Chapter 3

Being a nurse at the State Hospital has its set of perks, but Natasha Martin likes her day job. She's punctual, and well-liked amongst her colleagues, and lives for praise from her seniors, even it means she has to drive an extra mile. Like today, when she was telephoned in the morning to visit the hospital for an extra morning shift. She was told it's a special shift - on the third floor - apparently, there's some kind of police affair going on there, some kind of top-secret, and she's asked to do a round check at the makeshift isolated ICU for this really injured man who, from what she'd known from the regular gossip, also happens to be a hardcore criminal.

All of it gets her blood pumping with excitement. She feels like she's on Criminal Minds, sauntering back and forth like a detective, looking for clues. She casually walks to the reception, earphones on. It's empty; this early in the morning, it's not that surprising.

Wait.

She rips the earphones out. Something is ... odd. Everything is too quite to be normal.

As she paces into the hallway, each footstep echoes. She takes in a deep breath; she gets this ugly feeling that the two injured criminals have escaped, wonders whose balls the hospital authorities have to lick to have better security, when -

A shriek so loud that it practically tears through her larynx. It takes a long second to comprehend it's her own.

It – it can't be. There's blood everywhere. Splattered on the wall like paint, dried into lumps, streaked across the bench by the wall, dribbling along the metal, making a trail on the white tiles. Her stomach churns; unable to hold back, she vomits out the bile, it's horrifying and she doesn't even know yet where it sources from... she thinks she's about to faint.

Curiosity gets the better of her. She limps, slowly following the trail, her heart almost thudding out of her chest. It leads to a dead end of another wall. It's almost like a trap. There's a copper statue and beside it -

She stops at the legs; she doesn't want to look further. There's a bigger pool of blood - her breath turns heavier and shallower - there's a huge bloody mark on the wall, the kind of mark when you smash a watermelon against a hard surface, and just like that she knows what happened to the corpse lying in front of her but she doesn't want to see, she doesn't want to guess...

Tap.

Someone is right behind her. Someone - right - behind - her - someone is right behind -

It's a man. He's over six feet - no, seven feet tall - broad, haggard, wearing an ill-fitting hospital gown that definitely isn't his - his square jaw and bulging, raging, eyes glaring down at her like a cowering, trembling insect he can crush with his thumb. His hand is caked with blood, thick, coagulating blood still dripping from his little finger, dripping to the floor with a sickening splotch.

"Run," he thunders; she screams, but at this point she has lost her voice, "Run, and don't look back until you are out of this city."

He had been dozing off in a class again.

He'd have been graced if his series of unfortunate events stopped at that point, but no, he had been drooling, his palm that had been supporting his head slipped out of his grasp and his chin banged right onto the table - that isn't the worst part - his free arm reached up in the air in a reflex motion, making it look like he has to ask a question.

"Mr. Katsuki? Have you?"

And now the whole class is staring at him. Has he what?

No amount of digging his face into his scarf is going to help the colour that is rising steadily up his cheeks. The professor stopped to look, and their eyes met; Yuuri feels his heart pop out of his mouth. He nervously scans around the classroom - an optional class means less familiar faces, more morbid curiosity. "Uh-er, uhm," he clears his throat, leaps to his feet when the professor begins to inch towards his chair. He senses a big lecture incoming, and this will be the number two of the day...

Somebody sitting right behind him tugs at Yuuri's jumper and slips a note between his fingers. He grabs it, but before he can even read what it is about the professor somewhy assumes it's for him and low-key snatches it out of Yuuri's hands. Yuuri isn't sure if he's supposed to thank heavens for his drowsy self having nulled instincts that he didn't flinch ten metres across the room or upon the window ledge at the sudden ambush, or curse the deep pits of hell for actively progressing into deeper and deeper shit with every passing minute.

"Myth, patronage and Christian landscape in Viking sculpture... that is fast, how did you come up with this?" The professor's big, grey eyes meet his again, but this time they're softer. Then he lets out a short laugh, and Yuuri thinks it's safe to believe he's only asking in good humour.

For the lack of a better response, Yuuri chuckles along.

