a god among men

The seconds ticked by like hours in Anya’s mind, each one an eternity now that she was not in the company of her friends. They’d been her only tethers to reality and sanity, she realized; the only the thing that was making this night feel normal. The first night of normalcy in years. Though she knew better than to be sucked into the spiraling thoughts that threatened to consume her, she felt herself being tugged along them regardless. Nothing about her life was normal anymore. Nothing had been normal since the night her brother came home and cried to her in fear of his life. Amidst her constant apprehension and fear, she’d found the eye of the storm in Tatiana and Emmaline, the only people in the whole city who seemed to see her as a human being. That feeling was as close to normal as she could get, and they’d managed to capture it for long enough to make sneaking out of the Russian Bratva’s headquarters to a gala birthday party for a nineteen-year-old heiress that none of them knew seem like a completely normal thing to do.

The spiral threatened to envelop her as she approached someone to ask them for help, and at first she didn’t fully look up at his face to hide the panic once again swirling at the back of her mind. But with another deep breath, she lifted her head and spoke in a quiet rush. She couldn’t help it—if she didn’t say her piece quickly, she might forget how to breathe entirely and never get it all out. The man she’d approached, and who’d met her with such purposeful strides, was quite possibly one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. Even here among the elite of New York, where actors and models could be found every two feet, she didn’t think she’d seen any man who was as striking in appearance as him. Her eyes widened, no doubt adding to her already nervous expression, and she had to force herself to take another shaky breath. There were good looking men among the Russians she saw daily, but she couldn’t look at them without wondering how their rugged, sculpted faces would look as they choked the life out of her.

This gentleman, on the other hand, was no Russian. She could tell from… well, everything about him. He didn’t carry himself like a walking weapon, or a barely contained animal in a man’s skin. He was refined, poised, relaxed, and didn’t look at her like a machine or a piece of meat. Anya wondered for a moment if she’d actually said anything coherent. What had come out of her mouth exactly? She’d already forgotten. He lifted his hand to her face, a slow movement that she was able to track. Half of her wanted to flinch—no one in the last two years had touched her face in a gentle way. But he merely brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen out of place, and there was that silly breathless feeling again, making it hard to focus.

Anya roused herself visibly with a little shake and a few blinks. She felt foolish, going starry-eyed over some stranger. She needed to find Tatia and Emmaline! That’s what she was doing, and that was more important than a few butterflies in her stomach over a nice man offering to help. “Erm,” she cleared her throat, and inhaled. “Yes, sorry. Am being… bit lost. And losing friends, too.” The man was right, the noise level of the ballroom was far greater than what she was used to, and was doing her anxiety no favors at all. But she had to push through it, like she always did. Anya entwined her hands together, fingers fiddling around themselves as she straightened her shoulders and offered the gentleman a tentative smile. “Ah, my name Anya. I am losing my friends Tatiana and Emmaline. If, erm, if sir is not being busy… I appreciate help.” She swallowed, starting to feel a little more confident, and added, “Maybe we are also finding your blonde friend, da?”

He was supposed to be looking for Sophia, that was the entire reason he had come back to New York City in the first place, but as evidenced already by his young ward, he had always had a soft spot for little lost blondes, especially when their eyes were as doe-wide and vulnerable as the impossibly pretty one that he was talking to currently. She was more out of place than anyone else in the ballroom, an easy form of prey for any one of the dangerous-looking men prowling around like vultures, he wondered just how she had ended up all alone in the first place. She was incredibly soft, that much he could tell right away, but her timid nature and the anxiety she seemed to be positively radiating had Adonis wondering if she hadn’t lived quite as much of a sheltered life as the majority of the other attendants at Bunny Golighty’s birthday party. And that accent, her fragmented English ... it gave so much away about her, while also raising a thousand different questions. He was curious, that was for damn sure. He wanted to help her.

