#i was like don't go where i cant follow mr frodo but then i followed mr frodo fucking anyway

[theburialofstrawberries]

“This is going to be a pain, you guys calling each other Semin, Kuznetsov, like we’re in a platoon.” Sasha makes a face like a petulant toddler. “Semin is Alexander Valeryevich, but he likes Sanya, or Sema. Kuznetsov is—”

“Evgeny Evgenyevich, but you’re welcome to ‘Kuzya.’ Or the kids say Kuzy, so you can do that too.”

Kuzy, like Sanya is a stupid child. Little halting syllables, like his English. The coffee grinder thrums in pulsing, punishing blasts, cutting through the din. Sanya tries to hide behind his tea. “Sasha, you’re trying to impose false intimacy. You always do this.”

“What’s false about it? Don’t be pretentious. We’re all going to work together.” Sasha smiles encouragingly, shaking Sanya by the shoulder. “Besides, it’ll scare the kids if we talk to each other the same way we talk to them.”

Sanya raises his eyebrows at Kuznetsov. Surely he agrees that this is a patronizing farce of an attempt by Sasha. Sasha’s like a nanny goat, forever hounding Sanya about his wallet, or his passport, just because Sanya always loses his wallet, or his passport. Kuznetsov raises his eyebrows back, pale blue eyes unreadable.

“It takes a little more than working together.” Sanya leans back and attempts to ignore the flurry of activity around their table. The insufferable small talk smothers his soul. He fumbles for familiar ground, settling his shoulders and brandishing his tea like he once had wielded a vodka bottle. “I can’t possibly get that familiar with someone until I know what makes him a fool.”

“Oh my god,” Sasha says in exasperated English.

Sanya ignores him. “For instance, I am a fool because I believe in God, and Alexander Mikhailovich is a fool because he believes in love.” Sasha exhales a petulant protest. “Well, you do,” Sanya points out, and hones in on Kuznetsov. “What foolish thing do you believe in, Evgeny Evgenyevich?”

As with many of Sanya’s party tricks, it’s about half theatrics and half genuine interest. He does like to rip the simpering skin of forced socialization from an encounter and try to get at what simmers underneath. He likes to hear what answers people dredge up: nothing, or, the closeness of death, from most of the horrible men in his now-extinct romantic life. Dull people say family. Truth, if someone is especially foolish and deluded.

Sanya gets to say, because I believe in God, and tuck himself into a locked box, and then hold up a mirror to the conversation so that the other person is forced to look at themselves, and not at Sanya. Ordinarily, this works a treat.

Evgeny Kuznetsov considers the question for a moment. He watches Sanya with eyes like one-way glass. One side of his mouth lifts up, almost imperceptibly. “Poetry.”

Sanya inhales.

“There!” Sasha declares, laughing. “Now we’re three fools on the right terms.”

Sanya shivers in the air-conditioned chill. He started out as a poet, a detail mentioned in passing by particularly thorough reviewers and widely ignored by everyone else. He abandoned poetry in his twenties, but it was his first love: a splash of color in his dull Soviet education. He remembers reciting Marshak poems at seven, “Silly Little Mouse” and “Luggage” and “Circus,” the first time he had excelled in his classroom instead of nervously falling behind the rest.

Sasha and Kuznetsov chatter about something, students, perhaps, or foreign coffee. Kuznetsov laughs, bearded chin lifted to show the long thick column of his neck. Sanya steals a portion of Sasha’s pastry for something to do with his hands.

[bible voice] Indeed, the Rave and waspabi 'Hockey RPF but everyone's a writer-in-residence collab' slaps, and I alone have escaped to tell you