TOWER OF BABEL (VII)
NAVIGATION || RAVISHING ALLURE MASTERLIST || NEXT: CHAPTER VIII
PAIRING: Nikto x F!Reader (Soulmate AU)
WORDCOUNT: 7.4k
WARNINGS: Angst, intense stalking & stalking behavior, talks of death/injury, toxic modeling standards/expectations, dark implications, symptoms & descriptions of dissociation, scar descriptions, etc. (Series 18+)
A/N: This is where some of the more serious/dark aspects come into the story involving Seraph's job and the pressures that are put on her. It's only implied in this chapter, but in the next, it'll be talked about more. Just to let you all know.
*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*
The day after your meeting, your gifted clothes came to the lobby of the penthouse.
You’d gone down with Nikto and picked up what you could, bags and bags of designer goods including purses, makeup, and jewelry. It was excessive—like Fedorov was trying to buy your silence; buy your affection so you’d cozy up into bed with him.
This job tried you every day, but that was a line you would never cross. Never.
Still, the items needed to be taken and packed for the trip regardless. Eyes would be on you from the moment this adventure from hell started until it ended in what hopefully was a peaceful fashion.
But you severely doubted it would be anything close to peaceful.
You take another gray dress and slip it into the garment cover, legs folded on the floor of your living room as you hum under your breath. Music wafts out from your record player, and you’re desperately trying to focus on the task at hand. Nikto reads from the couch.
“Have they called you yet?” You ask, not looking up as you slide the cover’s zipper, missing it once as your hand shakes unexpectedly.
The Russian responds with a slow and even, “Нет. No calls.”
You sigh, licking your lips.
No one had been telling you what was in that last gift at AMA—not even your mother. Aly had said it was probably nothing when she’d been briefly over to assist with the clothes, on a tight break in her schedule, but you weren’t too sure of that.
Pale eyes blink slowly, and a page turns. “No use thinking. Pack.”
“You make it sound like it’s that easy,” you huff, body leaning back and spine resting against your various rugs. The penthouse was warmer today, and you wear comfortable loungewear; shorts, and a dark baggy t-shirt. Your head shifts, arms out beside you. “How are you so calm about everything? My heart feels like it’s constantly going to break out of my chest.”
Your phone goes off on the coffee table, a short buzz that has to be either your mom or Alyona. Rubbing a palm into your right eye, you hear the bear grunt and close whatever he was reading, finding it pointless to try and focus if you continue to speak to him.
He stares for a moment, hidden face a mystery you long to solve. With a tap of his finger on his thigh, he explains.
“Training,” you blink, intrigued. Nikto seems to notice, tilting his head and looking down at you. “You are scared, Woman, yes?”
“Of course.” You had no trouble admitting it. “Anyone would be.”
“In military,” the air of the penthouse moves with the weight of his broken words, the rough bleed of vocals. You really did like his accent—it just added so much to his already intimidating form. Just a stack of bricks being constantly grated against one another. “We were taught how to become used to it—the adrenaline. Fear. In the end, it held little over many; failure was the only fear that never left.”
Your brows furrow, lips frowning. “You fear failure, Nikto?”
You expected a blunt refusal, quick words. But the man had been softening to you over the time you’d known him—if that was your own doing, or something more, you can’t quite tell anymore. Any talk on soulmates has feld you like a rabbit in a dark wood to shy away from the looming presence of something bigger; parties and scorned maniacs.
You still wonder if ignoring the gifts was the right thing to do. Would that make it worse? You think you’d read about that somewhere.
A trigger. But the stalker had already pushed one of those, hadn't he? What could he do that was worse than killing three men? Mutilating animals?
Nikto surprises you.
The man blinks, not looking away from your pleasing eyes—even now, your pupils were small with anxiety; he’d noticed how you adamantly avoided social media and the news, plastered with your pictures and the case. The window had never been opened fully since he’d been here, only a creak of natural light slipping from the crack of the half-risen blinds.
For a gruff beast of action, his eyes missed nothing.
“Yes,” he grumbles, blinking away for a moment before his attention returns. “But it is…lesser than what you feel. Незначительный. Minor.”
A small smile flickers your lips, skull to the ground even as it aches slightly.
“I like it when you speak to me—it helps,” you mumble honestly. It wasn’t flirting, not really.
The Russian looks slightly confused at your sentence, but that doesn’t stop his shoulders from minutely tightening. You chuckle, shifting your head to the ceiling where your little bits of painted glass hang.
“Nikto,” you point upwards. “That one—the bird. What color is it?”
