Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You’d better have that money ready, mon cher.”- Unknown Number

Yuri woke up in his usual morning mood of an angry kitten with guaranteed knowledge of having to leave the warmth of his blanket nest and having to going to work where he will have to talk to real people. Urgh! Why couldn’t the world be made of cats?!

The text message beep startled him ten minutes before his alarm clock, so Yuri was twice angry, and rightfully so. It took him a long minute to ponder over the meaning of that one sentence on the web of his cracked phone screen before he realized that the message had been sent to him by mistake. True, he was sometimes late with his rent but his landlady, a former ballet prima, who did in fact speak fluent French, never stooped so low as to send him messages like that. All it took for Ms Baranovskaya when beetroot-red Yuri would mumble-jumble about the due rent extension yet again was to quirk an eyebrow and purse her lips and it was enough to make Yuri feel guilty of crimes he hadn’t committed, including Kennedy’s assassination, and he came up with the rest of the money before the sunset of the same day.

By the sheer willpower Yuri steered himself out of the bed that was still calling his name and schlepped
barefoot to the kitchen to put on the kettle. The floor tiles were cold but Yuri was Russian and nothing is ever too cold for a true Russian. He yawned loudly, scratched under his armpit and wondered if he should just block the fucker who had texted him but he couldn’t be bothered to do it right away. Right away he was giving half of his kingdom for a hot coffee and a hot shower afterwards. His shift in a cat cafe, that homed former street strays as a charity project, was due to start in a few hours time. This job gave him flexible working hours and a laughable pay but it also presented him with the most delightful feline company and if Yuri could, he would work there for cat food. He also knew that he had to end his shift early today to take a few of their cats to the vet’s appointment for their annual shots and Potya was still missing.

Yuri took a quick but scorching hot shower, got dressed without much attention to what he was putting on his back (honestly, anything was good if it was animal print), grabbed his much suffered phone, wallet that had seen better days and keys on a sparkly key-chain. He always drank his second morning coffee at work and ate one of their sandwiches to support the cat cafe with his meager means.

Yuri’s co-worker Yuuri Katsuki was already in as it was his turn to open the cafe, clattering cutlery in the working space and making fresh sandwiches for sale. He had already made them a sandwich with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and lettuce each and the pot of coffee was on brewing. Yuuri Katsuki had two awful character features for a shift partner: his name was Yu(u)ri and he fell in love easily. Yuri Plisetsky considered himself to be one of a kind and he didn’t believe in love.

All the cats were accounted for except for Potya, who was still missing. The two boys silently munched their mediocre snacks and mentally prepared for a busy day. Their cat cafe was very popular with little kids and dating couples, and it was needless to say that either of the two congregations drew Plisetsky’s rightful wrath. Little screaming kids with sticky pastry fingers bothered the animals and as a result often got scratched by a cornered animal, and their crazy mothers complained about the overpriced drinks (true fact, but have you ever seen a vet’s bill?) and rude staff (another true fact if Yuri was their server). Dating couples mainly came for tooth-rotting Instagram photos and often left disappointed without even ordering anything when the animals refused to cooperate. Yuri, in a moment of financial misery, had set up a donation box next to the till but since bills were almost always brought to tables and paid by bank cards, donations were few and far between.

They still had twenty minutes before the opening time when there were four of them. One of them was a tall, well-built man with just the right amount of being skinny. His carefully styled silver hair cast a fringe over his left eye while the right one sparkled cold and sharp blue. Neither the colour of his hair nor the colour of his eyes seemed natural but that didn’t work against the fact that he was one of the most handsome men that have ever walked this city. It didn’t hurt that he was wearing an elegant three-piece suit that screamed designer and fit him like a second skin. He was wearing a pair of fancy gloves as if he was afraid to catch something unhygienic. A mermaid cast ashore made more sense than this man in their feline establishment.