"Good work, Mr. Katsuki. I'll look forward to reading your paper," he pats him on the back and goes back to the podium, and Yuuri lets out a giant sigh of relief, thumping back into his seat.

Then he turns to his saviour in the backseat, a goofy tired grin to patch up for his disappointment with his own self. "Thank you so much - "

It's Victor. Again. That is, unless he's hallucinating. This is an optional class. For Sophomores. What is a Medieval Arts major Freshman doing here? Sitting-in, Yuuri, use your head. A more important question will be, why do his nerve impulses start short-circuiting every time he lays his eyes upon that pale face and silver hair, rendering him immovable for five whole seconds, what with that stupidly gaping mouth?

"Hi," Victor chimes in, "I remember you."

"Thank you... for that," he stutters lowly. He slides Victor back the slip of paper, "Here's your topic."

"You can keep it," he says, kindly (is it weird that Yuuri notices his mouth resembles a cutesy heart when he smiles and speaks?), "I was just attending for fun. Actually, not. Joined late and I was lagging, so the prof adviced me to attend some of the optional classes to get a better hang of things..."

"Oh," is the only reply Yuuri's half-blank brain can think of. Lagging. Surely, Yuuri can relate. Only this morning he had to take fifteen minutes of Mechanics professor Cialdini's wailing about how his star student has been losing his shine and that if Yuuri keeps being off the mark this way he should forget about his letter of recommendation into the Ivy League. Well, Yuuri concedes. He did have a point.

He needs to be off his self-imposed night duty to make sure he catches up with his studies. What a pain, there is never a thing called the best of both worlds, is there...

Maybe that ice guy can do the job for a week, although as good as his intentions seemed to be it's a little too early to entrust him with that big of a responsibility. Plus, he seemed somewhat of a goof -

"What's your name?" Victor asks all of a sudden, and Yuuri snaps out of his trance. The class has been dispersed, and Victor is already through packing his stuff.

"Yuuri, Yuuri Katsuki," he mumbles, grabbing his things and shoving them into his bag. "Yours? Sorry, I mean, it just popped out, I know your name -"

"Victor," he says, chuckling, as he holds out his hand, "Victor Nikiforov." Yuuri shakes it.

"Nice to meet you... again, Victor," he utters. Suddenly his mind flies off the bars and he imagines what might happen if they become good friends and Victor discovers the room filled with his posters back at Yuuri's family home in Japan. Yuuri has to physically jerk his head to bring it back to track.

"Do you have a class now?"

"Yeah, I have a th-theory class," he explains.

"Your schedule is kind of packed, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he says, assuring Victor as subtly as possible that it's the only reason he keeps turning him down, "Actually, Wednesday's free."

("There is no reason Victor would need that information, Katsuki.")

"That's great, I mean, I need to check my schedule, and if I'm free too, you can show me around, right?"

Show him around? When Yuuri glances up, he finds Victor at the door. He half-expects him to leave, but it seems more likely that Victor is just waiting up for him, so he slings his bag over his shoulder and clumsily trudges along. For a minute they just walk in silence, Victor's eyes frequently stopping upon the frames in the hallway, and Yuuri lost in thought. Show him around? Why Yuuri, though? He's Victor Nikiforov, he must've made a ton of friends already. Fraternities must be inviting him over; the clubs must be hunting him down.

"I don't know a lot of people around here," adds Victor, "I was -"

There is an abrupt interruption: a group of girls literally hop into the scene from nowhere (or maybe from the backdoor to the canteen) and horde in for a picture with Victor. There's a hush and a huddle, and although Victor happily obliges, Yuuri thinks there's something very fake about his smile this time... well, not long before one of the girls hands over her cellphone to Yuuri and makes him take about thirty-five in every angle possible.

"Wow," Yuuri sighs, watching them wander off to the very direction they came from, "You'd think they caught E.T going home." Then his eyes catch Victor's and both of them burst into peals of laughter.

"Thirty-five," Victor snorts.

"I counted too," Yuuri pulls his glasses down and wipes off the tears leaking at the corners of his eyes, "I wonder if I'll get camera courtesy when these flood Facebook tonight."

