i'll show you mine

p. 31. eastern europe. lesbian.

[appletvgifs]

For All Mankind│5x08 - Brave New World

Your embargo put the US and Soviet economies in free-fall. Bragg, Korzhenko, they must take action to show their citizens they're not powerless, in order to stay in power themselves. We have learned that there is a multinational military force from the M-6 that's currently on the way to Mars. And their order is to retake the Kuznetsov Station and the Goldilocks asteroid by force.

[zodiacsuite]

Perhaps another morsel of Sputnik (and/or 🐈?)..? 🙏

Happy with anything you want to write but, if you’re lacking inspiration I can come up with more detailed prompt. (My initial idea veered a bit potentially angsty, despite that not being my intention, and I feel like we’re still in a healing, minimal-angst phase rn…)

The second cat arrived in March.

Margo should have known something was wrong the moment Sergei came home an hour later than usual. Neither of them was ever late without calling – an unspoken rule they had arrived at, confirming that the other was safe and on their way – and the silence of her phone should have been its own warning. 

“What happened?” she asked from her usual place on the couch when she finally heard the front door creak, her attention still on her papers.

No answer. Not even the familiar sounds of Sergei hanging up his keys.

She had already begun, in the few seconds it took to set down her work and cross the room, to compose the worst version of whatever had happened. She walked toward the front of the house just in time to see Sergei easing the door shut behind him with extraordinary care, the way you close a door when you are hoping not to be noticed. One hand on the handle. The other pressed to his chest, cradling something small.

Margo stared.

The orange kitten didn’t even glance at her—she was far too occupied with the pressing task of attempting to climb inside Sergei’s shirt collar. 

“You can’t be serious—”

“She was hiding under a car,” he explained, clearly having spent the entire walk home preparing for exactly this. 

“Sergei.”

“It is raining.”

Margo turned and looked through the window. The night sky was perfectly clear. The street was perfectly dry. A couple walked past without umbrellas. A child was eating an ice cream cone. 

“She is very small,” Sergei stressed, as though this were a compelling legal argument.

The kitten punctuated this statement with a pitiful squeak.

Margo crossed her arms. “No.”

“She would have died, Margo.”

“She seems perfectly healthy.”

“She is approximately the size of a potato.”

This was not an exaggeration. The kitten, apparently sensing that she was the subject of negotiation, chose this moment to abandon her expedition into Sergei’s collar and instead fix Margo with a gaze of enormous, unblinking yellow eyes. The effect was somewhere between accusation and appeal. It was deeply unfair. 

“You already have a cat,” Margo reasoned, addressing this to Sergei rather than the kitten, because she refused to be manipulated by something that weighed less than a pound. 

“We have a cat.” He paused. “And we have another cat now.”

The kitten sneezed—a tiny, catastrophic thing that nearly toppled her sideways.

Margo closed her eyes. Opened them. Sighed the sigh of someone watching the next several months rearrange themselves around a decision that had, apparently, already been made.

“You already named her, didn’t you?”

Sergei’s shoulders relaxed and the pause answered before he did.

“Semyorka.”

“Of course.” Because apparently that was the naming convention now. Margo was living with a man who had looked at two small, soft, entirely unrocketlike animals and thought: yes, these should be named after Soviet missles and spacecraft.

They agreed, after a conversation that was mostly Margo talking and Sergei nodding with such transparent sincerity that she didn’t entirely trust it, that Semyorka was temporary. A foster arrangement only. They would keep her until she was old enough and healthy enough to be adopted properly, and then she would go to someone with the space and the intention for a second animal. 

For the next week, Margo asked everyone she encountered at the office – colleagues, the receptionist, an intern she had spoken to perhaps once – whether they were, by any chance, looking for a cat.

Two weeks later, she was sitting at one end of the couch with a stack of reports balanced on her knees, making notes in the margins. Sergei occupied the other end in his usual evening posture – reclined, one arm resting along the back of the cushions – with Semyorka asleep on his chest, rising and falling with his breathing like a small, furry buoy.

