#orchiru

“It is a shame to see you here as well, Detective. And to think that I went out of my way to warn you.” 

Viktor narrowed his eyes. As far as he could remember, the only warnings he’d ever received from anyone in the Triad were those infuriating half-baked riddles in teacups that Phichit Chulanont had crafted for him, so he had no idea what this was supposed to be all about.

…Or maybe not. A cold, lonely night from weeks and weeks ago, by now long forgotten, resurfaced in his mind. He recalled the mountain of paperwork, the dim lights, the stale air of his office a merciful reprieve from the frigid breeze outside. 

And silence. Until… 

“It was you.” The realization hit him like hoar frost, a slow but deep chill, all the way down to the bone. “You called me at my office, and you threatened me. You told me to drop the case.”

“I told you to think of who you have left.” The reminder came punctuated by a stream of smoke, mercifully directed to the ceiling instead of straight into his face. “A part of me, if you will believe it or not, actually meant well. But it seems those words did not make a difference in the end, did they?”

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So... how bout dem plague times, huh? Hope everyone is coping and/or doing okay, this cursed year will be over soon.

Sometimes he dreamt of Mama in the sea, floating alone in a tiny, beat-up boat that looked as though a single sour look would make it fall apart. There was no motor as far as he could tell, or anything else in the boat that she could use to steer it; she was at the mercy of the wind and the tides, every time. 

As for Viktor, he would always find himself on the shore, not too far from their house. He would be six, sixteen, twenty-six, anything else in between. Sometimes barefoot, sometimes not; sometimes in uniform, sometimes not. Sometimes draped in a flimsy hotel blanket, from his latest horrible lapse in judgment; sometimes, wearing spatters of blood on his clothes and hands. 

But one thing was always the same: he would be standing on the beach, as he was now. And he would always know, as he knew full well now, that she’d left him once before. 

And yet - 

“Vitya!” 

No matter how much the sea churned that night, he could always hear her voice, inexplicably clear as a bell. 

“Vitya! Come here!”

She would always be floating the same distance away, her hands cupped over her lips. Viktor jumped into the sea without thinking, as he always did, the frigid water shocking him to his bones, but not enough to paralyze him. He swam and swam, until his limbs ached and his lungs burned.

“Keep going! You’re almost there. Just a little bit more!”

But no matter how hard he tried - no matter how fast or how desperately he swam - he could never close the gap between himself and Mama’s boat, not even by an inch.

“I love you so much.”

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Yes, I'm alive, we're alive!! ^_^;; So, so, so sorry for the radio silence! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, happy 'we survived what was almost WWIII', etc. Hope we're all staying safe and healthy and sane throughout this pandemic crisis (I feel like March 2020 has lasted 10 years...)

In any case, barring any disasters (*knock on wood*), Ch. 17 goes up around midnight-ish Eastern Time on Saturday, April 4th.

The city wasn’t as frantic as it usually was during the workweek, but its heartbeat was the rush of air and the clanging of metal as the weekend trains ran along, and it was no less alive. The somewhat sedated state of downtown threw him a bit, only for him to remember that he hadn’t spent a proper weekend in the city in… almost a month, was it? God, but it felt like it had been forever, and yet also felt like the blink of an eye.

And there was a conversation to be had, now that those weekends in Long Island would need to stop. A trip to Brooklyn, an ending, an apology - 

But not yet. Not today. 

Chinatown was a writhing mass of congested criss-crossing roads, abandoned construction projects, and clogged alleyways, almost as organic as it was chaotic. He wasn’t too surprised to find that most of the laundromats from Yuri’s list were actually open on a Sunday. What he was surprised to find - although, after giving it some more thought, perhaps a cynical part of him might have seen it coming - was how all of the boisterous greetings and friendly smiles he was welcomed with shriveled up and died the moment he asked about 'The Silk Umbrella'. 

"No. No idea what that is," was what he heard from a man whose laundromat sat on the exact same street as the tea shop. He could even see it from here, the sign with the umbrella sticking out, if he squinted hard enough.

"I can't help you," said the next shop, before shooing him away without another word.

"We don't handle silk," the next one insisted. "We never handle silk." 

It was already dark by the time he got to the last three on Yuri's list, all of them right on the border of Chinatown. The first one had already closed for the day - they closed early on Sundays, it seemed, which was a problem that Viktor had thought he would have run into sooner. The next one was populated by staff who insisted that they spoke ‘no English, no English’. No Russian, either. No French. 