 He heard the hitch of her breath when he reached out to brush a stray curl from her face, he instantly worried that he had overstepped. It was meant to be a small, reassuring touch, something to comfort her when she was clearly ill at ease, but with how nervous she seemed already ... he had to remind himself that not all lost things were like Sophia. Eager and desperate for affection in any way that they could receive it. She looked up at him, though, with those brilliant eyes of hers, and he had to smile back down at her---lord, she was pretty. “Nothing to apologize for, Anya,” he said calmly, quietly, everything he was doing was meant to soothe and placate. She brought out his nature as a caretaker so effortlessly, his always-present desire to nurture and protect coming out in spades.

// open

There wasn’t a word in either English or Russian which could accurately describe her feelings. She’d never been in a place as… as beautiful as The Garden Hotel. She’d never worn anything as elegant as the dress she was borrowing, or the pin in her hair or the pearls in her ears. This was a dream, surely. She was dreaming and would wake up at any moment to find she’d fallen asleep in the middle of ironing the Pakhan’s shirts. But the dream kept going, and only the solid feel of Tatia and Emmaline beside her was keeping her grounded enough to believe this was actually happening. To keep her from being overwhelmed.

Anya stayed close to her friends as much as possible. Emmaline was fluent in English, and Tatia’s English was much better than Anya’s, so she felt better being near them and knowing they could field conversations that she might embarrass herself in. But in such a massive building with so many people, it was hard to stay with them without literally holding their hands, and eventually a moment came when Anya turned around to ask a question only to find that her friends were not there. Panic swelled inside her, churning her stomach like river rapids until she felt sure she might cry or puke or faint. All she could do was back up to the nearest wall and close her eyes for a moment. Deep breaths, she told herself. Don’t make a scene. Don’t draw attention. The only thing worse than losing track of Tatia and Emmaline would be being found by one of the boyeviks, or even Viktor himself.

So she waited. Breathed. Counted to ten. Opened her eyes. The panic was suppressed, for now, but she would have to find her friends in order to banish it permanently. Time to start asking. Anya timidly approached the nearest person and spoke up in a quiet voice, “Excuse me? Um, forgive interruption. Have… erm, have you been seeing two girls? Short, one is blonde in pink dress, and one is having brown hair and blue dress. Both very pretty.”

He needed to find Sophia. 

Adonis had only been back in the country for not even a week, but usually it didn’t take long at all for him to come across his sweet little flower. She was free to come and go as she pleased from the luxury apartment he had purchased for them to share when he was in the city, and for her to live in fulltime when he was not, but he had arrived home to find it empty and seemingly unlived in for what had to have been at least a month. She wasn’t answering the phone he had provided her with either and had hardly touched the generous allowance he gave her to keep herself spoiled and tended to, it was true that perhaps he hadn’t been the most attentive of guardians as of late, but hell---what was the point of returning home to New York City if he didn’t have a Parisian goddess waiting for him with her arms (and legs, for that matter) wide open?

It was concerning, to say the least, he had planned on inviting her to the gala tonight, but with Sophia nowhere to be found, he was forced to attend it on his own. The Golightly family was a familiar one to him, he had done business with Howard plenty of times in the past and was quite fond of his young daughter, Bunny. Bright, talented, and beautiful, there was no doubt in his mind that she would go far in whatever she aspired to do. As a gift to the birthday girl, he made a hefty donation to her animal rescue charity of choice---somewhere north of a cool five million dollars---and when she began opening gifts for the night, she would find an elegantly wrapped package containing a beautiful diamond necklace handcrafted by Harry Winston himself. 

Now, with a drink in his hand and a watchful eye on the crowded ballroom, Adonis was doing his best to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with all those who knew him and wished to welcome the billionaire back to the city, but in all seriousness he was just trying to find Sophia. A golden springtime goddess of a pet, she shouldn’t have been hard to locate, but it would have made things a thousand fucking times easier for him if she just answered her phone. A pop of blonde caught his attention, and he quirked a brow in interest as he moved in powerful strides across the ballroom, only to realize that ... the girl that was approaching him wasn’t his Sophia. She was small, dainty really, with thin shoulders and a sweet, elfin-like face, she was nervous and shy and he could tell right away by her posture that she wasn’t at all comfortable at such a massive party. Her English was broken and reminded him of the time he had spent in Eastern Europe, why on earth was she all alone like this?