Chapter Text
Perhaps if the pirate crew of the Hasetsu had chosen to raid Governor Yakov’s mansion on any other night, things would have gone differently.
As it is, Katsuki Yuuri— captain of the Hasetsu—finds himself holding a cutlass to the pale throat of the one and only Viktor Nikiforov.
“We told you to STAY ON THE SHIP,” Yuuko is hollering to his right at the triplets, “why won’t you listen?”
“Mama,” one of the teenage girls says petulantly, “Mama, we captured Viktor Nikiforov.”
“We wanted a high-profile hostage, and now we’ve got one!” Another triplet, Lutz, agrees.
“I never said I wanted Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri inserts quietly. Of any of the high ranking people attending Governor Yakov’s dinner party, they had to choose Viktor. “We promised we would hold the governor hostage until our demands were met, and I intend to fulfill that threat. Specifically that threat.”
“About that, captain,” says Nishigori sheepishly, “Governor Yakov kind of… escaped. Some of the naval military men managed to get him out of his mansion.”
Yuuri unconsciously tries to steady his sword arm, because it shakes. “You’re telling me that we successfully raided Governor Yakov’s mansion… and he escaped.”
“Ah,” Nishigori says with a wince. “Yes.”
Yuuri wants to wince too; Minako will be displeased. This had been her plan. But there’s something more pressing, more worrying than all of that, because there is only one logical option left to the pirate captain.
And that’s taking Viktor Nikiforov, decorated naval officer and his longtime idol, hostage aboard his ship.
Do it, the Minako in his mind commands him.
“Captain?” Yuuko questions.
“We’ll take him,” Yuuri says. He could almost swear that Viktor smiles, blue eyes crinkling at the edges.
“So starting today,” Viktor says in a voice that is low and melodic, “I’ll be your captive.” Yuuri motions for Nishigori to bring him a cloth bag for the man’s head, a rope for Viktor’s wrists, with the hand not holding a cutlass.
“Yes, Officer Nikiforov,” he replies quietly, “yes you will.”
“Tie me up and have your way with me, then,” the naval officer sighs, and Yuuri is incredibly grateful that immediately following this statement, Yuuko pulls the cloth bag over his blue eyes.
Yuuri had enrolled in the navy at sixteen, as soon as he was able.
He’d been enchanted since he was twelve, though, when a naval fleet had stopped by his small seaside town. The shine on the boats, the crisp organization of the officers, had captured his attention.
Viktor’s swordplay captured his heart.
“Come here,” Yuuko had whispered, pulling on his hand. “The navy members are sparring for fun near the old castle.”
And there he was, long silver hair pulled back in a ribbon, elegance and grace contained within a stiff naval jacket. Anyone that dared spar with him was decimated by his speed, the technicality of his movements, the variety of his style. Yuuri and Yuuko had watched for hours, entranced.
Joining the navy had partially been because organization and honor suited Yuuri. It had mostly been because he wanted to see Viktor again, to know him.
But then Yuuri had to go and ruin everything with his first navy mission failed, and come home disillusioned and disgraced. The chance to ever speak to Viktor Nikiforov, to lead a normal life, had been pulled from him in a drowning riptide.
Or so he thought.
After the Hasetsu escapes the harbor and makes her way onto the open sea, Yuuri and Minako have a brief meeting before deciding how to handle the Nikiforov situation. Then, they go collect him from the triplets (who have the tied-up officer perched on an old crate, posing, while they try to sketch his likeness) and move him below.
“Here’s where you’ll be staying,” Yuuri says, swinging open the door to the small cabin.
“I get a cabin,” Viktor says flatly.
Yuuri tilts his head at him. “…Yes? Where else would we bed you? We can’t just let you lay out in a hammock in the main area unsupervised, you could wreak havoc at night.”
He watches the other man’s eyes rove over the small room, the bed with sheets and Viktor’s jacket folded neatly at the foot of it.
“We’re locking you in,” Minako adds in firmly, and with a nod to Yuuri she’s sauntering off down the hallway.
