A Heart Beats At Night

Chapter 26: Beginnings and Endings, Part II

Content warnings: Not very graphic but disturbing descriptions of injury, angst, general Bad Stuff. Etc. You know the drill by now, but there's a lot of it here, so use caution.

Yuri stared into the mirror. No reflection looked back at him, so he inspected the tiled bathroom wall behind him. Warm water trickled from his hair, down the back of his neck, as he yanked the brush through his tangled, shoulder-length hair. The droplets slithered across his skin, growing thicker, hotter, sticky –

He clutched the edge of the sink. It's just water, Plisetsky, get a grip. A snarl of his hair was tangled in the teeth of the comb, refusing to relinquish two (or was it three? Five?) days' worth of hard-earned knots. Most days, Yuri could barely muster the energy to pull it back into a messy braid or bun to hide under his hood. It wasn't like he could see what he looked like, or cared enough to attempt any sort of style without the aid of a mirror.

The shower, turned up as hot as it could go, forced some life (hah) back into his limbs as the heat streamed over and through his body, chasing away thoughts of ice and darkness.

It dripped down his back, soaking into the collar of his shirt, and Yuri shuddered.

He was so tired.

The scissors sheared through his hair, the dulled blades catching occasionally and tugging at the strands. Handfuls were dumped unceremoniously in the trash, still clinging to the knots he hadn't managed to unsnarl. Yuri ran his fingers across the ragged tufts poking up from the back of his head and through the uneven fringe that now barely brushed his cheekbone. It was undoubtedly a mess - he was mildly grateful that his lack of reflection spared him the sight – but the awful creeping wetness was off his neck, and the few tangles fell easily into order.

A few stray hairs were scattered across the sink.

Yuri wondered if it would grow back, if he'd resigned himself to a short-haired existence, and if he cared. It had been part of his image- no, Yuri Plisetsky's image, but why did he need an image anymore? He idly inspected his fingernails. They were bitten past the quick, and he couldn't remember if that had happened yesterday or last month.

Four eyebrows lifted when he stepped into the kitchen, but neither Chris nor Viktor commented on it.

"Felt like it," Yuri mumbled as he opened the refrigerator door. It was close to empty; Viktor, in light of Yuri's apparent success with hunting, had stopped buying more than a few liters each week from whoever it was that sold cartons of blood.

"Oh, don't worry, we'll keep some around for snacks," Viktor had reassured Yuri. "If you get hungry, just let me know- or you can probably manage by yourself now."

Yuri couldn't, in fact, manage by himself, but nothing that he would call precisely 'hunger' had manifested yet, although he had begun to avoid humans almost religiously, nauseated by the scent of their blood, the shudder of heartbeats that his ears could pick up from many meters away.

"I can clean up the back for you," offered Christophe, stretching his legs across the linoleum. "Don't let Viktor touch it. After that disaster a few years ago, he's not allowed to have scissors."

"I was experimenting," Viktor pouted. "It grew back just fine."

It grew back. Like everything else, relief was lukewarm and faded quickly.

"Okay." Yuri slumped into an empty chair. "Thanks."

Viktor rummaged through the drawers until he found a pair of scissors.