One shot. Our employer was impressed.”

He directs his gaze to Victor, standing next to Yuuri. “I’ve wired the two million to your people.”

Victor holds up his phone, nodding in thanks. “Yakov’s confirmed the transfer.” Victor sends a two-fingered salute as he rounds the room for his suitcase, shoots a biting grin that has Yuuri’s spine stiffening. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Hold up, Victor,” Celestino calls, and Victor halts, turns to lift a single, perfectly arched brow.

Celestino sighs, put upon. Yuuri’s gift sits up, hackles raised. Something’s happening, it warns.

“Our employer,” Celestino begins, the words dragging, “Was impressed by your performance. Both of your performances. So impressed that he’s negotiated to have you both on exclusive retainer for the next six months.”

Victor barks a sound of disbelief, already continuing on his way out the door. “Not going to happen,” he fires over a shoulder. “Yakov knows - ”

“Your syndicate’s approved it,” Celestino interrupts.

Victor stops cold in his tracks, and Yuuri can’t help but laugh in incredulity at the situation.

“No,” Yuuri says, head shaking. “No, I’m not doing it. Victor’s people are his problem, but I’m a freelancer, and I’m not going to do it.”

Celestino pinches the bridge of his nose. “Now look here, Yuuri, Saito’s offering - ”

“I don’t need - I don’t want the money.” Yuuri’s pacing now, agitated by the turn of events.

“It’s not about the money,” Celestino advises, voice heated. “Saito’s a powerful man. Having someone like him on your side is invaluable, you know that.”

“Even Lilia?” Victor cuts in, and Yuuri bristles at having his conversation interrupted. “Lilia’s approved it?”

“She signed off on it, yes,” Celestino replies.

Victor’s curse is low, vulgar and Russian. He swings off to stand by the balcony doors, livid and seething.

Redirecting his efforts to Yuuri, Celestino presses. “You’re a professional, Yuuri, you know how the trade works. Be reasonable, damn it.”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Yuuri’s a professional. Yuuri’s reasonable.

Yuuri’s let go, except for all the ways he hasn’t, the thorns of Victor snared in his soul, pain and hurt with every breath.

He nods once, a jerky incline that has Celestino sighing in relief.

“Ten million,” Celestino says. “Per person. Just think about that, Yuuri. I’ll send you the contract. Celestino out.”

The screen grows black, and his faint reflection stares back at him, blank and adrift.

Behind him, Victor stands, perfect marble rage. “Did you do this?” His voice is smooth, freezing fury that bites cold, unforgiving. “Did you think - ” Victor’s hands spasm in a violent, furious gesture “ - believe that you were perfect out there, that Saito would be so taken with your work? Did you make this happen? Because trust me, your performance left much to be desired.”

They’re toe to toe, anger driving their bodies with pounding fists.

Yuuri’s answer is an incensed exhalation.

He snaps under the weight of everything they were and have become, tears under the grip Victor’s always had on him, seeds that Victor sowed in his heart and twined around tender ribs, flourished in a thudding chest, bloomed full and sweet along bruised kisses that would match the bow of Victor’s mouth exactly.

Yuuri sets his hands to Victor’s chest, curls his fingers into the pristine white of his dress shirt.

“Scared, Victor?” he taunts, and shoves hard. Victor staggers back, and Yuuri pursues. “Here,” he continues, “Let me make things easy for you.”

He leans in, their faces inches apart. “I believe,” Yuuri begins, and Victor’s pupils blow wide, the blue of his irises a swirling, devastating storm, “That you will fall in love with me. I believe that you loved me then, that we were happy and that I loved you, and that what we had was real. I believe that I was more than a job to you, and that Makkachin was ours, and our flat was the best place on earth.”

Yuuri lets go, takes a step back. Smiles broken and bitter, sighs exhausted and spent. “Well? Any of that come true yet?” He drops his hands to his sides, turns away.

Victor yanks him back by the arm, a motion that has him whirling, unbalancing and falling as the back of his knees catch on the side of the neighbouring bed. Victor follows, furious and wild, brands their lips together in a seal that steals the breath from Yuuri’s lungs, leaves him gasping.

“Let’s make it clear, Yuuri,” Victor says, thigh grinding down hard against Yuuri’s cock, half-hard in his trousers, Victor’s eyes dark and fiercely, cruelly triumphant, “The only thing easy here is you.”

He fits their lips back together, teeth clacking and tongues warring, sparring for ground in the battlefield of their mouths.

Yuuri pulls at Victor’s shirt, sends buttons flying, and in retaliation, Victor sucks a high bruise to the skin of his neck. Yuuri flips them, straddles Victor to strip his shirt, and Victor tosses him back down, pinning him with his greater weight, the hot lines of their cocks striking searing friction through their trousers.

Yuuri writhes, struggles for leverage, makes vicious use of his elbows. Victor pins his wrists above his head with a bruising hand, kicks both of their trousers off to run a taunting hand along the hardness of Yuuri’s cock, tenting his boxers.

“Easy,” he bends to whisper into Yuuri’s ear, and Yuuri marks him with a fierce bite to the shoulder, has Victor drawing back with a hiss.

Victor lets him up to discard their boxers, returns with a vengeance of crushing lips and unrelenting touches, an assault that makes it clear Victor hasn’t forgotten an inch of the conquered land of Yuuri’s body.

There are new scars scattered across Victor, and Yuuri sets questing fingers to them, tracing jagged lines and raised circles. Victor shrugs his touches off, raises himself up onto his elbows, Yuuri caged in the frame of Victor’s body.

“You’re clean?” Victor asks, and Yuuri nods.

The lube is cold and viscous, worked into him with insistent fingers even as Victor’s other hand works his cock, keeps him panting. Two fingers press in, then three, and Victor’s fitting their lips together and lining up to push into him when Yuuri circles his wrist, makes him pause.

“Condom,” Yuuri gasps, lips swollen slick with saliva. “Akiko.”

Emotions flit across Victor’s face, too fast to catch. “I didn’t fuck her,” he says, but pulls away to retrieve one from his suitcase all the same. The condom is rolled on, and Victor returns, scalding kisses wet and filthy, branding physical affection to touch-starved skin.

Yuuri turns onto his front, sets himself on his knees. After the briefest pause, Victor follows, fitting his body to the line of Yuuri’s back, hand coming to nudge Yuuri’s away to stroke at his cock. Victor’s hand comes to rest at Yuuri’s hip, and face pressed to the bed, Yuuri shuts his eyes.

Victor pushes in, a length and heat that Yuuri’s gone without for long years, an intimate, deep ache that pounds want and desire into the thrumming of his blood, that sends him spiralling to stars fired behind his eyelids, streaks meteorites along the trembling of thrusting, straining muscles.

Yuuri moans, rocks back and takes his pleasure, squeezes hard and ruthless. Their sweat mixes, their joined bodies perfecting an old rhythm composed for two.

Victor’s hips stutter, and Yuuri’s hands curl into the bed, familiar pressure building low. Their thrusts grow erratic, and Yuuri grits his teeth, spills white and hot in Victor’s fist as Victor shakes behind him, in him.

The aftermath of battle is silent, each side gathering casualties. Yuuri retrieves his boxers from under the bed, Victor picks shirt buttons off the floor. The condom is discarded.

The two of them circle, celestial bodies pulled into inevitable, reluctant orbit, parting with catastrophic tragedy.

Yuuri takes his coin out from the pocket of his trousers, flips it once. Makkachin stares up at him, gaily lolling, heads either way.

Victor watches with wary eyes.

“Six months,” Yuuri says, lips curling brittle. “I can do six months.”

_____

(“Back then,” Yuuri asks. “Two years. Goddamned years, Victor. Why?”

The cigarette butt lies cold on the ground between them, savoured indulgence now worthless pavement detritus.

Victor ignores his question, slides his gaze to Yuuri, and Yuuri’s shoulders shake with a weight he doesn’t think he ever learned to bear.

“The flat,” Victor says, “In St. Petersburg. What did you do with it?”

Yuuri picks at his thumb, excises dead flesh from new and misses, draws blood that sings with the sweet sting of pain, blooms ruby rose-red. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not, in the end,” Victor replies, and between them is a handspan, a gulf uncrossable that drowns and abuts the Atlas burden of the years they share.

Yuuri thinks that’s the best answer he’s going to get.)

TBC

Chapter Text

November 2011

Yuuri doesn’t dislike Jean-Jacques - no, no, call me JJ, that’s more my style - Leroy, not the way he knows some of the others in their trade do, from what he’s heard from Phichit of the grapevine.

It’s just -

Well.

JJ’s pretty fucking annoying, truth be told.

They’re holed up in a tiny studio flat, courtesy of the job, Yuuri checking and re-checking his gear over in restless spurts. JJ’s in the bathroom, planted in front of the mirror. He mutters under his breath every few minutes, flexing his oiled biceps, and shoots finger guns at his reflection.

“Oké, JJ,” JJ says, winking at the mirror, “You’re the best. Genre, you’re going to nail this job. Dead-on, bulls-eye, you get it every time. That’s JJ style. Ca va être malade, tsé.”

Yuuri eyes the clock on the desk in the room, silently willing the hands to go faster. The second hand ticks by with stubborn slowness. He sighs, and sets himself to polishing his rifle for the fourth time that day.

In the bathroom, JJ continues to pump himself up. “Alright, you’re going to get them, ça trippe. Everyone knows you’re the man, mon gars. Isabella loves you. Everyone loves you. Yeah, JJ, keep doing you. JJ style.”

If Yuuri hears JJ style another time, he’s going to shoot an innocent pigeon.

With forced calm, he calls out, “We good to go?”

JJ swaggers from the bathroom, clicks his fingers in Yuuri’s direction. “Yeah, c'est tiguidou. Let’s do this.”

Annoyed, rubbed entirely the wrong way, and feeling petty, Yuuri has to physically refrain from rolling his eyes.

“I don’t speak Spanish,” he deadpans, and ignores JJ’s incredulous look as he bends to gather his half of their gear and tech.

At the front door, Yuuri tugs on a hoodie, eyeballing JJ’s frankly horrific doubled-up tank tops and purple skinny jeans with disbelief.

“Are you - is that what you’re going to be wearing?” Yuuri makes an aborted gesture at - at JJ’s everything. “Not something less conspicuous, maybe?”

JJ flexes his arms and sends him a finger gun. “Can’t keep these babies hidden,” he replies, pressing a kiss to a gym-toned left bicep.

Yuuri’s eyebrows are raised into his hairline, and he wonders, for the briefest second, how JJ’s survived this long in their business without being murdered. He prays to gods he doesn’t believe in that JJ’s gift is at least marginally useful. He reminds himself, not for the first time, of the five hundred grand waiting for him at the end of this particularly annoying tunnel.

“Sure,” he responds, hefting the cello case with his rifle over a shoulder.  “Whatever you say.”

JJ follows him out the door, duffel containing his pistols and tools in hand. “That’s the way I roll, mon gars. JJ style.”

They trail down the corridor, and Yuuri rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised they remain in their sockets.

The job itself is a clusterfuck.

Yuuri’s watching through the scope of his rifle, tuning out JJ’s monologuing as JJ mows his way through guards, viciously sharp daggers swinging, pistols firing shots Yuuri can’t hear at this distance.

Motherfucker, that’s how we do it, taking suckers down! JJ’s in the house!

Yuuri bites a sigh back at the excessive comms chatter, tracking JJ’s progress. He’s nearly to their mark, the run-off-the-mill gang lord cowering in his office, men scattered to the wind.

In his rifle sights, JJ slits a throat with overdramatic flourish, tucking his daggers away to kick the door to the back room down. He draws a pistol, stepping through with a smug grin.

Yuuri’s gift chafes at its bit, rumbles discontented and unhappy. JJ, Yuuri thinks, the thought fleeting and absent, JJ could stand to be taken down a peg or two.

There’s a moment of disconnect between what Yuuri sees then and what he manages to process, JJ stumbling, hands slipping. Through the scope, Yuuri watches JJ fumble and drop his pistol.

“What the fuck,” Yuuri hisses into the comms, finger leaping to the trigger of his rifle, backup ready. JJ’s supposed to be good. He’s reputed to be one of the best in their trade; Phichit’d sent Yuuri a laundry list of difficult jobs JJ’s pulled off solo, each one impressive enough to validate the claim.

JJ’s not supposed to drop his guns, but he does, and Yuuri can’t believe it, the disbelief thrumming itself through his body, calcifying in bones that cleave unforgiving doubt.

JJ’s hands are shaking, and the gang lord sees his chance, scrambles to seize it.

Yuuri’s finger is a caress on the trigger, death’s alluring come-hither. Attend me, the motion commands the whispering void, I have need of your services.

A bullet through the forehead and their job is over, five-hundred thousand that Yuuri’s made in less than a minute.

He stands, swift.

Yuuri’s out of the building in under five minutes, navigating the Montreal winter with grim determination.

At the rendezvous, JJ’s jittery, all nerves and jumpy twitches. It’s disconcerting juxtaposition, the man Yuuri’d just about tolerated back at the studio flat and the anxious wreck before him now. He’s almost terrified of Yuuri, eyes skipping and refusing to hold, body turning away from Yuuri’s direction.

It’s worrying, but it’s JJ’s fuck-up to sort out, and Yuuri’s not here to baby him. You don’t get far in the trade if you need someone to hold your hand.

Three hours later, Yuuri’s on a plane to Los Angeles, JJ out of mind, an anomaly to take out and wonder at when Yuuri has less pressing matters to attend to.

There’s a two-hour layover at LAX, Yuuri wearily parking himself at a Starbucks to while the time away. One table over, a bleary-eyed mother levitates her sleeping baby with her gift while she carries a sniffling toddler in her arms.

It’s pushing four in the morning, a scant hour into the layover when Phichit calls, the too-happy beat of Katy Perry singing about plastic bags making Yuuri huff a reluctant laugh as he swipes at the screen to answer.

“I hate Katy Perry,” Yuuri greets, smiling into his phone.

“I know, I couldn’t resist,” comes the giggled, unrepentant response. “I’ll make sure to use Justin Bieber the next time.”

“It’s like you want to be murdered,” Yuuri jokes, sipping at his frappe. “Alright, what’s this about? I’m done with Montreal, so I have - ” he checks his watch, “ - an hour and forty minutes before I’m bound for Jakarta.”

Phichit clears his throat, and there are the sounds of typing and clicks on his end. Stalling, almost. Yuuri straightens from his slouch, sets his to-go cup down.

“About Montreal,” Phichit begins, and Yuuri’s standing from his seat, moving with careful quickness.

“I’ve been made?” he asks, eyes trained on the reflection of two patrolling corpsmen in the glass, his head kept bowed, all appearance absorbed in conversation.

“No, no,” Phichit hastens to reassure, apologetic. “Sorry, right, I should have led with that. No, you’re fine, it was a clean op.”

Yuuri sighs at the false alarm, lets himself relax into the stroll, shedding the tension with a roll of his shoulders. “You know, this is how people get heart attacks.”

Phichit squawks in indignation. “I said I was sorry, okay, I am gravely wounded by your distrust. And I’m doing you a favour, because what the hell was Montreal?”

Yuuri blinks hard, nearly misses his next step. “Wait, what do you mean? It went fine.”

“JJ’s refusing to work with you again. Ever. He rang an hour ago, told me he wasn’t even going to take any jobs on the same continent as you. He was dead serious about it. No one knows what to make of it, and I’ve since gotten over a dozen enquiries about the nature of your gift. The syndicates are curious, Yuuri.”

Yuuri makes himself move again, wanders around the empty terminal. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not, I promise you. What did you do to him?” There’s clear interest in Phichit’s tone, laced with circumspection that has Yuuri curling in on himself, defensive.

“Look,” Yuuri says, “He’s the one who blew it. Did you know he was doing this, this weird pep talk thing in the mirror before the op, all JJ style? He was doing fine, getting through the guards well enough, then he dropped his pistols during the mission, Phichit. Like it was amateur hour. I mean, I thought he could stand to be less of a cocky shit, but - he dropped his guns. That had nothing to do with me.”

There’s silence on Phichit’s end, oppressive. Nearly judging. “Yuuri,” Phichit begins, and damn it, that’s Phichit’s you fucked up voice, “You do know what JJ’s gift is, right?”

Yuuri pauses. “No?”

“Oh my god,” Phichit sighs into the receiver, and the chagrin in his tone has Yuuri wincing. “It’s based on confidence, though I'm not sure of the specifics.”

“Ah, shit,” Yuuri blurts, realisation dawning.

Phichit echoes the sentiment. “You crushed the man with a thought, it’s no wonder he’s terrified of you.”

“Okay,” Yuuri admits, “So maybe that was my fault.”

“You’re lucky I like you,” Phichit quips, and there are more sounds of keys being tapped. “I’m going to do what I can to smooth things over, hopefully pacify the syndicates. You’re still set on freelancing, right?”

“Minako - ” Yuuri’s hands ball into fists, the grief still an open wound.

Phichit makes a soothing sound, apologetic. “No, I get that. I’m sorry, I thought it best to check.”

More sounds of typing, and the faint beeps of notifications on Phichit’s end. Overhead, the boarding call for his flight is announced.

“I’ve got to go,” Yuuri says, and the pleasure of having his best friend call is muted with the jarring reminder of the reality of their lives, all of them slow tragedies in the making.

There’s a reason no one in their line of work retires. There’s no duty to lay their lives down for, no higher cause to pin their banners to.

When they die - and they will, violent and ugly and ignominious - it’s silent, an afterthought of karma.

If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and no one’s around to hear it -

If an assassin dies alone in a back alley in Seoul, and no one finds her body till two days pass -

Minako had been forty-seven, had barely lived half her life.

Only the good die young, Yuuri’s aware.

Maybe that’s why he’s still alive.

Over the phone, Phichit’s voice comes through again, tinny with poor reception. “No one’s quite sure what to make of you, Yuuri. I’d watch your back out there.”

Yuuri nods, eyes on the boarding screen for his flight.

Departing soon.

“I always do.”

_____

April 2012

Yuuri’s struggling with the Windsor knot of his tie, the silk slippery and uncooperative beneath his fingers. He groans in frustration, staring at the askew fabric in the mirror.

The doorbell rings, and Yuuri shoots the tie a final, defeated glare before leaving to answer it. Through the peephole, Victor’s hair glints shifting silver.

Yuuri unlatches the door, swings it open to find himself tugged into a quick kiss that deepens, his hands coming to rest on the perfectly tailored line of Victor’s shoulders.

When they break apart, their breaths are uneven, pupils blown.

“Hey,” Yuuri greets, smiling warm and happy. “You’re right on time.”

“And you’re frustrated,” Victor answers, muted amusement in his tone as he studies Yuuri, reaches up with a hand to brush a careful thumb along his cheek, finger smoothing out the lines of his frown. He glances down, at what Yuuri knows must be a tangled mess looped around his neck. “It’s the tie, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Yuuri huffs, waving an exasperated hand at the offending item of clothing.

Victor leans in to steal another kiss, sweet and tender, catching Yuuri off-guard, sending him brimming and overflowing with pleasure.

“Your eyes,” Victor chuckles. “Your suit says party, but your eyes say murder.”

Victor’s hands bracket Yuuri’s waist, a thumb slipping under the loose fabric of a shirttail to stroke at the fragile, delicate skin of his hip.

“Come on,” Victor coaxes. “You fix your shirt, I’ll help with your tie.”

Hands gentle, Victor twines fingers expertly through loops and tucks, knots the tie firm, draws it up tight around his neck.

Yuuri glances up, shyly meets Victor’s eyes, and the amber light of the hallway of his flat kisses Victor gold, renders him Adonis in the flesh.

In the hours when Yuuri’s alone, he convinces himself he’s dreamed Victor up, all molten metals and quicksilver eyes, sharp-sweet smiles and knife-edge intensity.

Victor’s hand rests at the base of Yuuri’s throat, cradles the tie captive, and Yuuri thinks: I could get used to this. I could make a home out of the circle of his arms, press my bed to the roof of his mouth, chase laughter along the line of his spine.

He doesn’t think: All of this could end.

How could he, when Victor smiles down at him like he’s hung the stars, their matching ties silk nooses neither of them know better than to mind?

Victor steps away first. “We’re going to be late,” he cautions, though his voice is impish, unapologetic.

The car that comes round to pick them up is sleek, a gunmetal grey Bentley that has Yuuri letting out a low whistle.

“Consulting sure pays well,” he teases.

“Well enough,” Victor concedes, ushering Yuuri in.

The party’s in a desanctified church, now a repurposed club. At the entrance, a red carpet’s been rolled out, and by the massive double doors, attendants hover in wait to assist guests with their coats and gilded invitations.

It’s a far cry from the sort of event Yuuri’s used to attending.

Struck silent, acutely nervous, Yuuri stalls in the car. “Are you sure - are you sure your company won’t mind? That I’m here with you?”

“Not at all,” Victor reassures, hand coming up to rest at the nape of Yuuri’s neck, pressure that grounds him.

Anxiety fades, and Yuuri inhales. Exhales.

Nods, and follows Victor out, navigating the attendants and the initial crush of the crowd.

The reception hall gives way to the soaring, cavernous main room, stained glass windows lit by faint lights, VIP section by the pulpit. Baccarat tables litter the floor, and off to the side, a pianist caresses Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 25 to life, the notes carried by the clinking of glasses and chatter of conversation. Waiters circle the room, trays of canapés and crystal flutes held gracefully aloft.

“I’m terrified,” Yuuri confesses, and Victor shakes his head, turns to pluck two glasses of champagne from a solicitous waitstaff.

Victor smiles, steady and sure, and Yuuri thinks he can do this for Victor.

With Victor.

“Don’t be,” Victor says, handing a glass to Yuuri . He leans in close, lips pressed to the shell of Yuuri’s ear, a relentless, fleeting heat. “I’ll let you in on a secret.”

