Chapter Text
Snowflakes swirled in wisps on the wind, and the sound of snow being crunched under the boots of the young, fresh-faced college students that made beelines out onto it after the last day of classes before the winter break slowly filled the air.
Amidst the low hum of general chatter and friendly shoves, a quiet young man meandered his way out from within the milling crowd, his sharp teal eyes darting up to catch a glimpse of the gloomy, gray-white sky. He walked out and away from the crowd, toward a tree near the gate in the distance, and carefully pulled off a glove to reach an arm out before him, palm upturned and long bare fingers splayed out to catch some of the falling snow.
"Loid!"
He looked over, and smiled at the sight of gleaming red eyes. "Yuri," he called back, his feet changing course to meet the boy, and Yuri quickened his own pace to meet him midway. He stopped short when Loid gently held his arm in one hand and brought the other up to his hair, and ran his fingers through it to ruffle it free of snow. "Where's your hat? You'll catch a cold this way, you know," Loid said, his gaze skimming over black hair to spot any specks of white that may have escaped his fingers.
"Where's yours?" Yuri shot back, smiling.
"Somewhere," Loid shrugged, and ruffled his hair once more for no reason. It earned him a light whack on the arm, and he let out a soft laugh.
"Don't think I'll let you treat me like a stuffed toy just because you have a few inches on me," Yuri eyed him.
Loid grinned at him, his expression affectionate and warm. "I also have a few years on you, you know. Two of them. Five when you're in a mood."
"Shut up." Yuri rolled his eyes, and fell into step with him. Loid raised a hand to his head and shook out his own slicked-back hair, returning some of its volume.
"Do you want to grab a bite to eat soon? My sister should be here in a little while," Yuri looked up at him. "I'm starving. I wish they'd scheduled all these tests for after the holidays."
"Sure," Loid nodded. He stopped when they reached the tree, and turned to watch the crowd, now much sparser than it had been a few minutes ago. Yuri stationed himself next to him, slipping his phone out of his coat pocket to check for messages.
"How'd you fare, you think?" he asked Loid, eyes on his phone even though his attention remained on his friend.
"Okay enough," came the quiet response, and Yuri smirked. In Loid-speak, that meant he would ace it.
Through the semester, and in the time they had spent together since they picked seats besides one another on day one, Yuri had developed a functional sense of what Loid's words - or the lack thereof - all meant; whether his speech reflected his thoughts or disguised them into a sweet, palatable lie, whether his spells of silence meant that he was at peace or if they signalled a calm that concealed a turmoil within, and whether his smiles expressed his own real joy or if they were conjured for the benefit of others. Yuri held a silent pride in being able to decipher this quiet boy - at least enough that he was able to stand by him while people around them that wanted to feel strong and be heard kept him outside their own circles as well as those of anyone they could influence.
Yuri leaned back against the trunk next to him, and gave him a gentle elbow in his side. "I figured. You being a genius and all."
"Mm. Says the sixteen-year-old working a double major."
"Takes one to know one, doesn't it?" the boy grinned, and barely dodged the fingers flying in to pinch his cheeks.
Loid settled for a friendly slap on the back. "Don't get cocky, now," he huffed.
Yuri laughed a little. "Don't worry about it. I'll probably die of sleep deprivation before any of it gets to my head."
"I doubt that," Loid watched him, then turned his eyes back to the crowd. "You have Yor."
Yuri looked up, his form ever-so-slightly tense at hearing his sister's name in that quiet voice he knew so well.
Loid gazed out into the grounds, his keen eyes flicking from one tiny form in the distance to the next, and a small, peaceful smile pulled at his lips.
The boy turned back, and folded his arms, nodding. "I have Yor, yes," he agreed. "By the way, do you want to come over tonight? Maybe we could take a road trip tomorrow, if you're up for one. It's been a while since we've had enough time to ourselves to relax."
"It has indeed," Loid smiled at him. "But I can't tonight. Franky has to leave by evening to go visit his folks, and I wanted to see him off. I could join you tomorrow, if you'd still want me to."
Yuri turned to face him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Of course we'd want you to," he frowned, then sighed and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "You'll stop assuming that my default does not include you one of these days, I suppose."
"I'm sorry," Loid offered him a sheepish little smile, guilt reflecting in his eyes. "I don't mean to."
"I know," Yuri nodded, then leaned back again, keeping their elbows in contact in an attempt to reassure his friend of his presence. "Anyway... it is something, though, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Having someone to fly home to for winter," he said, with a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Franky still has them. I suppose he knows to hold onto them with everything he's got."
