Kolya Kuzmichev (kolkuz) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-09-30 23:06:00 |
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Adrian was off a high from his night with Rose--he’d been reluctant to even leave, even knowing she’d long since gone. He’d eventually managed to drag himself home, but still felt light and full all at once as he opened the front door. He was jolted from his buoyant mood by the sight of his mother already standing there, waiting for him, wringing his hands. “Mom!” Adrian burst, surprised. “You scared the--” he started, but she swiftly cut him off. “Adrian,” she began gravely, her face twisted into an utterly distraught, aggrieved expression. Adrian could tell she was struggling to find the words for whatever it is she wanted to say; she kept opening and closing her mouth, then eventually clasped her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes shut tight. “Oh, God…” she murmured. “Mom…” Adrian said hesitantly, walking closer towards her. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?” Daniella met his eyes--she took a deep breath, “Adrian...your aunt--” she stumbled--the news had left Daniella herself dumbfounded, she’d yet to really work through it herself, “She was...she--she was murdered.” Adrian merely stared at her dully for a moment as his mind did a 180 to shift from his romantic musing to processing the words that had just come out of his mother’s mouth. “What?” Daniella shook her head, tears gathering in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but it’s like I said--they…” she struggled with how much she should really tell him, but of course, it would all be public soon, “they found her...someone had...they’d--” she tried, but couldn’t quite bring herself to divulge the more gruesome details to her son. “Well, someone had killed her in her bedroom.” Then, it was a blur of emotions and memories all at once--a dark, deep, and gnawing grief; a hangover; a funeral; an escape; a betrayal; and underlying it all, a debilitating, hopeless sense of sadness and loneliness. Kolya woke with a start, covered in sweat as his heart pounded underneath his sternum. The dream came back to him in a rush--but then in the dazed state he found himself in, Kolya wasn’t sure it had been a dream at all. That had been his mother who stood before him, and the way he felt towards his aunt....his aunt. He ripped his phone out of the charger suddenly, and clicked the call icon on his aunt’s name in Whatsapp. After only a few rings, she answered. “Kolya?” she asked, her tone surprised. “Nepravil'no?” she asked with concern, then after a beat, “What time is it there?” Kolya closed his eyes, caught somewhere between relief and continued exhaustion. “Nichevo, nichevo...” Kolya sighed, trying to reassure her. A beat of silence. “Kolya...why are you calling then? It must be...what? Three in the morning for you?” she asked. He squeezed his eyes tighter, feeling utterly foolish, barely able to remember what made him back up the phone at all. “Kolya,” she demanded. “Nichevo...” he repated. “I just--I had a dream you’d been murdered,” he admitted, feeling profoundly embarrassed now. He’d had a random, stupid nightmare and called his aunt in Russia about it in the middle of the night--what was wrong with him? She was quiet again for a moment, “Oh, Kolya…” she said softly. “That is a silly thing to worry about. Russian politics aren’t quite as bad as your adopted country make them out to be.” Kolya frowned, “I wasn’t really worried, it was just--when I woke up, it felt like it’d really happened.” “Disorientation, maybe...it’s still very late, for you,” she reasoned. “Maybe it’s the distance that made you dreamed it. I’ll be in the States soon, you know.” “I know.” “Will I meet this Sage girl?” she asked. Kolya smiled into the phone. “Da,” he told her. “Well, I look forward to finally meeting her properly,” she said. Kolya knew it wasn’t as warm and fuzzy as that--Aunt Nastya would be appraising and judging Sage quite severely, but Kolya was utterly confident that she would love Sage. He had no doubt of it really. “I’m sorry for worrying you…” Kolya murmured. “It’s alright, darling,” she told him. “Poka, lyubov moya,” she said. “Get some sleep.” “Horosho...poka, tetka,” said Kolya, then hung up. But even after he’d heard her voice, Kolya didn’t feel any more at ease--he couldn’t shake that sense of insidious dread and loneliness that he’d felt in the dream, and in this moment, it felt as real as anything. With slightly more hesitation after that embarrassing exchange, Kolya entered Sage’s number, listening to the ring from the other end. Sage was, thankfully for once, having a nearly dreamless sleep. She hadn’t been sleeping all that well as of late and so it was no small blessing when she had a night where she wasn’t tossing and turning the whole time she was in bed. It took her a moment to realize that the sound of the phone ringing was real but, when she did, she reached for the phone on her nightstand, knocking off the book she’d been reading before she fell asleep as she did. She