Yuuri cocks his head, nurses the champagne flute against the shelf of his lower lip. “Yeah?”

Victor raises his own flute, taps it against Yuuri’s with a high, resonating clink. “I’m with the most gorgeous man in the room,” he says. “I’m worried I might lose him.”

Yuuri sips his champagne and scoffs, reluctantly charmed. “You’ll have to point this man out to me,” he plays along. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Oh, no,” Victor answers. “I couldn’t. If I did, he might realise how beautiful he is, and then where would my heart be?”

Laughing, Yuuri downs the rest of his champagne, and the bubbles rise to buoy him gently, a buzz that leaves him floating.

Emboldened, Yuuri sets the flute down, never taking his eyes off Victor’s. “I don’t know about your heart, but I’m going to be over there, trying my hand at baccarat.”

He snags another glass of champagne from a passing waiter as he goes, seats himself in a recently vacated spot.

The croupier nods at him in greeting, and Yuuri tips the flute back, lets the champagne slip smooth and cool down his throat. When he next looks, Victor’s eyes are searing.

Yuuri signals for another glass, winks slow and sly.

The croupier reaches for the deck, and Yuuri unwinds, shakes loose the reins of his gift that slides to his fingers, turns his limbs languid with power.

A pair of cards are offered to him, face down on the table. Yuuri draws one towards him, lets the pad of a finger rest along the edge. A scale hangs in balance. A coin is tossed into the air.

Fifty-fifty.

Always fifty-fifty, until the house wins.

Yuuri’s gift leans out, eager.

In the domain of chance, luck reigns, king in a court of inveterate gamblers.

The house wins. The house always wins.

Yuuri inhales.

What’s a king to a god?

Exhales.

Yuuri’s gift upends the scales, snaps the coin from the air.

Fifty-fifty.

Don’t make him laugh.

The odds have never meant a thing to him.

Nine, he thinks. Nine and Jack.

He flips the first card. Nine.

Flips the second. Jack.

The croupier bows his head in congratulations, calls, “Nine Player, Three Banker.”

Chips are pushed his way, twenty large. There’s quiet applause from the audience.

Yuuri sips his champagne, raises the flute Victor’s way, eyes dark with the coursing thrill of victory.

He wins, over and over and over, makes three hundred thousand in half an hour. When Yuuri stands, he tosses a chip the croupier’s way, a ten grand tip that has the man scrambling to thank him.

Champagne flowing through him, alcohol leaving him languid, Yuuri works his way upstairs, lets himself out onto a secluded balcony.

He’s unsurprised when Victor follows. Yuuri sets himself back against the parapet, elbows on the edge, back to the view.

Victor crowds him instantly, lips insistent, hands pushing, tugging. “You were magnificent.”

“Mmmm,” Yuuri hums, arching into the press of branding fingers. “I was, wasn’t I?”

Yuuri leans back, and he has no idea of the way he looks then, midnight hair silhouetted by the moon, cheeks rosy with expensive alcohol and triumph, lips pink and breathless.

Victor surges towards him, a force of nature Yuuri couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. The grind between them is delicious, the friction just this side of rough and perfect. They share breaths, steal skin-to-skin touches in the gaps between buttons, by the vulnerable dip of their collars.

They come in their pants like horny teenagers, and the aftermath has them laughing in a combination of disbelief and embarrassment, Victor shaking his head.

“Not the best impression I was hoping to make for our first time,” he admits. He strokes at the curve of Yuuri’s jaw, tender. “But I’ll make it up to you.”

Yuuri ducks his head, the alcohol burnt out of his system and leaving him shy. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Oh,” Victor responds, hand coming to rest on Yuuri’s hip, eyes dark with promise. “I’m sure you will.”

There’s a shared moment of respite, the both of them resting their pounding hearts against the other, gently working clothing back into place. The moment stretches, molasses thick.

“Back in there,” Victor says, “What was that?”

“Hmm?” Yuuri bends to retrieve a popped shirt button from the floor. “Oh, you mean with the baccarat?”

Victor nods. “Was that your gift?”

There’s hesitance to his tone, and Yuuri starts. It’s not something he’s ever had to explain anyone. It’s not something he’s ever wanted to.

But it’s Victor, painted gently by the moonlight, lit softly by the stars. The night stretches, gossamer-thin. It’s Victor, who’s more than Yuuri ever dreamed of, who’s more than he’s ever deserved. All his life, Yuuri’s shaped the world around him with the force of his belief, reality committing itself to his novice hands. Everything good he’s ever had, everything right that’s ever happened - he’s never known the permanence of being certain.

How do you unmake a man who makes truth?

Where do you start with the circle of what’s real?

Here -

Here, it’s Victor, and Yuuri doesn’t think he could ever believe someone like him into being, into whatever they are, orbiting the other.

“Do you know,” Yuuri begins, trepidation shivering his voice, “Do you know that moment when you’re balanced on an edge, on the cusp of falling?”

Intrigued, Victor nods.

“There’s a dragging split-second where you’re falling and not-falling, the grey area where the dice is being thrown, suspended in the air. In that moment, you’re a winner and loser, dead and alive.”

Yuuri inhales. “My gift lets me choose which side I come down on. I just have to believe it enough.”

The shock on Victor’s face is palpable, cast clear in the cooling night.

“You shape reality,” he breathes. “It’s you.”

Yuuri shrugs, figures that conclusion close enough, wonders at Victor’s declaration before he discards the errant thought.

“In a fashion,” he explains. “I can’t start from nothing. There has to be - ” he gestures, searches for the right words, turns it around in his mouth, “ - a ball in play before I can do anything with it. I can’t put the ball on the court. There needs to be an object, a situation in action for me to tip the scales.”

“That power,” Victor gapes, “That power is colossal. Why would you tell me this?”

Yuuri dips his head, runs bashful fingers through his hair, already mussed by Victor’s hands. “I think - ”

He studies the lines of his palms, traces the heartline with a finger. “I guess I just wanted someone to know.”

He doesn’t say: I’m lonely.

He doesn’t say: I think you might understand.

He doesn’t say: I’m scared of myself, and I want you to be brave for me.

Somehow, he thinks Victor understands anyway, even if the way he watches him changes, the glint in his eyes sharpening to consideration that feels like the blade of a guillotine Yuuri’s made his bed in.

It’s alright, Yuuri thinks. Only the good die young.

_____

September 2017

The door to the suite slams, and Yuuri jars with the sound, inhales sharp and fast.

Victor storms through their shared accommodation, moves thundering and angry, loud enough that Yuuri can hear the whirlwind of his warpath through the door of his own bedroom. He’s on the phone, exchanging rapid-fire Russian.

In his room, Yuuri hangs the last of his clothes, crosses the generous square footage to stand by the full-length windows, the evening dark with impending fury.

He glances to his desk, to the glow of his half-shut laptop, their newest mission brief reflected on the chrome surface in stark white.

When Yuuri looks back up, the sky rumbles, a sonorous rattling that snaps at his heels, rabbits his pulse. There’s the catching of the handle, and the door’s swung open, Victor coming to rest against the frame, arms crossed.

There’s a predatory glint to his eyes, an unkind combativeness that sets Yuuri instinctively on edge.

With a crack, nature begins to pound its wrath in thunder beats and coursing rain.

“No welcome home?” Victor asks, smiling acid, taunting bone-white teeth. He tilts his head, considers Yuuri with a viciousness that’s drowned out by a flash of lightning that sparks scalding. “What was it again?”

Victor straightens from the door frame, stalks over to surge close. Anger has Yuuri’s spine stiffening, refusing to yield.

“Ah, yes,” Victor sneers. “I remember. Tadaima, Yuuri, aren’t you happy to see me?”

Beyond the glass windows, violent catharsis streams past, floods the smouldering remains of a long-blazing ruin, cleansing the fire that licks through the meandering tributaries of Yuuri’s veins and feeds the river of a city he once dared to call home.

Yuuri smiles back, curves as cruel as he dares. “Very, Vitya.”

He throws out a hand, connects with Victor’s chest. Balls it into the fabric of his shirt, yanks him close. Their lips and teeth clack together in devouring tandem.

Yuuri pulls back, just enough to meet the hard whet of Victor’s eyes, monsoon blue.

“Okaeri,” Yuuri taunts. “I’m glad you still remember.”

Insulated behind glass, the storm drums silence on weeping windowpanes, a startling, hateful quiet over the ruins of a walled city.

_____

“Back then,” Victor says, “You loved me.”

“I did?” Yuuri responds, and the words are surrendered to the night, set free, ashes to the wind.

They’re racing towards a precipice, hurtling breakneck towards the event horizon of a perfect storm, trailing wreckage in their wake. Somewhere, a butterfly flutters its wings. Here, they wind down towards mutually assured destruction.

And because Yuuri’s never been the best at self-preservation, because his first instinct is always to press down on bruises left by fists and fingers to make sure they hurt, because he’s never known anything but the ricochet of doubt that spits out a litany of never good enough; he asks: “How do you know?”

He means: tell me what we had was real. Tell me what to believe, tell me I’m not driving myself insane in this half-life of certainty with a gift I never wanted, tell me the words you said were meant, all of it, your eyes sea-blue in the ocean of our bed, lips blinding red like the sunset sky, where you promised me the world with you in it.

He means: tell me our undoing wasn’t mine.

The silence between them is deafening, Victor half-turned away. And this is what it’s always been, Yuuri realises, Victor with one foot out the door, the conviction of unwanted foreign belief chaining him there.

Victor leans in, wraps a hand around Yuuri’s wrist. There’s a quiet sighing in the boughs of Yuuri’s veins, the leaves of his heart shaking free buds that blossom fresh and new along the lines of his ribs, the circles of his palms. A gentle, shy love.

The hand drops, and the emotion blinks out.

Victor takes the first step back, and there’s bitter triumph to the cut of his jaw, vicious satisfaction to the set of his shoulders.

“Who else could’ve made you feel this way?” he says, and the devastation is consuming and total.

How do you unmake a man who makes truth?

It’s easy, Yuuri’s discovered.

You break him with it.

End of Arc 1

TBC

Chapter Text

ARC TWO

*

“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix.” 

Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

_____

September 2017, Present Day

Yuuri’s thighs are sticky.

They’re sticky with lube and come, tainted with recrimination and self-loathing and doubt, bitterness that coats the back of his mouth and leaves him sick with himself.

It’s gone three in the morning, morgue-silent and cold. There’s a chill in the room, the kind that violently churns in your aching body, hauls you to awareness and socks you in the face.

Yuuri reaches for his glasses, left haphazardly perched on the nightstand. His thighs slick uncomfortably together with the movement, making his stomach roll. He grits his teeth.

On the other side of the bed, Victor tucks a cigarette between his lips, and the click of a lighter is a gunshot, the faint flame a flickering, dancing demon.

Yuuri stands, makes for the en suite. He wipes at the mess between his legs, avoids looking at himself in the mirror. Tosses the wadded-up tissues in the bin.

There are bruises on his hips, bite marks on the soft, tender flesh of his thighs.

He returns to the bed, picks out his boxers from under a pillow, leans over to fish his shirt from behind the headboard, bends to retrieve his trousers.

Smoke curls from Victor’s cigarette, laces the air choking and acrid.

Yuuri balls his clothes up in his hands and bites at the words, reluctantly concedes to give them voice. “That’s going to kill you someday.”

Victor’s lips twitch upward. He taps ash away, uncaring of where they fall. “Oh, I’m well aware.”

Yuuri’s hands clench, an involuntary action. Betrayal in the lines, the pull of his body and muscles. He reigns himself in. With a shrug, he turns away.

“No cautionary tales? No admonishment?” Victor calls after him, the taunt in his voice chipping at Yuuri, flaying him.

The knee-jerk anger rises first, a hot flush that scalds his lungs and shoots up his throat. He catches it in his mouth, and it fades to sour dust.

Yuuri breathes in deep, tastes the lingering smoke in the air.

Exhales.

There’s a lit cigarette between Victor’s fingers, the end sparking bright when Victor inhales.

Yuuri could do it. He can see it, threads spinning, scales tipping themselves over in their eagerness to bend to his whims. Victor’s cigarette could improbably, impossibly burn out. The water sprinklers could turn on. He could make Victor -

Yuuri winds the threads up, spools and buries them behind the cage of his heart, his gift snarling with disuse, possibilities furious at being denied.

He’s -

He’s exhausted by this vicious back-and-forth, this bitter, laughable semblance of a partnership they have limping along, sick of balancing his way through the tally sheet of which of them can make it hurt the most.

He’s tired, mostly.

“Is there a point?” he replies, pressing his eyes shut. “It’s your funeral.”

_____

(If you want to destroy a man, you don’t need to kill him.

You just need to kill what he loves.)

_____

When morning breaks, it breaks with a lambency that spills amber across the lounge of their quarters, lending the room a softness that neither of them know what to do with.

Yuuri brews genmaicha in the kitchen, and Victor percolates coffee beans. The distinct scents of both beverages clash in confusing assault.

Victor turns to reach for a mug, and the motion hikes his shirt up, reveals a sliver of pale skin marked by scratches, battle scars from the night before. Victor’s DNA living under the nails of Yuuri’s fingers, twining with his, stifling, an indelible brand Yuuri’s never known better than to bear.

The scorching traces of a city burnt to ash.

Their domestic orbit falters, Victor making to retrieve the day’s copy of Izvestia, Yuuri heading to his room for his laptop.

His phone rings just as he shuts the door behind him, mug of genmaicha balanced in a hand. Yuuri sets the mug down on a coaster, thumbing at the screen of his phone with a grin.

“Okaa-san,” he greets, shifting to wedge his phone between his cheek and shoulder as he wanders over to throw the drapes open. The morning light streams in, virulently gold.

“Yuu-chan,” his mother answers, the smile evident in her voice. “Is this a good time? Which timezone are you in now?”

Rapid-fire conversation in Japanese or no, Yuuri glances at the door, mindful of Victor beyond.

“It’s fine,” he reassures, turning back to the window. “It’s just gone nine in the morning here. How are you? How’s otou-san?”

His mother laughs, and the bustle of Yu-topia - the clinking of dishes, the TV in the background - makes itself heard. “Your father’s doing well. He’s taking it easy, just as the doctors have ordered. Mari’s off with one of her friends, so it’s me holding down the fort alone at the moment.”

The sound of rustling, the phone on the other end switching hands. “What about you? Are you eating enough? You’re working too hard again, aren’t you.”

With a sigh, Yuuri leans his forehead against the glass of the window, the exhalation of his breath leaving a fog that rapidly recedes.

“I’m doing okay,” he replies, half-shrugging in a motion he’s aware his mother can’t see. “Things are just - busy.”

“Hmm,” his mother hums, non-committal and decidedly unconvinced. “Busy,” she echoes.

“I’m really fine,” he says, tone just shy of indignant.

“You did say that,” comes the agreeable response.

Yuuri straightens from the window, hand coming up to wipe at the smear his forehead’s left. He picks at his nails, scrapes them against his forearm. Feels the enduring stains of Victor trapped under his skin, the memory of slick between his thighs.

“It’s - nothing,” he tries, and his mother merely remains silent, a quiet entreaty continue.

At length, he halts the press of his nails, turning a hand over to examine the lines of his palm, views each crease wearily anew.

“Victor’s here.”

A surprised noise on the other end. “You mean - ”

“Yeah,” he interrupts, the regret at his rudeness coming immediately. He softens his tone. “That Victor. The only Victor.”

“He’s…” his mother trails off, clearly wary of the conversational minefield. “Consulting on your buyout?”

“More or less,” Yuuri confirms, nodding into the phone, rubbing at his temples. He leaves the window to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the sprawl of the city beyond the insulating glass. “But it’s - it’s a long job, okaa-san. Very long.”

“How are you holding up?”

It’s the same voice that’s soothed him through falls and scrapes, through the devastating news of his father’s cancer, through the tears she hadn’t understood following his first proper wetwork job, through the shock of waking up in Nevada, five thousand miles from the city he’d thought safe to call home with the man he’d known dangerous to love and did so anyway.

He fidgets at the sheets of the duvet, straightens out nonexistent wrinkles.

“I’m. Dealing, I guess.”

There’s a pregnant pause, then the sound of movement. The chatter of Yu-topia in the background continues, idle counterpoint.

“Yuuri,” she says, careful, “This job. You know your father’s fine now, the cancer’s been in remission, and you’ve sent us so much over the years. When he was first diagnosed - the money - look. Your import-export business, and this thing with Victor…we don’t need the money. You’ve done so much for us, more than any parent could ever ask. I don’t want you hurt.”

Yuuri cradles his head in his hands, buries his face in his palms.

“It’s not about the money, okaa-san, it’s just. It’s Victor.”

And that’s what it keeps boiling down to, isn’t it?

It’s Victor, always Victor.

It’s a beautiful man holding his hand out and offering the world, smiling wicked sharp under shadowed, sacred arches, feathering gentle kisses to skin on drowsy mornings.

It’s a dangerous man looping a silk noose around his neck, tilting a head to listen to garbled transmissions over a radio on a paradise island, shoving back and biting hard, leaving bread crumbs of bruises.

And Yuuri’s never been able to deny Victor anything, not his heart or his body or his soul, and the realisation slices fast and brutal.

It’s an epiphany that slugs him in the gut, leaves him winded and breathless, makes him a believer to an emotion that gathers vicious and brutal, grows wild and untamed below his ribs.

And the epiphany is this:

There are many ways to ruin someone.

No one ruined him.

He did this himself.

_____

When Yuuri reemerges from his bedroom, the sky’s gone sharply yellow with noon, the sun throned overhead, commandingly present through the full-length windows.

Victor’s lounging lengthwise on the sofa, a single leg hooked and dangling redolently off an arm. He has an elbow propped up along the back, chin resting on a downturned wrist as the other taps at the keys of his laptop spread out on his legs.

Yuuri ignores him, heading straight to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“Long conversation,” Victor comments, and there’s snark behind those words, but also an unspoken question buried between the lines.

Yuuri brings the glass to his lips, takes a long swill to steel himself. He turns to face Victor in the lounge, propping his hip against the counter.

“My mum,” Yuuri replies, and Victor nods absently, eyes still trained on his laptop, the blue-light white paling him to a milky glow, the afternoon sun at his back.

There’s no how are your parents doing, no tell them I said hi. Yuuri’s grateful, inasmuch as he’s willing to concede being grateful to Victor for anything. He nurses the rim of the glass against the shelf of his lower lip, contemplative.

Yuuri’s never been one to let bruises be. He’s always pressed hard, breathed with the throb of pain, rubbed sweat-salt hands over cuts to savour the sting of hurt, to see what would happen. “I told her we were working a job together.”

Victor raises both eyebrows, eyes never leaving his laptop screen. His lips part briefly, then seal shut. “Yeah? She must love that.”

Yuuri tilts his head, and the movement ripples the water in his glass. “What did you expect?”

Victor’s expression is impassive, his half-shrug insouciant. He straightens, rolling his shoulders from his slouch on the sofa. He sets the laptop down on the coffee table, gesturing to it with a hand. “We have an op. Came in an hour ago.”

Yuuri lets the topic slide, leaving his glass in the sink to wander over. “Timeline for completion?”

“As long as it takes to get it done. It’s a big op, complicated.” Victor waves at the details onscreen, standing to stretch his legs. Yuuri settles into the spot he’s vacated, body-warm and moulded to foreign lines.

Yuuri studies the details of their mission, biting at his lip. “Wong can identify gifts? This is going to be a bitch to work around.”

Victor nods and grimaces, coming to stand by the sofa. “Saito’s green-lit extra hands on this one. Two, maybe three contractors.”

“Phichit’d be a good fit. And Altin, maybe?” Yuuri mentally reviews the colleagues he’s acquainted with, ones he knows the gifts of, others he can only guess at.

Victor curls his lip, and there’s a set to his jaw that wasn’t there before. “You mean Chulanont? He’s green on the field, isn’t he?”

Frowning, Yuuri glances away from the screen to properly look at Victor. “He doesn’t just hand out his gear, you know. He knows how to use them, he’s a professional.”

Victor’s scoff is quiet, but his distaste is apparent enough. “I’d be more inclined to believe that if he hadn’t blacklisted me for six months.”

The rebuke is out before Yuuri can stop it, sharp with annoyance. “You chose to leave.”

A huff from Victor, who shifts and turns away.

Bitterness wells up, spurs Yuuri on. “I’d have believed anything you told me. I wanted to believe anything else. You could have tried. You could have stayed.”

Victor stands, slices an hand through the air. A final, definitive movement.

Neither of them speak, the silence festering like an open, weeping wound. Minefields from a tired war graved between them, old-wrought devastation they still manage to discover anew. Both necessary casualties in a conflict they were assigned stakes in, neither zealous nor tempted enough to burn or turn the other cheek.

Victor folds his arms, stands with his back ramrod straight. Perfect posture, chin held up. A mannequin posed, impassively blank. “Altin’s too risky. I don’t know how his null gift works, we can’t gamble on him being able to nullify Wong’s. If Wong’s gift works around his, we’ll be made from the start. Syndicate has him running an op with Yura, anyway.”

They’re good at this, working together, cautious orbits at steady, hurtling paces with meteor-shots in between.

They’re good at this, ignoring the blazing comet-trails of history written in the treacherous familiarity of body language and touch, keeping stubbornly blind to the stardust debris they shed in their shuddering wakes.

They’re good at this, avoiding the truth of their collision course.

For every city burning, a star dies out in an infinite universe.

Victor and Yuuri is a nebula collapsing, tragedy sown in the fact of their creation.

Yuuri inhales, deep.

Exhales, breathing out the dregs of glass-sharp bitterness, and accepts Victor’s truce for what it is. “Alright, so not Altin. Nekola?”

Victor shakes his head, tapping a finger against a forearm. “Pulling him in will bring the Crispinos, and that’s drama we don’t need.” He unfolds his arms, plucks his phone from a pocket. “I’m thinking Christophe, maybe JJ, if I can talk him into it.”