From the armchair, Sputnik observed all of this with the expression of a firstborn who had not been consulted.

Then, Margo heard Sergei say: “Мой котик.”

She raised her head. Sergei’s gaze was somewhere else entirely.

“What?”

A brief silence passed between them, weighted in a way that made Margo lower her reports slowly. 

“What?” she asked again.

The kitten had woken up and was now engaged in what she clearly considered a life-or-death battle with one of Sergei’s fingers, her hind legs braced against his palm, her whole miniature body committed to the struggle.

Sergei wasn’t looking at Margo.

He was looking at the cat. Realization arrived slowly and painfully.

“Oh.”

Sergei furrowed his brows and it was his turn to ask “What?” now.

For perhaps three seconds, Margo considered lying.

“I thought you were talking to me.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Even Semyorka paused her assault for a moment, one tiny paw suspended in the air, before resuming with renewed purpose. And then, to Margo’s horror, she watched the corners of his mouth start to twitch.

“No.”

His shoulders shook once.

Margo pointed at him.

“Don’t.”

That only made it worse. He actually laughed, the kind of laugh she still didn’t hear often enough to be immune to it. Which made the whole thing significantly worse.

Enough that Margo felt personally attacked.

“It was a reasonable assumption.” She averted her eyes, chin lifted, with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

“Was it?” he teased, still recovering, amusement still caught in the corners of his face. “I have never called you котик.”

He had called her many things. Солнышко in the mornings, low and unhurried, before either of them had properly woken up. Любимая моя when she came home in a bad mood and he was trying to soften the edges of it. Милая exactly once, which Margo had pretended to dislike, and which she thought about more often than was strictly reasonable.

Sergei glanced down at Semyorka, who had abandoned the battle in favor of simply lying flat across his arm with all four legs in the air. His eyes moved back to Margo. Then, with a complete and total absence of remorse, he reached over and deposited the kitten directly into her lap. He must’ve thought that if it had worked with Sputnik, it would work again this time.

Semyorka landed, turned a precise half-circle, and curled into a ball. Then she began to purr—a sound disproportionately large for her size, mechanical and steady as a small engine.

Margo looked down. The kitten looked up at Margo with drowsy, half-closed eyes.

Traitor.

Across from her, Sergei smiled.

Entirely too pleased with himself, he settled back against the couch. “You can both be мой котик.”

Margo picked up the nearest cushion and threw it at him.

[lasaraconor]

[zodiacsuite]

me: i should finish my long fic

me: ok, but margo and sergei on road trip to alabama and then a tornado hits AU. ok, but sergei inviting margo for a christmas dinner for his first american christmas but every nice restaurant is fully booked and they go to a wendy's dressed all fancy. ok, but having had enough of margo and aleida not speaking to each other, sergei and victor secretly set up a "double date" so they can sort it out finally. ok, but margo going over to sergei's unannounced and seeing him wearing a cute lil apron while baking sharlotka (for her, obviously) ugh

[zodiacsuite]

me: ok, but valentine's day is coming up and neither of them has mentioned anything to the other cause in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter but sergei is secretly trying to figure out what kind of chocolate margo likes (tootsies don't count) and what her favorite flowers would be or if she even has any and he's also thinking that maybe western consumerist worms have started eating his brain. ok, but margo and sergei going over to aleida and victor's for a cinco de mayo cookout and aleida finally realizes how much they truly love each other when margo picks the pickles off of her nacho plate and gives them to him and he just eats them happily. ok, but a delegation from the european space agency is visiting after the MCSC rebuild is done and one of them is clearly very interested in margo and sergei is not jealous at all cause he's secure like that and instead finds the whole thing genuinely entertaining… margo finds it less entertaining.

[burneddownthegym]

FOR ALL MANKIND | 3.03 "All In"

(requested by @flamingo24)

[nadia-el-mansours]

Oh, they're really going hard with this huh

[aphel1on]

never stop being obnoxious about fictional character online. you will find like-minded people and it will literally save you

[zodiacsuite]

I would not be disappointed if you shared your Piotr research photo from the latest chapter of your fic.

