It had been about a year.
Maybe. He honestly hadn't kept track of time; it felt like a year, but what's to say that time hadn't just been dragging, with all he'd had to deal with?
Well, some time had passed, obviously. Looking in the mirror, something he'd avoided until now when he could, his hair was longer, just barely covering his eyes and tickling the base of his neck in soft, pallid curls. Between school and what was now a disaster of a home life, he hadn't thought to do anything with his hair since...
Well, since before what had happened had happened.
But, he'd thought about something to do with it; he liked the idea of letting it grow out and...
Somehow, the idea of dying it had snaked itself into a thought. Black, dye. Yuri really couldn't have answered the question of why.
But, a friend at school had agreed to snag him a box of dye, a female friend; Yuri had been glad she'd complied, he'd felt emasculated enough from having to cover his... face, with makeup. She didn't know that, but she'd agreed, and that made Yuri happy either way.
Somehow the prospect of dying his hair made him feel better rather than ashamed, as much as he didn't want to handle obtaining the dye himself...
Maybe he just needed a little bit of change...
A bottle of dye and a mess later, Yuri dared look in the mirror...
And found that his hair was now jet black. He'd been right, it looked completely bizarre... But he liked it. It was interesting, it was a change of pace...
And he'd done it correctly the first time, miraculously. He'd been expecting a disaster.
The contrast was shocking, the only downfall in Yuri's mind being that his already overly pale complexion was now glaringly obvious.
Well, there was another thought nagging at him that could potentially become a problem, but he'd deal with that when he came to it.
It'd be sooner rather than later, but he was too elated to care at current.
Sooner being within the next hour; he really didn't have time to prepare for this.
But it was inevitable, and he'd known that. He just hoped his mother was in a good mood.
She rarely had been since the event, but there were always moments where she surprised him. Granted, those moments were decreased, at least around Yuri, because he'd taken to locking himself in his room, a rather recent development in his behavior...
While he'd never tell anyone else, he spent the majority of time away from school curled up in bed, pondering what was and what should have been... Including how on Earth he actually kept his grades up the past few months... Year, whatever...
Today, though, his mother seemed fine. Relatively. As relatively as she could be now; he still wasn't quite sure how to go about her when she got like this, even though it was much better than when she was ill humored...
On one hand, she acted normal and went about the day as if nothing had ever happened.
On the other, she made small remarks to her husband with every task she did.
See, this is why Yuri stayed in his room- and preferably his bed- when he was home...
But, today, today his mother had caught sight of him as he was slinking back to his room. His attention had been drawn to the fact by his mother's light giggling and her joking confrontation.
'Yuri, what have you done to your hair?'
While he could hear the laughter in her voice, he still sheepishly turned to look at her as if he were seriously in trouble.
'I...I dyed it...'
His mother was clearly no more than amused; he hadn't expected this reaction.
Well,it was better than what he had been expecting when she found out...
She waved him off and went back to what she'd been doing. Yuri continued to his door, but paused before confining himself.
'Yuri's gotten to the age where he's becoming rebellious; it's a phase, dear, it'll pass...Well, you have to admit, some of what he comes up with is rather amusing...'
And with that, Yuri slammed his bedroom door shut.
It was only the two of them now, why couldn't she just understand that?
As if to physically punctuate his turmoil, a flame leapt to life, blurring his vision.
And, with that, he jumped backward into his door, creating a horrifyingly loud thump.
Now sitting at the base of the door, Yuri closed his eyes and attempted a few methods of calming himself down.
While Yuri'd given attempts at taming his NEXT, he found that the only thing he could do with it was trigger and scare himself half to death with it...
Or leave it be.
Until moments like this happened, then the only solace he could find was from various information he'd dug up about panic attacks...
He tried not to think about how often that information coincided with him at the use of his power.
Feeling satisfactorily calmed down, Yuri cautiously opened his eyes and proceeded to roll himself back into the warmth of his bed.