Viktor didn’t have high hopes as he let himself be all but shooed from the second-to-last laundromat, and caught sight of the last one from Yuri’s list right across the street. He was also down to his last cigarette, as it turned out, and he forgot to savor it in the frustration of knowing he was very likely about to hit a dead end. What other avenues could he explore, really, after this? With any luck, Otabek’s translation team might have uncovered a case-winning clue in the ledger book since the last time he’d checked in with them, but when had he ever been that lucky? 

Screw it, he thought as he tossed what was left of his cigarette, after fleecing it for all of the warmth and comfort it could offer. He was already here, after all.

Among the laundromats he’d visited, this one sat on the smaller side. A whopping six strides separated him from the front door to the counter, where a middle-aged woman sat filling out paperwork, stopping only to look up when he walked in. Bags of folded laundry, clean if he had to guess, were stacked high and lined both walls. A dozen or so suits of various colors and sizes hung on a rack on the other side of the counter. 

A small blue lantern hung from a hook mounted high on the back wall. 

“Good afternoon! How can I help you?”

There was a young man peeking out from the back room, about Yuri’s age. As Viktor introduced himself, and asked the usual questions, the lady at the counter exchanged a glance with him that she must have thought Viktor couldn’t see. She also must have thought that he didn’t notice the almost imperceptible flinch on the boy's face as she plied him with more or less the same response he’d been hearing all afternoon. 

“Sorry. We’ve never heard of the Silk Umbrella.”

Viktor let the silence hang in the air, and waited for her to break eye contact first. “You want to try that again?” he asked calmly.

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It’s been awhile ^_^;;

✨ Art/fic snippet from our mixed-media collaboration project: The Fever Called Living, a Victorian/vampire 🦇🐰🦇 YOI AU ✨

$20+ Patrons get real-time access to new chapters! (Non-patrons get access with a one-chapter delay) ^_^

\(^ヮ^)/ Some samples of past drabbles written for @iruutciv‘s and my joint Patreon account ♥♥♥

$5/month unlocks these little drabbles, 2-3x a week! BMAAHD-verse, new Vampire AU, canon, and other shared orchiru universes, oh my. Right this way!:

What could he even promise, from this point onward? Perhaps before tonight, even though he'd made himself a target of the Triad from the very beginning, he'd been able to bear that burden somehow. The Triad was a far smaller presence in the city, and he wasn't new to glancing over his shoulder while walking down the streets at night. And maybe a part of him had clung to the notion that - despite everything it had cost him - while he didn't have or want La Cosa Nostra's protection, he at least had been spared from their wrath.

But all of that had changed, in just a few measly hours. Sara had marked him for death, and at the end of the day, it was all a numbers game, wasn’t it? How many guns on this island fired at the whims of the Crispino family, and how many times could you sidestep death before using up all of your luck? He’d already done it once, twice, a thousand times it seemed. Most of those times, someone else had paid a price.

He recalled Yuuri’s words, all of a sudden, from the night they’d first met: careless, weightless words, dropped in the haze of cigarette smoke and the sweet aroma of liquor, after Viktor had followed him into the phone booth only to become trapped by his arms, his lips, his smoldering eyes. At that time, those words had been meant to convince him to stay, let his guard down for once in his miserable life. But they still somehow rang true now.

What if Michele kicked down his flimsy door - it really wouldn’t take much, after how many years’ worth of wear and tear - with a dozen of his lackeys, and made it rain bullets on them both? Or what if Viktor were to slip on the last of the ice still coating some of the lesser-traveled sidewalks from the last snowstorm, cracked his head on the pavement, and never woke up again?  

That would be a tragedy, wouldn’t it?

--

After an eternity... this is finally happening ♥ Thank you so much for waiting!

Today (well, yesterday in some time zones, but today in mine!) marks the one-year anniversary of @iruutciv's and my Yuri On Ice + Detective/Noir AU, But Monsters Are Always Hungry, Darling ♥♥♥

Gosh, but how did this even start? I'd tried my hand at writing noir before, in another fandom that I'm now no longer a part of. I didn't finish it, but the idea of wanting to play with that universe never really went away, even chasing me through the next couple of fandoms that I flirted with. Well, I remember talking to Iru about it on tumblr, though I had absolutely no plans of actually writing it out at the time. Iru then thought it was a good idea to bribe me by basically saying: 'if you write it, I will draw it!'

Well - long story short, here we are, 12 chapters (soon to be 13!) in, a little over halfway through this story that's kind of morphed into a monster of its own. We can't thank you enough for all of the support that this story has gotten, and the love that we've received from the readers who've connected with us, yelled out speculations and predictions to us, and just kept urging us to press on. I can't speak for Iru, but I don't think I could have continued to undertake such a huge project without you all, so thank you. Thank you so, so much! We love you, and we hope the rest of this story - which will probably take us to the end of 2019 - will live up to all of your expectations, and be worthy of your love.

