The Glasses
Melina Vostokova had been across the world three times over, in all seven continents and over a hundred nations. She had flirted in the face of death up close and personal, as her profession so often demanded, more times than she could count, and would slip away with a wink to live another day just before it could claim her. She had her fair share of singlehandedly taking down heads of entire crime rings, corporations, and governing bodies. All that before the age of thirty. And all that considered, meeting Alexei Shostakov didn't impress her in the least.
Never mind that the Red Guardian could press enough tons with the ease of a toddler picking up a toy truck, because this latest mission that put them together didn't call for pressing tons, or any heavy lifting for that matter.
No, this called for subtlety and secrecy, and this towering hulk of a man before her had as much of that as a penguin had the wings to fly.
When Dreykov had briefed the pair on their assignment in his office, Melina had scrutinized him for a flush in his cheeks, perhaps a slur in his speech. To her horror and dismay, he had been perfectly sober. Not a drop of vodka went into Dreykov getting the idea in his head to pair her with Alexei Shostakov, of all people, with a man of no undercover experience whatsoever.
A Widow like Melina had enough discipline beaten into her to dare not question her superior, but the one thing she did have control over were her thoughts. And she thought that this mission had to be the worst joke in the world.
An awkward silence followed Melina and Alexei on the elevator ride down. She could barely hold back the disdain in her sidelong scan of him from head to toe.
The first thing she said to him was "You know you're not going to Ohio looking like that, right?"
He glanced back at her askance. "Of course not." He paused, then he muttered, "I'm going to miss the suit, though." He patted at the white star emblazoned on his chest, like petting the head of a favorite dog. "Aren't you going to miss yours?"
Melina resisted the urge to roll her eyes so hard they'd spin out of her sockets and fall on the floor. "I change among three to five outfits in a day on average. Clothes mean nothing to a spy like myself."
"You're like a chameleon, always shifting and changing colors, huh?" He shook his head. "Me, I'm a simple man. I wear my suit all the time, day and night, rain or shine."
She quirked a dark eyebrow at him. "You wear that all the time? Don't you ever wash it?"
"Sure, I do." Then, in a smaller voice, "But maybe not as much as I should."
"Oh my God," said the aggressively atheist woman of science. It had only been a few seconds in this elevator and already she wanted to run back to Dreykov begging for another assignment.
She'd do anything. She'd fall to her knees and grovel at his feet. She'd rather throw herself into a hair-raising hitman stint in any of the top five most dangerous countries in the world than go undercover in Ohio with the Red Guardian. Man probably goes to bed wearing that suit as pajamas.
Needless to say, Melina was in a foul mood. Being stuck with a buffoon could do that to anyone, she thought. As the elevators opened, she fell into a brisk stride that had Alexei almost run after her. "Don't do anything without my say so," she said without so much as a glance over her shoulder. "The paperwork, the travel, the moving arrangements...leave it all to me. I don't trust that you know what to do."
"Fair enough. You think I'm an idiot. I get that. But could you at least let me pick my own clothes?"
She halted and spun around so suddenly that he almost bowled right into her. "What makes you think I should let you do that?"
He hunched his shoulders, frowning down at her. "Because that's what mothers do for their babies or little kids. And I'm not a kid."
The masculine pride tugging at his voice made her want to gag. "Fine. But run it through me first."
The Red Room kept a repository for a staggering variety of clothes from all corners of the world, in every size, shape, color, and culture, fulfilling the needs of undercover Widows everywhere. There were even clothes for men, if the mission called for an alias of the opposite sex. Widows had to be able to do anything. They headed there next. Melina set the bar low. As long as Alexei didn't pick a track suit and matching sneakers that screamed stereotypical Slav, he got a pass from her.
Melina held out a hand over the access pad, then lifted it in an inviting gesture to Alexei as the door slid open. He stepped in muttering, "Dress like a typical American guy in the nineties, how hard can that be?"
Melina followed him inside and passed the time by picking her own clothes. She couldn't recall the last time she wore denim. The fabric felt foreign in her hands. Cardigans, v-neck tops, cashmere sweaters...that seemed to be all the rage among American suburban moms, if memory served her correctly.