(For the sake of convenience)

Look at this BABY.

[zodiacsuite]

POV you're me writing your silly little fic.

[rebiesque]

I’m sorry, Margo.

[zodiacsuite]

all my happy dreams were now | chatper 3

Застолье [zah-STOHL-yeh] More than just a feast or meal, this refers to a grand, hours-long social gathering around a table. It encompasses the entirety of the experience: the food, the endless rounds of toasts, the deep conversations, and the singing, lasting long into the night.

Summary: Margo Madison has overseen rocket launches and testified before presidential committees and committed, technically, federal crimes, and yet she has spent the better part of today mildly terrified of a seventy-something old Russian woman she has never properly met.

Or; Margo has a very Russian New Year’s Eve.

8.5K | Meeting the Parents, New Year's Fluff, Everyone Thinks They're Together

[rebiesque]

[timrousbeastie]

[dorito-dog007]

Margo and Sergei shippers - what to you is the, or one of, the essential songs that you associate with them? (Other than Margo & Sergei off the OST, which is a beautiful song but dare I say a bit obvious 😛). Personally, Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” reminds me of them every time.

[zodiacsuite]

I know she’s problematic, but alas, I’m only a white girl… so The Prophecy by Taylor Swift is so Margo coded it hurts.

[rebiesque]

[zodiacsuite]

me: i should finish my long fic

me: ok, but margo and sergei on road trip to alabama and then a tornado hits AU. ok, but sergei inviting margo for a christmas dinner for his first american christmas but every nice restaurant is fully booked and they go to a wendy's dressed all fancy. ok, but having had enough of margo and aleida not speaking to each other, sergei and victor secretly set up a "double date" so they can sort it out finally. ok, but margo going over to sergei's unannounced and seeing him wearing a cute lil apron while baking sharlotka (for her, obviously) ugh

[zodiacsuite]

Another Brazil prompt…

How about Sergei making Margo caipirinhas (Brazilian cocktail), and Margo returning the favour by making caipiroskas (aka caipivodkas), which is where the cachaça is substituted with vodka — because I presume she has to have tried to acquire a taste for it during the 8 years she thought she would be in the USSR for the rest of her life.

Disclaimer: this cocktail knowledge came from Google and I have nothing further about why either of these things are happening.

By the time Margo got home, she operated almost entirely on momentum.

She dropped her bag beside the front door and rolled the tension from her shoulders as she stepped into the hallway of their home.

The first thing she noticed was music. Bossa nova, mellow, coming from the kitchen. The second was the smell of lime. The third was Sergei, standing by the counter with his sleeves rolled up and a knife in his hand.

“Should I be concerned?” she asked, her voice slipping into something lightly teasing as she took him in.

He turned, and there it was—that smile he only did when it was her.

“Margo, you had a bad day.” It wasn’t a question. Margo crossed the distance between them, got on her tiptoes, and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, the closest part of him she could reach without asking him to stop what he was doing.

“That obvious?”

“Sit,” he said.

Margo took her usual spot at the kitchen island, one elbow propped against the cool stone surface. The house was warm despite the open windows. This place never really cooled. Even at dusk the air carried a lingering heat that settled into the walls and furniture and skin alike. And, in a way, that felt like home, like Houston.

She looked at the two glasses in front of him, the cutting board with two limes, and then the bottle that sat beside it. “This,” she said, waving a hand loosely at all of it, “is new.”

Sergei didn’t respond to that, because he was already sliding a glass toward her.

The drink was pale green, ice clinking softly against the sides. It smelled sharp and bright and slightly dangerous. Margo took a cautious sip.

“A colleague gave me a bottle of cachaça,” he offered by way of explanation, careful with the pronunciation.

“Do I know this colleague?”

“Luis. From the modelling team. I helped him with an equation he had been stuck on.”

