grey

yes so um this is different from the good ol traitor au seen in my fics because instead of yuuki switching up on the phantom thieves to work for goro, he actually seeks out shido before even meeting the thieves. so no betrayls happening there!

basically shido ends up having kamoshida killed before ren transfers to shujin. (why isnt necessarily important but i like to think maybe kamoshida just got involved with some risky business... idk.)

so, yuuki ends up looking into the mysterious circumstances around kamoshidas death and traces it back to shido. thus he tracks him down and asks to work with him because he just had to repay him—which shido obliges because he kind of already knew too much and killing him before seeing his usefulness seemed like a waste!

goro and yuuki end up coworkers. Yay! but goros certainly not a fan because goro akechi works alone. hes even less of fan of working with a guy who works for shido because he genuinely likes him. gag!

additionally, since shido knows yuukis only working for him because he admires him, he tries to use that to his advantage for as long as possible. he keeps up a nicer, more caring charade for yuuki to keep his loyalty. it's a lot kinder compared to what goro gets, but he never really treated him that nicely in the first place... blatant employee favoritism all over the place!

of course, goro knows shido is manipulating yuuki, but yuuki himself refused to acknowledge that (especially not from goro, because he was just jealous, right?) until it got too obvious to ignore. aka, once shidos temper slipped and he dropped the pleasantries with yuuki for the first time. reality checks ensue, yuuki realizes doing assassination for politicians isn't all cupcakes and rainbows, and that goros mean comments were actually just the truth.

then. theyre forced to acknowledge eachother as allies and victims in one way or another and it gets gayyy

i think my favorite things about this au in specific are that firstly, it's kind of a forced proximity thing. you can't just quit working for shido, he'll have you dead by yesterday... high stakes you know! and second, i get to write/draw/think about how different mishima would be without his intense love for the phantom thieves. he said himself that the main reason he changed was cause of them so... much to think about!