"Are you on Facebook?"

"My friend made one for me, but I don't go online much."

"Hey, same! My friend made one for me too. Under a different name, of course."

It comes to Yuuri's notice that his heart has been palpitating all this while. His jumper sure is way too warm for his comfort, what with all the heat radiating around his neck and the breakfast flipping in his stomach. He takes in a long breath, and opens his mouth for a change of subject when -

"Victor!"

Damn, their moment of peace just keeps getting breached time and again. A little irked, Yuuri turns to see who it is this time, because Victor is staring over Yuuri's shoulder, his eyes brightened into shining blue orbs.

About six feet tall, bleached blond hair in an undercut, stubble on the chin, John Lennon glasses and a very distinct way of standing - Yuuri is pretty sure he has seen this guy somewhere before. Wait, wait a minute, isn't this - holy shit - isn't this Swiss star skater Christophe Giacometti?

A long time back, Yuuri used to keep track of their on-field rivalry - well, not really rivalry since Chris hasn't been able to dethrone Victor even once, as far as Yuuri can recollect - going as far as fighting off Giacometti fans on online forums. But it's not like he's curious about Victor's personal life anymore, or it's not like he can stop Phichit when he starts gushing excitedly of the recent media scoops about some kind of heat going on between the two.

It's not like he cares. Yes, Victor has been his idol, but he's still a celebrity, a god on an untouched pedestal. Yes, he adores him, but there has always been that wall between them... it's not like he has a deep, personal crush on him. It's not like that.

(Somewhere inside Yuuri's head, a little guy in black spandex and a polymer helmet-like mask - much like the one he looks like at night - sniggers. There's no point denying; out of him and the anxious, self-deprecating wallflower, no-name-vigilante is the more honest one.)

So... is Christophe Giacometti - is he Victor's boyfriend?

"Chris!" Victor runs up to the man, "You did turn up!"

"Anything for you, my man," Christophe lightly punches him in the arm.

From the looks of it, it seems they are pretty engrossed in each other's company. Yuuri believes his journey has struck the end and it's time for him to slip out of the scene. He's getting late for class and it's not like Victor's going to notice his absence anyway.

"Yuuuuri! Are you leaving?" It's Victor, defying his expectations as usual.

"Uh, yeah, I got my class -"

"Wait up," Victor jogs back to him, and then drags him along to Christophe, who's certainly eyeing them (him?) with interest. "Yuuri, this is Chris," Victor introduces them to each other, "Chris, this is Yuuri, my new friend."

Ba-dump. New friend.

"Hi, Yuuri," Chris pats him on the shoulder. Thankfully, it's not as awkward as Yuuri thought it'd be.

"I won't hold you up anymore," Victor grins, (he had dragged him along a minute ago and technically they're still holding hands; when the realisation strikes Yuuri, he gulps down a pterodactyl screech and flinches his hand out of Victor's loose grasp - and of course, regrets it immediately, whatever happened to acting cool and being friends, casual friends bro-fisting each other...) letting him go.

"I guess I'll see you guys... sometime later," Yuuri smiles nervously, quite certain that beads of sweat have already started dotting up his forehead as he trots into the canteen passageway, his thumping heart never giving him a break.

Hell, Yuuri leads two lives. At least one of them should be boring.

"That is one nice looking ass."

Victor rolls his eyes; he ought to laugh at the comment, but instead he feels slightly offended at Chris gazing after Yuuri Katsuki's steadily pacing form trying to find a way out through the crowd. "Chris, can you not."

Chris turns to Victor with a raised, amused eyebrow and a crooked shit-eating grin. "I see."

"What?" Victor asks innocuously.

"Sparks flying."

"Sparks flyi- no, no," Victor chuckles as if it's the most ridiculous thing he has heard today, "He's just a friend. He's not even in my class, he -"

But Smug McSmuggy's grin keeps getting wider and wider with every word he utters, so Victor looks around for more solid conviction. "D'you want to know who I'm actually pining over? I met him last night. Let's get a place to sit, I have the whole afternoon off, I'll give you every little detail."