This was a game you’d taken a fast liking to. You’d point and ask the color; Nikto would answer.
“Red,” is his monotone reply after a glance. Eyes from behind his mask shrouded in dark paint. You doubted the face grease could come off anymore, the chemicals already bone deep.
“I thought it was orange,” you sigh. “I still can’t tell the difference.”
“Obviously,” is the dryly amused response, with you glaring without venom and putting your hands to the ground to help push you back up.
“Hey,” you try to hide your teasing smirk. “I’m getting better at it—”
Your voice is strangled off as a sharp inhale, eyes blinking rapidly, and your vision blurs in a moment of ricocheting pain flaring in the base of your skull. Snapping one hand to the back of your head, you strangle down a small scream, reducing it to a whimper of utter agony.
Neck bending forward, your mouth fills with saliva as your spine pulls in, yet you can’t even focus on that. You feel like if you even have a single thought, your brain will explode out of the back of your head.
Nikto startles, eyes widening, but he doesn’t waste time on shock. Feet already rush over at the slighted change in the air, a hand grasping the base of your neck tightly, attention snapping into place. Your breath puffs as your frantically moving face tenses and eyelids twitch. Your nerves were on fire.
The Russian watches, confusion and a certain unease striking him through his pounding heart. What had happened? One second you were speaking and the next your body was so steel-like it shook harder than he’d ever seen it.
“Seraph,” he barks, face close to your head, looking at the spot you grasp at with your visible knuckles, the sound of your gasping pants leaving his throat echoing with reverberations of unease.
Nikto pulls at the skin of your wrist, peeling your hand back before you draw blood, trying to assess what to do. He only sees it then.
It’s a rabid-looking thing, the scar. With your hair as such, your fingers stuck in the knots, they’re pulled back just perfectly to see it. Pale blue eyes stare unabashedly, struck dumb for a moment in their concerned sheen.
It spans from the base of your skull upward, a jagged bulge of healed tissue and fissures—the shade of skin is different there, hyperpigmentation just as Nikto had. Halfway up the back, the rough line breaks into two places, creating a ‘Y’ with the one nearest to the right stopping sooner than the other.
But it was deep. Deadly-like. An indent lives at the middle point.
For someone so in tune with the ways of the body, Nikto was horrified and fascinated at the very implication; how had you…survived this? Your entire skull might have been broken open from the force of whatever had happened, judging by the strength needed to achieve such brutality. Was this the injury that you’d been speaking about?
An overwhelming emotion takes him by the lungs.
Your body had scars just like his did.
Form curling even farther forward, your legs pull into you, and Nikto finds that at the moment, none of that even matters.
“Seraph,” he orders again, equally as urgent but noticed less sharp. His thumb curls your wrist to trap itself at your pounding pulse; running as if being chased by whatever nightmares he hears you whine from in your sleep.
You swallow down your bile with a clicking of your throat and a small cough, eyes stinging.
“Burns,” your lips whisper, lids closing firmly. “God, my head burns.”
It’s a brief thought—a small moment of slip-second thinking that had saved his life many times.
A chilled palm spreads itself over the back of your head, directly over the broken fracture of flesh, without an utterance of a word. The effects aren’t immediate; you don’t just calm down and stop panicking. But it helps. Like a light in the dark, it helps.
After a minute, the chill seeps into your bones. It goes deeper and deeper, the large grip of Nikto’s fingers stuck into your hair perhaps a little harder than they needed to be, but you weren’t about to complain at the pressure. After two minutes, your panting slows to a small ragged wheeze—feeling like a sick duck as your beady eyes finally open. You see the unblinking pale orbs directly to your right almost immediately after the abyssal dots go back to wherever it was they came from.
He doesn’t speak; you didn’t expect him to. Nikto was arrogant, prideful, but he never spoke unless he knew he had something he needed to say. A blunt hound who never hesitated to bark, but only when he could see something was up in the tree.
When you’ve seemed to calm down, the hand on your wrist leaves with a brush of rough gloves to the skin, making you shiver. You notice the hastily tossed material of the matching product, belonging to the other limb, near your knee.
Cold fingers. Cold hands. A corpse would be jealous, but you’d never felt so thankful.
Nikto studies your face rapidly, and your raspy voice levels out a meek, “Sorry.”
Barely visible brows furrow tightly, almost disgusted. You perhaps misinterpreted that expression the wrong way, because just as you’re about to rush into a wild explanation as to why, how, and every excuse you can give, you’re once more taken off guard today.
Bulky arms circle your waist and under your vibrating knees.