Yuuri lifts a single, questioning eyebrow. “Giacometti?”

Victor slants a knowing look his way. “You’re acquainted, I take it?”

“Briefly. I’m on better terms with JJ, we worked a job together a few years back.” Yuuri idly scrolls through the laptop, absorbing the relevant information. Seoul. Information extraction and target elimination. Gifted mark. Open deadline.

The huff of disbelief from Victor has Yuuri blinking up at him, mildly annoyed. “What?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Victor’s tone is derisive. “JJ won’t step foot on the same continent as you. The only reason he might even think about taking this op is as a favour to me.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes, scrapes his tongue against the edge of his teeth to kill the instinctive retort. “Fine, I don’t care about the details. You call JJ and Giacometti, I’ll get Phichit.”

He pushes to his feet, yanking out his phone to shoot off a text. Are you working an op right now?

The reply’s instant, Phichit’s gift doing the heavy lifting. Nothing I can’t wrap up anywhere else! What’s up?

There’s a job we could use you on, but it’s a long gig and pretty complex.

A longer pause this time, as if Phichit were choosing his words with care. Victor?

Yuuri worries at his lip, a subconscious move he only catches himself doing after the fact. Mmmm, he responds.

A string of emojis, red faced and scowling, pop up in rapid succession.

Yuuri quirks a small smile. Is that a yes? Do you need me to send you the dossier?

More emojis of various disgruntled expressions from Phichit. Noooope. Give me the details, I’ll grab what I need from the data stream.

Used to Phichit’s gift, Yuuri mentally shrugs, pecking out the relevant information. The target’s Wong Ming Fa, location’s Seoul. Businessman, dabbles in the gifted slave trade, drug cartels.

He sends the text. The response comes ten seconds later.

Got it. Wong’s sneering face appears onscreen, along with a series of photos, grabbed from various surveillance cameras. This the guy? Nasty piece of work, I can see why Saito wants him taken out.

Eyebrows raised, Yuuri taps a reply. That was quicker than usual.

I *am* pretty awesome. A winking emoji. I’m not running a sweep or any background processes, so there’s that. Clear data stream for miles, I’m bored AF. You’ve got good timing.

Amused, buoyed by the perpetual cheer of his best friend, Yuuri grins into the screen. Then haul ass over here, slacker.

Five seconds later, an email of a flight confirmation comes through.

Way ahead of you. Try not to kill each other before I get there.

_____

It’s five in the morning when Phichit sweeps into the flat Yuuri’s been put up in with Victor, bypassing the electronic lock on the door with terrifying ease.

Victor’s shooting shirtless out of bed, gun drawn and cocked, eyes dead flat, before Yuuri can inform him of Phichit’s habitual theatrics.

It’s a terse standoff, Phichit’s knife at Victor’s neck, Victor’s pistol to his forehead.

Fingers rubbing at his temples, Yuuri shuffles out of the bedroom, tugging a shirt on as he goes. “Oh my god, stand down, both of you.”

Silence stretches thick, spun molasses that drip realisation into Yuuri’s sleep-fogged mind, two pairs of killer eyes trained on him.

It’s five in the morning.

He’s emerged from the same bedroom as Victor. There are bite marks slung low on his collarbone, scratches along Victor’s side. He’s in boxers and a borrowed shirt, two sizes too big and drowning, slipped low down a shoulder.

Two pairs of killer eyes.

It’s not a difficult conclusion to come to, Yuuri trailing traces of cigarette smoke and sweat, sex and sin sharp in the air.

Phichit withdraws first. The knife is whirled away, tucked whip-snap fast into a holster at his back.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Phichit says, and the implication is clear in his tone, in the impish curve of his smile. His gaze on Victor is assessing, calculative friendliness veneered in courteous hostility.

Victor inclines his head, lowering his gun. “Chulanont,” he greets, no love lost. “You made it here quickly.”

Phichit breezes by him, dropping his suitcase by the sofa in the lounge. “A thirteen-hour direct flight.” He shrugs. There’s a look to his eyes, an unspoken dare. “Shorter than the flight from Mauritius to Nevada. You’re well acquainted with that, Victor, aren’t you? How long is it?”

Victor bares his teeth, a false, feral smile. “Shorter than six months, that’s for sure.”

Phichit feigns surprise, brings a hand up over his heart in an exaggerated act. “Oh, six months? I struck someone from my network for six months, what, three years back? If I could only remember who, though. Yuuri,” he calls, “What was his name?”

Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose, feels the throb of a headache forming. “You know what, it’s slipped my mind. Look, Phichit, thanks for coming, it’s great to see you, but it’s five in the morning. Can we pick this up later?”

Vaguely chagrined, Phichit shoots Victor a telling glance, then nods. “When are Giacometti and Leroy arriving?”

Yuuri gestures at Victor, passing the question on.

Expression impassive, voice cool, Victor answers. “Chris gets in tomorrow morning, JJ tomorrow afternoon.”

Phichit tilts his head to the side, eyes going briefly blank, filming a milky, cloudy white. Victor’s gaze sharpens, curious and considering at the obvious display of a gift.

Phichit blinks once, and his eyes refocus, colour seeping back. “I’ve moved their flights, they’ll both get in tonight. New flight details are in their inboxes. Make sure they don’t miss it, they’ve been upgraded to First Class.” He winks.

Victor’s too much of a professional to be obviously surprised, but his answering nod is just slightly delayed.

Stretching his arms over his head, Phichit retrieves his suitcase, making for an empty bedroom. “I’ll get myself a room. You’ve got some sweet digs here, I’m going to get settled. Holler if something interesting happens, you know I love the drama.”

Phichit departs, a whirlwind of personality that steals breath from the room, leaves Victor and Yuuri watching him go, then watching each other.

It’s a marked contrast, silence going stale between them, a handspan and a universe.

Victor’s eyes are flat, arms akimbo at his sides. In the faded light of morning, Yuuri can make out the lines of muscle and sinew.

“He knows a lot,” Victor says.

“About us?” Yuuri answers, and it’s five in the morning, the sky barely more than muted grey, and he’s in Victor’s clothes, stained with Victor’s touch. “Why wouldn’t he?”

The ash-spewed dawn washes them out, presses their complexions wan. Two-dimensional renderings of themselves, trapped in media. Flies caught in amber, stock animatrons in a theme park ride going through the same motions, over and over, day after day, world without end.

A-fucking-men.

Yuuri takes a half-step forward, chases the exhaustion of - of whatever this is, Victor’s come still between his legs, in his mouth, blood-drawn passion in the beds of his nails. “He was there.”

He doesn’t say: you weren’t.

He doesn’t say: you left.

Victor hears: you could have stayed.

_____

Some days, Yuuri wonders if he's even human. If bending the world under the weight of his wishes doesn't somehow make him less.

There are things he thinks -

My parents love me.

The sky is blue.

My name is Katsuki Yuuri.

And he wonders if any of that is true.

Why should it be?

If he believes something, does that make it more or less real?

He’d bumped into Giacometti once, in Florence, the both of them running ops that’d put them in the same city. Pure coincidence, for what that’s worth.

Across an iron-wrought table in a piazza, Giacometti’d lowered his sunglasses, peered at him with a sharpness that might’ve made him flinch.

But Yuuri’d been two months past Victor, past St. Petersburg and Nevada, and he’d met Giacometti’s gift head-on.

“You’re an interesting one,” Giacometti’d said. “The truth slides off you.”

And Yuuri, two months past Victor and heartsore, had leaned forward, forearms on the table, and willed Giacometti’s espresso into Earl Grey.

And Yuuri, hurting and out to hurt, had smiled wide and empty. “How’s your tea?”

He’d watched Giacometti’s eyes slide to his cup, watched the way they widened just a fraction, the sunglasses pushed up in defense then.

“Curious,” he’d said, “I ordered coffee.”

“Really,” Yuuri’d answered, “Did you?”

A passing waiter stopped by their table, bent to ask after Giacometti’s beverage. “How is your tea, sir? I’m sorry we didn’t have Darjeeling like you wanted. Can I get you anything else?”

_____

My parents love me.

The sky is blue.

My name is Katsuki Yuuri.

_____

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Phichit’s sorting through the spartan selection of clothes in the closet of Yuuri’s room, frowning with each article of clothing he comes across.

Yuuri looks up from where he’s flicking idly through the pages of the day’s Asahi Shimbun, bored. “What?”

“This. You, Victor, whatever I walked in on this morning.” Phichit straightens, eyeing a navy-and-white striped shirt Yuuri’d bought in Barcelona with a censuring eye.

Yuuri sighs through his nose, folds the newspaper shut in precise halves. “It’s nothing.” Phichit opens his mouth to speak, and Yuuri holds up a hand. “You’re about to tell me I’m making all the same mistakes.”

Phichit waves him off. “No, I’m about to tell you you’re making new mistakes, and that’s worse. Seriously, Yuuri? You know this is a terrible idea, tell me you do.”

Rolling his eyes, Yuuri comes to stand by Phichit, batting him away from his critical analysis of Yuuri’s fashion choices. “This is a terrible idea,” he intones. “Now leave me alone, I’m busy.”

Phichit allows himself be hustled to the door, dragging his feet as he goes. “You’re not listening to me, Yuuri. He’s the same as he always was. Victor’s a weapon. Nothing’s changed.”

Yuuri lets up, annoyance flashing licking flame, stiffening his spine. “Don’t you think I know that? Maybe - maybe right now I’m too tired to care. Maybe right now what matters is that I know what he is, and I know his agenda, and I know what he does, and I know all that and I let him fuck me anyway, and isn’t that better? Isn’t it better that I’m in this with my eyes wide open?”

He’s gripping the frame of the closet door hard, turning his knuckles bone-white with force. “Do you think I think this is real? Because I know it isn’t, Phichit. There, I’ve said it. Nothing’s real. None of this ever was.”

Yuuri’s gift is this: the crippling knowledge of self-awareness.

He draws blood through the current of fear he can’t keep at bay.

There are nightmares of skies the colour of grass, of waking up with a new name for himself, of going home to parents who don’t remember him.

The universe is infinite, and everything you can imagine is real.

(Is it only infinite because he believes?)

There’s nothing but the sound of his plosive breaths, demons dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day, scarring his lungs and throat.

Phichit places a careful hand on his arm. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here with you.”

In space, there’s no sound.

None that the human ear can naturally discern, anyway.

Stars and giants live and die in the vacuum of silence, planets turning and returning along graduating orbital paths at hundreds of miles per hour. There’s nothing to breathe, leaking reserves of oxygen from his blood. Planetary bodies on scales he can begin to believe he can’t move.

The only truth in this life is the certainty of death. Yuuri can’t believe anything else.

“I know,” Yuuri says. “I know you’re here.”

He doesn’t say: prove it.

_____

Victor fucks him brutally hard that evening, JJ and Christophe and Phichit jet-lagged and shooting the shit in the lounge one door away.

Teeth scrape marks along the line of his neck, lips sucking bruises to the pale flesh of his inner thighs.

Fingers stretch, just this side of dry and raw, and Yuuri drowns in the burn. Nebulas scorching under his skin, pleasure rolling flame that follows the tug of Victor’s hands in his hair, splaying across his back, leaving Yuuri spread on all fours.

“Quiet,” Victor hisses, and every thrust drags a second and eternity, and Yuuri moulds himself into the vacuum of space, bites down on pillows and sighs moans into sheets, pliant.

Victor’s hand snakes round to pull at his cock, a ring of pressure that has Yuuri clenching tight, drawing long inhales from Victor, struggling with silence.

There’s the slick sound of skin on skin, their bodies flush, weeping.

Victor bites down hard on the join of neck and shoulder, and Yuuri starbursts to orgasm, fights sound that shivers in his throat.

Silence. Silence. Silence.

When Victor comes, he buries his lips in Yuuri’s hair, moans softly against his ear, drags teeth along it.

They collapse together, sweat and fluids mingling. The faint voices of chatter filter through the bedroom door, ongoing.

Victor swings his legs off the bed, making to stand, and the motion draws Yuuri’s eyes to his back, tracing the curves of muscle, the quiet of his body.

Yuuri frowns. “What is that?”

Victor pauses, sitting on the edge, head cocking to lend Yuuri his profile. There’s an unspoken question in the lift of a single brow.

Pushing to his knees, Yuuri draws closer, undeterred. He places a wary palm along the nape of Victor’s neck. Victor tenses, but doesn’t withdraw.

Emboldened, Yuuri skirts his hand round to tilt Victor’s head, fingers brushing at the mercury strands of hair obscuring his target.

There’s a mark - a tattoo, just behind Victor’s right ear, barely the size of a thumbnail.

In the muted light of evening, dusk threading its way in greys along the horizon, Yuuri trembles.

勇.

It’s a single character, no larger than one yen coin.

私の名前は勝生勇利。

My name is Katsuki Yuuri.

Victor’s still beneath his hands, Michelangelo’s perfect marble David branded.

Yuuri rests on his haunches, feels the drying semen on his chest and thighs. Thinks of glittering nights and gambled hearts, Beethoven and champagne glasses clinking and I’m scared of myself, and I want you to be brave for me.

Victor stands, and neither of them say a word.

“There’s an op to plan,” Victor says, and Yuuri mutely nods.

Yuuri doesn’t -

He doesn’t dare -

If he believes something, does that make it more or less real?

TBC

Chapter Text

“Maybe…you’ll fall in love with me all over again.”

“Hell,” I said, “I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?”

“Yes. I want to ruin you.”

“Good,” I said, “That’s what I want too.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

_____

November 2017, Present Day

There’s a companionable silence, a shroud settled over the occupants on the balcony, together and distant.

“Tell me something true,” Yuuri says, and his eyes are fixed, unwavering on the red-hued, haemorrhaging horizon.

Chris huffs a laugh. “How will you know?”

“I won’t,” Yuuri answers, lifting his shoulders. A fractional shrug. “Tell me anyway.”

“Your name is Katsuki Yuuri,” Chris says, humouring him. The sun lingers on its descent, watercoloured blood.

Yuuri hums, a non-response. He lifts a forearm from the rail, angles to face Chris. “And if I said that,” he says, “Is that true?”

Perplexed, Chris frowns. “You don’t need me for that. You know it is.”

Yuuri shakes his head, draws a thumb down the length of his forefinger. Yearns to drive a nail into the giving flesh. Resists.

“My name is Katsuki Yuuri,” he persists. Raises his eyes to Chris’s, challenges. High noon, revolvers in holsters; it’s the wrong time of day, he knows. He knows. “True or false?”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Chris replies, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t need my gift to tell.”

Frustration surges, breaks against battered shores. Yuuri sighs. He dips a hand into a pocket, feels for the coin he carries, holds it body-warm. “If you could just answer the question.”

Chris lifts a hand in exasperation.

“Neither,” he says, “The truth - it bends around you. You want an answer based on my gift alone? I can’t give you one. You’re a black hole where truth should be.”

Yuuri extracts the coin, indent of Makkachin pressed to a palm from his grip. He curls it in a fist, comforting.

“No,” he responds, “That’s good, right? For the job. If you can’t tell, Wong won’t be able to either.”

“Sure.” Chris looks wholly unconvinced, edging on professional concern Yuuri doesn’t care for. His demons aren’t for others to bear. “The job. Of course.”

Yuuri shifts his gaze from the horizon, now mauve, a bruised sky conceding aching defeat to nightfall. Stares at the coin in his hand, turns it over and over.

“Listen - ”

“We should head in.” Yuuri cuts him off. “There’s more planning to be done.”

Chris steps through the glass sliding doors to the lounge with reluctance, casting Yuuri a careful glance. Yuuri ignores it.

He tosses the coin upwards, watches it spin in the light of dusk.

His gift leans out, rumbles that rattle its chains. Eager to act, eager to play the odds and win, every single time, don’t you know the house never loses? Heads or tails? Heads or tails? What do you want, heads or tails?

Yuuri lets the coin fall, catches it dead centre in his palm. Picks the coin up between a forefinger and a thumb.

“Yuuri,” Phichit calls a clarion bell. “C’mon, stop procrastinating.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says, “I’m coming.”

He glances back at the coin. Makkachin lolls at him, identical on both ends.

_____

(You’re a black hole where truth should be.)

_____

“You’re still up.” Victor raps light knuckles on the doorway in greeting, the dining room requisitioned for mission planning. Blueprints and maps sprawl across the teak surface of the table, laptops and notes scattered amongst the fray.

Yuuri jerks at the interruption, throwing a glance at the clock mounted on the wall. 4.03am. He tosses his pen down in defeat, other hand worrying at the weathered coin between his fingers.

“I don’t think anyone’s asleep yet,” Yuuri blearily defends, tilting his chin in the direction of the lounge, where the muted voices of Phichit and Chris can be heard. “Wong’s running fucking circles around us.”

“Chulanont thinks he’s got a gifted techie on his team, some kind of scrambler.” Victor’s holding two steaming mugs aloft, raising them in offering in his approach to stand by Yuuri’s chair.

Puzzled, tired, and frustration with the op dogging his heels, Yuuri runs a sleep-deprived hand through his hair, removing his glasses and setting them on the table. “That would explain the lack of useful data. Where’s JJ on the leads we - ”

Yuuri blinks hard as the scent hits him.

Victor places one of the mugs down by Yuuri, slides it further towards him with two long fingers. The tea sloshes, laps precariously at the lip. Yuuri instinctively halts the motion with a steadying hand.

It’s a distinct aroma, rounded and rich and beautifully deep.

Yuuri’s eyes flutter shut.

“This is Euphoria.” It’s not a question.

He opens his eyes, feels his lips tremble open. Presses them together, holds them firm. “I didn’t bring this.”

Victor meets his gaze, unwaveringly blue. There’s something in that look, in the sea-storm intensity that narrows the world to the two of them. Something that whispers: I know you. I will always know you, and it will always be like this, the two of us cleaved together because we know nothing else.

Call and answer, untameable instinct that has them by the throats.

Time stretches, syrup-thick.

Victor inclines his head, a deliberate movement. The lightest gesture, equivocation in motion. Yes and no.

Yuuri breaks the stare first. Feels the shaking of his breath, the disturbed dust of ash-faded betrayal, the stirring of whatever remains, laughter under the stars and breath-warm kisses between years.

His coin is solid in his palm, the metal smooth and worn.

“It means bravery, you know,” Yuuri says, and it feels like tentative courage, Midas gold in his gut.

Understanding is traded, one commodity they’ve yet to exhaust.

Victor pauses, mug raised halfway to his lips. “The tattoo? I’m aware, yes.”

The mug resumes its upward trajectory.

There are things Yuuri wants to say, questions that clamour for resolution. Why did you do it, when did you decide I was worth bearing, how long will it take you to forget?

A person is only as much as what you remember of them, once they leave.

Whatever you are or may have been, the reality of your person is beholden to what others can recall. What others forget. The good and the bad, the bad and the ugly, the ugly and the wicked.

You will never be whole in someone’s memory, but you will be incomplete without consequence.

Forgetting is a gift. Be thankful for it.

Yuuri ’s never had the luxury of being able to.

If he forgets, if the belief impressioned on the past is something he can no longer bring to bear, what becomes of it? Does history erase itself because the reins of his gift go slack? Is it kinder? Does it fade?

Some things are better off not knowing.

And so Yuuri remembers, boat beating on against the current.

He remembers everything, his months and years and days with Victor turned over and over in his mind, memories well-worn, unsuccessfully excised. He can burn all he wants. What does it matter if it doesn’t take?

Nassau. Three weeks before the clusterfuck of Mauritius, more or less.

They’d gone stargazing, Victor driving them out to trace constellations by the shore, the both of them shoulder to shoulder, wrapped secrets in the Stygian night.

Orion. Andromeda. Cetus.

Monsters and fantastical shapes traced into being beyond the reach of man, as if pressing them into perceptible form could give him power over them, bend them to his will. Claiming possession over bodies he could never come to own, that would die before he could reach them.

As if charting them onto maps could deny the inevitable fact of their entropy.

He’s a maudlin romantic; he’s never claimed otherwise.

There’s a silver coin in his palm, warm like a brand, more and less permanent than the one behind Victor’s ear.

“I like it,” he says, and the sweet fragrance of offered tea cuts through the bitter years.

Call and answer.

_____

Mornings in the suite are strange things, the kitchen privy to five assassins coming and going in varying states of wakefulness and undress.

It’s seven in the morning.

Yuuri shuffles drowsily into the kitchen, yawning into the back of his hand as he reaches for a mug from the cupboard. JJ’s conversation with Chris comes to an abrupt halt, the former skirting around the island to give Yuuri a wide berth as he legs a hasty exit, not meeting his eyes.

Shrugging, Yuuri peers into the tea cupboard, retrieving the orange canister when he spots it. He turns the squat cylinder over in his hands.

Kusmi Tea, Euphoria, the label reads. Maté grillé, chocolat et orange.

He’s measuring out careful teaspoons of the tea blend when Chris meanders over to stand by his side, hip against the counter.

“Make me a mug too, won’t you?” Chris asks, nodding at the tin. “I brought this all the way from Paris, I might as well try it.”

Yuuri pulls down a second mug. Wars with himself; lets curiosity win. “Oh?”

Chris’s nonchalance is perfect, studied air around him when he lifts a hand to examine his nails. Elaborately staged European je ne sais quoi. “Hmm? Yes, well, Victor doesn’t often ask for favours.”

The kettle boils, steam churning violently into the air, clicking off. Yuuri pours steaming water into the two mugs. If he’s biting his lower lip, that’s no one’s business but his own.

They watch the tea steep in silence, Chris inclining his head in thanks when Yuuri hands him a mug. Yuuri drifts away to sit at the island.

Chris sips at the tea, letting out a noise of appreciation as he does so. “I can see why this is your favourite.”

Yuuri lets the corner of his mouth curl. “So favours from you come at the cost of information?”

