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Yuri is bored.
His eyes flick restlessly around the room, moving from person to window to clock to person again and again as the minutes drag. The voices he’s not listening to wash over him like a wave, comforting in their familiarity but doing nothing to ease the frantic itch that lack of action has brought to the forefront of his mind. He’s briefly reminded of a time not-so-long ago when he would’ve done just about anything to be included in one of the meetings going on around him, and he can’t help the slight eye roll that comes with the thought. If only he’d known then what utter hell these stupid meetings are.
He catches Mila’s eye from across the table, and she winks good-naturedly before letting her eyes stray purposefully to the couple sitting beside him. His exasperation becomes real quickly enough, frowning deeply for good measure as he pointedly looks in the exact opposite way she’s directing him to, his chin in the palm of his hand in a show of defiance. He hears her snort over Yakov’s droning, but knows that he’s made his point well enough; watching Viktor whisper sweet nothings in Katsudon’s ear until he gets all hot and bothered in the briefing room may be the most interesting thing happening in this room, but it’s also gross and Yuri has standards, thank you very much.
There’s also the fact that Yuri’s been attending these stupid meetings for four years now, and the routine debriefings — like this one — are so predictable in their outcomes it’s like they’re following a goddamned script. He can practically set his watch to Viktor’s charming murmurs and Katsuki’s hitched breaths, and God, if he doesn’t get out of here quickly, he’s going to have more than just breaking and entering and theft on his rap sheet.
Maybe he’s being a bit unfair, though; they have these meetings because, like it or not, they are necessary. Yuri himself isn’t involved in much of the day-to-day running of their group, but taking just one look at Yakov makes him conclude that:
- One, it must be difficult, considering Yakov’s receding hairline and high blood pressure, not to mention the near-permanent scowl he wears on his age-lined face;
- Two, that Yuri never wants to be in charge of this group of fuckers in any way, so long as he shall live.
Then again, he’d probably like being put in charge of the ground team, since getting to boss everyone around without risk of backtalk seems like something that would be right up his alley, so…
Maybe someday. Long after Yakov has retired, at any rate.
Yuri’s rambling thoughts are thankfully derailed by the sound of a chair scraping harshly against the wooden floor. Viktor pushes himself up and Yakov moves to stand by the wall, allowing the focus of the room to shift. There’s a subtle tension in the air now, because they’ve finally reached the part of the meeting that everyone’s been waiting for: the announcement of their new target.
If there’s one thing Yuri can say about Viktor with absolute certainty, it’s that Viktor thrives on attention. He’s the type of person that gets offended if people don’t look up when he enters the room, and while he has no problem sharing the spotlight with other people, Yuri’s half-convinced the reason Yakov started allowing Viktor to give these presentations in the first place was so that Viktor would stop making a nuisance of himself while Yakov spoke during the rest of their briefing. Yuri would say it’s only been about… eighty percent effective, because while Viktor has no longer harassed the rest of them during meetings, Yuri knows for a fact that Katsudon hasn’t heard a single word spoken by Yakov at one since.
Yuri would probably find that amusing if he wasn’t both the one who had to sit next to the world’s most publicly affectionate couple and the one who always had to summarize the meetings for Katsuki afterwards.
Viktor clears his throat for attention, a completely unnecessary action in the now deathly silent room, and Yuri can feel the need to roll his eyes at Viktor’s antics again almost completely overwhelmed him. He manages to refrain, but it’s a near thing, and he can see Mika poking her head around Viktor just to smirk at him. Honestly, she’d be irredeemably annoying if she wasn’t hyper competent, and Yuri just tends to thank his lucky stars that she, at least, has a sense of time and place.
Viktor claps his hands and begins with a smile on his lips and a glint in his eyes.
~~~
Yuri is only ten years old when his grandpa sends him off to live with someone who is basically a stranger. He knows he shouldn’t complain — his grandpa is getting on in years, after all, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep up with the boundless energy of a child — but to be frank, Yuri is terrified. He’s dealt with careless abandonment before (who even knows where his mother is now) but this is different, this feels remarkably similar to being given up (and he knows his grandpa would never hurt him on purpose) but Yuri’s clammy hands are trembling in his grandpa’s grip as he leads them into the heart of a bustling Tokyo neighborhood. They stop briefly before a small café with a European-style name that Yuri can’t read before before his grandpa pulls the door open, a pleasant-sounding chime indicating their arrival to the occupants of the shop.
There aren’t many other people, which makes Yuri feel a tiny bit less anxious. In fact, there are only three: an old man behind the counter, a teenager with long hair at one of the bar stools, and a fluffy looking dog splayed at the teenager’s feet. The dog is the only one to look up at their arrival. It wags its tail and barks once, laying its head back on its paws, though its tail never stops wagging. The old man finally tears his gaze away from the news channel playing on the old TV in the corner, looks between Yuri and his grandpa, and sighs deeply, raising an arm to scratch at the top of his bald head in discontent.
“I almost forgot you were coming,” the old man says, again looking between Yuri and his grandpa, this time with a frown. “You sure took your time getting here, Nikolai.”
Grandpa snorts. He’s smiling at the man in a way Yuri knows means that he’s angry. Yuri swallows, shifting uneasily on his feet in the face of his grandpa’s displeasure. The old man behind the counter seems to sense that somehow, and before Grandpa can even say anything, the man is nudging the teenager on the arm.
“Vitya, bring Yuri to the house,” he commands, and the teenager finally looks up, long hair trailing back over a slim shoulder until Yuri can see the book open on the counter that had been the center of his attention until now. The teenager blinks in confusion, but then turns, his bright blue eyes meeting Yuri’s before he smiles widely.
“Oh, he’s here!” Vitya says, hopping off his stool and tucking the book under his arm in one fluid motion that makes Yuri’s heart do an odd flip in his chest. The dog also rises to its feet, following Vitya as he heads to the door, walking smoothly towards Yuri and his grandpa.
Grandpa narrows his eyes at Vitya as he approaches, but he maintains his menacing silence. Yuri’s mouth drops open as Vitya offers his hand for Grandpa to shake, completely disregarding the intensely unwelcoming aura his grandpa is giving off.
“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Plisetsky, I’ve heard a lot about you from Yakov. My name is Viktor Nikiforov. I’ll escort Yuri to the house to get settled in so you and Yakov can catch up.”
The whole speech sounds remarkably rehearsed and overly polite, and Yuri flinches when his grandpa laughs, loudly, and finally relents to shaking Viktor’s hand, which had been outstretched between them the whole time.
“Take care of my brat,” is the only thing Grandpa says. Then he’s slipping his hand out of Yuri’s and allowing Viktor to grip Yuri’s shoulders and steer him right back out the door again. It shuts with a slow click behind them, and Yuri can feel the panicked dread from earlier rising up again as Viktor forces him to keep moving down the street, away from the café.
“Hey, wait!” he gasps, ducking his shoulders and twisting to try to get away from Viktor. “Grandpa! Wait, don’t—”
“It’s okay, Yuri,” Viktor says soothingly, still marching him away from the café, still moving him further away from his grandpa. “They’ll meet up with us afterward, at the house. You want to hang out with me and Makkachin, don’t you?”
Viktor pouts spectacularly, his big blue eyes and stuck-out lips causing weird sensations through Yuri’s chest again. Add to that the fluffy dog walking next to them, tail wagging and eyes bright, and Yuri can feel his resolve to stay with his grandpa crumbling.
“W-well…” Yuri shuffles his feet uncertainly.
“You don’t want to stay in there anyway,” Viktor reiterates, stopping and leaning close to Yuri like he’s about to impart to him some great wisdom. Yuri can smell the flowery scent of his hair as it slides like silk over his shoulder. “They’re gonna talk about boring stuff, like stuffy adults do. But,” he draws the word out with a flourish, capturing Yuri’s full attention. “I have some video games in my room. Maybe we can play together?” He tilts his head and blinks his bright eyes imploringly at Yuri.
It’s the final nail in the coffin that is Yuri’s resistance. Yuri has been to the arcade before, whenever grandpa can scrounge up some spare pocket money for him, but they’ve never had enough spare money to buy their own. Yuri’s always wanted to play a game without even having to go to the arcade and risk getting beaten up for his money before he even gets there. Plus…
“O-okay,” he tells Viktor, whose face relaxes with relief. Viktor offers his hand to Yuri, smiling sweetly as he begins to lead them back down the road to the home they’ll be waiting in.
Plus, Yuri thinks somewhat hesitantly as he looks between Viktor’s face and their joined hands as they walk, Viktor would’ve been sad if Yuri had said no.
~~~
The worst part about having a childhood crush on Viktor is not, in fact, what most people probably assume — the actual having a crush on Viktor part — because Yuri knows that most of their mutual acquaintances of similar age have also felt the same way.
No, the worst part about having a childhood crush on Viktor is having Viktor know about it.
Viktor had been Yuri’s first crush, and it had showed. He had been embarrassingly obvious about it, and at the time, Viktor had handled his clumsy affections with courtesy and grace. But once they’d grown older, closer, and Yuri’s crush had dulled into brotherly affection, it had become one of Viktor’s favorite things to tease him about. It had only been the appearance of Katsudon in recent years that had finally lead to Viktor allowing that part of their shared past to rest, but Yuri is under no illusions as to why.
It turned out that Yuuri and Viktor had gone to the same school for one hot minute as impressionable kids, and as a result, Katsuki had been ruined for anyone else for life. Viktor finds the whole thing terribly adorable, and thus, Yuri having a childhood crush on Viktor is no longer a laughable offense.
As a result, Yuri is completely thrown for a loop when Viktor brings up their long association together without the intent to tease.
“Yuri,” he starts, and already Yuri feels his body tense in a fight-or-flight response to hearing his real name coming from Viktor’s lips. He definitely still doesn’t like the obnoxious nickname he earned four years ago when Viktor met Katsuki, but he’s gotten used to the damn thing and any attempt Viktor gives to curry his favor by not using it sets his teeth on edge.
He is not going to enjoy this conversation.
“What,” he mumbles, an edge to his voice that exposes the tension he feels. He allows Viktor to pull him out of the small crowd of people leaving the meeting room, both of them coming to a stop near the wall of the corridor.
“Do you remember,” Viktor mutters, looking slightly off to the side, as though he’s not quite sure how to broach the topic. “The day you came to live with Yakov and I, when your grandfather dropped you off at the café?”
Yuri feels his body go hot and cold at once, and immediately he feels the need to run, to escape from this conversation and never look back. But one look at Viktor’s face confirms that he wants to be having this conversation about as much as Yuri does, and he relaxes his muscles enough to give Viktor a solitary nod, which winds up more like a jerk of his neck than anything resembling a sign of agreement, but he knows that Viktor understood it for what it was.
Viktor lets out a sigh, running his fingers through his hair and suddenly looking much older than his late-twenties would suggest.
“The thing is,” Viktor begins, letting his hands fall back down to his sides as he looks Yuri right in the eye. “I think we’ve found him.”
And with that simple declaration, it’s like Yuri’s entire consciousness devolves into a mess of static: his ears ring and his vision fractures and he’s sure that if Viktor hadn’t been there to catch him, he would’ve hit the ground when his knees gave out.
Because despite what Viktor had told him nine years ago when they left Yakov and his grandpa talking in the café, Yuri had never seen him again after that.
Viktor reaches into his pocket, withdraws a folded piece of paper, and holds it out for Yuri to take. Yuri’s vision narrows down to the tiny slip, a minuscule life-line that contains almost ten years of hope and longing. He reaches out a shaking hand, takes the paper with weak fingers, and lets out a deep breath as Viktor’s hand retreats, leaving the decision solely in his hands.
“Yuri,” Viktor says gently, putting his hand on Yuri’s shoulder. “Be careful, okay?”
And then he’s gone down the hall, meeting up with Katsudon, who’d been waiting by the corner. Yuri watches them go, feeling numb. There are too many emotions swirling through him, and when he glances down, catching sight of the paper in his hand again, his heart skips a beat and he quickly pockets it before he can think any more.
~~~
The first time Yuri is allowed to go out on a heist, he’s fifteen and has been watching Viktor and Yakov’s work behind the scenes for five years. He knows the ins and outs of what they do even better, he suspects, than Viktor does. It’s still a long-fought battle, after all is said and done, but victory tastes sweet on his tongue as he sits in on their operations meeting, going over the same shit they’ve been going over for the past five years.
When they’re finally headed out, dressed all in black with masks covering their faces, code names to protect their identities, it feels like coming home. It feels right, and he loves the sense of belonging, something he hasn’t properly felt since his grandpa left him behind.
They’re standing on a roof, Yakov getting ready to lower them through the skylight like quintessential thieves. There’s a trail of sweat making its way to his chin behind his mask, and he’s never felt more badass in his life. He trails behind Viktor through the darkened halls and quiet rooms, until they come to the vault they’re supposed to be accessing. Viktor stands back and allows Yuri to put his five hard years of training to use: his fingers are shaking with adrenaline, but he manages to get the lock open in record time — for him, anyway. Viktor makes sure he’s aware that he’s still not at Viktor’s level (“Still two minutes too slow for me, kitten.” ; “It’s Tiger, asshole!”) but as they’re cleaning out the safe into what are basically fanny packs (“Yakov, what the hell?” ; “They’re convenient and they come in black.”) he doesn’t let it bother him. They pass a security camera on their way back to the roof, and Yuri can’t help himself: he flashes a “V for victory” at it as they pass, and sees Viktor shake his head with a sigh. Yuri shrugs — they’re still fairly unknown considering some of the higher profile places they’ve broken into, so it’s not like one moment of vanity is going to matter overly much.
As it turns out, his one moment of vanity makes it on the evening news the next day. It’s the first time they’ve been referred to as something other than petty thieves, and a still shot of Yuri in his thief outfit and mask is the cover shot for the story. He can feel Viktor and Yakov staring holes into the side of his head as he stares in horror at his own image on the screen of the old TV in the café.
