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"So, what would you like to talk about? Anything good happen since our last session? Anything bad? How's Viktor?"
"The same as always. Complaining about this and that…pisses me off."
"Why's that?"
"He has it easy, yet makes it difficult. I do the opposite, and I don't ever talk about it…But I'm not here to talk about him."
"Are you sure? It sounds like you have things to work through there."
"…It's…complicated."
"There's no judgement here."
"I know."
"…"
"His parents don't like me, but they pretend they do. He thinks I'm seeing things, but he's lying to himself."
"What makes you think they don't like you?"
"It doesn't matter. I don't care. I wouldn't like me either if my son brought me home as his best friend…I'd run me out of town. But they haven't done that. And I hate them for it."
"Why? Do you mean to do harm to their child?"
"No...But I could."
"Yuri, those feelings of being a danger are a sort of phantom pain. They aren't about you. They're about someone else, projected onto you because it was never safe to consider him a danger. You don't need to be afraid-"
"I'm not afraid. I'm stating facts. When there's a tiger in a cage with you, you deserve to die if you ignore it."
"…You'd never do anything to hurt Vitya. Those are intrusive thoughts. All you have to do is ignore them. Distract yourself."
"Mmm."
"The anniversary is-"
"Shut up."
Yuri looks up, the muscles in his back shifting the tattoos disfiguring the skin there so that a host of beasts roar and snap their jaws, and a great serpent chomps on its own tail. He looks into the mirror before him, but avoids his own eyes.
"Shut up."