With a sluggish reaction, you blink rapidly as you’re settled against the hard Kevlar of his chest—kept firm in his grip. Your legs hang, hand stabilizing yourself on Nikto’s pec.
“What did I say?” He asks heavily, looking down at you as your shock bleeds away to focus on how to calm your heart. “Seraph?” Nikto prompts, his fingers digging into your clothes.
You try to think, stuttering, “You don’t like it when I apologize.”
“So do not,” the Russian grunts, clenching his jaw out of sight. His words are low, and he rolls his shoulders. “That is the end of it.”
He sets you down on the couch, sinking into the multiple plush pillows. You feel weak—limp. Not looking into the man’s eyes, you curl your hands around your waist, leaning back and being careful to not hit your head on the back.
Nikto watches with hidden concern.
“Explain,” he utters, not moving an inch from in front of you. It’s a minute or so before you can find the words. All the Russian does in that time is shift his arms over his chest—fix the stance of his feet. You can feel his eyes like a knife, but you can’t feel how his brain is on high alert; vigilant to any pain that may be hidden from him.
“Happens sometimes,” you whisper, one vibrating hand coming up to lightly run over the back of your skull. You trace the scar softly, feeling the pulse underneath. “It’s just… sensitive.”
Nikto’s eyes narrow.
After a pause, where it’s obvious you feel some sort of embarrassment judging by your avoiding gaze, the great beast sighs long. A slow blink makes his dark lashes up and down.
He hated how he despised that look on your face.
Moving, Nikto sits beside you, leaning back with a grunt and extending an arm behind you on the hardwood of the couch’s frame.
“Tell me. I want to know.” You side-eye him, knees pulled up to your chest. It has a distance to it, your focus. Everything feels like it’s underwater.
“It’s not a good story,” you force a broken huff, smiling wobbly. Numb eyes don’t waver over the lines of your face.
“No,” Nikto bluntly says. “I did not expect it to be. Nonetheless…” he trails. “I am asking if you are willing to answer.”
It wasn’t like you were against saying what had transpired, but there was a lot of history there—so much. The event had happened when you were young, so many years had passed to a point where the mental pain of it had dimmed to all except the consequences. The aftermath.
This was a give and a take; you consider yourself a fair person.
“How did you lose part of your finger?” You turn it around, licking your lips and staring at his neck. The man’s body stills at the question.
Nikto slowly loosens a grumbled scoff. But it isn’t a feral thing. Perhaps he was even impressed that you had the forethought to gain something of his story when you’d already told so much of yours.
He reminds himself once more, not dumb.
“Very well,” Nikto’s head tilts like a wolf, his knee hitting the place where your feet hang over the edge of the cushion. He looks you up and down as his finger taps the wood behind your head. “Second year with PMC. Operation in far-off country—we do not care to remember which anymore.” You listen, heart calming with every scrape of vocal cords. Nikto explains slowly, thinking over every word carefully as his vision trails to rest at your nose. “Hostile hiding under floorboards.” The Russian rolls his shoulders. “I was reaching down to grab at the hatch; it confused me because it was partially open.”
Your body lightly turns his way, the side of your skull meeting the hard build off the inside of his forearm. Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath, getting everything under control again one second at a time. As if a book, you turn the pages of Nikto, painting a picture of his tale, oblivious to the way his eyes are stuck on your face. His arm stays completely still for you.
He longs to look at that scar again, and he can’t understand why.
“...Large knife came up through the wood. Cut it off and damaged the others near it. It is numb most days. Barely can tell I still have finger. Very inopportune, but all was not lost.”
“What wasn’t lost?” You hum, sighing, and open your eyes again. The Russian’s gaze darts away.
“I killed him,” he says numb-like, a vicious smirk in his voice. “In the end, it was only us who could tell the story, yes?”
“Does it hurt?” You change the subject back to his scars, liking how his forearm acted as your pillow. You could feel his tendons as they pulled.
“Sometimes,” Nikto shrugs at your quiet question, thighs over the couch cushions. “Like all the others. Natural.”
He doesn’t need to ask if yours do.
You dwell on what he insinuates about his body—the scars you already thought he’d have; why he wears that mask.
“I fell,” you share, not letting a long silence linger. Nikto’s feet shuffle on the floor, but otherwise, like a waiting cat, he was completely beholden to your soft voice. “Far. Cracked my head open on a rock.”
There’s so much more to it—but this is the version you always tell everyone. It’s less…complicated. Gets you less looks of pity, even if you’re not sure Nikto is the type to do that.
