Bluebeard's wife

Rising in the east

They pass by Victor's room without stopping. The door is ajar, light peeking out from the doorway, but Yuuri neither dares nor needs to peek inside.

He knows for a fact that the bed sheets are definitely intact, unslept in. When he had sent Victor to bed last night and half-sprinted to his own room, there had been no sounds coming from Victor's room. Yuuri had lain in his bed, straining his ear to catch Victor's movements through the paper-thin walls of the house.

When none came, he had thought that maybe, just maybe, Victor had fallen asleep. His heart raced at the thought. Now, if never, was the moment. If he was careful, if he waited just a little longer, he could make his escape. He could run for the front door and make it to Yuri's car, left at the entrance of the Nikiforov mansion, keys still in the ignition, and make it to town. With luck Yuri had left their plane tickets in the glove compartment and he could drive off directly to the airport and leave everything behind him.

All hopes he could have nurtured shattered when the rustle of clothes made themselves heard. Cloth against clothes, cloth against skin, cloth pooling on the floor. The clinking of an unbuckled belt, the metallic thump it made when it fell to the ground, joining what he guessed were the slap of the shoes Victor had gone to bed with, laces hissing as they were snapped from their bows and tangled on hardwood.

He would come for him. He was coming for him. Yuuri hadn't locked the door nor turned off his light, knowing that doing the opposite would only spur Victor's madness.

The doorknob gave way in the corridor, squeaking in low-pitched wails like the rest of the house. Wood creaks softly under Victor's feet, shadows moves under Yuuri's door before they finally stop, the tip of Victor's bare toes peeking before his door.

In spite of his stature, Victor moved like a mouse, far more quietly that Yuuri could ever have managed in his dance shoes. Even with his form currently looming behind him at arm's length, he can't hear him walk over his own steps. Their intertwined fingers is his sole reminder that he is flesh and bone, and not just a figment of his imagination.

His presence alone exudes confidence, a power which Yuuri cannot put into words without picturing Victor as anything other than human. The figure that slips inside his room and under the covers, pale as a ghost and smelling of death cannot be human.

Like the Red Dragon presenting before his lady, basking in the light of the Woman clothed in Sun, reverent and predatorial all at once.

Are you really the dragon and I your damsel in distress, Yuuri wonders idly as he guides them to the bathroom. The door isn't far away from his room, but it still feels as if they've walked for hours. He almost startles from seeing it where it last was, and always had been, as if it had never been there in his imagination in the first place.

The young Japanese turns on the light and is assaulted by how blind the room is upon entering it. His eyes squint against the light, taking in how white the bathroom actually is. He had never paid much thought to it before, having been too busy worrying about his new station and careful not to damage anything with his clumsy hands. Now, after... everything... it all seemed overly clean. A room tiled with ivory-colored slabs frol ceiling to floor, with a sink and a bathtub to match.

He turns back to Victor, still holding his hand in the doorway. Morning shade hovered at his back, drowning the hallway but not venturing into the bathroom. Victor stares back at him with that unreadable expression that threatens to drown him.

"Come on in then," he whispers tonelessly, squeezing his fingers and tugging him gently towards the bathtub.

When he realizes what he just did he wants to slap himself. How stupid. Who is he even to tell Victor to follow him into the bathroom? There is nothing Victor hasn't seen before. This is his house, after all. His manor, the one that he grew in since his most tender age and has lived in throughout all of adulthood. The house that he never left, nor will ever leave. The house that saw him live and die.