“Mon ami, whatever information Victor may have shared aside, it’s far from difficult to work out.” Chris leans back against the kitchen counter. “I did it because he’s my friend. Don’t flatter yourself, you’re not that interesting.”

Phichit steps in then, and Chris straightens slightly.

It’s clear Phichit’s caught the end of their conversation, his mouth set in a less-than-friendly smile.

Yuuri nurses his mug, resisting the urge to duck under the table and escape back into bed. It’s too early for this.

“Is this what Victor’s doing now?” Phichit says, “Getting his friends to act as an intermediary?” His once-over of Chris is deliberate and unimpressed. “Why am I not surprised?”

Phichit crosses the length of the kitchen to pat Yuuri on the shoulder in greeting. Notwithstanding the proxy war brewing over his head, Yuuri offers a weak smile, grateful for the interruption.

Phichit shoots Chris a barbed look, then makes for the fridge. He retrieves some jam and butter, snagging a bagel as he passes the bread bin.

“Yes, Chulanont,” Chris fires back, “Interference in the affairs of others is a terribly unwelcome overture, hmm? I can’t imagine where you might have experience with that. A six-month ban, that sounds horribly immature, no? But I’m sure you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”

Phichit digs out a butter knife from a drawer, pressing a hand over his heart in feigned, exaggerated hurt. “I’m not the one here who’s a walking lie detector, so you best tell me.”

“I hardly need my gift to know we’ve suffered a dearth of competent contractors in recent years.” Chris glances at Phichit, dismissive. “Mon dieu, you’re just boys. They’ll call anyone a professional these days, won’t they?”

Phichit flashes his teeth in retaliation, lips curled into a fine-edged slash. Knife in hand, he spreads butter over his bagel in precise, curt strokes, then dollops jam over it.

He tilts his head in slow consideration, eyes flat, expression shy of viciously gleeful. Takes a bite of the bagel in hand, lets the white bleed into his eyes as he slips into the data stream.

“Christophe Giacometti, hmm? My, your high school reports weren’t exactly glowing, were they? And what’s this about your cat at the vet? Oh dear, kidney stones, the poor thing. Tell me, is Snowball well?”

Still in the chair between them, Yuuri drinks his tea and keeps his head low.

I don’t want to be caught in this, he thinks, an idle, errant thought. We could use a distraction.

Victor walks in, perfectly timed.

Yuuri freezes.

It’s a blow he doesn’t see coming, impact shock he can’t brace for. Blind panic flush through his veins, terror beating his heart wild.

Somewhere, scales sway gently in the wind. A deck is cut, ruthlessly shuffled. A rolled die balances on an ivory edge.

You can’t prove anything, his gift whispers.

The room tilts, headrush and fear indistinguishable from the other, coating his tongue sour and bile-sharp. Yuuri grips the handle of his mug tight, ignores his knuckles boning white. His other hand fumbles for his coin.

Phichit and Chris continue their exchange around him, voices hollow and distant.

Yuuri flips his coin, flicks it in the air.

Catches it, dead centre; spins it in his hand. Watches Makkachin dance, heads either way.

His candle burning at both ends, how will it last the night?

The metal careens, spirals from finger to finger. Singular hypnotism, the world in a grain of sand.

Real. Not real. Real. Not real.

All of it is real. None of it is. Two sides of the coin and all truth, none of it.

A hand on his shoulder, a warm clasp.

Yuuri jerks.

The coin falls.

Victor catches it before it hits the ground, studies it between index and middle fingers before handing it back.

“You with us?” he asks, and there’s an intensity to his gaze, weight to his question. Furrowed concern that Yuuri doesn’t know how to endure.

Yuuri fixes his eyes past Victor, to the shell of his right ear, the secret between the shadow and the soul.

“I think so,” he says.

It’s not a lie.

_____

(His candle burns at both ends; it gives a lovely light.)

_____

They’re clustered around the dining table, the five of them cautiously sharing the space.

Phichit’s sipping some soda from a bendy straw, eyes pale milk, deep in the data stream, and JJ’s engrossed in discussion with Victor, their heads bent low, voices a background murmur. Chris is off to Victor’s right, tablet in hand, brow furrowed at whatever contents lie onscreen.

Yuuri absently twirls a pen, pouring over the transcript of a recorded conversation.

“I’ve got it,” Phichit announces, triumphantly grinning. “It needs more wrangling, but we’ve got a way in.”

Yuuri halts the motion of his pen, rounding the table to stand by Phichit. “Yeah?”

“Wong’s hosting a charity benefit in two weeks,” Phichit explains. “Precise details are scarce, it’s being held outside of Seoul, in some country property. Exclusive as hell. I can handle the invites, but covers are a whole other ball game, especially in circles this small.”

“You can’t forge new identities with your - ” JJ points a finger to his own eyes, makes a little circling motion, “ - thing?”

“Yeah, no, Leroy, it doesn’t work like that,” Phichit answers, wryly amused. “Sure, give me a couple of minutes and I could generate passports, IDs, dump all that into databases, but that’s just creating a person in name. It’s too clean. Too flat. You want me to create a passable, convincing cover? I’ll need to seed bank transactions. Insurance purchases. Parking fines. Tuition fees. Marriage licenses. Create a whole life, with all the little things. All of that takes time we don’t have, not if we want to make it for the benefit.”

“It’d help if we knew what this charity was,” Victor interjects, arms crossed, the index finger of a hand resting against his lower lip, tapping. His brows are creased in thought.

Yuuri grabs the transcripts he’s been working through, flipping through the pages till he finds what he’s looking for. “It’s not The Giving Tree, is it? Wong’s driver mentioned something about it, some big event coming up.”

Phichit clicks his fingers, nods. “That’s the one. It’s a charity that claims to help trafficked gifted individuals.”

JJ snorts. “That’s one hell of a sense of irony.”

Yuuri’s under no illusion he’s a good person by any stretch, but there’s a special place in hell for human traffickers.

“What’re you thinking?” Chris asks, question directed at Victor, who nods back slowly, contemplative.

“I have something that could work.” Victor sends Chris a speaking glance. “Boris.”

The look of surprise on Chris’s face has Yuuri cautious. “You’re sure?”

Victor shrugs. “What good is an alias if I don’t use it?”

Chris chews on the inside of his cheek, then sighs, bringing his hands up in a gesture of acceptance. “It’s your call.”

Phichit’s tapping an impatient pen against the surface of the table. “Someone care to fill the rest of us in?”

“I have an alias who is, shall we say, known by a few who’ll be at this event. The alias is married, so that gives cover for two of us.”

“That’s not half bad,” Phichit begrudgingly allows, visibly disgruntled. “Bulking up the cover of one person’s something I can do in the timeframe, no problem, and no one’s going to look too closely at the spouse of a known quantity. Who’s your alias?”

Victor pauses, almost reluctant, then cedes. “Boris Soltanov.”

Phichit’s eyebrows jump to his hairline. “You’re Soltanov?”

The smile in response is empty, just scraping this side of mean. “We have a problem, Chulanont?”

Yuuri cuts in, wary of the situation escalating, exhausted by the back-and-forth and traded barbs between all parties. “What does Soltanov do?”

Victor’s gaze snaps to his. Holds.

Beside him, Phichit answers. “Ah…he obtains things. Anything.”

Dread curls low in his chest, sits over his lungs. They’re none of them good men, Yuuri knows.

None of them.

And maybe it doesn’t matter.

And so what if it’s the one thing he can come back to, a compass true-North; this, this here is the monster, I’ve spent all my life trying to cut this from me, I don’t know the difference killing myself and fighting back.

“And what, exactly, do you procure?” It’s a direct question. An arrow fired true.

“Why,” Victor responds, smirk tugging the edge of his lips. No sinner ever cared less. “Whatever you can afford.”

_____

In the hallway outside the dining room, Victor stops him with a hand on his arm.

“What’s your ring size?”

Caught off-guard, Yuuri frowns. “Excuse me?”

Victor sighs. “For the benefit.”

Surprise has Yuuri falling a half-step back. “You want me to go with you? Isn’t Chris better suited?”

“I need your gift,” Victor admits, and by god does Yuuri know how much it costs him to say that. “Wong will be there. I need someone to - I don’t know how you do it - to make him think I’m ordinary. Giftless. Boris Soltanov’s supposed to be a mundane. Chris can’t help on that front.”

Yuuri studies him, dormant bitterness curdling, overriding recent detente. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

Victor’s expression sours, a reluctant concession. “I’m fairly sure I do.”

“You want me to - to overlay a dual reality for the duration of the benefit, one where neither of us are gifted,” Yuuri clarifies.

Victor nods.

“You realise it’s not an illusion. It won’t be. We step into that venue, walk onto that court, it becomes - it’s reality, you understand? You’ll know it’s not, but I - I have to believe, on one hand, that no one knows we have gifts - ” he gestures with one hand, “ - but at the same time keep up a secondary layered belief that we do, and that we aren’t who we say we are - ” Yuuri waves the other, “ - so I can return us to it.”

Yuuri ends, presses fingers to his mouth. “That’s what you want.”

“It’s what the mission requires,” Victor snaps. “You think I want to subject myself to your gift all over again? You think I don’t know about the million different ways your gift could fuck this up?”

Yuuri’s heart is pounding, blood screaming in his ears.

There’s no more anger in him, drained out with the bodies of the last war. Struggling resentment remains, battles with exhaustion. Beds down with doubt and unease, the dregs of him that play at being human.

Silence is a thunderclap, struck down between them.

“It’s alright,” Yuuri breathes. “You’ll be able to make me believe whatever you like, won’t you?”

It’s not an accusation, not if it’s accepted and true.

Victor’s lips part, readying a defense.

“No,” Yuuri interrupts. “That’s good. It makes things - easier. For me.”

His coin is in his hand. He doesn’t remember pulling it out, but he must have, how else would it have gotten there?

“You’ll need rings,” he continues. “I have that. A pair. We’ll use those.”

“You…have rings,” Victor echoes, edging on disbelief and caution and something Yuuri refuses to look too hard at in the light of day, belly-soft and vulnerable. “Just like that. A pair of rings.”

Yuuri equivocates in a shrug, lifts a shoulder. Worries the coin, over and over between two fingers.

“You don’t even have a suit yet, but you just happen to have two wedding rings with you.”

It’s hard to drag his eyes over to focus on Victor, the metal the only thing absolute.

Here. Now. Where the world ends, every time.

“What are you asking, Victor?” Yuuri thinks of Barcelona so very long ago, endings that never were. “Ask, or let it rest.”

It’s quiet in the hallway, half-light cracking in from the doorways.

The scab of an old wound, broken anew.

_____

Nine days to the benefit, and Chris comes to him in the lounge wielding a pen and sheet of paper. He wrinkles his nose at the mess on the coffee table, sweeping away empty coffee cups, takeout boxes, and Victor’s propped-up feet to drop the stationery before Yuuri.

“Umm,” Yuuri hedges, taking in the dirty look Victor shoots at Chris for dislodging his footrest, “Can I help you?”

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Chris says, as if the two words were explanations in themselves.

Yuuri blinks. “Sure, that’s me. Are you - ”

Chris tsks, waving him away. “No, write your name down for me. Phichit needs it perfect for the invitations, apparently they’re pretentious enough to take native language into account, so. Kanji, if you will. Katsuki Yuuri. Or we'll pick an alias for you later, just do what the man wants so he gets off my back.”

Yuuri takes the proffered pen, scribbling down the characters.

勝生勇利 。

Next to him on the sofa, he feels Victor rise from his languid incline, straightening to something more alert. Watchful.

Yuuri’s halfway towards ruminating on Victor’s sudden wariness when his mind processes Chris’s words, and he grins, sly.

“Phichit, huh?”

Chris sends him a look that broadcasts don’t go there, but it’s good-natured enough.

Yuuri lets it slide. He’ll needle Phichit later.

“Alright,” Chris says, retrieving the paper and pen, going over what Yuuri’s written, “We’re good to - ”

He stops short, and beside Yuuri, Victor tenses. It’s barely perceptible, but Yuuri knows his body, possibly knows it better than his own.

“This is your name?” Chris queries, pointing at the characters. His forefinger rests directly below 勇, a physical underscore. “Katsuki Yuuri?”

Chris’s eyes are trained past Yuuri, straight at Victor, carrying a look he can’t decipher. The temptation to turn to catch Victor’s expression is overwhelming. Eden’s heaviest fruit, ripening siren song knowledge.

“It is,” Yuuri confirms.

He’s never been able to resist. Horrors lurk below the ocean of his skin, collapse in the constellations of his mind and prey on the soft, fragile parts of him, consume him whole. One day he’ll wake to a new world, and who’s to say he’ll even know the difference?

You can call and call and call, and the best you can hope for is an answer.

He can’t prove anything.

So he bites vicious while he can, lets the sticky sweetness of apples bloom on his tongue, quakes in the blackest shadows alone.

“It means bravery, you know,” he adds.

Chris is shaking his head, and there’s an entire silent exchange Yuuri’s not privy to, he aware.

“Really?” Chris says. “Because it seems a lot like foolishness to me.”

_____

Affairs like this, exclusive and self-important and grandiose, he’s come to find, are rarely different from others of its sort, no matter their billing.

There’s always champagne and expensive alcohol, free-flowing, wealth-fuelled libations held aloft by discreet waitstaff; classical music of some kind, a quartet or pianist or duet; gracefully circulated canapes in rich flavours.

Women, clad in furs and silks and jewels, dripping gold; men, extravagantly tailored in bespoke numbers and six-figure timepieces, all of them flirting and socialising and dancing the dance, the Pied Piper is money and power, don’t let anyone tell you different.

And they’re just two people in the crowd, Boris Soltanov and his husband.

Kimura Daisuke. It's on the invitation.

Him.

They were married in London, surrounded by close friends and loved ones, and Boris’s family had disapproved but attended anyway. They honeymooned in St. Kitts, bought a house in Moscow so Boris could be closer to home. Daisuke’s from Nagano. They visit sometimes.

Twin gold bands circle each of their ring fingers. They bought their rings in Paris, you know? Van Cleef and Arpels, on the place Vendôme. They’d picked them out together, Boris fussing over the engravings.

A waiter circles past, and Daisuke fetches a new glass of wine. Malbec, his favourite. Boris would love a glass, he thinks, so he retrieves a second, turns to find his husband studying him.

Concerned.

Worried.

Why?

“Darling?” Boris asks, accepting the glass from him. “Are you alright?”

Daisuke blinks in surprise. What an odd question.

“Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?” He watches the crowd eddy around them, spots a few from Boris’s set and waves at them with a smile. “Did your business talk go well?”

“Well enough,” Boris chuckles. “Mr. Wong is a canny man. Most helpful, which is what matters.”

Daisuke nods absently, finding his gaze caught on their rings for reasons beyond him. The light glints off their matched pair, fits perfectly on either of them. It’s the funniest thing, this niggling sensation. He captures Boris’s hand in his, fiddles with his ring, twists it around on his finger.

They picked these out together, in Paris on the place Vendôme.

“I bought these,” he says. “Back then. For us. You left, before.”

He bites his lip, traces the roof of his mouth with his tongue. That’s not true. He savours the wine sitting on his tongue, dark and heady. Finds the glass plucked away, feels the tension strummed through Boris’s body, hand still in his.

“Boris?” Daisuke frowns. “What is it? What are you doing?”

Boris sets their glasses down on a cocktail table, leads him away from the centre of the ballroom, hand pressed to the small of his back. They’re by the wall now, still hemmed in by the throng but less so on all fronts.

“Look at me,” Boris demands, and there’s a note of - of something in his voice, something that cuts through the haze of good wine and - and what? What else is there? Here. Now.

Shock, almost. Ruthlessly suppressed, somehow plain for him to see.

Daisuke meets his gaze, curious and concerned.

Boris takes one of Daisuke’s hands in his, brings it up to cradle both of their palms against his cheek, then leads Daisuke’s hand down, over the slope of his cheekbone, the cliff of his jaw. Back, ghosting the curve of right ear, pressing down on the tender flesh, hot to the touch, behind it.

“Come back to me,” Boris murmurs. “You’re alright. I’m here.”

He jolts.

A finger on branded skin.

Cities razed for this, a universe wounded and dying.

For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.

Daisuke folds, crumbles in the space between cards, in the seconds before the die lands.

This is not destruction. This is rebirth.

A gasp.

A breath.

Choking, heaving lungfuls.

Yuuri breaks surface, passes through one reality to another. Neither, or either. Both.

“Victor.”

“I’m here,” Victor echoes, and they’re a hair’s breadth apart, surrounded and alone. “I’m here.”

Yuuri struggles to inhale, feels the edge of panic catch on his seams, the unravelling thread of his body.

“Prove it,” he whispers.

It’s a plea, a final cry on the precipice of night that succumbs to the wild things, the feral things. Call.

Victor wraps a hand around his wrist, fits fingers to eggshell skin above a doubting pulse caught between two worlds. They hold fast, safe in the truth of a reality layered in another. Victor’s gift slips over him, a shroud.

Everything - confusion and uncertainty and fear - cast aside, and Yuuri -

Yuuri believes.

(Answer.)

TBC

Chapter Text

“I really don’t know what ‘I love you’ means. I think it means ‘don’t leave me here alone’.”

Neil Gaiman, Adventures in the Dream Trade

_____

November 2017, Present Day

Yuuri dislikes wine.

There’s something to the taste of it, a round, acrid almost-sourness that makes him wrinkle his nose in distaste, forcing down mouthfuls.

He knows Phichit spends tens of thousands on vintage bottles of Chardonnay and Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon; he’s never been able to understand why.

Yuuri’s partial to whisky, likes the earthy traces and wood notes that warm all the way down, slides smooth from tongue to stomach. Victor’d spoil him, bring him Yamazakis and Hakushus, and when the bottles were empty they’d rinse them out and keep them on the top shelf of their St. Petersburg flat where they’d catch and refract the morning light.

Years and a lifetime away, Kimura Daisuke savours the glass of Malbec in his hand, smiling at the acquaintance his husband’s making polite conversation with.

Katsuki Yuuri dislikes wine.

Kimura Daisuke adores it.

Katsuki Yuuri sips at the glass and hides a wince.

“Kimura,” the acquaintance says, voice lilting with the tone of faux camaraderie, “Where’ve you been hiding all this time? If we’d all known Boris had you squirrelled away somewhere, we’d have demanded he take you with him.”

Yuuri darts Victor a glance of spousal affection, the sort that speaks to intimacy and a conspiracy of close confidence. “Boris knows I’m awful at these things, he’s really sparing all of you my company.”

“Nonsense,” Victor immediately says, playing at the ever-attentive, defending husband. “I’m just determined to keep Daisuke all to myself.” He leans in to Yuuri’s ear, whispers loudly in jest, “You can’t trust any of these people, darling, they’ll steal you away.”

The acquaintance guffaws, shakes his head in amusement before bidding them farewell as he ambles off in search of more food. Yuuri feels himself sagging, his shoulders rounding slight degrees, his tux straining on a body he struggles to inhabit as someone else.

My parents love me.

The sky is blue.

My name is Katsuki Yuuri.

He takes steadying breaths, feels the gnashing of his gift pounding on doors.

“How are you doing?” Victor asks, brow furrowed in concern, and it’s a show, Yuuri knows, playing high-stakes on a stage in their many parts, but he’ll take what he can get.

His free hand, tucked into the pocket of his slacks, fists around the familiar weight of a coin.

There are eyes on them, more now that it’s gotten around that Boris Soltanov’s mysterious spouse has finally made an appearance.

“Don’t be dramatic, Boris,” Yuuri teases, “I’ll manage.”

“If you’re sure,” Victor cautions with a smile, dipping to brush a kiss to his temple, a gentle hand pressed to the small of Yuuri’s back.

Yuuri’s breath hitches, knuckles whitening around the stem of his glass.

Victor’s lips are warm, a feather-soft brush of memory, lingering traces of malt and coloured-glass refractions on St. Petersburg walls.

Yuuri sets his empty wineglass down on the tray of a passing waiter, turns into the curve of Victor.

“I’m dying for something stronger,” Yuuri says, and one of the nearby guests shoots him a commiserating, amused look, which he returns with a bashful incline.

“Of course,” Victor says, Boris the perfectly solicitous spouse. “I’ll have a look around the bar. You’ll be alright on your own?”

Yuuri wrinkles his nose in feigned annoyance, waving him off. “It’s five minutes, Boris, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Victor winks in response, parting the crowd with the ease of practice. He’s swallowed by the throng, swept up in seconds.

Alone, Yuuri taps idle fingers against the surface of the cocktail table, regulating his breaths.

Inhale.

Exhale.

He shuts his eyes from a long second, curls daunted fingers around the leash of his gift and strains to keep ahold of it as it bucks and he frays.

“Boris is a lucky man.”

Yuuri startles, bumping into the table, eyes flying open.

“I’m sorry?” he sputters, hand pressed to his chest, whirling to face the source of the voice.

It’s Wong. His tux is bespoke, a heavy, charcoal-grey Italian wool that drapes beautifully. There’s a glass of scotch in his hand and the clear light of interest in his eyes, and fear leaves a sour taste at the back of Yuuri’s throat, taps his pulse rabbit-quick.

Yuuri can almost hear his gift laughing at him.

“Your husband,” Wong says. “Does he know how lucky he is? I’m guessing not, or he wouldn’t have left a pretty thing like you all alone.”

Yuuri swallows the terror and bristles, plasters a genial smile on his face. Pretty thing. “I sent him to get me a drink, Mr. Wong.”

“So you do know who I am.” Wong is a handsome man, and from the smile on his face, he knows the fact well. He brushes off the formality with a gesture. “Please, call me Ming Fa.”

“Kimura,” Yuuri responds, keeping polite distance in his tone. “It’d be hard not to recognise you, given that you invited us.”

“Fair enough,” Wong chuckles, undeterred by the edge of frost in his voice, almost spurred. “Well, since I am the host, would you care to join me for a dance?”

