Chapter Text
Yuuri wakes up feeling like his head was run over by a small car, possibly more than once. His eyes are crusty, and the skin of his face feels stiff and stretched tight over his bones. He reaches up to rub the sleep from his eyes and feels fabric against his fingertips. Once he’s worried out loud that he was becoming jaded about the life of a vigilante superhero, but passing out without removing his domino is a new achievement. Clearly he has not yet plumbed the depths to which he could fall in the world.
He hisses as the light from the window filters through his lashes and tries to bury his face in the pillow, but the movement pulls twinges of pain from both his face and his injured bicep. Groaning, he rolls to the edge of the bed and sets his feet on the floor. At least he remembered to take off his boots before passing out this time.
His phone says its only 8:30, although he forgot to set his alarm, not that it matters since he doesn’t work today. He opens a new text message window.
Yuuri: help me yuuko i’m dying
He levers himself off the bed with his good arm, then hobbles into the bathroom and checks the mirror. The mysterious masked man squinting back at him definitely looks worse for wear - his black hair is sticking up everywhere from the gel he left in it overnight, and the skin around the edges of his mask has the distinct pinkish look of irritation. He left his contacts in overnight again, too. He’s a human disaster.
He closes the bathroom door, moves his now-dry costume clothes onto the back of the toilet, and starts the bath filling with hot water, knowing a soak and the steam will help. His phone, still on silent, is now flashing at him insistently.
Yuuko: Yuuri I’m at work what do you mean?
Yuuko: Do I need to call Phichit?
Yuuko: Are you joking? Or do I need to call Takeshi?
Yuuko: I’m going to call Takeshi.
He grabs the phone, hurriedly thumbing open the message thread. Joking about dying with a nurse was not his smartest move ever, although given his last twenty-four hours, he knows he could do worse.
Yuuri: no no no
Yuuri: don’t call anyone I’m fine
Yuuri: i’m just hungover
Yuuri: sorry.
He stares at the screen, waiting eagerly for the read receipt.
He jumps when someone starts banging on the front door. Oh crap, she did call Takeshi. Yuuri meets his own wide eyes behind the mask in the mirror. He can’t go to the door in the mask, but the steam hasn’t loosened the adhesive on his face nearly enough. He doesn’t have time to wait for the solvent, either. This is going to hurt.
He braces himself against the edge of sink, grabs one corner of the mask, and rips it off like a bandaid. Then he stuffs his fist in his mouth to muffle the noise he instinctively makes at the pain, eyes tearing. The knocking starts again, louder, and he pulls his fist from his mouth. “Hang on!”
He checks the mirror again, but luckily the pain left his face so bright red all over, not only where the mask had pulled off a layer of skin. It’s good enough. He runs to the door.
As soon as he gets the door open, Takeshi shoves a small bottle of ginger ale, a tube of crackers, and two packages of chicken ramen into Yuuri’s chest. He scowls, pointing one finger at Yuuri aggressively. “Don’t you ever freak Yuuko out like that again, hear? Especially not when she’s at work.” Yuuri can only nod dumbly, but his neighbor immediately sighs and drops the tension from his shoulders. “And don’t drink so much next time unless I’m there to protect you. I know how you get.”
Before Yuuri can even open his mouth to ask how he gets, Takeshi’s spun off back to his own apartment.
A little dazed, he shuts the door quietly behind himself, dumps the ramen packages on the counter, and takes the crackers and ginger ale with him back to the bathroom, where the tub is now nice and full. The blinking light on the phone indicates he finally has a text response waiting for him.
Yuuko: Take care of yourself.
Yuuri can’t help but smile a little, reading that. Yuuko’s a good friend to put up with someone like him. He takes out his contacts finally, which instantly makes his face feel much better. Then he carefully places his phone on the soap cubby in the shower and strips down to check the cut on his arm. It’s looking good, but it’s not quite ready for the water yet, so he wraps it in plastic once more, then slowly sinks into the hot water with a hiss.
The tub is small, forcing him to choose between having his chest well out of the water or sticking his knees up into the cold air. It's far from the onsen baths he enjoyed back home, and he’s hit hard by a pang of sadness as soon as he settles into the tub, thinking again of everything and everyone he left behind. He feels his skin tighten in reaction to the heat, but his muscles begin to relax.
He shifts his knees up to allow his back and neck to sink down beneath the water and stares up at the greyish, water-stained popcorn ceiling. With his ears submerged, he can close his eyes and drift to the echo of the dripping faucet, immediately taking himself back to the staccato memories from last night. He groans and the sound bounces back at him, reflected by the bathroom tile.
The first time he met his idol, and he really was an unqualified fuck-up. He’d practically said, ‘Nice to meet you, sorry about your dead parents,’ hadn’t he? And he’d tried to hand the man his drink instead of shaking his hand! He sinks himself further into the tub, the water lapping at the corners of his eyes now.
And of course, then he’d just gotten wasted, falling down, embarrassing himself so utterly that his host had to leave his own party in order to get Yuuri out of there. The other guests had probably been concerned he was going to vomit on the fake plants or something. He digs the heels of both hands into his eyes.
Why had he even agreed to go to the stupid party? He wasn’t a real member of the Justice Friends, as Aura and Lynx had both seen fit to point out. Lynx had even said it outright - as a member of the team, Yuuri is useless. Hell, Phichit gets invited on more missions he does, and Yuuri loves Phichit, but his superpower is that his hands makes lights that look pretty. But Phichit is a good friend. He’s dependable and knows how to be on a team. Yuuri is basically just a weird fan who won’t let go, and gets his ass beat by the bad guys every time he goes outside.