“Sorry about that,” Yuuri adds absentmindedly. He pulls a wooden box from beneath the bed, revealing several worn novels. “To entertain you when you’re locked in. I know they’re not much.” He taps at the cover of the book on top. “Try this one first.”
Viktor’s laugh rumbles behind him, and the captain flushes. He turns, raising an eyebrow in quiet challenge.
“Do you treat all your prisoners with this harsh depravity?”
“We don’t usually take captives,” Yuuri admits.
Viktor leans forward, expression amused. “These lodgings simply won’t work for me. I have to be put up in a better room.”
Yuuri’s brow twists. “You get your own private cabin,” he says incredulously. “Most of the crew doesn’t have that. The only room bigger is the captain’s.”
“Oh, I’d be willing to share,” Viktor hums, and Yuuri is trying to puzzle out this statement when the naval officer makes his move.
Viktor’s fingers are on his wrist, then, gently encircling it, pressing their faces close in the cramped quarters. On reflex, Yuuri darts back into the cabin wall with a thump, his heartbeat pounding uncomfortably in his chest. Too close! Too close too close, too—blue.
“No?” Viktor questions softly.
“N-no,” Yuuri garbles out, and he manages to squeeze past the other man, locking the door behind him and collapsing against the outside of it.
Minako had predicted this, had used her foresight. Yuuri, he could try to seduce you for his freedom. You have to be on your guard.
Yuuri hadn’t needed to be told. He already knew. Knew, just how dangerous and appealing Viktor Nikiforov was. Knew how weak he was personally to those charms. Knew how ridiculous it was to believe that Viktor would ever take an interest in him, especially now, as a criminal.
It doesn’t make pulling away any easier.
There is a light rap on the door.
“Yuuri,” comes muffled through the wood. “Yuuuuuri.”
The pirate captain stands, and flees.
The Hasetsu is a terrible pirate ship. Katsuki Yuuri is, without a doubt, the worst example of a swashbuckling and merciless pirate captain that Viktor has ever encountered. Neither of these things are insults.
The Hasetsu is cleaner than most navy vessels Viktor has commanded. This appearance is soon partially explained by the constant and quiet cleaning of one of the ship’s crew, a flat faced woman with a bandana with a pipe between her lips. Viktor is fairly sure she only cleans so much to avoid other duties on the ship, but it works out.
It is completely explained when Yuuko brings him aboveboard one evening and he sees the captain himself scrubbing at a spot on the deck, on his knees, hat tilted and face absorbed in the task. His eyepatch glints in the sun.
“Cap’n likes to clean when he’s nervous,” Yuuko explains, as though this is any explanation for the leader of a ragtag crew to be handling such a menial job. Nervous? “There’s a storm due this afternoon—it’s sitting on the horizon now.”
There is, apparently, no job too menial for Katsuki Yuuri. He lithely climbs the rigging with the triplets, wanders about the deck with a dried snack in his hand and a map in the other, and accompanies Yuuko occasionally when she mans the crow’s nest.
“Ah,” he says on a rare day when he fetches Viktor to walk him about for exercise rather than Yuuko or Nishigori, “we’re stopping ashore in a town today, so you’ll have to stay in your cabin most of the afternoon.”
“You’re pillaging a town,” Viktor realizes with a sinking heart. This is something he knew would likely happen eventually, because no matter how much he approved of Yuuri, pirates were bound to be pirates, but the other man gives him a strange look.
“We just trade,” he murmurs quietly.
Admittedly, Viktor had not heard many tales of horror about the Hasetsu from the common folk. It was all from men of the navy, trying hard not to quake in their polished boots, about the Hasetsu looming sudden and black on the horizon before half of their cargo was gone, their men bloody from swordfighting. One had sworn that the captain didn’t seem human, his cutlasses singing so quickly through the air.
“Hey,” a long haired woman, youthful and obviously athletic, greets as she emerges from belowdecks to find Yuuri and Viktor at the ship’s railing. Viktor remembers her dropping off some of his meals, so possibly she’s the cook. “I was actually thinking that we shouldn’t leave him here. Let’s take him into town. What do you think?”