Then Viktor starts to laugh.
“Well,” he says, resting his chin in his palm, his elbow on the counter. “You were complaining that you didn’t think we were getting enough publicity, Yakov. People will certainly remember us after this story.”
Yakov grumbles but can't deny it, and Yuri lets out a breath of relief: Yakov will never be as truly frightening when he’s angry as Yuri’s own grandpa, but it’s still easier to not have a fight if he doesn’t have to.
After that, Yuri makes it a point to address a camera in some manner during each heist, and every time they end up on the evening news.
Their popularity grows, as do people’s speculations on what they do with the money and items they steal, but the police are sharp, and eventually make the connection to various charities throughout the country. It had been a concern that once the dots had been connected, the money would be confiscated as evidence against them or returned to the former owners — luckily, since no one could actually prove that it was the money the Phantom Thieves themselves had stolen (Yakov had taught them well how to cover their tracks), there was nothing the police could actually do except simmer and suspect.
Over the years of their gaining popularity — they steal from the rich and give to the poor in a real “modern day Robin Hood” move that the press can’t get enough of, whether to criticize or praise — they also gain a few more members to their rag-tag family of thieves: Mila, who’s just a few years older than Yuri himself, and Georgi, the same age as Viktor and just as fucking dramatic.
It’s odd for Yuri at first. It’s just been him and Yakov and Viktor for so long now that it feels almost like a concession somehow to add more people, like he’s giving into some sort of unknown pressure, but he doesn’t know of what and it makes him tense and edgy and completely unwelcoming to their new blood.
Mila and Georgi are both wary of him because of this, looking at him out of the corners of their eyes like one does an unfriendly dog. It’s like they’re looking at him and wondering why Yakov bothers to keep him around — a thought that rankles so hard it sends a real fucking shiver down his spine — and after that he tries harder. He knows Yakov won’t get rid of him over a bout of teenaged angst — Viktor’s words, not his — but fuck, he’s been abandoned twice now and that shit leaves a mark. So he tries, and eventually, they warm up to him as he does to them, and it really does start to feel like some kind of weird criminal family they got going on, and despite his “bouts of teenage angst,” Yuri honestly begins to enjoy the weird mess his life has become.
And then Katsuki Yuuri happens.
~~~
Yuri finds himself standing in the park a few blocks down from the café with no precise memory of how he’d gotten there. The evening air in autumn is crisp and cool, and serves to wake him up more the longer he stays out, so he takes a seat on a swing and watches the sun dip below the horizon. The clouds are still dyed orange, the sky purple, and the street lights start flickering on, one by one, before Yuri hears a voice by the other entrance to the park and turns to look. There’s a man with a bicycle gesturing in random directions to a little old lady wearing a shawl and looking confused. He snorts and turns away, letting his head dip to the side until it comes into contact with the cold chain-link of the swing, his eyes sliding shut as he thinks.
It had been a long time since they’d gotten a lead on his grandpa’s whereabouts, and as a results, all his old insecurities are rushing right back into place. He’d needed to take the time to beat them all back down to the recesses of his mind before he could concentrate fully on the problem at hand, but it was a tedious and thankless job that left him feeling drained emotionally exhausted. But needs must, he thinks with an unhappy laugh, because if he ever wants to see his grandfather again, it’s up to him to put those pieces back together.
He jumps about a foot into the air, his eyes flying open when that voice from before, the bicycle man giving the old woman directions, sounds from right beside him.
“I think you might be a little too old for this park,” he tells Yuri, watching with complete stoicism as Yuri’s life flashes before his eyes.
It’s too dark to really see him properly, Yuri realizes as he looks over at the man, his heart still beating a mile a minute. All Yuri can really tell at the time being is that the guy’s got dark hair in an undercut and if Yuri stands up, the guy will probably be shorter than him. That makes up for the scare a bit, Yuri thinks with viciousness, but not enough.
“What’s it to you?” Yuri says with a sneer he’s practiced on Viktor for years. He normally isn’t so rude to strangers, despite his aversion to them, but this guy just tried to kill him.
“I’m a cop,” he says, so matter-of-factly that it takes a beat for Yuri to process. His fight-or-flight instincts kick in, and his heart starts beating faster with fear and adrenaline. He makes a conscious effort to push it all back though, and eyes the guy’s plain clothes obviously. The guy shrugs, “Off duty.”
“Are you really going to arrest me for loitering?” Yuri’s voice is higher now with his automatic panic, shaking in a way that he hopes will come off as incredulity. He has no idea how well he does though; the guy’s face is a stone mask.
“No,” the guy answers easily, and Yuri’s eyebrows shoot up despite himself. “I actually came over here because you looked upset. Anyone looking like that at a park at this time of night isn’t looking for trouble.” He sounds so sure of himself that Yuri can feel some of the tension relax from his muscles even as he’s still blinking in surprise at the notion. “Thought I’d offer to listen, if you needed to talk.”
And honestly? What the fuck. Yuri’s being set up right now, he has to be. There’s no way this guy is real. This is a set up, and they’re trying to get Yuri to talk. Granted, they probably won’t get much through a wire with the guy’s dark coat and thick scarf…
“You’re a nosy one, aren’t you?” He’s back to sneering, because he’s honestly completely out of his depth in this situation, and Yuri has a bad habit of masking all his more vulnerable moments with facades of anger.
The guy doesn’t rise to the bait, though. He leaves his bike leaning against the metal frame of the swing set, then takes the swing at Yuri’s side. He shrugs, and the chains of the swing rattle with the movement, his shoulders brushing up against them. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
And then they just sit. In silence.
Yuri is one hundred percent aware of the fact that staring is rude. He also one hundred percent does not care, because he’s absolutely convinced that if he takes his eyes off this guy for more than a second, he’s going to fade into nothingness, just a figment of Yuri’s overly stressed imagination. He knows he shouldn’t talk, he really does, but the guy is still sitting there, on the uncomfortable swing, staring up at the sky where the stars would be if Tokyo wasn’t a complete mess of light pollution, and he feels something give. It’s not much, just a crack, but any amount is dangerous, especially around a guy who is, by his own admittance, formally tasked by the government to uphold a certain moral standard.
“Yuri,” he says, watching the way the guy’s eyebrows first raise at the unexpected break in the silence, then lower as he tries to figure out the meaning behind the seemingly random word. “My name. It’s Yuri.”
The guy looks over at him, seeming unconcerned to find Yuri already looking, and meets his gaze evenly. This close, even in the dim light, Yuri can see that his eyes are dark. Brown, he thinks.
“Otabek,” the guy says in response, and unwinds his hand from the chain of the swing to hold it out for Yuri to shake. Yuri stares between the hand being offered and the guy’s — Otabek’s — eyes for longer than is strictly polite, but neither the hands nor the eyes waver in the slightest. Both calmly waiting, leaving expectations by the wayside, just like before. Yuri can feel a smile forming on his face as he reaches up to take Otabek’s hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
~~~
Katsuki Yuuri had been… unforeseen. A chip in a cup. A crack in a window. Waiting for them at their next heist target.
He’s completely unremarkable from the outside, if you ask Yuri (if you ask Viktor, he’ll start to soliloquize about every minute detail, from the way his hair falls at just the perfect angle to how adorably unfocused his eyes are when he takes off his glasses. Yuri makes it a staunch point to not ask Viktor about Katsuki after the first vitriolic, “What do you even see in him anyway?” was answered as such). And yet, he was somehow able to extrapolate from their previous targets and the dates of their anonymous donations the exact time and place of their next mark. Apparently.
There’s a complete breakdown of communication between the ground team — Yuri, Viktor and Mila — and the back up unit — Yakov and Georgi — because it’s such an unprecedented happening — Yakov’s intel being wrong — that none of them know what to do. Mila is whispering frantically in Yuri’s ear, panicked in a way he’s never seen her before. Viktor is staring dumbly at the man sitting calmly on the floor next to their mark, flipping through a book as though this was a library and not a highly secure museum with cameras and guards around every corner.
Yuri’s heart is beating fast in his chest, the uncertainty of the situation making it all he can hear, drowning out even Mila’s muttering and his own string of subconsciously whispered expletives. Viktor reaches over and grabs Yuri’s knee to get his attention, never once taking his eyes off the man in the room. He opens his mouth to say something, so Yuri leans forward, and the communicator drops out of his ear with a clack that seems to echo through the whole building.
They freeze. Nothing happens for a beat, then two, then three. Yuri’s about to breathe, let his muscles relax, when the guy moves, reaching next to himself and out of sight, rustling through something too obviously to be anything but intentional. There’s a cold sweat trickling down Yuri’s brow beneath his mask, and Viktor’s gripping his knee so tightly his flesh has gone numb. Behind him, Mila whimpers almost silently, the sound more passed between their bodies where they’re pressed up against each other than through the air. The man’s hand comes up, carrying… Tupperware?
His relief and confusion make him careless, and he manages to blurt, “What the fu—” before Viktor’s hand is slapped over his mouth. But the damage is done, and the man inside the room startles, spilling his Tupperware all over the floor as he looks frantically around.
It’s katsudon, Yuri wants to say incredulously, but with Viktor’s hand still pressed over his mouth, it’s a useless endeavor. But it’s true, and the man in the room is getting more flustered as he looks between his spilled katsudon and trying to figure out where Yuri’s voice had come from.
The guy seems to get his bearings, visibly gathering his courage as he calls out softly to the room at large, “Th-that’s you guys, right? The Phantom Thieves? You’re here?”
Viktor makes a split second decision, squeezing his hand against Yuri’s face in warning before he stands up and enters the room, coming face-to-face with the stranger. Yuri has to bite his tongue to prevent himself from yelling about Viktor’s stupid choices; they need to present a unified front in front of the potential threat this stranger poses, if nothing else. Viktor doesn’t say anything, at least, just stands there looking regal and intimidating, something he does well until he opens his mouth. The strangers seems to agree, as his mouth drops open and he takes a step back. Yuri gets a glimpse of determination forming on his face before the stranger drops to his knees, and says, “Please, let me join the Phantom Thieves!”
Yuri’s jaw drops beneath his mask. The resounding silence that echoes for multiple minutes after that ridiculous statement tells Yuri that his comrades are in equal states of mind. The guy on his knees, bowing to Viktor in the middle of their heist, glances up, apprehension on his face.
“Is that… Is that a no?” he asks in a small voice, his eyes dropping pathetically to the floor, and in that moment, Yuri knows that they’re screwed. Maybe it’s just that he’s lived long enough with Viktor now to trust his gut reactions when he has them, but Yuri is certain that Viktor is already smitten.
It’s then that Viktor finally moves, walking slowly towards the man, dropping down to his knees and pulling the man’s shoulder until he’s sitting on his knees and looking Viktor in the eyes. Eyes because Viktor just took off his mask.
“What’s your name?” Viktor asks, his voice as smooth as butter, his smile practically oozing pheromones.
The man on the floor is star struck, his tongue twisted into knots from the sheer amount of sexual vibes Viktor is transmitting through his every move. Eventually, the stranger manages to stutter out, “K-K-Katsuki Yuuri!” before steam starts to billow metaphorically out of his ears.
Viktor smiles, and Katsuki cheeks instantly turn scarlet.
“Welcome to the team, Yuuri,” he whispers into Yuuri’s ear, practically caressing the shell of Katsuki’s ear with his lips.
Katsuki Yuuri promptly passes out.
~~~
It takes Yuri many hours to finally work up the courage to open the note Viktor handed him after the meeting. He’s sitting on his bed in the loft above the café, the lights off in the room, the only light he’s able to see by coming in through the window. The shop below has been closed for hours, the last customers leaving long before Yakov had closed for the night, finally leaving Yuri in peace.
With shaking hands, he slips his fingers between the folds, opening the paper to reveal just three lines of information: an address, a date, and a time. He commits the info to memory before he rips the paper up. This isn’t the first time he’s been to one of these meetings. He knows Viktor and Yakov don’t approve of what he’s doing, but he knows they’d rather help him do it the right way than watch him get himself killed over something they could’ve helped him do. This is the first time he’s seen Viktor so serious when passing on information though, and there’s a part of him, a spark he’s never quite been able to snuff out, that wonders if maybe, this time, the lead will be real.
Yuri takes a deep breath and smirks to himself. Only one way to find out.
~~~
When Yuri first suggests to Yakov and Viktor that he wants to attempt to find his grandfather, they are… let’s just say, less than thrilled. Yakov had, at one time, been fairly good friends with Nikolai — Yuri knows this to be a fact, because even if he had been abandoned, his grandfather would never leave him with anyone he didn’t trust with his life — but even he has reservations about looking for him, and that… hurts. It’s one of the first times Yuri feels like he actually doesn’t fit into this makeshift, ragtag family he’s been left with, and the explosive argument that follows has Yuri running away from home for two whole days before Viktor finds him crouched under the slide in the park on the far side of the neighborhood. Maybe Yuri could’ve gone farther, but even during the summer the nights are cold, and sleeping on the ground sucks.
After that, Yakov agrees to look, though he makes sure Yuri understands that just because he’s looking, doesn’t necessarily mean anything is going to come out of it.
When Yakov finally does have something to report, it’s months later and the argument is all but forgotten. Yuri had just finished celebrating his sixteenth birthday, and Yakov takes him aside that very night, telling him that he’s found a potential lead, but it’s up to Yuri to follow through on it himself, since neither he nor Viktor are invested in this. If Yakov thought that was supposed to scare him off, he’ll have to come up with something new. Yuri’s never been easily swayed by having to do things alone, and frankly, he just enjoys the feelings of freedom and exhilaration that race through him as he walks towards the meeting point by himself.