Anyway, without further ado: here is the official preview for BMAAHD Chapter 13, scheduled to go out on either the 29th or 30th of December, to close out 2018. ^_^

“You didn’t have to gamble like that at all.” Viktor glanced up to meet Yuuri’s eyes, curious to see if he could guess what the other man was thinking. This usually wasn’t so hard for him. But Yuuri was an anomaly that way. Maybe he’d always been. “Twenty’s a hell of a good hand.”

“You could have still beaten me,” Yuuri said. “If your other card was an ace.”

“And what do you think the chances of that were?”

Yuuri shrugged. “I suppose that’s something I really ought to work on, then - knowing to quit while I’m ahead.” A soft, lazy smile stretched out across his face, as he leaned back in his chair, and pulled out his cigarette case from an inside pocket. “Take the win, Viktor. Claim your prize.”

He watched, silent as Yuuri lit his cigarette. It took him three tries to do it, and Viktor wondered at that moment if that was yet another testament to his luck, or lack thereof. Then again, three tries for a light to take didn’t quite equate with three cigarettes lit from the same match. But there was an eerie symmetry there, completely lost in Yuuri’s calm, sated expression.

Yuuri raised an eyebrow, and - right. His prize.

What would he ask about, at a time like this? With the honesty of Yuuri’s answer guaranteed by his promise, Viktor was of course tempted to ask about that orphanage - what had set off that fire, perhaps? Or he could ask what exactly had happened to Yuuri after his days there, because from the documents he’d found that sketched an outline of the rest of the doctor’s life, this was only blind spot that spanned years. Then there was a question that had been sitting unanswered since they’d first met, the simplest one no doubt, but also one that carried the most risk of coming out to be in poor taste: how had Dr. Yuuri Katsuki, who’d abruptly aborted his own career as a surgeon before it could have even begun, and slotted himself into a field of medicine that was relatively new and unknown around these parts, amassed such a massive amount of wealth?

Viktor could have gone with any of those questions, or any of a hundred more. But instead, he found himself asking, “Would you really leave everything here behind - your practice, your friends, your prestige - and run away with me? If I asked you to?”

Yuuri, without even batting an eyelid, murmured, "I would leave in a heartbeat if I could."

"But…” And he’d remembered as much from their first visit to the beach house. “You can't yet."

"Not now. Not until I’ve repaid all of my debts."

Of course. Viktor knew a thing or two about unpaid debts, albeit only his own. He had no idea what Yuuri had still hanging over his head, and who or what entity might have been holding the other end. And maybe he would find out one day, but for now, he only hoped it was nowhere near as bad as the debts Viktor had on his account. He hoped, earnestly, that Yuuri had not done anything so foolish as he once had, and made a deal with the devil of his own.

“You said to ask you again, once you finish your case. Do you remember?” When Viktor nodded, Yuuri asked, “If by that time, I still haven’t completed my… obligations…” He hesitated. “Would you wait for me?”

“Of course,” Viktor said. "We'll go when you're ready.”

Chapters: 15 / 22 Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime) Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Undisclosed/Victor Nikiforov (minor) Trigger Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape / Non-Con Ao3 Taggage: Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Dark, Murder Mystery, Organized Crime, Aged-Up Character(s), Blood and Violence, Psychological Trauma, Heavy Angst, Hand Jobs, Semi-Public Sex, Blackmail, Blow Jobs, Dubious Ethics, Minor Character Death, Rape/Non-con Elements, Dubious Consent, Gunplay, Past Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Strangulation, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Blindfolds, Sensory Deprivation, Exhibitionism, Possessive Behavior, Switching [more tags pending]

“You do this, you do. You take the things you love and tear them apart or you pin them down with your body and pretend they’re yours. So, you kiss him, and he doesn’t move, he doesn’t pull away, and you keep on kissing him. And he hasn’t moved, he’s frozen, and you’ve kissed him, and he’ll never forgive you, and maybe now he’ll leave you alone.”

A brutal murder on Christmas Eve abruptly pulls one Detective Nikiforov out of a holiday he was just starting to tolerate, and forces him to come to terms with demons he’s been pretending not to see. On that same night, a man walks into a bar and waltzes into his life, lighting a spark that grows into a monster of its own.

[ fic + art collab with @iruutciv ]

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CHAPTER 15 IS UP!