A/N: This swept me away like the trash that I am. I told myself that this is a ONE SHOT, but my fingers wouldn't listen. Again, this is unplanned, messy, probably completely self-indulgent, but it is what it is.

*Violently resists the urge to write an Eros POV chapter*

Yuuri wakes. The room holds a peaceful quality reserved for early morning thoughts and Yuuri allows himself to indulge in those. He thinks about the arm across his middle, its strength, pulled tight to his abdomen. He thinks about his notebook, always within reach, but growing dusty from weeks untouched, its pages becoming foreign to his softening fingertips. He thinks about the blankness of his mind, the days he does not remember, the look that crosses Viktor's face whenever he speaks of the incidents.

He thinks about the dryness of his mouth. The weight of the air on his fingers. The screams in his ears.

Yuuri once had a dream. He was smiling some smile he hadn't felt on his face since he'd last seen his sister. But there was something sinister sitting at its edges. Even as he looked out at the scene in front of him, full of gore, the embodiment of death, his smile didn't change. It never warped with the horror that panged his heart and deadened his pulse. He watched as a knife spun around his finger without his control. He watched as blood squished beneath his toes like the paint he used to play in as a child. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to call someone, anyone, because this wasn't right. Where was he? What-

But a hush fell over his mind. It took his words, stole his worry. A silence eclipsed him, and with it came a peace. Whispers advanced like tendrils that covered his eyes and spirited him away.

He never forgot that moment, but it was always remembered as a nightmare. After all, it was something he would never do. The very idea of killing something, taking a life, made Yuuri's insides twist with vile disgust. Within the nightmare, there was no feeling, not of the knife in his hand, not of the liquid slipping between his toes, not of the mental cries at war with the smile. It had to have been a nightmare. There was nothing more to it.

As all nightmares do, it haunts him. It keeps Yuuri from explaining away his collapsing memory. The nightmare serves as a needle that has pierced him bone deep, leaving the smile as a souvenir, a tattoo he can never laser off.

Yuuri knows that something is wrong with him. The gaps are getting longer, more frequent. He also knows that Viktor is hiding something from him. He used to look disturbed, lost, when Yuuri would bring up the memories so cruelly taken from his mind, but now all Viktor ever does is quietly, effortlessly console him. Tells him that it's okay. The look in Viktor's eyes instantly changes from heated, enthralled, to placating the moment Yuuri comes back to himself and knows something isn't right, yet Viktor says that there is nothing.

The way Viktor says it always makes Yuuri doubt himself. Maybe his thoughts have run away with him again. Maybe his imagination has finally grown too big for him to handle.

Yuuri's thoughts crack apart as he's tugged closer to the body behind him. There's a sleepy murmur in his ear, some incoherent babble that makes Yuuri smile.

The smile is frozen as Yuuri glances up at their reflection caught in the window across from their bed. It is not Viktor behind him.

It is Yuuri.

No. Yuuri doesn't look like that. He doesn't smile like that. Like he's in a bloodstained room, knife in hand, and he's enjoying himself. Yuuri swallows. His breathing has stopped. This… apparition that has him must be nothing more than another nightmare.

Yes. It isn't anything more than a nightmare. It is only Viktor behind him, holding him, keeping him safe. Yuuri clenches his eyes shut, some ill-begotten certainty driving away the tears behind his lids, and then opens them.

Viktor is there.

Yuuri blows out a sigh, but there's something wrong with Viktor's face.

Viktor is deep under sleep's sweet spell, and he's smiling.

Yuuri recognizes the smile. It's from his apparition's face. The face Yuuri doesn't recognize as his own.

Yuuri goes cold. The weight of protection wrapped around his middle makes him feel trapped. Bound. Chained.

That smile. Yuuri can't escape from it. Because it is his.

Now it is Viktor's.

Viktor's grip tightens around his waist. Yuuri feels the love.

He no longer trusts it.

Yuuri has always desired love.

It blindsides him. Comes in the form of a regular, always charming, ever polite if not a tad too flirty. It takes its coffee with cinnamon and never fails to give him a compliment and a wink. It leaves a lasting impression of sea colored eyes and hair threaded with starlight and a deep, searching voice.

