Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“So, the whole situation is a little hazy for everyone. Would you mind telling the whole story?”
-----♡-----
Yuuri couldn’t stop the low whine that worked it’s way from his throat upon exiting through the glass doors of his job.
Just past the covered entrance was an absolute downpour — guaranteed to drench anyone to the bone within seconds. Yuuri stood and stared as dismay flooded his frame and features like the water in the street. He quickly turned to look at the usually ignored umbrella stand in the lobby, any remaining hope draining from his body when he saw it was empty.
Of course, that day of all days was when the forecasters would be right.
Someone grumbled behind him and Yuuri stepped to the side, out of the way of the doors but still under the cover provided by the building, and started to figure out a plan. It was two and a half blocks to the metro station, and two blocks from the station to his home. A welcomed commute on any normal day, then seemed to Yuuri like a wet, dreaded chore.
He could call a lyft, but Woodley Park was fifteen minutes away on a good day and rush hour was descending on D.C as hard and as quickly as the thunderstorm. His wallet pleaded with him not to, but Yuuri’s dignity and clothes were begging for mercy.
Before he could come to a decision, someone brushed past him. They bumped his shoulder, knocking him into the rain. Yuuri stumbled, fumbling with his phone in his hand, and as he recovered he looked up to see the culprit — and froze at the sight of silver hair.
Oh no.
Senator Victor Nikiforov, with his sharp blue eyes, perfectly styled hair, and tight suit that-should’ve-been-made-illegal turned and looked at Yuuri. Their eyes met before the Senator’s gaze flicked to his now drenched appearance and to the phone in his hand before he smiled, tight lipped, cold and impersonal.
“Ah,” he said, “I’m sorry, no statements today.”
His voice was as cold as the weather, and Yuuri desperately tries to keep a stricken look off his face, leaving expression carefully blank.
Victor Nikiforov just waltzed out of the office of Cialdini Co. and mistook Yuuri for a journalist. A low-life journalist who hung outside D.C. offices waiting for statements and pictures and new scoops.
Without another thought Yuuri turned and started his trek towards the station. Clothes be damned — his dignity had already been crushed underfoot by Senator Nikiforov.
-----♡-----
When Yuuri entered the apartment shared by himself and Phichit he was immediately greeted by his roommates worried inquiries.
“Hey — Wow! Did you walk all the way home? You’re soaking!” Phichit rushed over and helped Yuuri out of his jacket as he slipped off his shoes. Internally, Yuuri was fussing because those were his only work appropriate shoes and he needed to figure out how to dry them by the next morning, but externally, he sighed and pushed it down because letting one emotion slip through his mental dam would mean letting them all slip through, and he couldn’t quite get the look on Victor Nikiforov’s face out of his mind.
“Yuuri? Are you alright?”
Yuuri took a breath. “Not really. I think I need a shower and a beer,” he said after a short minute.
“How about I order some sushi while you do that?”
Yuuri paused bending over to peel the soaked socks off his feet. “Can we afford that?”
Phichit narrowed his eyes. “Of course. Stop being dumb and go take a shower. We’ll even watch some of that zombie show you love, and then you can tell me why you came home like this.”
Yuuri smiled despite himself and made for the shower, grabbing a towel from their linen closet as he passed. He stripped off the rest of his soaked clothes and let the water heat up before he stepped under the spray.
“I’m sorry, no statements today.”
He stood there for a while — long enough to lose track of time, and as he reached for the bottle of 3-in-1 he wondered if the stinging in his eyes was water, exhaustion, or tears. He used a non-soaped up area of arm to wipe his eyes before continuing his ritual of hair, then body, then face.
Phichit must have turned on the heat, Yuuri realized when he stepped out and the bathroom didn’t feel so desperately cold. Affection for his friend swelled in his chest and for the first time since he left work, the heartache dulled a bit. He towel dried his hair before he wrapped the towel around his waist and switched on the fan. He picked up his soaked work clothes and tossed them on top of the washer as he headed towards his room.
A sigh escaped him as he bypassed his dresser and flopped onto his bed. The idea of skipping dinner and avoiding responsibilities called to him — a familiar siren song that his depression and anxiety had crooned time and time again.