Yuuri waves a hand, hesitantly frantic. “He’s too famous for that, Minako. Everyone will recognize him. And what if he escapes?”
“You’re not going to let him escape,” the woman replies, rolling her eyes, “I taught you better than that.”
“All… right,” Yuuri sighs, pinching at his nose. The exchange is respectful, that of near equals, and Viktor feels curiosity tighten in his gut.
“She’s your lover?” He questions after the woman disappears again, and Yuuri’s one visible eye widens, jaw dropping.
“W-what? Minako?” Yuuri does not seem interested in being more forthcoming, just expects his utter surprise to answer the question, but Viktor waits. “No! No, Minako is… Minako is like my second mother. She was on the Hasetsu before me; after I came back from the navy she—“
He cuts off, eyes darting over to Viktor, flinches when Viktor opens his mouth for another question.
“Oh! So do you have a lover, then? In this town where we’re stopping? Do you have lovers in all the seaside towns?”
It is clearly not the question he had been expecting. The captain is a red mess, gripping at the railing and looking vaguely like he’d rather fall into the ocean than continue the conversation. “No,” he finally grits out.
“Ah, only past lovers then,” Viktor prompts, and Yuuri just groans and manages,
“I have no words for you on that subject.”
“Then let’s talk about my lovers!”
“Back to your room,” Yuuri says firmly, louder than his voice usually goes.
There’s something about being on land again, the lack of constant swaying movement and salt air, that makes Viktor feel sick, trapped and immobile. Nothing like when he is on a mission at sea, when he’s manning a vessel with the wind kissing roughly at his cheeks, the spray of the ocean coating his skin, the horizon endless before him. He is an excellent captain, a legend in his time, and he’d headed many navy missions.
Recently, even being at sea with the navy had begun to feel limiting.
So Viktor is not too grateful for the land beneath his feet. He is, however, grateful for the chance to see Yuuri’s crew in action. They’ve come ashore in a cove a mile or two away from the bustling town, and Yuuko soon returns with news that Yuuri listens raptly to from the deck, petting softly at the monkey sitting atop his shoulder. Viktor thought he had seen a small figure darting around the rigging earlier, but under Yuuri’s palm the creature is docile, clinging with a small hand at the captain’s pinky. Yuuko finishes her report with an excited flourish.
“Vicchan,” Yuuri says, gesturing, and the monkey hops from his shoulder and clambers away into the depths of the ship. The crew gathers, besides the woman that cleans, and Yuuri leads the chattering group into town, to… well, Viktor’s not exactly sure.
He’s not sure until they approach the skeleton of a building. An older man steps forward, shakes Yuuri’s hand firmly.
“Thanks so much for offering the manpower,” he says, “most of our young’ns are away in the military or navy, so this… just, thank you, captain.”
Yuuri waves dismissively, blush dusting his tanned cheeks. “Not a problem, sir. It’s nothing.”
Then the pirate crew spends the rest of the morning and afternoon constructing a house. Viktor would hardly call it nothing. He watches the group work for nearly half an hour, gaze lingering on the captain, especially when he peels off his coat in the morning sun, before Viktor comes to his senses and begins to work beside them. Only when the house begins to look like a home do they stop, and the older man in charge invites them back for dinner, offers them supplies.
“You’ve done this before,” he accuses Yuuri on the walk over to the man’s residence. They’re passing through the town market, the triplets eyeing booths from the corner of their eyes. “Everyone knew exactly what was happening.”
“Hmm?” Yuuri picks at a splinter in his palm, distracted. “Of course. Anytime we come ashore we look for work, so we can eat and drink well. Plundering corrupt merchant ships or the occasional navy vessel doesn’t happen that often.”
“We have to conserve our funds,” Yuuko adds.
Viktor’s musing over this information when there’s a dreadful noise from a nearby market stall.