“I should really wait for Boris to return,” Yuuri hedges, biting at his lower lip in hesitation.

The movement draws Wong’s eyes, a dark, almost glittering black. There’s desire there, want that crawls nauseatingly up Yuuri’s back. He fights a frown.

“He’ll be awhile yet, the bar’s busy.” Wong sets his scotch side, hand alighting on the table by Yuuri’s. “Surely you’d indulge your host?”

There’s little way out of this, not without seeming unfathomably rude for no apparent reason.

“One dance.” Yuuri makes a show of relenting, aware of curious glances being thrown their way.

Wong’s gaze lights in triumph, as if Yuuri’s acquiescence was never in question. “That’s all I’m asking.” He offers a hand.

Yuuri accepts, but not before he lets the second stretch this close to a snub.

Wong leads them to the dance floor, clicks his fingers at the quartet to have them striking up the first notes of a waltz. The strings of Schubert are drawn, and Wong raises a hand to Yuuri’s waist, cups the angle of his hip.

They step into the dance, Yuuri’s teeth gritted, expression carefully placid. He allows the slightest slack to the reins of his gift, struggles to stand unwavering in layered belief with fear hounding his heels.

My name is Katsuki Yuuri.

I am Kimura Daisuke.

“So, Kimura-san, what is it that you do?” Wong’s interest is dangerous. Suspicious. Paranoia seizes his lungs.

“I’m in imports and exports. It’s nothing glamourous, really,” Yuuri downplays, hoping to gods old and new that Phichit’s seeded cover’s held up.

“Oh?” Wong says, “I beg to differ. I’m in international trade myself, it’s always a thrill.”

Yuuri smiles politely as best he can, feels it bloom wan. “We must be in very different circles, then, if you think it exciting.”

“I work for collectors, mostly. Tool acquisition, talent management on occasion. A wide scope; keeps my job interesting.” Wong’s veiled effusion makes his skin crawl.

“You must meet a lot of gifted individuals, travelling the way you do,” Wong continues, and the enquiry is affably couched, the intent far more worrying.

“I’ve met my fair share,” Yuuri deflects, wondering where the hell Victor’s vanished to.

The music quickens, and Yuuri finds himself spun round, caught again by Wong, the hand on his waist now poised lower. Yuuri purses his lips, works to keep his face neutral.

“And you?” Wong asks, “None yourself?”

Yuuri nearly freezes, his gift surging, storming the gates. Phichit’s cover is rock-solid, he thinks, and pushes everything in him into that belief.

Yuuri thinks of roulette wheels being turned, of the breath of a second a hand reaches to draw a card from a deck.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Nine and Jack.

What’s a king to a god?

“Mr. Wong,” Yuuri responds, and they’re both smiling the smile of thinly-veiled conversation and double-speak, razor-sharp on the cusp on blood. “I’m sure if I did you could tell me all about it. As it stands, I don’t have a gift, and I’m sure we both know you’re aware of that.”

Their eyes lock, and Yuuri holds. Sees the desire spark in Wong’s, feels the tightening grip of the hand on his waist.

And maybe it doesn’t matter than his world is unravelling faster than he can thread it back together, maybe it’s unimportant that there’s a truth and lie for every fucking thing he believes, Schrödinger’s perpetual monster that he is.

Maybe it’s not worth the attempt to splay out Kimura Daisuke and Katsuki Yuuri, maybe it’s immaterial that he can’t face up to the possibility that Katsuki Yuuri’s a construct of whatever plays at being human at his core.

Maybe what matters is this:

You can rig the game and change the rules, but it’s never been the game he’s played. He’ll win, over and over, to hell with your money and throne. He’s here to burn your kingdom down, baby, kings and laymen all.

“So why don’t you tell me what this is all about?” Yuuri drawls, eyelids hooded in challenge.

Wong studies him, and Yuuri doesn’t flinch. There’s a twitch of a real smile at the corner of Wong’s lips, the music winding down as they face each other, two monsters cloaked in gilt.

Wong opens his mouth to reply, and a hand clamps down on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Daisuke,” Victor says, Yuuri whirling to face him. There’s flint in those ocean eyes, the darkening of an emotion Yuuri can’t put a name to, but Victor grins affably at Wong all the same.

“You had me worried, wondering where you’d wandered off to. And here you are, with Ming Fa, and I confess I’m even more worried.”

Victor winks, and the three of them share a polite laugh. His hand lifts, arm coming up to sling across the breadth of Yuuri’s shoulders, Victor’s chin by the curve of his left ear. Playing the part, Yuuri twines obliging fingers with Victor’s.

“Your drink,” Victor offers, nudging a glass into his free hand.

Yuuri glances down, and the fingers of his hand linked with Victor’s curl in surprise, physical betrayal that Victor, poised behind him in the relaxed way of predators, can’t have missed.

It’s whisky.

Of course it is.

“It’s your favourite, darling, isn’t it?” Victor bares his teeth, lifts a hand to play with the strands at Yuuri’s nape. The gold of his ring catches the light, unmistakably draws the eye. “Daisuke adores the Hibiki 21, you know,” he says to Wong, conspiratorial. “It’s not just the whisky, he’ll keep all the bottles once he’s done with them.”

“Then it’s a shame this is his first glass of the night,” Wong pronounces. “Seems like you’ve been awfully remiss, Boris.”

“Well, I’ve had to keep him from you somehow,” Victor jokes, and Wong laughs, but it’s brittle and barbed, sharks circling.

Irked, Yuuri knocks back the whisky in a single swallow, notes the way two sets of eyes - one hungry, the other tidal and storming - track the long line of his throat, watch the bob of his Adam’s apple. The Hibiki burns in the best way, a column of fire straight to his belly.

“Daisuke,” he says, “Is right here, and doesn’t appreciate the way you’re talking about him.”

Yuuri tosses his hair back, some black strands escaping the hold of the gel.

“Mr. Wong and I were having a perfectly civil conversation before you interrupted.” He shoots Victor a look of censure, idly rolls the glass in his hand as he turns back to face Wong. “Mr. Wong, as you were saying?”

Wong’s amusement is plain, intrigue that Yuuri’s managed to rouse.

“Like I said,” he says, his eyes trained on Victor’s, and there’s a whole conversation Yuuri knows he’s been cut out of, tension thick and heavy. “Boris is a lucky man.”

Wong catches Yuuri’s hand in his own, lifts it to press a kiss to his knuckles. Behind Yuuri, Victor scrapes a sound of affront from the back of his throat, stiffens. “Enjoy your evening, gentlemen. Boris, pleasure doing business. Kimura-san, it’s been a revelation. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

He weaves his way back into the crowd, stopping every few metres to greet and be greeted. They watch him till he disappears from sight, neither saying a word.

Yuuri studies the glass in his hand, feels the bluster of his boldness recede in increments. It’s fine, he thinks, Wong was entertained, that’s all there is to it.

Victor’s arm weighs across the shrug of his shoulders. Wry humour prickles through the anxiety, Yuuri averting his gaze to stare into the glittering crowd. Atlas and the beast of his burden.

“That was foolish,” Victor seethes, and Yuuri frowns, waving a hand in dismissal. Hard liquor blazes through his veins, scorches his gift quiescent.

Yuuri pulls his lips back, thrusts the empty highball that was proffered into Victor’s hand, ignores the way the ring on his finger clinks against the glass. Finds every doubt that nests inside of him, labels them traitors.

“Prove it,” he hisses, head thrown back in defiance.

Victor’s arm around him tenses, drops.

A hand cups his chin with force, tugs him until they stand a hair’s breadth apart, the fury in Victor’s eyes barely banked. Their harsh breaths mingle, nebulas colliding.

“I’m the one with the ring,” Victor says, and that’s not an answer, except for all the ways it is.

Victor closes the gap, seals their mouths together, slips past Yuuri’s defences to assault the roof of his mouth, the gates of his teeth. Licks hot and wet, razes resistance with a hand cupped to his jaw.

Someone wolf-whistles, and Yuuri cedes ground, rocks back.

Victor licks his kiss-shined lips, conquest in his eyes, and toasts the empty glass in his hand.

The feral, twilight parts of Yuuri, the parts that churn the sound and silence of the universe, demand an answer.

Yuuri surges forward, fits the pads of two fingers to the delicate skin behind Victor’s right ear.

Presses down, feels the rush of Victor’s breath.

Leans in close to whisper, fingers left over a mark that spills questions he’ll never have the courage to set free -

“But this is mine.”

_____

There are scars across Victor’s hands, nicks that cut across his palms, lines that cross over fingers. Hard-won trophies of a life lived on the edge.

In sleep, his fingers curl inwards, a gentle cup that Yuuri could press drinking kisses to, sip at the salt of his skin. There’s something almost childlike about the curve of his hand, the open innocence of a flower on the cusp of blooming.

The night is ink, Victor’s sleep deep. Yuuri follows lines left on his own skin by those fingers, touches the tender bruises high on the slope of his neck one by one. Here is where you exchanged your fury for a thrust; here is where you buried your anger in my body.

All while two rings glinted in the dark.

Victor shifts, and his hand rolls closer. Gold catches, draws the eye.

Yuuri trembles in the half-light.

It’s like fairytale make-believe: a man goes to Seoul, and meets a monster on a ballroom floor. There’s the ghost of a woman dead in an alleyway, bullet casings and gunfire marks on the walls; there’s a beautiful man who broke his heart.

What becomes of Yuuri stands between two truths, both and none of them real. There are no heroes in this story.

It’s past midnight now, clocks everywhere ringing plangent. He’s had his fun. You can wish and wish and wish and you can’t make it come true, not like Yuuri can, but he knows it’s wrong, he knows it isn’t right.

Is it?

Yuuri eases the ring from Victor’s finger, cradles it in his hand by its twin.

Closes tired eyes, then works the ring around his own finger off.

In his palm there’s history and a future that never was, heartbreak that struggles at his seams.

He steals away like a thief in the night, and Victor sleeps on.

_____

Dying is easy, a woman told him once. It’s who gets left that’s hard.

She’s dead now, anyway, so he thinks he knows a little of that.

I won’t retire, Yuuri. Someday I’ll be a second too slow to respond, a beat behind on getting to my feet. Quickest draw wins, and I won’t, not that day. There’s no retirement, not for the likes of us. I’m sorry I did this to you. If I’d known anything else, if I could have -

Memory is difficult. Who’s to say it ever happened that way?

A man goes to Seoul, follows the footsteps of the woman who paved him this road. Three days and an alley; there’s a body growing cold. You can’t beat death, but there are things far worse.

“Are you alright?”

Phichit joins him in his bedroom, sits himself on the edge of the bed where Yuuri’s bent over, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands.

“I take it,” he continues softly, “That there was significantly more to the op than what was mentioned at the debrief yesterday.”

There are callouses on Yuuri’s hands, dried-worn skin that flakes when he picks at it. Yuuri traces a light fingertip along the bedsheets, watches the indent he trails behind.

“There’s always something more,” he says.

“Victor?” Phichit asks.

Yuuri shrugs. “Yes.” He frowns. “And no.”

Phichit laughs lightly. “That’s not exactly informative, Yuuri.”

“It’s Wong. Scrambler aside, there’s something about him. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Phichit’s eyebrows are raised, curious but not yet alarmed.

“Scrambler aside?” he jokes, shaking his head. “Wong’s scrambler gives him a bubble where all data access is restricted. Anything past 20, 25 feet, and there’s nothing on him anywhere. I’m dying of envy, Yuuri. Dying.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “It’s not that. He’s - he approached me, he wanted - I don’t know. Wong’s far more intelligent that we gave him credit for.”

“Well, you weren’t made, as far as we can tell,” Phichit says, brows knitting. “I’ll keep an eye out for anything. You’ve got good hunches, but I don’t know what more we can do. We have the intel Saito wants, Chris is out working his magic on Wong’s right hand for his schedule. Come Thursday, Wong’ll be dead, and we’ll each be five mil richer.”

“I know,” Yuuri sighs. “It’s a difficult feeling to shake, that’s all.”

“Then don’t,” Phichit offers. “It’s what’s kept you alive this long, don’t ignore it. I’ll do what I can, and you just - ” he gestures expansively, “ - keep an eye on that feeling.”

There’s the sound of someone storming down the hallway outside the bedroom Yuuri’s claimed. Not in itself alarming, but it’s a suite shared by five assassins. Not exactly a profession that breeds loud movement.

Yuuri and Phichit are on their feet in an instant, hands going to various body parts where weapons are concealed. Yuuri has a grip on the knife he keeps on the small of his back; Phichit’s gone for his Beretta 9mm tucked in an ankle holster.

Victor’s voice filters through the door, low and urgent Russian on the phone, and the both of them relax, hands drifting away from their weapons.

There’s something in Victor’s tone, a stringency that has Yuuri moving before he can help himself.

“I’ll see what that’s about,” he calls over his shoulder, catches Phichit’s shrug from the corner of his eye.

“Suit yourself,” Phichit replies, following him out, turning down the hallway to the lounge. “I’m going to check on Chris’s progress. Keep me posted on that hunch, yeah?”

Yuuri absently nods, following the sound of Victor’s voice.

There’s a pause on Victor’s end, then more Russian, tone more sedate. Victor hangs up just as Yuuri rounds the corner. He’s staring at the glowing screen of the phone in his hand, face blank.

“Hey,” Yuuri says, and his voice is louder than he means it to be, bouncing off the walls. He winces, then moderates his volume. “Is everything alright?”

Victor runs a hand down his face, tucking his phone away in his pocket. He opens his mouth, makes to speak, then shuts it, as if at a loss. His hand clenches at his side, turning white with effort.

“It’s - it’s Makkachin,” he breathes, and Yuuri’s heart bottoms out.

Yuuri captures Victor’s hand in his own, unravels the ball of his fist. Feathers fingers over his palm until Victor’s breathing evens out, until there’s nothing but their breaths in sync.

Inhale.

Exhale.

“Tell me,” Yuuri coaxes.

It’s gentle; he feels gentle. There’s a reverent quiet around them, stars merging, two rings secreted away in the hushed light of a witching hour.

Victor turns his hand over in Yuuri’s, a palmer’s kiss. In the hallway, they stand a breath apart, Victor’s palm pressed to Yuuri’s. 

“I left him with a dogsitter,” Victor says, briefly shutting his eyes. “He ate something he shouldn’t have, and he choked. The sitter rushed him to the vet, but it’s still - they still don’t know.”

Yuuri reaches for his pocket, feels for a silver coin gone warm with the heat from his body. Ringing in his ears, pulse hammering.

He withdraws the coin, opens the join of their palms to set it in the middle of Victor’s. “Makkachin will be fine.”

Victor’s studying the coin, eyes tracing Makkachin lolling on its face, his head bowed over Yuuri’s. When he lifts his gaze, there’s an intensity to it, a relentless, inscrutable questing. As if every question he’s ever had has Yuuri as the only answer.

“You kept this.”

Yuuri covers the coin with his hand, makes to tuck it away. Victor arrests his movement, wraps fingers around his wrist.

“He was always mine too,” Yuuri sighs.

There’s a play of emotions across Victor’s face, full seven parts. Neither of them acting, Yuuri thinks. An ache in his heart, soft and bittersweet.

Yuuri shakes his head at Victor’s silence. “Makkachin will be fine,” he repeats. “He will be fine.”

He plucks the coin from Victor’s grasp, tosses it once in the air. Watches it sail.

“Makkachin’s alright. There was no accident, he didn’t choke.” The coin lands. “There, I believe it.”

Yuuri smiles, hoping Victor understands his attempt at levity.

Victor cracks a smile in return, and there’s the ache again, an old bruise smarting perfect pain before it heals. “Not even you can change - ”

JJ turns the corner then, nearly barrels straight into them. “Oké, nice, Victor, I’ve found you, why are you hanging about here? We’re waiting for you in the planning room.” He darts a nervous glance Yuuri’s way, inching resolutely in the opposite direction.

Victor frowns. “What do you mean? I was taking a call, you were there when it rang.”

JJ shoots Victor an incredulous glance. “No, Victor, you just walked out. There was no call, what are you talking about? You okay, mon gars?”

There’s a beat, Yuuri’s eyes meeting Victor’s, then Victor’s unlocking his phone, scrolling through his call history.

Victor looks back up. “You’re right, apologies.” There’s tension in the line of his body, expression that doesn’t sit quite right. “Head on back, I’ll catch up with you.”

Nodding, JJ leaves, eager to be gone.

Yuuri falters.

The world rushes away, then surges back. Tide breaks. On the right frequency, the universe roars.

“I didn’t know,” he whispers. “I didn’t - Victor, I didn’t know, how did I - ”

Victor’s cradling Yuuri’s head in his hands, thumb brushing over his cheek.

“What have I - ” Yuuri’s breath hitches, words tumbling like glasses of whisky left on counters, empty bottles throwing light on the walls of a flat seven thousand miles away with two names on the deed, “ - I don’t, Victor, I can’t - What have I done?”

Victor holds him, murmurs in Russian, keeps stability over them in nudges of his gift.

“You didn’t know,” Victor echoes. “Is there anything you can’t - Where does it stop?”

If Yuuri shuts his eyes tight enough, he can pretend there’s no stiffness to Victor’s body, no wound tension coiled between them.

It’s the only answer Yuuri can offer.

“I don’t know.”

Victor nods, and shuts his eyes. Keeps their foreheads pressed together, breathing in time.

You can wish and you can’t make it come true, not like Yuuri can.

He’s your fairytale all-in-one, monster and godmother and damsel all.

Don’t kid yourself. There are no heroes in this story.

TBC

Chapter Text

“I loved you. You tried to love me. This is how I will remember you.”

Ari Eastman

_____

Yuuri doesn't believe in God. Or gods, for that matter, however you decide to capitalise certain letters.

How could he, doing what he does?

With what he can do?

It’s just as well, anyway, since he doubts he's high on anyone’s list for entry past those pearly gates.

He’s not a good man. He’s fine with that, most days. There are worse things to be.

Young. Stupid. Naive.

Victor’d been his first, you know?

Twenty-two and chafing at the bit, bursting and wide-eyed and so, so goddamned hopeful.The world is a good place, he’d tell you. Never mind the monsters like me.

And Victor too, all twenty-five years of him, cocksure and devil smiles.

What had they been thinking?

Yuuri’s twenty-seven now, and there’s more than years weighing him down.

And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death -

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He’s always walked with one foot in the grave, anyway.

_____

November 2017, Present Day

Monday, and Phichit sits up in attention from his recline on the sofa, eyes dipping straight to white.

“He’s got the schedule,” he declares, and Chris strides in four hours later, waving a slip of paper with said information in hand.

“Any trouble?” Victor asks, and Chris shakes his head, tousling his rain-damp hair.

“None. The data extraction was smooth. In and out, no ripples.” Chris glances over at Phichit, brow raised in an unspoken question.

“Nothing in the stream,” Phichit confirms, nodding. “No chatter.”

“This has been a doozy,” JJ says, sauntering in from the kitchen, half-eaten muffin in hand. He eyes Yuuri across the room, and keeps to the opposite side of the lounge. “Didn’t need five contractors for this, but I’m not complaining. Five mil, nice.”

“That’s…good,” Yuuri offers to Chris, gnawing at the inside of his lip.

Victor’s watching him, banked wariness and unnamed emotions that prickle the cage of Yuuri’s skin, raises gooseflesh along his arms.

“Good?” Chris echoes, eyebrows drawn up into his hairline. “Good? I’ll have you know I was incredible, thank you very much.”

Victor rolls his eyes, breaking his vigil over Yuuri.  “Yes, you were amazing, Chris, full marks, I’ll call the Academy and alert the press, when do you want your award?”

“Merci, next Monday at noon works fine,” Chris says, fluttering his lashes and holding a dramatic hand up with flourish as he accepts imaginary awards. Phichit snorts, and JJ laughs and chokes over a mouthful of muffin. Billy Joel plays tinny over the radio someone’s put on, singing about fires he didn't start and men in bars playing pianos.

Yuuri catches Chris later, when the sun’s bled out to grey over the washed signboard lights of Seoul.

“Did you notice anything off when you were working Lau over?”

Chris is flicking through a battered copy of Kerouac’s On the Road, feet propped up in Phichit’s lap, the latter using his shins as a rest for his laptop. Yuuri catches Phichit’s eyes and waggles his eyebrows, looking pointedly at Chris sprawled over his friend.

Phichit wrinkles his nose and waves him off as subtly as he can. Yuuri’s sure Chris doesn’t miss a second of their exchange, despite the deceptively lazy slouch of his body, but he doesn't deign to comment on it, so Yuuri lets it slide for the time being.

“What wasn’t off is the better question, I think.” Chris rises onto his elbows, book left flipped open, pages down, on his chest. “He didn't lie, though, if that’s what you’re asking. Something wrong?”

Yuuri shakes his head, picking at a hangnail. He notices Chris glance down to his hand, dart back to look at him, and exchange a significant look with Phichit. Yuuri tucks his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

“No,” Yuuri says. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

There’s an awkward pause then, Phichit clearing his throat after a long second.

“Yuuri,” he begins, and it’s halting, uncertain, and Yuuri doesn’t like the implications of that tone, “Ugh, okay, I don’t know how to ask this, but please know I love you, you know I do - will your hunch affect, you know, the outcome of the op? Because you might believe it will or something?”

Phichit’s face is set in a worried expression, his eyes searching, concerned. Yuuri’s throat seizes, and there’s the weight of his coin in his pocket, and it’s comforting, pressed up against his right palm.

Bile at the back of his throat, weight on his lungs, the burn of - of other, of they, of every anxious demon sitting on his shoulders - and there’s one thing he can believe in, more than any man with quicksilver hair and secret smiles, more than the memory of a dead woman on grimy Seoul concrete -

Victor strides in then, jaw set. “What’s going on here?”

Not that, not this. This is not his line in the sand.

