Chapter Text
When Yuri woke up, he knew something was wrong even before he opened his eyes. He was laying in a bed far too comfortable for Duel Academy regulations and covered in blankets far too warm for his shitty levels of body heat to combat his usually freezing room or the even worse nurse's office.
The foreign feeling of waking up peacefully had the reverse effect of putting Yuri further on edge than he ever had been before. With trained ease, he kept still and his breathing even; he listened to his surroundings and mentally cursed when he heard someone move closer.
"I know you're awake, dumbass," an unknown and brash voice said…fondly? Whatever it was, it wasn't a tone Yuri was used to hearing. At least from non-Dennis humans. Those were his least favorite kind of humans.
Still, Yuri didn't flinch, even though–to be honest–it was more from the surprise and embarrassment of being caught neigh-immediately rather than him having total control over his reactions.
"You are the wildest sleeper we know," the voice laughed. "Going dead still is a dead give away." Whoever they were, they sounded close, like they were standing right at his side.
Yuri moved to claw at them–an instinct he thought he had killed a long time ago but hey, he was kind of panicking, give him a break–but his body screamed in agony when he tensed to sit up, making him involuntarily jerk and let out a pathetic whimper. The hand he had managed to wrench out from under the covers he was trapped under dropped like dead weight as he went limp.
"Hey, hey, woah-!" the stranger exclaimed, "try not to move too much; taking an arctic ice bath's gotta be shit for the nervous system." There was a hand holding his and another one resting on his shoulder, not applying any pressure but Yuri got the message.
With a wince and a groan, Yuri blearily opened his eyes and squinted at the bright lights shining overhead.
"Want us to kill the lights?" they asked knowingly.
The casual and familiar way this stranger was talking to Yuri should've been deeply troubling, and while Yuri could acknowledge that, something about them was just as deeply comforting. They felt like the kind of people Yuri would deliriously dream about when he got sick: warm and kind, despite how much of a brat he acted like.
Yuri had barely hummed his affirmative when the bright daggers trying to cut up his pupils were indeed killed, dousing wherever he was in the warm afterglow of the sun. With the horrible lights off, Yuri's eyes were able to fully adjust and clear, making the blob of blue and yellow settle into a boy with Yuri's face.
In his foggy daze, Yuri raised his hand out of the boy's grasp–much to his apparent confusion; he's much more expressive than Yuri, it's weird seeing his face like that–and smacked it against the boy's face, not hard enough to fully smack him, but just enough for it to make a noise on contact.
"Rude," the boy pouted, not put off at all as Yuri poked and prodded his face. He looked a lot like Yuri, but the eyebrows were different; his eyes were just as sharp, but they didn't hold the malicious, dead-eyed stare that Yuri was stuck with as a resting face.
The more Yuri moved, the easier it got. With his hand at full working order, he grabbed the boy's chin and turned it side-to-side. His skin was tanner than Yuri's; he looked like he rarely spent time inside, what with his wind-swept blond bangs and unruly blue hair.
With shaking arms, Yuri let the boy go and pulled himself upright, shocking himself by not flinching when the boy moved closer to help and hold him up instead of backing off. Yuri pressed a hand to his forehead with a tight frown and a huff, as if the act of sitting up alone had been arduous.
As he got a better look at the room, he caught the door shutting abruptly but not who left and noticed two other boys standing close-by. Not close like the first boy–the one still holding him upright–but too close for societal social etiquette to approve of. Their faces were similar to Yuri's too, but not terrifyingly similar like the first boy's.
However, they were achingly familiar.
There was a striking emptiness in Yuri's chest he had stomped out years ago that was coming back in full force, just from looking at the three. He pushed away from the first boy and sat up fully on his own, almost curling in on himself at their openly concerned expressions and relaxed postures, like he wasn't a blood-thirsty monster.
"Who-" Yuri rasped, his throat dry from lack of use, making him hack up a lung as his body betrayed and forced him to show weakness in front of strangers on their home turf, "who are you people?"
The first boy handed him a glass of water as the second boy–who had the most obnoxiously endearing red and green hair Yuri had ever seen–asked, "You really don't recognize us?" and motioned between the other two.
In three gulps, Yuri had downed the glass of water and shoved it into the first boy's chest, making a disgruntled whine when he went to put it down. "More," he weakly growled, grabbing the boy's shoulder to turn him around and shove him towards the door.
"Hell no, you're not the boss of me," he laughed at Yuri's deeply depressed frown and put the glass down with a louder-than-necessary thunk like he was trying to prove a point.
Yuri sent him a glare with little-to-no malice behind it–he didn't know glares could even have no malice–and cleared his throat as he turned his attention back to the second boy. "You people look familiar," he said in a horrifying honest manner. It was like these people had full access to his heart with how easily they brought out the truth, "but no."
The second boy looked thoroughly heart-broken at his response, making Yuri's own heart jump in his throat in panic. Flashes of that boy tearing up passed through Yuri's mind faster than he could process them, but he got the jist. If he upset any of these three, he felt he would happily throw himself off a cliff.