He takes a deep breath and puts his feet up on wall beside the faucet, submerging his face completely. His eyes start stinging when he opens them under the water. There must be residual soap on the tub from the last time he showered. He releases his held breath, watching the burst of air escape to the surface as bubbles.
He waits. His chest starts to feel uncomfortable, lungs burning. If he didn’t have a pounding headache, he might feel light-headed. He waits.
When he can’t take it any longer, he pushes off the wall with his legs, launching his head out of the tub with a great, desperate gasp of breath. The water from the overfilled tub sloshes over the side at the sudden disruption, drenching his bathroom rug well beyond what it can absorb. He leans back against the cool porcelain, still breathing rapidly.
His phone vibrates loudly against the plastic shelf it’s on, and he grabs at it without drying his hands. It’s ringing, but he doesn’t recognize the number. He swipes his hand uselessly across his equally damp chest and, after a couple attempts, manages to thumb the call to voicemail.
He puts the phone back on the shelf, only to hear it vibrate again immediately. He glances over, expecting one of those weird, cut off 10 second voicemails from a recording, but sees instead a text notification from the same number.
Unknown: Feeling ok today?
He frowns at the phone, and thinks back to the previous day. He basically never talks to anyone but Yuuko, Takeshi, and Phichit. Phichit had gotten that licensing deal and that new car - maybe he decided to get a new phone as well?
Yuuri: who is this?
Unknown: It’s Victor! :-)
Yuuri drops the phone in the tub.
He immediately scrambles to get it out, but the rug is practically as wet as the tub now, so climbs out of the bath and rushes to wrap the phone in his towel. The screen is dark. It’s not looking good. Shit, he doesn’t have insurance on it, and he certainly can’t afford to buy a new phone right now. He puts it on the side of the sink, wraps the towel around himself, and then takes the phone into the kitchen to find some rice.
Why would Victor be texting him? Why would he be calling him? Where did he even get Yuuri’s phone number? He mentally scrolls back through what he remembers of his interactions with Aura at the party: he got to pet a dog, and then he tried to hand Victor his drink, and then he mentioned his dead parents… Yuuri drags himself with force out of his own head and realizes he’s standing in his kitchen in nothing but a towel, staring at a bowl of rice. He’s not getting any new information this way.
He gets dressed and makes some of the crappy instant ramen that Takeshi brought over to get something salty and solid in his stomach, cracking his last egg into it as it boils for some actual nutrition. Payday is tomorrow, and then he can buy more eggs and rice for the week.
Watching the pot bubble reminds him again of his mom and the wonderful, authentic meals he could be enjoying right now if he were back in Hasetsu helping his parents, rather than running around in a mask on the other side of the world. Some days it feels like everything is conspiring to make him homesick.
With some food and water in his system, his head starts to clear a little, and he takes off for the gym.
-
When he gets home, there’s a note on his door in Japanese, telling him to let Takeshi know when he gets back. He rips it off the door and heads inside to rinse the sweat off. His laundry bin is full again already, between clothes for work that reek of popcorn and mold, and clothes for the gym that reek of sweat. He can tell the water bill will be a rough one this month, but its not like he can shower at the gym, where any of the other members could walk by and notice the bruising, the scars, the gash in his arm. He’s not making that mistake again, even if it would save both time and money.
Once he’s washed and dressed again, he knocks on the Nishgoris’ door. His fist is still resting against the wood when the door opens under his hand and someone reaches out, grabbing him by his collar to drag him into the apartment. Takeshi jabs Yuuri in the chest hard with his index finger while closing the door, trapping him with his back pressed against it. “Where were you? Where is your phone? People have been texting you!”
Yuuri rubs his chest where Takeshi’s aggressive finger had been stabbing at an old bruise. “Sorry, sorry. I dropped my phone in the bath, and it’s still drying out in my kitchen.”
“Ah,” Takeshi relaxes, and Yuuri suddenly notices the other man is wearing a floral apron, one he’s seen on Yuuko many times. He stares, absolutely thrown, until Takeshi notices what he’s looking at and immediately flails to rip it off, blushing furiously. “I had to wash the dishes,” he hurriedly explains. “I already dressed for work!”
Yuuri shrugs and looks away. It’s not like he was going to laugh at him or something, he was just surprised by it. Takeshi is a good dad, he knows that, but Yuuri rarely gets to see the gooey center of his tough exterior that Yuuko insists is there.
He stows the apron away, revealing the mechanic’s jumpsuit he was wearing underneath, then Takeshi turns his attention back to Yuuri. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but Yuuko has been texting me about you all day! She was very upset when you weren’t answering her, and apparently Phichit was texting her because he couldn’t reach you either.”
Yuuri bites his lip. Of course, Phichit left the party early, but by now he’s probably heard all about what happened from the other members of his team. God, he is not looking forward to that conversation. Could he be kicked off the team for being such an embarrassment? Could Phichit be kicked off because bringing Yuuri was such a mistake?
No. He pushes back against that thought immediately. No matter what, he won’t let Phichit lose out on his dreams over Yuuri, even if it means Yuuri needs to sacrifice his position with the team.
Yuuri’s startled from his thoughts by a warm mug being pressed into his hand. Coffee. He looks at Takeshi quizzically, but the older man just takes him by the shoulders, turns him around, and gently pushes him toward the living room. “Go spend some time with the girls while I finish in here, eh? Yuuko will be home soon.”
Yuuri nods and submits to direction. Axel, Lutz, and Loop are safely blocked into the living area with a significant number of baby gates covering every exit. Yuuri steps over the nearest gate and feels immediately that he’s entered a battle ground. There are no babies in sight, and that’s a problem, because the floor is littered with blankets, toys, and other soft, squishy things. Any one of these things could secretly be a baby.