The large man hums, nodding. He wants to know more; he’d have to look into it further on his own. “You are lucky to be alive after an injury like that.”
“Yeah,” you whisper, lips twisting. “Lucky.”
Your skull pulses.
“But, anyways,” you wave a hand, locking gazes. “Thank you.”
Nikto’s knees crack as he stands, moving away; his heat leaves. Hands situating themselves at the collar of his vest, the Russian’s throat rolls with a noise of acceptance.
“It is my job. Do you require anything?”
“I think I’m okay,” you admit, feet delicately moving to the rug on the floor. It’s back to packing, pushing this to the back of your mind just as you do the remembrance of his fingers tight in your hair; tight at your wrist. Nikto’s hard voice in your ear, saying your angelic title.
Your throat clears itself, blinking, as you stand.
The man takes it as lightheadedness, one foot moving closer. Your hand raises, and he stops. A small chuckle moves out of your mouth, side-eyeing him with a crinkle to your lids.
“I’m okay, Nikto. Trust me, please.”
He sighs, fingers twitching. But he doesn’t grumble any blunt vitriol, he just watches. Always watching.
Your spirits are lightened by his presence.
Brushing down your t-shirt, you close your eyes and shove away the memories, tiny tingles of pain still present as they go up and down your spine.
“Now, we have to get to work,” you brush past the episode, used to them. “It would be helpful if you lent a hand, Big Guy.”
Your joke leads to a huff, fingers taking back their book from the table—all in Russian script, so you didn’t know what it was—and a roll of eyes.
“That is not my problem. Your clothes, your parties.”
“The parties you’re going to have to go with me too,” you smirk, eyes glimmering as you grasp your phone, flipping it over to turn it on and look at the text you’d received. “I hope you like suits.”
Pale eyes widen before a growled Russian sentence wafts over the music from the recorder. You laugh, already knowing the contents of curses and refusals. He was so much like a child sometimes it takes you aback. A brute, utterly refusing what was in front of him and owning a short fuse.
“Oh, calm down,” you blink, signing into your phone. “I’m good at finding clothes as long as you tell me colors and shades. You’re in the best hands in the business, Nikto.”
“Do not say it like that,” he barks, eyes narrowed and his body moving forward to pass you, most likely to go back to your bookshelf and return the book, seeing as he’d get nowhere with it now. “I do not want your hands, Whelp.”
“You’re saying that now,” you tease, pointing with your free finger. “Everyone says that before they have a taste of—”
“Quiet.”
You laugh, spine lightly bending forward, and Nikto’s back turned to you to where you can’t see his face soften at the sound. His body unconsciously loosens, orbs gaining a distance that has nothing to do with his condition. Your existence is a curse to him, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
It’s only after you’re able to calm down, the Russian putting his book away with a large hand, when you finally look down at the text you’d gotten.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
‘I sent you a gift and you didn’t even open it?’
Your face freezes mid-smile.
‘I’m giving you everything you wanted—you didn’t open the letter I gave you in the grocery store, either, did you? I waited for hours for you to show up! Hours for you! I’ve waited YEARS to be near you! I love you more than anything in my life and you’re ignoring me? How can you do that when I’ve risked so much? Please, Seraph, I love you but you’re breaking my heart—I’m trying so hard to be kind to you. Please, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Это любовь с первого взгляда! Я не могу жить без тебя!
I’m trying to forgive you, my Сладкая, I promise. I’ll always forgive you, but let me show you how much you mean to me.’
Images pop through, scent quickly as your glee stiffly drops like glass to the floor. You’d never felt yourself go so still as when you’re halfway through the block of text and you see yourself at the grocery store, alone, and Nikto’s shadow disappearing around the aisle. More—so much more. You in AMA...in…in the photoshoot wearing nothing but the lingerie, skin on full display.
Your eyes flood with tears, jaw open.
He had been in that fucking room. He’d been there when your manager had brought in the dead birds—he, he had…
He’d been right there.
You can’t speak, you’re only looking down at the continuing barrage of photos.
Outside of the Consulate building, walking down the street, talking with Aly on a girls outing from months ago. Your phone vibrates with every one, quivering hands already moving but now more so. Like a rabbit being hunted down. It shows an escalation—the more you see the closer this freak was getting in each, slowly slinking with vile intentions until the last.
An image of the direct back of your head, a hand reaching, and almost touching, exactly where your scar lives.
You’re going to vomit.
The entire device is snatched by gloved fingers.
Nikto glares in confusion, ears twitching at every buzz of your phone. “What is wrong with—”
The man is suddenly more wound up than a dog under a noose.