Love is different than he imagined it would be. He expected some messy titanic of a thing. Something that would drown them both, something Shakespearean and tragic and enthralling to the bitter end. Instead, it's easy. It makes him feel as fluffy as the clouds over his head and warm like the sunshine that reveals itself after a long winter. The words come with little difficulty and so do the feelings. His songs revolve around a heart-shaped, goofy smile that he can't help but want to touch, take, have. Their hands, their bodies, everything about them seems to fit better than the pages of his most cherished notebook.

He feels lucky. To be given this. This love that costs him nothing and gives him everything.

Viktor, the detective that helped him solve what love is, showed him love's magic and transparent personality. Yuuri doesn't know how he earned this, what he did to deserve this man, this happiness.

He wonders. It shadows the sunshine. Glooms over the feeling that beats truth into his chest. He feels insecure and wrong and sick all at once.

But he wakes to love once more. Viktor's apologizing. Yuuri can read the shame in his brow, the guilt harsh in his mouth. Yuuri feels no regret. They're together, nothing can be wrong about that. It doesn't matter how they fell together, over coffee, or in a forgotten, drunken haze at a nightclub. They're together. Yuuri knows that it's right.

It isn't until Viktor starts questioning him that Yuuri hears a fogged over echo in his mind. It's an itch he can't scratch. He doesn't want to. There's a box sitting somewhere in his mind. It's unassuming, but Yuuri knows not to touch. He knows that once he nears it, and peeks inside, he won't be able to live here in this happiness anymore.

There is nothing wrong. He got drunk and forgot once. It's probably only happened again.

Viktor, his boyfriend, is only worried. Viktor, the detective, is only asking to answer the questions he can't help but formulate.

The whispers come. They soothe. They spirit him away again to the forest that gives him his best songs. Yuuri loses himself.

In more ways than one.

Yuuri is floating. There are notes around him, bathing him in a glow that he attempts to collect, every brain cell working to transcribe them down into a tangible song. But something calls to him, grips him. A feeling overtakes him sharply with all of the suddenness of a wasp sting. It builds into a euphoric crescendo, a high he's never possessed.

The box is in front of him, feeding him this feeling straight into his gut. Yuuri can't help but turn over its flaps.

He sees.

Something falls from his hand. He hears his own breathing, ragged and bestial in its drive. The acrid smell is enough to make him light headed and he wants to faint. He wants that whisper to come again. He needs to summon his hero to save him from whatever depraved delusion he's stumbled into.

Viktor is there. He's choking her. He's choking this woman that is crying into the tie that Viktor wears on Tuesdays and blood is pooling around her like wings. The only thing left of a fallen angel. She writhes. The plastic crinkles and cracks as Yuuri's brain cells do the same.

Yuuri feels the smile on his face. He knows this smile.

Yuuri's mouth is whispering words. Encouragements. Praises. Yuuri doesn't know where the words come from but they leave his lips without his consent. He feels possessed. He feels violated, but he doesn't know by who. Who is this creature that utilizes his throat like a weapon?

"We are all monsters, Viktor. Are you one that watches? One that lets other monsters run rampant? Or are you one that makes them pay?"

There's one last crack. A whip that sounds out finality. Her body stills, knotted strands of hair covering her eyes. A man on the floor dissolves into inconsolable sobs.

Yuuri feels eyes on him.

He's back in the forest. In the maze that grants him genius. The other Yuuri is there, the one with the smile he fears.

"I'm so sorry, Yuuri," is all he says, voice a wreck. It's the first time Yuuri has seen him without a smile, a grin, a leer. Tears balance on his lashes. "I'll fix you, I promise. I'll make this better." The Yuuri that is not Yuuri holds his hand out.

Yuuri wants to know what's going on. He wants to throw up. He wants to pummel the other Yuuri in front of him and demand that he leave him and Viktor alone. He wants to hug him, grant him forgiveness. He wants to know why. Why him? Why Viktor? What is wrong with him?

But as Yuuri takes this imposter in, his throat closes, takes hostages.

This is his savior. The one that makes the bad things go away. The knight that vanquishes his nightmares.

Yuuri can trust him. He has to.

Taking his hand is the only choice he has left.

Yuuri's laugh unfurls from his chest and he hands Viktor the knife. He's hopeless with knives, almost always cooks a chunk of himself with his dinner. Relief rests in Viktor's shoulders. There's a strange coating on his voice when he says "It's astounding how bad you are at this."

Yuuri pinches Viktor's ear in retaliation. "Yeah, well, I'll take singing and songwriting over chef skills any day."