It’s about as boring as one of these types of shady dealings can possibly get, as it turns out, but the information seems solid, and he brings it back to Yakov the next morning with hope held high in his heart. What he doesn’t expect is the tangled web of misinformation, false leads, and dead ends he gets caught in from then on.
~~~
The meeting itself is still a week out, so Yuri has time to prepare, though it’s not like it takes a whole lot; he wears his thief clothes and sticks to the shadows. He brings a burner phone in case he needs to call for help (at Viktor’s insistence) but carrying anything else that could connect him to his everyday life is too dangerous. He knows that Viktor and Yakov wouldn’t purposefully put him in a dangerous situation when they scare up informants for him, but in this kind of situation, anything goes to get a leg up on the other person.
At least, that’s what he tells himself when, a week later, he enters the parking garage his meetup is taking place in and spots a veritable ambush waiting for him.
He enters from the roof — a long-time habit he has when scoping a place out, thanks to Yakov’s unfailing sense of paranoia — and makes his way down the levels, making mental notes of exits and hiding places as he goes. It’s as he’s coming down towards the basement level that he notices the signs of unusual activity increase. The place isn’t totally deserted — no place in Tokyo will ever be, he thinks, even at one in the morning — but the traffic is light all the same, so the extra footprints and additional voices, even at a whisper, are glaringly obvious to his practiced senses. When he slinks into the predetermined meeting spot, there’s one man standing obviously in the middle of the floor, but as Yuri casts his eyes into all the nooks and crannies of the parking garage, he counts up to at least ten people total, including the man in the middle of the room. He reaches into his pocket and types a quick message into the burner phone — just in case — before he steels himself and walks out into the open.
“Ah, you’re here,” the man smirks, and Yuri already knows he’s not going to keep up the pretense for long; informants never reveal their hands this early in the game. To be a good informant is to have a perfect poker face, and this guy isn’t a very good actor.
Yuri stops about ten feet away and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Just tell me what you know,” he snaps, the voice modulator in his mask making his voice sound deeper, helping to further obscure his identity.
“Alright, hold your horses,” the man raises his hands palm up, gesturing Yuri to calm down. “So this guy you’re looking for… he’s Yakuza property. And I think I know some people who want to ask you a few questions.”
As he says that, the men that had been hiding step out, all smirking as they move to encircle him between them. Yuri barely even notices them, his mind completely awhirl. His grandpa, Yakuza property? What does that mean?
He snaps back out of himself when one of the brutes grabs at his shoulder, and he calms his mind, letting instincts and muscle memory take over. He shifts his feet, bending his knees and lowering his center of gravity as he grabs the man’s wrist and pulls him forward, using the guy’s own weight and momentum against him, sending him sprawling to the ground in a heap.
He can help himself in a pinch, but Yuri’s smart enough to admit when he’s outclassed; even low level Yakuza grunts might be packing heat, and there are far more of them than there is of him. So while the rest of the brutes are gawking at their layed out friend, he jumps over the sprawled out body and makes for one of his pre-planned escape routes, allowing his body to fall into the familiar patterns of ducking and weaving through the shadows, making sure not to think too hard on any one thing until he’s back in that same park from before, more than a mile away from the garage, his thief outfit carefully stowed away inside the bag on his back.
Dropping back onto the same swing he’d occupied shortly before this whole mess had begun, Yuri tips his head back, staring up at the night-dark sky as he runs his fingers tiredly through his hair. He can’t process what he’s just found out, and it’s approaching three in the morning. What he should do is leave it, forget about it until he has enough brain power to even begin to think about what he’s learned but… He can’t.
The thought of going back to the café right now stings, and he can’t make his legs move from where they’re resting. A shoe scuff from the direction of the park entrance makes his entire body tense before he forces himself to look as nonchalant as possible; even if the goons from before had managed to follow him this far out of the way (which he sincerely doubts; he’d lost them before he’d even left the parking garage) he’s dressed as a civilian now, which means they’d have no reason to bother him.
If they really were Yakuza thugs though, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t.
The shuffling footsteps come closer, and Yuri’s neck starts to ache with how stiff he is. The movement stops, and he finally allows himself to look over. And he blinks in surprise.
“It’s you again,” Otabek says, scuffing his shoes against the gravel under the swing set as he moves to take a seat. “Yuri, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Yuri nods, still blinking dumbly at Otabek. He feels as though his brain is stuck on a loading screen. “Uh. What are you doing here?”
Otabek nods towards the entrance of the park where Yuri can just make out the outline of his bike in the dim lights from the streetlamps.
“Just got off work. I pass by this park on my way home. Saw someone on the swings again. Didn’t think it’d be you though,” he looks at Yuri through the corner of his eye. Yuri’s mind instantly latches on to the chance of a distraction.
“Yeah?” he questions, tilting his head towards Otabek. “Why not?”
Otabek snorts. “You didn’t seem that keen on conversation last time. I thought you’d had your share of nosy cops.”
Honestly, Yuri hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d ever see Otabek again, let alone in the exact same park just a week after their initial meeting. Yuri’s used to leaving a poor first impression on people though, and the comment slides right off his back like goose feathers with water.
“You always work such late hours?” he asks, swinging his feet a little to kick at the gravel under his shoes.
He can see Otabek turn to look at him for a moment before he answers.
“Not too often. My current case has hit a bit of a dead end, so I’ve been taking extra shifts at the police box down the road,” he gestures in the general direction of the police box in question with a thumb, and Yuri hums in thought.
“What’s this case you’re stuck on? Maybe a fresh perspective could help you crack it? Or can you not talk to civilians about it?” Yuri’s mostly just having fun with this conversation now, he admits. He’s a little curious about what case could be stumping the local cops, but mostly he’s found exactly what he had so desperately needed: a distraction.
Otabek hesitates, then shakes his head, looking down at his hands, wrapped around the swing chains.
“It isn’t that,” he frowns, and Yuri is a little surprised to see something other than plain indifference on that stoic face. “You’ve probably heard of the case, though. The Phantom Thieves.”
Yuri chokes on thin air.
“Wait, like, The Phantom Thieves?!” he heaves when he gets his breath back. Otabek is giving him an odd look, but he can’t bring himself to care. He needs to get all the info he can out of this guy and bring it back to everyone else.
Otabek seems to chalk up his reaction to surprise, because he nods and says, “Yeah, the real deal. They made a… task force, I guess you could say, but to be honest, we don’t even really know where to start,” he runs his fingers through his hair, looking frustrated. “Which is why I started taking shifts at the police box near my apartment. It helps me feel like I’m doing something…” he trails off with a mutter, and for the first time since he officially joined the Phantom Thieves four years ago, Yuri feels just a tiny bit of remorse for everything that they’ve put the cops through. Not for actually stealing any of the stuff, no; they do too much good to regret what they’ve done, but he’s never really given much thought to all the cops’ lives they make that much harder before this very moment.
“What can the cops even do?” he asks, sympathetic. “No one knows where they’re gonna strike until after they’ve done it.”
Otabek sighs in a way that tells Yuri he’s thought this all before.
“Tell me about it,” he mutters, then says, “Apparently there was a civilian once that cracked their code. We’ve been trying to hunt him down for awhile now, but he’s effectively disappeared. What we don’t know is whether that was his doing, or if the Thieves spirited him away because they found out we were looking for him.”
Yuri sucks in a breath and has to hold it carefully before he slowly exhales, trying to control his reaction to the best of his ability.
The cops know about Katsudon, and are looking for him. Yuri wonders if Viktor knows about this.
Yuri stretches as nonchalantly as possible, finding that he doesn’t even need to fake the yawn that slips out of his mouth. His adrenaline from his earlier confrontation has all but worn off, leaving him feeling surprisingly drained, especially considering he’s still in the presence of a cop.
Otabek doesn’t quite smile at him, but it’s a near thing, he thinks. Yuri might just be learning to read the subtle changes in that less-than-expressive face, which, all told, probably isn’t a good thing; he really can’t afford to get attached.
“It’s almost dawn,” Otabek says softly, glancing down at his watch, then up at the sky, which had been slowly lightening as they spoke. Yuri hadn’t even noticed. “We should both head home.”
Yuri nods, rubbing at his eyes. Yakov will be at the cafe soon to start getting ready to open, and he’ll be annoyed if Yuri isn’t there to help. They both stand up, and Yuri begins to walk away, waving tiredly as he goes, already too far gone to think about a proper goodbye.
“Yuri, wait a minute,” Otabek says, and Yuri stops, turning back to find Otabek rummaging through his pockets. He comes up with a small rectangle of paper, which he offers to Yuri. Yuri takes it, baffled, until he brings it close enough to his face in the rising light to make out the words. It’s Otabek’s business card.
“The second number is my cell,” he tells Yuri, almost awkward. “I enjoyed talking with you. Both times. Contact me sometime.” He moves in the other direction, towards where he left his bike. Yuri watches him go, but he only turns back once to wave before he rides away, leaving Yuri standing in the park alone, clutching the card.
~~~
Needless to say, Yakov is less than pleased when they arrive at the extraction point with an unconscious body in tow. In fact, at first he’s speechless, which doesn’t happen often. Then, he turns such a deep shade of red, Yuri wonders distantly about the medical complications this must surely be having on Yakov’s body. They all brace for the unholy shriek which emerges straight from the bowels of the hell beast that has taken possession of Yakov’s body, and when the next sound is a word with the closest approximation to Viktor’s name, Yuri is completely unashamed to say that he, Mila and Georgi run for cover.
Let it never be said that Viktor is a coward, Yuri thinks to himself as they listen to the unintelligible argument taking place between Viktor and Yakov, Viktor’s calm tone barely heard in between Yakov’s muffled shouts. Yuri decides to risk opening the door an inch, and Mila looks at him with an expression of pity on her pretty face.
“You know they’re just going to be pissed at you when they found out you’ve been eavesdropping, right?” she says softly, unsure of how far her voice can travel in the warehouse they’re stashed away in.
“Why?” Yuri asks rhetorically, looking back at her with a pouty expression. “This way, they don’t have to rehash the whole thing for us, we’ll already know.”
Mila sighs deeply, but doesn’t argue further, and Georgi just sinks further into his corner when Yuri pins a look on him, so, content that he’ll have no further interruptions, he goes back to slipping the door open just enough to hear the conversation taking place on the other side. Or, at least, one part of it’s a conversation; the other is a bizarre shouting matching that Yakov seems to be having with himself.
“— figured out our code, Yakov,” Viktor is saying, gesturing back towards the warehouse where Mila is watching over the unconscious Katsuki Yuuri. “I couldn’t just leave him behind, we need to ask him how he figured it out.”
“That doesn’t involve kidnapping him, Vitya!” Yakov retaliates, his arms crossed firmly over his chest. “You had his name, we could’ve found him at any time we wanted! Instead, you carry his unconscious body out of the museum, risking not only yourself, but Yuri and Mila, as well as Georgi and I when you brought him straight back here! We’ve already established that you weren’t thinking with your head, Vitya, so let me ask you this: what were you thinking with?!”
Yuri flinches, unseen by either occupant of the room. He’d known, of course, that Yakov wouldn’t be happy with Viktor’s choice to bring Katsuki with them, but somehow, actually hearing Yakov tear into Viktor with this much wrath isn’t sitting well with him.
Yuri closes the door on Viktor’s answering sigh, slinking back over to where Mila is sitting with Katsuki, Georgi’s coat on the floor, shielding him from laying on the cold, hard concrete, with Viktor’s on top of him, and Mila’s bundled up under his head, acting as sort of makeshift bed: the best they can do for where they are. Yuri settles back down on the other side of him, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his chin on them as he looks down at the guy that got them all into this mess.
What a selfish asshole.
Mila quirks a brow at him, but when he doesn’t say anything, she takes it upon herself to speak.
“The trouble not what you were expecting?” she rests her chin on her hand, elbow on her thigh, knees bent and ankles crossed. Her other hand is dangling her phone between her thighs, and Yuri really wishes she’d pay more attention to it than to him, but knows that wish is a long shot at best. He sighs.
“I know what Viktor did was stupid as fuck,” he starts, and Mila snorts into her hand. Yuri ignores her. “But hearing Yakov put it like that, like what he did was not just dumb, but endangering to all of us… I guess I just didn’t think about it like that,” he fiddles with the seam of pants, full of restless energy and not having an outlet to take it out on.
Mila hums an agreement.
“Yeah, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen Viktor act so emotionally. He’s normally so calm and collected on heists, it’s almost hard to reconcile him as being the same person. Today was… unlike him.”
Yuri nods, then goes back to staring at the unconscious man in front of him. Another wave of contempt overtakes him as he sits there. What right did this guy have to just burst into their lives and demand they let him join them? What right did he have to completely fuck up their heist, and completely fuck up Viktor while he was at it? It’s completely un-fucking-fair, he thinks as he gnaws on his lip, scowling at the aforementioned man, who has just started to stir on his makeshift bed. Yuri makes a sound of surprise, alerting Mila to the situation, and she puts her phone down, both of them watching intently as Katsuki Yuuri wakes up.
They had taken his glasses off of him, laying them on Georgi’s coat next to his head, so they wouldn’t be far when he woke up, so it isn’t surprising when the first thing he does is squint up at them. What is surprising is that the next thing he does, instead of searching for his glasses or asking what happened or even where he is, is to say, “Hmm… I want… katsudon…”
He rolls over, pulling Viktor’s coat up to his chin and burying his face in Mila’s, smacking his lips loudly as he falls back asleep. Yuri and Mila stare incredulously at each other before Mila starts laughing, wrapping her arms around her stomach as she bends in the middle, resting her forehead on the ground as she guffaws, tears in her eyes. All Yuri can do is sigh, suddenly feeling terribly put-upon.
“Katsudon, again?”
He scrubs at his face viciously with his hands. What the fuck has Viktor gotten them into, indeed.