The sound of Alexei clearing his throat from behind made her turn around.
"Ta-da, what do you think?"
He chose to throw on a fur-lined cotton jacket and baggy jeans. Not bad, she admitted. But then she looked up at his face and said, "No, not the glasses. Throw them out."
"Why?"
"Because they look stupid."
"They do?"
That boyish hurt in his voice again. Melina felt a tension headache creep in and she wanted to grab at her temples. "I'm pretty sure those glasses are ten years out of style. The frame's way too big on your face. They make you look like an old man. Need I go on?"
"But everything else is fine?"
She peered at his selection once more, and she sighed. "Yes."
He beamed at her. "So I've done at least one thing right."
"The glasses negate everything else."
"Oh come on, they can't be that bad."
"They look ridiculous. Take them off."
Alexei's broad shoulders sagged and he relented by obeying her. She thought she had seen the last of those glasses.
Then came their move to Ohio, and as Alexei returned from his first day at work from the North Institute, there were the big round glasses perched on his nose, sporting all their absurd, ugly glory. Melina greeted him with her best look of silent disapproval from afar. Clearly he had been attached enough to those glasses to steal them away with him all the way from Russia to Ohio.
"Daddy, I didn't know you wear glasses," Yelena said.
"How come you didn't wear them this morning?" Natasha asked.
"I wanted to surprise everyone," he said, having the nerve to wink at Melina.
And he wouldn't let the matter slide, as if they didn't have more important things to talk about.
"The glasses were a hit," he declared later over the dinner table. "Everyone at work loves them. I fit right in with the IT guys. And best of all, the ladies adore them. Think they're charming." He nudged Melina. "Maybe you're the one who's out of style, honey."
"Mommy's out of style," Yelena parroted with a giggle over her bowl of mac and cheese, as if the idea delighted the three year-old to no end.
Natasha hid a smile with a forkful of green beans.
Melina conceded defeat with the slightest shrug and a generous gulp of champagne. "Well, clearly the majority vote overruled me. I guess the glasses stay, then."
So Alexei kept wearing them to work, and day by day, Melina got more and more used to seeing them taking up almost half his face. She wouldn't admit it, though. Maybe she was as stubborn and proud as he was about all this.
One day he didn't set his alarm right, and he overslept, and that made him run late for work. Melina had to shake him awake, and he shot out of bed to brush his teeth and fumble into work clothes at the same time. He rushed to the garage when Melina called him from the kitchen hall.
"Hey, you forgot this." She held up his pair of glasses.
He blinked like a startled animal, then he broke into a wide grin. "Wow, can't believe I almost took off without them." He put a hand to his chest. "I'm touched that you care enough to remember for me."
Melina rolled her eyes. "It's not that big of a deal—"
In her attempt to brush it aside, he leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek. "Thanks, honey."
He had moved in so fast that he took her off guard—no small feat, given her true profession as an elite spy and assassin. Without further ado he slipped on the glasses and zoomed away in his car, leaving her standing between the garage and hallway half in bewilderment, half attempt to fight back heat from rising up her neck.
What did he do that for? There was no one around to dupe, no reason to play the charade of a happy, functional American couple.
"That idiot," Melina muttered as she headed farther into the house. But she didn't rub away the small, lingering warmth he left on her cheek.
The Jokes
"Laughs from the girls are the best sound in the world."
Alexei had this annoying habit of declaring whatever he felt was extremely important with a booming solemnity.
Sitting across from him at the dinner table, Melina replied to this with a noncommittal grunt, flipping to the next page in a book on parasitology.
"I think I'm starting to see why people enjoy having kids. I hear the girls laugh and it's like the sun shines even brighter." He took a satisfied sip of his coffee. "I'm a simple man: I see them happy, that makes me happy."
"Good for them and good for you," she said. She tried her best to focus on a chapter titled "Body Invaders and Zombie Makers:" wasps that laid their eggs on caterpillars that weren't gorging just themselves, but their would-be killers that'd leech off the nutrients to grow and burst out of their hosts one day. What Alexei had said, however, planted something in her own mind she couldn't brush away, much to her annoyance.
