A/N: I wanted to try something really messy for fun. Just a babble of words with no preparation. I'm kind of sick of outlining so I free wrote this so I wouldn't take my frustration out on my other stories. I think I should have chosen a different subject…

Well, let's see what hell I can create for these lovelies at one in the morning.

The name stares back at him. It sees through him and right into his inner core. The vibrant red stains easily into the paisley patterned wallpaper, a giant smear of cut edges spelling out a name he's all too familiar with. A name that is on the entire city's lips. A name that is in every newspaper, talked about on every news station. A name that haunts Viktor all the way into his morning cup of coffee.

EROS

The taunt draws a scoff from his partner as Georgi glances over at the mess on the bed. "Think we can get them to call this a serial now?"

Viktor wants to say yes, but this is their fourth body, a fourth victim left with EROS freshly stamped onto their scene, and their department was still investigating other avenues. But that's okay, he thinks. It keeps them from looking too deeply.

"You see the body yet?"

He hasn't, but it doesn't stop his mind from conjuring up the images, every gory detail printed onto the backs of his eyelids. He knows it's going to be the same as every other body Eros has left behind. It's just another poor soul lured into bed where he or she has been slain horrifically. A life ended all too soon.

All of the victims are younger than him and his partner. A college student, a waitress, a new father. This one is a resident at the hospital downtown. Had wanted to become a surgeon, or so his residency badge indicates. Pictures around the apartment tell of the people he left behind. Friends to be interviewed. A girlfriend they are currently consoling, her heel prints a frantic, bloody pattern underfoot. Viktor focuses on one picture of him, smiling in his graduation outfit, arms around two middle-aged people - parents that they will have to call in the dead of night.

This is his fault.

The stench doesn't get to him anymore, but the metallic tang curls through his nostrils and finds a home in the pit of his stomach where his guilt lies. There's a sound, a drip, drip, drip of blood that creeps up Viktor's spine. It's a familiar tapping sound that Viktor remembers from his most recent intimate encounter and that, that makes him regret eating steak, medium rare, for dinner.

The lone lamp in the room is on the floor, the shade propped in the corner and leaving the light in a funnel that zeros in on the bed and the body it holds. Most of the body. The flashes of cameras illuminate the rest.

The man's smile is long gone, torn apart as his jaw now lies on the floor next to his severed foot. The dead pupils of his eyes are rolled up into his head, no longer shining with the unbearable relief of finally making it through school. His body is bare, only covered in the slick maroon that streaks the entire room. It matches the gown in the picture.

There's a strange artistry to the way the victim is laid out. Like something he's seen before. Many times. But he can't put his finger on it. It serves as another mockery to him. He's supposed to know. It's a clue. Personal to him and him alone, a shallow whisper spoken in a tongue only he comprehends. Eros left this for him. A mismatched Picasso of a man, body parts splayed around his empty torso that lays in grotesque repose. His heart, the ugly organ, no longer pulsing, lies in his hand, out in offering. This Viktor feels the significance of.

Should he take it? Or reject it?

Viktor memorizes every detail of both the happy, lively man and the beyond dead shell left behind. A part of Viktor wants to shut down, grows hysterical in a dark corner of his mind where Eros whispers to him. Tells him things he already knows.

This man lost his life because of him. It's his fault. All his fault. Because he knows. He knows who did this. And he does nothing.

He does worse than nothing.

He goes home to his cozy, one room apartment, and sleeps beside him.

There is an invisible shackle around his neck.

That shackle is love.

He meets Yuuri first.

Yuuri is the type of person that a first glance underestimates, all wide glasses and an awkward smile. The second glance can steal your breath. He serves coffee - a mochaccino with a twist of cinnamon topped with a little bunny he crafts from milk - and it melts Viktor from the inside out. Chris has been nagging him to come to his coffee shop for weeks and now he knows why. There's an angel awaiting his worship working right beside his crafty devil of a friend. Viktor leaves his number on the five he slips into Yuuri's hand. Yuuri doesn't notice and it takes three more failed attempts before Viktor outright asks him to lunch.