~~~
By the time Yuri slips into the café, the sun is already peeking above the horizon, and Yakov is in the small kitchen, chopping vegetables as he starts on the day’s batch of curry. Yuri sighs deeply when he realizes that Yakov did indeed beat him back here, and prepares for a lecture as he slips his apron on and washes his hands, getting the meat out of the fridge on his way by.
Yakov grunts when Yuri moves to the counter next to him, grabbing a knife from the block he can start cutting up the meat. Yakov adds his carrots to the pot, grabbing an onion next.
“How did it go?” he asks gruffly, and Yuri blinks at the cutting board, taking a minute to register that Yakov isn’t actually yelling at him. Then he remembers the text he’d sent from his burner phone, and everything slides neatly into place. Yakov isn’t yelling because he’d been worried. A younger Yuri would’ve smirked, laughed, rubbed it in Yakov’s face that he had feelings. Now, Yuri is just glad he doesn’t have to listen to Yakov yelling at him on top of everything else that’s happened to him tonight.
“Fine,” he answers after a moment, cubing the meat in neat, even strokes of his blade. “They tried to corner me, but I lost them before I even left the parking garage. They weren’t expecting retaliation,” he shrugs a shoulder, throwing his meat cubes into a pan to brown. “I took a long route back just in case though. Killed some time in the park to make sure no one followed me. They said,” he hesitates, his tired brain not wanting to rehash this again. “They said my grandpa was Yakuza property. What does that mean?”
He looks up at Yakov, eyes wide. He feels like a little kid again, his only anchor to this world knocked out from underneath him as he struggles to stay above the water. Yakov looks back at him, a grim frown on his face.
“After all this time… I had feared it might be something like that. I couldn’t find any records of his death, so that left only one thing… I’m sorry Yuri, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do at this point. If Nikolai really has been taken in by the Yakuza… We’re just a bunch of small-time thieves. We can’t mess with the Yakuza.”
In his brain, Yuri knows this is true. They’re just a bunch of civilians playing at being criminals, casting aside their masks when it’s inconvenient to don them, pretending they don’t do what they do for the sake of others, when in reality it’s so they don’t get caught. In his heart, Yuri hurts. It’s been nine years, and he wants to see his grandpa again. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Yakov puts a hand on his shoulder, turning Yuri to face him.
“Yuratchka,” he says softly. “I’ll finish up here. Go on up to bed, you’ve had a long night.”
Yuri had stopped hugging Yakov around the same time he had grown taller than him, but for right now, he makes an exception, burying his face in Yakov’s shoulder as he sobs. Yakov pats his back, but doesn’t say anything else, and Yuri is secretly thankful for it. He already feels awkward as he pulls away, rubbing his eyes like a little kid, but Yakov just ushers him upstairs, and he takes his leave with a wave of relief.
By the time he crawls into his bed, feeling more emotionally and physically drained than he has in years, the smell of curry is just beginning to waft upwards through the floorboards. In spite of himself, it’s a smell he’s come to associate with home, and he wonders what sort of sights and smells his grandpa is forced to experience everyday as he drifts off, being held as he is.
His sleep is, as expected, filled with nightmares.
~~~
By the time Katsuki Yuuri finally wakes up for real, the argument between Viktor and Yakov has dwindled to a tense silence. Yakov had come out of the small office they had been using as their fighting grounds about ten minutes ago, though Viktor himself had yet to emerge, and Yuri wonders absently if Yakov accidentally killed him in his anger. Then he realizes if that were the case, he’d have had them clear away from the scene of the crime the moment it had happened, so he doesn’t get his hopes up. Instead, he watches Yakov pace from his place next to Katsuki, his arms behind his back as he clenches and unclenches his fists.
Then Katsuki starts to stir again, and Yuri has the insight to realize this is what Yakov has been waiting for. Poor Katsuki.
He actually manages to sit up this time, rubbing his eyes with one hand while the other skitters across the various coats he’s surrounded by, probably looking for his glasses. Yakov is in the corner, conversing with Georgi, and Mila had left him to check on Viktor, so he takes it upon himself to inform everyone that their guest is awake.
“Finally up then, Katsudon?” he asks, and Yuuri jumps, his hand finding his glasses and pushing them onto his face as his legs start pedaling uselessly over the coats in an attempt to push him away from the scare Yuri had just given him. Yuri smirks.
“Who— what—” Katsuki is gasping, finally making eye contact with Yuri for a split second before his eyes are bouncing around the rest of the room, cataloging where he is and what’s around him. Watching an idiot flounder is only funny for so long though, so Yuri sighs deep, bringing Katsudon’s eyes back to his.
“You’re with the Phantom Thieves,” he says, acting bored as he pretends to examine his finger nails. “Or do you not remember propositioning us to take you with us?”
Katsuki abruptly turns red, and tries stammering something out, perhaps an apology, but Yuri cuts him off with a vicious, “Shut up.”
Katsudon’s mouth snaps closed, and Yuri feels a rush of satisfaction.
“You’ve really caused us a lot of trouble, you know?” he says, and from behind Katsuki he can see Yakov starting to make his way over, Georgi in tow. “So now you get to speak with our boss,” he adds, pointing a finger behind Katsuki, who pales drastically when he turns and sees Yakov’s livid face. Yuri considers telling him that Yakov’s only about twenty percent as angry as he was when Viktor had carried him in there, unannounced and unconscious, but ultimately decides he enjoys the look on Katsudon’s face too much to spoil it.
By the time Yakov and Georgi reach them, Katsuki is in full seiza, bowing so low his head is touching the floor. Yuri snorts. Yakov just rolls his eyes before he jumps right into the fruits of what he really wants to know.
“How did you figure out what our next target was going to be?” He’s practically spitting the words, but Yuri figures that’s more from the fact that Viktor forced him to talk politely than anything else; Katsuki still looks like he’s going to pass out again at any second, though.
Yuri only half listens as he stutters out some sort of equation detailing their previous targets along with their suspected donation sights and extrapolating possible future targets and blah blah blah. Yakov’s jaw had dropped open halfway through, and Georgi is surreptitiously scribbling everything down in a notebook as Katsudon drones. He glances over to the door of the office to see Viktor and Mila standing in the now open doorway, Mila looking surprised, and Viktor looking smug, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches Katsudon wow Yakov with his rambling nonsense. They’ve known each other for three hours, during most of which one of them was unconscious, and still Viktor is absolutely obnoxious when he finds a new love interest.
When Yuuri finally finishes, Yakov looks impressed, but resigned, and immediately Yuri can feel what’s coming. He puts his chin in his hands and pouts as Yakov sighs, “Very well, then. That was quite impressive, Katsuki Yuuri. I suppose… you may join us.”
Katsudon’s face lights up like a tree on Christmas.
“However!” Yakov barks to get his attention. “You’ll have to train yourself until you get into shape. We can’t have you out on heists like that. You’ll fall behind,” Yakov eyes Katsudon’s protruding belly, and Katsuki has the decency to blush. Viktor takes that moment to flounce into the room, invading Katsudon’s personal space in less than a minute.
“Don’t fret, my little piggy,” Viktor says sweetly into Katsuki’s ear. “Just follow my regimen, and we’ll have you in burglarizing shape in no time!”
Katsudon stammers and blushes and makes half-hearted attempts to get out of Viktor’s arms. Yuri immediately has a vision of his foreseeable future, looking just like this. He rubs at his face in an attempt to prevent the headache he feels coming on, to no avail.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Yuri,” Mila says as she sidles up next to him. “I think it’s sweet.”
“Yeah?” he echoes back hollowly. “You don’t have to live with him.”
Technically neither did he, but it’s honestly close enough that he doesn’t care to split hairs. Luckily, neither does Mila, who seems to think about it for a moment before she slaps her hand down on his shoulder and trills, “Good luck with that!”
He takes a swipe at her, but she dances out of reach, laughing. Georgi starts to clean up, erasing all traces of their presence from the warehouse, and Yuri begrudgingly follows suit. If he’s lucky, this’ll just be some random fling.
Right. Because he’s always been so lucky.
~~~ (Part Two) ~~~
When Yuri next wakes up, sweating and disoriented, it’s early afternoon, and the low murmur of people talking and the click-clack of cutlery and dishware drift up from the floor below. The café never gets busy enough for it to really be considered loud and Yuri’s been living here long enough that he’s generally used to the noise anyway. He’s unsure of what woke him up, until the noise sounds again: a soft tap tap on the attic door.
He calls an assenting noise, sure that he already knows who’s on the other side of the door; lo and behold, there’s Katsudon, shortly followed by Viktor at his chamber door.
“Good morning, Yurio!” Katsudon says sunnily, and Yuri fixes him with the most deadpan stare he can manage. Unfortunately, such tactics stopped working on Katsuki years ago, and his stare goes ignored as Katsudon shuffles around with nervous energy, rearranging things on Yuri’s desk, picking up his dirty clothes and throwing them in the hamper. Honestly, Katsudon is the closest thing to a mom that Yuri’s ever had. Viktor, on the other hand, sits himself daintily on the end of Yuri’s bed, crossing his legs and watching Yuuri putter around the room with hearts in his eyes.
“Is there a reason you’re here?” Yuri asks bluntly, stretching hugely as he yawns, running his hands through his hair in an attempt to calm the wild bedhead he knows he’s got.
“W-well,” Katsudon stutters, something he really only does nowadays when he’s caught off guard. “We heard from Yakov about… your grandpa.”
Yuri’s entire body goes cold, and he has to close his eyes against the sudden need he has to start bawling again. His head starts to swim, so he lowers it into his hands, hoping to stop the rocking in the room by holding himself steady. It doesn’t work, but then Yuuri’s hands are on his back, gently rubbing up and down until he feels a little more in control of himself.
He had forgotten. Maybe it was just the confusion and general forgetfulness that being asleep causes, and maybe it wasn’t, but he had forgotten. His grandpa was out there, suffering, and he had forgotten.
“—rio? Yuri?” Viktor voice manages to break through his haze of self loathing, and he takes a shuddering breath, anchoring himself again to the sights and sounds and smells of everything around him, reminding himself to stay in the here and the now. He nods to Viktor, indicating he can hear, and Viktor lets out a sigh of relief, sitting back on the bed from where he’d been leaning over Yuri’s prone form.
“Sorry,” he gasps when he can, feeling ashamed of his outburst. He hasn’t had one that bad in years. “It’s just… a lot. To take in.”
Katsudon shakes his head vigorously, his hands still kneading gentle circles across Yuri’s back.
“You know you don’t have to apologize, Yurio. Don’t feel bad about something you can’t help. We’re here for you,” his eyes are so earnest Yuri has to looks away.
“Anyway,” he says forcefully, changing the track of the conversation. “At least… at least I know he’s alive. And if he’s alive, we can still meet again someday.”
It’s more optimistic than he feels, but he doesn’t know what else to say to get the spotlight off him and his issues. He’s searching his mind for a distraction, something, anything, when a small rectangle of paper on his window sill catches his attention, and last night slams back into him full force, completely removing any traces of his earlier panic attack.
“The cops!” he says in a rush, causing Viktor and Yuuri to look at each other in confusion. “The cops are looking for Katsudon!”
“Me?” Yuuri squawks in surprise, looking between Viktor and Yuri with growing concern. “Why? What did I do?”
“They know you cracked our code!” Yuri huffs, trying to keep himself understandable in his excitement. “They put together a Phantom Thieves task force, and they wanna recruit you to help them track us down!”
Viktor breathes in sharply.
“Yuri, where did you hear this?” he asks, his voice low and serious.
“There’s this cop that talks to me sometimes,” he gestures vaguely, suddenly feeling uncomfortable telling Viktor and Yuuri too much about Otabek. It feels like he’s breaking Otabek’s trust, even though he had never told Yuri he couldn’t tell people they had met up. In fact, as a cop, it would be even weirder if he had. “We met up last night after… and he could tell I needed a distraction, I think… so he told me about his current case. And it’s us, we have a task force and they’re looking for Katsudon to crack our code again!”
He looks between Viktor and Katsuki, concerned. He’d been vague enough about his source that he’s not even sure if they’ll believe him, but he’s got to try. Otabek has no reason to lie to him, nothing to gain from it, and Yuri can trust that, at least. He knows though, that deep down he also trusts Otabek, and that… that could be a problem.
“If that’s true…” Viktor mutters, resting his finger against his lip as he thinks. “Then Yuuri shouldn’t be seen around. I need to talk to Yakov,” he announces to the room. “Yuuri, stay up here, just in case,” he says, planting both his hands on Katsudon’s shoulders. Yuuri looks up at him with a tearful but determined nod, and Yuri can’t help but roll his eyes, even as a part of him settles after seeing the familiar dramatics these two will always display.
Viktor disappears down the stairs, and the sudden increase and decrease in the volume of the downstairs chatter as he opens and shuts the door to the attic is jarring in the quiet he leaves in his wake. Viktor has always been a bit like a hurricane, Yuri muses, including the silence he leaves behind.
“Is it really such a big deal if the police find me?” Katsudon wonders, staring thoughtfully at the door Viktor had disappeared through. “I mean, it’s not like they know I’m a thief.”
“No,” Yuri agrees. “They don’t. But they do know that you “disappeared” from your previous life after making contact with us. You changed everything: who you hung out with, where you went, where you lived, hell, you even changed what you ate. They’ll be curious about that, and curious cops are always a bad thing.”
Katsudon rests a hand on his flat stomach with a sheepish grin, clearly remembering the time he let himself go in the days after college. Then he sighs, expression falling.
“You’re right, of course. I just hate feeling like I’m making things more difficult for everyone.”
Yuri rolls his eyes.
“You always make things more difficult for everyone. It’s what you do.”
Katsuki smiles, but it’s weak, a pale imitation at best, before he goes back to brooding. It looks weird on his face.
Whatever, Yuri thinks uncharitably, laying down with his arms folded behind his head. I tried.
