Yo, what up, I'm in a weird headspace and brains are stupid
He's grown used to the weather, learned how to combat the cold. Hot tea, long sleeved pajamas, burrowing into a thick blanket, and sitting through a few minutes of adjustment until the warmth seeps into his bones. It's a pleasant ritual when there isn't another body in bed to leech heat from.
If he's being honest, it's not all that different.
Buried beneath a blanket, Yuuri is still awake, even though night has reigned for several hours already. He doesn't feel like leaving his cocoon of warmth to check his phone, but he knows it's past midnight. Sleeplessness is well traversed territory for him by this point. He could teach a survival course on all the ways to spend the hours of existential dread and self doubt that come creeping in once the clock strikes one in the morning.
This night, however, it's not crippling anxiety or spiralling self worth that keeps Yuuri awake at what is surely some ungodly hour.
The day went as good as any other.
A morning jog with Makkachin before heading to practice. Several grueling hours at the rink, broken up only by a phone call from Victor, apparently his flight got delayed, so he wouldn't be returning home until the next day. Mila, Georgi, Yakov, and Yuri came over for dinner right after practice so the atmosphere was loud and just the slightest bit overwhelming, but good all the same. Once everyone left, Yuuri sprawled out on the couch with Makkachin and finished up some business, answering and sending emails, updating social media, working out the next stretch of his schedule, until it was time for bed.
So here he is.
Happy and warm, Makkachin curled up near his feet, the last message in his phone being an overly sappy goodnight from Victor.
He's okay.
He's not in the throes of a downward spiral. Not sweaty and shaking from an anxiety attack. No irrational fear of abandonment floating through his brain. Imposter syndrome not even a blip on his mental radar.
He's okay.
And that's frightening.
It's new territory. Uncharted minefields he's only just begun to navigate. Whatever cloud or haze or shadows that used to hang around him have begun to recede. He can see light now, feel comfort. The voices that curl in his mind, the ones that call him a liar, a fake, a failure…
They're still there, but they don't speak as often as they used to.
And when they do, he's able to reason his way out of them. At the very least, he's able to call his sister, or Phichit, or go to Victor. Hell, he's sat down with Makkachin and cried on more than one occasion when no one else was available.
His general anxiety is still present in full force, he doubts that's ever going away, but the dangerous one? The destructive force that nearly wrecked his whole life?
It's leaving him alone.
Little by little, breath by breath, he's getting better.
Yuuri curls tighter, making himself as small as possible, inhaling one shaky breath before slowly letting it go.
Where does that leave him then?
He should be happy about this progress. He should be jumping with joy at the realization that he's not as bound by darkness as he once was.
So why isn't he?
Why does the prospect of being okay fill him with such trepidation?
Simple.
The darkness is familiar, it's comfortable.
He's spent a pretty significant portion of his life in that darkness, in that terrible swirling place. He knows his fears and shortcomings like the back of his hand, better than he knows anything else really.
But happiness? Contentment? Stability?
He's had them pieces, in windows of time before things got bad again.
Not nearly long enough to cement his personhood in them.
The space he's made for himself in the blanket shifts from comforting to stifling, and he throws the blanket off, stumbling out of bed. Makkachin wakes at the disruption but Yuuri quickly pets his head, smoothing out the curls of his fur until he goes back to sleep.
Unsteady, he stumbles to the kitchen for a drink, filling the kettle with water then hemming and hawing over tea while it are no nerves to calm, he doesn't feel nauseous, no headache, doesn't feel stifled. He pushes aside his usual selection in favor of Victor's strange fruit tea assortment. Citrus is familiar but Yuuri doesn't want familiar right now. He opens a box covered in red and blue berries and removes a tea bag from the wax sealed packaging, dropping it into a cup.
He sits on the counter while he waits for the water, and he thinks.
He's known for a while.
It's that he was in a bad place before, not in terms of those around him. He had his parents, had Phichit, his other friends, his coach, but he'd never accepted their help before. That would mean he was weak, that would be admitting to the shadows that they'd won. It's not until recently that he's figured out that's not right. He's denied his problems for years. They weren't that bad, he could manage it.
Burrowing himself deeper and deeper into that dark place, convincing himself that he was somewhere brighter.
How he ever managed for so long is a mystery.
But it's a part of him now, that dark place, and he's accepted that.
That's what changed. That's why he's better. He knows, he's not denying it anymore.
So, little by little, he's crawled through that dark. There were setbacks, he thinks there will likely be more in the future, but he's dealt with them thus far. He's still crawling, no longer content to wrap a shadow like a shawl across his shoulders.
It would be so easy to slip back there, one misstep and he's back where he started. Being in unfamiliar territory isn't pleasant, but he knows the only way to make it familiar, is to keep pressing on.
But it takes so much effort, and he's so afraid that it will all crumble. He's come so far that if it does, he won't be able to go back to the darkness. He'll be stuck in some limbo of emotions for the rest of his life and that is terrifying.
Yuuri turns off the heat as the kettle starts to whistle and pours the water into his cup, watching the tea bag bleed red. He carries it to the front room and settles on the couch, setting his cup on the table to steep.
Not a second later, the click-clack of claws on hardwood sounds from the hallway. Yuuri lets out a few short whistles and the click-clack speeds up until he has a lapful of curly haired poodle. Makkachin settles down quickly, getting comfortable once Yuuri settles a hand on his head.
"What do we think, Makkachin? Hm? I don't know what I'm doing, but that's not exactly a first. What if I mess up? I don't think I'd even know until I was too late. I've never done this before. I don't know how to."
There's no response from Makkachin aside from a shift when Yuuri scratches behind his ears.
"I mean, maybe I can just ignore it? If I don't think about it, I can't mess it up. It's worked so far. I mean, I want to get better, to be better, I...deserve that, right? Yeah, it's just- I don't know, why is this so difficult?"
Yuuri tips his head back and closes his eyes, keeping his fingers twisted in Makkachin's curls, scritching lightly at his head so he doesn't think he's being ignored.
What to do? What to do?
He's still the same Yuuri that he was, the same level of broken, the same kind of history. But he's trying, and that has to matter for something, right?
The tea doesn't have a particular smell as Yuuri lifts it from the table. It's sweet at first, with a bitter aftertaste. He's not sure if he enjoys it or not, but it's only the first sip, and he has a full cup to go.
From behind him, through slightly parted curtains, sunlight spills into the room, laying lines of bright over Yuuri and Makkachin, as well as everything else in the room. He's not awake enough to have his eyes wide open, and the space between the curtains isn't all that big. But he knows what the sunrises look like here, he's seen more than a few. All the same, he squints his eyes toward the incoming light and feels a smile tug at the corners of his lips.
Usually Oikawa's my go to for weird venty mental stuff but here we are. I hope you enjoyed this little piece.