The monkey emerges, an orange clutched in his grubby hands, and Yuuri gasps, pushing past Viktor. “Vicchan!” A woman with a broom is chasing him, hollering, and Yuuri bows low to her as the monkey scampers up his leg. “I’ll pay for anything he took, ma’am.” Pacified, she returns to her stall with a heavier purse, and Yuuri returns to Viktor’s side, hissing at the monkey. “You can’t just steal things that aren’t yours from people. I told you to stay on the ship. If you’re hungry you come to me!”
Then Viktor is laughing—laughing hard enough to clutch at his stomach.
“What?” Yuuri asks, flustered.
“You,” he says, shaking his silver head, “you are the worst pirate I’ve ever come across. You have the morals of a priest.”
Yuuri flushes, bites his lip, and stubbornly turns away. Vicchan chitters from his shoulder.
Viktor ignores the urge to take his hand before the group continues on its way.
Their host owns an inn. And a bar.
Minako settles beside him at the bar, throwing back rum with Yuuko and Nishigori with ease. Yuuri’s herded the triplets and the blonde cabin boy at a nearby table, drinking—Viktor tries not to laugh—milk. At some point Yuuri ventures over to them, and Viktor hands him a new pint.
“Oh,” Yuuri hums thoughtfully, handing it back, “I try not to drink.”
Viktor tries not to laugh again. “You’re a pirate captain… that avoids rum.”
It’s lovely, to see both of his eyes. They crinkle in amusement. The patch comes off when they come ashore, apparently, though the captain’s hat remains.
“What,” the other man begins, “does that really surprise you?” Viktor leans forward on his stool, and Yuuri leans back.
“Yes,” Viktor admits. “But so do a lot of things about you.”
That—that gets him a smile. A small one. It’s different, off the ship, when he’s not being put belowdecks anytime it becomes too tiresome for someone to watch him.
It’s different, with Yuuri.
Viktor finds he doesn’t mind coming ashore at all.
He minds being aboard the Hasetsu less after a few weeks, when most of the crew realizes that the great naval officer Viktor Nikiforov is mostly harmless and apparently has no intention of violently fighting for his freedom or grabbing weapons at any opportunity. After a month, he’s essentially allowed free reign, except at night.
But his favorite activity, by far, is being allowed to spar. Convincing Yuuri had taken a surprisingly short amount of time.
“I don’t mean to sound conceited,” he says one day, as Yuuri finishes teaching Minami (that’s the cabin boy’s name, apparently) a few steps and some swordwork on the starboard side of the ship. “But… we could spar? I could teach you some of my footwork?”
Yuuri squints at him. “You’d be willing to do that?” He asks, and oddly quiet and breathless. “Even though I’m a pirate?”
“Of course,” Viktor exclaims.
Watching Yuuri correct Minami’s form was nothing compared to watching the captain in action himself. Viktor had been the most talented with a blade in the whole of the navy, and he can barely hold Yuuri off. It’s the other man’s style—free, spinning movements. A deathly dance. Naval officers always fight predictably—a counter when he tries this move, a parry if he appears to do that move—but Yuuri is different. Yuuri is more.
Yuuri is beautiful.
Viktor wonders where the form originates, and when he manages to disarm the captain at last, pressing his practice blade with a playful smirk to the man’s chest, he finds out.
He’s pinned to the ship deck before he can think—is Yuuri really that fast—and Minako is drawing blood from his throat with a dagger, pressed over him, eyes sharper than steel.
“Minako!” Yuuri is gasping, and Viktor doesn’t dare to look. He likes his neck the way it is.
“You hurt Yuuri,” she says lightly, “or you escape him, and there will be worse things coming for you. Do you understand, officer?” The sharp pressure on his vocal chords lets up, just enough for him to whisper out an assent. Viktor understands everything, now. Minako had not just been onboard the ship before Yuuri; she had been its captain. Likely one fiercer, more heartless, than Yuuri could ever become.
