Why not believe you're heaven-sent...

[colonelcrotchgrab]

When; 16th, at night
Rating; R, ending is suggestive, Russians being vulgar, nothing terribly explicit
Characters; Ivan Raikov, Yevgeny Volgin
Summary; Volgin wakes up to a surprise. Raikov wakes up to a surprise. Cold War suspicions and rampant paranoia never dies, much to Raikov's... delight.
Log; 

Everything was wrong.

Volgin, a light sleeper already, had jerked up from the bed, finding himself somewhere else. The elaborate gaudy reds and golds befitting of his country, excessive really, were not there. The tall elaborate bedposts, the heavy canopy, all of it gone. The bed beneath him was different.

And it was too small!

Still, Volgin steadied himself, trying to make sense of his surroundings, make sense of this sudden change of... everything. He noted no hangover from some drug cocktail, no sign of struggle, no telltale ache of muscles or injuries he could feel. He was not restrained in any way he found, testing a limb or two.

What was going on?

 

Comments

[majorcrotchgrab]

The movement from the bed caused Raikov to stir. He groaned in his sleep and rolled over... right in to a body. It took a moment before Raikov realized he was against someone and when he did, he reached up a hand, feeling around. His hands discovered a very large hip, thigh, and what felt to be... rubber?

The smaller Russian opened his eyes and sat up, staring at the person next to him. He couldn't believe his eyes. Was it... really Yevgeny? Not many men were over 7 feet and weighed a ton with facial scars and wore a insulation suit.

He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The man was still there. All Raikov could ask was...

"...Yevgeny?"

[colonelcrotchgrab]

And stupidly, Volgin had not noticed the presence right next to him, which he violently jerked away in surprise at the sudden touch. Alert to the rest of the world, he did not make out the smaller form, of all things. The fact that those thinner fingers had met his insulation and not his face was the only reason the younger of the two was still alive.

And the larger Russian rather nosily had landed on the floor.

Still, on his backside in the mental scramble fighting for some sort of sense, that voice was familiar. He sat up carefully, hoping the other man had not seen his... momentarily lack of grace, even if he was who he thought he was. No one saw that.

"Who...?" He almost wanted to answer in English. "Aren't you supposed to be back... at...?"

Groznyj Grad? This was not it. He knew what it was like to be surrounded by its mighty walls almost intimately. His home for several years now, he did not recognize this room at all.

[majorcrotchgrab]

"Groznyj Grad?" Raikov responded, crawling over to the side of the bed where Volgin had fallen. "We're not there...?" He looked around. This was indeed his City apartment. So that meant...

"Oh, we aren't."

There was a pause.

"I've got quite a lot to explain to you..."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Explain? To him? Flaring his nostrils and bristling, hotly puffing his breath, Volgin narrowed his eyes at the pretty little face peering at him and quickly got to his feet.

"Major!" He curled his lip. Had he been captured? Betrayed? "Aren't you... supposed to be on patrol?"

[majorcrotchgrab]

Raikov leaned back on the bed, smirking a bit. While he had his doubts if this was the real Volgin or not, he had missed the man's various reactions to things nonetheless.

"Yes, Colonel... but we aren't in the Soviet Union anymore."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Raikov might have picked up the growing burning odor in the room, the telltale signs of an emotional electrical flare. The lights might have gone brighter. Should they have been off, they might have reacted to the building charge with a growing glow.

The room reacting to the giant's power had somewhat comforted him, even if it had sometimes led to replacing bulbs. And other things. Things still were not making any sense at all. Why was Raikov so... so calm?

Volgin tossed his head.

"Then? Where are we?" he demanded. He noticed a window, but he found his foot hanging in midstep. Hesitation. Windows were dangerous. "Explain, Major. Right now."

[majorcrotchgrab]

"Calm down, sir..." He smiled reassuringly. "We're in the City. Boring name, I know but... it's not that bad of a place."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

"'The City'," Volgin echoed. That did not sound suspicious at all, not when he had dwelt in a fortress that had translated to "Terrible City". He paced around the bed, deliberating if he should take this man that sounded and resembled Raikov up by the throat and throttle the truth, the real truth, right out of him. Maybe he should have bolted out the doorway. It might have been a trap. He might have been in the throes of some drug still. Fooled by the vivid lucidity and coherent thought, when his body was snug somewhere, out of it. A lull.

[majorcrotchgrab]

Raikov knew how paranoid Volgin was. The man had to be, after all. There were things only the two of them knew though. It was their way of telling the other was the real thing. If Volgin didn't believe what he was saying, due to the level of craziness or that he wasn't the real thing, Raikov would tell him to test him.

For now though, Raikov attempted to explain things to the larger Russian.

"This will sound crazy, sir... but... the City is a... pocket dimension, of sorts. It's a nexus of different worlds and times."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Volgin stared at Raikov for a time. The almost unnatural animal yellows of his eyes were boring right through him. Finally he looked away, chancing the window, ready to peel away from the damn thing if someone was expecting him to pull aside the blinds.

A pause. His gaze flickered here and there, quick observations measured against what he knew. Nothing noticed him, but he did not stay there long enough to let himself be known.

He saw enough, snapping his gaze back at Raikov.

"Are you as out of it as I think I am, Major?"