"Me? You want to go out with me?" Yuuri asks, flabbergasted like his brain cells just burst with the outrageous idea. He looks around expecting there to be someone else more deserving of the invitation.

Viktor nods, finds it endearing, if not a little frustrating because finally, he gets it. "Unless, of course, you find me unsuitable." He grins that grin that Chris calls panty-dropping, flicks his hair for emphasis. He's pulling out all the stops, desperate and his lips tug down nervously at the corners as Yuuri's still processing. Yuuri laughs and Viktor feels the earth shift beneath his feet. God, he wants to bottle up his laugh and keep it forever. He's savoring the sound, indulging in its crispness, when he remembers himself, looks up and finds that Yuuri is laughing at him.

"Does that," Yuuri makes a poor attempt at flipping the ends of his short hair as he smirks, Viktor thinking, now that's panty-dropping, and bats his eyelashes, (wait, did he do that?) "usually work for you?"

Viktor's heart flails in his chest.

Yuuri is his soulmate. No doubt about it.

Yuuri embodies happiness, spreads joy with quiet praises and open honesty. He hums to himself and writes song lyrics about the openness of the sky, waxes poetic about Viktor's heart-shaped smile. "You can't be that much of a stranger to love," Yuuri says as their swapping stories over tea on a park bench, "when it's written in the contours of your face."

Yuuri strokes his cheek with fingertips that Viktor marvels over when they're strumming a guitar for a crowd in Chris' little coffee shop. Only when I'm with you, Viktor thinks. And doesn't stop thinking until he gets a new case.

He meets Eros at a club not too long after.

Viktor's there to calm down, to shed the layers of professionalism off on the dance floor, to wash out the color of blood from his eyes with neon lights and the bitterness of alcohol. His lips are on the beginnings of a second vodkatini when he spots him. A caterpillar turned butterfly, glass barrier gone, hair slicked back, shirt half buttoned and pants tight at his hips. He walks with so much beckoning that it nearly makes Viktor fall out of his chair. Viktor almost can't believe that it's Yuuri, doesn't until he sees him do that thing with his lip that Yuuri does when he's nervous, usually right before a performance at the shop.

He's electric on the floor, his moves sparking the attention of everyone in the vicinity. Like a magnet he draws people in only to turn them away with a cold shoulder as he moves on to the next. Viktor can't stop watching, and then it's Eros that's watching, over a shoulder, eyes smoldering like enflamed coal in the flashing lights.

"Yuuri," he gasps after Eros makes it to him, kissing him breathless without a single word. His hand's on Viktor's thigh, inching up with dancing fingertips.

He bends low, voice whisky-rough in Viktor's ear, "Eros," he says pointedly, and Viktor plays along. A dog strung along by the promise of a bone.

Viktor says the name, over and over. In the club as they grind their bodies together in a dance that never seems to end. In his bed as he feels Eros pulsing inside of him, as he's brought to the edge of his sanity over and over again.

Yuuri doesn't remember anything in the morning. Viktor is horrified, thinking he took advantage. He didn't know Yuuri was that drunk. Didn't know he was drunk at all. Yuuri soothes him, tells him that it's fine. He's been wanting him for a while now, guesses he just needed a little liquid courage to take the plunge. He's only sorry that he can't remember any of it. Viktor makes it up to him, showing him exactly what he missed as he plays Yuuri's body to its highest note.

The name is discarded. Forgotten. Left in a dank corner to rot with old memories until he sees it on a victim's wall three seasons later. It's a coincidence. Has to be. He tells that to himself even as he finds out that Yuuri has no alibi. That he and the victim went to the same club two nights before. That Yuuri thinks he went to bed early that night and again remembers nothing of the name, this person, this Eros.

Viktor doesn't ask anything more, never can. It would make everything real. No going back. Yuuri is Yuuri. Viktor recites this when his conscience makes itself known.

Viktor doesn't meet Eros again until it's too late. Until he's in so deep with Yuuri that it no longer matters. He'd sell his soul to the devil to keep his love in his life.

In a way, he already has.

