SLEEP NOW IN THE FIRE.

boris: ...............shut the fuck up

boris: nice to fucking meet you, #2673

boris: you're right, if i was gonna murder someone, i'd rather they're awake. and you're kinda too cute anyway

boris: i will murder you in your fucking SLEEP if you do. how about a home cooked meal? not that i'm any good with that shit

boris: ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ what the fuck does the winner get anyway

boris: ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ you're not fucking winning this

boris: ❤❤❤❤❤❤

Maybe you’ll surprise yourself had Boris laughing, turning to Zane and lifting an eyebrow, putting his hands on his hips after he had slammed the door to the trunk, an amused smirk playing on his face. “You’re a little fucking naive there, I’ve always been this way. I’m myself. I’m not gonna fucking change for anybody,” he returned, before musing as his smirk turned into the faintest grin, “I think Jesus would fucking rise from the dead again before that fucking happened, but it’s so fucking sweet to know you have so much fucking faith in me.” The so fucking sweet could not have possibly been laced with any more sarcasm that leaked into his voice, though the rest of it was not nearly said as harshly as he would have normally spoken it. He had always had a soft spot for Zane and there was no denying it, even if he would never admit that there were still a few human beings on the planet that could make soft. That would go against everything he had been avoiding for a large part of his life, if not half of his life, and he was not terribly keen on letting it be known. If it were, someone might assume it was a regular thing, or you know, that he was capable of showing some twisted form of positive human emotion that wasn’t a sub-category of anger. Whatever the reason, he was refusing to acknowledge it and so he didn’t pay much thought to the fact that he often spoke to Zane in a way that was not quite as harsh as he had seen him speak toward his brothers or his parents, let alone when he had to talk to others while he was on the phone with Zane. “Yeah, yeah, just fucking making sure, I never know. You kinda fucking followed me around as a lil’ kid, I had to be fucking sure it wouldn’t continue in a different sense or some shit. I am a grown-ass man, thanks for fucking pointing that out. I feel like an old grown-ass man, but you’re fucking right.” Sliding into the passenger seat of the car as he spoke and rolling down the window to continue smoking his cigarette, he looked over him at the question, furrowing his brow and scoffing, replying, “Do I look like I need any fucking family? I don’t know where the fuck my brother is, you’re pretty much the only fucking family I have. I don’t fucking need you but...” He bit into the butt of his cigarette slightly when he clenched his jaw, falling silent and staring at him for a moment, debating whether he should say it. He certainly didn’t pity the fact that Zane’s family had disowned him when he couldn’t even go back to his own home country, but he knew how much Zane enjoyed having a blood relative left that wasn’t going to kick him out on his ass. Expressing that, though, was a different story, and he finally turned his head away and muttered, “Just shut the fuck up, don’t think too fucking hard about it.” Waving his hand in Zane’s direction, he shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t going to say the real reason of feeling old being why he had come here, the inherent need to settle down in one place again, as if he had anything to settle down to, grunting. “Yeah, what the fuck ever... I don’t really fucking like big and noisy. I lived in a fucking city until I was twenty-one. That was fucking enough for me. I can’t fucking stand people. At least I can fucking avoid them in a smaller fucking place, I don’t fucking know. What the fuck is this, twenty questions, Dr. Phil?” Taking another drag from his cigarette and drumming his fingers on the dashboard in tune with the music on the radio, he scoffed again and rolled his eyes. “I’m not a fucking stranger, I’ve been fucking busy for the last nineteen fucking years. And I’ll make excuses if I fucking feel like it. But don’t you go fucking making excuses either, while you’re at it, don’t be a fucking hypocrite. My home is your home or what the fuck ever, whatever the fuck it is family does.” Flicking his cigarette out the window and debating lighting another, he settled instead for the drive over to the rink, huffing on a laugh. “I ain’t a very good fucking cook, I can cook a few Russian meals fucking decently enough, not much beyond that. My brother was always fucking amazing at it. Thus, why my kids ate a fuckton of TV dinners.”

