There it was, that little curve of a frown that the other would sooner turn away to hide than show such a sign of discontent. Kieran was only teasing the other, and the fact that it rubbed Viktor the wrong way had him visibly amused. “Don’t take it so personally. What? I’m not allowed to complain, too?” He spoke through a sharp smile.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already made a few contacts here.” The devil works hard, but Viktor Bezukhov worked harder. Fucking incredible, if that was the case. “What will it be first, hockey?”
He snorted, half into laughter and half into doubt, incredulity plastered on his face. Hockey?! Mary and the holy Saints, but he could never tell apart when Kieran was purposefully trying to keep himself pristine clean from every hint of illegalities, and when he was just daft. Viktor flicked more ash from his cigarette, not particularly careful not to hit the rink. He brushed off the comment with a renewed grin. ‘ What are you on about, already? I’ve married people in less. ’ His hand went up to pat the other’s back. ‘ Look, Misha, I get that you’re fond of burying your pretty head in the sand, and I like a tacit agreement as much as the next guy, but you know we don’t deal with stuff like, what, glorified lacrosse. It’s going to be blackjack. Or poker. Depends what the trend in bougies is these days. ’
i’m almost ready to risk something
the size of my life & full of blood,
to ride into town with my twin fears:
obsession, the jacket of knives
i look so good in –
desire, a foul animal
gone stupid in the heat.
— Cassandra de Alba, from “Miniatures,” published in Ghost City Press
a corner of his lips arched higher into a twisted rendition of a smile– beware of the snake for it’s venom can kill instantaneously. electric hues, were enough to bring a shudder to run down any man’s spine, and the intensity with which he held himself– every movement brittle as though worried it would release the demon from deep within. he was but a whited sepulchre, feigning innocence whilst filled with tumultuous anger and above all deceit.
’ Рад тебя видеть. ‘ nice to see you.
the words left his lips in a rather faulty attempt at russian. a jumbled mixture of entonations thrown in, somewhere along the way he had lost his very own accent. and the question arose: whom had valentine kennedy become? and just how much of himself had he lost along the way?
there was a reason why he had chosen never to attempt a russian alias after an encounter with viktor in an underground establishment in amsterdam. riddled with the worst of the worst, a place tourists would never have dared to set foot into. or simply could not find it as it lay tucked away in the heart where the law is but an instrument adjusted at zero.
though, tonight– they were not hidden away in dubious establishments but rather surrounded by affluent faces. ‘ it’s been a while. ‘ and with that he pulled the seat beside viktor out from under the table, slipping out of the comfort of his coat and hanging it upon the leathered shoulders of the chair. a refined demon on the loose.
After encountering the British agent - or whatever fucking title he paid his dues to - Viktor settled rather snugly in the belief that Genovia was a rat trap. There was nothing you couldn’t unearth, nothing that didn‘t slither right down from the mountain slopes and curled in your bloody lap. And just as you have it, the past stirred again, coughing up those raw chunks of faces you should remember and places you didn’t want to. It landed on his doorstep - or, well, next to his bar stool, a double-breasted coat as envelope.
In Ivanov’s case, it was not necessarily a bad reunion. Then again, as far as reunions went, any other would be hard pressed to compare with his last. The bookkeeper let a smile play out - on his features, it congealed and then peeled off, leaving behind a raised eyebrow, a surveying glance. He put the papers he’d been rifling through to one side. They dangled from the edge of the countertop, likely already imprinted with beer and jack sours, and to press further on that point he rested his glass over the pile. Everything’s a paperweight if you try hard enough, no? Customize your workspace, and all that.
His brow arched even higher at the Russian inflections - listen, kid, he had an itch to say, even as he realized the other might’ve been his age and that, frankly, he wouldn’t mind a show from him, when you had a language forced down your gullet, you and your folk and every other country with the poor sense of not ditching their place on the map, with their dormant reflexes to not see the big bad flag rise up, then you learn that language with your mother’s milk. It doesn’t whir and flutter in your throat. It comes out inevitable, heavy, like a sucker punch or a landslide.
He kept his mouth shut; only because proving points was not his best suited jurisdiction. He was far more keen on putting his legs up and being entertained - and you can so rarely be both entertained and right. ‘ Look who managed to waddle their way across the pond ’, he offered instead. Part admiration, part indulgence, but all of it generally well-meant. Testiness wasn’t his gig, either; he had Kieran for that. ‘ Been far too little of a while from my estimations. People like us have an expiration date of decades, haven’t you gotten that by now? We ran into each other only a bit less regular than that classy little comet, whatever its name was. ’
PLACE: winter palace
TIME: evening
FOR: open starter @genoviastarters
“What lives in these mountains that could eat me?” Bas asked, stretched out on a sofa in front of a fireplace. His coat, boots, scarf, and various other layers were in a pile on the floor, discarded temporarily even though he wasn’t ruling out the possibility of running off into the wilderness forever. “I bet I could fight a wolf if I had to. They’re just dogs, really.”