The sun streaks golden light through the window, shining in his eyes and blinding his vision white. Viktor goes to close the blinds, but something catches in the corner of his eyes. Eros' fourth victim flashes in his mind and he turns, staring at the large abstract painting Yuuri had gifted him for their anniversary. There's something to the globbed patterns, the inky blackness taking on familiar shapes. The crest of a jaw. The angular jut of an elbow. When Viktor realizes the significance, his hands race to cover his mouth, as if to cover his screams.

Eros decided to gift him something, too. A direct accompaniment to Yuuri's present.

Viktor stands there and doesn't resist the choked gasp that shatters from his throat. Yuuri comes in the room, greets him with a sweep of an arm across his shoulders, a sensual touch across his collarbone. It's all wrong, his brain thinks, but he's too horrified to listen.

"You like it?" A breathy catch in his ear, warm air twirling the fine hairs on his neck.

Viktor's head turns to look at him in short, jerky movements. He knows what he'll find, but he doesn't want to see it. "You're not Yuuri," is all he can say, a whisper that's a roar in his head. Eros smiles back at him and it's so wrong. He wants that shy giddiness back. That careful warmth that's tender and endearing. Not this predatory leer that strips him naked.

He should draw his gun. But it's locked in the drawer at his bedside.

He should draw his gun. But it's Yuuri he'll be killing.

Eros knows this. It's in the gleam of his eyes as he breathes through Yuuri's mouth.

"I gave you my heart, Viktor." He tugs on Viktor's shirt, a dip of fingers caressing the ribs of his chest. Viktor can feel the inky crimson that once stained them, the heavy liquid slipping off and onto his shirt with a drip, drip, drip. "Won't you take it?"

Viktor runs to the bathroom and this time he vomits. When he sits up and flushes, he jumps at the man beside him. But it's only Yuuri. His Yuuri.

"Oh, Viktor. Are you okay? Are you sick?" Yuuri scrambles for a washcloth, wets it with heated water before he caresses it against his flushed skin. "Here, I'll make you some ginger tea. Don't move."

Yuuri doesn't know.

Viktor can't tell him.

Viktor's nightmares used to consist of lost suspects and a build of mutilated victims.

Now all he sees when he closes his eyes is Eros standing over him, grinning as he peels back layer after layer of Viktor's humanity along with his skin. He should be screaming, but he's not. He can't feel the pain, his nerves dull to the assault. He doesn't try to run, doesn't move, squirm, writhe. His body is still on the table, lifeless even as he blinks against the blood dripping from his lashes. Eros peels his chest back, cracking ribs open and tearing through veins with a purpose in mind. When he reaches his heart, Viktor passes into blackness.

The next thing he sees is Yuuri beneath his own fingertips. Yuuri's blood is on his hands, his body cut open for the world to see and examine. His brilliant light is snuffed out by Viktor's actions.

This time, he screams.

Viktor wakes to an empty indentation beside him, sheets a stale coldness. The neon numbers next to their bed catapult him out of his sleepy haze as he thinks of why his darling lover would be up at such a godforsaken hour. He wouldn't be. Unless it isn't his darling at all.

He stumbles out of bed, shivering in his half-dressed state and pulls on the first things his fingers find. He doesn't know what he'll do, where he'll go. He's stupid, so stupid, because he should be ready for this by now, have an alarm, a guard dog, a bell, some form of prevention in place. He can't keep this on his conscience forever.

He can't let Yuuri go, either.

They have a predicted predation zone. Viktor will start there. Maybe Yuuri, Eros, is still prowling, still on the hunt and can be stopped before anything begins. He hopes, wishes, prays to any divine or cosmic being out there that tonight isn't the night that everything ends. The night that this half-dream half-nightmare comes to a grinding halt with a bullet and a body bag and-

Oh. Viktor stops, half in the shadow of the entryway, one arm through his coat, the other with a gun at his hip. His Yuuri is there, out in the apartment's courtyard, lazing on one of the last grass patches left in this winter torn city. A lone friend to the teeth-chattering cold. Viktor's heart beats back into his chest as he slips his gun into the back of his pants.