Chris being the kind of enabler he is, it didn't need much deliberation over the fact that they needed to chill at some posh place for their first meet in six months. They choose a restaurant not too far from campus, ordering two pints of beer and a light snack to go with ("Yakov asked me not to get out of hand with the delicacies if I'm really considering a comeback next season," Victor tells a downcast Chris over the menu card), before Victor elaborates upon his escapade last night.

By the end of which, Chris looks... confused.

"So, basically, you got five minutes with him and then he shot you down?"

Victor does a double take. "Shot me down? It wasn't like I was asking for his hand in marriage."

"But he rejected you."

He sighs dreamily across the space, his face in his palms, elbows upon the table. "Just made him all the more attractive."

"Wait, Victor, consider this. This guy, he must be someone like you. I mean, he must have an ordinary life as well. What if he has a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, you know...?"

Oh, right. But the solution is simple.

"I'll ask him next time," Victor tells him in a matter-of-fact tone, as if the masked man lives next door. "In fact I'll ask him tonight."

"What about your getup? Are you going to wear that filthy ski mask again?"

Victor slams his head into his arms upon the table, shooting death glares at the blond man across him. "Well, aren't we Mr. The-glass-is-half-empty."

Chris smirks. "Okay, but still?"

"I don't know... I'll figure something out."

"Better hide the hair. It's very distinct. You don't want a silver-haired guy in a mask and a leotard hanging around the same week Victor Nikiforov crashes in the city to complete his degree."

"Leotard, huh? That choice of costume just screams you."

"I know right? If there's ever an oddball in a see-through leotard, it won't be a hard guess," Chris winks, downing the last of his beer, "And what about the voice?"

"He used a pitch-distorting mic."

"And you?"

"I tweaked it a little bit."

"Like Batman?"

"As in, made it shriller. It's not a big deal, I had a major whim of wanting to be a Soprano when I was a teenager, so I'd enrolled in a training course. I still remember some of the hacks. Man, was Yakov pissed when I asked him if I could sing for my SP that year..."

Chris checks his watch, apparently a little tipsy from the beer, "Shoot, I'll have to run back in half an hour. But it's an interesting thing you've got there. It's like online dating, you never know if the person's ninety years old or picks his nose or has two heads."

Victor narrows his eyes at him. "I think he'd have been quite easy to spot in a crowd if he had two heads."

"I was kidding, Victor. But imagine this, you're there kicking ass with him everyday and all you know that he can be that boring professor you hate or this guy sitting at the counter or ... or he can be your cute nerdy friend I met in the morning."

"Are you talking about Yuuri?"

"Was that his name?"

Victor has got to be knocked out of his senses to actually allow his mind consider this scenario. Yuuri Katsuki, huh? The boy with that adorable chequered jumper and stunted fashion sense, carrying a bag around that he latches up from the front so that it doesn't fall off, who never misses a class, who turns into a nervous wreck every time he speaks (although, he was a low-key deadpan snarker today), who looked like a deer caught in the headlights and dropped a box of glass items at the mere sight of him... can he even be - no, if there's a nuclear holocaust and Yuuri Katsuki is the last surviving person on earth, it's only then if someone tells Victor he's the super-agile Eros incarnate masked vigilante that Victor'll even get his head around that concept.

"Half a million people in the city, and you meet an average of seven per day," Victor jumps to his feet and pushes his chair back; as a wave of dizziness hits his head, he grins, "so let's take a walk around and bump into some actual possibilities."

"Quit staring at me, bitch."

The moment of contact is broken and Yuri Plisetsky's fierce green eyes dig into the floor again as he sat crouched into the chair he usually sits on every time he's brought to the interrogation room.

"Quite a filthy mouth you've got there." It's true that Otabek has been gazing at him for some while now, studying his features and antics - nothing much discovered, except that one of the boy's feral eyes is almost always behind streaks of blond hair (sometimes he tugs them behind his ear, sometimes he just lets them fall as they will), and that he often sniffs and sounds like an angry cat - but Otabek likes to call this act a strategic method to make the suspect uncomfortable and confess faster. "Would you like a coke?"