He walks on tiptoe across the carpet toward the sofa, trying not to step on any lumps. He’s only a couple feet from sitting down when he loses his balance and, trying to salvage the coffee above all, lets his heel come down onto a small rubber giraffe, which retaliates the mistreatment by releasing a long, high-pitched squeak.
Yuuri freezes in place, eyes darting around the room. There’s no sign of moment, so he quickly covers the last couple steps to the sofa and sits down. From in front of the TV, a pile of blankets suddenly starts to twitch, then rises up and pulls back, revealing three small pairs of eyes. Yuuri takes a long sip of his coffee, and swallows. His fate is now inevitable. He surrenders.
When Yuuko gets home from the hospital a short time later, she finds Night Owl, vigilante menace and protector of the streets, sat cross-legged on her sofa with one girl on each knee and the third curled right up against his chest. All four of them are sound asleep.
-
Yuuri wakes up to Yuuko lifting the last sleeping baby gently off his chest, winking at Yuuri as she carts her daughter away to the nursery. He stretches, yawning, as Yuuko quietly closes the door to the girls’ room, then comes over to join him on the sofa, ruffling his hair fondly. “Yuuri,” she sighs. “I was so worried about you. Are you okay?”
“Ah, yes,” he ducks under her touch, playing along with a ritual they’ve had since childhood. “Sorry about the text this morning. And the dead phone. And also Phichit.”
“Good, good,” she says, her eyes crinkling as she smiles. “I’m so relieved everything is okay.” Then the smile drops off her face, and she jabs her finger into his sternum. Yuuri briefly wonders, as she hits the same bruise, if she learned that from Takeshi or the other way around. “But if you ever, ever worry me like that again, I want you to know that I will call your mother, Katsuki Yuuri.”
Yuuri gapes at her, stricken. “Yuuko, no.”
“Yuuko, yes. I’ll tell her everything,” she continues, practically hissing. “And Mari too. You could have been dead in an alley somewhere! I know I sound like a mom right now, but that’s actually a real concern with you.” She throws her arms out in frustration, then crumples in on herself, her face in her hands, and shakes her head.
Slowly, Yuuri reaches out and lightly pats her messy bun. He feels a shudder, like a sob, but he’s not sure if she’s crying or not. She looks up, scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands until they’re red, or they already were. “You can’t just ignore things like this as if no one will care if something happens to you, Yuuri,” she pleads. “At least pretend you believe we love you, okay?”
“Of course,” Yuuri says, rubbing her back gently. It’s good of her to keeping trying so hard with him, despite his failures. “Of course I believe you.”
-
After placating Yuuko with promises to knock on her door and check in physically until his phone is fixed, Yuuri finally makes some vague excuses and gets back to his own apartment to start prepping for patrol. He grabs a protein shake from the fridge for dinner and takes it to the couch, licking his lips to try to clear out the chalky texture.
He grabs his pants and coat from the bathroom, inspecting them quickly for issues. Both still have rips in the knees, and the arm. He’ll have to repair that before he can take them out onto the street. They should have been done this morning, but then the day hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. He shuffles through the various odds and ends on the table by the couch until he finds his sewing kit, turns the pants inside out, and gets to work repairing the tears while he finishes drinking his shake.
In the end, he can hold up two pieces of clothing with no more giant rips in them. The fixes aren’t pretty, but they’ll hold, and hopefully it will be a long time before he has to buy any new pants or coats.
He strips off his daytime clothes, laying them out on the bed, and steps into the cargo pants. Of course, no amount of sewing Yuuri could do would fix the t-shirt he had to cut off himself the other night. He heads to check the closet, thinking he might have a sleeveless black top that will do until he can get another pack of shirts from the store.
He’s still sorting through the closet, looking for a tank top, when he hears a tapping noise at the window behind him. This is exactly the sort of thing his father always warned him about as a child - you feed a pigeon or a stray animal once or twice, and they come around forever. Yuuri never really saw a problem with that, though.
He looks back over his shoulder to see which creature is begging scraps off him this time and sees - silver hair, blue eyes, magenta and gold. He feels like an American cartoon character, his jaw unhinged and pooling on the floor. Then he remembers he’s not dressed and wraps his arms around his torso quickly, trying to cover. But, he’s not wearing a mask either! Oh, god. He quickly puts a hand over his eyes. Now he can’t see. That helps.
He shuffles slowly around the bed to the window, peeking between his fingers. Proudly, he only bumps his shins on the side of the bed once before making it over to the wall. He pulls his other arm away from his chest just long enough to lift open the window. It suddenly slides open much more easily than it had before.
“Hello!” Aura immediately sticks his head through the opening, followed quickly by the rest of him. “Thank you for letting me in. Oh! I can look away until you get a mask on.” He straightens up, absolutely filling the room with the brightness of his very existence, but then stares deliberately down at the floor.
Yuuri watches him cautiously for a moment to see if he peeks, then backs away to dig a domino out of the closet and stick it on with spray adhesive. Safe, for some values of the word. Safe, but still shirtless. He frowns into the closet, and finally manages to spot a scrap of black fabric draped over the side of his hamper. Well, a dirty shirt is better than no shirt at all. He grabs it and pulls it on, then turns back to Aura. “Okay, you can look now.”
Victor raises his head and immediately starts looking around the apartment. He looks like one of the bad Photoshop manipulations Phichit used to make, standing in the middle of Yuuri’s disastrous studio apartment in his immaculate uniform and shining like a god. It’s like someone cut and pasted an image from one of Yuuri’s posters into a photo of his bedroom. The lighting looks off in reality.
Yuuri feels a sudden stab of panic, remembering he has posters of this person on his closet door. He subtly scoots backwards and nudges the sliding door he decorated behind the other, mirrored door as quietly as he can, hiding his shame.