Loid hummed his agreement. "They're very close. It's... it's nice to see."
Yuri looked up at him again, then leaned his head back against the tree. "I wish we had ours, still."
Loid's breath hitched, so quietly that lesser ears would have never heard, but he shrugged it off in the next moment. "I do, too," he said, quietly - then turned his head to give his friend a warm little smile. "No one could replace them, of course, but you do have me, for whatever that's worth."
Yuri huffed. "It's worth a lot," he smiled back. "We three have each other. Hopefully for a long, long time to come."
Loid averted his gaze, but his smile grew. He toed the grass with the tip of his shoe. "I hope for that, too."
"Yuri! Loid!"
Yuri gasped, and immediately pushed himself off the tree to turn toward the voice - and missed the way that Loid's eyes lit up with life again at the call.
Long, black hair flowing out from under her hat and back with the wind, Yor ran toward the two, her arms spread out for a hug and her fingers just peeking out from the sleeves of her oversized sweater. "I'm so sorry I made you wait! I couldn't stay there any longer. I think there were only five minutes or something to go, though, so here I am!" She wrapped her arms tight around her brother and lifted him off the ground for a few seconds, and Yuri bit back a wince. Behind them, Loid chuckled.
She looked up at him and beamed. "What are you doing way over there? Come here!" she giggled, and held out an arm to him.
Loid found himself smiling just as wide, and took her hand in his own as he walked up and wrapped around Yuri from behind him, and enveloped them in his arms. "It's good to be back with you, Yor," he said, unable to keep his quiet joy out of his voice.
"Isn't it!" she grinned, and gave her boys a gentle squeeze.
"If the joyous reunion has concluded," Yuri wheezed from being sandwiched between them, "could we go get some grub already?"
"Oh!" Yor gasped, promptly freeing him from her arms. "Sorry! Yeah, let's go. I'm so hungry, I could eat a car."
Yuri grinned. "What was it today, again?"
"Wrestling," she huffed, making a show of dramatically sagging in exhaustion. "I won every round, but I'd forgotten to pack my chocolate brownies this morning, so it was like, five hours straight on an empty stomach before my last class. The other girls wouldn't share with me, so." She shrugged, nonchalant. "Anyway, you two had better take me somewhere good. I need to eat my body weight in- in all the good stuff we can find," she waved her arms in a gesture that meant 'everything edible'.
Yuri laughed, and pat her back. "You can count on us."
"Oh- oh!" Yor gasped again, as though she had had an epiphany, and her hands flew up to cup her own cheeks. "It's the winter break, isn't it?" she shook Yuri by his shoulder, and he nodded.
"Perfect!" she exclaimed, and poked Loid in the arm. "Do you want to come over after-"
"He can't, today," Yuri piped up, taking Yor's hand in one of his own and Loid's in the other as they walked toward the exit. "Franky has a flight to catch, and he sounded tired the whole time we talked before you arrived."
"Oh," she nodded, and turned hopeful eyes toward Loid. "Tomorrow, then?"
Loid felt a little smile return to his lips. "Tomorrow," he nodded.
Between them, Yuri barely tamed a grimace.
—
Loid walked into the living area in the small house he and Franky shared, and sank into the couch; it had been an hour since his roommate had left, and two since he had returned to the house after his meal with the siblings.
He held up his phone, his other hand reaching out to the table with the lamp on it beside him, his fingers scrambling for his reading glasses. Once they found purchase, he put them on and read through his messages, pursing his lips when he found nothing of note apart from his classmates wishing each other well for the winter in their group, and the expected radio silence in the little group that consisted of just Yuri, Yor, and himself.
A few minutes of reading through their most recent conversations later, he leaned back, removed his glasses, and closed his eyes as the wind picked up outside. The noise was unpleasant, but it was far better than the deafening - lonely - silence that would have permeated his space in its absence.
Time crawled through its course, and Loid did not know how much of it had passed - until he opened his eyes, and was met with muted pinks and deep blues of twilight beyond the frosted-over glass of the windows.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the floor lamp to switch it on - and a small shadow in the gap under his front door caught in his peripheral vision.
Loid frowned - in the several seconds he watched it, it did not move, and no one knocked. There was no shuffle of feet, or a sound at all.
He cast a glance at a cupboard near his bookshelf, but then decided against a gun. Soundlessly, he walked alongside the wall and up to the door before opening it gently, his gaze trained on the shadow.