"Low blow." Viktor grins, slipping the filleted salmon into the pan. Oil cracks and pops and the scent of lemon and garlic cover over the worm of familiarity that wiggles in Yuuri's ear. "You know how much I envy your ability to sing."

"Your stage shall forever remain the shower." Yuuri hitches a squealy laugh as Viktor steps away from the stove to tickle his hips. They end up laughing into each other's mouths, kissing until dinner chars away, their hands clasped like clamps holding together a lifeline.

It's this, these moments, that Yuuri holds onto. When Viktor looks at him like he always has. Viktor holds his hands like Yuuri's the world and all of the glitter in it. Yuuri covets these moments, holds onto them until they rust, turn gray and fray at the edges. He grips onto them until they break in his hands. Until he's bleeding a blood that's too familiar beneath his fingernails.

He wants to escape into Viktor's hands, warm from wool pockets and big enough to cradle his face in the delicate curve of his palm. He smells of bitter coffee and nicotine gum. Yuuri can listen to the crinkle of pages turning between Viktor's fingertips until he can no longer hear anything at all.

It's unhealthy, this fixation. This obsession. But it's love. Twisted and ugly and raw. Raw as the heart that no longer beats, stretched out in an inky blob he sees in the art on his wall. He can't look at it anymore, doesn't. He turns his eyes away from its diseased brushstrokes that are nothing like what he saw when he presented it to Viktor.

Yuuri doesn't recognize it. Yet he does, somewhere in his fractured thoughts.

There's choking.

There's a heart. His masterpiece. His proposal.

A drop of blood lands on his photo.

He sees them. Siblings fighting outside the café. They're perfect.

"Stop."

The whisper is adamant. It's unhinged with emotion.

Yuuri listens.

Yuuri is afraid of sleeping. He's afraid of what his sleep holds. And if one day he won't wake.

Because now, the nightmares won't stop.

This one feels too real.

Hands are around his throat, thumbs under his Adam's apple, fingernails digging in. Yuuri gags out silent questions. The pleas and begging are lost somewhere beneath his lungs. His heart beats, breaking and splintering his ribs with its need to survive. Yuuri's hands don't fight, don't claw or hit, they grip their protests into the sheets. He can't breathe. His tongue no longer fits in his mouth. His saliva pools beneath his ears.

He's scared. He wants to run.

Viktor is above him. His Viktor that has granted him love. Given him so much and taken so little. His Viktor has his life in his hands. Yuuri doesn't fight him. Can't.

Yuuri sees that look in his eyes, full of the wonder and light that Yuuri keeps like a locket under his shirt. He's smiling that smile and Yuuri can't fear it anymore. He accepts it.

He feels Viktor squeeze tighter.

"Yuuri? Love?"

Yuuri blinks his eyes open. His head is heavy. There's a murkiness to his mind and he wades through it to figure out where he is. What he's doing.

"The movie's over."

Viktor's beside him, easing him awake with his arm sloped around his back and the soothing back and forth of his hand on his shoulder. Movie? They were watching a movie? He fell asleep?

No, that doesn't sound right.

Yuuri was remembering something again. The memories are a film over his vision, a milky cataract that steals reality and fills in the blanks.

It's convincing, this act he's woken to. Credits stream up the screen. Bitty popcorn pieces are strewn across their laps. Viktor's buttery breath wafts against his cheek. He tastes salt in his throat.

It all feels… rehearsed. And he can't stand being his character, the pure maiden, the confused pawn, the misled fool. He's tired of this. He's not crazy and he wants that pacifying lilt to Viktor's eyebrows to go away. Viktor's fingertips curl around his face. It isn't a comfort. It's the first time Yuuri's questioned those hands.

Just a few inches lower and-

"So what did you think? Not bad for a disaster movie. The plot line was stretched thin, but given the genre, that's nothing new."

Yuuri isn't doing this. He can't smile through the confusion anymore. This is dragging on his mind. He's not himself anymore. He stares at blank pages and sees nothing but red. His pen feels heavier in his hand than it should. It's sharper and he feels like he could stab it through the pages, down through paper and cardboard and flesh and bone. His lyrics come out jumbled. His fingers no longer dance across strings or keys. They waver. Yuuri feels like he's slowly being entangled, caught in this web that's threaded in steel. He can never escape. And if he does, who will he be?

"Stop it," Yuuri says as he stands, and he's surprised that it's his own voice, quivering beneath the knowledge that this is a plunge he cannot handle. The shock reverberates over Viktor's expression briefly, but he laughs it off. That smile, he loves it, but Yuuri does not find this amusing.