The first boy pulled his mouth to the side in a frown and scrunched his eyebrows. He turned to the other two–entirely turning his back to Yuri, a show of trust Yuri hadn't ever seen from anyone other than Dennis–and shrugged, "I don't think that's that surprising? It's not like a knock to the head's gonna make him remember us."
Come to think about it, the back of his head was rather tender. He lifted a hand to his head and felt around as the three talked.
"Yeah, but it's not any less upsetting," the second boy said. "I know it takes a bit but, like- ugh" he groaned in irritation and ran his hands down his face, "I already went through this twice with you guys; I just want us to be okay again."
'What a weird thing to say,' Yuri absentmindedly thought as he moved on from his head to studying his hands, frowning lightly at how they shook. When the third boy spoke up, his deeper tone of voice struck a familiar chord in Yuri's heart. It was kind and warm, but held a power behind it that Yuri felt could protect him from anything. 'What a weird thing to feel,' he thought, holding a shaking hand to his chest in wonder.
"It's probably going to be tough getting him back," the third boy said, putting a reassuring hand on the second boy's shoulder, "if anything Dennis told us is true."
"Dennis?" Yuri looked up at the three, his eyes wide.
Dennis.
With newfound motivation, Yuri shot out of bed and knocked the first boy to the ground, shoving his arm against his throat threateningly–ignoring the loud voice in the back of his still aching head saying some bullshit about how 'fighting won't solve anything', whatever that meant–and growled, "What have you done to him?"
The door opened and Yuri's head snapped to look, his eyes wide and pupils shrunk into slits as the boy of the hour walked through the threshold with a fresh glass of water. "I suppose this is as good a time as any?" he awkwardly laughed, a tone that was so entirely foreign to hear from Dennis that Yuri blinked and shook his head in open confusion.
A more natural sounding laugh came from Dennis this time at the uncharacteristic surprise Yuri was showing. "I am shocked it took him this long to pounce one of you," he said, casually walking towards Yuri and the first boy like Yuri wasn't actively cutting off his air supply and held up the cup of water in silent offering.
Thirst that wasn't for blood–a foreign feeling, Yuri wasn't sure which he preferred–overcame him as he moved off the second boy's throat and took the water, downing it worryingly faster than the last one and putting it off to the side so he could neigh-tackle Dennis.
Dennis was slow to reciprocate since Yuri showing affection like this, in front of–to him at least– strangers, was less likely than getting struck by lightning twice in one week. Although…hadn't Jaden said something about one of his dads doing that…? With a shrug, Dennis accepted his odds and wrapped his arms around Yuri.
The third boy's words fully processed in Yuri's brain as he calmed down enough to think. "Dennis?" he mumbled tiredly. At the hum he got in response, Yuri asked, "What the hell have you been telling these freaks?" He had no evidence to call them that, but he got a carnal feeling that he had to insult them. They had technically kidnapped him as far Yuri knew, so it might be a fitting title.
A fitting title the first boy did not appreciate, but one that got laughs out of the other two. Again, they sounded terribly fond, like nothing Yuri had ever gotten in response to an insult. "Hey!" the first boy cried, jumping up from his place on the floor and onto the bed where he could make eye contact with Yuri from where the boy had tucked his face under Dennis' chin.
"Yugo!" a new voice from the doorway chastised, making the first boy–Yugo, apparently–yelp and throw himself off the bed with the fear of God in his eyes. This voice, while the others had been only distantly familiar, was horribly familiar.
Dennis felt Yuri freeze in his arms and pulled back a little, tilting his head at the wide-eyed, almost frightened look Yuri had. Yuri never got scared, not even during the slasher flicks Dennis found out he hates with a burning passion. He stepped to the side a little to let Yuri see who had come to the door, to let him see that she wasn't a threat.
But the moment Yuri locked eyes with Yoko, he teared up.
Dennis, in a panic, tried to hold Yuri's face and wipe away his tears with his thumbs, but Yuri dazedly knocked his hands away. He got the message and backed away from the two, standing at Yugo's side by the head of the bed to watch with bated breath as Yuri took a hesitant step forward.
"You," he said raggedly, "who the- who are-" but he couldn't find the words. As he stared at the woman in front of him, his brain ceased all possible function and filled with memories of the delusional, fever-induced dreams he used to get. Dreams of that woman, a man, and three boys–though one of the boys was usually just as sick as he was–taking care of him, leaving him devastatingly alone when he woke up alone in a cold dorm room. "What is this?" he asked in horror. "Where am I?" his breathing picked up and his heart raced. Yuri whipped around to back himself against the bed, leaving nothing but the wall behind him as he demanded, "Who the hell are you people?"
The terribly worried faces they had as his eyes frantically darted between the four–Dennis was a non-threat, no matter how scared he felt–only served to make his stomach churn with nausea.
"That is a surprisingly loaded question," the third boy huffed, watching Yuri crowd himself against the bed like a wounded animal with gentle and patient eyes. "Do you want the long or short answer?"
"Short," Yuri was quick to respond, his tolerance for long-winded explanations was nonexistent on a good day and this most certainly was not a good day.
"We're brothers?" was not an answer he knew what to do with, though.
At the nonsensical answer he was just back handed with, Yuri dropped his defensive stance with comical speed and cocked his head to the side, not unlike an owl, to say, "Come again?"