A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 15

Yuri watched his mouth a lot more carefully for the rest of the night.

I'm such an asshole. Even Viktor managed to be more sensitive for the first few months. Yuri replayed that thought, remembering how Viktor's strategy of breaking the news gently essentially boiled down to telling him 'you died, you're a vampire, congratulations!' He tried, at least.

Otabek seemed to be okay now, testing out more spins and jumps, just barely wobbling on the worn-out rental skates as he increased the complexity of the elements. Still, no more casual jokes about death. He didn't want to fuck this up. They'd have to talk about it soon, set boundaries, but – Yuri gritted his teeth – he needed some advice.

He didn't have to wait long. Almost as soon as they arrived home, Viktor popped up beside him.

"Hey Yuri, can you come upstairs for a minute?"

"Uh, sure." He glanced back at Otabek instinctively, wanting to make sure he was still doing fine, still there. "I'll be right up."

He heated up another serving of blood as quickly as possible, shuffling out of the way to let Otabek put together his own lunch. Yuri wasn't trying to hide it, exactly, but he waited until he was comfortably out of the kitchen before taking a sip. It had been fun to tease Phichit, seeing how far he had to go to get a response, but that was when he was trying to be gross. His pride couldn't handle Otabek seeing him slop blood down his shirt the moment Yuri forgot to compensate for his fangs.

He burst into Viktor's room without knocking. "I need to ask you something." Viktor opened his mouth to reply, but Yuri cut him off. "No, don't say anything yet, because if I stop I'm going to realize how stupid this sounds."

Yuri paused. Viktor nodded mutely, taken aback.

"Okay. So." He kicked the bedpost, buying a second in which to collect his thoughts. "I'm afraid that I'm gonna say or do something stupid and freak Otabek out so much that he doesn't want to stay and I'll never see him again."

Viktor tried to pat him on the shoulder. Yuri sidestepped neatly.

"I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what's going on, and I'm really confused. You're going to need to back up a bit," said Viktor with a sigh. "But I don't think you have to worry about Otabek going anywhere."

Yuri had been telling himself the same thing, but hearing it from someone else was a relief.

"I know. I just don't want to hurt him again." Thankfully, his eyes weren't threatening to tear up again. "I don't want him to leave because of me."

Viktor pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yuri..."

Right. He hadn't actually told Viktor anything.

"He left without saying anything a few months before my accident, but that was because he was turned into a werewolf and didn't even know I was trying to contact him, which was kind of my fault even though it was an accident." Yuri drew a deep breath and continued. "So I thought Otabek was ignoring me and hated me, which is why I didn't tell him I was alive, and he didn't know anything until he saw that stupid fucking video. But he didn't know anything about vampires or whatever, and there was this whole thing that made him think my body had been possessed by a probably evil ghost thing. Which is what we talked about last night."

"Yuri," said Viktor, looking decidedly nonplussed, "What the hell?"

Yuri scowled. "Never mind, that's not really important right now. It's just, I let him think I was dead for two years, and I know we need to talk about what this all means, but I don't want to push him too far by being..." He dropped his empty mug on the bedside table and gestured at himself, lost for words.