Yuuri's scribbling down notes as Viktor makes it to him. He doesn't peek, respecting a privacy Yuuri doesn't have. Someone is always watching.

A hand on the raven's back asks the question and when their eyes meet, Viktor remembers why he's yet to do anything. That smile tears him apart easier than any blade Eros procures. "Just felt the moment," Yuuri says, as he stares up at the orange moon cradled in mist and shadow. Viktor gazes out, chewing on what Yuuri could be seeing. He's always amazed by the beauty Yuuri finds in the mundane.

A silence finds them, coats them in its protection even as Viktor feels its knowing judgement. Eros lurks. He may not have surfaced tonight, but what of tomorrow? What happens when Eros slips out and he doesn't wake? Or if he does? The answers choke him quieter still.

"I went out with Phichit today." Yuuri's words are shaky as he speaks them, but his pen strokes persist. Every dip and arc of ink is a wonder to Viktor, who keeps himself from imagining how that wrist flicks with a knife. He wants to hear one of Yuuri's songs. Listen to one of his poems. A guitar strum. A piano note. Not the tapping of the back of his pen as the gears turn in his head. "I can't remember a single bit of it."

It takes a moment for Viktor's thoughts to center. His Yuuri doesn't remember, not a thing of an entire outing with one of his best friends. Viktor should have noticed that something was off that night at dinner as quiet had replaced idle chatter. Usually Yuuri recounts his day to him, but he hadn't. Just sat quietly chewing on his pen cap as he ignored his plate.

Yuuri doesn't look as scared as Viktor thinks he should be. He's troubled by it, nibbling on plastic as his fingers rest on frayed pages, but he's not terrified like Viktor. Comfort bumbles on Viktor's tongue, lost to fear, uncertainty, but Yuuri doesn't need his assurance. He works through this on his own.

"Maybe I'm just getting as forgetful as you." He smiles, shrugs and knocks himself over into Viktor as he curls into his side. Viktor smiles down at the crown of Yuuri's head like that settles it. As if he's not going to spend days wondering if it's Eros he's talking to, and not his precious Yuuri. He slips a hand around Yuuri's waist and pulls him in closer. They sit staring up into murky gray until they retire.

Viktor doesn't sleep for the remainder of the night.

Yuuri has always had low self-esteem. It's there, sometimes with his anxiety, a precursor, and sometimes it's like a spindle that weaves out hopelessness. Leaves him listless in bed where he hardly stirs. Viktor worries, but he knows that time eases Yuuri out of these funks. He lays beside him, holding his pieces together as he's quiet, while he pours forth burdens in the form of tears, as he laughs through an episode Viktor doesn't understand. Viktor's not as helpless through this as he is with Eros and he takes comfort in that. Makes Yuuri dinner with a smile. Takes time off even as his lieutenant hounds him through the receiver.

He wants to be with Yuuri until his sun shines again.

But this episode lasts. Yuuri talks, sitting up against the headboard and staring down at fingers that haven't held a pen or pick in days. He talks about how easy it would be to still, how quiet everything would be in his head, how abandoning the world doesn't seem so hard. He wonders if things would just end abruptly, like the big bang but in reverse, or if he'd lose everything slowly, pieces of him picked apart until there's nothing left. If he'd lose the memories of the things he loves most first, the smell of coffee as it percolates, the sound of wind chimes twanging in the twilight, the feel of sand within the creases of his toes, the taste of a snowflake, the sight of his beloved losing himself in the pages of a novel. Or if they would be his last thoughts.

Viktor feels the tears before Yuuri finishes. He doesn't know if it's Eros or Yuuri talking, a veiled threat or a cry for help. Either way it leads Viktor to taking Yuuri in his arms, holding him tighter. Yuuri's lifeless in his hold, pliant, moving as if there are strings attached to Viktor's fingertips that yank Yuuri this way and that. Viktor whispers into the hollowness of Yuuri's cheeks and the dark under his eyes. His words are all flat assurances, sweet nothings, because they are all he has. His only sword to cut away the demons, forged from devotion and adoration and love.