It doesn’t stop the uneasiness swirling around his gut though, and if there’s one thing he hates, it’s waiting on Viktor. He springs back up, startling Katsudon into dropping whatever it was he’d been fiddling with from Yuri’s desk to abate his own nervousness, and stomps across the floor.
“I’m gonna go see what’s taking him,” he starts to say, getting to the door just as a solemn faced Viktor swings it back open, and Yuri has to make a rather spectacular backwards dive to avoid taking the door in his face. Viktor completely ignores him — crouched on the floor, clutching his chest as his heart attempts to jump out of his throat — as his eyes automatically seek Yuuri’s in the room.
“Borrow one of Yurio’s hoodies,” he says, making his way to Yuri’s closet to begin picking through for one large enough to pull down over Katsudon’s face. He has plenty, but most of them say less than reputable things on the front, he thinks with a smirk as he watches Viktor tut as he discards option after option. He eventually surfaces with a bright red pullover that has orange tiger stripes up the sleeves and hood, and Yuri makes a sound of distress in the back of his throat.
“You better give that back! I love that shirt!” he cries as Viktor begins to shove the garment over Katsudon’s head, completely unheeding either of their protests.
“Don't worry, Yurio,” Katsuki mutters through the fabric as he tries to salvage Viktor’s attempts at dressing him. “I don’t want to keep it.”
Okay, that was uncalled for.
He heads down the stairs with Viktor and Yuuri nonetheless, and Yakov and Viktor exchange grim nods as they go. Yuri turns to ask Yakov what the hell is going on when he sees the look on Yakov’s face, and suddenly remembers he’s still in his pajamas, and technically, the café is open.
“There’s no one even in here, chill out, Yakov,” Yuri mumbles, already turning and making his way back up the stairs. He wants to know what they decided, but even he knows when he can get away with pushing Yakov, and “pajamas in the café during business hours” is not a fight he’ll win.
He’s back in less than five minutes, trading his sweatpants for jeans and his shirt for a hoodie so he doesn’t have to fuck with his hair, and throws himself on to one of the barstools. Yakov grunts in disapproval, but otherwise doesn’t react, so Yuri counts it as a win.
“So?” Yuri says as Yakov passes a fresh cup of coffee over the counter at him. Yakov sighs deeply, looking like he’s debating rubbing at his temples to stave off a headache, but instead picks up a glass and starts cleaning it.
“We’ve decided to send Katsuki into hiding. Or, as best we can, anyway. We obviously can’t take him out of the city; he’s too important to the team for that, and Vitya will want to go with him if he goes, and we won’t survive being down two active members. So he’s going to take your old room in my house. Viktor can run him any errands he needs done, and they can check in for meetings through webcam. It’s not ideal,” he says this gruffly, and Yuri gets the distinct impression if Yakov thought there was literally anywhere on earth safer than his own house for Katsudon to be staying, that’s where he would be, Viktor going with him or not. “But it’s the best we can do on such short notice. Good work, Yuri,” he adds, turning to stir the curry so he doesn’t have to look Yuri in the eye as he praises him.
Yuri blinks once, twice, then smiles, ever so slightly, hiding it by dropping his chin into his palm as he swirls his half-empty coffee cup around. Yakov clears his throat, adjusts his collar, and tells him to get out before his customers show up.
Yuri laughs, downs the rest of his coffee, and takes the stairs back to his room two at a time, causing Yakov to yell about sounding like a herd of elephants just as he hears the bell that signals the front door opening. Yuri can just hear Yakov stuttering a greeting to his customers as Yuri closes the door behind him, and he just laughs that much harder.
~~~
The letter comes the next day.
At first, Yuri doesn’t even look twice at it; it’s unusual to get handwritten letters in this day and age, but still not so uncommon that it strikes him in any way peculiar. Then he notices the distinct lack of postage on the envelope, and his interest is at once peaked. Someone took the time to deliver that letter to his mailbox in person.
Then he opens it, and he can feel the blood drain from his face.
Dear Mr Tiger:
It has recently come to our attention that you have been hunting for a certain individual. We would recommend that you cease and desist, lest something untoward happen, either to the individual in question, or to yourself. Thank you in advance for your understanding in the matter.
Signed,
A Friend
It isn’t hard to deduce what the letter’s referring to; there’s only one individual he’s been hunting for, and given that the Yakuza is involved, he shouldn’t even been overly surprised to receive this kind of threat. Three things stop him cold in his tracks though:
- They personally delivered it to his home address, meaning they know where he lives
- Though his real name is on the outside of the envelope, they specifically addressed the letter to his alter ego
- He’s only ever met these people as his alter ego, so there’s no way they don’t know
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, in the middle of his attic room above the café, just staring at the letter. He doesn’t even really snap out of it until the light clicks on, and the room he didn’t even notice had grown dark is suddenly flooded with light, leaving him squinting and blinking at his surroundings.
“Yuratchka?” Yakov pokes his head through the door, and Yuri scrambles to shove the letter behind his back. Yakov can’t know about this, he decides. None of them can.
“Yeah?” he responds, as casually as he’s able with his arms hidden behind his back as he stands stupidly in the middle of the room (read: not very casually at all).
Yakov raises an eyebrow at him, but otherwise doesn’t comment.
“I’m closing up now. There’s leftover curry if you want it,” is all he says before he’s stomping back down the stairs, muttering something unintelligible about teenagers.
“Uh, okay. Thanks,” he belatedly calls out to the empty room, though he knows Yakov probably still heard him downstairs. The floors are thin around here, after all.
~~~
He stares. Blinks once, slowly. His adversary remains unfazed, and Yuri feels a bead of sweat make its way down his jawline. The little white card reading him Otabek Altin’s contact info looks back at him, completely unrepentant.
“This is stupid,” he mumbles, letting himself fall back onto his bed from where he’s been leaning over the card. “Just send the fucking text. It isn’t that hard.”
Except somehow, for some reason, it really fucking is. Yuri feels like he’s twelve again, trying to get Viktor’s attention and god, isn’t that a revelation. He doesn’t have a crush on Otabek. They’ve talked twice, it’s just not possible. Not to mention, he’s a cop.
He sits abruptly, slapping his face in an attempt to rid himself of the thoughts circling his head like vultures. He doesn’t have a crush, and he’ll prove it: he picks up his phone, inputs Otabek’s number, and sends him a text.
He regrets it almost immediately, but it’s too late to back out now.
hey, it’s yuri, from the park
Wow, how stupid can he sound? He stares at his phone, hoping for a response all the same, before he realizes what he’s doing and drops it down onto his covers, sliding backwards on his bed until he’s sitting back against the wall by his pillow. He shoots his phone a glare before he scrubs at his face with his hands. His heart is beating unnaturally fast, and he blames it on his stupid circling thoughts, that can’t leave well enough alone. He wraps his arms around his knees and sighs. Then it hits him.
Otabek is at work!
Yuri drops his head back, hitting the wall with a solid thud as he laughs. Of course he won’t text back immediately. It’s almost eight o’clock on a Friday night, and Otabek had outright told him that he spends his nights volunteering at the local police box since he’s not getting anything done during his day job.
Well, if Otabek can’t answer him, he’ll just have to take matters into his own hands then, won’t he. He springs up from his bed with a smirk, and starts changing out of his sweats.
Yakov is serving up the last of the curry for the night when Yuri makes his way down the stairs, and Yuri recognizes the woman at the counter as one of the café’s regulars, as well as Yakov’s ex-wife, Lilia Baranovskaya. He nods to them both as he passes, and Yakov splutters before he manages to catch Yuri as he leaves.
“Yuri! Where are you going?!” he stammers, slamming his hands on the counter. Lilia tsks in annoyance as her coffee and curry rattle in front of her.
“Out,” he rolls his eyes as he turns back. “Just for a walk. I’ve got my keys, and my phone, and I promise I’ll be careful,” he recites before Yakov can get a word in edgewise, and Lilia smirks daintily behind her cup.
Yakov can do nothing but nod begrudgingly, and Yuri’s on his way out the door, down past the park, where he can’t help but look at the swings a little longingly. On the other hand, it’s not that late but it’s already cold as fuck, so he keeps going. Waiting for Otabek at the swings would take way too fucking long when he already knows where he is otherwise. He buries his face in his scarf, a giant white knitted thing that he’d bought on a whim and almost everyone he knows has made fun of at one point in time. But fuck them, it’s warm as hell and it smelled like someone’s grandma’s house when he’d first bought it.
He sees the police box and the bright light inside is like a lighthouse beacon, a familiar bike parked at the bike rack outside, and his heart starts beating faster at the sight. It suddenly occurs to him what he’s about to do, and he stops short, looking at the small building just a few feet away from him in incredulity. He’s not actually… about to go through with this, is he?
The decision is taken out of his control as someone steps out of the police box, placing their hat on their head as they do, and when they look up, making eye contact with Yuri, they stop.
“Yuri?” Otabek asks, sounding surprised. Yuri fidgets a little before he nods, burying the bottom half of his face behind his scarf without being obvious so he doesn’t have to talk. Otabek’s face softens a bit as he says, “Is there something I can help you with?”
Again, Yuri shuffles in place, his boots scraping at the frozen ground before he nods, pulling his face out of his scarf to mumble, “Can we… talk?”
“Of course,” Otabek responds immediately, his voice soft like honey, and Yuri can already feel himself melting from the warmth behind it. “Come in,” he offers, gesturing to the building he’d just exited.
Yuri trails along behind him, dragging his feet as Otabek steps behind the desk, offering Yuri the chair on the other side. It’s a tiny building, barely two rooms, and definitely not large enough to have any kind of holding cell in it, but it still makes Yuri feel anxious as he slowly lowers himself into the uncomfortable looking chair opposite Otabek’s desk.
“Would you like some tea?” Otabek offers, nodding his head towards the hotplate in the corner with a kettle on top. Yuri startles out of his thoughts, his eyes traveling over Otabek, then to the kettle in the corner, and nods his head once. Otabek moves through the small space with practiced ease, clearly comfortable despite the small space he has to work with, and Yuri watches him move, feeling the tension bleeding from his muscles as he does. It’s not enough to make him feel completely at ease, but it’s enough to get him going, he thinks.
Otabek hands him a mug, and then sits, sipping at his own as he waits for Yuri to open up about whatever it is that’s troubling him. He stares at down at the mug in his hands, then takes a deep breath, inhaling the peaceful scent.
“I’m having some… family issues,” he starts, unsure really how he’s going to go about this. “I’ve been looking… for my grandpa, for a long time. And I finally think I might know where he is. But… seeing him… might be a… bad idea,” he stumbles through an explanation that he hopes makes sense, but frankly he’s not even sure if he’s even coherent right now.
Otabek hums, takes a sips of his tea, then asks, “Does he not want to see you?”
Yuri shakes his head slowly.
“No, I think he probably does,” he responds, his fingernail catching on a chip in the porcelain mug as he scrapes his finger across the rim. “But I haven’t talked to him so… I can’t say for sure.”
The thought of his grandpa not wanting to see him after all this time makes his eyes fills with tears, but he refuses to shed them, closing his eyes and willing them away as best he can.
“So you want to see him, and he probably wants to see you,” Otabek sums up, and Yuri nods, agreeing. “Then if you ask me, nothing else really matters. You want to see him, and even if there are circumstances that might not be ideal… you can deal with them together, right?”
Yuri blinks down at his tea, then finally looks up at Otabek. He’s smiling gently, his eyes so soft, and Yuri can feel his cheeks flood with heat. It’s the first time he’s seen such a positive emotion on Otabek’s face, and he subconsciously begins searing the image into his brain, his eyes trailing across every curve and line that make up such a wondrous expression.
“It can’t be that easy,” he blurts, trying to distract himself from the suddenly audible thump thump of his heart.
Otabek shrugs a shoulder, but doesn’t stop smiling, placing his empty mug on the table in front of him.
“I’m sure there are things that you’ll need to think more about,” Otabek allows simply with a nod. “But sometimes, when it comes to things like your family… it really can be that simple. If you both want to see each other, and you know how to make that happen… you should do what you can.”
It’s like a light turns on inside Yuri’s brain. All his doubts melt away, and all he’s left with is the burning desire to finally, finally see his grandpa. He smiles. Otabek blinks, looking at him like he’s suddenly been struck dumb.
“Thanks, Otabek,” he says, and downs his cold tea in one long swig. He places the mug back down on the counter and stands, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Maybe even months. “That really helped a lot. So honestly… thank you.”
He waves goodbye as he steps back out into the cold, feeling sure of himself. He hears Otabek call out a garbled goodbye after him as he begins making his way back towards the café. Halfway there, his phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out, glancing at the screen.
Otabek: Come back any time
Yuri stares at the screen, feeling like there’s a bubble rising into his chest, taking residence in his heart, and he can’t help himself. He smiles.
~~~
Yuri takes a deep, shuddering breath behind his mask, and waits. This is the most stupid, reckless thing he’s ever done, but after examining all his options from several different angles, it’s probably the one he can best live with. If anyone else knew about it of course, he knew he’d never hear the end of it. Yakov would shout himself red and hoarse, Viktor would call him a reckless child, Katsudon would Worry™, Mila would refuse to leave him alone until he changed his mind, and Georgi would shake his head disapprovingly, muttering about the follies of youth. He has to admit, he’s not the biggest fan of this plan either, but… if he’s going to go down either way, he doesn’t want to take anyone else with him.
His talk with Otabek had been exactly eight days ago now, and here he is again, waiting for him in the park where they’d met. (He tells himself there’s no deeper meaning behind it, that he’s just there because he knows Otabek will investigate if he stays. He doesn’t really believe himself).