“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says, rubbing his back in soothing circles when the former captain of the Hasetsu has left, “Minako is… protective.” Viktor has faced more horrific men and women. He does not need Yuuri’s comforting, his hand on his back and then his neck, clicking his tongue at the thin line of blood on it that’s now drying. Viktor doesn’t need those things. He still encourages them, still presses ever closer, till he can see himself reflected in Yuuri’s one brown eye, in the blackness of the wide pupil.
“Let’s spar again, sometime,” he offers, still propped up in Yuuri’s arms, “at least until we fix your bad habit of overrotating into your thrust.”
“Okay,” Yuuri murmurs, hand slowing on Viktor’s back, “okay.”
He learns the cleaning woman’s name in an unfortunate way. Yuuri stops and holds a brief conversation in another language as she mops one afternoon, and bids her farewell, wandering off. Viktor, ever eager, remains for a moment to tell her goodbye as well.
Her lip curls up in disgust at the sound of it. “My name,” she says, “is not Nee-san, not to you, Nikiforov.”
“I… what?” She nearly hits him with her hair as she turns and walks away, and he has to ask Minami for clarification.
“Huh?” he says, “Captain and Mari are siblings, obviously. Nee-san means ‘sister.’”
Viktor stares with dawning horror between Yuuri— all soft lines and worried face, staring at the horizon from the upper deck— and the pipe-smoking, expressionless woman, the one he’s come to be wary of second only to Minako.
“No,” he murmurs in disbelief.
“Oh,” Minami chirps. “Oh, yes. Her name is Mari, by the way.”
Mari delivers him dinner in his room that night. It is cold.
But it’s the last night he has dinner alone, in his room. Yuuri, the next evening, leads him to the rowdy galley. “You can eat with us,” he offers, and then jerks suddenly, staring resolutely at the floor. “If you want.”
“I do,” Viktor assures him. There, he thinks, there’s the smile.
One morning, after they come ashore for a day and take off into the night, Viktor is treated to furious hollering and screaming from belowdecks. Reluctantly, Yuuri stands from where he’s been perched on the railing beside Viktor.
Mari comes above deck, dragging a blonde boy. Oh, Viktor thinks, Oh no.
“I found a little cat running around belowdecks with the rats,” Mari smirks, tossing the teen towards Yuuri.
“Can I… help you?” Yuuri asks. “Why would you become a stowaway?”
“Don’t think I don’t recognize you,” Yuri Plisetsky growls. “I’d know your ugly face anywhere. I should’ve known you’d be stupid enough to become a pirate!”
“I didn’t know,” Yuuri says mildly, looking up at the lazy clouds in the sky, “that you were stupid enough to hop onboard a pirate ship and assume we wouldn’t put you to work.”
“Hah?”
“We’re not going back ashore for a week,” Yuuri explains. “I can’t have you eating my rations without putting in anything.”
“I’m not staying here for a week, I’m just here for Nikiforov—“
Minami slaps at his leg in excitement. “I moved up the ladder!” He squeals. “New cabin boy, new cabin boy!!”
Yuuko pats at Yuri’s shoulder sweetly. “It’s not really up to you, I’m sorry. Don’t worry, there’s plenty to do on a pirate ship!”
Such a murderous look on such a young and angelic face seems wrong. Well, at least the blonde makes sparring practice more interesting. He’s navy—blazing his way through the ranks, the next Viktor Nikiforov, or so Viktor had heard through the grapevine. He’d come for Viktor, to take him back to the navy from his captors, and seemed to believe besting Yuuri in a swordfight would somehow grant him control of the ship. He talks about it proudly for most of the week, and the rest of the crew humors him.
“I can’t wait to mutiny,” Mari deadpans. “Thank god you hid yourself in a barrel on Monday, Yurio, or we’d be trapped with this tyrant forever.”
Talented or no, Yuri still can’t handle the captain.
At the end of the week, Viktor almost feels a pang of regret, when they leave him standing and screaming at them from a dock. Yuuko looks on, wiping happy tears from her eyes, because he’d become company for her in the crow’s nest most nights, when he wasn’t helping out in the kitchen. Mari lights up her pipe and takes a particularly long drag; she’d miss him too. She was the one that had dubbed him Yurio.