He'll call Phichit the next day, maybe Ketty, and Kenjirou, too. Yuuri needs light in his life. Not this darkness. Viktor will overwhelm Yuuri with love. With all of those people, those things, that will be unreachable in death. Even if he has to give him himself.

He's more than okay with that.

Another body surfaces and this time Viktor's had it. He keeps thinking that maybe things will change. Maybe if he loves Yuuri hard enough, if he holds him tight enough, Eros will be suffocated out of existence. Eros proves this theory wrong with another corpse. Viktor sees it as a slap in the face, a personal affront and he can no longer stand idle. The time of death only makes a rage build as he stares into the face of a woman who is flayed open expertly. Twenty-two hours before. He remembers seeing Yuuri off to work. Viktor had checked his shift schedule, knew what days he was working so he'd tell a lie if he heard it. He wasn't home to see that Yuuri had come back late. Had come home after severing every vein this woman had to offer.

There's no clue this time. He runs his mind over the room until his nerves are frayed and his cells fizzle. Something simple clicks and he kneels down to take Eros' newest victim in at an angle that arches his back and twists his neck. Her index finger's straight when the rest of her body is curved and disjointed, a direct arrow towards the bathroom. Viktor enters, not sure if he'll find anything or if Eros has burrowed himself so deep into his brain that his own reality has become distorted.

He sees it. A mistake. Something that tumbles his intestines on the heavy cycle. He bends to snatch up the damning piece of evidence that's tucked neatly beneath the floor mat. The driver's license trembles between his fingers so much so that he nearly drops it. He fumbles, lets out an escaped cry because it's Yuuri in his hands, why Yuuri when Eros does the killing, and gains Georgi's attention.

"Everything alright?"

Viktor's heart makes the decision for him as he nods, slipping the ID into his coat pocket and trading it for his phone. "I missed my Yuuri's call." He acts devastated, though it's more than just a performance at this point.

"Ah, young love," Georgi muses, a stupid smile on his face even as his eyes glint with loneliness. "I had a love like that once…"

Georgi's latest spiel goes unheard as Viktor retreats back, thoughts pounding his brain into mush. Eros made a mistake… Was it a mistake? Viktor wonders upon this as he makes his trip home. It's all too deliberate, the placement of the body, the ID in his direct line of sight. Maybe Eros was testing him, his devotion to Yuuri, to him, while making Viktor an unwilling accomplice, utilizing Yuuri as the hostage. If so, what next? Was Eros going to keep making Viktor clean up after him? Force him to become some kind of monster like him? He wasn't a monster. Could never become one. Right?

The questions dizzy him, cobwebbing his thoughts as the license sits like a rock in his pocket. Weighing him down. Pulling him under until the sky is unseeable and only the abyss, Eros' playground, awaits him.

He's furious when he makes it home.

He's not sure what to do first, coax Eros out or just start screaming. Viktor's stopped as he finds him in the kitchen, knife in hand as he's slicing tomatoes. A pot's on the stove, the glopping of boiling bubbles a background to the hiss of the blade on the cutting board. The knife tears through flesh without a sound. The speed and precision of the blade is a dead giveaway to the person he's facing. In a way, it's a relief. He doesn't have to wrench Yuuri into this world, not yet.

"You're late," is what Viktor's met with. The saccharine tinge to his voice grates on Viktor's last nerve and he unloads.

"Why?! Why do you do this? What fucked up reasoning do you have for taking such a pure, perfect person and forcing him into this… this… madness?!" The driver's license flicks out of his hand and hits Eros between the shoulder blades. He doesn't jerk, doesn't start. The card slips to the floor without interruption and the blade keeps chopping. To the next vegetable. And the next. "I don't understand what you are or why you do these things, but I won't let you do this. You can't… He can't… Yuuri can't-"

"Kill?" Eros finishes for him, uses the word that was searing itself to his tongue. It slithers out of Eros' mouth. Viktor doesn't like it, even spoken in question. He cringes, and his shoulders hunch up, protection from the onslaught of his own shame. The rage swiftly decays. Confrontation doesn't taste right when he's terrified.