Melina was a woman of many skills and talents, collecting them like tools to hook into her belt for handy use whenever she needed it. She always craved knowledge and found power in devouring as much of it as humanly possible. But she found that one thing eluded her grasp, because it was something Alexei had already made his own.
How to bring joy and laughter to others, to children—that was entirely, undisputedly his domain. And that did more than infuriate her. It made a strange bitterness gnaw at her insides. She had thought herself the one between them to be competent in all fields, that she had to take the helm at everything they did for this mission.
She knew how to keep the girls informed and safe, teach them how to behave properly and think smart, but to make them smile, laugh, and let kids be kids...Alexei did that far better than she ever could. She hated how jealous that made her of him. That was why she hated how he could be such a goofball.
"If you like hearing them laugh so much, why aren't you outside with them?"
"I thought you might want some company. You look kind of lonely when it's just you at the table."
"I have company already." She made a point of raising her book to briefly hide her face before setting it back down to reading level.
Alexei finished his coffee and slid open the patio door. He looked over his shoulder. "Come join us at the playground. Beautiful weather today."
Melina didn't even glance up from her book. "Call me if one of them trips and scrapes a knee or something."
Her flat reply was the final nail in the coffin for Alexei to leave her alone. Her bout of Sunday reading ruined, Melina shut her book and trudged to the front yard for a smoke. In her irritation, she took long drags from her cigarette and let out short puffs that clouded her vision for a split second. Laughter drifted from the backyard. Punctuated between those bursts of laughter were growls and roars uttered by Alexei, no doubt pretending to be some monster chasing after the girls.
Playing was a luxury Melina could never afford in her youth. She'd been born to parents who cared so little for her that they sold her to the Red Room when she was five. Since then she grew up in those walls, not knowing anything else. She heard Natasha's deft footwork against the wood of the playground and the steel of the slide. Meanwhile Yelena's footsteps were more frantic, skittish, clumsy over dead leaves strewn on the ground. The oldest of the two was better at escaping the clutches of monster Alexei.
When Melina was Natasha's age, she was learning every angle and thrust of a knife, more than a hundred ways to kill a man. She had to run a mile barefoot on midwinter snow until her feet bled and she coughed up blood. She'd been dropped off by helicopter into an untamed Siberian tundra, forced to survive on the bare minimum she could bring, and spent a month living off the flesh and fur of wolves she hunted down, cooked, and skinned herself. Play had never been a part of her vocabulary, her reality. Melina found herself jealous of the girls too, for enjoying what she could never have or understand.
She burned through a third of her pack of cigarettes until sundown. Time for dinner, she thought with a grimace. Melina did not enjoy cooking. It was such a chore. All that work only for it to be stuffed down in a matter of minutes. In a bad mood, she definitely didn't want to fire up the stove or the oven. She ended up getting the family Chinese takeout. Days like this made her feel worthy of the title "Worst Mom in the World."
No one complained about having Chinese takeout, though—at least Melina knew where to get quality food. She was able to squeeze in some teaching moments as she taught everyone how to use chopsticks.
The girls picked it up with impressive speed, but Alexei, being the clumsy oaf he was, kept fumbling with keeping the chopsticks in his big, bear-like hand. Natasha and Yelena giggled over his hapless antics. Melina was less than amused. She almost cleared her bowl of flat rice noodles when Alexei barely picked up a bite or two. They were here to break into a maximum security institution and steal top-secret documents, not be a bloody circus act. Melina spared him of further embarrassment by giving him a fork.
After dinner were fortune cookies.
"There's paper inside," Yelena exclaimed as she cracked open hers.
"Usually there will be some pithy saying in there," Melina said.
"What does pithy mean?" Natasha asked.
"It means wise, philosophical."
"Leave it to your super smart mom to know all the big words." Alexei said. Then he grinned. "Let's turn pithy into silly. Everyone read your fortune out loud, and you have to end it with 'in the bathroom.' I'll start." He pulled out his paper with a flourish. "'In the eyes of lovers, everything is beautiful...in the bathroom.'"