"What? You liked it? Fine, I'll refrain from issuing any more insults."

Yuuri pushes Viktor away. It's abrupt. It's a movement that scalds his skin. He doesn't want to do this.

He has to do this.

"Did you… Did you kill someone, Viktor?"

Viktor's face doesn't move. There's no tell, no noticeable twitch. Viktor's face doesn't hold the honesty Yuuri's does and Yuuri curses the fact. Concern straightens Viktor's mouth and he stands from his off balance place against the couch where he's been shoved. Ah, the detective. Viktor's go to cover when Yuuri pries.

"Yuuri. You know I've killed people. I'm a cop."

Viktor says it, but the usual pride is gone. Yuuri doesn't remember the last time he saw Viktor's badge.

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"I'm not quite sure that I do. What is it that you mean?"

The questions won't come. His saliva turns to acid, corroding them down along with his tongue. His head feels heavy again, ready to roll off his shoulders and into Viktor's hands. Where it has always belonged. Yuuri laughs. It stutters out of his lungs and Yuuri decides that he really can't do this. Not to Viktor. Not directly. "I think I need to lay down."

He fakes an episode. It's easy enough and Viktor falls for it. He's never really understood Yuuri's anxiety, the depression that slips its hand in with it. He lays in bed for days, his mind turning over every thought, just close enough to something that he can almost taste it, but then a whisper comes.

Viktor remains by his side until he isn't. Yuuri wakes to find his lover has absconded into early morning musings. He can hear him, breathing in the next room, socked feet dancing nerves into the floor. Yuuri senses another box, this time existing outside of himself. It sleeps beside him. It's in the next room and Yuuri can't ignore it.

Yuuri ghosts his limbs out of bed, his breathing taut in his diaphragm as he collects his glasses from the bedside table without a sound. His feet take calculated steps to avoid the creaks and cracks, sounds his ears can't forget. Yuuri draws himself bow-tight against the wall, glances carefully out into the living room.

Viktor sits, toes in a rhythm. There's agonizing conflict in his eyes, a dagger that rips through Yuuri's gut. There's a file in his lap, papers and clippings and notes coated in a manila folder that matches the ones scattered across Viktor's desk. If he squints, Yuuri can just make out a name emboldened in newspaper ink.

EROS

The name quivers him down to his toes. It's in black but Yuuri sees it in red. In brushstrokes that match his own.

Somehow, it's not the name that disturbs Yuuri the most.

It is the gun in Viktor's hand.

It's not his police issue. His finger toys with the hammer. Safety on. Safety off. It flicks back and forth. Yuuri listens to the click, an almost entrancing tick-tock, and the movement mimics that of a pendulum. Back and forth. Swaying dangerously closer. Bringing death mere inches from his throat.

Viktor sighs and makes to get up. Yuuri frantically tip toes back to bed. He moves into position, mimics his earlier sleep. He's good. He's fine. He won't get caught.

Except he forgot that he still has his glasses.

Yuuri listens to the rustle of clothes and paper. Viktor's side table opens, papers whispering in like falling leaves, his gun a clunk after them. The drawer shuts. The lock clicks. Viktor slips in beside him and Yuuri has to remind himself to steady his breathing. Viktor's arms are back around his waist but he comes to a sudden pause.

Oh god, oh god, Yuuri thinks, he knows, he knows. Yuuri isn't sure why he doesn't want Viktor to know, but he doesn't.

There's a chuckle. It rumbles from Viktor's chest into Yuuri's back. His glasses are slipped from his nose, his bangs are brushed from his forehead. And Viktor sleeps.

Yuuri lays there, doesn't speak. He remains a sleepless husk until Viktor can't afford to miss another day of work. He's sorry, Viktor says as he buttons his cuffs, because usually he wades out Yuuri's storms with him. He leaves Yuuri with breakfast in bed and a kiss on his temple.

Snooping is not something Yuuri does. He respects Viktor's privacy. Knows that secrets aren't necessarily bad, especially when they concern Viktor's cases. But his eyes stray to the bedside table. Yuuri knows where Viktor keeps the key. That isn't a secret, because Viktor trusts Yuuri.

He shouldn't. Not this new Yuuri that hasn't slept in four days and envisions wool-warm hands on a throat when he thinks of the name Eros. Yuuri takes the key in hand, thumbs over its teeth. Yuuri has to know. He has to see. His curiosity, this craziness that drives him, compels him to see. There are no whispers to stop him.