The second man was quite a bit shorter and more broad-shouldered than the first one, with a fresh undercut of unruly black hair and a pair of slit dark eyes, accentuated by sharp cheekbones. If the first man looked like having just stepped from a fashion magazine cover of the year, the second man looked like someone who was bad news, like, really bad news . His brutal image was emphasized by a total black biker’s outfit and he was undoubtedly directly responsible for many sleepless nights and broken hearts. He was wearing a pair of fingerless leather gloves but it didn’t seem he minded dirt and grit. The strange pair walked in unison like they owned the place and the two other nondescript men followed after them at a respectable distance.

“We are closed,”- Yuri said, wiping his lips from the sandwich remains with the back of his hand. There was a piece of green lettuce funnily attached to Katsuki’s lower lip but Yuri chose not to mention it. That pig shouldn’t have stolen Yuri’s name!
“We’ll be quick,”- the man in the biker’s outfit said in a low rumbling voice, - “we are looking for JJ.”
“Who?”- both Yuri’s exchanged surprised looks. Neither of them knew anyone by this name. JJ? Yuri pouted. Was it a dog’s name, perhaps?
“We can do this easy, or we can do it difficult,”- the dark man said as he watched Yuri intently. Yuri started sizzling. Nobody had ever won a staring contest with the Yuri Plisetsky but boy was this one a close match. The silver-haired man looked around the place with a bored face expression, though, as if he was too tired of life in general.

Difficult is my middle name, Yuri wanted to say. He could swear there was a naughty glint in the dark man’s eye and Yuri felt his cheeks go on fire.
“Who the fuck is JJ?”- Yuri hissed. Now he looked like one of their cats. The most ferocious one.
“Jean Jacques Leroy. His phone has last been pinged to this location.”
“Then your ping is wrong. It’s just me and my colleague. And we don’t know anyone by that name,”- Yuri replied calmly, which on the Richter scale was a strong six, but by the corner of the eye he noticed that Katsuki was beginning to panic and that lettuce bit didn’t look half funny now.
“Just the two of you?”- the dark man echoed Yuri’s words and looked around as if he expected more people to drop from thin air.
“Well...”- Yuri said with a note of a doubt in his voice as if he just remembered something and the dark-haired man snapped back at him in attention; Yuri nearly burst into a laughter because this was so easy, - “maybe Barsik, Ryzhik, Knopka and Pyrazhok may be able to help you.”
“Who?”- the dark man furrowed his brow in concentration, biting the bait much faster that Yuri could have hoped.
“The cats.”
“The cats?”
“It’s a cat cafe, Sherlock. And for the last time, we don’t know your where your beloved JJ is.”
“Beloved?”- the dark man titled his head to the side and Yuri’s heart missed a beat. The badass man was hot .
“Mon cher?”- Yuri cited a part of the message he had received that morning. Katsuki looked bewildered in total loss at what was going on but the silver-haired man also looked at Yuri questioningly. That must have been the end of their visitors’ patience because the dark man nodded to one of the men in their entourage who approached the bar area and put an open tablet on it. The dark man keyed in something (and his leather gloves squeaked silently and boy did Yuri drool) and Yuri’s phone started ringing.

“What the fuck do you want?”- Yuri answered the call.
“This is your phone?”- asked the man in a biker’s outfit.
“You are fucking smart for a Tartar.”
“I’m Kazakh,”- the dark man said.
“I’m Victor,”- the silver-haired man said, finally speaking up- “and this is Otabek.”
“Go get a room,”- Yuri was about to say something else, probably suicidal, when he saw…

“Katsuki, at three o’clock.”
“Roger that.”
The two strangers shot each other surprised glances at such military exchange but neither was prepared for what happened next: Yuri darted from behind the bar, crossed the room in three giant strides and rolled on the floor like a central forward.
“Gotch ya!!!!” - Yuri was lying flat on his back, grinning ear to ear, and he was holding a hissing gray cat in his extended upwards hands. - “Potya is baaaaaaack!”
“I told you she will be back when she gets hungry,”- Katsuki said and smiled; and Victor wanted to coo. Nikiforov had no idea his fate would strike him in somewhere less that three Michelin stars but there he was, head over heels, over a boy with lettuce on his lower lip.
“Yeah, yeah,”- Yuri replied. He scrambled himself off the floor. -“I would adopt Potya any day but my landlady is against pets.”
“Don’t look at me”,- sighed Katsuki, - “I already have a dog.”
“You have a dog?”- Victor asked, suddenly intrigued,- “what breed?”
“A poodle,”- Yuuri answered and Victor’s face lit up.
“Oh my God!”- Victor exclaimed, - “so do I!”
“Great,”- Yuri blurted out,- “go get each other a ring now.”