“This is your apartment?” Victor sounds surprised, and Yuuri wets his lips to respond, but before he can try to explain away the size or the mess, the other man finishes with, “I love it!”
Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Victor’s house is enormous. He has rooms in his place twice the size of Yuuri’s entire studio, but here he is, walking around like he’s a tourist in an art museum, examining all of Yuuri’s sad, discarded things. All he can do is watch, uncomprehending, as Aura wanders through his space, picking up objects to look at them more closely. He only snaps out of it when he sees the silver head bent low to get a closer look at some of the photos on the fridge - photos of Yuuri’s family, and pictures of Hasetsu.
“Ah,” Aura jumps like he forgot Yuuri was still in the room until he heard his voice. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard here. Can I… help you with something?”
“Oh, right, yes.” The bright, curious look he’s worn since he crawled through the window melts off Victor’s face, leaving his expression startlingly blank. “I’m very mad at you.”
Yuuri can feel his skin tighten against the domino as his eyes widen. His stomach drops. “M-mad at me?”
“Yes, I’ve been texting you all day. I thought maybe something was seriously wrong with you.” Victor frowns, shaking his head. “But now I see you’re just inconsiderate.”
“No, no!” Yuuri waves his hands, then scurries over to the bowl on the kitchen counter, fishing his phone out of the rice to show Victor. “I dropped my phone in the tub when I took a bath this morning, so it hasn’t been working.”
Victor looks at the phone, then the bowl of rice, then back at the phone. He puts one finger to his lips. “I don’t understand. Why is there rice? Why didn’t you just buy a new phone if that one is broken?”
Yuuri blinks, dumbstruck. How exactly is he going to explain to Victor Nikiforov that a new cell phone would cost him nearly two months’ rent? Or that most people in general don’t just walk out and replace something like a phone immediately? It’s all a bit outside Yuuri’s area of expertise.
“Ah,” Victor says suddenly, smiling brightly once more. “This seems like a money thing. It’s okay; I’ll buy you a new phone.”
“No!” The other man looks struck back by Yuuri’s vehemence. He slips his phone back into the bowl. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s not necessary. The rice absorbs the water,” he explains. “It will be good as new tomorrow.” Hopefully.
“So you weren’t ignoring me?”
The memory of that rejected call tugs at Yuuri’s gut. “No, no. I’d have texted you back tomorrow!” Maybe. Probably not. “You really didn’t have to come all the way over here just to check on me.”
Victor tilts his head like a dog trying to make sense of human language. “Why not?” Before Yuuri can answer, he sweeps right along, “Well, maybe I am being a little ridiculous. Certain people would say I do that sometimes.”
He stops, eying Yuuri up and down thoroughly enough that he considers covering himself with his arms, ridiculous fears of x-ray vision in the back of his head. “Oh, but you’re dressed for a fight. Are you going on a mission?” Again, he pauses as if waiting for a response, but then runs right over the answer, “I should come with you.”
Yuuri flushes to the tips of his ears. “Oh, that’s - that’s really not necessary! I’m just going to walk around the neighborhood, rescue lost cats from trees, that sort of thing.” The only thing that could possibly make this situation worse would be getting his ass kicked in front of his idol.
To Yuuri’s shock, Victor begins to pout dramatically- lower lip protruding and trembling slightly beneath wide eyes. He has one of those faces that makes it very obvious that the puppy dog eyes are an unnatural and deliberate ploy. “But I came all this way. Surely you don’t want me coming out to this part of town just to waste my time?”
Yuuri is torn between his terror of being seen as he truly is by his hero and the years of training in hospitality and etiquette screaming from the back of his mind. The etiquette wins out. “Okay,” he sighs. “I guess an extra set of hands certainly won’t make anything worse.”
Victor claps, breaking out an authentic, dazzlingly wide grin. “Perfect! Tonight we’re a team of two.”
-
Yuuri generally considers himself to be someone who works alone. He’s made the occasional exception for Phichit, sure, and he’s popped up at Justice Friends missions once or twice, but Night Owl is a solo act.
So when he starts to realize he and Aura are working well together, the feeling fizzles through his limbs like a mild electric current. He goes out on his usual route, walking the alleys and mounting the fire escapes of the inner city maze he’s learned by osmosis in the past few years. Here, where he got a concussion after the victim threw a rock at him instead of the bad guy. There, where a group of homeless men sleep most nights when the weather’s good and will tip him off to bad actors in exchange for even just a little respect. Aura follows his lead, and Yuuri might not even notice he was there most of the time, if it weren’t for the part where he’s flying and also glowing constantly. Those parts are a little distracting.
On one street, they grab a guy in the middle of running off with a designer purse, and while Night Owl is tying the mugger up, Aura gets the bag safely returned to its owner. The grateful young woman, practically draping herself into Aura’s arms, begs for a kiss or at least a selfie with her hero and looks, frankly, a little put out when Victor makes her include Yuuri in the picture too.
Then, they help a store owner chase down a couple kids who grabbed beer from the store and took off. Aura obviously moves a lot faster than Yuuri could have, or any human for that matter, yet by the time Yuuri comes around the corner, the kids have mysteriously disappeared, leaving the six-pack safe at Victor’s feet. “I don’t know where they went,” Aura says, eyes too wide to be authentic. “It’s like they vanished into thin air.” They both pretend not to hear the distinct creaking of rusted metal on a nearby fire escape.
An elderly woman flags them down as they pass by her apartment and asks them for help getting some boxes out of her storage closet, of all things. It has to be Aura’s ethereal presence prompting that request, because contrary what he claimed earlier, Night Owl never actually gets asked to do things like rescue kitty cats from trees. After they move about a dozen hefty boxes of photos from the woman’s closet, she gives them each a fresh chocolate chip cookie and pecks them on the cheek.