The fact that Zane even thought to mention the try to keep from beating anyone up was amusing to him, almost, but not exactly unwarranted. Zane knew him well enough by now to know that his rather impressively short temper came with a price tag and that price tag was the fact he did have a rather violent background in the military, none of which extended into a police record but were instead filed away. It was no surprise to anyone by now that he was a bit of a few screws loose and he figured he should be glad to have someone who would be trying to keep him on a chain that wasn’t superbly destructive. Going down a war path in a new town didn’t exactly make for a good start and it wasn’t exactly ideal when it came to making friends- though he had no intention of making friends, but in theory. “No fucking promises,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders and the cigarette between his lips, raising his eyebrows at Zane, “We both know I’m not gonna be able to fucking keep it either.” Well, it was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to keep it, but he would make his best attempt not to put it into excess or overkill. Now that he was out of the military, he couldn’t really afford to do whatever the fuck he wanted as far as getting into fights went. In the military, he had all the protection from it in the world that he wanted, the government sweeping up every bad move he made and pretending it didn’t exist. With anybody else, he would have been kicked out faster than anyone could blink, but he had been a special case and a fluke for the military and he often wondered if they observed him as a mistake or still to be one of the best decisions they had made in terms of arming up. The fact of the matter was, outside of his field of expertise, he was also trained in the Russian army and the Russians were notorious for putting their minds to trying to create the best soldier possible to put out on the field. A war machine, as they might call it, and he had suffered through experimentation for it and whether that pointed out that he was resilient or not, he wasn’t really sure. It said something about him, that much was for certain. “Don’t fucking follow me around trying to fucking stop me though, I’ll do what I fucking want. I can always up and fucking leave again if I have to.” After all, he wasn’t good at staying in one place anymore. His inquiry had him wanting to deflect, his eyes on him for a moment and he took a drag from his cigarette after he had hoisted the boxes into the trunk of the car and headed back for more. “You need some kind of fucking family, don’t you?” he inquired, answering a question with a question. Deflecting from the real reason and no one would be able to drag that out of him- he would never admit to anyone the reason of I’m getting older and it’s time to stop moving around like crazy. It would be very... well, un-Boris-like. “Besides, where the fuck would I go? Home? They’ll cut my fucking head off if I go back. Putin still wants me dead, Neptune.” Though the reason was dusted over and only a basic answer resolved as to why he had a warrant of treason for immediate execution on his head. “Good, you better fucking let me know. You have my fucking number anyway. And you can come over whenever you fucking like, I really don’t fucking care.” Hoisting up two more boxes and heading back out, he shoved them in the car and slammed the door to the trunk. “Yeah, fucking hopefully, but that doesn’t help me fill out the goddamn paperwork. I forgot how fucking tedious owning a business is.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. His general thought process when the Bean was incredibly fucking crowded was one of total annoyance and he had never understood people’s inherent need to be such assholes about where their place in line was. In fact, there had been a few instances in the military he had completely taken no bullshit when it came to other soldiers that thought it was perfectly fucking fine to cut in line and that had gotten him in trouble a few times. Eyes flitting around warily as the line slowly moved forward, arms crossed over his chest and tapping his foot absently, he almost wished that time could be sped up just so he could get the fuck out of here. Boris had been intending to be at the office by noon, which wasn’t likely to happen until he reorganized his biological clock. Back in the military, he would have been up before the ass-crack of dawn and getting ready to go do shit before the sun even came up, if he hadn’t already, as well as having eaten breakfast. However, the past two years had been a rare luxury of sleeping in late and he had gotten used to it much quicker than he had figured he would, and ironically, it had become a bad habit he would have to wriggle out of now if he wanted to be half-decent at running a fucking business all over again. Two businesses and seventeen years of military service all crammed into one fucking lifetime sure felt like a damn accomplishment to him if he ever saw one and he was proud of that. Boris was not someone who would ever say he was proud of his service, not out of modesty so much as the disdain for the reason he had been pushed into it to begin with and unwillingness to give anyone the satisfaction that being thrown ass-first into the army had ended up being, in a very twisted way, both good and bad for him. Bad, as in, he had lost his fucking mind and went a little fucking insane and he still hadn’t gathered all his marbles back up and put them back into one big-ass marble. Good, as in, while he had lost them, he had figured out some semblance of close friends, some kind of tight-knit, wildly dysfunctional family that was a little too fucked up on all sides of the spectrum, and ultimately got a little too complicated- it happened. Fifteen years would allow it to happen. As he approached the counter and received his order of a cup of black coffee and slid the money across, he headed for the door. He really needed to get his ass moving and get everything done today, but there was still time before he had intended to go in. Slow and steady won the race, or whatever. However, he wasn’t paying any attention when he left through the door just as another woman was coming in and he walked right fucking into the other human being, and the bump caused him to jerk his arm and spill coffee down the front of his shirt, swearing immediately and loudly, “FUCK!” Reeling in a temper tantrum for a moment inwardly, his eyes still closed after spilling the coffee on himself, he growled, “I did not just spill my fucking coffee all over myself.” After he had told himself that, he opened his eyes and grimaced, looking down at his soiled shirt and growling again, before coming back down to earth enough to realize he had jostled the woman in front of him by walking into her. Fuck. Well, in this instance, he would have to be polite. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking where the fuck I was going.” Huffing and pushing his dog tags to the side to dab at the coffee on his shirt, he grumbled to himself, before muttering, “Are you alright?”