"Where is Yuuri?"

Eros sets the knife down and turns toward Viktor slowly, lips curled on one side, and levels a look on him, examining him. Viktor suddenly feels preyed upon. A little late, he supposes, to think that now. He's been prey since that night in the club.

"In a maze of brambles in our mind." Our, like they share the space, both renting it out and splitting the pie, equals. Not one in control, presiding over the other. Their dynamic is a question that is answered then. Eros thinks of them as partners, but Yuuri is none the wiser while Eros sees and knows all. The imbalance is as blatant as night and day. "He's fine. Where do you think he is when I'm working?"

There's so much Viktor should say. So much he has to press back upon this creature that holds both him and Yuuri in a vice. And yet he can only inquire, "Is he safe?" From you. From this conversation. He could only imagine if Yuuri ever found out what he'd done, trapped behind another persona or not.

"For now."

The response draws a full body shiver from him and as Eros stares at him, desire flexing his pupils, Viktor steps back into their kitchen wall. Distance is only an illusion as Eros has become an all-consuming part of him, but Viktor tries futilely to gain some semblance of it.

"The only person that has the power to hurt Yuuri is you, Viktor."

The words are like a promise. Viktor feels the full weight of them as they push him down to the floor and punch out any resistance he might have once had to this unspoken deal he's made.

Eros turns back around, scraping the knife deliberately across the glass as he resumes. Viktor sees trust in the motion. For all Eros knows, he could pull his gun up and shoot him right now. Maybe he wants Viktor to shoot him, lusts after his own death the way he delights in others'. But, no, he knows that Viktor can't, let alone won't.

Viktor's surprised that it isn't Eros that kills him. Turns around and carves him open with that kitchen knife. He's skilled enough. Powerful enough to overtake him. Eros could have killed him long ago. There have been countless opportunities. In their bed. That night at the club. Right after he and Yuuri met. It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to Viktor, that he doesn't feel Eros' eye on him even when he's with Yuuri, that it doesn't curdle his blood. He knows he's flirting with his own demise. He fears that one day it will be his turn to feel the pain that he deserves.

His love outweighs the fear.

"Yuuri loves you. I love you." Eros toys with the knife the way Yuuri toys with his pen. He twirls it in his hand, caresses its spine with the side of his index finger. When he places it back over the cutting board, there are no more vegetables left. It's Yuuri's voice that he hears next. "Don't you love me, Viktor? All of me?"

The sweet spot of the knife hovers over the fingers of Yuuri's non dominant hand. Viktor imagines Yuuri without the ability to play his guitar, back to being listless, lost, purposeless in his own eyes. The answer is automatic as a tear scurries down his chin.

The knife retreats.

Eros smiles wide, and it's almost childlike in its glee, a spot of innocence in the dusk. Viktor doesn't know whether he should be fascinated or repulsed. Eros steps away from the counter and into Viktor's space. That same hand that threatened Yuuri's happiness caresses the tears from his cheeks.

Every moment Eros spends with Viktor is one he isn't killing. This registers in his mind as an afterthought, a rationalization. As if that's the reason he's pooled like liquid wax beneath white hot touches.

Thighs are pressed against thighs, lips on his jugular and Viktor sighs, fingers tucked along Eros's spine.

"He can't survive on his own," Eros starts, his thumb playing with the plushness of Viktor's lower lip. "So he wanders after companionship, love, like the seedling of a dandelion, floating in the wind, waiting to be planted, to sprout. The earth takes him in her arms, the sun shines for him, and he suckles on water's life, draining it dry. He grows. But he is forever lonely. Until he breaks apart and tries again."

His voice suits the purr. For a moment, Viktor can imagine Yuuri saying it, in that voice, with that smile. He looks into the big, bright eyes that he first fell in love with and stops holding back.