He hears the familiar ticking of a bicycle being walked, and takes his place in the center of the park, standing where he knows Otabek will be able to see him. He’s standing with his back towards the entrance Otabek passes, but he hears the ticking come to a halt, and subconsciously begins to hold his breath, his body tense with anticipation. He hears footsteps as Otabek comes up behind him and stops — though not as close as he did when Yuri had been dressed as a civilian — and asks, “Excuse me? Is there something I can help you with?”
Yuri turns his head, looking over his shoulder just far enough that Otabek can make out his mask, will know who he is. Otabek’s breath leaves him in a rush as he takes a step back out of surprise, but he retreats no further. Yuri turns to face him, and before Otabek can say anything else, Yuri gets down to business.
“I have a proposition for you, Officer,” he says, his trained eye noticing the way Otabek tenses up at being identified as a cop so easily, and something about the way Otabek is acting so on guard around him makes Yuri feel a bit queasy. He powers on all the same. “Will you hear me out?”
Otabek’s brows furrow, looking Yuri up and down as he contemplates hard on what he should do. Yuri feels the compulsive need to swallow as he waits on an answer, despite that his mouth has been almost bone dry since he started talking. He doesn’t allow himself to, however; even the smallest sign of nervousness is a potential tell that he can’t allow himself, lest it be seen and used against him.
Finally, Otabek nods, though he doesn’t look any happier about the situation for it. Yuri takes a brief moment to feel bad that he’s putting Otabek in this situation before he pushes all emotions to the back of his mind. Think about it later. He’s got a job to do now.
“I have reason to believe that someone… important to me has been taken hostage by the Yakuza,” Yuri says with as little emotion as he can. It’s already going to be apparent that he’s worried, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to locate a cop and tell them of the situation, so he’s trying to keep himself in line. “If you agree to help me out with this case… I’ll turn myself in.”
Otabek’s eyes widen, and he looks at Yuri as though he’s seeing him for the first time. Then his brows furrow, and he asks, “Do you have any proof? The Chief is going to want that before he’ll agree to listen to anything you have to say.”
“And what about you?” Yuri turns back before he can help himself. “Do you really believe me that easily?”
“You wouldn’t have sought me out if you weren’t serious,” Otabek answers as if it’s obvious, and Yuri blinks a moment behind his mask before he decides that actually, it probably is. “Not to mention, you’re willing to risk your freedom for this, so… it must be important to you.”
Yuri reaches into his pocket and withdraws the card, hesitating only for a split second before he’s offering it to Otabek to look over. He’s not even really sure if this’ll count as sufficient evidence, honestly, but it’s the only concrete thing he’s got. Otabek steps forward, just enough to take the card, but Yuri’s heart is beating a thunderous note in his ears. This is the first time he’s been so close to anyone in his thief outfit that doesn’t already know who he is, and it’s incredibly nerve wracking. Every instinct in his body is telling him to flee before Otabek figures him out, but he locks his knees in place with a grimace. He is going to do this.
Otabek finishes reading the card, frowning more deeply than Yuri’s ever seen before.
“It’s addressed to your persona, so how did it get to you?” Otabek immediately asks the worst possible question he can, even though it was bound to come up eventually, Yuri had been hoping later rather than sooner.
“...it was delivered to my residence,” he admits, willing his hands not to start wringing together in his nervousness. Not allowing for a single tell to get through for so long is harder than he thought; usually he only needs to keep up appearances for security guards and cameras. He swallows as subtly as he can and elaborates, “Hand delivered. There was no postage on the envelope.”
“So they know where you live,” Otabek says slowly, his eyebrows raised. He does not ask for the envelope for proof, as Yuri has feared he might, and it makes the tension in his body relax by a hair. “And who you are. That’s dangerous.”
Yuri nods once, agreeing, “That’s why I decided… to get outside help.”
Otabek reaches out, allowing Yuri to take the card back from him, before he pulls out his phone and looks at the time.
“It’s not too late,” he decides, looking back up as Yuri sips the card back into his pocket. “We can go down to the station, everyone should be there.”
Yuri freezes. It’s sooner, much, much sooner than he expected to be offered to meet the other members of Otabek’s task force, even though he had gone to Otabek strictly because he had believed Otabek would give him a chance. He’s almost positive it’s not a trap; Otabek’s just not that kind of guy, he’s come to find out, but not everyone in the police force would be so willing to listen to a criminal.
“There are some things I want to make clear before we go,” Yuri makes his decision completely on the spot, but as soon as he says the words, he doesn’t regret them, so he keeps going once he’s sure he has Otabek’s attention. “Turning myself in doesn’t happen until we’ve rescued the hostage and gotten them to safety. And it’s only an offer for me; I won’t give up any information on the other Phantom Thieves. I’d like to keep my anonymity until I absolutely can’t anymore,” he adds, gesturing to his outfit with a wave of his hand.
Otabek frowns again, his eyes flicking up and down Yuri’s thief outfit before he nods, turning away and clearly expecting Yuri to follow him. As they walk, Yuri can’t help but wonder what Otabek must be thinking as he leads an infamous thief from an infamous criminal organization through the streets of Tokyo at night to the police station with a tenuous agreement to not attempt to unmask said thief until they’ve taken care of a different criminal organization. It’s… a lot to take in, even for Yuri, and he’s the one that instigated the whole situation.
They arrive at the station and Yuri has to force himself to keep walking. There’s an intrinsic fear about being a criminal willingly walking into a police station, and even though he only has himself to blame, it’s hard to keep his legs moving forward. He reminds himself again that Otabek isn’t the type of guy to set up a trap as they move further into the building. Otabek pushes open the door of a meeting room, and Yuri follows him in, immediately taking in the people in the room.
Closest to the door is the only woman in the room, her bobbed hair surprisingly stylish for a cop, he thinks uncharitably (Isabella Yang, he learns later). Next to her is a man with a shaved undercut like Otabek, but that’s where the similarities clearly end, as the man’s insufferable grin is already setting Yuri’s teeth on edge (Jean Jacques Leroy; God, even his name is annoying). Near the back of the room are two men, sitting close to each other, one small with brown hair (Ji Guang-Hong) and a larger one with longer hair (Leo De La Iglesia). The last person, sitting in almost the exact middle of the room with one of the straightest faces Yuri has ever seen is the man in charge of the task force, Lee Seung-Gil.
“Officer Altin says you have a proposition for us,” Lee says after the introductions have been finished. Yuri simply nods, so Lee keeps going. “I’ll have to bring this deal to our higher ups; that’s not the kind of decision we can make between us here.”
Again, Yuri just nods; all things he’s been expecting to hear.
“Do you have some way we can get in contact with you? We’ll let you know of the decision when it comes through,” Lee says, and Yuri has to appreciate his complete no nonsense way of running this task force. Yuri had been expecting such a question, though admittedly he had expected it from Otabek, asking to get in touch to set up a meeting, but in the end it winds up the same, he supposes. He withdraws the card he prepared; completely clean of fingerprints and typed, not written, so they won’t be able to figure out anything about him from it. He’d picked up another burner phone specifically for this purpose, so there’s nothing to trace.
Lee nods as he accepts the number, slipping the card into the pocket of his uniform and standing up quickly.
“If we’re done here, then?” he says to the room at large, and upon receiving no contest from any of the other people in the room, he strides out. There’s silence for a moment, before Otabek turns to him and offers to walk him back to the front of the building. Yuri just nods, and follows Otabek back through the building. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he agreed to meet the task force bent on taking down him and his teammates, but a meet and greet that lasted less than ten minutes certainly wasn’t one of them.
Otabek leads him outside, and the cool air helps Yuri return to focus. Otabek turns to him then, an expression on his face that Yuri can’t quite interpret.
“Sorry about Seung-Gil,” he says. “He always like that, so don’t take it personally.”
Yuri shakes his head, surprised that Otabek is bothering to make amends to a thief he’s been trying to catch.
“It’s fine,” he replies, shifting on his feet. His nerves are seriously frayed after being on guard for so long just talking face to face with Otabek that he appreciates how short his meeting with the task force really was.
Otabek turns away with a nod, heading back into the building, and Yuri feel a little bad knowing that Otabek had been on his way home when he stopped him.
Impulsively, before he can think better of it, he turns to Otabek’s back.
“Thank you,” he says, putting all the sentiment he can in those simple two words. Otabek stops and looks back in confusion, but Yuri’s already taken off into the night, feeling giddy.
He’d actually done it. He’s on the verge of having a working relationship with the police force, and if this really does work out (it has to) then he’ll be that much closer to saving his grandpa.
The walk home feels so much lighter than he would’ve thought possible.
~~~
“What? Why do you want us to stop planning heists? You’re not making any sense, Yuratchka,” Yakov tells him the next morning as they open the shop together.
“I just want to take a break, is that too much to ask?” he puts as much of a whine into his voice as he can, partially because he knows it will annoy Yakov, and partially because he actually does have an objective to accomplish here. If he’s to spend his nights collaborating with the police, he can’t have Yakov off planning heists willy-nilly. It could also be a good bargaining chip in his pile, if he needs it; agreeing to stop heists while Yuri’s working with the task force could be considered a show of good will.
As expected, the vein in Yakov’s temple begins to throb, and Yuri has to suppress a smirk at the sight of it.
“You never do anything! What do you mean, you want a break?” Yakov snaps, pushing him out of the way of the curry so he can look over Yuri’s progress.
“And I’m sure Viktor and Katsudon would appreciate it too,” Yuri continues as though Yakov hadn’t said anything, though he does return to a more reasonable tone. “And maybe you could even go away for a few days… get away from those lovey-dovey two…”
Yuri knows he strikes a nerve when Yakov goes unnaturally still, standing at the counter with his hands idle. Yuri goes in for the kill.
“In fact, it’s been so cold out lately, a trip to an onsen would be really nice, wouldn’t it? Free of obnoxious wards and responsibilities…”
Yakov lets out a tremendous sigh, but slings his rag over his shoulder after he wipes down his hands, and turns to look at Yuri.
“What have you done, you little shit?” he sighs, and Yuri grins. Bingo. He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket.
“Your ticket to a two week onsen trip, all expenses paid,” Yuri brandishes the paper, waving it under Yakov’s nose until he gets fed up, and snatches the paper from Yuri’s fingers, reading the details.
“You’re a brat,” Yakov declares when he’s done reading. “You’ve only given me two days to pack and get shit ready.”
“Guess you’d better get out of here then, old man,” Yuri waves Yakov out of the kitchen. “I’ll handle the café today. Go home and pack, geezer.”
Yakov snorts, but seems to need no more incentive; he’s gone in the next minute, throwing off his apron and gathering up his coat. He does pause briefly on his way out the door though, and gives Yuri a suspicious look.
“You’re up to something,” he tells Yuri. “And don’t think I won’t figure it out… after I get back.”
And with that, he’s out the door, Yuri smirking at his back.
If everything goes according to plan, it’ll all be over before you even get back, old timer.
~~~
“I don’t like it,” Ji mutters to De La Iglesia, as though Yuri isn’t within hearing distance of them. They’re looking askance at him where he’s leaning against the wall of the meeting room, waiting for the debriefing to start. He’s got his mask on and hood up, and it occurs to him that maybe they think they are being subtle. He suppresses a snort. These idiots wouldn’t know subtle if it came up and bit them on the ass.
“I know, Guang-Hong,” De La Iglesia says back just as softly. “I don’t either. But it’s not our decision. We just have to follow orders here.”
Ji pouts, crossing his arms over his chest, and De La Iglesia sighs fondly, reaching up to pet Ji’s hair consolingly.
“How can we trust him, though?” Ji asks after a few moments of being babied. “He’s a thief. What if he’s lying?”
Yuri bites down a sharp stab of indignation that bursts through him at those words. What, just because he’s a thief, he’s a liar? That’s profiling, dammit. Not to mention, just plain rude. Next they’re going to accuse him of being a murderer just because they’re all crimes, right? Yuri feels his lip curl at the thought, and a wave of dislike rushes through him for all the cops here. Pathetic.
De La Iglesia shrugs, “Otabek said he had evidence. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.”
Yuri’s hand involuntarily clenches, thinking about the note he received from the Yakuza, safely stored in his pocket. He’s kept it with him practically constantly since he received it; an unpleasant reminder that his grandfather is, at least, still alive.
The rest of the Phantom Thieves taskforce walks into the room then, Otabek, along with Lee, Yang and Leroy. All four of them give him their own version of a wary look, though Leroy’s had just enough cocky swagger in it to make Yuri want to sock him in his smug mouth. He and Yang are holding hands as they walk, and Yuri wonders absently as he watches them all take seats around the room if fraternizing with colleagues is even allowed.
As soon as everyone of the cops is seated, Lee launches into an introductory speech for him and why he’s there, as though they all haven’t already met him. It’s still awkward, and he raises a hand and waves when people’s eyes linger on him for too long, causing them to scowl and turn away. Otabek watches him for a few moments longer than everyone else, though his face doesn’t change when he turns away, Yuri can tell that he’s less than impressed. It doesn’t hurt. Or at least, he tells himself that it doesn’t. It’s not like Otabek knows that it’s him under the mask, anyway.
When Lee finally gets to the part about his grandfather, he motions for Yuri to give him the note, and though everything in his being screams in irritation at being told what to do by a cop, he does so anyway, knowing that his cooperation is needed if he wants this partnership to work out in his favor. He pushes himself away from the wall, pulling the note smoothly from his pocket, and placing it delicately in Lee’s outstretched hand. Every person in the room watched him with baited breath, promises of pain in their eyes if he so much as thought about doing anything other than what was asked of him, and he draws in a deep breath for his own sanity; this is going to be a long fucking partnership if not even a single one of them can trust him to take something out of his pocket without pulling something funny.
He resumes his place leaning against the wall as Lee passes the note around for them all to see. It’s only addressed to his thief name, as he left the envelope at home, but it’s still nerve-wracking somehow, watching all those policemen read a note that has so much of his identity in it.
