#reginalupus

“You deserve better, you deserve so much better.”

A beat passed. The rain continued to hammer down his back. The shadows cast from the trees spin and bend, morphing his expression into a million fleeting emotions. Their target sat a hundred meters away reading a newspaper by candlelight. But the target is the furthest thing from his mind. All he can focus on now is her. On her words. He lowers his sniper rifle to his side, his eyes burning on her.

How many versions of the same line would she feed him? How long would it take for her to understand he isn’t leaving her? He couldn’t imagine ever not following her into the abyss. He couldn’t imagine ever not loving her. He would love her through it all.

The silence persists. But, there is a change in the air around him. It’s charged. With that same burning look, he threw the gun he had in his hand, the gun that had been his savior for so long, very deliberately to the side. “Don’t care ‘bout whats deserved.” His jaw clenches as his voice breaks the silence. He moves closer to her. The scent of wood and musk. Drops of rain fall down his cheeks and hers, her hair sticking to her face in wet curls as well. It was just him and her in the woods. No targets. No Russia. Them. And its like the dam finally broke. “I love you.” Words quiet beneath the downpour of rain, yet strong. “And I will always, always, fight for you.” Then lips. His soft, tender lips settling upon hers. His palms coming to rest on both her cheeks as he steps completely into her space and lips start to tremble against hers, his eyes stinging, his heart exposed. A heart he didn’t even know still beat. When he pulls back, only slightly, his left thumb slowly slides back and forth across her cheek.

“You’re part of me.” A whisper in the space between them. His breath mingling with hers. He tilts her head up, though, to pin her eyes with his own. To let her see the sincerity pouring from not only his voice but his eyes, too. “I can’t lose you.” If he ever did… He doesn’t want to know the person he would become if he lost her. Especially if he lost her to Bratva. He pulls her to himself then, arms wrapping tightly around her smaller frame. Nobody, not Bratva, not death, would take another person he loved from him. He wouldn’t survive if they ever did.

“Make me a promise that when the world ends, you’ll kiss me.”

His hands cup her cheeks.

“нет.“ He whispers. The time bleeding slow as they stood there, staring, crickets chirping in the dead of night. No: he wouldn’t make this promise. No: he wouldn’t let the world end. No: he wouldn’t wait until then. “нет.“ He says it again, unable to pull his gaze away from hers. He would never make this promise. He doesn’t know what will happen between now and then. What if his fight has ended with him six feet under by then? What if they’ve drifted so far apart he can’t even remember the color of her eyes or the sound of her laugh? There were too many what ifs. Too many maybes. He wants her to be one of his definites. He wants her to be his present.

“The world doesn’t have to end for me to kiss you,” he says, low, for their ears alone. A secret shared. Then he pulls her in for a kiss. Soft, gentle, everything his being has fought against being since he came back to Russia for her.

‘this will only end in heartache’ — freyja

(x) continuation from here. 

It’s much later. The match had ended with another well predicted win for Nikolay and three hours later he found himself standing outside Freyja’s door. He had considered calling it quits for the night and going to Catalina’s room. Normally he would. Tonight was different, though. He had been on edge since the match ended. He couldn’t get her out of his head, or how she shrank away from him. Nikolay knew he was a monster, but he never thought Freyja would see him as one, too. But, the way she looked today, almost in a sweat and panicky, said otherwise. It was the mirror image of his own bleak gaze reflected back at him. She saw what he saw. The monster rather than the man.

These thoughts he had tucked under a rug were resurfacing as his hand tightened around her doorknob, Nikolay unable to turn it and walk in as was his habit. He understood that if he went in there he wouldn’t come out the same. Something would change. They would be different. Is that what he wants? 

He walks in and shuts the door behind him. She is sprawled out on the bed asleep and, for a minute, he considers leaving. She shifts in the bed, however, and turns to face him with tangled curls spaced out on the sheets behind her. He clicks the lock and, unsure of himself, he leans against the door instead of stepping any closer. 

“Get out.” She shouts and he narrowly dodges a tissue box aimed for his head. He can’t see that she’s been crying since the room was devoid of light except the moonlight pouring in from outside, but he could tell. He could hear it in her voice and see tissues sporadically tossed about the bed. Christ. Was this really because of him? He wants to say something but he ends up snapping his mouth shut as she rolled to face away from him. She mumbles so quietly into her bed sheets he almost doesn’t hear it. Almost. 

“Why can’t you understand? We’re dangerous. This will only end in heartache.” The words she spoke cut into him like broken glass; shattering every bone in his wasted body. Nikolay has to lean deeper into the door behind him for support while every instinct is telling him to just get out. Every instinct his old self would have followed in a heartbeat, but not now. Now he stands powerless at her door. Grinding his teeth, his hands land behind his neck as he buries his face between his arms. Frustration has him wound up tight like a knot as he feels trapped inside a twisted circle. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if there was anything to say. She sounded so hopeless, so broken. Like she had made the decision for them. 

For the second time tonight, he opens his mouth just to clamp it shut again. He can’t fix this — whatever this was. There was no bandaging it. Nikolay unclicks the lock and walks out in the direction of his own bedroom. 

(x) continuation from here.

“You miss them, don’t you?”

He drags his eyes over her: her hollow cheeks, her pallid skin. She looks lifeless but she could still kill her enemies without a hint of exertion, and he could do the same. His stiff exterior, the permanent darkness in his once again emotionless eyes, the dark circles under them, or the fading purplish blue marks coloring his skin weren’t an indication of fatigue. If anything, it detailed how often they scoured the Russian soil for their prey of the night and won. They always won. No matter how high up the chain they went. Their enemies were so, so easily cut down. It helped that the so called men in charge were spineless weasels who practically crumpled into sobbing, pathetic heaps as they offered diamonds, guns, women, anything and everything in trade for their lives. A fruitless antic. They weren’t in the business of trade. They dealt in elimination.