Rushing past, you only reach the kitchen trash can two seconds before your bile rocketed from your mouth, heaving what little you’d managed to eat of Nikto’s cooking into the bottom with a tight sob.
Nikto’s hand holds the thing—reading, looking, with dead eyes. Dead eyes that gradually become enraged with a certain type of anger that breeds in silence. The skim, a ruthless finger tapping the screen and dragging the conversation back to the top before he stares. He stares and stares and stares at the pictures. At you.
The way you live your life, oblivious to the threat right behind you. Stalking closer.
Nikto can’t remember a time he’s felt so angry at an enemy before. Not just an enemy, no, an animal. This wasn’t like the rules of war, this was for pleasure; for a selfish need. He knew how to keep himself separate—had to for his sanity—but this was something no one could not get wrathful at. Even him.
He hears you wretch, vomiting into the trash just below the island where he’d made the both of you lunch, the choke of your sobbing breaths. The sounds make his hands tighten over the phone, to smash it to pieces like a toddler with a block castle.
And then the device buzzes one more time as Nikto silently finishes reading the first text you’d been sent.
‘Don’t worry about the bodyguard, Seraph, I can take care of him, too. We can finally be together, just like it’s supposed to be.’
Nikto is hitting the call button before his brain catches up to his finger.
Slotting it to his covered ear, he breathes like an afflicted hound, eye buggy and chest rattling with air. Panting echoed from behind his mask, the hot breath moving back to warm his slashed and burned flesh.
It picks up on the second ring, but nothing is said. No words from the other end.
In the corner of his eye, Nikto sees you hyperventilating. The former soldier speaks entirely in Russian, slipping back into his native tongue as easily as he slips into violence—it is nothing more than a slide of sandpaper.
“I am going to watch the life bleed from your eyes,” he grinds out. “And then I’m going to make your corpse wish it had been set on fire instead.”
Nikto hangs up, tossing the phone to the coffee table and making a mental note to get Yaromir and Galina to trace the number. Stomping over to you, your body was away from the trash now, hand to your mouth.
“I’m okay,” you say hurriedly, tears tracking your cheeks. “I’m okay.”
“You are not,” Nikto wishes he could go to the shooting range—wishes he could spar and slam someone down to a wrestling mat. He needs flesh under his fingertips.
The Russian’s chest is wide and rising with the pulse of untamed lungs. The bulge of his pecs stuttered over their course and the old scars he carries itch under the barrier of his gear.
Growling, the man clenches his eyes shut, shaking his head to the side firmly.
But there was something about the implication of you being threatened that made Nikto need to feel the weight of his service weapon in his grip. To feel the recoil of a bullet being sent into someone. A nameless figure; a silent phone call.
Nikto scoffs, rolling his neck and shoulders.
Thinking like this was making him reckless.
“I guess I should have told you about the letters, then,” you taste bile on your tongue, images swirling in your head—paranoia was firm. Suddenly, every memory was tainted. You gag on your saliva, coughing.
Nikto doesn’t respond to the self-deprecating comment.
Once more today, hands move to touch you, pulling at the space under your arms and lifting. Blinking, you’re moving around when your feet are flat on the ground—hands going to rest on the edge of the counter behind you.
Nikto’s hands stay stuck at the meat of your limbs, great head tilted. Eyes lock on the tear tracks spreading down your skin, and he pauses.
A thumb slowly pushes at them, spreading the liquid along your flesh as your blurry vision stays at his neck. With a shuddering inhale at the unneeded attention, your head lightly sags forward—connecting with Nikto’s chest.
He tenses, looking down at you from the corner of his eye.
After a minute, his nose releases an unheard sigh, and his arms lower to his sides.
Nikto lets you rest there as long as you need.
—
You’re in the bath tonight, and Nikto listens to the water sloshing as he pushes the envelopes around from inside the lockbox.
It was safe to say you hadn’t gone back to packing.
That woman, Alyona, was here—she’d made a big fuss about the texts before she’d taken you with her and led you into the bathroom to clean yourself up. You were both in there now—talking. Nikto wasn’t going to act like he wasn’t eavesdropping; he didn’t care if your friend or you knew it. It was mostly about the parties, the talk, and the Russian could understand that Alyona was trying to occupy your mind.
His mission was more important.
You’d passed him the box and watched as Nikto had retrieved the letter from your coat pocket. The former soldier had already called the investigators and promptly told them to arrest Sergi, or they would have him to deal with—there hadn’t been time to respond before he’d hung up and smashed his phone to the nightstand of your rented room. The resounding echo had made both parties in the bathroom go silent for a minute before hesitantly starting back up.