“I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of Yurio,” Viktor warns, and Yuuri laughs, shifts closer to him.
“I agree.”
Yuuri doesn’t sleep as much as he should. Minako constantly and gently berates him for this, but he can’t help it. He sends Yuuko off to Nishigori and the triplets many nights and sets up in the crow’s nest himself.
It’s calming, up there. It’s calming to try and see the future coming for him, to control what little he can after the mess he’s made. Up there, he can feel comfortably alone, cloaked by the night sky and the light crashing of waves on the ship’s sides.
When he’s not in the crow’s nest, he practices his footwork. All of his steps, his styles, his cutlasses shining in the moonlight.
“I’m tired of reading,” Viktor says one night, when Yuuri is locking him into his cabin after a long day out on deck together. “I’m curious. What do you do at night?”
Somehow this means he has company, on his long nights in the crow’s nest. Viktor’s been with them for nearly four months, now.
“So,” Viktor says, eyes on the stars, silver hair glowing with moonlight, “how did taking me captive work out for you? Are your demands going to be met?”
Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut in muted shame. “Ah. They said to give them time. Apparently your parents are throwing their political weight around, as well as the navy’s upper levels of administration, so it shouldn’t be more than a year.” He bites his lip until it draws blood. “They miss you. I’m sorry.”
Viktor waves the thoughts away, eyes still to the sky. “Don’t be. My parents have never really had to fret over me before. They were glad when I joined the navy.” He pauses, shifts closer. Yuuri is hyperaware of it, feels the heat pulsing up through where their hands brush. “What about your parents? Mari is your sister—which I o know now, after an embarrassing mishap.”
“They’re home,” Yuuri says quietly. “In what’s left of home, anyway.” Viktor doesn’t ask. This is something he’s learned. “The war was… devastating. The navy and the military took most of our youth, left us with children and the elderly. Now there’s nobody left to defend home, and nobody to give it much life.”
“To defend it? From pirates?”
Yuuri almost laughs. “From the navy,” he releases quietly. A hand lands atop his own.
“Yuuri,” he says, gently. “Yuuri, what do you mean?” His thumb is making small circles, and it’s so hard to think through the haze of pleasure such a small motion brings to Yuuri.
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. Where is your hometown?”
Yuuri tries to take a calming breath. “Eastern border.” Viktor’s grip tightens, almost harsh, before it loosens, and he’s taking Yuuri’s cheek with his other hand.
“It’s true, then. That the eastern division is corrupt. I’ve never been assigned there, but I heard the rumours. I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad; I’ve been at sea too much. Yakov assured me they were trying to clean it out.”
“I was—“ Yuuri stops again, trembles. Viktor doesn’t need to know. Viktor doesn’t need to hear about his failures. “I’ve seen it.” From both sides.
“Those are your demands, aren’t they?” To end the corruption. To replace the leaders. “This is why you’re a pirate, as moral as you are.” They only take on wealthy merchants that sell weapons. Navy vessels and other pirates that instigate a fight. Yuuri nods into his palm, brown eye closing. Viktor reaches for his eyepatch. “Mm. You don’t need to wear this at night. It’s to help you see belowdecks during the day.”
“Viktor,” the captain breathes in completely unconvincing protest.
“Yuuri,” he responds pleasantly. Then he leans in. Lets Yuuri close the final gap himself. But it’s Viktor who pushes him onto his back, who expertly urges him to open his mouth with wet pressure and light brushes of fingertips on his neck. Viktor that swallows his gasps, who seems to want more.
Yuuri has to tell him. Has to make it clear. “I can’t free you,” he blunders, panting, when he pulls back for a moment. “I can’t, Viktor, I can’t. I wish I could. No matter how much you kiss me, that won’t change. It’s not up to me. This isn’t for me.”
Viktor is framed by the night sky, stars dancing and swaying behind him. His gaze burns through Yuuri, through the linking of their eyes.