He looks straight again and tilts his head back in the dark shadow of the treeline. The night sheathed them in its perfect cloak. Here they were already stood waiting a few hundred feet from the fortress of a known traitor to the Brotherhood, miles away from Athos, eyeing their next target, and the victim had no clue or hope of stopping the pair. Russia would bleed red again tonight. An exhale turns into a groan. He looks away from the fortress and moves to stand in Freyja’s line of sight, too. He mindlessly fiddles with her thick fur coat, tugging the gray furs tighter around her figure already swallowed up by the coat and lifts the cowl over her head. The shadows deepen the dark circles under her eyes. What a pair they make. Russia’s favorite little beasts they loved to keep leashed until they were bloodhounds hot on the trial for the next meal — their prey.

“No,” he finally says. The lie is thick as blood. Of course he missed them. They both did. But, they both made their choice. Freyja when she left them all behind nursing heartaches, bruised egos, and unleashing Nik’s untamed rage all for the sake of keeping the trio safe. And Nikolay when he discovered the truth of her abrupt departure. It took eight months for Freyja to make a single mistake in her habitual checkups. It then took Nikolay less than a week to track Nadiya down and squirm all the information out of her. Once he chopped off the head of the snake, or rather forced Nadiya to tell by offering up himself as well, he reunited with Freyja. Well, reunited in the sense that he fought with her the first day for being so foolish then spent the rest of the week working alongside her in terse silence.

Now here they were four bitter months later. Winter was in full terror and they were splattering each morning’s fresh blanket of snow with blood each night. “In this line of work. You make a choice. You do not look back.” He continues, darkened hues devoid of anything that might attest to a different story. But, he’s surely dying as he speaks those words. No matter how much he hardens after every day that passes since he left without a word, either. There is a small flicker of misery then. So short one might not have seen it if they weren’t paying careful attention to his every movement like he knew she would be. They both know there is nothing he will regret more than leaving them, so he kills to forget he has a heart. “Ready?” He asks. 

They lived in a world that could erupt into fire at any moment. She could steal his every last breath, and not in a good way. He could leave her to suffer unceasing, endless torment. Numerous outside threats could barge in their house when they least expected it. This sort of knowledge kept them on their toes. But, tonight, the biggest threat to either of them is tied with a neat bow and hung in every possible space Midas could find. One of the hung decorations had found it’s way into Freyja hands as she angrily waved at Nikolay.

“Oh, put some mistletoe on my butt and kiss it.”

He quirked a brow at her while supporting a dangerous grin. “Tempting.” A low rumble. The smell of rum mixed with eggnog on his breath. His swirling thoughts all night were silenced in her presence, doused by the fire in her eyes. The universe taps him on the shoulder, a brief moment of pressure that whispers to him. Do it. Take her. Claim those lips. He bites back the initial urge, but not entirely. She had dangled the temptation in the space between them and he did not hesitate to slam her body into the wall for doing so, his body roughly pressed into hers as he takes the mistletoe from her. Slowly, and with that stupid lascivious grin of his, he then moves the mistletoe from near her ass to her inner thigh. For a second, he pauses. Those wicked eyes of his with pupils blown wide saying maybe, maybe, maybe… The mistletoe rises higher to her chest. Another pause. A husky laugh. The mistletoe rises higher. It climbs the expanse of her neck and one of the leaves finds rest against her lower lip. Nikolay’s free hand comes to the back of her head and tangles his fingers in her hair, pulling her head back till their gazes were leveled. He tosses the mistletoe away and leans closer. So close. Impossibly close. “I just might.” His lips just barely brushed against hers as he spoke. Touching but not. Always on the precipice but never completely falling off the edge. She had to fall first.

❝ Thought I was doing you a favor by leaving. ❞

He doesn’t startle. He just peers up at her with those haunted eyes. “You would think that.” His voice is distant and detached, but it’s clear he’s forcing it on, because his fingers are twitching and his shoulders are bunched with tension. “You would believe breaking Cat instead of staying was the better choice.” He peers up at Freyja, his eyes dead.

He should walk away now. He doesn’t. Unlike her, he doesn’t find it so easy to leave. Not without getting everything off his chest.

“I can’t do this. I can’t” His voice breaks off, faltering. “Cat can’t… We cannot watch you walk away,” he rasps, the sound guttural. Then, “again.” Thumb rubs along his forefinger and middle finger, again. His nervous tick. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to do this. But, he can’t not. He can’t keep pretending like it doesn’t hurt. He can’t keep falling and falling without any hope of ever behind able to stand on his own two feet. He can’t keep offering up a part of himself if it will only continue to make him bleed. Too much blood had been spilt. “A favor would be not coming back.” Words once so hard to say slip from his tongue with ease, almost too easy. And his voice, his voice was ruination. There is nothing beyond the appearance of it. It just was, and its aftereffects left all lifeless, unbreathing. Was he even breathing as he allows the grief he so long clung to to wither in favor of vacantness?

“Just don’t come back.” Don’t look back, he wants to add. Don’t string together all those precious words that bring on heartache. The flame that was them almost flickering out just as she would reawaken it. The words came undone. The love she held in her hands will be crushed beneath her boot as she goes. The distance between them comes into view, excruciatingly so. He can’t carry this hope for her anymore. “If you can’t stay. Leave for good.” If he ever felt anything for her at any point, it couldn’t be heard as he said this, unblinking, staring at the hills behind her.