"I'd like a smoke."

"You're too young to smoke."

"Then no, thank you." The false gratefulness comes seething from under his teeth.

"By the way, I must tell you, you're gonna be appointed a lawyer tomorrow. It's either going to be someone young like you or someone at the verge of retirement. In any case, don't make 'em cry."

"Why're you so hell-bent on helping me? If I'm fucked, let me be."

"Why are you so hell-bent on helping people who don't give a shit about you?"

Yuri opens his mouth to argue (or swear), but then changes his mind.

"I thought so," Otabek sighs, "Tell me something, the higher-ups, do they know your face?"

"I can tell you're new. If you'd known anything about the mafia, you'd have known that the minute I step out of here free someone's gonna blow my brains out and bury my body in the pavement and cement it over. You either die or you die bad. Vouching for loyalty means nothing."

His words make Otabek's stomach lurch even as he shifts in his seat uncomfortably, somehow managing to pretend he still has an upper-hand over the broken teenager sneering at him across the table.

Yuri continues. "Look at you, all distraught now. You think too good of this world. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's the truth. In fact..."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

Otabek's breath shakes. "What is it?"

Yuri huffs, and his nostrils flare at the moment of indecision. "Tch. Okay, I know in near future I'm going to regret saying this... but... I was never loyal to the mafia... some of us, we were... we were actually planning to betray the mafia. Williamson was involved, I know you've caught him too... if you don't believe me, you can check with him."

"Williamson sold you out to the other gang."

"I don't - you're - you're lying."

"I'm not."

"I know."

And there it is again - that vulnerable, betrayed expression - which leaves Otabek in a nasty fix: one half of him wants to protect the boy and the other half is constantly chastising him for allowing himself to get more and more involved with his shenanigans, to not be able to toughen up to his suspects although his outer appearance might suggest otherwise, to get worked up at the thought of this boy falling in trouble.

"Then why won't you give names to the police? What you wanted to do and what you ended up doing... they aren't mutually exclusive."

"Because I fucking hate the police!" Yuri barks, eyes narrowing down into that of a wounded, dangerous animal. "Useless, useless lot. They all just..."

"Why did you tell me, then?"

He looks away, as if he doesn't want to answer it. "You're... different."

"... In what sense?"

"Hey, I told you, I already regret telling you all of this, okay!" he screams, but calms down almost instantaneously, "You're different because you're daft. You're stupid enough to not look at me like I'm something disgusting. I've been asking you outrageous questions and you've been stupid enough to answer them. You're stupid enough to try and help me. You gettit? You're stupid."

"Wow. I'm not sure if I'm to feel honoured or offended."

To Otabek's surprise, the boy's lip curls up into a smile. Darn it, maybe it's the air-conditioner that's malfunctioning, because Otabek suddenly has this weird need to adjust his collar to relieve some of the heat emanating from his neck. Yuri Plisetsky throws a shade. "Maybe you should -"

"Otabek!"

The blasts open without warning and Officer Babicheva's scream reverberates inside the soundproof room. She appears shaken, strands of her hair are sticking up at odd angles; she is panting as if she just ran up ten flights of stairs. Yuri Plisetsky makes a slight turn of head at the sudden chaos, his eyebrows raised but eyelids droopy, apparently unaffected, even as Otabek leaps to his feet and runs to the door.

"What happened?" he asks urgently. He knows Mila Babicheva; she is the annoyingly chill antithesis to the hyper J.J Leroy most of the time - while Leroy turns the place upside-down if the coffee machine stops working, she's the kind to not blink an eye even if petty thieves gang up together and break out of the lock-up marching to the tunes of Queen.

"Go to J.J's office immediately. He's totally flipped out," she pulls out a handkerchief and dabs it over her sweat-clammed forehead. "The suspects from the Southwest drugs case - someone killed them in broad daylight. The guarding officer, two of the staff are dead too. A nurse went missing. It's a massacre."