They don't have to.

His hand halts just shy of the lock. His arm no longer moves forward. Yuuri implores it to move, commands his muscles to shift. His body betrays him. It doesn't let him anywhere near. He's a fly paralyzed and he senses the spider inside him. Yuuri realizes that it isn't just Viktor he can no longer trust.

It is himself.

Yuuri backs away. He places the key down, every edge conforming to its dust shadow. Then he runs for his phone. His fingers type in a frenzy. He can't trust himself, no longer knows who he is, so he texts Phichit. He needs his best friend. He needs someone to help him when his arms fail him and Viktor toys with his gun and his savior wears that smile.

He says that he's in trouble. He asks for Phichit's help. He needs him. Needs him.

The answering text is bizarrely casual in the face of his pleas. It doesn't make sense.

"Sure," he says, "Let's meet up tomorrow. Go skating or bowling or something." There's a bunch of smiling, celebrating emojis trailing after.

Yuuri doesn't understand, so he clicks back to his sent box and his brain stutters over what he apparently wrote. "Hey, Phichit. We should do something soon."

Yuuri gives that up and calls. He dials, he checks over the number and the contact that springs forth. He presses send and waits.

"Yuuri? Is something wrong?"

It's Viktor's voice.

The phone drops from his hand. It collides with the wood, cracks the screen and sits silent.

Yuuri stares at the many Yuuris in his broken reflection.

They smile back.

The way Viktor moves feels wrong. His fingers drift along the column of his neck, his other hand pulling the strings of Yuuri's sleep pants. Yuuri feels himself kissing and groaning and tastes danger at the back of his throat. He bites at Viktor's tongue, his lips until he's sure there are bruised imprints. A strange surge of power thrills through his blood stream, electrifies him at every point of contact. Their bare chests. Viktor's hand on his pulse. His tongue in his mouth and his breath on his teeth. Where Yuuri reaches down and shoves away Viktor's slacks, turns them over and grips them together, tighter, and tighter still.

Viktor whimpers as he looks up at him and Yuuri holds the crown of a conqueror on his head. His own hand moves, up and down, gliding them together until Viktor's a moaning mess beneath him. He stops, makes Viktor beg. His hands slide up Viktor's chest and he curls his slick fingers around Viktor's throat. He gazes deep into Viktor's eyes, slides his hands up and down, tightens. Viktor opens his legs for him, lets him in.

Viktor doesn't breathe until Yuuri tells him to. Until Yuuri drives into him and makes him gasp in a breath that is expressly given. Yuuri's hips move, but Viktor stays still, doesn't move even as his muscles twitch and spasm with the effort to lay there and take it. Yuuri's hand glides down the slope of Viktor's thigh, touches him, applies sweet relief like a bandage and whispers praises like he's kissing away wounds.

This isn't how they make love.

Yuuri internally screams, cries, pounds himself against the outskirts of his mind because this is not him. This is not how he treats Viktor. When they join, it's soft and sweet and makes Yuuri melt into the sheets. He's not this overbearing sadistic monster that takes and takes and takes until there's no more Viktor left.

But Yuuri recognizes the whispers. The smile that creases his own face.

It's his savior. Yuuri took his hand. Yuuri allowed him in. Into his body. Into their bed.

The heat is maddening. Yuuri licks away the sweat beading down to his lip, curls his tongue and licks away the indents his fingers have left on Viktor's skin. His movements don't stop. They run full speed, rattling the bed frame and drawing every sound out of Viktor that they can. Until he's screaming his name, the right name, into the air with the last of his breath.

Viktor's in tears by the time they release.

Somewhere in his mind, Yuuri is, too.

Eros is a criminal.

That is the only explanation for his name to be in one of Viktor's folders. He is a killer, Yuuri suspects, because proof is kept out of reach every time he tries to type the name into a computer or turn on the news.

Yuuri thinks that he knows Eros, down to the very fiber of his being.

Yuuri feels a gagging restriction around his throat and thinks of Viktor.

Viktor strangled some woman. He played with his gun in the silence of the night over clippings of his name.

Viktor is Eros.

Yuuri wants to reject the thought the minute it finally congeals. Viktor is a detective, not a criminal. He protects people from monsters, isn't one himself. But Yuuri can't help the thought as the scene replays. It plays and plays across that milky cataract over his eyes.