The cat in Yuri’s arms was struggling ferociously to get free and soon Yuri’s hands were marked with bloody scratches.
“Put her in the quarantine cage,”- Katsuki said, - “and make a new appointment with the vet because tonight’s full. We can’t put him back on the cafe floor before she is tested.”

“Must be tough,”- Otabek said to Katsuki while Yuri was creating havoc in the sanitary space. -”It doesn’t look like you have a lot of business.” True, the place looked deserted like Heaven on a Friday night even though it was already past their opening time.
“We have it tough because we don’t sell alcohol. Try surviving on smoothies, coffees and sandwiches,”- Katsuki sighed. He ran a palm over his lips and started at the lettuce bit on his thumb,- “oh...”

Otabek and Victor exchanged another look. They seemed to have developed a new form of mental communication, which worked surprisingly well between their pair, so different as it was.
“Can I have an espresso?”- Otabek asked.
“And I’ll take anything you recommend,”- Victor said. Katsuki nodded and got down to making their orders and the two visitors took bar seats. Their entourage hovered by the entrance, probably keeping potential customers at bay.
“I’ll make you a nice cup of our newest coffee mix, then. It’s called “Eros” because the amount of caffeine makes your heart dance sirtaki,”- said Katsuki, failing to mention it was their most expensive drink but, by the look the things were going, he didn’t expect to be paid.
“Cats can’t like your colleague much,”- Otabek observed and Katsuki gave him a surprised look.
“On the contrary, they adore him. In my humble opinion, Yuri Plisetsky can tame the most ferocious of tigers!”
“But he’s badly bruised...”- Otabek couldn’t help but comment on the state of Yuri’s hands. In his line of work, Otabek saw bruises as part of life, like air and water, but Yuri’s alabaster white hands were something extra. For a moment, Otabek thought if a pair of gloves was a suitable first date gift… Yeah, something made from smooth leather, probably fingerless, so he could trace those long fingers with his tongue...
“That’s because he got beaten up last week,”- Katsuki sighed as he placed their orders on the bar, - “this area isn’t exactly gay friendly.”
Otabek and Victor shared another secret glance and nodded to each other like they have just made a mutual decision.

“Where did those old geezers go?” - Yuri asked when he returned from the sanitary zone and found only Katsuki busying himself with washing dirty cups.
“They left. Guess what? They even paid for their coffees and left a large donation! Enough to cover out vet’s bill! Otabek said you should also check you phone, he left you a small gift.”
“What?!”- Yuri yelled, grabbing his phone and unlocking it, - “if the asshole deleted my Insta...Fuck! He shared his paid Spotify subscription with me!”
Yuri’s been scrimping and saving for his own food, so splashing out on small luxuries like a premium Spotify account was a really big deal for him, and the free version had world’s most annoying advertisements.

Victor’s sleek car drove off silently, followed by the car with their silent bodyguards. Not that either Victor or Otabek needed a bodyguard, they were more than capable of dealing with an unpleasant situation themselves, but Victor liked showing up in style.

“The IT specialists have confirmed that Plisetsky’s phone had been hacked. They were able to trace the hacker to China where they lost it. But that confirms our speculations about the Leroy family dealing with the Ji family behind our backs,”- Victor brushed invisible dust from his fancy gloves. - “Don’t worry, my friend, you will soon know the colour of his panties that you want to get into so much. You were practically eye fucking him the entire time,”- Victor told Otabek as spyware, installed under the guise of Spotify, on Yuri’s phone started spitting out data. - “Oh, it seems that he likes Rammstein. Who could have thought?” Victor broke into a laugh of a hyena, so unbefitting to Pahkan of the Russian Bratva, but Otabek only twitched the corners of his lips. The Butcher of Almaty knew the last man to laugh gets the best laugh.

And surely the good times were looming ahead.

The End