Maybe since Victor just bragged of a make-believe statistic about an average person bumping into seven people per day, the Gods above decided upon playing a practical joke on him because it seems he keeps bumping into Yuuri Katsuki seven times a day instead.

Victor sees off Chris and as his car zooms off into the distance and out of his sight, he walks back to campus. He thinks he'd spend some time reading, or maybe structuring out his disguise for the night. On one hand he wants to be as careful with his identity as that guy is, on another he just wants to rip the metaphorical mask off and tell him who he is. Yes, the latter is insane.

The other guy will never take him seriously, and he doesn't even want to imagine the media assault. Also, ISU will freak out, won't let him compete ever again, even if he proves to them a hundred times over that none of his powers affects his performance (except, when he scrapes his knee, he doesn't bleed more than a second, god knows how no one ever noticed it). Yakov will be so pissed. Then again, when is he not.

Victor's at the gate when the sky growls and it begins to rain. It's so abrupt and rough it seems like a cloudburst, even as Victor shelters his head with his bag and his shoes unwillingly splash into the new-formed puddles on the pavement while trying to edge past the people running helter-skelter around, looking for a respite. The university bus stop is close, and he makes a run for it.

It's not even five minutes when he watches Yuuri Katsuki hurtle into the place, soaked from tip to toe all while shielding his bag in his arms. The bus-stop is quite packed now that the rain has grown heavier. He jostles for space and slips to a corner, rests his bag against an empty seat, and a surge of panic booms across his face as soon as he opens it.

"Hello, hello, Phichit," he yells into the phone against the pitter-patter of the rain, "Can you hear me? Hello? Yes... hey, you in the flat, right? I think I've lost my keys..."

Without realising, Yuuri takes off his glasses and wipes his face against his soggy sleeve, then pushes back his wet hair, and Victor thinks the snack at that restaurant must've been two days old because something is flipping inside his stomach.

"Eh, you're at the Embassy office?!" Yuuri exclaims, "That's at the other side of the town! ... No, the landlord lost his set six months ago... yeah, I'm stuck in the rain too... no, it's okay, it's fine Phichit-kun, I guess I'll chill at Starbucks... no, I'm not drenched or anything... good luck with the visa thing, okay - okay, bye... I'll see you soon."

He puts the phone back in his bag and is on his way separating the wet clingy scarf from his neck when Victor approaches him.

"Yuuri! Hi!"

Yuuri turns, and his face breaks into the softest of smiles. "H-hi."

"My god, you're soaking wet."

"Oh," he shrugs and dusts at his shoulders, as if he can shake the water off at will, "it's okay."

"You'll catch a cold if you don't get into a dry set of clothes. Should I call you a taxi? Where d'you live?"

"Half hour by bus," he replies, still awkward, trying not to meet the eye (his eyes are a curious colour of chocolate and Victor has no idea why he made that observation), "But I, kind of, lost my keys. And... my roommate's not at home, so..."

Suddenly, it's like Victor has a Eureka moment, and his eyes brighten as he suggests, "Come to my flat. It's right about the corner."

" - Uh, Victor, it's okay, it'll be too much trouble - "

"Yuuuuri. Why d'you keep rejecting me? I'm so wounded I don't think I'll ever recover," he pouts and sighs in mock-resentment, even as Yuuri looks like he isn't sure whether to laugh at it or panic some more, "I have a really cuddly poodle, if that makes things easier."

He's cute, really cute, but in an odd way - he'd be considered an average looking Asian by conventional standards (except those arched eyebrows, wow) - his eyes resist contact but at the same time are mysteriously inviting, they're so soft and yet sometimes they've got that keen gaze that gets Victor all dizzy and nervous. What's all that about? Also, the way the tip of his nose keeps blushing now and then, and how he keeps rubbing over compulsively; Victor never knew seasonal allergies can be so damn attractive.

Finding other people attractive is not exactly betraying his high-flying night-time vigilante buddy, is it? It's not his fault if he can't help it.

Yuuri giggles this time, scratching the back of his head, the bag in his arms cradled in a manner as if he has something inside that his life depends on.

"Well, I guess I can't say no thrice."