Viktor’s head tipped to one side. He spread out his arms on opposite rests of the wing chair, his feet already hoisted up on the table. He always considered himself as indifferent to common space as he was to personal one. ‘ Fuck it ’, he drawled, fake thoughtfulness as he gave the boy the once over, ‘ Why wait until you have to? Fight a wolf now, come on. Step up to it. ’
Was it terrible that he knew when Viktor was near just in the way he could throw open a door and stomp into a room? At least he knew how to make an entrance, which was more than Kieran could say for most.
With one foot in front of the other, he glided over to the edge of the rink, looping back around on the ice just before meeting the wall. He resisted the desire to laugh as Viktor continued. “Music to my ears, your complaints,” he chaffed, moving back and forth across the ice.
“Your ass may as well say Bezukhov Express, I don’t know who you think you’re kidding. Tell me you haven’t done worse for less and I’ll call you a liar.” The sound of his skates scraping the ice as he met the wall cut through the room. “If this is not your type of thing you’re free to go back,” he said, feigning sweet concern with an impudent grin on his face. “But I know there are many nobles whose wallets would miss you dearly, Laska.”
He gave out a laugh that could’ve just as easily been called a snarl. His hand resided lightly on the parapet’s rim, the metal edge coating it like some cyberpunk gig. He scrunched up at the sound of ice being grated — Jesus, all these years with Kieran and he still can’t get over it? — and leaned backwards on his heels.
‘ They’re spoiled cunts, is what they are. I did worse, right proper, but that depends on what you mean by less. ’ The offhand comment gets him in an odd way; Viktor isn’t used to it, this inner need to check for signs, but still he bends for it, scoops it up in his hand - the what did he mean by that, the endless tail-spinning. No one other but Kieran could have him second guessing banter - second guessing anything, really. Free to go back were his favorite words: he’d give anything to hear them from women after a night together, hell, after a year together. More often than not he never did: women entangled their legs with his and murmured sweet nothings, as if to coo here, here, here is home. He fucking hated it.
But then Kieran said the words and they scraped the back of his skull.
‘ I haven’t started oiling them up properly. ‘s no wonder they don’t sing, no? ’ He looked sideways, averted eyes, pupils growing in their darkness. He had other stuff to think about than - what, fucking semantics? ‘ There’ll be a game tonight. I’ll make up for all this wasted time then. ’
( @mvsquerades ) This place has him measuring people like slabs of meat; he can feel his eyes raking them up and down, tracing the grease and the weight of them, the subtle blood. Sometimes he thinks he’s always done this, that it’s a rhythm of survival, but then he remembers so many instances in which a little assessing would’ve taken him a long damn way. So many men (less women, but they were there too, peppered among the casualties) he decided to trust without looking into their mangy mouths. Because it was convenient. Because trust, like spit, like a punch, was an expendable thing.
He does not trust this woman, though. It’s not about lessons learned - even a yuppie, dyed-in, wacko tree-hugger on mescaline would know better. There’s no free love to be wasted on her; no lost sibling of the universe typa’ bullshit. She’s a serrated edge, the sort that’s apt to cut you no matter how you grab it. She’s also a prig, but that comes secondary.
It’s only fitting that he’s seen her bent over the Brit like two shrikes on a sill. Viktor doesn’t know whether they’re fucking, collaborating, or both, since he’s not the only one who can’t jot down life’s lessons. He wants to find out - even just as a sleight of hand exercise. To make sure he stays in shape. It’s with this in mind that he approaches her, waiting in line next to a ticket booth for some moronic show, as if anyone south of Caucasus could whip out music to save their ass. He clears his throat for good measure, but there’s no need; her eyes should be on him by now. She’s not a woman you can prowl up to, leonine steps and towering height, without her noticing. ‘ Is this going to be just chamber music? Like, the sort of cozy shtick they give for rich people eating their scones? Or could it be worth the five seconds it takes me to open my wallet? ’
( @rellinquish ) It goes like this: first, he thinks his mind is getting one leg up on him, geared by whatever he last melted under his tongue ( no hard stuff, nothing more rocky than Es, Kieran’s rule ) or maybe just rattled by all the different, contrasting faces he’s seen in the past week, cancelling each other out like static. He risks a closer glance; though if he’s honest there’s hardly any risk to it, no thrill and no stakes, with the right credentials anywhere can waltz wherever the hell it pleases them in these mountains, and more often than not, nothing does. His staff badge, silver-rimmed, is testimony in itself. It sets ironclad against his woolen jacket and sears a hole clean through the ribs.
He gets so close he believes he can see the chest hairs on the other man’s torso. He can see the flimsy column of steam rising from his breath. No mistaking it now: it’s the Brit, the one from back in Ukraine. The one Viktor couldn’t vouch was British in the first place - could be from anywhere, from a half-world, such men are less than ghosts, less than the stamps you lick and press against a foreign address. But what he had been for sure was this: he had been wrong. They both had been: Viktor in trusting, even as a last bastion of hope, as the last rung on a ladder meant to drag you out of the pit, and the other man in keeping his haircut. Too posh, too memorable - too close from where they started.
That’s what gets you, in this life, he muses as if someone’s listening. A haircut. A cunt you stay in one second over your time. A pair of eyes colored like some book you used to read as a child. Life, eh?