“ I’m sorry, no statements today.”
The words echoed in his mind, and Yuuri could still very clearly see the image of Senator Nikiforov, a bright, pale-silver beacon against a grey torrential downpour of wind and rain. His words accompanied by the battering of raindrops on pavement and brick and metal and the sound of a car splashing down the road.
His eyes held onto Yuuri’s, commanding his attention and respect for what had to be an unnoteworthy exchange, and his posture was confident and easy. He was everything Yuuri looked up to — and had for years .
And he had mistaken Yuuri for a journalist.
His nails bit into his palms as fresh and bitter frustration built inside him. A Journalist. Yuuri mentally scoffed. He might be a glorified coffee-bringer and copy-maker intern for Mr. Cialdini’s office, but he’d turn tail back to California before he’d ever consider journalism.
“ I’m sorry, no—.”
Distantly he noted the front door opening and closing — Phichit arriving home with their dinner. And Yuuri mustered his resolve to get dressed and sooner rather than later found himself settled into the couch with Tono Sushi balanced on his lap and a bottle of Sam Adams on the coffee table in front of him.
Phichit used his laptop to stream Netflix to their TV and they ate in silence while they watched a medical resident turned zombie turned police detective assistant help solve crimes with varying levels of amusement and disgust between them.
“I’m suing whoever thought that was a good plot twist. Seriously, I called it the second he claimed memory loss,” Phichit said as the episode ended. Yuuri made a noise around the sushi in his mouth, and Phichit hit the pause button before the next episode could start playing and turned his body to face Yuuri. “So, tell me what happened.”
Yuuri stared down at his empty plate and fiddled with his chopsticks as he recounted the time between him leaving their office building and him returning home; discovering the storm, encountering Senator Nikiforov, the miserable walk to the station, the malfunctioning ticket barrier, the packed train — crowded with extra commuters due to the rain — and the defeated walk to the apartment. Phichit made sympathetic noises throughout his re-telling but in the end, Yuuri was still left feeling like he was no better off than before.
“Well,” Phichit said once he finished, “They always say you should never meet your heroes.”
“Yeah, I know.” Yuuri took another drink from his beer, having picked it up into the beginning of his story. “But that’s why I came home sad and wet. How was your day?”
Phichit shrugged and smiled. “Good. I made some decent progress on an app for a new customer, and cleaned a bit.”
“Sounds like a productive day.”
“Very,” Phichit chimed, then leaned forward. “Hey, did you happen to see that new temp today? I heard that he has to spend another week in training because of some huge fuck up last week.”
Yuuri let himself be drawn into Phichit’s chatter and gossip until Yuuri no longer felt like he would combust at any moment, and after the laptop fell into sleep mode they got up. Yuuri gathered their dishes while Phichit threw away their beer bottles and the empty takeout containers.
Phichit resettled at his table with his laptop, most likely to finish up some work or browse his social media while Yuuri went about stuffing his waterlogged shoes with paper and other things google recommended and placed them near a heat source. Next he tossed his wet clothes into the washer, along with some other laundry that he had been waiting on.
“Can you switch that over when you go to bed?” Yuuri asked Phichit, knowing that the boy would be up way past him and wouldn’t mind.
“Sure.”
And with Phichit’s approval Yuuri retreated to his room and fell into bed. He found a reasonably droning documentary on his Netflix app and set it to play while he plugged in his phone and settled under the covers.
He gradually fell asleep to the sound of Ken Burns, rain and thunder, and the voice of Victor Nikiforov dancing in his head.
-----♡-----
Tuesday came the announcement of an office party — hosted by Celestino Cialdini — and all of the staff were invited. This invitation, Celestino’s PA said with a weird sort of look, extended to interns and temps.
Yuuri put it out of his mind. He wasn’t one for parties, and as much as he had ever dreamed of reaching Nikiforov levels of socializing, he held no current desire to mingle with any DC big-shots who were rumored to maybe be there.
An email reminder was sent out a day later.