barely registered the name on the caller ID through her bleary eyes but the ringtone itself belonged to Kolya. “Kol,” she said as she picked up, voice thick with sleep, “what’s wrong?” The conscious part of her was aware that phone calls at three in the morning were never a good thing and she vaguely understood that she should have been more concerned while answering the phone. After she had a few more minutes to wake up, she’d likely have a proper panic. Kolya closed his eyes tight at the sound of Sage’s voice--again, he was struck by the feeling that he’d done exactly the wrong thing. He’d woken her up over...nothing, really. “Nothing,” he said, his words echoing his own thoughts. “I just…” Kolya paused, because the words sounded so fucking ridiculous in his head, he could barely bring himself to say them. “I had this weird dream. It was nothing. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you,” Kolya mumbled. Too tired to hold the phone and not finding any imminent danger on the other side of it, Sage cradled the phone between her ear and the pillow. “It’s ok, Kol. You can call me any time,” she said, and she meant that. She might have been fighting against falling back to sleep even as he spoke, but she hoped he knew that she was always there for him, even if it was the middle of the night. “Do you want to talk about it? I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep, but I’ll sleep listen,” she offered groggily. “I won’t mind if you do,” Kolya told her, since he felt pretty bad for waking her up at all. “It’s not really that I complicated...I just had this dream that, uh...someone murdered my Aunt Nastya,” he said. The most vivid part had been of Kolya talking to his mom, but pieces of the rest of it suddenly came back to the surface of his mind--like looking at the photographic evidence of his aunt’s body. “She’d been, like...stabbed in the chest.” Sage’s eyes opened then as her brow furrowed. “She’s all right, though, right?” She turned to lay on her back, this time reaching up to hold the phone with her hand. She drew a hand down over her face and rubbed the sleep away from her eyes with the tips of her fingers, wondering if it would be too much to get up now and make a cup of coffee. “It was just a dream, Kol. I don’t-” she hesitated, “I don’t mean just, I just mean that you can rest assured that your aunt is alive and well because dreams are just that.” Sage yawned and decided that the coffee pot was too far away to consider getting up for coffee just then. Kolya bit his lip, for some reason embarrassed to admit this--on some level, he knew his reaction had been a bit...over the top. “Well...uh...yeah, I definitely know that, because I woke up and immediately called her,” he admitted. “There’s no better way to know for sure, though, right?” Sage replied. It wasn’t uncalled for to want to call someone to make sure they were okay. After all, if she had a dream that Remington was hurt, she’d probably call her immediately, too, even if they were in the same time zone. “So it makes sense that you called her. I’m glad she’s fine. Are you all right, though?” Kolya paused, considering the question--he wasn’t sure, honestly, and the uncertainty was probably telling. The issue was he couldn’t exactly pinpoint any one thing that was making him feel exhausted and utterly unable to sleep all at once. His aunt was fine, but a dull sense of dread lingered all the same. “I think I’m just tired,” Kolya said, finally. Sage knew that hesitation, knew what it meant, knew that Kolya wasn’t confident in how okay he was. She didn’t know how to help that, though, because everything was okay. His aunt was fine, the dream had just been an unfortunate nightmare, and it was too late at night for her to be much use with anything else. Well, she could be there for him. That was within her power. “Do you want to meet me in the lobby of my dorm? I’ll check you in and you can stay here with me for the rest of the night.” Her father wouldn’t be happy when he inevitably caught wind of it--when it came to things that could potentially look bad for him, he was quick to be informed--but Kol was worth the risk if he was as shaken as he sounded. Sage’s dorm seemed a long ways away when his body felt filled with lead--it hadn’t started tonight, and the feeling probably wouldn’t end tonight either, it’d been creeping up on him for days. And yet, the loneliness that would come with hanging up the phone seemed even more crippling. “Okay,” Kolya said, frowning into the phone--he felt slightly pathetic for needing this, but he did need it. “Are you sure?” he asked her, though he knew she was. Sage wouldn’t have offered, otherwise. "I'm sure," Sage replied, even if she wasn't actually very sure at all. She was certain she would do almost anything for Kolya, but she was uncertain that she was ready to risk her father's wrath so soon after their last encounter. The bruises on her arm had only just faded, after all. Still, when it came right down to it, she'd decided long ago that Kolya trumped her father. "I'll be in the lobby in five." |