It goes like this: he cuts through the bar clientele, through the bags slumping on the backs of armchairs, through the brocade and the oak - he laps up the space between him and the Brit. He reaches him; one hand on the shoulder, a tap, knuckles against bone. The cotton that separates them is expensive - expensive, but sheer.
‘ I kept wondering: did you cum, at least, after fucking me so hard? ’
He’s storming towards the side of the rink, unruly steps beating against the width of the practice arena, spurred on by the cold and by the urgency he always has when just landed from somewhere - the pointless need to move, salute, get the run of the mill. Fresh returns, prodigal sons, all that. ‘ A’ight ’, he says for proper greeting the moment he reaches Kieran’s shoulder, syllables muffled by the winter, dragged along with the cigarette he’s lit between two strides, ‘ This is the last time I’m driving, flying, leash-steering, mitten-holdin’ any of those babies you call students. Transportation device? Turned fucking off. Unless my ass says United Airlines, which, no, it doesn’t have half as many lawsuits, they can pretty well book their flights on coach. ’ On the ice, a decent-looking bird ( or a very uncomfortable dude ) is twirling in flashes of something bright and tight. Viktor inhales in tandem with the words: he does it with a satisfied fury, purposeful and yet completely unfazed. The students were not more fussy than other valueables he had to lorry around; they just couldn’t be shut up with the tried-and-true methods. ( @kieranmorozov
A new dawn, a new dysfunctional child. The only tl;dr you need on Viktor is that he wears custom suits and tacky watches like a parody of richness. He is feral and chaotic and absolutely despises monarchs - despises anyone, really, whose days are not spent looking over their shoulder and whose nights do not pass in a white, vodka-addled haze, wondering whether that guy you screwed over back in ‘09 finally made parole. He grew up poor, struggling with Kieran to claw their way up in ranks no one told them were unscalable. There was no way to escape that country, not really. It seeded something deep in you that would fester like spores.He came to Genovia trailing after Kieran: he’s his right man through and through, possibly the only bit of honesty left on him. But he also came here to escape his past, sort himself out. At the end of the day, make a buck or two on the backs of kids with even poorer impulse control than him. And what better place to stay safe and get loaded than the ironclad fortress of royalty?
⋆ ° ⟡ ( THEO JAMES, thirty, cismale, he/him ) i saw VIKTOR ‘VITYA’ BEZUKHOV at the winter palace. did you know that the BOOKKEEPER / FORGER is originally from BELARUS? i heard they can be quite UNHINGED, but also RESILIENT. there’s rumours they’re at the winter palace because THEY’RE RUNNING KIERAN’S CHECKS AND A LITTLE ON THE SIDE, but you never know. FINGERS SNAPPING INSIDE A LEATHER GLOVE, SNUFFING OUT A CIGAR IN SOMEONE’S WHISKEY, FALSE BOTTOM DRAWERS always remind me of them.
okay, for anyone who’s a nitpicker like me and is wondering where does the Soviet Union play in this AU: I’m just headcanoning that Belarus is still poor, massively so, and Russia is still a vast sprawling empire that is either governed by an autocrat or that has an autocratic client-king who’s currently keeping belarus in poverty & disparity.
abuse TWs that aren’t even worth expanding on: their childhood was hard and gritty and it stuck between their teeth like sand, they carry it on their backs, behind their eyes, hearing it creep out when the room gets too quiet
me and kieran’s mun already hc’d that viktor is a more impassioned boris (RE: the goldfinch) with worse choices and a fancy for playing billionaire dress up
don’t buy into it for a minute
he couldn’t tell an armani jacket from whatever they hand you in an airplane if you’re cold
he’s been all over europe on a number of nebulous, nondescript jobs, slipping through the cracks of organized societies: from contraband driver to signature forgery, money laundering, back-alley deals, there is neither hierarchy nor purpose to them - he only speaks the languages he was cursed in, which is, well, most of those
super rough patch a few years back, his beliefs that he can outrun everything finally cracked and began to feel off - exactly what went wrong is to be determined later but it likely involves: harsh the mi6, state secrets he had no idea about, a crazy oligarch or two
he sought kieran and was like aight boyo let’s see how hard can it be to live a normal life
turns out? quite hard. he’s bored out of his nuts half the time in genovia, even while he can see the rational benefits of its safety. he helps kieran with the books, drives some hopefuls back and forth over the mountains, talks royals into piling gambling debts, collects their bloodmoney, drinks some more, smashes a window or two.
random factoids: likely has a fake pilot license, just to match all the other counterfeited passports and credentials he’s kept over the years. his real name is not actually bezukhov but he likes to take the piss (huge adorer of british slang) on cultured people and bait them with tolstoy.
the dynamic between him and kieran is likely something very tangled and complex. there’s definitely a we fought in the trenches together friendship but also quite the king & lionheart vibes in my view? because kieran is stable. his power is only his own: it doesn’t come from other men or a stack of gold. the ice skater tried to build a future for himself even while knowing it could come crashing down. viktor both admires and despises that: how the other began to weed out the darkness in him, while vik is still nursing his own like a pet.