“Whatever,” he retorted simply, not intending to expand on it. He was so avoidant of conversation these days that his responses were often unintentionally noncommittal or just plain threatening to try and keep people at a distance. The farther away they were, the better, and it he was content that way. It made him happy to have people at a distance from him, if not afraid to approach him and he was contented with that. He had no problems with someone being intimidated by him and that was the vibe he intended to put off around other people and the reason he spoke the way he did, walked the way he did, behaved the way he did. He had learned quickly and from a young age that aggression was a fast-track to getting where he wanted to be in life- away from people. Boris had never been a social person from the start, but he had been more lenient back in the day before his children had been ripped away from him, enough that he had a few meager friends here and there, none of which he would call close by any means, and he was capable of holding a civil conversation with his employees if they weren’t fucking up on the job. That had all changed, though, and he figured for his forty years on the planet, his unit and his brother’s ex-girlfriend were the closest friends he had ever had. With his bad memories he held in his mind’s eye of his brother, he could not remember being terribly close to him, especially after he had left him alone to deal with his irate and alcoholic father after his mother’s death in a fire. They had had nothing and were practically dirt-poor, and once their home had burned down, they couldn’t avoid very much, nothing more than a shack practically. His brother had gotten into trouble after that, continuously, until he finally left at sixteen and Boris had never seen him since then. He supposed the way he had grown up, treated like street trash and under the acknowledgement that he had been the child his parents hadn’t wanted, never intending to get pregnant again, had certainly not helped his disposition and view on the world later in life. Boris had always been cynical, insubordinate and defiant in the face of any government, and more than willing to speak his own mind, never holding back for anyone. Really, some parts of his personality were contradicting considering how much he was defiant to the government control, and yet, he believed in order and maintaining some semblance of a society. He was not quite an anarchist but he was unwilling to follow anyone’s rules. The other man was wearing scrubs which prompted him to lift his chin, muttering, “Guess you work for the fucking hospital.” Big whoop. He still hated hospitals after all this time, and he had never enjoyed every time he had to spend a night in the medical bay. Unless asked otherwise. If that was meant to imply something, his nose only wrinkled up and he scoffed down at his oatmeal, taking a few more bites and making a face as he began to count on his fingers. What the fuck is he doing? His question was quickly answered, and he paused, his brow furrowing as he took a really fucking stupid moment to actually care enough to think it through in his head, before replying, “Fuck you, I didn’t come here to retake a math class.” Though, he wasn’t terrible at math- if anything, he was quite good at it; it was necessary in his field of expertise. “Yours is harder to fucking pronounce.” Taking another drink from his coffee, his eyes rolled then. Show-off. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to fucking impress me but I’ve traveled too fucking much to be impressed by that,” he muttered as he set his cup down and quirked a brow at him, “Mm. Been visiting my cousin since he was a little fucking tiny kid, I’ve been here enough to fucking know my way around. No big fucking deal. Seventeen fucking years of army experience and I end up here.” 

“Damn right.” His response was simple but his tone was sharp and harsh, not caring much for the thought of running into them. They had gotten into it verbally over the phone when Zane had been kicked out of the house and in addition, he had made a few threats that had earned him a restraining order. That restraining order had probably expired by now, but he would rather not find out. Running into the Neptune family was not his idea of fun and it wouldn’t turn out good for anyone, considering his idea of fun was usually more destructive and likely to end him up in jail for the millionth time. Nothing new there. “Fucking disgusting. I hate it when everybody’s up in everybody else’s fucking business. In the army, that would get someone flipped over a fucking table. By me, usually.” His eyes rolled as he spoke, wrinkling up his nose and glaring down at the photograph he was cleaning up and shaking his head down at it. It was known enough that Boris had a temper on him and he could care less what everyone else thought of him, which led to his verbal filter being a little more than cracked wide open. Simply put, if he was going to say something, it was going to be the blunt and honest truth. “If I catch anybody spreading shit about me, they might be fucking in for it.” Might was a strong word when the possibility was almost certain- it wasn’t that he went looking for trouble, it was just that trouble found him. “But I guess that makes a lot of a fucking sense, this place is so goddamn small.” Setting the last photo up on the shelf, he leaned back to view it from a distance. After he was satisfied with it, he returned to the boxes of personal items and started to unpack the box of clothes and set up a pile for them. Really, he didn’t have much at all. Photos, clothes, and a couple knick-knacks from the army, and a duffel bag he kept of various military items that was already pushed under his bed for safe-keeping. He felt safer with it. “There’s not too fucking much here, I don’t really fucking care where you put it, just set it on that table for now and I’ll fucking deal with it later. If you find a fucking garter with a rose on it, though, I want it. I don’t fucking know if it’s in there, I might’ve lost it.” Snorting and picking up the clothes, he wandered down the hall to dump them in the laundry basket for now, knowing that they probably needed to be washed. Pulling out a cigarette and lighting it as he came back down the hall, he leaned against the wall and glared at the boxes in the corner by the door. “If you want a fucking job and you interview for it, so long as you’re not gonna fucking drop dead on your feet from lack of sleep, I don’t fucking care. I inherited my father’s business. Doesn’t fucking bother me,” he pointed out promptly, shrugging his shoulders. Just because his brother hadn’t stuck around to be a business partner didn’t mean he cared if family got involved. His head shook at his prompting, waving his hand. Maybe another time. “Shut the fuck up,” he replied dismissively at the implication that it was normal, “There’s not a fucking normal thing about me.” His tone didn’t entirely sound serious though, becoming obvious he was merely deflecting it, sighing and walking over to the boxes and hefting two up after he had opened the door. “These are gonna be a bitch to unpack.”