“Go away, Victor,” Chris says, and there’s something to his tone, to the way his gaze never leaves Yuuri, to the way Phichit grows more apologetic by the second, to the way Yuuri feels.

Breathless. There’s someone in his body, moving his limbs and moving his mouth, but he’s only watching. A pilot shut away from his own cockpit.

“I’m - ” Yuuri says, and he thinks:

Far away. Not here.

Son, can you play me a memory, I’m not really sure how it goes -

Victor rounds the sofa, and there’s a blanket of calm dropped over them all, Chris’s shoulders rounding out their tension, Phichit uncurling from where he’d coiled himself in worry.

Chris frowns, but can’t seem to summon more heat than mild ire. “Merde, Victor, at least try for subtlety, why don’t you. Lilia would be appalled by your lack of finesse, of artistry.” He gestures, but the movement is muted, relaxed. “You didn’t have to feeling-roofie us, enfoiré.’

“You were screaming,” Victor says, eyes on Yuuri, ignoring Chris’s complaints, closing the distance between them, “In my head. I could hear you.”

Victor’s face is indecipherable, and the fog of calm thickens. Victor takes him by the wrist, wraps a loose circle with his thumb and middle finger. The surrounding blanket of calm lifts, surges and grows focused; the churning in his estranged body is soothed. A warm, scented bath on a frigid winter’s night.

Victor, working him over with emotional stitching at his seams, unravelling him in all the ways that count.

Yuuri tugs his hand away.

“It’s alright,” he lies. “I’m with you.”

_____

Tuesday now.

Yuuri emerges from Victor’s bedroom to Chris yawning into the back of his hand in the kitchen, shooting him a knowing glance when he’s done.

Yuuri’d put on the first article of clothing he’d seen. It’s Victor’s shirt, of-fucking-course it had to be. He grits his teeth and ignores Chris’s look, rounding the island for his habitual morning mug of tea.

It’s just the two of them in the church-quiet kitchen, each toeing their tacit stalemate.

Chris breaks first, but it’s not a capitulation, not that Yuuri ever expected it to be.

“I never knew whether you were toying with him, all that while.”

Yuuri plonks his mug down onto the granite countertop, the ceramic hitting the surface with a resolute clink. Chris flinches, looks almost surprised for having done so, and Yuuri thinks: good.

“Two years is a long game to play,” he replies.

He doesn’t say: two years was eternity, two years is twenty-four months, two years is nothing at all.

He doesn’t say: two years Victor did this to me.

Chris shrugs a single shoulder. “With your gift, who knows?”

Yuuri raises the mug to his lips, sips at tea that tastes of orange and chocolate. Euphoria; regret, bitterness. Feels the latent anger rise, hot and stifling.

“Victor was sent after me,” he hisses. “None of anything after was my fault.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Chris concedes. “But like I said. Your gift - ” he jerks his head Yuuri’s way, “ - you don’t actually know, do you, whether it did anything to him. Made him believe what you believed.”

It’s not even a question, not the way he presents it.

Yuuri bares his teeth.

“What do you want me to say? Are you looking for guilt, or its absence?”

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Chris says, emphasis on the vowel, the light of something heavier than contemplation in his eyes. “The one loose end even the Victor Nikiforov couldn’t bring in from the cold.”

“I never asked for any of it. You think I would have chosen it if I knew?”

Chris waves a hand in dismissal. “You terrify and baffle him in equal parts, yet he’s the one that comes away branded.” There’s a sideways glance thrown Yuuri’s way, a quirked eyebrow. “Surely we can both agree that amounts to something.”

Yuuri opens his mouth, tries to put words to the emotions that churn inside him, fights the ball of frustration that wedges itself in his throat.

He wants to say: There are some things I can’t look at in the light of day.

He wants to say: I am the victim here.

He wants to say: Despite everything, so is he.

Yuuri is made of bullets, held together by shrapnel and string. He smells gunsmoke on every inhale, exhales the parts of him that played with Mari in Hasetsu Pond, that rode screaming-laughing on his father’s shoulders, that urged his mother to push higher, faster on playground swings. That skated innocence in Ice Castles and believed the world would let him by unscathed.

Yuuri is a warm gun barrel, Yuuri is formed of more and less than flesh.

Yuuri is metal, tears, blood.

“I believed Victor loved me,” he says. “He left anyway.”

Yuuri draws up himself to his full height, sets his shoulders. “Surely we can both agree that amounts to something.”

_____

Barcelona, 2013. Summer had been muscling its way past spring, catalysing the gentle colours into bold, brash splashes that blossomed furiously over passers-by below.

Victor’d been on a business trip, one that Yuuri’d tagged along for.

(It’s two years later that has him connecting the death of Manuel Fernandez, expertly garrotted, to the timing of their one week stay.)

On the second night, Victor away for meetings, Yuuri’d wandered around Passeig de Gracia, peering into the glittering displays of jewellers until he mustered the courage to venture in.

He’d stuttered and pointed at pairs until he’d found the right one, twin gold rings etched through the middle with a single, white gold band.

Yuuri bought them then and there, fifteen thousand euros upfront.

He’d taken a cab back to their hotel, stashing them in his luggage, chewing furtively at his bottom lip the entire time.

He’d meant to propose at dinner, and then at the Basilica Santa Maria, and then when they’d returned to their hotel, and then he promised himself he’d do it when they got home to St. Petersburg, then at their anniversary -

Then Mauritius.

And then the rings became fifteen thousand euro-dead weights in his battered Samsonites, dragged from continent to continent, city to city, nestled between his shirts and Cheytac Intervention.

Shackles he’d forged in an attempt to be free.

_____

Wednesday.

Yuuri wakes to pitch skies, to blinking red numbers on the clock on the bedside table reading 04:50.

Victor sleeps on beside him, left hand on the pillow by his head, palm turn upwards. Open, in dreamed supplication.

Two years, and Yuuri never had the luxury of losing him in increments - all, to most, to some, then none. One day to the next.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Two gold rings sit in a velvet-lined box in Yuuri’s suitcase, silently accusatory. He stymies his demons, chokes them one at a time until he can breathe easy with the twilight dark.

There are some things he can run from, others he must face. The line between them always drawn in sand.

Swinging his legs off the bed, Yuuri tugs a pair of jeans on, exchanges his washed-soft sleep shirt for something less faded. Glances at the flat, silent and dim, and slips out.

He wanders the streets of Seoul, lets the city wash over him in her otherness - the script, the streetlamps, the shape of her traffic lights. He walks until he thinks he can possibly bear the weight of his years, the way the world made him a weapon and told him he had to find peace.

There is a turning point in every morning of every city, where the sky hovers in the breathless moment between night and dawn. When the world shivers, just before it wakes up.

One moment to the next, the changing of the guard, and then there’s traffic, noise, bird calls.

Yuuri holds himself there, watches the paint strokes of pale colours bloom across the irregular shape of the sky framed by looming towers around him.

He’s far from where Minako was found, but he thinks there must be a bit of her in the pinks and oranges of the morning, in the crisp, unspoiled breeze.

She will never be whole in his memory, but he remembers her, so she is eternal.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, a text from Victor.

Where are you?

A car blasts its horn, and pigeons take flight from a neighbouring tree.

He turns back to walk the way he came.

Orange gives way to soft yellows, schoolchildren cross a street before him.

Two years, and he thinks -

Here, no more. This is all I have given of myself, all you have taken, all I will concede. I keep remembering -

I keep remembering.

Love does not require forgiveness to sustain itself.

His heart has no pity on him, the soft, fool thing.

Two years with, three without. Feast and famine.

Yuuri absently strokes at the stamped face of Makkachin in his pocket, thumb hovering over the screen of his phone.

I’m coming back, he sends.

I don’t think I ever really left, he thinks.

_____

Yuuri's sorting through his duffel, cataloguing op logistics. He’ll need his gloves, rifle, ammo, silencer -

There’s the edge of a black velvet box half-hidden under a stack of his shirts.

He rocks back on his heels, traps his bottom lip between his teeth. Fidgets with the frame of his glasses, then he tilts forward, traces the box with a lone finger.

Sighs, and shuts his eyes. Unearths the box, cradles it between his palms. Turns it over, feels the edges catch on his chapped skin.

There’s a rustle behind him, the faintest susurrus of fabric, socks against hardwood floors. His hand clenches around the box, defensive.

“Earlier,” Victor starts, and Yuuri curls the box to his chest, only partially turns his body to face him. “You were - distressed. I could hear you, screaming.”

Yuuri inclines his head. A half-sigh escapes his lips, audible in the still air.

Victor takes the admission for what it is.

“Is it always like this?”

Yuuri relaxes his arm, lets the box rest on a crouched knee, steadied by a hand.

“No,” he replies. The box sits on his leg, a distinct pressure. Nothing and the weight of -

Time, so much of it. Huge, mute, and history places them further forever from that.

He’s tried so hard to carry it; he only has two hands.

“It’s the first time someone’s heard.”

Victor is silhouetted by the light from the hallway. His face cast in the dark.

There is a fragility to this, to baring yourself to someone who has hurt you before. To granting them, again, the power. Life is a cycle of wounding and being wounded, bargaining for your place while the world spins gold.

Yuuri shifts the box to his hand, and Victor’s eyes follow, sharp.

We wound and are wounded. The oldest story ever told.

"You keep rings on you," Victor says, leaning against the doorframe. The dark of his shadow stretches long, falls to reach Yuuri. "Wedding rings."

“And if I do,” he replies, “Is there a problem?"

Yuuri resumes movement, tucks the velvet-lined box away, nestled next to his gun. Any lingering vulnerability from before is stifled, buried. They’ve always been good at this, casting stones.

Victor pushes away from the door, strolls with a deliberate gait. His hand darts out, bends to plucks the box from where Yuuri'd tucked it, flicks it open with a thumb.

"Solid gold," he says. "White gold thread through. This must've cost, what, twenty thousand dollars? An expensive prop to keep around."

He lifts one of the rings from the box, examines them in the half-light. It glints in his hand, and Yuuri’s heart is sore with aching.

“Tacky, don’t you think, that white gold? I suppose emotions don't account for taste.”

Yuuri sits back on his haunches, stiffens even as he schools his face. "Maybe I didn't buy it for anyone. Maybe I bought it for me."

Victor shoots him a look of sarcastic rebuke. "Who are you trying to fool, Yuuri? You bought two rings to carry around in a suitcase?"

There's a cruel downturn to his mouth, a knife Victor's always known how to best wield. "I suppose congratulations are in order, then? Though I don't imagine he means much if you let me fuck you when he's away."

Yuuri studies him, lets the anger ice over. “No, you're right,” he says. “He mustn't have meant much at all.”

Victor stills, rings still in hand.

“Oh?” His voice is silky. Dangerous, riding the glacial edge of anger and something deeper. “Interesting, given how you keep it next to your gun. Freud might have a thing or to say about that.”

Yuuri rises, pads two steps in Victor’s direction. He runs a hand through his hair, the other brushing down his face. Cupped over his nose for an instant, and he sighs.

Demands, “What do you want, Victor? Do you want it to have meant something or not? Which is it?” He lets his hand fall to his side. “Either it meant nothing to me, or more than you want to accept. Take your pick.”

Victor’s chin comes up, head canted at an imperious angle. Never further or closer away than in this moment. “We’re talking about him, Yuuri, not me.”

As if they didn't both know they were one and the same.

Yuuri takes another step forward, hand outstretched in silent demand for the box. “Right. Of course we are.”

Victor dances the ring further from him, held between two fingers. “Pity. I thought there might be an inscription.”

Time does not promise closure; forgiveness is too great and difficult for one person alone. It requires two: betrayer and betrayed. We wound and are wounded.

“What would I have engraved there, Victor?” he asks, smiling without mirth. Hard, like the world has made him. Soft, on the inside, like the fool he never stopped being.

“A date? A location, maybe? St. Petersburg? Hasetsu? Or - bravery?”

Love does not require forgiveness to sustain itself.

_____

The flat wakes to Chris’s shouts from the direction of Phichit’s room, to JJ hurtling in, knives unsheathed, to Victor and Yuuri bursting in, pistols drawn.

Phichit’s seizing, his body thrashing on the bed, violent ragdoll movements and lolling.

“Do something,” Chris hisses Victor’s way, frantic, and Yuuri catalogues implications of the way he’s shirtless, and so’s Phichit, and it’s three in the morning.

Victor’s by Phichit’s side in a minute, and the room falls under a fog of calm, of don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine, and then Chris is rounding on Yuuri, eyes wild -

“Help him,” he demands, and Yuuri’s nodding, fingers flexing at his side, and goes to the place deep inside him, neglected and overgrown, where the wild things roam.

There’s no effort at all. His gift slams into him when he cracks the gates open.

Phichit will stop seizing, he thinks, and it’s one moment to the next, nothing at all -

Phichit stills.

JJ’s gone white, and he excuses himself from the room.

There’s the briefest pause, Chris and Victor lost for words, exchanging glances, and then Chris is bent over Phichit, cradling his nape in his hands, gentling him and murmuring in French.

Phichit’s breathing hard, shivering in Chris’s lap.

“You were right,” he gasps, eyes trained on Yuuri, and there’s a sinking in his gut, an oh, fuck, no. “Wong’s scrambler found me.”

“We’ve got to shut this down.” Chris is still half-bent over Phichit, and for all Phichit’s been denying the existence of anything serious, Yuuri’s pretty sure it speaks for itself.

Victor’s on the cusp of agreeing. Yuuri knows that look, the way his arms are half-crossed in front of him, right hand poised for decision.

“No,” Phichit insists, “What are you saying? Fuck his scrambler, he doesn’t know what we have. He found me, but I buried us. We’re still in the clear. Covers, intel, prep, we’re still set.”

Victor’s hand completes its arc, index finger pressed to his bottom lip. Decision made. “You’re absolutely certain?”

Phichit pushes up from Chris’s lap, though he leaves a hand in his. Expression vaguely offended. “Nikiforov, I have a reputation to maintain. Fuck yes, I’m certain.”

“Alright,” Victor says, glancing at Yuuri, who nods, then he checks his watch. “3.50am, Thursday. Let’s get this show on the road.”

_____

They cluster around the dining table, all of them nursing steaming cups of coffee in sleep-deprived hands. Phichit’s wrapped in a hoodie a size too big for him, bearing a Swiss label. Geneva.

Chris hovers.

Blueprints, maps, schedules, lists, op flotsam and jetsam spilled over the table in haphazard stacks and piles. They’ve been back and forth over this, no stone unturned, but Wong -

Wong.

Yuuri can’t shake the feeling they’ll never be prepared enough.

“Let’s run through this again,” Yuuri requests, and it’s testament to how shaken they all are by Wong’s assault that no one protests going over their plans for the fifth time.

Victor’s bent over the table, both palms pressed to the wooden surface. “Alright,” he agrees, tapping at the schedule in front of him, and they all lean in for a better look.

“Wong and his entourage will depart for the Dongnam warehouse from his headquarters in Gangnam-gu at 1800 hours.” His finger trails, taps the corresponding area on a map above. “Chris will follow them and keep us updated.”

“Phichit,” Victor continues, gesturing in his direction with a scattered pen, “Will track their progress through the data stream from the van.” He points to a different section of the map. “Wong will reach the warehouse at 1910. JJ and I will be onsite from 1830. Yuuri will provide cover from warehouse 4, here.” He indicates the location with a circled mark. “When Wong arrives, Chris following, Chris will take out the guards stationed outside here and here. Yuuri will clear the guards on the doors on the opposite side.”

Victor straightens, surveying the map and their collective intel. “Wong’s bringing nine men with him. Without the guards on the perimeter, there’ll be four inside for JJ and I to contend with, plus Wong and his right hand, Lau. Lau’s gifted - something tech-related?” He glances to Phichit, who nods in confirmation. “Phichit will lay down a data blocking field from 1910 to 1940. No backup, in or out. JJ and I will be cut off from all comms for thirty minutes.”

“At 1940, we’ll exit from this door, here. Phichit will be waiting in the van with Chris and Yuuri. We head for Incheon, clear the country by 2230. You’ll all have details of your respective flights.”

Nods from around the table.

“Good. Payment will be cleared once Saito confirms the kill. 5 million, US, each.”

More nods.

“Any last words?” Victor asks, wry. Gallows humour, but they all crack smiles.

“Sure,” JJ says. “Don’t get killed.”

_____

At 1700 hours, Yuuri departs the flat for Dongnam warehouse, an unremarkable backpack slung over a shoulder. Gun, bullets. He rubs at the surface of a metal coin in his pocket for luck, Makkachin smooth under his fingers.

He boards a bus headed further into the city, then disembarks after three stops. Boards another bus, rides it for four stops, then gets off and heads for the subway. A circuitous route, difficult to follow. Victor and JJ are both on their own meandering paths there.

“Take every precaution,” Saito’d warned. “You have no idea what Wong Ming Fa is capable of.”

A dance around a ballroom, whiskey highballs the colour of liquid amber. Yuuri has an inkling.

At 1800, Seoul startles alive, spilling smartly-dressed office workers into the veins of her subways and flooding their carriages with people. He’s buffeted on all sides, pressed into the middle of the car. A metallic, female voice warns of doors closing in crisp Korean, and the train departs with a pneumatic hiss and the rumble of tracks.

At 1803, they reach the next station, and the crowd ebbs, then rushes back. Presses in around him, bodies nudging each other with casual everyday contact. Metropolitan dialysis at every rush-hour stop. Yuuri’s mind wanders, bored. He studies the subway map printed above the doors, and fidgets with his fingers, clutching his bag.

At 1805, a minute to the next stop, the train lurches, a sudden movement that has them all bumping into one another, mumbled apologies and embarrassed smiles. Yuuri’s distracted, someone’s foot landing on his by accident, and then there’s an insect bite on his wrist. A prick of pain, an ant of some sort. He frowns.

Glances down in time to catch the flash of a needle disappearing up a sleeve.

It’s quick.

There’s the dizziness, the disorientation, the stumble. Shouts, noises of concern.

“I’ll help,” someone says, catching him by the arm.

How lucky. What fortuitous timing. They reach their next stop, and he’s helped off the train.

“I’ve got him,” the same voice says.

Yuuri thinks: oh, fuck.

The train pulls away from the station.

Black.

_____

Light.

There are muffled voices, distant and swimming, startling fluorescence overhead.

Yuuri squints, licks dry lips and forces his eyes open through the wool in his head.

“Ah, there we go. Welcome back to consciousness, Katsuki-san.”

There’s something that rises in his throat, monstrous and total, sourness and ash. Terror is too mild a word. Yuuri bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood.

He doesn’t believe in god, but he might just start praying then.

“Wong.”

Wong smiles, pleased. “Well, we’ve certainly confirmed you know who I am, despite whoever you’re pretending to be at the time.”

He’s seated across Yuuri in an office of some sort, the warehouse floor visible through an overseer’s window. His shoes are black, perfectly shined, the white cuffs of his shirt perfectly turned out.

“This is Dongnam warehouse,” Yuuri rasps, his voice hoarse with disuse and drugged fog.

“I see you’ve done your homework.”

Wong’s studying him thoughtfully, chin cupped in a hand, elbow rested on crossed legs. A king comfortable on his throne.

“Tell me, is Saito well?”

There are shackles on Yuuri’s wrists, pulled taut behind his back. Thick, seamless metal, without weld. The work of some gift or another. They clink, audible enough that they echo, when Yuuri startles.

He doesn’t mean to, of course. Minako would chastise him, say he was trained better than that. I didn’t spend all those hours drilling you on counter-interrogation techniques for this, she’d scold.

But there’s ash in his mouth, a chemical cocktail in him. A parody of cigars and hard liqueurs, pounding headache thrown in for free.

His shock is enough of a giveaway that Wong’s smile widens, despite Yuuri’s lack of reply.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t know who sent you to kill me?” He waves a hand, dismissive. “Saito and I, we go way back.” There’s an unhappy downturn to his mouth, history there Yuuri has no wish to be caught in the crossfire of.

“No hard feelings, then,” Yuuri tries, ignoring the rapid tattoo of his pulse, the sweat beading on his palms. Acrid fear, threatening to consume him. Choke him.

He thinks, Wong will die, and I will walk free.

He has no belief to spare. His gift lies dormant with panic.

“Ordinarily,” Wong answers, “No. You’re hardly the first sent to kill me. But - ”

His eyes alight with something akin to fascination. Something darker. Monsters stirring in the night, eager for new blood.

“Your gift, Katsuki-san. It’s…I’ve never heard of anything so wondrous. Beautiful. Valuable. You’re of far more use to me alive than you are dead, and I’ve expended too many resources on you to let you go.”

“You knew,” Yuuri breathes, “All that time.” And he has to fight the surge of -

I believed it, I did, I lived Daisuke and drank his wine, closed my eyes and ate pomegranate seeds and never once looked back -

I walked the gardens of Gethsemane and I waited while the wolves came, and I did not run.

I am Cassandra, Icarus, Pandora.

Doubt.

This is his line in the sand.

Can the man who shapes reality with belief believe his belief powerless?

Wong observes him, all this while, must catalogue the million expressions that run across Yuuri’s face.

God and devil war here, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

“If it’s any consolation,” Wong speaks, amused. “You weren’t to blame in the slightest.”

“No?” He’s breathing too fast, cresting on the edge of panic. His heartbeat races.

“It’s - oh, there we are.” There’s a knock on the door to the office. Wong calls for them to enter.

Yuuri can’t help the jerk that shoots through him, the incandescent terror, not for himself.

No.

Victor is worse for wear, blood on his forehead, the signs of a fight in his bruised jaw, the way he favours his right side. His hands are cuffed behind him. He’s shoved onto his knees by Yuuri’s chair.

“Mr. Nikiforov,” Wong greets, clearly pleased when Victor’s head shoots up at the mention of his real name. “I was just explaining to Katsuki-san how we uncovered your party’s clever deception.”

Victor’s eyes dart to his, a barely-there flicker. Wong catches it all the same.