All things considered, Yuuri is beginning to wonder if he didn’t hit his head earlier in the night, and everything since has been a weird concussion-inspired hallucination. He stares at Aura, who is hovering next to him, just a few inches above the ground, faintly glowing and probably getting melted chocolate chips all over his immaculate uniform. It briefly occurs to Yuuri to ask if he does his own laundry.
“I like this,” Victor says suddenly, between bites of cookie. “Your people here are very nice. No one ever thanks you for stopping aliens from blowing up earth.”
“They literally built a statue of you,” Yuuri points out, dumbfounded. “They gave you a key to the city. You met the President.”
“Yes,” Victor responds solemnly. “They didn’t make me cookies, though.” He looks legitimately disappointed by this. Yuuri was considering pointing out that his patrol is never like this - that the night has been quiet and easy, the people friendlier, and the problems less complicated than what he normally walks into. But there’s something about the way Aura looks, frankly magical as he floats through the night next to Yuuri, but simultaneously just disappointed to have run out of cookies. Yuuri can’t bear to snap the illusion for him.
The next couple blocks are quiet, so they cut through an alley between two warehouses, starting to circle back toward Yuuri’s apartment building. It’s like Aura’s very presence has been a talisman to bring luck to the patrol, and Yuuri’s starting to seriously contemplate the possibility of an early night home and a few more hours of sleep.
There are sounds up ahead of them in the alley. Yuuri can just make out indistinct male voices, the sound of a car engine, and music. Nothing about it is particularly suspicious if not for the hour and the location. Yuuri puts his arm out, stopping Victor short. “It’s probably nothing, but we need to check this out carefully,” he murmurs, glancing back over his shoulder. “Can you put out that light around yourself?”
Aura nods, dropping to set his feet on the ground like anyone else. As soon as he touches pavement, the glow disappears. His costume still isn’t subtle, but at least he’s not actively impersonating a night light anymore. Yuuri nods at him to follow as he slowly approaches the source of the noise.
There’s a big white cargo truck backed into an alley to their left, almost completely blocking the path. The engine is running, driver’s door propped open, and the radio is cranked. The squeal of electric guitars reverberates off the bricks around them. Yuuri crouches, moving along the hood of the truck to hide behind the door, then peers up through the window at the back of the truck.
There are three guys in the rear, loading something from the warehouse dock to the truck. Two of the men have a look that screams “hired muscle” or at least “club bouncer”, while the third guy is more slight, well-dressed, and standing up on the dock supervising while they handle the wooden crates.
From back here, Yuuri can’t tell what’s in the boxes. This could be a completely honest business venture, for all that it’s a bit late to be loading up shipments of stuffed animals and fresh flowers, but to know for certain he’ll have to get a better angle. He backs up to the nose of the truck, nods toward Victor to follow again, and then carefully climbs onto the hood, and from there up to the cab of the truck.
The riskiest part of this venture is moving from the top of the cab onto the cargo area. If the truck is mostly empty, it will echo any noise he makes by shifting his weight and alert the men below that something fishy is going on. He crawls onto the back of the truck and pauses for reactions, but if he made any noise it's overwhelmed by the classic rock riffs still emanating from the truck’s speakers. He lies down flat and creeps forward slowly, using his arms to drag himself along the roof of the truck. He glances back and finds Aura following suit.
After what feels like an eternity of drag and pause, drag and pause, Yuuri finally pulls himself just short of the end of the truck, where he can see the workers and their cargo from above. Aura arrives beside him a moment later.
As he watches for any sign of trouble from below, Yuuri finds himself distracted by the warmth of the man next to him. They’re lying on the roof of the truck mere inches apart from shoulders to feet. He adjusts his legs slightly to lower his profile, and their calves brush. Yuuri takes shallow breaths, imagining he can feel Victor doing the same beside him, synchronized.
The supervisor steps into the warehouse for a moment, and one of the goons below them calls the other guy over and starts to pry open one of the wooden crates with a crowbar. They’re speaking a language Yuuri doesn’t recognize. It bears some resemblance to Russian, but the faint creasing of Aura’s brow indicates confusion, not understanding.
The lid pops off the crate with a groan. It's full of straw, paper, packing peanuts, and also guns. Big guns. Yuuri looks over at Aura and finds him staring right back, looking more serious than Yuuri has seen him all night. This is definitely not a legal business venture.
One of the goons pulls a handgun from the crate and starts playing with it, waving it around like a total idiot who clearly never had a single lesson on gun safety. The supervisor comes back out of the warehouse with another dolly stacked high with crates and yells at him in the mystery language. There’s a lot of pointing and screaming, and more wild gesticulations with the hopefully unloaded gun, and then that crate gets sealed once again and loaded onto the truck with the rest.
Victor raises an eyebrow at Yuuri, questioning, but he just lifts his hand, signaling ‘wait’. They lie together, watching as the last few boxes are loaded into the back of the truck. Yuuri can feel Aura shifting against his side, having moved closer in the long stretch of minutes. He hides a smile in his own shoulder at the other man’s obvious impatience. Yuuri’s learned the importance of timing his moves to just the right moment to gain the advantage, while Aura clearly hasn’t needed to exploit that edge as often.
Finally, the last box lands in the cargo truck with a thud that vibrates the metal beneath them, and one of the goons drags the door down and secures it with a padlock. That’s when Yuuri gives Victor the go-ahead. With the same movement, he pulls his legs up under himself and flips off the top of the truck, landing mere inches from one of the gun smugglers. A brush of displaced air and a flash of light tells him that Victor’s joined him, and he glances over to see Aura facing down both the other goon and the supervisor. Two against one is more unfair for the two in this case.