There are whispers again, pleading with him in his ears, crying from the box, but Yuuri shuts them off. He finds the strength to kill them before they gain power. Before they can entangle him and chain him.

It is then that Yuuri comes to a new conclusion.

Eros

Viktor called that name in their bed, with Yuuri, during whatever that was that was anything but coupling.

Knives are beginning to feel right in Yuuri's hands. Yuuri was there during the killing, goading Viktor on. It was Yuuri's present that sent the message, the very proposal that led them here. The smile belongs to Yuuri's cheeks.

Yuuri doesn't know what to do anymore. He stops just shy of his answer, because he can't think it. He runs to the kitchen, stops himself from gripping the knife. He can see the blood, slick on the blade, in his own prints on the handle.

Instead, he goes for the scissors. He cradles them to his chest as if they can somehow protect him from Eros.

From Viktor.

From himself.

"No," Yuuri demands. He shakes his head so hard against his thoughts that the room spins and he falls. His head hits the floor and there's a blackness.

There's arguing. He can feel himself talking, but he can't hear a word. He doesn't see anything. He's numb to his movements.

His head hurts.

Maybe he really is crazy. He's finally gone insane. He doesn't trust the people he loves. His own words and actions don't match what he thinks. He doesn't remember things that he should.

Yuuri's eyes flicker open. He's on the couch, an ice pack to his temple and a bandage around his wrist.

Viktor is between his legs. He's crying into Yuuri's thigh, forehead against the seam of his jeans. Yuuri wants to brush away his tears, assuage the anguish from his expression. To his relief, he does. His hand moves just the way he tells it to. This time, its Yuuri consoling Viktor. Doing his best to parry the unknown demons away.

Viktor's smile is sad. There's no murderous intent behind it. It doesn't carry a sadistic twist.

Yuuri isn't sure if that smile ever existed in the first place.

"I think it's time that I showed you something, Yuuri."

Viktor blames himself for Yuuri's ailments. Yuuri can see it in the dull tinge to the sea within Viktor's eyes. He blames himself for the gaps. The mistrust. The reason he'd come home to find Yuuri on the floor, running a pair of scissors down his own wrist.

So what can Yuuri say but, "Okay." Viktor has done so much for him. He cares for him through his deranged moments, loves him despite them. Yuuri pets Viktor's hair, smiles as the man nuzzles his face against him.

Yuuri has always yearned for love. It came to him, with a gleam in its eyes and a gun on its belt. It never judged him. It sang his praises and came to his shows with sparkles in its eyes. It didn't take anyone else's coffee, only Yuuri's.

Viktor makes him feel special. He makes him feel wanted. Makes him feel like more than the musician that will never see the outside of a coffee shop. More than the man who's had no one but himself to count on.

Viktor makes him feel normal.

Before Viktor, Yuuri hadn't been able to find happiness in coffee art or music or poetry anymore. He felt dried out, washed ashore where the limitless possibilities seeped out of him. He never minded the listless days, he would get through them and come out feeling better. And if he didn't remember some of it, days running into each other, it didn't matter.

Now Yuuri has this fairy tale presented to him. There's laughter and happiness and glee. There's a purpose in his coffee and his music and poetry beat with his heart. He just won't pay attention to the darkness this is built over. He can stay out of the closets, the boxes, the dungeon.

He won't look anymore, he promises to no one, but always someone.

There has always been a coo in his ear. It was there with him when there was no one else. A presence, not physical, but real enough. Yuuri used to talk to it, when he was a child. He remembers whispering back in the dark, under his covers, when no one was watching. He doesn't remember when it named itself, when it started to wear his face.

When he began to forget about it.

He doesn't think about it. It is his savior, and it tells him that Viktor is one, too. Saviors come in many forms. They wear many masks.

So do monsters.

Yuuri can accept the darkness. He can learn to accept the darkness holding his throat.

Because what do you do when you destroy yourself?

You take the hand that makes everything better.

They're in Viktor's car. He turns onto a road that's nothing but gravel. It's bumpy and full of holes and Yuuri rattles in his seat, the feeling of uneasiness seeping into his stomach. Viktor hasn't told him where they're going, but Yuuri dreads their destination. It's like he has a blindfold on and is waiting to be presented with his surprise. Except he knows in what's left of his soul that this surprise is one he doesn't want. It's a box that can't be opened. He's following deeper and deeper into the dungeon he promised to never go in. He accepted the darkness, but he doesn't dare touch it.