“Oh, don’t blame him, there’s no fault on his part.”

Another knock on the door, but Wong doesn’t need to call for whoever it is to enter. The door opens, and Lau walks in. Wong nods at Lau, then gestures at Yuuri.

“Search him.”

Lau rifles through his backpack, on the floor by Wong’s feet, then shakes his head. Draws nearer, and Yuuri grits his teeth against the hands that slide into his pockets. Jacket, shirt, pants. Closes around something.

Pulls away holding -

“Katsuki-san,” Wong says, as Lau walks back over to him. “You have a tracker on you, did you know? An extraordinarily powerful one, in case you were wondering. Global coverage.”

Lau deposits a coin in Wong’s palm. Wong holds it up, studies it between fingers.

Makkachin stamped on both sides, glinting.

Yuuri can’t breathe, not through the ugliness of everything dragged into the light. There are no words, not for this.

Victor is silent.

“Mr. Lau here, with his useful gift, noticed it at our little party at my estate. Followed the trail to its registration. A V. Nikiforov, 2014. Careless of you, Mr. Nikiforov, wouldn’t you say? Imagine how curious we were when we discovered that V. Nikiforov looked so much like our dear friend Boris.”

Yuuri trembles, overflows with emotions he can’t name.

This is Mauritius.

This is worse.

“Katsuki-san. I can’t imagine you have any sympathy left for Mr. Nikiforov, not when he’s betrayed you like this. Work with me. I have vast means. Whatever you need. I will give you the tools to become something greater.”

Wong bends, reaches into Yuuri’s discarded backpack to draw out the unassembled parts of his gun.

Yuuri’s gun. God.

“This is a masterpiece,” Wong says, and begins assembling the Intervention with the ease of someone used to handling firearms. “A good make, if slightly outdated. 2014, I believe? And - Oh,” Wong announces, eyebrows raised. “Look at that. Here, under the trigger. Vicchan. It refers to Mr. Nikiforov, I presume? Quaint, Katsuki-san.”

He arms the gun, sets the butt against his shoulder.

Raises it.

Holds it up to Victor’s forehead.

At that range, it wouldn’t take anything at all. Mere Newtons of force on the hair trigger. A pistol could do the job. Yuuri’s Intervention is made to rend flesh.

Vicchan.

Yuuri inhales, swallows through the bile of fear and revelations, cut-glass betrayal that shears every thought.

Victor is a tool. From the minute you became his mission, it was never about you, not really. It was never personal, not for him.

He exhales.

Love does not require forgiveness to sustain itself.

“No,” he says. His voice does not shake. Yuuri is metal, Yuuri is folded steel. “If you’re going to kill one of us? Kill me instead.”

Wong’s surprise is palpable. “And why would I do that, having invested so much effort into acquiring you?”

Men like Wong are fat, prideful housecats used to getting their way, masters of their territory. There is little they have not surveyed, little they cannot if they choose.

“Because you’re curious,” Yuuri challenges. His voice grows stronger with each word. Surer. “Because you want to see what will happen. Because you know that I could let you shoot him and join you and be done with it, but it’s so boring when all your plans go perfectly. Because you want to watch what happens when there’s…chaos. Something even you can’t control.”

Wong’s intrigued, thinking. Considering. He gestures, as if to brush off Yuuri’s words.

“A pretty argument. Persuasive, even. But what I’m hearing is that you’ve valued your life against his, and yours has come away wanting.”

Wong purses his lips. Curves them, tugging up the corners. “Now -That, I’m intrigued by. You really believe it, don’t you? You want so much for him to live. That his life is worth more than yours, that to die for him would be a worthwhile trade.” 

A beat, two, then Wong inclines his head. His hand moves, and Yuuri’s looking up at the barrel of his own gun. Vicchan.

“Alright. You truly believe this? Make me do it.”

Victor’s furious, cursing at Wong, pleading with Yuuri with the next breath. Shouting himself hoarse with urgency, but Yuuri can’t hear the words.

He’s beautiful, Yuuri thinks. He’s always been.

“If I’m going to make you kill me,” Yuuri bargains, “At least let me die unbound.”

Wong shrugs, clicks his fingers at a guard through the window. Points at Yuuri’s shackles. The guard ambles in, presses a lone finger to the metal, and it cleaves. Clatters to the floor in halves.

His gun is gestured, and Yuuri gets to his knees next to Victor.

Sinners kneeling in the dirt, shown strange mercy from the devil.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name -

Yuuri breathes in the stale warehouse air, the scent of mildew and faint rot.

Yuuri’s gift is at his fingertips, quiet for once in his life. Gentle, comforting. Nothing to be feared. There are things far worse than death.

He exhales.

Two years with, three years without. Feast and famine.

Three years he abstained.

Now he will devour, consume the flesh of ripe, forbidden fruit with both hands - and be devoured in turn. Yield to the give of softer, kinder emotions. He ached for this. He will bleed for this.

He parts his lips, savours the quaver of breath before words.

“I believe,” Yuuri says - and Victor’s mouthing pleas, struggling with his bonds, desperation in his eyes - “I believe you will shoot me and let him go.”

The only truth in this life is the certainty of death. Yuuri can’t believe anything else.

A finger crooks. Mere Newtons of force.

It takes nothing at all.

Muzzle flashes.

The first thing you feel is the impact. Metal demanding entry into your body, splitting a path for itself when denied.

Despite everything, next comes surprise. Oh, you think. It really happened. One, two, three.

Then the pain, and the blood.

Yuuri falls.

The red on his hands is slippery, wet. Warm and coppery, trembling with life as it bleeds from his body, palms pressed to wounds on his gut.

Distant shouts, the sounds of struggle that go on. Time is measured in heartbeats, in breaths. There’s abrupt hyperawareness, the crystal-sharp realisation that -

I am dying.

In minutes, I will be dead.

This isn’t something you come back from. He’s killed too many people not to know this.

He’s on his side, curled foetal. We leave the world as we come, with nothing at all.

Victor’s bent over him now, breathing hard. He’s haloed by the lights above. His eyes are blue. So blue. Yuuri could drown. Maybe that’s the key, he thinks. Maybe he already has.

“Yuuri,” Victor’s demanding, hands pressed with his to gaping holes in him, “Stay with me, you understand? Stay with me. I’m here. Meet me where I am. Don’t go.”

Yuuri’s body is shuddering, beyond him now. He tries to speak, but labours to breathe. Victor shushes him, bends to press their foreheads together.

“Don’t speak,” Victor says. “Evac is coming, I swear it. Hold on. Stay with me, Yuuri. Stay.”

Yuuri drifts. Lifts a hand, studies the way it comes away from him stained with blood. He cups Victor’s cheek, eyes fluttering with the effort. With pain.

Frowns when Victor is smeared in red, and he tries to wipe it away, but it makes it worse.

“Rest,” Victor murmurs, cupping his hand in his to still his movement. Their hands slick together with blood, warm.

“It’s alright,” Yuuri manages, keen to comfort. “You’ll be fine, Vitya, I know you will.” He traces a thumb over Victor’s cheekbone, leaves a line of red.

Urgency now. There are things he has to say, and sand dwindles in an hourglass. Yuuri struggles to sit up, chokes with the pain and effort, makes it halfway before Victor cradles him in his lap.

Their hands are twined together still.

“This - ” Yuuri tightens his grip, tries to make Victor understand, even as he unravels, frays with every borrowed breath, “This was real, Victor. Here, now, then. Always.”

Victor murmurs words he can’t hear, soothes and gentles, and every second the sea of red around them spreads, conquers new land.

Yuuri blinks through the sluggishness that creeps up on him. Adrenaline spent.

“I am dying,” he says. The belief grows, settles in his bones, content.

Victor’s voice is panicked, his hands on Yuuri growing frantic. “Hey, no. No, don’t think that, what are you saying?”

“I’m going to die,” Yuuri echoes, and Victor’s cursing -

“Fuck, fuck, don’t you dare, Yuuri, don’t you dare believe that - ”

He drifts. Minako died in Seoul, you know.

There must be some peace in going with her.

“Death isn’t so bad,” Yuuri sighs, and then Victor’s cupping his face in his blood-stained hands, and he yanks Yuuri towards him, crushing their lips together -

The pain is blinding, Yuuri’s back arches with it, and Victor holds firm -

Pulls.

Yuuri’s emotions sing. Love hits him like a freight train, Victor dragging it kicking and screaming from him, amplified a thousand times, and Yuuri overflows with it.

He loves Victor, of course he does, he can’t be without him. He can’t die, not like this.

“You love me?” Victor’s saying, “Then live, believe you’re going to live, Yuuri, do this for me. Make living a reality. Come on, feel it. You love me.”

Yuuri’s nodding with his words, coughing through the agony of breathing. But he loves Victor, of course he does, it’s all in him, there, that love. More than anything he’s ever felt.

He believes it.

“I love you,” Yuuri says, and there are tears. His and Victor’s.

“I love you too,” Victor whispers, and Yuuri doesn’t know why he looks - devastated.

“I’m here,” he tries to reassure. “I’m with you.”

The valley of the shadow of death is a rusting Seoul warehouse, moulding floors and whispering shutters.

Yuuri fears no evil.

He closes his eyes.

_____

It goes like this:

A man goes to Seoul, only he isn’t just a man, and the location doesn’t really matter. There are horrors dressed in tailored suits, a beautiful man that breaks his heart, no one ever told him a heart can keep on breaking. There’s blood on a warehouse floor, gunfire marks on the walls, and his body lies warm still.

Dying comes easy.

It’s living that’s hard.

The dead haunt the living, and the living are haunted by themselves.

_____

Yuuri doesn’t die in Seoul; Yuuri is reborn in Tokyo.

The bedsheets in the hospital Saito’s set him up in are Egyptian cotton. Seven hundred threadcount. He has no complaints. The staff are polite and discreet, the food is good. He has an entire room to himself.

Wong has scattered to the wind, but Lau is dead. Saito’s slightly appeased, but they each find only three million in cash wired to their accounts.

No one contests it.

Phichit visits, a whirlwind of good cheer and flowers, but Yuuri sees the shadows in his eyes. Dented confidence, involuntary glances over shoulders.

Chris comes too, strays in behind Phichit, kisses Yuuri’s cheeks, oh-so-European. Brings chocolate. When they leave, Yuuri watches the way Chris tucks an absent hand into the back pocket of Phichit’s jeans, and the latter beams just that bit brighter, ghosts chased away for a little while.

Yuuri’s self-aware enough to admit he’s envious.

JJ sends a balloon, rainbow-coloured and obnoxious, in the shape of his initials. As if Yuuri might’ve mistaken it came from anyone but him. He smiles a little when a nurse brings it in, though, and sends off a thank you text that goes unanswered.

Victor?

Victor doesn’t visit. Is that such a surprise?

Yuuri’s backpack is dropped off sometime in the middle of the first week of his stay. He goes to sleep; wakes up to it on the chair by his bed.

He picks through its contents when he can stand without help. The staff are unfazed by the sudden appearance of a large gun at his bedside; Saito pays them well.

He touches a reverent finger to the body of the Intervention, hoists the gun with a wince to stare down the sight. The chamber is empty, and the trigger clicks hollow.

He turns it over in his hands, frowning.

The metal under the trigger is smooth. Newly-filed, expertly so. He runs fingers over it, searching for the remains of an engraving. He comes away wanting.

Yuuri breathes long, deep.

When someone says, I was hurt, they say the worst is not the first flush of pain. It is when the world heals you, takes the scabs from your flesh, steals the pinks from your scars. So the worst of it lives on, only in your mind, until it fades.

The brain does this. It hides the worst, until it no longer is.

It is the reason we look at ourselves in mirrors and say -

All I remember was the screaming. Then everything went black.

When I woke up, the worst of it was over.

He does not have the privilege of bad memory.

Yuuri cannot say -

I don’t remember dying in your arms. I don’t remember my blood between us, I don’t remember love dragged from me, kicking and screaming, until it was all I could breathe.

“Mr. Katsuki,” a doctor says. “We’ll be ready to discharge you into outpatient care within the week. Is there anyone we can call?”

“It’s alright,” Yuuri answers. “I’ll take it from here.”

He leaves the gun, leaves everything but his phone and two rings that he pockets in clothes he steals from the laundry room.

Calls Phichit, takes the next flight out from Haneda. Doesn’t look at the destination.

You can make no mistakes, win all the battles, and still lose the war.

I am awake, he thinks. The worst is not over.

End of Arc 2

TBC

Chapter Text

ARC THREE

*

YOU

*

“ ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘What will it cost me?’ ”

Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

_____

July, three years, and December now. Time treading on, endless, date stamping lives as if marking their passage means something to history.

Men fear death, fear being forgotten, fear the ignominy of time so much they spend all their lives working to scar themselves on this world. Vast ruins of sand-blasted stone and rain-shelled monuments; behold my works, ye mighty, and despair!

You die twice, they say, once when your body expires, and the other the last time someone says your name.

Bullshit.

You are never whole in memory. Parents, lovers, friends, strangers, even your own. Autobiographies are works of fiction, coloured by vanity bias of the worst kind.

That’s the secret, probably.

No one will know you, most and least of all yourself.

The water is freezing, frigid with the Tokyo winter. It’s quiet beneath the surface, splashing loud through air, then down to liquid silence.

The rooftop pool is deserted, the saner among the condo’s residents staying resolutely indoors.

Water sluices. Burns with cold just the right side of pain, tastes of chlorine when it gets into his mouth.

Victor swims.

Cuts through the water, one stroke, another. Kick, surface, breathe. Repeat.

Don’t think.

Don't think about the way he laughed, full-bodied and rich, don't think about how he hated mornings, rooting down into the duvet and pillows, don't think about quiet boys with warm smiles and kind eyes.

Don't think about these things. Memory is a faulty device, rose-tinted and biased in the most dangerous ways.

Think, instead, about how -

How you lost your footing and fell, hard, head over heels for a man you're not sure even knows himself; who are you in love with, then? Your own imaginings?

You made him feel, then he made you believe. He made you feel, then you made him believe.

Round and around and around we go.

Victor dives low, cuts a line through the water to skim the bottom. From here, the sky is a distant, fragmented light, rippling and amorphous.

No sound, no air. Almost a universe unto itself, and he thinks about the inevitable destruction of celestial bodies, how probability and infinity means everything comes to an end.

Oxygen runs out, and he rises, surfaces to the glittering vista of Tokyo at night. There are no stars in the sky, outshone by grounded man-made ones of neon and amber. There’s the moon, waxing, and he wrinkles his nose at it, lets his body relax enough to float.

When he emerges from the pool, fingers and toes pruned and pale, there’s an email waiting in his inbox. It’s a stark white that blinds when he opens it, a brightness that hurts his eyes.

I’m not going to tell you where he is, it writes. But he’s fine.

Victor towels through his hair, refuses to read the rest of Phichit’s reply until he’s down the lift and back in the suite, cradling a glass of bourbon.

It’s been years, Victor, the final paragraphs reads. Maybe it’s time to let go.

Floors below, there’s a baby wailing in abject misery, a mother irritated and concerned; two doors down there’s a serene presence, peaceful and calm; there’s anger in the building north-east downwards, someone else having sex mixed in with sadness and lust and confusing jealousy -

Everyone and the sheer weight of their living stacked atop one another and packed in so tightly he can taste the salt of their emotions, choke with the life in them and never be alone in his head.

There’s someone furious a building over, someone else idling in dreams. Someone grimly determined passing by below, someone buildings over cruising in a contented stream.

And he’s standing here, in this fucking flat, this silent, hollow flat with a highball of hard liquor in hand, and there’s a laptop screen dimmed now with disuse, read email left open and furiously unanswered.

Hollow, he repeats.

Hol -

Low.

That’s it, that’s the word, the syllables themselves onomatopoeic and resonant. Form follows function, makes itself universally understood across cultures, and Victor’s only a sad parallel of that, surely, because if form follows function then -

He is a vessel, an empty, vacant thing, and maybe once he could've been something more, but he’s forgotten how; he’s set the whole thing on fire and never realised what they made him burn.

Victor drains the glass, set it down hard enough the crystal chips. Stands there, hands pressed against the edge of the sink, head bent, and thinks -

That -

God, if love is a conquest, what does he know about love when it’s only ever moved through him, holy dove and halle-goddamned-lujah, taught him how to shoot anyone who outdrew him -

If love is a conquest then Yuuri broke his throne and cut his hair and took him for everything, razed his city and made Victor breathe the smoking ruins and think, still, of the brush of his lips, made him bleed over the wreckage and wish, still, for the press of his hands -

If love is a conquest then Yuuri conquered.

Victor can be angry about that, despite everything. Despite the way truth is often foreign on his lips, the way his tongue shines silver.

Despite the way he’d been twenty-five and insulted, first, that some upstart had stolen his contract and killed Victor’s mark, his, the Victor Nikiforov, then intrigued about the beautiful boy he’d tracked down who’d done the deed.

And despite the way everything, later, lined up like dominoes, and the whispers, the rumours, made sense as truth fell into his lap.

He can hate the way a part of him remembers what it was like to hold Yuuri, to rain kisses along his nose and the slope of his cheeks just to hear him laugh.

He can hate the way he can’t forget that he once knew what it was like to be - maybe not half-full, but only half-empty, and that it makes the emptiness now vast and yawning.

Maybe it’s time to let go.

Don’t you think Victor’s tried?

He’s run the gamut of loathing and fury to jagged despair and helplessness, and still, still -

Still.

There’s a beautiful boy with a smile too sweet for someone like him, who made Victor forget what he was and played him for all he was worth and nothing, nothing about it was real, formless like the steam in the Hasetsu baths that draped over their first meeting.

Victor pushes away from the sink, breathes in sharp and deep. Retrieves his laptop and wakes it from sleep, stares at the blank white of the reply box, the blinking cursor.

Thank you, he eventually types. It’s alright, I’ll take it from here.

Send. A quick depress of a button.

Whisper together, quiet and meaningless, more distant and solemn than a fading star.

He books a flight to Barcelona.

_____

When Yuuri wakes, the morning is grey.

It’s the same way all cities are in the early hours, faint light that seeps muted into rooms and chases the chill and muteness of night.

The clock on the bedside table flips over to seven, the radio alarm blaring to life and filling the hotel room with cheerful, spirited Spanish.

Barcelona, he thinks.

The last time they’d been here had been in June, summer golden and at its height. Tourists milling about down every street, in every square, chattering in a dozen languages.

He’s here now, in a bland, cookie-cutter hotel room, alone. The pillow beneath his cheek smells foreign, the mattress under him is a different firmness.

His mouth is sleep-sour, his eyes crusted. He rolls over under the covers, takes in that unique hotel linen scent.

This was a mistake, surely, this isn’t where he should have come.

He curls a fist into the sheets.

What does he know, twice-bitten and never smart enough to shy?

When there are scents, tones, goddamned colours he can’t see without trembling with emotions he can’t name?

But he’s still going, still breathing, and this room is unfamiliar, and there are a million ways this could be bad but it isn’t, not yet, and he thinks he’s lived through the worst, so -

One step at a time.

Yuuri draws himself up, steps into the thin slippers embroidered with the hotel’s logo and heads for the bathroom.

His wounds twinge with the chill, seventeen degrees out and he’s tender with it, the pull of foreign scar-flesh, raised and new.

He brushes his teeth, pulls on a jumper and winces at the aching stretch in his side, tugs on a pair of jeans and slips a searching hand into his right pocket before he can stop himself.

He can almost feel it, the move so ingrained into muscle memory that he can feel the phantom press of the hard silver of his coin bite into his palm, into the bend of his fingers.

One step at a time, and sometimes you falter three steps back.

He goes to pull on his shoes, does up the buttons of his pea coat. Loops a scarf around his neck and heads for the door.

“Great day out, Mr. Katsuki,” the concierge greets in the lobby. “Any plans?”

Yuuri swallows, then offers a smile. Thinks about coins and crossing the Styx, fares for the ferryman paid for in currency far more than silver.

“The Basilica Santa Maria,” he says.

The concierge hands him directions, chatters about the city and the place, sends Yuuri on his way with a wave and map.

By the time he gets to the Basilica, it’s nearly ten, armies of buses depositing their innards of tourists along roads, people trickling into the streets and squares.

The entrance to the Basilica Santa Maria throngs, selfie sticks and tour flags tiny landmarks before the soaring spires.

It looks -

Different.

They hadn’t been here in the day; he only remembers it in the night.

A deep breath, fingers pressing into scars on his side to feel the edge of pain.

Sometimes you take one careful step at a time, other times you grit your teeth and soldier on, come hell or high water, and you run the whole fucking race.

Yuuri’s a long way from hospital beds and guns without names. A long way from home, wherever that is.

He doesn’t go in. He watches the building, traces the spires, marks the eddies of the crowd as they jostle and flow.

Centuries, a thousand different feet treading the same well-worn paths leading to the same places.

It is this that lasts - the altered entity of history itself;  no one tells you love is not what survives us; no one tells you the past matters only inasmuch as what we allow it to.

History will never be right.

Houses made out of brick and stone, weathered plaster and faded wood leading out to a quiet surf, an endless sea.

Home isn’t a place, and god knows you can’t make homes out of human beings.

What is home if not maybe  -

A time, some tired months in your life where you’d been able to stop and breathe and say -

Here.

Here, I am content; in this moment I could live forever.

Tens of tourists around him, taking their photos to upload to Facebook or Instagram or to keep, some proof that they were present in this moment. There’s something to that, to keeping memories in pictures or videos, to souvenirs and ticket stubs you file in albums that will yellow.

But if he doesn’t - if he stands here, just like this, then -

He is the sole curator of this moment.

This is his alone.

Maybe then he can be born anew, fresh memories pressed atop old ones; the old fading into obscurity. The way scars pale until they are an afterthought of skin.

The way a borrowed home stays in his memory, a shuttered house looking out onto the Indian Ocean. Saltwater breeze with every breath, now-silent radios sitting profound on darkened tables. The way a shining coin became a dead weight he’s barely learned to shed.

