A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 7

"Yeah, I was thinking to visit in January, before the days get too long – yes, of course. I love you too. Пока."

         Yuri hung up the phone – not his phone, which was lying on the desk across the room, utterly and definitively dead, but the upstairs landline, god knows why Viktor even kept paying for the thing – feeling infinitely better. He couldn't help but wonder if his grandpa had some sort of supernatural thing going for him, because no normal person would be happy to get a call from their hiccupping vampire grandson in the middle of the night.

         He barged across the landing and pounded on the other bedroom door.
         "Viktor! Oi, Viktor!" No response. Viktor was pretending not to hear him, but Yuri knew he was in there, sulking. "Your damn dinner party is over, so now would you deal with the stray werewolf already?"

         Incoherent grumbling drifted through the door. Yuri yanked it open, letting the knob slam against the wall.

         Viktor, still in his dress clothes, lay facedown on his king size bed. He moaned gently at the sudden noise. A flash of fear leapt up Yuri's spine.

         "Hey, Viktor?" He nudged the red-clad shoulder.

         Viktor rolled over, his face anguished.

         "I looked like a fool, Yurio."

         Oh, god.

         "He was toying with me." Viktor let himself fall backwards across the pillows, his hair fanning out in a silver curtain.

         "He was- what?" A brief mental scramble, and he remembered that Viktor was a world class moron who needed to be suitably punished for putting Yuri through multiple levels of hell over the past day and a half. "I thought you said he didn't know anything!"

         Holding back laughter at the thought of Yuuri the Usurper (why couldn't he be Yurio, huh?) as a fearsome vampire slayer was a torment all of its own.

         The only reply was a deep and completely unnecessary sigh.

         "Oh, who cares about that? He thought I was an idiot! A useless idiot! I told him I could help, and now he's never going to want to see me again."

         Well, he wasn't wrong. Insufferable asshat. Any traces of guilt Yuri had about fucking with the two hopeless imbeciles had vanished into thin air.

         "That's a good thing, isn't it? The hunter leaves us alone and gets himself killed in a few nights when he asks the wrong person the wrong question. Works out for everyone."

         Viktor flinched visibly. If his skin hadn't already been chalk-pale, the blood would have drained from his cheeks.

         "Right, right. Of course." He put one finger to his chin, deep in thought. "Perhaps I should keep an eye on him. Just to make sure he doesn't suspect us."

         Good lord, Viktor was a terrible liar.

         This was going to be even more fun than Yuri had hoped, but if he had to deal with another second of melodramatic moping, he was going to stake both of them himself. The other situation rose once again to the forefront of his mind.

         "Great, good idea. You do that. Now, the werewolf thing?"

         "Okay, okay. After I take a shower. And get something to eat."

         Oh, for the love of -

         "It's almost three o'clock already! You don't have time to go hunting!"