And now, there was the scratchy English script of a stalker in his hands. He felt disgusting even touching them; he was glad he’d put his gloves back on. A permanent sneer was stuck to his hidden face like a curse, eyes narrowed.
Standing, the man trades weight from his thighs as he reads the letter that had been stuck in your jacket.
‘My Сладкая,
This is the one-hundredth letter I’ve written to you, though you haven’t been sent all of them yet. I’m still waiting for you to notice me, and I’ve grown disquieted by your response to the way I disposed of your three guards. Was that not what you wanted every time you looked at me?’
Nikto’s hand comes up to rub at the fabric over his neck, digging until he feels the bulge of his scar against his fingertips.
‘I thought you would be thankful, but now you have that man following you everywhere. He took your doves from you—the doves that were supposed to make up for the misunderstanding about the dead men. You looked beautiful with the red fire moving over your face that day, you know? It caught every curve and the softness of your skin perfectly. Here—I even took a picture for you to enjoy as I thoroughly have. I hope it brings you the pleasure it brought me to run my lips over your holy image.”
Fingers crumble the side of the letter, creasing it. Not once do they delve into the envelope to look for that picture. If he had the choice, Nikto would rip this entire thing into little bits.
‘I think it’s time that we meet—alone, Сладкая. I’ll be waiting tonight at the café for you, so we can run away together. And start this life together. I think it’s time. Yes. I will ravage you with all of the beautiful things in life; jewelry, dresses, makeup, my body. It is mine, isn’t it? You? You’ve told me with your eyes, so why are you still ignoring me? You look at me every day. I look back—you love me! I know you do! Why are you still being such a—’
It falls off into nothing but rabid script; illegible even to Nikto’s best abilities. The letter is saturated with something—spots of the paper pulling in on itself with droplets off…
Nikto stills, disgust and insult moving in his gut. There wasn’t any DNA on the box, but they certainly had some here.
Dropping the letter into the lockbox on the nightstand, the man takes the top and rams it shut with a rattle of the nesting dolls on the upper shelf. Nikto removes his gloves and tosses them into the garbage bin.
Stalking to the bathroom door, he moves on instinct. Ever the animal.
Knuckles rasp to the wood. Conversations halt once more.
“Seraph,” he eases, accent tight. “You are well?”
A bead of silence, the moving of water.
“Yes, Nikto,” your voice is still shaky, but it comes out from under the door.
Nikto stares at his feet, blinking. With a grunt, his feet shift and he forces out, “Good. You will call if you need us.”
It wasn’t a question.
Moving back, he nods to himself firmly, shaking out his right hand—he can’t seem to stop being on edge. Every creak, every shadow of your decorations moving, made his eyes dart to them, honing in as if behind the scope of a rifle.
Nikto brought his hands to the side of his skull, pushing in. You were messing with his head, he tells himself again. The moments of dissociation were becoming more frequent as of late, and he could feel it in the back of his mind even now. A glaze over his brain that made everything feel like it was worlds away from him—it was sharp and sure of itself. Words jumbled, ‘I’s came out as ‘We’s, things were lapsed from his brain; important things. Moments of confusion—aggression. Leaving you behind in a grocery store at the flip of a coin. Snapping at you in real anger when you were just curious.
He can’t do that. He can’t lose his grip.
From inside the bathroom, your eyes stay locked on the door, your head resting on the wall behind you as your skin soaks in the claw-footed tub.
“I don’t know if this is good for me, Aly,” you confess lowly, eyes shifting back to the wall ahead of you, a little black and white ceramic fish on a shelf. Candles let off the scent of linen and pine.
Alyona sits on the stool a few feet away, watching your face worriedly.
“Солнышко,” she starts slowly, “we both know it isn’t. It’s going to pass—I can’t hope for more than that.”
It’s like a repeating record—It’ll be okay, just keep strong, push through.
It wasn’t Aly’s fault; she’s involved in this too.
“Is Nikifor worried about you?” The woman’s head perks, her lips twitching as the orbs inside of her head soften.
“Seraph, you don’t have to change the subject—”
“Truly,” you move a hand up from the water and rub at your face. “Really, Aly, I need a distraction. Please, just…talk. You know I love to hear about the two of you.”
She sighs, looking to the wall. After a moment, she chuckles, head tilting down. “Yes, he’s worried. He worries about you as well. You have a home with us, little Солнышко—I want you to know that, yes?” Alyona brings a hand to your cheek, pinching in good nature.
You shuffle away in mock annoyance, lips twitching.