The girls dissolved into fits of earnest laughter. "My turn, my turn," Yelena said, but nothing intelligible came out through unstoppable giggling, so Natasha had to read it for her: "'There are 365 days in a year, may all 365 of your dreams come true...in the bathroom.'"
More laughter around the table except from Melina, who kept a straight face.
Natasha went next: "'Your existence has a positive contribution to mankind...in the bathroom.'"
"That makes absolutely no sense," Melina said, but no one heard it among the laughing.
"Mommy, read yours," Yelena said, when she could finally catch her breath.
"Come on, let's hear it," Alexei chimed in.
After a pause, and with a sigh, Melina obliged. "'A great destiny beyond your wildest dreams, unlike anything you've ever had before, awaits you...in the bathroom.'"
Alexei laughed so hard that no sound came out of his mouth and he clapped his hands like a seal. Natasha had to hide her reddening face in a clean napkin. Yelena laughed so much that tears squeezed through the corners of her eyes.
Finally, Alexei wheezed, "That's a good one. That's a really good one."
"This is so stupid," Melina said, but the slightest upward tug of her lips betrayed her.
Alexei gaped. "Is that a smile I see?" He pointed at her face as if spotting an endangered species in the wild.
Natasha played along. "Quick, get a picture of it before it runs away."
Melina plucked from a plate of Alexei's unfinished lo mein and stuffed her face. "I wasn't smiling," she mumbled through a mouthful.
"Yes, you were, Mommy," Yelena said with glee.
Later that night, while Melina and Alexei cleaned up the table and washed dishes together, he said as a satisfied aside, "Well, well, well...the Iron Maiden can have a sense of humor, after all." Beside her at the sink, he leaned toward her. "Maybe someday I might even get a real laugh out of you."
She leaned away, snatching rinsed plate after plate from him to load up the dishwasher. "Don't get ahead of yourself."
Thus began their Sunday tradition of Chinese takeout for dinner and fortune cookie readings. Unlike most people who threw them away with the wrappings, the girls kept the slips of paper in a jar, but not before scribbling "in the bathroom" after the end of every saying. The jar got a bit fuller after every Sunday.
Now every time Melina had to use the bathroom for whatever reason, she had to fight back a smile, and she had no one else but Alexei to blame for that. "Idiot," she muttered, meaning both him and herself.
The Talk
After figuring out their undercover wardrobe, Melina was struck by something she found odd as she remembered. "Why did Dreykov say we have a month until we're on the field? He'd never make us wait that long between briefing and deployment. And I never take that long to prepare."
At that, Alexei scratched the back of his head and looked down at his boots. "He said you could teach me."
"Teach you what?"
"How to speak English."
"Oh my God," said the woman who never in her life believed in such a fantasy. "You mean to tell me that you don't know how to speak any English?"
"Yes, I can," he retorted. Then he added meekly, "Just not very well." He said this in English, very Russian-tinged English, to demonstrate his point.
"So he wants me to act like your accent coach."
He scuffed the floor with his boots. "Yeah. Something like that."
Melina sighed. "We have a lot of work to do."
They spent the following month holding sessions in an unused classroom for language studies. Melina hadn't been in such a room since she was an adolescent. She had mastered English as a second language before she turned ten, and by twenty, she had three more of the most commonly spoken (therefore most practical) languages under her belt.
Alexei's grasp of English was cobbled together from American movies and TV shows. His heavy accent and poor grammar weren't going to fly if they were going to pass off as a typical Ohio family who had never left American soil.
"Not all American accents are made alike," Melina told him during their first tutoring session. "Not in a country made of fifty states. Every region has its own particular sound. If we want to blend in and not stick out like a sore thumb, what we're aiming for is a Midwestern American accent."
He nodded dutifully at her. With his bulk almost dwarfing even the largest available desk he sat in, he looked comically out of place in this classroom.