Yuuri turns his attention back to his assigned baddie just as the guy throws a first punch, and he narrowly manages to duck, then kicks him in the knee. The goon immediately hunches over in pain, because Yuuri is very aware of his own strengths and weaknesses, and one thing he certainly packs is a damn solid kick. He tries to follow that up with a punch to the face and end the fight quickly, but his swing gets blocked. He feels his own head snap back as pain bursts through his left eye. Crap, that’s going to leave a mark, and black eyes are hard to excuse without looking suspicious. He staggers back for a moment, but uses his momentum to swing around, kicking his opponent’s other knee as hard as he can, then jumps out of the way as he crumples to the ground.
Yuuri sweeps the guy’s arms out from under him, wincing as his face hits the ground - possible broken nose, maybe even some teeth - then kneels on his back, pulling a length of rope from one of his pockets and quickly trussing his hands together behind his back.
He stands, wiping his hands on his pants, and turns to check on Aura. The other thug is on the ground already, out cold, leaving Victor facing off with the supervisor. As Yuuri watches, the glow which surrounds him dims and flickers, his feet touching the ground, and the enemy uses the opening to lash out, the single street light above the warehouse door glinting off the blade of a knife.
In a film this would all be happening in slow motion. The unexpected blade flashes in the light as Aura throws up an arm to protect his face, stumbling backwards, and then the sleeve of his uniform parts under the knife: first just a flutter of severed fabric, then the bloom of bright red, darkening already as it soaks through the cloth.
Yuuri feels himself go cold all over, and then his face flushes. He’s never seen his hero bleed before. Aura, too, is pulling back, staring down at his own arm like a foreign object.
Their opponent apparently doesn’t understand the significance of the moment. He darts forward in the same instant that Victor staggers back, still grabbing his own arm. Yuuri sees the enemy’s arm rising, and he knows what comes next. The knife is still in his hand, and in a moment it finds a new sheath in the space above Aura’s collarbone.
For once in his life, Yuuri doesn’t hesitate or question his own intuition - he runs. They’re only a few feet apart, but Yuuri crosses what feel like a gulf in an instant.
The bad guy’s eyes go wide and terrified as he finds Night Owl suddenly standing before him. He doesn’t have time to slow the downward momentum of his strike before Yuuri’s forearm meets his, blocking and then twisting, seizing his arm tightly and knocking the blade from his grip. Yuuri feels something give sharply in his own upper arm, but ignores it, driving the heel of his other hand into the man’s nose with as much force as he can manage.
The guy goes down hard, his head hitting the pavement with a dull thud.
It’s alarming enough to shake him out of the headspace he’s in, and he drops to his knees to check on the bad guy first, feeling at his neck for a pulse.
“Is he going to be alright?” Victor asks, his voice strained. Yuuri nods, the other man’s heart beat firm beneath his fingers. He’ll likely live to stab another day.
Then he looks back over his shoulder, and realizes Victor is clutching his own arm tightly to his chest, dark red blood soaking through the remnants of his sleeve, running down his elbow, and staining the pink and gold of his uniform brick red. Yuuri jumps up with a wordless sound and rushes to him, gently pulling his arm away from his chest for a closer look at the wound.
At first all he sees is blood covering the arm, and his stomach shoots into his throat. He swallows to calm the nausea, then turns the gash toward the street light, trying to see past the blood. As he peers closer, he watches the edges of the wound slowly reaching toward each other, the gash already knitting together at the outer corners to form new, pink skin.
He stares, fascinated at the sight of an injury closing right before his eyes. “Of course. You’ve got accelerated healing. I knew that,” he says dumbly. “I’ve just never even seen you bleed before.”
“Yes, I think that I forgot I could bleed myself for a moment there.” Aura laughs lightly, but he doesn’t sound anything like he did earlier in the night. Yuuri glances up to see the other man still frowning down at the slowly knitting tear in his arm. “It’s healing much slower than normal tonight. At first I thought maybe it wasn’t healing at all.”
“You’re not glowing anymore,” Yuuri points out, as if this might have somehow escaped Victor’s notice.
“No,” Victor is still looking away from him. “I guess I’m out of juice. Oh, no, your hand!” He reaches out to where Yuuri is still holding his arm up to the light, touching the back of his hand gently. His fingers come away red, blood running down Yuuri’s hand from under his coat, mingling with the drying blood on Victor’s arm.
He pulls away, remembering the sharp pull, the wetness he felt on his arm when he went to block the attacker’s knife. “Oh no,” he groans. “I’ve pulled my stitches. Yu- my nurse,” he ducks his head away from Victor’s curious gaze, flushing under the scrutiny. “She’ll be furious.”
“Stitches?” His long fingers are still resting lightly on Yuuri’s hand. He must have forgotten. Yuuri can feel the warmth of his blush creeping up the back of his neck to the tips of his ears. He has to let go and pull away.
“I guess you’ve never had stitches,” he says, looking anywhere but at Victor. There are still bad guys on the ground that need securing. He pulls more rope from his cargo pockets, tying the hands and feet of both of Victor’s opponents as he explains. “I got stabbed a few days ago. My nurse had to sew the wound closed to heal, but I pulled the stitches fighting, so now it’s started bleeding again.”
He pauses in the middle of tying up one of the gun runners. “Could you call the police and let them know where these guys are? We can’t exactly drop them off at the department right now.” Victor nods, pulling his phone from somewhere inside his uniform. His phone case matches his costume.
Within a few minutes, Yuuri can hear the faint sound of a siren approaching. The police must take Aura more seriously than they do Night Owl. “I don’t suppose you can fly us out of here before they get here?”