“How long had he been stuck on it?”

“Three weeks.”

“And you?” Margo asked, even though she could guess the approximate answer.

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. “An afternoon.”

Margo picked up her glass again. “He got off cheap with one bottle.”

Sergei smirked and refilled her glass, the drink disappearing surprisingly quickly. Margo didn’t entirely notice it happening—they were talking, and then her glass was empty. Sergei was halfway through making another round, by which point Margo had developed several complaints about her day.

They began to leak out of her in fragments: Three separate departments had wanted answers she did not have. Someone had submitted the wrong set of calculations to the wrong team. Twice. By four in the afternoon, she’d found herself mediating an argument between a Brazilian and an Argentinian engineer who were ostensibly discussing telemetry and yet had somehow arrived at a personal dispute about soccer futebol dating back six years.

“I think,” she remarked, after a long sip and an even longer sigh, “I need something stronger than this. Move.”

Before Sergei could respond, she was already standing.

“Что?”

“Move.” She nudged him aside and took over the counter space.

“Margo—” He narrowed his eyes. “It’s Wednesday.”

“And this,” she announced, pretending not to hear him, “is where your Brazilian assimilation ends.” She took the cachaça from his hands and got a bottle of vodka from the fridge instead.

Sergei only stared. “I thought you disliked vodka.”

He was right, but she wouldn’t give him that. “I figured,” she said instead, “if I was going to spend the rest of my life in the Soviet Union, I should probably learn how to drink vodka without looking like I was being poisoned.”

“Did it work?” he prodded, grinning now.

“Somewhat.” She set the bottle of Roskoff between them. “I no longer make a face.”

They switched roles without further discussion.

Her version of the drink was stronger. Neither of them caught the exact moment it tipped from a single weekday wind-down into something more indulgent; Sergei continuing to make adjustments with the vodka “for balance” while Margo continued sampling what balance now apparently meant.

When she realized how much she had actually had, it was already too late to correct course in any meaningful way.

She just watched as Sergei leaned back against the counter as if he had suddenly decided the kitchen was an acceptable place to philosophize, and began, with great seriousness, to explain the “proper hierarchy” of vodka.

His cheeks were redder than they had been an hour ago. His accent had gotten thicker too—each glass adding a little more of it back. If anything, it made her want to keep him talking.

He went on about how some were for celebration (Stolichnaya), some for endurance (Moskovskaya), and some, he said, with a faintly offended look, were for “people who do not respect grain” (Russkaya). How it was meant to be accompanied by food – boiled potatoes, salted herring, pickles, sauerkraut, rye bread, bacon, ham – because after every glass you were expected to eat something, and just as importantly, to do it in company.

Otherwise, he said, you were just an alcoholic.

He gestured with the glass as though lecturing an absent committee, and Margo watched him through the slow warmth building in her chest, thinking distantly that she had seen him brief generals with less intensity than this.

She stopped following his explanation somewhere around sortirovka and continuous column distillation. His voice became part of the background she instinctively associated with being at home.

“I like coming home to you.” It slipped out before she could measure it properly, and it was probably the alcohol that made saying it feel so easy, so unguarded. Or maybe it was just the accumulation of nights like this, of months like this spent with him.

The words hung in the air a fraction longer, and Sergei blinked once, slowly.

“That was the vodka talking,” Margo added quickly, a flush creeping up her cheeks as she avoided his eyes.

“Maybe,” he conceded, setting his drink on the counter. He came around the island to where she was sitting and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Definitely.”

He shook his head, smiling all the while. “нет.”

“No?”

“That is you, Margo,” he stated. “Vodka only makes it louder.”

He didn’t let her protest. He leaned down and kissed her gently, without hurry—even now, even with alcohol softening the edges of everything, there was still that familiar carefulness, like he was always aware she might disappear. His hand came down onto her waist, steadying rather than pulling, and Margo felt the last of the day finally give way under something warmer.

[zodiacsuite]

In case you were wondering about the morning after: find it on AO3.