“...I know, Aly.”
“Good,” she huffs. “I would not be a good friend if you didn’t. At least that brute is taking care of you, it seems.”
“He’s a good cook,” you ease out. “You should try it sometime.”
Gray eyes blink at you, shocked. “He got you to eat a meal?”
“You’re saying it like I never do,” you chuckle, eyebrows pulling in as the dimmed overhead light shines down on your avoidance of the problem at hand.
“No, it’s not that,” Aly’s eyes rove with unseen emotion, her concerned heart gaining a smidge of affection for the man outside of the door, whose shadowed feet can still be seen pacing. “I am…glad, Seraph. Food is always the way to someone’s senses, eh?”
Your lips twitch, but the weight on your chest remains. A tense pause grabs the both of you.
“I wish you were coming with,” you have to admit on a stiff tongue. “Ever since I first got here, you’ve been with me for all of it—the parties especially.” Your open mouth stutters. “Aly, I don’t think I can do it again by myself. All of those people; what some of them expect from me, it…it’s just…” Getting choked up, you move a hand to your mouth, covering it. From behind the flesh, you mutter, “I can’t do it again, it’s just the same as staying here, as a matter of fact, I think staying would be better.”
“You need to think rationally,” Aly shakes her head, getting closer to take your hand in both of hers. She squeezes, her top shiny in the light as it moves. “Nothing is worse than staying in this city. The man outside the door agrees. It is the safest option for you, even if,” Alyona closes her eyes, looking away as she opens them. She never finishes her sentence.
“I don’t want to,” you fight a whimper. “Aly, we tried so hard to get out of them sending us like meat.”
But there’s nothing that the woman can do to you when you say it like that, and even her expression gets far away. Alyona’s eyes blink fast, getting glossy before they avoid your eyes for the rest of the night.
“I’m sorry, My Seraph. I’m so, so, sorry.”
And that’s all that can be said.
When night comes, you don’t think you sleep at all, and by Nikto’s pacing of his room, the occasional pause to peek his head through your doorway, neither does he.
—
The time to leave came far quicker than you could anticipate as the days blended. Chelyabinsk was nearly a three-hour drive if you went the fastest route, and in the time before it, you and Nikto hadn’t spoken much about the letters. They’d been taken by the investigators the next day, along with your phone, for testing and tracking. While you’d been given a new device, it was a tiny thing that died more times than not; you had three contacts—Alyona, Nikto, and your mom.
You’d been assigned a driver by AMA for the trip, and thus, the all-black vehicle had arrived in the small hours of the morning as you had finished a hurried call to your matriarch.
“I’ll be back soon, Mom,” you’d explained. “Business. I’ll keep me busy.”
She had said it was a good idea like everyone else. Aly and you were the only ones to know the truth. Dread was a fishhook in your throat, but the fear of staying here was just as prominent. Those pictures haunted your mind.
“Nikto,” you ask, grabbing one of your suitcases on the street with a grunt. “Can you…?” The item is taken and easily lifted into the trunk. “Thank you,” your voice breathes out a sigh into the early morning air.
You hadn’t been to Chelyabinsk in a long time. Your brain knew that it would be most of the same—you needed to be careful of who you spoke to and how you did it. While regular crime was only moderate, corruption and bribery was your main problem when entering the place. You were on Allurement’s payroll, would your CEO’s influence be enough to stop anyone from trying anything with you?
If you stuck to where you were told to go, you should be fine.
Along with yourself and Nikto, photographers and media know-hows would be tagging along; makeup artists and stylists. A team of people who mostly refuse to look at you at all, only a few familiar faces among them.
But, thankfully, only you and your guard would be in this car.
“You can get in,” Nikto comments, blinking at you in the dark street, the lights of the car and the penthouse behind you all you have to differentiate between shades of black and gray. Your eyes had been constantly narrowed so you could try and see better. “I will load the rest.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” you smile sheepishly, “I’d like to stay out until we leave. I get fidgety when I’m in the car for too long.”
His shoulders shrug, taking another of your bags from the ground. “Very well. You will eat on the way there, then.”
Your eyes blink, attention pulled back from the shadow of a man walking across the street, raising hair on your arms.
“What was that?” You tilt your head.
Nikto huffs. “Eat. On the way there.” He raises a brow. “You need breakfast.”
“Oh,” you at your neck slightly. “Sure, yeah. But what about you? Do you want me to turn around or something so I won’t see your face?”
“No need. We ate as you dressed. Packed the remaining for you.” You’re brushed past, the purse around your shoulder connecting with Nikto’s thigh as his boots clop over the concrete.