Standing before the board, Melina tossed a piece of chalk in her hand. "We'll have to iron out all traces of Russian from you. Even I can't learn a new language in a month, but correcting an accent is feasible." She jotted down a few words on the board. "Here are the ones you need to get down. Let's get started. Repeat after me…"
She was a relentless driller. He had to earn every trip to the bathroom or break to eat until he pronounced something correctly. As a reward for his efforts, she'd scrub out the word from the board.
A few weeks later, she said, "It seems that you still have the most trouble with this." She tapped at "yes" still written in damning chalky white.
Alexei stared up at it in despair. "I hate that word."
"Too bad, you need to get it right. You still sound very Russian when you say it."
He folded his arms over his broad chest. "Why can't I just nod? That gets across the same message."
Melina mirrored his gesture. "You're going to learn how to say 'yes' like an American before the month is over."
He groaned and slumped in a seat too small for him.
"For the millionth time: stop rounding and stretching out your 'e' like a Russian. Americans don't do that. Be short and to the point. Just say it like 'yes.'"
"Yes."
"No. 'Yes.'"
"Yes."
She peered back at him with a raised eyebrow. "There's no need to shout." He had no right to throw a fit like that, when she had more right than he ever had to toss the chalk at him for being such a pain in the ass. If she'd been paired with a more experienced agent, she didn't have to go through all this trouble to play tutor for a man child.
A muscle twitched in his square jaw. "I'm not like you, okay? I'm not a perfect genius who knows like fifteen languages."
"Twenty," she muttered.
"Which proves my point." He fell silent for a fuming moment. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, "I'm sorry you have to be stuck with an idiot like me. I'm trying, okay?"
Melina sighed and ran fingers not dusted with chalk through her hair. "If it helps any, step out and take a breather. We'll try again in a bit." She needed the break as much as he did. She really could use a sip of liquor or a cigarette right now, but drinking and smoking were not permitted in the Red Room. Not permitted for anyone besides Dreykov, anyway.
Alexei rose with a slight creak in his back and lumbered out of sight. Left alone in the classroom, Melina sat down to mindlessly sort out pieces of chalk by color and sift through English worksheets she had went through with Alexei. He covered more ground than she had first thought. Maybe she was remembering his mistakes more than the strides he was making. He was trying to take this mission as seriously as she did. She actually felt a twinge of guilt for being so hard on him.
Alexei returned to the classroom looking as glum and defeated as when he had headed out. The two of them said nothing for a while, then Melina broke the silence.
"You'll get it. I know you'll get it because you're so stubborn." She gestured with a turn of her head to the sheets beside them. "You got through all these other words and phrases by sheer will and brute force, like pushing rocks out of the way." She gestured next to the "yes" written on the board. "This rock is bigger and tougher, but it's still a rock. You'll push through and you'll crush it."
"Yes," he said softly. Correctly.
That pricked her ears, and she leaned in. "What was that?"
"Yes."
"Louder."
"Yes!"
Melina actually had to fight back a smile. "Good. That's exactly what I wanted to hear." Alexei was a man of great brawn and strength; it seemed that talking in his language was the best way to get through to him. She erased "yes" with a triumphant stroke, leaving the board blank. "You're ready for Ohio."
"Yes," he cried, like a true blue born-and-bred American.
The delight and triumph brightening his face made her hate him a little less. Just a little.
The Walk
It was going to take months to crack open the North Institute, likely years. Melina may be posing as a stay-at-home wife and mother of two girls, but pretending for this long was starting to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
"Don't slouch, sit up straight," she'd tell the girls, and to Alexei, she'd say "Don't drag your feet when you walk."
The rest of her "family" may think she was just playing her role, but really, their bad posture was driving her insane.
She would remember—not fondly, of course—those distant, bygone days in the ballet studio with other girls, flexing in sync with the instructor's rhythm, and if her posture was anything less than perfect, a slap on the backside with a wooden rod would set her straight.
She would do no such thing to the girls now—this was suburban Ohio, not the Red Room. Instead, she became the nagging mother hen met with either meek apologies or smiles and rolling eyes.
Alexei's shuffling bear walk especially grated on her nerves. He would make the world's worst assassin. She could hear him coming from a mile away. When he wouldn't listen to her, and he'd trip over a toy of Yelena's or get zapped by static shock, she'd shake her head and grill him with that "I told you so" look.