“So here’s how this is going to go,” Lee starts once everyone has read over the note and its made its way back over to Lee. “The Chief has already accepted this deal, so there’s no point in making a fuss about it.” He meets everyone’s eyes individually as he says this, trying to hammer the point home, but Ji and De La Iglesia are the only ones that look abashed, probably thinking back to their gossiping from earlier.
“We help Tiger find this person that’s been kidnapped, he turns himself in to the authorities when this person is safe,” Lee looks down at the papers he has gathered in front of them. “This does apply only to the one with the Tiger alias. None of the others are in on this agreement, correct?” Lee directs this at Yuri, who only nods. No sense in letting these people get closer to him than is necessary, after all.
“Very well,” Lee moves on. “In this operation, we’re going to be targeting a Yakuza group.”
A general cry rings out through the room, and only Yuri’s training allows him to pick out each individual cry of alarm.
“Wha—?” cries Ji.
“That’s crazy!” shouts Leroy.
“Yakuza?!” says De La Iglesia.
“Really?” worries Yang.
Otabek and Lee are the only ones that don’t say anything, Lee because he gave the announcement, and Otabek because he was the first one Yuri told. Lee raises his hand, and silence falls almost immediately.
“They’ve kidnapped a civilian. I understand you’re all worried about the dangers, but there is an innocent life at stake here,” Lee looks each and every one of his subordinates in the eyes as he gets his message across. “I know it’s unorthodox, but we don’t have much to go on. I’ve compiled a list of things that Tiger has been able to tell us about what he knows about the family that may have taken the civilian hostage. We’ll have to be thorough, and work individually through each of the families we know to try to match known motives and methods of action.”
There is a collective groan throughout the room this time, and Yuri can’t help but feel annoyed. Aren’t these supposed to be elite police officers? Why are they whining so much over a little hard work? They wouldn’t be talking that way if it were their loved one on the line.
“That sounds like a serious pain in the ass,” Leroy complains, crossing his arms behind his head. “Do we really have to do this?”
Yuri moves away from the wall, his hands dropping to his sides as he clenches them into fists at the words. How dare that fucking son of a bitch. He steps forward, intent on just punching the guy in his pretty boy face, but Otabek gets there first. Unfortunately, not physically.
“Are you seriously condemning an innocent person to life being held captive by Yakuza because you’re too afraid to do some work?” he asks dangerously, and Yuri’s heart skips a beat. Otabek is defending him and his grandpa and he doesn’t even know it but he still…
Leroy blinks, taken aback, clearly not expecting such a serious answer to his complaint, and tries to dissolve the situation.
“It was just a joke man, calm down,” he raises his hands up by his head in a surrendering motion.
Otabek’s brow stay furrowed as he responds, “Someone’s life is not something to joke about. Please keep such comments to yourself in the future.”
“Okay, jeez,” Leroy sighs, leaning forward to rest his chin on the table. “Lips are sealed, I get it.”
“If we’re all quite through,” Lee’s voice cuts through any other chatter, and they’re all back on topic immediately. “I’d like to meet here nightly from now on. We have a lot of work to do, and I’d like to get this case cleared up as soon as possible, for that civilian’s sake if nothing else. Is that amenable?” he directs to Yuri, clearly expecting his officers to take it for the command that it is.
Again, Yuri just nods.
“Very well then. I will see you all here tomorrow,” Lee nods, and once again, steps briskly out of the room.
Yuri makes his own way out of the room this time, before anyone can stop him.
He’s given himself two weeks to get this done, because that’s how long Yakov is going to be away, and not there to question Yuri’s comings and goings.
Two weeks.
He can do this.
~~~
One week. It’s been one week, and he can’t do this.
It takes just one week of meeting each other every night, of having to pretend that he doesn’t know Otabek at all just to keep his cover. And it hurts. Yuri had honestly thought it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but… he huffs a laugh. It seems like he’s over estimated himself.
They’ve been texting each other almost everyday, which is fine. The hard part is that Yuri has to keep refusing to see him as himself, because he’s not sure if he’ll be able to keep up his part as Tiger next time they meet.
And as a result, he may be planning something… reckless.
As a matter of fact, by the time Otabek arrives at the park, Yuri is one hundred percent sure this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had in his life. And to be honest, that’s saying something. His palms are sweaty, his mouth is dry and if his heart beats any faster he’s pretty sure he’s going to have a nervous breakdown. He takes a deep breath to calm himself down; he already decided that this is what he’s going to do, and he needs to follow through with it.
“Tiger,” Otabek says as he approaches. It’s not quite a question, but there is a certain cadence to it that Yuri can pick up.
This is it.
“Officer Altin,” he greets, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible. It’s difficult, more so than it’s ever been before, but somehow, he manages it. “Thank you for meeting me here.”
“It’s alright,” Otabek responds with a shrug. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Not… exactly,” Yuri tells him, cursing himself for letting his voice slip. It’s not going to matter soon, but it’s the fact that he let it happen at all that really gets to him. “Would you be willing… to hear me out?”
Yuri can only call the expression on Otabek’s face concerned, which is… not what he was expecting. Otabek, after all, has no connection to Tiger outside of their forced cooperation, and the fact that Tiger is a criminal to boot should really just remove him completely from Otabek’s radar. The fact that it doesn’t really only endears him to Yuri even more.
“Go on,” Otabek nods, walking closer to Yuri than he ever has before when he’s in his thief outfit. It’s cold, and Yuri can see Otabek’s breath cloud in front of him as he breathes. It’s oddly comforting, so he closes his eyes and holds on to the sensation for as long as he can. When he opens them again, Otabek is still there, still just waiting for him to get his thoughts together, and everything he’d planned to say just… evaporates into thin air.
“I’m Tiger!” he blurts out, and it doesn’t even take the rising confusion on Otabek’s face for him to realize that what he said makes absolutely no sense. Of course he’s Tiger, he’s standing there wearing his mask and everything, and he frantically tries to backtrack, unable to hear anything past the blood rushing in his ear.
“I mean, of course I’m Tiger, you knew that, what I meant is, um,” and he pauses, realizing in that instant the quickest and easiest way to do this. He reaches up, and pulls off his mask.
“What I meant is, I’m Yuri,” he says, his voice small. His eyes are on the ground, and he can’t bring himself to look up at Otabek, not after that. Not after what his reveal implies. The major breach of trust, of the way he used Otabek as an in with the police force for his own extremely personal reasons
He doesn’t want to know.
But at the same time, he has to.
He allows his eyes to travel up slowly, taking in Otabek’s casual clothes — Yuri’s seen him so often in uniform lately that they almost seem odd — before they land on his face. And surprisingly, Otabek doesn’t look… mad. In fact, he’s looking at Yuri in a way he might even categorize as… tender? It doesn’t make sense, because Yuri’s a liar and a betrayer and a literal thief, and it just doesn’t make any sense. Otabek can’t be looking at Yuri like that because Otabek is good, and Yuri… Yuri isn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters before Otabek has the chance to say anything. His eyes drop back to the ground, because there’s no way he wants Otabek to see his face when it’s like this. That is, about to cry. “I’m sorry. I lied and I used you and I’m sorry.”
“Yuri,” Otabek says, and it feels so good to hear his voice like that. Like he cares. Because he’s only been seeing him as Tiger and of course Otabek doesn’t care about Tiger. But he cares about Yuri still, somehow, and Yuri can hear it in his voice. “I’m glad.”
“Huh?” Yuri looks up, confused. “What do you mean, you’re glad?”
“I thought you were mad at me,” Otabek says, and Yuri wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but Otabek looks almost… sheepish? “You kept declining to see me in person so I thought I had done something to offend you and you just wouldn’t say. I’m glad you’re not mad at me.”
Yuri sputters. He can’t help it.
“I’m not mad at you? Shouldn’t we be more concerned with you not being mad at me? Because you really, really should be! I’ve been lying to you! I’m not who I said I am! I’m a criminal, a Phantom Thief, and you—!”
Yuri doesn’t get any farther than that, because Otabek reaches up, places a hand on the back of his neck, pulls him in and kisses him.
It doesn’t last long, and Yuri tells himself he shouldn’t feel so disappointed at that. When they separate though, they don’t go far, and Otabek keeps his hand cradling Yuri’s neck.
“Yuri,” he says, and his voice is so serious that Yuri has no choice but to listen. “I don’t care about that. I don’t care that you’re Tiger, or that you’re a Phantom Thief, or any of it. All I care about is you. I like you because you’re Yuri, not because you’re not a Phantom Thief.”
And Yuri can’t help it. He cries.
He’s been practically on the verge of tears the whole time, and the relief coursing through his body is so strong that he feels his knees go weak with it. But Otabek is there, keeping him upright, wrapping his arms around Yuri as he sobs, running his fingers through Yuri’s hair as he shudders with too much repressed emotion. And when they finally part, Otabek reaches up to gently rub the tear tracks from Yuri’s face, which has gone almost numb with the wet and cold.
“Thank you,” Yuri mutters. “I just… thank you.”
Otabek smiles, and for a man so stoic in expression, it’s almost amazing how natural it looks on his face.
“I just have one question,” Otabek says a few minutes later, hands pausing from where they’ve been gently carding through Yuri’s hair. Yuri is leaning hard against him, burying his face into the warmth of Otabek’s scarf and just enjoying the sensation of being close. He lets out a hum and Otabek continues. “Does this mean we can finally date now?”
Yuri jumps so hard he almost pulls himself out of Otabek’s embrace, but Otabek just holds him closer.
“Wh-what do you mean, finally?!” he stutters, feeling a flush slowly creeping up his neck and into his cheeks.
“You don’t have to say yes,” Otabek tells him in lieu of a direct answer. “But it would be nice if I could tell people about my boyfriend.”
It takes a lot to make Yuri speechless, but it turns out this is one of those things. He wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to accomplish when he confessed his true identity to Otabek; all he knows is that he had to, or the guilt would’ve eaten him alive. This, he supposes, isn’t a bad place to end up.
He says yes.
~~~
And Yuri has to admit, it’s easier after that. For obvious reasons, of course, but also for some he didn’t even consider. Like, finally being able to tell Otabek the truth behind the investigation he’s spurred. Talking to someone outside of the Thieves about his grandfather is both liberating and terrifying. He’s showing someone who, for all intents and purposes, is a total stranger all his deepest secrets. It’s somehow addicting.
It does make working together during the nights a little awkward though, at least on Yuri’s end. Trying to keep up his Tiger persona around someone that knows him otherwise is harder than he expected it to be. Luckily, he doesn’t have to put up with it for long.
Just two days after that night in the park, they get a major break in the case, just the two of them. They had taken to staying later at night together, working with each other in silent comfort after everyone else had gone home.
Yuri stretches his arms high above his head. He much prefers working these quiet nights with Otabek than having the whole task force assembled. While they (arguably) get more work done with four other people here, it’s a load off Yuri’s shoulders to be able to just take off his mask and work, to be able to concentrate on what he’s doing without having to keep up pretenses. He’s about to settle back in to work when Otabek calls his attention.
“Yuri. I think… I might have found it,” he doesn’t sound sure, which is unlike Otabek, but Yuri knows he wouldn’t have bothered to pull Yuri out of his own work if he wasn’t already reasonably confident in what he had found.
Yuri wheels his chair over to where Otabek is bent over a book from the archives, his papers and notes spread out in an orderly fashion around him as he cross-checks references and motives. He points out a particular passage to Yuri, who leans over to get a closer look.
“I’m almost sure this is it,” his voice is stronger now, gotten over his doubts from just a few moments ago, the more he looks at his own trail of evidence. “The Yu-Topia Family. They’re based out of Hasetsu, which is a ways from here, but… everything fits.”
Yuri’s heart is pounding in his chest. He can’t believe it. He actually can’t fucking believe that they found the people who have his grandpa. There’s as much excitement building in his chest as there is dread pooling into his stomach. He’s never felt such a strange mixture of emotions before, and yet, he still feels inherently calm. He wonders if it’s because he knows that Otabek is by his side this time.
“Let’s go,” he says, and is pleasantly surprised by how steady his voice is. “Tomorrow. Can we?”
He’s aware that is sounds like he’s asking for permission, but he also knows that now he knows where to go, he will be going there tomorrow, with or without Otabek. He’s hoping with, but if Otabek wants to wait for police protocol or something… Yuri will be disappointed, but he’ll make do.
Otabek doesn’t seem surprised by his declaration though, clearly reading Yuri’s intent through his words. He nods once, and begins to meticulously copy down all the information they'll need to reach their destination.
It’s happening. It’s actually fucking happening.
Parting ways with Otabek that night is hard for Yuri. They clean up as usual and leave nothing out of place to alert the rest of the task force that they’ve found what they’ve been looking for, and as always, they walk together until they absolutely have to part ways to get to their homes. Yuri drags his feet, feeling oddly emotional. He knows he should save it for tomorrow, though, for when he actually manages to see his grandfather again, so he sucks it up and walks the rest of the way back to the café alone.
It feels colder than usual.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
~~~
It turns out to be a little more complicated to get to Hasetsu than Yuri estimates. They wind up having to take a plane from Tokyo to the island of Kyushu, and the quiet, tourist-y area they wind up in is not what he’s expecting at all.
Neither, admittedly, is the old traditional onsen that is apparently the place the Yu-Topia family is based out of. It seems too sleepy to be the front business of the yakuza, with a plump old woman sweeping the steps outside. She throws them a cheerful greeting as they approach, and Yuri looks to Otabek uncomfortably. Otabek, however, doesn’t seem particularly fazed; he walks right up to her and says, “We’d like to see the Yu-Topia Family’s patriarch, please.”
Yuri almost chokes on his own saliva as the woman looks up at them with curious eyes. Then, she smiles.
“Of course! Come right this way,” she gestures for them to follow her into the building, leaning her broom up against the door frame to come back to later.
It’s official: Yuri has no earthly clue what’s happening anymore.