Yuuri sighed and deleted it. Maybe once he had licked his wounds and no longer flinched at the mere idea of seeing Senator Nikiforov, or found a cheap phycologist willing to give him some equally cheap anti-anxiety meds.
The thought almost made him laugh. Yuuri held nothing against Mr Cialdini, but temps and interns were a good way to get work done for cheap and without spending extra on benefits and healthcare and PTO. It was the way every office worked. Yuuri was lucky that his position was paid.
Yuuri could only hope then when his internship was up Celestino would be kind enough to offer him a proper position, rather than stamp his name on a reference sheet and throw Yuuri to the wolves.
Yuuri suppressed a shudder at the idea of job hunting in D.C.
“Hey, Yuuri, are you busy?”
Yuuri looked up at the mention of his name and saw Sara walking towards him. She held an overstuffed folder and had a grimace on her face. Yuuri eyed the papers almost slipping from her arms and could almost predict what was coming.
Yuuri shook his head, despite the monstrous pile of papers already stacked on his desk. It was his job to be useful to anyone who asked. And a lot of people had been asking that day.
“Oh, great. Do you think you could help me with these? I’ve got Hughson breathing down my neck and the idea of doing all of this is—” she made a face and wiggled her shoulders, and Yuuri knew there was an alternate reality where he said no and started the Great Intern Uprising of 2021. “Pretty please?”
“Sure. Just put them over there, and I’ll get to it when I’m done with this current pile.”
“Ehhh. These are kinda important, though, so...” Sara trailed off as she haphazardly balanced the file on his desk.
Yuuri stifled a sigh. “James said the same thing about the pile he left, so I’ll finish the one he gave me and then do yours. Don’t worry, you’ll have it back before tomorrow morning.”
With that promise, Sara thanked him and smiled — saccharine sweet — and Yuuri knew he’d be working late.
Yuuri worked through the morning, re-reading and highlighting and cross-referencing and auditing until Phichit sidled up to his desk with a packaged croissant sandwich and a reusable water bottle filled with homemade fruit-infused water and pestered him until Yuuri started eating.
“They have me doing errands today,” he said as he eyed the papers Yuuri’s been shouldered with. “Though I can’t say I’d rather be you.”
“Yeah,” Yuuri said, “It’s pretty awful. I’ll be late tonight, so don’t plan on us doing dinner together or anything.”
“Alright,” said Phichit and made a meal out of his chick salad and crackers. They people watched the office as they are, and made conversation between bites, until Phichit asked “Are you going to the party?”
“No.”
“Wow, that sounded final. You’ve already decided then?”
“Yeah,” Yuuri unscrewed the cap on his bottle and took a sip. “Strawberry?” He guessed.
“Yep!” Phichit cheerfully replied. “Why are you so determined not to have fun, though?”
Yuuri made a frustrated noise. It wasn’t that he was determined to not have fun, it’s just that he could feel his depression coiling around him like a snake waiting to strike, and Yuuri would rather fight it in the comfort of his bed than have to publicly deal with it while surrounded by coworkers and strangers and politicians and politico-bloggers and anyone else who would prey on his moment of weakness. He struggled to find a way to tell Phichit this without sounding crazy, or like he was about to jump off the nearest building, but he settled for a “I just haven’t been in a partying mood.”
“It’s barely going to be a party though. It’ll just be some fancy alcohol and mediocre food and some butt-kissing.”
Yuuri took another bite of his sandwich, accompanied by another sip of water, and choose to not reply.
“And, I’m not going to lie, we don’t know if we’ll be hired by Celestino. If there’s any politicians or other business owners there it’ll be a good opportunity to network and maybe build a safety net.”
“I know,” Yuuri said. “I’ll consider it.”
“Good. And I’ll be there, so it’s not like you’ll be alone. And if you’re really that anxious about everything then why don’t you head by Minako’s sometime? She’d probably be happy to see you stop by.”
Yuuri considered it. He hadn’t been to Minako’s since the start of summer and his internship. It’d be good to see her again. “I might,” he said after a minute.
The two shared a smile and Phichit left soon after.
Yuuri felt the tension and anxiety roll over him in waves for the rest of a day, it disrupted his ability to concentrate and made him stay even later than he wanted. Eventually, he finished and dropped Sara’s papers back on her desk before he headed home.