It wasn't just his feet. His big square head and hulking shoulders and towering build all reminded her of a bear, a clumsy bear on two legs. It was embarrassing to be seen in public with him.
At least just before their latest trip to get groceries, he had gotten the worst toe stub in his life at home, so he stopped dragging his feet as he accompanied her to the store. They were driving on the freeway to collect the girls from school when a speeding drunk driver slammed into them. More precisely into the passenger side, Melina's side. Alexei's car skewed to the side, spinning out of control until it struck a road barrier some thirty feet away.
A scream of pain jolted Alexei from a dizzying haze. "Melina...?" He was met with a groan, instead of a reprimand for using her real name rather than her alias. He ripped off the seat belt, trying to make sense of everything amid broken glass.
Somehow the door of the passenger side had been ripped away while the car spun. It laid on the road now, caved in courtesy of the drunk driver before. His spotty gaze fell on Melina and horror lanced through his chest. Her right leg up to her knee was pinned between the road barrier and the car frame.
Protective instinct took control of his entire body. He staggered out of the car, went around the front, and with strength that made him the Red Guardian, he pushed it aside. That freed her leg. Melina would have collapsed onto the road if Alexei didn't stretch out his arms to catch her. She groaned against his chest. He looked down and winced. The bottom half of her right leg was covered in blood. Everything from the knee down bent at an angle he thought humanly impossible. Her right arm also curled in at an odd angle, and with her left hand she clutched at his shirt as her mouth gaped open in silent agony. All he could do was cradle her and hold her close, whispering comfort and assurance into her ear. Despite that, her breathing grew shallower and her skin paler.
Soon he heard sirens wailing. Paramedics swarmed over him and took Melina off his hands. When a few stuck around to hover around him, he shook them off. Besides the throb and trickle of blood on one side of his head, he was fine. Nothing crushed or broken. That was far better than he could say for poor Melina.
At the nearest hospital they were whisked away to, he heard the verdict: right arm broken in two places, right leg crushed in twice as many, cracked ribs with internal bleeding near the liver, and a deep cut across the right cheek. Melina needed urgent surgery and massive blood transfusion.
Feeling the world spinning from under him, Alexei had to collect his bearings in the waiting room for a few hours. Then he could call the school and let the girls know what had happened. The principal offered to have the police drive them there.
Melina would have looked at this with mistrust, while Alexei could feel nothing but gratitude. He was in no state of mind to pick up Natasha and Yelena from school. Besides, this was what happened when he and Melina had tried the same earlier that day.
Eternity seemed to drag on before it was announced that surgery was done. He jumped to his feet and almost ran to the recovery room.
Being a super soldier meant having sharpened hearing, so Alexei had his fair share of eavesdropping on conversations he likely wasn't meant to hear. He had that feeling on his way to the recovery room, stopping as he picked up snatches of a doctor's furious tirade upon what seemed to be a hapless underling.
"You really gave the whole stick of ketamine?"
"I'm sorry-"
"Did you give a benzo before that?"
"Erm, no."
"Not even glyco?"
"Um..."
The doctor swore and sighed. "Great. And she's got a smoking history, too. Now she's going to be-"
"Excuse me, is my wife going to be okay?"
The doctor and a younger man spun around to meet Alexei's concern.
"Oh, you must be Mr. Johnson. Melissa's husband."
"Er, yes." It took him a second to process connecting those fake names to himself and Melina.
The doctor cleared his throat. "I'm the anesthesiologist who took care of your wife during surgery, and this is the medical student with me today. She will be just fine, sir, but..."
The student stepped up looking like a fawn about to be shot. "I-I made a medication error. It's my fault, sir, I'm so sorry."
The anesthesiologist made a slight raise of his arms in resignation, as if to say, "Perks of being at a teaching hospital."
"I gave her a whole syringe of ketamine instead of half the dose as my attending instructed," the student went on. "A-and before that, I should have given a benzodiazepine like versed for the hallucinations, and an anti-sialagogue like glycopyrrolate for the secretions-"
Head spinning, Alexei held up a hand. "In English, please?"