[majorcrotchgrab]

"Sometimes I wish I were," he replied as he stepped out of bed. If Volgin had any physical doubts, they'd be cleared up now as Ivan tended to sleep nude. He slipped on his red robe and made his way towards the door.

"Follow me."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Volgin's illusion had at least had allowed him the mercy of a perfect replication of his lover, pale and unmarred unlike he. As the younger man moved, his commanding officer's gaze had lingered on Raikov's groin, his posterior as he grabbed his robe, but the flickers of his more carnal urges were quickly extinguished. It might have been a bait.

Volgin darkly followed Raikov, but he stopped at the doorway, his gloved hand pressed against it in passing. It was quite solid. Stable. Hn.

[majorcrotchgrab]

And in to the living room Raikov went. It was very modern looking... for the year 2012. A flat screen TV, DVD player, radio. And off in the corner was a desk with a laptop on it. Even the kitchen seemed very high-tech.

There were a few things here and there that were old-fashioned though. And the apartment still had Raikov's taste in style.

[colonelcrotchgrab]

This was too much to take in. Volgin was caught not even completely in the room, resembling a deer in headlights. He embraced technology, funded some of the most advanced things in the world with his nearly unlimited funds, but all these things, these things had evoked some strange vision of the future he had only imagined in his mind's eye when he found the time to curl up with some visionary, fanciful pulp he managed from the black market. It wasn't often.

He looked right at Raikov again, then some of the larger, unusual things in the room. Then at Raikov again.

He could have been in space, an odd thought noted. Abducted. Outside was just an illusion. Raikov was just a meticulously crafted thing to keep him calm before... whatever they wanted to do with him.

Slowly, he still made a few slow steps into the room, treading lightly like not unlike a just adopted animal allowed to explore their new home.

[majorcrotchgrab]

"Welcome to 2012, Yevgeny." Raikov smiled slightly, shrugging. "It was quite a shock to me at first as well. We're in the future... and time stops back home. I was here for almost a year once and not a minute had gone by when I returned to Groznyj Grad."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

The year 20... 12? Really? It sounded very futuristic, but why take a demented perfect imposter's word at face value? People did not just fall through the cracks and ended up almost half a century into the future, especially not with the seemingly perfect coincidence of winding up with his lover. And falling back precisely where he had left off without a single day passing?

Volgin's expression did not relax.

He harshly pushed past Raikov and, another glance about, made a beeline for what he presumed to be the door to the outside, if it even led to what he had made out from the window. He could not recognize anything out there at all, no city he could recall, no landmarks from what he knew of the world. And he knew of a lot.

The City, he would think! What kind of name for a place was that? It sounded like an experimental ... thing. A containment of some kind as opposed to a proper place like anywhere else ordinary.

[majorcrotchgrab]

Raikov simply watched as Volgin inspected the place. He didn't want to say anything more at the moment since it appeared he had already overloaded him with information.

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Volgin was very overloaded. He might have been terrifying and imposing, a behemoth cast into the vague shape of a man to be feared by his enemies and allies alike, but this whole ordeal was testing him. Still he maintained his calm and collected exterior.

He wanted to tear "Raikov" apart and see what would come out, but what if...?

Still wordlessly, he fiddled with the door and peered outside, still quite snug in his containment suit. He might have not looked too terribly out of place in the red, itchy thing, come to think of it. If he was in the future.

[majorcrotchgrab]

Outside was just like any other apartment complex hallway. Nothing special about it. I'm sure Volgin could find something though if he wanted to look that hard.

Meanwhile, Raikov took a seat on the couch and continued to watch for a while before speaking up.

"Well?"

[colonelcrotchgrab]

For a modern apartment complex. This was not Moscow, or anywhere else he had known. Raikov might have seen that shapely, dangerous rear turning the corner as Volgin took a few steps around the outside, before the fear of keeping his head intact and his brains off the pavement overrode the shock of ... wherever he was. The City.

He came back inside, closing the door behind him. Don't get stupid. Or careless.

Was the information he had been given reliable? A construct of something else? He could only pinch the bridge of his nose in thought, sorting through this new pack of potential truths and lies. He was no stranger to deception and mind games, which this was increasingly sounding like one. This whole situation was unreal.

Finally, he managed to speak, his words low:

"Who are you?"

[majorcrotchgrab]

Raikov sighed. Looked like it was turning out just as he thought it would. He looked up at the giant Russian and replied calmly, "Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov."

What the hell else was he supposed to reply with?

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Volgin studied him. Still reclined just like the real thing would across his bed in his quarters, still had those perfect legs, that lovely frame. The young face framed by those soft fluffy locks of almost-white blonde. Dangerous turquoise eyes.

"Anyone can say that," Volgin grunted.

[majorcrotchgrab]

He chuckled and shook his head.

"Then test me. Ask me something that only the real Ivan would know."

[colonelcrotchgrab]

Raikov might have found the giant pacing around him in the manner of a predator sizing up his prey. Volgin was thinking, thinking of all the little things he had slipped out through his crafted persona, allowed for only Raikov to hear, to take away with.

There were too many of them. He chose his words carefully.

"The first time. Tell me. When was it?"

[majorcrotchgrab]

Teal eyes followed Volgin as he walked around the younger Russian. The first time... Raikov knew what date he meant all too well.

"April 30th, if you're referring to the first time we had.. mutual sex, as opposed to you forcing yourself upon me." He smirked.