Your lips twitch, expression still worried but the tease sneaking out instinctually. “I need to start calling you Mother Bear, Nikto.”
“It will be the last thing you do, Whelp,” he grumbles, eyes looking over his shoulder as he packs the last suitcase away. Amusement is like liquid stone inside of them.
So the trip ensued.
You entertained yourself by staring out of the window as the cityscape rolled back, already missing the sanctity of your penthouse as you fiddled with a small stuffed bird in your grip.
“I spy…” you mumble twenty minutes in, trying to be normal again. “Something tall and gray—”
“Tree,” Nikto grunts, trying to read one of the books he packed.
“No,” you say, defensively. “It was,” your mouth opens and closes, scouring the passing scene but finding nothing. “Fine, yes, it was a tree.”
“I spy something blue.”
“That’s not even funny.”
“I believe it was funny. Perhaps you do not have a good sense of humor, Woman.”
You glare, throwing your stuffed bird directly at his forehead and watching it bounce off. Nikto doesn’t even look away from the words on his page, flipping to the next with a deep chuckle in his neck.
Rolling your eyes, you groan and slouch into your seat.
You had to say, though, that as the city disappeared, so did your anxieties. It felt good to be near dense croppings of trees again—only an open and uncrowded highway and Nikto beside you. His pale eyes would watch you every so often, and you would do the same, studying each other as time passed and a gradual silence fell.
“Can I use you as a pillow?” You ask with only an hour left on the trip.
Nikto’s halfway through his book, and up until now, you’d kept to yourself, lost in thought.
“I am not comfortable,” he utters, leg shifting. He glances, but his numb eyes don’t do much until they move back to where they were prior. “And my Kevlar is hard. It will aggravate your head.”
You had to wonder how fast he caught onto that fact about you. A smile grows on your face, and you shift to grab your jacket, folding it and tossing the item onto Nikto’s thigh. His head darts down right as you move to rest there, body sideways and legs folded against the door.
“I like it when you worry—it’s cute,” you stifle a yawn, ignoring his digging eyes. “Wake me before we get there?”
Your ears don’t wait for an answer, your fatigue from missing an entire night of sleep catching up where Nikto’s never would. He watched you rest for the remainder of the ride, hand hovering over your shoulder until it slowly slipped down to rest on it with a grumble of exasperated Russian under his breath. But the man had noticed the bags under your eyes—unable to be hidden by makeup. He found it in himself to let you sleep, even if the infection of your warmth made his head go loose; how your slackened face looked peaceful.
The knowledge of what you’d just experienced was still with him, even as he linked his feelings together as pointless. This was a waiting game, and everyone else seemed to have time except for you.
He didn’t like it. There was a nagging in the back of his gut—instinctual understanding as a hired gun who’d gone through many deployments. This was bigger; something was going to happen soon. A tipping point.
Nikto had a feeling you felt it too, as your head nuzzled his thigh in your sleep, shoving yourself into your jacket as tiny grunts moved from your lips; eyebrows furrowing.
Bad dream, the Russian clocked immediately, his book long placed at his side and his one elbow against the window frame.
Pale blue eyes watched for a moment, looking at your deep red blouse and the long back skirt that lightly cascaded over the side of the seats. His hand at your shoulder—hard and immobile, twitches as it tries to keep you steady, feeling the muscle under your flesh writhe.
Only when you can’t seem to calm down does he do anything at all.
Nikto can easily stamp an expression of annoyance on his face, of bored numbness, but instead, a sliver of something that could be considered softness bleeds from behind his eyes; something that even if he were to look into a mirror, he couldn’t name himself.
A finger brushes up your neck, scarred and broken, most of a finger missing and the nearest ones fuzzy with nerve damage. It hovers, steady, before his hand moves to massage along the base of your scar. It’s an awkward angle, no mistake. After all, he was practically grabbing the side of your neck to reach, but it was all he could offer short of waking you.
When he couldn’t sleep, he’d do the same to himself; it helped, he thought, feeling skin on skin—a caress that eases aches. Call it pathetic, but the sensations he was feeling doing the same to you were nothing short of trance-inducing. To understand the pulse of your heart—your breath returns to a slow puff; brows settling back down at only his circling thumb.
A bit of that infectious pride trickles into his eyes; smug.
Nikto grunts, and leans back into his chair, continuing his work to settle you, and smirks softly under his mask.
Only roughly half an hour to go, and then it was back to guard duty. But perhaps he could close his eyes and rest as well.
You made for quite the distraction.
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