They follow her through the tourist-oriented front hall into a large, empty banquet room. She gestures for them to take a seat.
“Who knows where that man is right now,” she huffs, putting her hand to her cheek and looking exasperated. “I’ll go see if I can hunt him down for you. Wait here, dears.”
She leaves the room, and quiet descends around them like a blanket. Yuri looks to Otabek helplessly, but he just shrugs; no help there. Yuri’s not quite sure what he was expecting to happen when they got there: having to brawl some bodyguards, maybe, or that they’d have to sneak in, but this… he’s so out of his element here he doesn’t even know what to do.
They hear voices approaching, and the woman from before steps back into the room, followed by two men. One of them, Yuri’s never seen before, the other, however… he shoots to his feet before he even realizes what he’s done.
“Grandpa…?”
Yuri’s voice is so weak and hesitant, he hardly even recognizes it as his own. There he is, though, in the flesh: the man who dropped him off on a thief’s doorstep nine years ago, then vanished into the night.
Nikolai, though undoubtedly surprised, doesn’t seem nearly as shocked to see Yuri as Yuri is to see him. Yuri hardly notices though, already running into his arms, hugging him as tightly as he can manage. It’s different, he thinks, from the last time. After all, he’s taller than his grandpa now.
“Yuri? What are you doing here?” Nikolai asks, belatedly wrapping his arms around Yuri in exchange.
Yuri pulls back, slightly incredulous, completely unaware of the tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he blinks, feeling blindsided. “You disappeared for almost ten years! No one could find you, not even Yakov! You left me,” and here, his voice cracks, emotions he’s kept bottle up for almost a decade getting the better of him. “On some stranger’s doorstep, and never talked to me again!”
Nikolai pulls Yuri close to him again, and Yuri lets him, burying his face in his grandpa’s shoulder to stifle the tears.
“Oh, Yuratchka,” Nikolai soothes, reaching up to run his fingers through Yuri’s hair. “I didn’t realize… I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. After your mother… I should’ve known better, Yuri. I’m so sorry.”
Yuri had completely forgotten about their audience, he isn’t ashamed to say, but when Nikolai pulls away from him a second time, he offers Yuri a seat at one of the tables, where the two people from before and Otabek are all very obviously trying not to stare at the spectacle they’re making in the middle of the room. He accepts, slowly returning to his seat at Otabek’s side, and as soon as he’s settled, Otabek reaches under the table to grab his hand, running his thumb along the back of it in a soothing motion. Yuri relaxes by a fraction, squeezing Otabek’s hand in thanks.
“Yuri, these are the Katsukis, Toshiya,” his grandpa gestures to the man, who never seems to stop smiling, “and Hiroko. They hunted me down ten years ago to ask me to find their son, who left the family after an argument and hasn’t been seen since. I used to be a private detective, you know,” he adds, looking between Yuri and Otabek. “That’s how I met Yakov to begin with. But we grew to be friends over the years… and I knew I could trust him with you. I didn’t think… with everything going on around you that you’d even notice I was gone. And I’m so, so sorry for that, Yuratchka. It was the foolishness of an old man. Can you forgive me?”
Yuri didn’t realize he had been gripping Otabek’s hand for dear life until a sharp pain shot up his wrist, and he immediately loosened his grip, silently apologizing to Otabek for unintentionally crushing his hand. It’s too much. Listening to his grandpa like this, after not seeing him for ten years… he didn’t think Yuri would miss him, would think about him every day, would wonder if he was ever going to see him again?
It’s too much.
He stands, excuses himself to the bathroom, and leaves the room. He doesn’t want to get lost in unfamiliar, Yakuza territory, so he doesn’t go far; just far enough down the hall that the business starts to turn into a family home, where there are pictures on the walls and dust in the corners. He leans against the wall, closes his eyes, and breathes.
It’s too much.
He hears Otabek approach, knows it’s him because he’s become intimately familiar with the sound of his steps, the steady pitch of his breathing, his comforting smell over the last few weeks of close contact they’ve had working together. He doesn’t say anything when he becomes level with Yuri, so Yuri doesn’t either, and they just stay there, silently, for a few minutes. Eventually though, Yuri has to know.
“...how did he take it?” he asks, the my leaving unsaid, but ringing in the air between them nonetheless.
“Not well,” Otabek responds, never one to beat around the bush. “He seemed pretty heartbroken. But if that’s what you need…” he trails off, but gives Yuri a meaningful look. Yuri gets it; if he needs to leave, they will, at any time, no questions asked. And Yuri appreciates it, he truly does, but…
“It’s fine,” he shakes his head. “I just… needed a minute. This has all just been…”
His thought is lost, because at that very moment, Yuri notices the picture on the wall directly to the right of Otabek’s head, a face hovering just over his shoulder that he knows almost as well as his own. A face that’s been positively stuck to Viktor’s for the past five or so years. He reaches forward, and plucks the frame off the wall, bringing it closer to his face, just to be sure.
“Yuri?” Otabek’s voice is worried, perhaps a bit wary, but Yuri barely even hears him, his eyes glued to the picture in his hand.
It’s Katsudon. It’s fucking Katsudon.
He turns and practically runs back to the room they’d left, leaving Otabek to trail behind him in confusion as he bursts into the room. They’re all still there, Toshiya and Hiroko and Grandpa, and he barely even takes note of how rude he’s probably being as he shoves the picture in their faces.
“Is this him?” he asks, brandishing the frame. “Is this your kid that’s missing?”
“Yuratchka!” his grandpa tries to scold him, possibly for being insensitive, possibly for any other number of things, who even knows, but his eyes are fixed on the Katsukis. The way Hiroko’s eyes fill with tears, the way Toshiya’s smile finally just slides right off his face. It’s him.
“I know him,” he says, trying to inject sincerity into ever pour of his body. “Yuuri, right? I know him.”
The atmosphere of the room changes almost instantly. Hiroko’s eyes are still teary, but this time they shine with wonder and hope instead of despair and sorrow. Toshiya looks at him like he’s just seeing him for the first time, and Grandpa’s eyebrow raise so high they practically get lost under the brim of his hat.
“You do?” Nikolai asks on behalf of the room at large, and Yuri nods, dropping to his knees as he puts the picture frame onto the table. A high school aged Katsudon stares back at him, and Yuri almost shakes his head in pure disbelief.
“I do,” he reiterates as Otabek comes around him to sit at the table as well. “I met him about four or five years ago now. I was fifteen. I’ve known him ever since, though. I can even tell you were he’s living right now.”
It’s surreal, the way the mood in the room shifts as he offers up his information. Hiroko throws her arms around Toshiya, and they both quietly start to sob, though they’re both smiling as they do so. Nikolai starts scratching at his head, pushing his hat up his hairline as he looks at Yuri in wonder.
“I can’t believe it,” he mutters. “All this time… you two were together. It’s incredible.”
Yuri just shrugs, though he has a decent understanding of the magnitude of what he’s done for these people. After all, he just found his grandpa, so the idea that they may have finally found their son… Despite the weird circumstances surrounding this whole situation, Yuri’s honestly glad he could help.
It takes a while, but eventually, Yuri tells his story, both to his grandpa and to Otabek, who seems to take everything in stride, and Yuri wonders why he was ever worried that anything he could ever tell Otabek would shake that unflappable demeanor. His grandpa apologizes at every chance he gets, and while Yuri appreciates it at first, it honestly starts to get a little annoying after a while. In light of everything, the Katsukis invite him and Otabek to stay the night; it had gotten dark while they were talking, and they feel they need to repay Yuri somehow for stumbling into their lives and knowing their son, as Yuri sees it.
Still, he takes them up on it: sitting in the cold air with the hot water all around them, snow drifting lazily down as he and Otabek look up at the cloudy night sky is practically magical.
“I’m glad everything worked out,” Otabek tells him, quietly and sincerely, in such a way that Yuri feels like his heart is melting.
Yuri looks back at him, relaxing lazily in the water as though he isn’t the sole reason Yuri was able to make it as far as he did. He smiles.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Yuri promises, and leans in, pressing his lips to Otabek’s in the sweetest kiss he has ever given. He means every word, and as they pull apart, he rests his forehead against Otabek’s. There’s just one last thing he needs to say.
“Thank you. For everything.”
~~~ (Epilogue) ~~~
(Six Months Later)
“This is stupid.”
Otabek sighs.
“It isn’t stupid, it’s a punishment. It’s not supposed to be fun.”
Yuri grumbles.
“I thought everyone agreed I was a minor when I joined the Phantom Thieves and couldn’t be charged?”
Otabek chuckles.
“That’s not quite how it works, but considering the sentence you could’ve gotten, I really don’t think community service is that bad.”
Yuri looks up from where he’s elbows deep in the soil, a sunhat perched over his head to try to prevent sunburn, but judging by the pink in his cheeks, Otabek thinks it’s a losing battle. Yuri pouts up at him.
“You could help, you know. Then this would be done that much faster.”
“I could,” Otabek agrees idly, looking around the park. It’s the one he’s come to consider as their park, where almost all the important moments of their relationship have happened. When this location had come up on the list of places Yuri could spend his community service, he had all but jumped at the chance, and Otabek can’t help but wonder if it’s because he feels the same. “But I’m not the one that owes society a debt.”
Yuri petulantly flings dirt onto his shoes in response, turning back to his planting with an annoyed grunt, and Otabek can’t help but chuckle. Yuri’s cute especially when he doesn't mean to be, and it’s one of the things Otabek likes most about him.
“How did Katsuki’s reunion with his family go?”
It had taken a long time to organize, mostly because Yuuri had been… reluctant to meet with his family again, but it had finally happened the previous weekend, and Yuri, of course, had been there.
“Fine,” Yuri shrugs, pulling out another weed and adding it to his bucket of plant refuse. “Katsudon was a fucking wreck. Viktor had to literally hold his hand the whole way there, or else he probably would’ve bolted. Once he figured out that they weren’t mad at him, he was okay though. I told him they wouldn’t be, but heaven forbid he listens to me,” he grouses. As always, he masks his worry and affection for other people with irritation and exasperation. Just another part of Yuri that Otabek is drawn to.
None of the other Phantom Thieves had ever been charged with anything, since none of the others had ever been captured, and they had officially disbanded and retired after Yuri had turned himself in. Over time though, Otabek has gotten to meet each and every one of them, though they’ve never been formally introduced to him as such, and it’s a bit of a surreal experience. It’s not something he would ever trade though, since it’s something that ties him to Yuri, and even though they had been thieves, their hearts had been in the right place.
At first, according to Yuri, tensions had been high between the former thieves, because none of them had been pleased with how Yuri had acted completely on his own with his decision to cooperate with the police all those months ago. Now, it’s only a point of contention between them when Viktor says something snide about Yuri’s community service.
Yuri’s watch beeps, announcing the time, and he immediately goes limp, flopping on his back on the ground, his hat tumbling from his head and as he throws his gardening gloves as far away from himself as possible. They don’t go very far, landing about a foot to his right, and Otabek takes pity, chuckling as he steps forward to retrieve them and shake them loose of dirt.
“Ready to go home?” he asks mildly, tucking the gloves into his pocket before he offers Yuri a hand.
“God, yes,” Yuri moans, taking the hand and pulling himself up, putting his hands on his lower back and stretching as soon as he’s upright. “I never realized how labor intensive gardening is. If I’ve ever said anything bad about people that do landscaping for a living, I take it back.”
Yuri scoops up his hat and basket of refuse, taking it with him to be disposed of properly. He places his hat back on his head, and slips his now empty hand into Otabek’s, beginning the short trek home. Yuri had moved in with him just last month, and while there are some things that have taken some getting used to, since both of them have been living alone for a long time, it’s the happiest either of them have been.
Yuri’s grandpa had been skeptical of their relationship at first; in an effort to make up for lost time, he likes to involve himself in every aspect of his grandson’s life now, and while Otabek would normally find the devotion sweet, he’s also developed an intense protective instinct over his twenty year old grandkid. Yuri mostly just finds it funny, never admitting that he somewhat enjoys the attention after years apart, but he’d put his foot down when Nikolai had started questioning whether or not it was too soon for them to move in together.
“He makes me happy,” Yuri had said, and that had zipped Nikolai’s lips faster than anything else possibly could’ve.
That he’d tried to give that same twenty year old man the sex talk not long after will live in Otabek’s memories as the day he’d had to stop Yuri from adding murder to his rap sheet.
“What’s with you?” Yuri’s voice breaks through the haze, and Otabek blinks, realizing he had been staring at Yuri as his thoughts had drifted. Yuri is smiling, though the edges of it are concerned, his eyebrows upturned in question.
“Nothing,” Otabek shakes his head, then pauses. “Just… I love you.”
It’s not the first time he’s said it, but it’s close, and Yuri’s ears and cheeks start to turn red from more than just exposure to the sun. He flounders a bit, still unused to sudden declarations like that, before he seems to find his metaphorical footing.
Yuri smiles, and Otabek’s heart beats just that little bit faster.
“I love you too,” he says, and Otabek knows just how hard that is for Yuri to say; because of his situation with his mother and then his grandfather, Yuri is always a bit reluctant to show his more positive emotions, some innate fear of being abandoned by the people he cares about that will probably never totally go away.
But there he is, trying to make it work, willing to drop his walls to let Otabek in, and Otabek comes to the staunch realization that’s he’s ruined for anyone else. It’s not as surprising as he feels it probably should be, but he knows he should wait a bit before telling Yuri; this is exactly the kind of thing that gets him all worked up.
As they walk home hand in hand, Otabek is content. The knowledge that he’ll tell Yuri when he’s ready to hear it is good enough for him; if Yuri can put forth that much effort to work it out, Otabek has no problem showing a little restraint.
He’s been waiting for Yuri since the beginning, after all. A little longer makes no difference to him.
Because Yuri is worth waiting for, no matter how long.