Aura shoots him a puzzled look, then bounces on his tiptoes a few times. Yuuri’s going to pretend that’s not how his hero prepares to take off. He doesn’t look to actually be leaving the ground at all, and after a couple particularly enthusiastic bounces he gives up, shaking his head. “I think I’m grounded for now.”
“Okay, we get back the old-fashioned way, then.” He waves at Victor to follow, then ducks into a adjoining alley, too narrow for cars to follow.
They start back in silence, just two men covered in entirely too much blood, limping through the shadows and the back streets to avoid notice. In this moment together, Yuuri finds a feeling swelling in his chest that they might be something he’d call unity, as if he were actually part of a team. He shoves the feeling down where it belongs. There’s no point in getting attached after only one night together.
As they pass by a small cluster of sleeping bags and tents, men with no safety to get back to, Victor suddenly speaks up again. “I’m sorry I can’t fly you back this time.” The light of a small fire set up in the homeless camp bounces off the gold in his uniform and the silver of his hair. The cut on his arm has vanished entirely, with only the dried blood on his skin giving away where the injury had been, but he still holds his arm close, like something precious.
“Is something wrong?” Yuuri asks, tentatively. “What did you mean when you said you were ‘out of juice’?”
Victor seems to abruptly notice he’s still holding his arm, and extends it, testing the movement. He brushes his hair back from his face as he thinks it over. “My powers, well, it's a bit like a battery, right? A solar battery. It’s not like I need to lay out in the sun nude to recharge or anything.” A shame, Yuuri thinks to himself, flushing at the image. “But I’m not normally out this late at night and using my powers this long. That’s why I can’t heal, or fly, or-” He gestures to himself in full.
“Glow?” Yuuri guesses, and Victor nods in confirmation.
“Although that part is really just a side effect of the rest of it. Despite what Lynx might tell you, I don’t deliberately try to impersonate a Christmas tree all the time for the attention.” He turns, winking at Yuuri deliberately. “Only sometimes.”
“I thought you looked like a firefly,” Yuuri muses to the pavement, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, but his insides freeze when he looks up, noticing Victor looking at him with curiosity and expectation. Somehow, Yuuri keeps coming back to this moment. “When I first saw you,” Yuuri explains, choosing his words with care. “In the news footage.” Maybe one day he’ll manage to talk to Victor for more than a couple hours without mentioning the day his parents died, but so far he’s batting zero for zero.
“Ah,” Victor looks up at the sky, although no stars are visible down here through the city’s light pollution, and Yuuri feels the weight of guilt settle in his stomach. Then Victor says, “That’s a lovely way to see it. At the time I had no idea what was happening, you know? I didn’t even notice the light when I was inside of it.”
“Now, I usually forget it’s there until someone reminds me. Humans really can adapt to almost anything.” They finally pass out of the last alley and onto a sidewalk, staying close to the wall in an attempt to avoid attracting too much attention. Even when Aura isn’t actively glowing, that’s hard to do. He’s just built to stand out. Yuuri imagines how odd they must look to the few people out this time of evening; one man tall, godlike, an explosion of rich colors, while Yuuri slinks alongside him like a rat that somehow befriended a champion show dog.
“You probably know this,” Victor continues, interrupting the spiral of his thoughts. “But there are a lot of theories about where abilities like mine come from - what causes this to happen to me, but not oh, that guy.” He points to a random man passing by them who, seeing two men in costumes and masks, covered in blood, immediately goes white as a sheet and freezes in place. They should probably have stuck to the rooftops and alleyways. “I find the explanations really fascinating. Some of the scientists say it must be genetic, but there’s been no evidence yet. Some theorists believe it’s the work of God, creating protectors for humanity.” He pauses, his gaze caught on the dimly illuminated stained glass of a nearby church, then murmurs, “and of course, there are others who would argue we’re not human at all.”
Yuuri’s encountered a few of the last sort through the years - people who believe even those who live as heroes must be created by evil magic, or the influences of sinister alien conspiracies. It seems impossible that anyone might meet a person like Phichit and see him as a creature of evil.
“Another theory is that it comes from trauma,” Victor continues, and Yuuri can’t resist watching the quiet look on his face as he speaks. He thinks of the old cliche about being willing to listen to someone read a phonebook. “In this version, they say we’re all walking around with this potential somewhere in ourselves, possible superhuman abilities just lying dormant in the corners of our minds. Then, something awful happens to that person, and it triggers something in the brain. Something just,” he snaps his fingers, the sound echoing off the buildings around them, “bursts open. And the power floods out.”
They turn the corner toward Yuuri’s street, and he can see the lights in Yuuko and Takeshi’s apartment like a lighthouse steering him home. “Is that what it felt like, a flood?” He still feels like this conversation is skating on thin ice, and he’s dangerously close to upsetting Victor when they’re just minutes from home, but he can’t resist the unfettered access he has to peek behind the curtain at this other life. He spent ages flipping through page after page of interviews, but he’s never seen Aura mention these things.
Victor is quiet for a long moment, and Yuuri starts to think that perhaps hei finally pressed the wrong button, but as they reach the base of the fire escape, he says, “A little bit, I suppose. There was a roar in my ears, and a light, and then,” he shrugs. “I honestly don’t remember much after that. I was too focused on doing what I felt I must do. I saw the footage the next day, like anyone else. Well,” he laughs, but it sounds forced. “I guess not like anyone else.”
Yuuri braces himself to pry the window open, but finds it slides quite easily now. He ducks through first, turning on the lamp by his bed for light so Victor can follow without crashing into anything in the unfamiliar room. Without asking, he goes directly to the kitchen and pours two glasses of water, then wets some paper towels to clean up the blood. Victor wanders after him, and takes the proffered towel from his hand, cleaning the dried blood from his arm. “That day wasn’t really the first time I used my powers, though,” he says, out of nowhere.
