@ariellestarling
how their little friendship had started, he couldn’t answer. it wasn’t there one day and then it was. but arielle was a really sweet girl, she was undeniably sweet amongst other things. but most importantly she was close to the younger valentina whom olyvar despised so much and he found himself competing. maybe he didn’t want her for himself, but he certainly wanted dimitri to know he could if he wanted to. right now wasn’t ideal though, she was here with him and as petty as oly wanted to be; he wouldn’t openly talk about his whatever–hatred, maybe– with dimitri. he hadn’t stooped to that level yet.
it didn’t matter if dimitri was a no good piece of shit, oly bit his tongue. but he did wave to arielle when dimitri wasn’t looking. soon enough the second he spotted her alone, he grabbed two cocktails for them and darted in her direction. holding one out and with his then free hand he reached down for hers to kiss her knuckles with a charming. ‘my, my, don’t you absolutely gorgeous tonight. might have me believing you’re the birthday girl, angel.’ he laughed softly, gazing over her in awe and it was true– she looked beautiful as ever, the red hair, the flushed skin, so much like a goddess. he certainly towered over her, and the slight agitation that it caused in his neck was well worth it for a moment alone with her. ‘are you having a fun night, arielle? how about a dance?’
Arielle wasn’t sure at all why there was so much animosity between Dimitri and Olyvar, but she had made a point of keeping her nose out of it as much as possible to avoid adding fuel to an already out of control wildfire. Dimitri was her best friend in the entire world, and Olyvar was - well, he might have been a newer acquaintance in her life, but she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed his company. It was nice to spend time with someone outside of the Bratva; it was nice to converse with someone who understood the meaning of hard work and hadn’t been born with a silver spoon buried in their throat. Olyvar had known just as much loss as she had experienced in the short span of her twenty years on earth, and Arielle felt a strange sort of kinship with him because of it. He was...handsome, too, almost unreasonably so, and the fact that he took it upon himself to devote any sort of time and attention to her made her feel a little bit dizzy. She wasn’t used to that at all - her older brother made it a habit of protesting her friendship with Dimitri at any given opportunity, and had made enough of an intimidating presence at her school that most boys her own age gave her a wide berth. Olyvar and Dimitri - they were all that she had, really.
Even in the absolute steal of a dress she had managed to pick up from a vintage thrift store downtown - long, backless, and a beautiful pale gold - Arielle still felt incredibly out of place at Bunny Golightly’s birthday party. They might have gone to the same school, but to say they ran in different circles was the understatement of the year. Dimitri was off speaking to his aunt and uncle, and Arielle would have been left helplessly on her own if not for the sudden arrival of...Olyvar. In his sleek black suit, he was incredibly dashing, and the floppy bowtie was so perfectly him that the slender redhead couldn’t stop the bubbly laugh from slipping past her lips at the sight of it. He held two drinks in one hand, and with the use of his free one, reached for hers so that he could duck his head to press a charming kiss to the backs of her dainty and fine-boned knuckles. “One of the many differences between myself and Bunny Golightly is that I’m not walking around with a twenty carat diamond ring wrapped around my finger, Olyvar,” she said breathlessly, but the apples of her cheeks flushed with rosy heat nevertheless when he complimented her; she could never tell if he was flirting with her or if he was just...nice. Yes, nice. She looked up at him from beneath the lengths of her long, dark, and fluttering lashes when he asked if she wanted to dance, and...she realized that she had no reason to say no.
Dimitri was engaged. Dimitri was - not something she had ever needed to think about before accepting the offer of a dance with another man to begin with.
“Only if you promise to tell me where you got that ridiculous bowtie from,” she managed to say with a bright grin, then, and she gingerly took hold of the drinks he had brought over for them to set them aside for the time being - she was already feeling warm as it was, after all, and didn’t need alcohol to intensify the heat coursing through her even more. Almost shyly, once her hands were free once more, she was moving forward to rest one of them on Olyvar’s broad shoulder, the other tentatively reaching for his own. “Dima’s been a little...busy, but we’ve been having a nice time so far. What about you? I take it you’ve been monopolizing the dance floor already?”