His chest throbs.

Viktor talks about a suspect, a predator both old and new.

Eros

But it's not. It's a different monster. One that rapes and maims and tortures. Yuuri's ears burn with the details, and his fingers are stiff as they turn the pages of Viktor's file in his lap. The file is thick. There are crime scene photos and medical reports. Family statements and notes of conjecture. Evidence and victim accounts. Yuuri swallows as his eyes stick on the bruises. The torn skin. The ligature marks. The blood.

Why? Why is Viktor telling him this? Showing him this? He never has before. Viktor never talked about his cases, kept them sealed away with his own sleepless nights and coffee binges. And yet, now he does this, reveals everything, kid gloves off.

The final page is a profile. Attached is a photo, some middle-aged man with a straight-toothed smile on an impeccably clean face.

Yuuri fights against the foreboding feeling. He feels like he's seen this face, talked to him. He feels like he's stabbing himself, stabbing and stabbing. His wrist stings with renewed vigor. Yuuri thinks about ripping apart the bandage, scratching his nails in.

Viktor stops him. His hand rests atop Yuuri's, gentle, calm. Those hands are somehow reassuring again and Yuuri faces forward.

The house is something out of a nightmare. His own, he suspects. It's run down and ill-repaired. Forgotten and left to rot. Yuuri pities it, and it's not so scary. Twilight bathes it in a glow and Yuuri can imagine it healthier, happier. When people used to fill it. A family.

Viktor leads them through brush and brambles. This, Yuuri recognizes. He bets that if they venture further, deeper, that they'll find the maze that he gets lost in, the solace that the whispers spirit him away to. But they don't. They turn and the back door cries as Viktor pushes it open. He waits, holds the door for him, let's Yuuri make the final decision.

Will he enter?

He does. Darkness shadows over everything as the door shuts behind them. There's a thump. It resounds in his ears and Yuuri feels an organ beat its death into his palm. Again, Yuuri goes first. He walks to the door that traps persistent thumping, thuds and a crackling he can hear as he gets closer. The knob is cold in his hand, but he thinks he feels something oozing.

He opens the door and rushes in.

This is it, the proof he's been searching for. The reality he's been denied for so long.

Viktor is the killer.

The man from the file is strung up on a bed. He's naked, left bare and stricken of his dignity just like his victims. Rope burns into his wrists and ankles as he struggles. He's already bruised, battered, bleeding. Some ghoulish form of justice has this rapist in its jaws and Yuuri doesn't know why he hasn't bolted already.

Yuuri tries to run, trips on a wrinkle in the room's plastic coating and falls into the wall. He clenches his hands against it, tries to hide beneath the plastic and paint and disappear. He cries. He asks the cosmos for something to come and rescue him.

His savior answers. But just before Yuuri can take his hand, before he can vanish into his maze, Viktor calls to him.

"Yuuri."

It's his name that Viktor speaks, not Eros'. There's that promised warmth in it. That fairy tale happiness.

Yuuri turns from the wall.

From his savior.

Viktor nods, smiles just for him. "I need you, Yuuri. Please don't leave me."

Yuuri wants to stay. He's terrified down to his membranes, but he wants to stay. He curls himself up into a ball, covers his ears as the man yells against another familiar tie. No, he doesn't. He wants to leave. He can't be here. This isn't him. This isn't his world.

Viktor kneels beside him. Uncovers his ears.

"Yuuri."

Viktor pulls out a knife. It shines and glimmers in the light of the heat lamps. It almost sings out his name as sweetly as Viktor does. It's held out for him, waits for him.

"I want you, Yuuri."

Yuuri takes it in his hand. These are his movements. His strings aren't being pulled.

"No! Don't-"

Yuuri doesn't listen.

Yuuri doesn't want to hide anymore. He doesn't want a savior or a hero. He wants to know who he really is, even if it's insane, even if it's depraved.

He wants to hold his head high beside Viktor's. He wants this. If this is what it takes, he'll embrace this darkness. He'll hold its hand and put it on his throat.

Yuuri brings the knife closer, gets up and walks forward. He's not sure what he's seeing, which scene he's now a part of. The present or the past. But he's playing an active role. He's in his own shoes.

Viktor's hand covers his over the handle, gentle, calm.

Yuuri makes his own choice.

He embraces a monster.