A numbness cradles him through his days even as his mind exists in static. Work doesn't satisfy, not like Yuuri's smile, not like Eros' addictive touch. He's drunk from lack of sleep and Georgi looks concerned, guessing that it's their latest case on his mind. It's not, but he pulls himself together. He is still a detective. He does what he knows and he knows how to face monsters.

Loving one is surprisingly easy. Becoming one easier still.

The attraction to Eros, his dangerous energy and insatiable passion, tugs on his core, yanks him in deeper, until he remembers the eyes of his victims, the visceral display of their mortal selves, and the delight that's present in every smear of blood.

It guts him. Carves out the euphoria he's been hiding in.

In the moments of clarity that are mere sun spots in the distant sky, Viktor tries to think of a way to stop this. To find a way to help Yuuri, end the killing, and extinguish Eros from their lives. But to get him help would be to expose him. It would mean Yuuri behind bars, his name branded in hatred, an injection waiting down the line. And he knows that Yuuri can't get better without confronting his demons.

Yuuri taking on Eros… It's a risk Viktor can't take.

Helplessness serves to hollow him out more.

All he's left with are the bite marks and the shame. He hasn't been to a church in years, regrets the lack of faith in his life as much as he doesn't. He doubts God can save him now. God never wanted him anyway.

It's too late for him. He's let this run on too long. So many bodies, people, on his conscience. He never said a thing. He practically took their lives himself.

He's no better.

Eros whispers this to him one night as he lays in the wake of their sin. Viktor's dreamt about it, taking lives. Only they were murderers his bullets ripped apart, not innocent victims.

"Is there a difference?" Eros sees through his hypocrisy. Radiant eyes of his lover shadowed by truth.

As Viktor stares at the case file of another recent string of killings, children, at the hands of an unknown killer, he finds a bloodlust of his own start to form. This becomes their new topic, a connection they share besides the carnal lust that draws them together. Viktor talks to Eros about his cases, his killers, in a way he never could with Yuuri. He'd been too afraid to tarnish his innocence, to drag him into the life that he and Eros take part in.

Eros enjoys talking about other killers far more than he does himself. He hangs on every word that Viktor speaks, and Viktor soaks up the rapt attention until he's drowning. The 5th Street Killer has stolen Eros' spotlight on the evening news, but he isn't fazed. The fame and notoriety isn't what gets him off. Viktor idly wonders what the signature was for if not to strut for the world. And why Eros always seemed so experienced with only a handful of murders under his belt.

Eros is the one that figures out that there are two killers. That they're siblings. Twins. He's the one who figures out their identities, but they've disappeared before Viktor can prove it. It leaves him frustrated, infuriated. Eros peels the ugly emotions off of him and replaces them with tendered marks.

Eros resembles power and passion, pleasure and pain, in a way that is deliciously intoxicating. He's wild, untamed, a walking contradiction of lust and love. He's perfected duality with poised femininity and raw masculinity. He gets what he wants. Utilizes a hidden strength that can bring a man to his knees and choke his weaknesses out of him. His pinky holds more mettle than Viktor's whole body.

Eros' smell is in the air, ravenous, raw, aching. Viktor feels Eros' want deep in his marrow. He suckles on his finger, victim to his flavor. It's all he needs to distract, to suppress, to resign. High on little air, he drinks in the night. It's not as cold as it once was. Fingernails rake across pale thighs. It elicits a hiss that burns his veins.

"Say my name," Eros demands, yanking Viktor's head back by starlight strands and tugging violently on his earlobe with the sharp of his teeth.

He does with a loud wail as he comes undone.

What Viktor is most afraid of is losing Yuuri.

He thinks that it's Yuuri's life he's sacrificing himself for, pursuing a martyrdom that's laughable. But it's not. This is an illusion that sustains him. A false truth he protects.

It's this fullness that he can't part with. This warmth of being whole. It's the loneliness he fears. He can't lose Yuuri, because then there will be no one left. Only the sighs of the walls and a winter that never leaves. Yuuri breathes life back into this man who before only trusted the cold truth of the dead. This act is as selfish as Eros' desire to kill. He is no better.

He needs Yuuri. Needs Eros. On some level, he wants this. Choice after choice led him to this consequence. He made his decision long ago.

