[Crumble]

Contrary to Boris' advice, Jayda had not asked Yuriy to teach her how to fight "properly". Not yet, anyway. The whole thing just seemed so awkward. Then again, most things had seemed awkward around Yuriy recently, like she was hypersensitive to everything she did; sitting, eating, talking, breathing...

...Jayda opted not to overanalyze that one. Her head was fuzzy enough as it was.

Instead of taking Boris' dubious advice, she had been hitting the gym for the past two weeks, partly in the hopes of exhausting herself so she could sleep properly for a change, and partly because she wasn't exactly Conan the Barbarian, y'know? Besides, a little muscle tone never hurt anyone, and it would help her lose weight.

Problem was, she still couldn't sleep. If anything, all that exercise was just making her more tired.

The whole thing was exasperating.

And tiresome.

... So very tiresome.

So there she was, standing in the hallway, repeatedly banging her head on her front door, because she felt like a bag of brittle old bones, and her head was foggy, and it was one in the morning already, and she really needed to sleep. She wasn't all too sure what she was aiming to accomplish by slowly giving herself brain damage in the hallway's muted light, but it had seemed like a good idea when she'd started.

Was she really that far gone already?

"Is there a point to this exercise?" A voice from behind her asked, sounding sceptical. She didn't recognize it for a few moments, her mind operating at maybe thirty percent of its normal capacity –and that was if she was feeling optimistic. As it was, Jayda was far from optimistic.

"...Don't think so." She sighed, pausing in her sleep-deprivation-induced masochism for a moment. She let her head rest against the door, her eyes sliding shut, feeling like someone had taped her eyes open and put weights on her eyelids at the same time. She felt a headache blossoming behind her forehead, and she grimaced, only half-listening to the shifting of fabric as Yuriy stepped closer.

"Then why?" The redhead sounded genuinely curious. Like she was a bug in a lab that had just done something terribly interesting.

The bug needed to sleep. The bug was going crazy. The bug was seeing things and losing track of time and people and conversations. The bug was also referring to herself as "the bug," which the bug found very worr-

Okay, she was stopping that now.

"Can't sleep. Really, really, really, really, really want to... Can't though. Kinda sucks... Kinda think I'm going crazy sometimes, too... Eyes playing tricks... Not sure if that's healthy... What do you think?"

"Ivan thinks you're having a mental breakdown." Yuriy decided to inform her, as if that might in some way be remotely relevant to helping her sleep.

Jayda thought Yuriy was a bit of a jerk.

"Ivan's not helpful... And short... And not helpful... And you're kind of a jerk sometimes... Tall, though. Still not helpful..."

At this point, Jayda wasn't entirely sure what she was saying anymore, but some small, rational part of her made a mental note to make the mother of all apologies to the redheaded man when she was sane again. Her legs felt all wobbly and bendy and she really wanted to sit down, but she thought that if she did, she might not get up again, and for some reason her brain told her that might be bad.

"Neither is trying to give yourself brain damage at one in the morning."

"... Not the point." She felt goose bumps on her arms and neck again, and that meant he was watching her, and shut her eyes against another wave of exhaustion. Her legs were really wobbly now, like her knees weren't really locking right, and she was too heavy, and she really wanted to sit down and just sleep, but she couldn't and it wasn't fair.

"You don't have a point." Yuriy's voice came from above her head, and that was weird, because he wasn't that tall. Groggily, she cracked open an eye, and goddamn, she'd sat down. Her back was pressed against her door, and her knees had been pulled up to her chest, and her head was on her arms, and she was so tired...

"I don't?" Jayda mumbled, feeling slightly surprised underneath the pervading feeling of fatigue. Of course she'd had a point!

... Hadn't she?

"Nyet."

"...Are you sure? I thought I... I don't know... I just want to sleep."

Standing over her, Yuriy sighed, and ran his hand through his short hair. She had the most irrational impulse to take a rule and measure how long his hair was, because... well, just because. She guessed it might have been an inch or so long, and he did that weird spiky-hair thing with gel, and it didn't look half-bad and oh my god she needed to sleep.

In an unexpected moment of clarity, she looked him in the eye and said. "This isn't healthy, is it?"

"Nyet."

Jayda shut her eyes again under the weight of her weariness, only just catching the sight of the man crouching down to her level, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet and watching her with those unnerving white-blue eyes.

Pretty, pretty eyes...