Yuuri pauses, his glass halfway to his lips. “No?” He can admit to himself that he was an obsessive fan. He watched every interview and bought every magazine Aura ever appeared in. The poster collection currently hiding in his closet is only a fraction of the merchandise he left back at his parents’ home. His inner fanboy is convulsing with joy inside his heart at all this new data.
“It had been going on for months,” Victor shrugs. “Not like that day, but little bursts I barely even noticed. I kept shutting the doors too hard, and then I fell in the driveway and afterward my jeans were torn and stained, but I hadn’t even bruised. I only started to add it up later.” Yuuri nods, moving to the living area and absently picking up a few things he left on the sofa earlier, in case Victor wants to sit and talk longer. It’s getting late. “It was more like I was sitting on the shore with my toes in the water, and then that day, someone just pushed me in.”
“What about you?” The questioni stops Yuuri short, his hands full of old cups and sewing detritus he cleaned off the couch. “What was it like, when your powers first kicked in?” Victor elaborates, as if maybe Yuuri just didn’t hear him at first.
“Excuse me,” Yuuri whispers through the rushing in his ears and the building heat behind his eyes. He can’t do this here, not now, not in front of Aura. “I have to just-,” he drops everything back on the couch, walks quickly to the bathroom, and shuts the door none too gently behind himself. The bolt on the door slides into place with a click that reverberates off the shower tiles. He can hear Aura asking him something through the door, but he can’t make out the words. He drops onto the bath mat. When your powers kicked in? When your powers kicked in?
He can feel his own heart pounding against his ribs, and his breath comes faster, harsh and audible in the tiny room. He tries to fight it, to slow it down, but the effort makes him gasp and cough, choking on air. The heat behind his eyes boils over, tears rolling down his face. It’s so horrifying, but something cracked in his chest just wants to laugh. This whole time? This whole time he was excusing the others for not liking him. Of course they didn’t want to drag the ordinary human into most of their fights. They just knew he couldn’t keep up. That was fine. That was understandable. He was a liability, just one more bystander in need of protection.
But this? Victor didn’t know? Did none of them know? If his life before was what he got with everyone thinking he was one of them, what happens now? He can hear someone tapping on the door, and Victor’s voice, but he’s not ready to hear the words still. He folds his head into his knees and lets himself shake apart.
Gradually, he focuses on his breathing, still loud and fast, hitching with sobs. He had a therapist once, back in Hasetsu, who taught him a few techniques to calm himself in emergencies. They usually don’t work. He tries counting anyway: five, four, and then there’s a tapping on the door again. He closes his eyes tightly, pressing his forehead to his knees. Five, four, three - it’s knocking now. He covers his ears with his hands and starts again - five, four, three, two, one. He takes a deep breath and holds it. Five, four, three - the knocking gets louder, and Victor’s voice has climbed into the range of distress. Yuuri doesn’t have time for this.
He knows it’s not the healthy solution, but he also knows it will work. He puts his hand over the wound on his arm and digs his fingers in.
The starburst of pain, pink and white behind his eyelids, makes him gasp. It also clears his head immediately, sharp and overwhelming against the other thoughts. His surroundings leap into focus. Good. Well, not good, but useful. He can hear what Victor is saying now. “Night Owl, please.” He mutters something after that, but Yuuri can’t quite make it out. Then, louder, “I just need to know if you’re okay. Phichit isn’t answering his phone and I don’t-. I don’t know what to do right now. Please don’t make me break your door. I’m not even sure if I can right now.”
Yuuri takes another deep breath and removes his fingers from his arm. “Just a minute,” he says, still choking on the aftereffects of his crying jag. He climbs up from the floor, using the cold porcelain sink as leverage to pull himself to his feet, and takes a moment to splash cold water on his face and blow his nose. It’s not going to do much to fix the redness around his eyes, or the blood he knows is probably soaking through the sleeve of his coat. Good thing he wears black.
He stops to take a few more breaths as he braces himself against the sink, until the pain in his arm becomes just a throbbing ache. Once he feels he can’t put it off any longer, he opens the bathroom door. Victor is practically flat against the door frame, eyes wide and hair in disarray. “I’m sorry,” he says before Yuuri can even start to speak. “I was just talking about how trauma can spark things, but I wasn’t even thinking when I asked.” He reaches out, taking Yuuri’s free hand in both of his. “I didn’t mean to remind you of something upsetting.”
“No, you didn’t do anything.” Yuuri reluctantly pulls his hand away. He can barely look Victor in the eye. He certainly can’t say this while holding his hand, but he knows he has to be completely, brutallly honest. As with his mask, it’s better to tear off the band-aid.
“I don’t have any powers,” he says, forcing the words out into the open and cringing as Victor’s lips part in surprise. “I never have. I thought you all knew that.” He swallows down the frustration he feels both with himself and the situation, then blinks back the impending tears from the corners of his eyes. “I understand if this… changes things with… my status on the team.” He licks his lips, and looks up at Victor through his lashes, feeling something burning through his limbs like a current. “But if it means you don’t think I can keep up, well, what does it say about all of you that I’ve been able to keep up for this long to begin with?”
Victor covers his mouth with both hands while Yuuri watches him warily. He can feel the beginnings of a blush warming his cheeks at his own bold declaration, and an apology starts to form on the tip of his tongue. Before he can fumble to excuse himself, Victor drops his hands to grab Yuuri’s again, pulling him closer. Yuuri finds himself suddenly so close to his idol that he can feel warm breath on his cheek, staring up into wild eyes and a blinding smile. “I know exactly what that says,” Victor says, rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand distractingly. “It says that you are even more incredible than I thought.”