“I know,” he says, slowly. “That’s not why I’m kissing you, Yuuri.”
His blood is singing and rushing in his veins. High tide. “What?” Impossible. It’s impossible.
Viktor kissing him had been impossible, too, but now it’s happening, again and again. More heated every time, until he’s sucking bruises into Yuuri’s neck, Yuuri’s hands gripping helplessly at silver hair.
Eventually it slows, kisses in time with the gentle lapping of waves.
“I hope I’ve convinced you,” Viktor says then, “I hope I’ve made my dastardly and underhanded escape plan very clear.”
“I can’t,” he whispers.
“I want out.” Viktor dips close to Yuuri’s ear to say it, and he shivers.
“Viktor—“
“Get me out of that cabin, captain, I’m begging you.” Are his teeth on Yuuri’s ear? “I already told you that the lodgings are terrible. I need a better bed on this ship.”
Yuuri laughs, his muscles collapsing into a relaxed and sated buzz, pressed below Viktor’s body. “I’m sorry. That’s the best the Hasetsu has.”
“Lies.” He nuzzles into Yuuri’s neck. “You said the captain’s room was the best.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” Viktor agrees with a roll of his hips.
Usually, it delights Viktor’s heart to discover exactly how honest and moral of a man Katsuki Yuuri, pirate captain, is.
“Yuuri,” he complains with everything he has in him. The door to his tiny cabin room is almost shut, a pair of brown eyes peeking through from outside, shining dimly in the night.
“I’m holding you captive,” Yuuri insists with a shake of his head. “You could feel pressured. It’s absolutely not right.” He closes off the room.
“Don’t leave me alone,” Viktor half wails, flopping onto his bed, and the door pops open once more. Viktor’s heart buoys with the motion.
Vicchan darts in, chittering. His hands root through Viktor’s hair.
“Goodnight,” Yuuri says firmly through the shut door.
They’ve plundered approximately two merchant ships in Viktor’s time onboard the Hasetsu, and he was belowdecks for that, but they pull up next to a ship one day while Viktor stands beside Yuuri at the wheel, and the naval officer has to admit he’s confused.
Boards slide between the two ships, Yuuri tapping at the wheel impatiently, and then a young man with dark skin and a blinding smile is bounding across one of the planks and shouting Yuuri’s name.
The captain goes to him, leaving Viktor to man the vessel. His smile is uncontained, and the two embrace.
It’s not a merchant ship, Viktor realizes. They’re from the neighboring country’s navy. The dark skinned man blabbers at Yuuri for several moments cheerily before turning his eyes to the deck.
“Seriously?!” He exclaims, turning back to Yuuri, “you kidnapped Viktor Nikiforov?”
“Stole him away from the world,” Yuuri mumbles, but Viktor can see the words on his lips. Something warms in his chest.
“Indeed,” Viktor calls cheerily.
“He doesn’t look very… kidnapped,” the other man says dubiously. “Is he steering your ship?”
“Never mind that,” Yuuri replies hurriedly. “I’m just really glad to see you, Phichit.”
“Me too!” Phichit cheers, “I’m so happy my best friend has taken to being a dashing pirate rather than some stuffy naval—“
“Enough, Phichit.” There’s warning in his voice. “Where’s Celestino?”
“Captain Ciao Ciao is belowdecks right now, but I’m sure he’d love to see you. And do we have news. Meeting you today is fate.”
“Why?”
Phichit leans in, and Yuuri’s eyes widen.
Seeing the way the rest of the crew reacts as Yuuri moves between them, placing his hand on shoulders and murmuring quietly, Viktor knows without being told.
There’s treasure to be had. The Hasetsu is going to take it.
Phichit approaches, eyes him from a few feet away, watching his hand sit steady on the wheel. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I hope you understand that my country’s navy doesn’t typically cavort with pirates.”
“No,” Viktor agrees, “this pirate crew is special.” He pauses, grip tightening on the wheel, knuckles white. “What else is so special?”
Phichit laughs, eyes glinting with promise.
“The treasure is called the Cup of China.”