The way a shining coin swung heavy, swung low, became lead in his gut and the ending to every self-inflicted would-be fairytale, monsters and mystery all.

Maybe that will be enough.

_____

There’s a shop that sells nuts in Barcelona that Yuuri’d loved. He’d bought a whole kilo of their house-roasted mix, savoury cashews tossed in with faintly sweet hazelnuts and bizarrely-shaped walnuts, and he’d popped a bag open just as they’d left to snack on.

He’d smeared sticky hands over Victor’s coat, laughing as he did, and Victor had squawked and batted his fingers away.

The shop’s shut now, boarded up and for rent, a sad A4 sign in Arial stuck on the storefront window with peeling tack.

Victor’s cigarette glows in his faint reflection in the glass, the lone spot of light against the pitch black interior. He’s angled away from the street, bustling with tourists laden with the day’s shopping, branded logos blazoned across crisp paper bags.

Some hip, boppy music floats out from a nearby store, bass thumping loud over repetitive lyrics.

Victor wonders if the same bench is still there.

It’s a sentimental thought.

A nice memory, Victor thinks. That’s probably what doomed them.

Nice things don’t last in this world, not in the same form. Life lends, you borrow, and the interest is more than a pound of flesh.

Nice things don’t survive.

Ask Yura, that scared, wide-eyed boy, too sweet for his own good - the boy that Victor’d watch grow into a snarling man, the boy Lilia broke down and built up into something brittle, something sharp and feral -

Ask Victor, silver-tongued and black-hearted from the start. The only compass he’s ever owned is one he had to buy.

But he had to buy it for Yuuri, he remembers, some silly hike he’d wanted to go on for his birthday, more than half too cold in late November and the animals all burrowed down and hiding, but they’d still gone anyway because of course Victor’d agree to anything he asked, how couldn't he?

How wouldn’t he?

There’s a point, Victor’s sure, when he became complicit in his own demise.

He wonders if that’s what their relationship had been, the whole thing, an essentialist line of complicity.

If maybe a bag of nuts left on a bench was only the beginning, the least of it, if maybe they’d scattered themselves into fragments until they were less than what they’d lost, and Victor couldn’t tell until he’d been pulled thousands of miles away from a beach house in Mauritius and the crawling, receding surf.

_____

When Yuuri gets to St. Petersburg, it’s snowing. White, heavy, wet and frigid that arrests the air in his lungs. There are snowbanks scored high along roads, small mountains left propped against the sides of buildings.

The hotel he’s at is a fifteen-minute walk from their -

From the flat.

It’s a good area.

A residential district bordering a street littered with shops and the odd tourist throng, quiet enough now in the midday light. A good investment, the realtor had told them.

It’s lethargic now in the lazy hours between noon and evening, bleary-eyed staff manning the cafes barely giving him a passing glance. Yuuri can’t help the curl of quiet amusement at the thought of  him wandering by, gently disturbing their sleepy universes.

There’s the local bakery they’d get their morning pastries from; over there the supermarket he’d sent Victor on a midnight lube run once. There’s the primary school that’d spill children out past lunchtime, giggling and giddy with youthful exuberance; there’s the restaurant that serves the best pelmenis Yuuri’s ever tasted.

He can retrace their footsteps, see the ghosts of them around every corner.

Sometimes the - the sheer domesticity, the warmth, the idyllic months and happiness and all those golden emotions, it -

It makes him furious.

With himself, with Victor, with -

Everything. All of it.

At the flat, it’s gone cold enough that the rotating doors have frozen shut, icily refusing to budge.

Yuuri shoves at the doors hard enough that they judder, ice chipping off with each attempt. By the time he makes it upstairs, he’s winded from the exertion, heart pounding from the effort.

The door to the flat’s the same. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, except not -

This.

That scuff near the bottom, from the time they’d bought too many groceries and had to fumble around and kick the door open.

The faint scratch marks on the left, from where they’d tried to scrape off an unsolicited sticker some errant child had left with too-sharp keys.

Flaking paint in the corner, from water damage and damp.

Yuuri fumbles the key from his pocket, slides it home and turns it true. Nudges, lightly, and walks into a memory, six feet past the door and two years gone.

The flat seems to sigh around him. Wan light spills over half-drawn blinds, and where he steps, the quiet settles in his wake. As if a question hangs, unanswered, and the only reply he can give is his hurt.

Did you miss me?

By the coffee table, in the middle of the lounge, he stops. Curls his hand, involuntarily, into a fist, and abruptly relaxes. There’s a magazine left flopped open on the sofa, messily dog-eared in some corners. June 2014, proclaims its spine. He sits and absently flips it shut.

This could be any flat, he thinks. Any young family might occupy this space, the second bedroom is lovely nursery for a toddler, that balcony a great place to host summer parties. The high ceilings make for ample natural light, the master bath has two sinks for the busy working couple. Tons of storage, underfloor heating.

An easy sell.

Except.

Except he knows about the wine stain on the bathroom marble they’d hidden with a laundry hamper. The way the dimmer switch for the hallway needs to be turned just so or it won’t work. The tiny chip on the kitchen counter from where he’d dropped a mug once. The stash of candy Victor’d hide at the back of the middle cupboard, as if Yuuri never knew. The way the bedroom faced East, drew in the morning sun and woke them with golden heat and how they’d had to try four kinds of blackout curtains and Victor’d hated the fourth one, hated it, but Yuuri had been adamant they’d spent enough, and Victor had pouted and conceded but only if -

Do you miss me, the flat dares to ask, and Yuuri presses a hand to his side, digs fingers into raised scar-flesh and sits, furiously alone, in this fucking museum to half-dead things and time marching on, and for the life of him he can’t figure out where he falls on that scale.

______

When Victor steps into the flat, the air is stale.

Faint motes of dust hang in the air, backlit by weak streams of sunlight.

He tucks his keys away in the pocket of his coat, fights the urge to drop them into the wooden bowl on the shelf by the front door, scratched now from keys fed into it from times past. With the toe of his boot, he nudges the door shut behind him.

It’s empty with a palpable hollowness that makes his footfalls echo, heels striking wooden flooring with a volume almost profane.

The smell is the same. His breath trembles, visible before him, and he thinks this is what it must be like to stop time.

There’s a dirty coffee mug in the kitchen sink, half-burned candle in its jar on the shelf. A pile of books by the TV, one of them with a bookmark peering out. A wilted plant by the window, a pair of house slippers shucked off by the dining table. A newspaper opened to an unfinished crossword. A magazine left closed and off to the side of the sofa.

He can’t remember what they were doing the last time they were here; why everything is the way they left it. He can’t remember what kind of coffee he drank, he doesn’t know when they last burned that candle. He can’t recall the titles to half those books, or the watering schedule they had for the plant, why he shucked off his house slippers that way, or what newspaper they’d bought. He doesn’t know what magazine that is, or who picked it up.

He can’t remember.

Maybe that’s the whole point of museums. Maybe it’s just somewhere to place things that once belonged to people, things that only become important once they’re old. Somewhere you keep shit you should have thrown after their time, broken things and dead things, artefacts of a past life someone else you don’t know once lived.

So you can visit and point and say -

Look, we used to do that, there’s a reason we don’t do this anymore.

When he’d been younger, fourteen or so, Lilia’d told him: you have so much talent. You could be great.

And he’d kept that, remembered that, believed that. Arrogant, cocksure, foolhardy Victor Nikiforov. Too proud by half to let some freelance nobody steal his mark, too proud to do anything but seethe in smarted pride and pursue.

He remembers that.

Younger, prouder, louder, and life takes all of that from you with age and throws you humility, makes you walk softer and feel the aching of your bones.

You could be great, and life teaches you that greatness is nothing true, nothing but bruises and hubris and in their line of work, really, in their line of work?

He could be great but never be happy, and it was a trade he’d been willing to make until a beautiful boy and warm, warm mist, and Victor stands here now in a mausoleum to happiness and greatness both.

He wanders to their bedroom, finds the bed unmade, duvet left haphazardly skewed. Swallows between photos on the wall, diverts his attention to the antique dresser and a box and envelope left atop it.

Victor frowns. Picks up the box and opens it, abruptly snaps it shut.

Stillness, and he inhales. Slits the envelope with a pinky, unfolds its contents.

Slowly, very slowly, he walks over to sit on their bed.

He opens the box again, stares at two rings threaded through with gold.

He rereads the letter.

…our client, Mr. Katsuki Yuuri, has instructed us to strike his name from the deed, in effect transferring full ownership of the St. Petersburg property to you.

He sets both down on the dresser and goes to wash the mug in the sink.

_____

The first breath of Mauritius and Yuuri thinks -

Nearly. I’m nearly done.

He’s standing outside a house, and he can hear the sea.

Nothing changes. Everything does.

He lays a hand on the faded wood of the porch banister and breathes.

Life takes all you have and gives you memories, things he must remember because what happens if he forgets? Every encounter and every person and every smile because this is it, all of it, and who will know them if he doesn’t?

A woman goes to Seoul, he thinks, and -

Minako. Minako.

Memory alone cannot bear the weight of history, and maybe that’s the point of museums.

Somewhere to keep things you can’t throw because they meant something, once, to someone; somewhere to keep things too heavy to carry. To pass them on to someone else,  to let another shoulder that burden, and in that passing exorcising your own demons.

I wanted you to have something to remind you of home, someone once told him.

Yuuri’d been given a silver coin, fool’s gold and half as precious, and he’d carried that for long enough.

He traces the rough grain of wood under his palm, focuses on the distant crash of the surf, the rustling of palms, and he walks up the stairs to the front door of everything.

TBC

Chapter Text

AND I

*

December, Mauritius

The sea breathes in threes: hush, hush, hush. The house remembers everything.

Yuuri stands barefoot on cold tile, one hand to his ribs, counting his own inhales like contraband. The bandaging pulls when he straightens; pain climbs his spine and perches there, a small, mean god. The table is empty, rickety. His fingers ache for something to fidget, the ghost of a coin he left behind in a hospital bed while his blood still thought about staying.

He did not look back when he walked away.

(The ghosts of memory are poor companions, but they keep score when you won't.)

On the dining table lies an old shortwave set Victor once pulled from a cupboard, once tuned to the voice in the walls.

Yuuri hasn’t turned it on since his arrival.

He places a palm flat on a plastic ribbed side. It’s warm with fading sun that slants through the shutters, rusty from sea-salt air and dusty with disuse.

Outside, dusk drags a violet shawl over the lagoon. Someone farther down the beach laughs like glass.

There’s a knock on the door.

He knows the rhythm before he knows the sound.

Victor is framed by the door: open shirt, breathless with travel, hair blown litigiously out of place.

No cigarette between his lips, but the devil’s eyes are a luminous blue anyway. The breeze from the sea carries decay and spray and something that ripens with the long, low ache of everything that lies between them.

“You almost died,” Victor says. His voice is too careful. The way you hold a blade you want to keep, the way you hold it always angled away, so you blunt the edge against others.

“Would’ve made things simpler,” Yuuri answers. It’s not bravado. It’s maths done in a dark room, a balancing of equations as he’d lain alone in sterile whiteness.

Victor’s mouth twitches. “No,” he says. “Harder.” He swallows. “Always harder.”

He doesn’t step in. Yuuri doesn’t step back. They count each other the way soldiers count exits. Somewhere, a gecko repeats itself on a wall.

“Tea?” Yuuri asks, and it is both an invitation and a sentence carried out.

“Please,” Victor says, as if the word might save him.

Kettle. Gas flare. The sharp black-powder scent of lapsang that once tasted like gunmetal and home. He remembers a chipped mug handle that bit his finger in another life. He sets two mugs down and falters, because his hands now shake when he is not on a roof with a job.

He feels every second of his years. His leg aches from the strain of just making tea.

Victor stands with his back to the sliding doors, the ocean shouldering light behind him. He looks like a figure out of a myth where men drown because they want to, throwing themselves into the surf and smiling as they do.

Yuuri knows Victor catches the way he limps back with the mugs, stumbles ever-so-slightly on the lip of a floorboard. Victor doesn’t draw closer to help, but the lines of his body shift. Muscles contract and relax, push and pull.

Forces in motion between them.

“Don’t,” Yuuri says, before he can stop himself.

“Don’t what?” Victor’s palms turn up. A magician emptying his sleeves.

“Touch me,” Yuuri answers. “Not yet.”

Shock flickers and is banked. “Alright,” Victor says softly. “Not yet.”

Something loosens a fraction in Yuuri’s shoulders, like a knot remembering it used to be rope.

They drink in silence until the silence has a shape, until it can be stepped around.

(“Back then,” Yuuri asks. “Did you love me?”

“Did you believe I did?” Victor replies, smoke curling like a scripture you know by heart.
“Well,” Victor says. “Then I must have, mustn’t I?”)

How many times can a question end history?

Seoul, then

Red on concrete, blooming into countries. Victor’s hands on his face, pulling the truth out of him like a secret thread.

You love me, Victor said, eyes wrecked. Make it real.

Yuuri, dumb with pain, believed, and so love became the stretcher between buildings, the rope across a ravine. He walked it back to his own pulse.

He lived.

(There is a cost to miracles. He has been paying in smaller coins ever since; he has none left for the ferryman.)

Mauritius, now

“You left the coin,” Victor says, eventually. “Makkachin.”

“Do you know why I kept it?” Yuuri asks, and it feels out of place, heavy in his mouth, apropos of nothing.

Victor says nothing, keeps his silence.

Yuuri nods to himself, continues. The sky outside is a mottled bruise. “I needed something to remind me it was real. Something I could touch. Something I couldn’t close my eyes and think away.”

Victor considers that, turns his words over in his head. “It was never that,” he concludes. “You needed a place to put your belief.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Yuuri asks. He doesn’t mean it to sound like a plea.

“No,” Victor says. “A coin can be stolen.”

He could reach for Yuuri’s wrist. He could set calm like fog over the room, let the edges soften, let forgiveness grow in a greenhouse that smells faintly of him. Instead he plants both hands on the back of the chair across from Yuuri, like an abstinence. The restraint is as loud as a siren.

“You could make this easy,” Yuuri says. “Like last time.”

“I won’t,” Victor says. His throat moves around the word. “Not with you.” He tilts his head slightly, then acknowledges. “Not again.”

They look at each other for a long time, two men in a room where the radio is off and the sea repeats itself.

“Say it,” Yuuri says at last. “Say the quiet part.”

Victor nods, as if he’s been expecting the blade. He speaks without ornament. “I came here because I love you. I came because you almost died and because I didn’t know if you would believe it if I said it in any other place.”

Yuuri’s breath missteps; pain lights a small fire under a rib. “You loved me when you were reporting on me,” he says, flat. He does not inflect the sentence like a question. He stares at the ring-white mark a mug has left on the table.

“I loved you then,” Victor says. “And I did the job anyway. Both can be true. I don’t expect that to be forgivable. I only expect it to be…what it is. True.”

It sits between them like a weapon placed carefully on a table, handle toward neither.

“Don’t use your gift,” Yuuri says. “On me. Not ever again.”

“Even if you’re dying?” Victor asks, and the flash of fear there is something a dark part of him whispers is unprofessional. Amateurish. He stifles it, chokes it in its cradle. “Even if – ”

“Not to make me feel for you what I already feel.” Yuuri’s voice frays, threads showing. “Not to make me believe anything about us. If I stay, I want it to be because I stayed.”

Victor closes his eyes like a man listening for the exact moment a mine finishes ticking. When he opens them, they are unarmed. “Alright,” he says. “I won’t.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

The room does not change temperature. The waves do not pause to approve. But something vast and old shifts a fraction, as if a door slightly ajar has been pushed to.

Yuuri has been careful for so long not to look back that his neck hurts from the strain of vigilance.

He looks now. It is not a pillar of salt he becomes, only a man with a history.

He thinks: This man will stay.

He thinks: I will live with this.

He thinks: We will try.

Not bullets. Not blood. Just the quiet machinery of a decision starting up.

YOU, again

You remember the first time you saw him, water threading down pale skin, the audacity of a hand held out while he was still naked in your mother’s baths.

You write over the memory with today’s: him on your threshold and not touching you. Both are true. You were young. You are not.

You do not owe the future to the past. You owe the future the truth.

You are tired of gods that demand sacrifice and men that pretend they aren’t altars.

You are tired, here at the end of all things.

You are alive.

Night unravels. The lagoon goes black and keeps its own counsel. They move to the veranda because the house is too full of old air.

Victor leans on the rail. “Phichit told me to let you go,” he says, almost conversational. “He said it’d been years. Implied I should repent and retire.”

“He would,” Yuuri says, and he doesn’t hide the fondness in the ache. “He also once named my rifle after your dog.”

Victor huffs something like a laugh, then sobers. “I didn’t come here to take anything from you,” he says. “I came to give back what I can.”

“And what can you give back?” Yuuri asks.

“Choice,” Victor says. “Yours.”

The waves keep arriving. Persistence as liturgy.

“Do you want to know the worst of it?” Yuuri says. When Victor nods, he continues: “Sometimes I’m still angry because you took away my certainty, not because you lied. The lie I could live with. The doubt – ” He stops, finding the shape of the word with his teeth. “Traitors,” he declares finally. “I let them be. I was brave about the wrong things.”

Victor’s fingers flex on the banister. “Then let me be brave about the right ones,” he says. “I’ll stay here tonight. In the guest room. I won’t touch you. I won’t reach. If in the morning you tell me to go, I’ll go. If you tell me to stay, I’ll stay. Not forever, not as a bargain, just… for the next right thing.”

Yuuri studies him. The man is the same shape as the wound; he is also the only one who knows where it started.

“Alright,” Yuuri says. The word is small and entirely sufficient.

July, another year

On a roof in London, rain counted out the seconds. He believed in death and it listened, obediently arrived.

June, before that

In bathhouse fog, he believed in desire, and it arrived like a summer storm: embarrassing, unexpected, impossible to refuse.

Now

He believes in the difficult middle thing, the one no one trains you for: not dying, not burning, but staying. The scales tip almost imperceptibly, and the world yields the width of a breath.

He does not need a coin to catch certainty. He lets uncertainty fall and does not chase it.

The house is quiet. The guest room door shuts with a careful click.

Yuuri lies awake on linen that smells like salt and dusted sun, and counts the water’s pulse in the shape of the darkness behind his eyelids. When sleep finally arrives, it arrives like surrender without white flags.

He dreams of nothing at all.

Morning is a soft-edged knife. The wound it makes is healing.

He pads down the hall, shoulder to wall for balance his body does not yet trust, and finds Victor in the kitchen burning toast like a man raised by wolves and Michelin stars. The radio is on; just an island DJ talking about a squall line in Creole, laughter beneath it like maracas.

“Good morning,” Victor says. He is so obviously trying not to look like he has been rehearsing the phrase that Yuuri almost smiles.

“Morning,” Yuuri answers. It lands. They survive it.

He pours tea. Victor does not reach to help when the kettle trembles; he steps back, makes room for Yuuri to steady himself. It is absurd that such a small thing could make him want to weep.

“Walk?” Yuuri asks after they eat what can only legally be called toast because it is a shade of black he associates with funerals.

“If you can,” Victor says, eyes flicking – worry kept on a leash.

“I can,” Yuuri says, and because he believes, he does.

They take the beach in slow stages. The sun is already a verdict. Yuuri’s body protests and then forgives him.

They stop where the surf folds lace over their feet. It is too much like a benediction to say out loud.

“Back then,” Yuuri says, because endings are owed their beginnings, “you deflected. You gave me belief in exchange for an answer.”

Victor nods. “It was a coward’s economy.”

“And now?”

“Now,” Victor says, and a wave climbs jealously to his ankles and retreats, “I love you. I loved you then. I chose wrong. I'm here to choose differently.”

Yuuri listens for the manipulator’s hum and hears only the man. He stands in the place where he was hurt and does not bleed.

He thinks: This man will stay.

He does not force it. He does not push the world. He lets the possibility stand on its own two feet. He watches it balance.

“Then stay,” Yuuri says. He adds the impossible: “And tomorrow, stay again.”

Victor’s shoulders soften – just a fraction, just enough to look human. “Alright,” he says.

The sea says hush. The sky is a bruise the day will walk off. They turn back toward the house, not touching, not yet.

This is the parentheses of a life to come:

(They will fight; they will fail; they will apologise more than either thought possible. They will forget and remember and forget again who they said they wanted to be. Victor will keep his promise and keep his distance when keeping it hurts. Yuuri will mistrust and mistrust and then catch himself, mouth forming the I’m sorry before pride can put a hand over it. They will make rules and keep them. They will sometimes break them and learn how to repair, which is a more difficult art than killing and more useful.)

(Phichit will call and talk very fast and hang up faster. Celestino will send a postcard that reads, in its entirety: Be good. JJ will text an emoji Yuuri doesn’t understand and never will. It’s not an aubergine, at least. Yuuri knows that much.)

(They will not become gentler men, not exactly, but they will become men who know what their hands are for when they are bereft of weapons.)

Back at the table, the radio hisses, then blooms: numbers like the old world rehearsing its catechism. Victor reaches out on instinct and then catches himself, looking to Yuuri for permission. Yuuri nods once. Victor twists the dial past the station’s cold mouth, to nothing but static, to a tropical station where a woman sings about work and rain. He leaves it there.

“Breakfast again?” Victor asks, tentative in a way that does not embarrass either of them.

Yuuri lifts a shoulder. “Let’s try not to kill the bread this time.”

Victor smiles, small and real. “No promises,” he says.

“Some promises,” Yuuri counters, and he means all of them.

Outside, the sea keeps arriving. Inside, two men pour tea and do not look away.

(“Back then,” Yuuri asks. He shifts, changes the question. “Do you love me now?”

Victor answers, finally, without smoke, without distraction: “Always.”)

The house exhales. The world does not end. This story does.

FIN.