The anxiety stayed with him for the remainder of the week.
-----♡-----
On Friday afternoon, the actual motivation behind the office party spread through the building like a wildfire made of whispers.
In a quite fitting, dramatic fashion, Celestino would be announcing his hires from the summer interns.
Yuuri felt his gut twist as he and Phichit exchanged glances when James came over during lunch to tell them. By the end of the following night Yuuri would know whether he had a job or was back to unemployment. He tried not to be completely pessimistic and firmly held back from looking at job searching websites.
He had worked hard through the summer, he reasoned as he swiveled his chair back and forth and spun his pen with his fingers. There was no reason for him to not get hired.
Eventually, Yuuri stopped his fiddling and settled down to work. A half hour later he gave in, reached for his earbuds and started up a podcast someone had recommended — Just something to help him focus on the papers in front of him, to keep his mind quiet and occupied and to keep him from distracting himself with his own heavy thoughts.
Near the end of the day Yuuri almost wished he could extend time, if only to delay the coming of the next day. At a little past five he finished his last paper and organized his things for Monday. Next week would either be his final week, or his first as a full-time employee. Yuuri wasn’t prepared to know.
The anxiety that had calmed throughout the day started to hum under his skin as he left the building and walked through the city to the metro station. The storm earlier that week had left the city hot and humid and Yuuri felt increasingly self-conscious as he navigated the subway — hands in pockets and eyes down. He couldn’t bare to see any weird or pitying looks from the mind-readers in the crowd.
Maybe he should go to Minako’s, he thought, and glanced up at the train-lines above him. He’d only have to switch over and go back to Gallery and then up to Shaw-Howard…
But the thought of being on the subway for any longer than necessary versus the warmth of his own bed made Yuuri backtrack on his thought of going to Minako’s. He’d live without seeing her.
Yuuri exited the station and stopped by the market to pick up ingredients for dinner. He wandered the small store, mostly empty but for the familiar aisles that calmed him after the hectic metro. He might have zoned out while holding a bottle of hoisin sauce, but the clerk, Maria, was friendly with an infectious type of genuine cheer that had Yuuri leaving feeling slightly better than before.
Phichit was home before Yuuri, sitting at his normal spot at the dining table with his laptop in front of him. Yuuri went about starting dinner while Phichit talked about the app he was working on.
App developing was something that Phichit had started as a hobby a few years back and Phichit had since started taking commissions and doing paid work for it. Yuuri was happy for him, it was something he truly enjoyed and an extra bit of income for him.
The closest thing Yuuri had ever had to a hobby was dancing, and ice skating when he was very young.
He had still been dancing and chasing far away dreams of performing when Victor Nikiforov was dominating his political bubble. Even as an activist teen Victor has been on the front of newspapers and on TV talk shows and news segments for his ideas and values.
Yuuri had wanted to dance, but he had also wanted to be like Victor.
His chest felt tighten as he stared at the chicken sizzling in the pan. Victor Nikiforov didn’t have personal roadblocks like anxiety stopping him from his reaching his dreams. Yuuri internally scoffed. Victor Nikiforov never would have been mistaken as a journalist.
-----♡-----
Yuuri would barely remember the way the room stared as he and Phichit entered the party side by side. Yuuri might have been a bit of a mess in his head, but he knew he wasn’t unattractive, and Phichit certainly had enough swagger for both of them.
He had indulged Phichit in some subtle eyeliner and hair gel when getting ready, and Phichit had sang The King and the Skater songs until Yuuri had given in and sang with him, putting them both in moods good enough to last the evening.
Yuuri let the almost-confidence wash over him as he picked his way over to the bar. He grimaced at the small selection, but he’d never complain about free alcohol so he handed over his I.D and ordered a Pinot Grigio.
‘ Always hold your drink in your left hand. You never know when you’ll be introduced to someone. ’ Minako had told him once upon a time and Yuuri shifted his drink, leaving his right hand open.
A few of the other Cialdini employees and interns came up to talk to him, offering to get him more drinks while also offering small talk and office chatter that Yuuri wasn’t particularly interested in. He accepted the drinks anyway.