There's an inhale against his breast and Viktor snuggles into it, trails after his touch like a starved weed. He holds him in his arms and vows once more to never let go. This person, with all of his dreams, faults, and lives, is his responsibility. His heart. Even as Viktor's picked apart piece by piece, he'll always have his heart.

Because what do you do when you destroy yourself?

You hold on tight to what's left.

No one's home. He sits and waits. Calls Yuuri's cell and finds it in a drawer at their bedside. He's a hair away from worry, it can't be Eros, there hasn't been a body since that day in the kitchen, when he finds a note taped to the counter. There's an address. The messy scrawl and the chewed pen cap are enough to settle his bones and he sets off.

It takes a half an hour to get there by car. The abandoned district on the outskirts of the city is quiet, empty, still. He drives down a long, dusty driveway. Grass spills into the unpaved road as spindly branches tug at his car. In the dark of night, Viktor can't see much except the dirt kicked up around his headlights and nature regaining its territory as it swallows him.

The house is old, lost to time and a damaged economy. It stands as a relic of a former period, but remains proud, sturdy. The entrance is blocked off by nailed up boards and a warning notice, but he finds a trail around the side, a beaten path that looks well worn in.

He's ignoring his thoughts at this point. Nothing good can come from this. He's known for longer than he's willing to admit that he's not following Yuuri's lead. This is Eros' spot. Eros' escape.

A creak accompanies the give of the backdoor and he slips in. Habit and training lead him to drawing up the flashlight and gun he'd yet to relieve himself of after his shift. There's a drip, drip, drip and Viktor instantly turns to it. The roof is leaking, and his shoulders sag. He ignores the warning, the sound of premonition, and carries on to the next room when there's a flurry of shuffling noises.

The room is shut, but he can hear muffled crying. Viktor's instincts take over once more and he kicks the door in. The scene is normal for Detective Nikiforov. But Viktor feels his gun quiver in his grasp as his flashlight falls.

It's one thing to know, another to see.

The room is lit by the dim of heat lamps. It's covered in plastic sheeting that crinkles under foot, under the two writhing bodies he sees. There's a woman on the bed, tied up, already cut into but only with superficial wounds. She appears desperate to escape, tugging against her binds, choking out screams against a tie he thought he'd misplaced weeks before. A man is on the floor, in much the same state as the woman except he seems beyond himself with fear as he stares at the woman. His eyes implore Viktor to free her, to save her.

Past the shock, the rush of adrenaline and impulse to save, comes realization. He recognizes them. Siblings. Twins. It makes him pause in a way that he shouldn't.

There's a sharp movement in the corner, and Viktor renews his hold on his weapon, drawing it up against Eros. Against Yuuri. He's smiling even as Viktor has him in his crosshairs. He looks exuberantly happy. Like this is his grand finale, or maybe his true beginning. He walks closer, but Viktor hollers at him to stop. The gun's loaded, safety off, ready. His finger hovers over the trigger.

Eros continues closer until his forehead meets the barrel. He's not afraid. Never is. His smile droops as his eyes shine. He puts up no resistance. Allowing himself to be prey to Viktor's hand, he makes good on his promise. Only Viktor can hurt him. "Go ahead. Call your friends. Shoot me. If you can't accept me… accept us… no one can."

The gun slips. It clatters against the floor, slipping along the plastic, but Viktor doesn't hear it. He no longer hears anything, not the stifled cries, not the drip in the living room. There's the lone sound of the winter wind. A coldness takes him and he remembers the insufferable bite of loneliness. He rejects it faster than the world twists in front of him.

He smells the scent of Yuuri on his clothes, hears his song through a mic, feels Eros' exquisite touch, tastes him on his tongue, sees a future he never could have envisaged only a year before.

The gun remains still at his feet. Viktor takes a blood-stained hand and caresses it against his face. He doesn't look at the twins. Can't yet. He's too busy soaking up the sunshine his lover's smile produces. Viktor is drawn forward and he doesn't look back.

The door closes like a heartbeat in his ears.