A small wicker basket, lined with an ill-maintained purple blanket and padded with thin pillows, lay at his feet.
Loid blinked, his brows furrowing in confusion. Carefully, he poked his head out beyond the doorframe, sweeping his surroundings for anything out of the ordinary, but when he came up empty for the fifth time, he redirected his focus to the basket.
Crouching down next to it, his fingers carefully pulled the blanket back - and in that moment, Loid made two discoveries.
One was an unassuming piece of paper, with only a word written on it.
The other was a tiny pair of fists, one of whose thumbs rested loosely against a little mouth, and wisps of wavy, soft, pink hair framing the small face of a sleeping baby.
Loid's eyes went wide, and he stumbled back. "What?"
He looked up - this time, the snow that covered the sidewalk and half the road outside registered in his mind like an entirely new piece of information, and his hands flew to his face.
"No, no, no, no-"
He scooped the little basket up into an arm from under its base to keep it from swinging, and closed the door as fast and as silently as he could.
"Wake up," he heard his own voice ring out through the house, and kept the basket down on the coffee table in front of the couch. His fingers trembled as they slipped under the tiny fists to feel for a pulse over their chest, and he inhaled sharply when he felt a tiny, faint heartbeat - but also just how cold they were.
"No, okay- okay, please," he babbled at no one in particular, and scooped the baby out of the basket into his arms, fumbling a little until he balanced their head with the rest of their little body. He rushed into the empty, warm bedroom, and held them close against his own chest and neck with one arm in an attempt to impart some of his own body temperature to them as he rummaged through the shared wardrobe to pull out his warmest sweaters.
Loid stepped back, sat down on the bed, and gently yet quickly swaddled the baby in them, letting his hand cradle their head until he improvised a little cap with one of the long sleeves. "Come on, you can do this," he murmured desperately, rubbing their little back with his palm, holding their little body close against his skin and tucked halfway under his collar so that they could receive as much heat as he could give them. "Wake up. You laid there in a pile of snow for who knows how long and you lived," he whispered, curling up around their tiny form. "You can't go out now."
Murmuring pleas over soft pink curls, he took to his feet and paced briskly through the house in the hope that it would raise his body temperature some more. He ignored his racing pulse in favor of regularly lifting the infant to level their chest with his ears before immediately lowering them into his arms again, and when minutes passed without a response from the baby, Loid - in a moment of utter despair - turned his head and pressed his lips in a tender, feather-light little kiss over a tiny forehead, his brows knit in pain and determination.
He closed his eyes, and had just turned to head for his phone when he felt a tiny shake of the head tucked under his chin.
Loid stopped, lowering his head to dare a glimpse of the baby's face - and let out a broken sob when their lips parted into the tiniest yawn he had ever witnessed.
All at once, his strength left him, and he barely managed to make it back to the couch with the child still cradled safely in his arms. Distantly aware of the wet trails down his cheeks but too drained to care, he kept up a gentle rub of his hands over their back, and when he pressed a tiny hand to his cheek to check their temperature, tiny fingers curled and uncurled against his face.
"Oh," he breathed out in relief, and moved sluggishly to lie down on the couch, carefully resting the little bundle over himself. "Oh, goodness. Thank you, thank you, thank you," he whispered into the little sleeve cap, and closed his eyes to give themselves both a moment to rest, the steady rise and fall of his chest lulling the baby back to slumber.
Moments passed, and Loid opened his eyes again. The little piece of paper beckoned to him from where it poked out over the rim of the basket, and he carefully made his way over, squinting at it.
"Anya?" he murmured, and glanced at his little charge asleep in his arms.
Then Loid blinked, and the next second, reality crashed down on him like a bucket of ice.
"Shit," he cursed, and rushed for his phone, holding the baby securely in one arm while his trembling fingers dialed his emergency contact. Wedging the phone between his ear and his free shoulder, he sat down, carefully moving the little bundle to rest on his lap as he listened to the ringing.
"Lottie!" Yuri exclaimed. "What's up?"
"Uh-"
"Is that Loid?" Yor's voice sounded distant, but as happy as it ever was. "Yuri, put him on speaker!"
"Okay, okay," he said, and Loid heard a tap. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then slowly moved his fingers to massage his forehead.
"Okay, we're both here," Yuri announced brightly. "What's up?"
Loid let out a slow, deliberate breath.
"Someone left a baby at my doorstep."