Yuuri was easily distracted from their conversations when Confressman Feltsman entered the room, if only for the reason that, usually, where Feltsman was Senator Nikiforov wasn’t far behind, and although they had joked about him being at the party, Yuuri never actually considered the possibility.
The others quickly abandoned Yuuri in favor of migrating closer to the doors, where they would be able to catch other guests arriving. Yuuri favored his drink until it was empty, and quickly headed back to the bar to get another glass.
He kept his head down and an eye out for any familiar flash of silver hair, but saw none, and when Phichit approached him stating that the rumor was Senator Nikiforov may show up later Yuuri quickly downed his glass, drowning the conflicting war between relief and disappointment that raged inside him. He made quick work of the next one too.
The band had taken to playing acoustic versions of Frank Sinatra songs that had a slightly off vibe to Yuuri. They weren’t anything with a good beat, and the Pinot in his bloodstream was making him crave dancing. He quickly weaved through the ballroom to stand next to Phichit, he slung an arm over his shoulder and leaned against him.
“Hey,” Yuuri said, “Let’s dance.”
Phichit turned to look at him. He had his own glass of sparkling whatever, and raised an eyebrow. “How many glasses have you had?”
“Um, maybe eight?” Yuuri held up an indistinct amount of fingers and took another sip from the glass in his other hand. “C’mon Phich… I want to dance.”
“Alright, alright,” Phichit bit his lip and glanced towards the stage. “They should be serving food sometime soon though, so you should eat when they do.”
Yuuri grinned and chugged the rest of his drink, then grabbed Phichit’s hand and found some open space between the round tables near the stage. Yuuri listened to the acoustic music the band was playing before he nodded and led Phichit in an over exaggerated slow-motion swing dance. Phichit caught on immediately and followed him with a laugh.
Yuuri wasn’t sure how long he blacked out for, but at some point he became aware of the fact that more people had joined them, and the band had decided to switch to more dance-appropriate music as he had a clear snapshot memory of hands on his waist as spanish-style music rang out in the background.
There was another black spot until he finds himself sitting and forced to eat beside Phichit. They leaned up against each other as they stifled their laughter into their chicken and rice for some reason that Yuuri wasn’t quite sure of.
And then Yuuri was very aware because the room became silent very quickly until it was replaced by the booming voice of Celestino Cialdini, who barely needed the assistance of the microphone in his hand.
“All of our interns have been incredibly hard working this summer,” he said, and drunk Yuuri could feel the uncertainty as it crept up on him. “I don’t think we’ve seen a bunch this enthusiastic about their work in a long time. Everyone will go far with whatever they choose to do, on whatever road they choose to take, however, a select few have been invited to take the road in our office and join our official team of employees.” There was a scattered applause and Cialdini paused. “So let’s please congratulate our new employees, who have gone above and beyond this summer. Ms Alice Carlisle, Mr Phichit Chulanont, Mr Jackson Montgomery, Ms Amanda Prince, Ms Natalie Waxhem. Thank you.”
Yuuri managed to unstick himself from Phichit’s side and turned to look at his friend. The joy he felt was bittersweet, especially when Phichit turned towards him with an “I’m sorry” half out of his mouth.
“Shut up,” Yuuri cut him off and hugged him tight. “You’re amazing. I’m so glad they hired you.”
“Thank you,” Phichit said, and returned the hug with surprising strength. Almost immediately people descended on them, congratulating Phichit.
Yuuri put up with being jostled and ignored by the small crowd until the food on his plate was gone, and then he stood and decided with a fierce determination, to make the most out of the bar and get another drink.
“Yuuri,” a voice came from his right. He turned and saw Sara standing next to him and holding a glass. “I’m sorry you didn’t get it.”
“Oh,” he said, “Thanks.”
“You look like you could do with some more wine,” Sara said as she looped a hand around his arm. She guided him over to the bar as he stared at her, bewildered. He continued to stare even when she passed him a glass. “Here. Bottoms up!”
Yuuri’s vision melded into a tunnel of swirling liquid and glass, and the rest was dark.