"What my student means to say is that with just ketamine and no premedication to prevent the side effects, she'll be hallucinating and excessively salivating."
He should have asked for plain English. Very plain English. "So...she'll be seeing things and drooling a lot."
The doctor thinned his lips and managed a tiny nod.
"Otherwise she'll be okay?"
"Oh, yes, sir. She tolerated the surgery very well. She's stable and the surgeon predicts a smooth recovery."
"Good, that's all that matters." Alexei was about to walk past them when he did a double take. "You were saying something about her smoking?"
The anesthesiologist rubbed at his balding head. "Yes, well, smokers tend to make more secretions than the average patient, so she'll be, um..."
"Drooling a lot," Alexei finished for him. "I got you. Thanks for the warning." The anesthesiologist and his student apologized profusely once again, and he waved that off with a little smile. They said that ketamine was an analgesic, so he didn't have to worry about Melina being in pain.
Stepping up to where she was being held, he parted the curtain gently. She was lying in bed slightly sitting up, out of street clothes and dressed in a thin patterned gown. Her right arm was bound in a cast. Many pins protruded from her right leg, which was propped up by some metal contraption Alexei didn't know the name of. A nasal cannula draped over her pale face. Sutures held the cut on her cheek together. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell with the evenness of undisturbed sleep. Her head was tipped toward the nurse at her bedside, who held out a styrofoam cup under a mouth slightly hung open. As the doctor had said, saliva came out in a steady dribble from the corner of her lips. Besides the odd sight, the monitor emitted continuous beeps that reassured Alexei.
She'll be fine. She's alive. She's going to live.
That made his knees weak with relief. He stepped in closer and graciously offered to take over being at the bedside, freeing the nurse so she could go about other duties.
With one hand holding the cup steady under a leaky faucet of a mouth, he cupped Melina's uninjured cheek with the other. "Hey, honey," he said softly. "It's me."
Her eyes fluttered open, wandered, and settled on him. "Hey," she drawled.
"How are you feeling?"
"Great." That came out more like "...greeeeat." She sounded soft and faraway, rather than inches from him.
"The girls will be here soon. They're coming to see you."
Melina didn't seem to register that and her eyes fluttered shut, so he was about to repeat himself when she said "okaaayyy." A cascade of spit followed her reply.
It was so odd, seeing her like this. She was always so composed, stoic, intimidating. Alexei couldn't recognize any of that in her now. He didn't know whether to be amused or frightened.
She was silent for a while. Then she said, "I dreamed about pigs."
"You did?"
"Yeah. I like pigs."
"That's nice, honey."
An impressively sized wad of spit came out every time she said "pigs." He was worried that in her loopiness, she'd lapse back to Russian, or whatever other language she was fluent in but not supposed to speak here. So far, to his relief, she was talking to him in dragged out, lazy-sounding English. She was holding herself together to that extent, at least.
She fell quiet again. Then she said, "Alex?"
"Yeah, I'm here."
"Good. Don't leave me."
"Don't worry, baby, I won't."
He rubbed her shoulder for further reassurance. She would slip in and out like that, looking asleep one moment then spouting something random the next. He stayed faithfully by her side through all that, brushing locks of her long, dark hair out of the way as the saliva just kept running and running. He wondered how the girls would handle seeing her like this. He was still trying to get used to it.
Melina fully opened her eyes to get a proper look at him and squinted, like she didn't trust him. "Alex? Is that really you?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Why are you a bear?"
He blinked. "Huh?"
She repeated herself slower and louder, as if he hadn't heard her the first time. "Why are you a bear?"
Good Lord, she was being perfectly serious. "I-I'm not—"
"You're all hairy." She stroked his arm with her left in awe. "How did you get all this hair?" She blinked up at him like a deer in headlights. "Bears shouldn't be wearing glasses. That's just dumb."
Even pumped up on drugs and high out of her mind, she thought the glasses looked stupid. A small part of him died inside.
"Animal control," Melina mumbled, then raised her voice. "Animal control!"
"Shh, honey, calm down."
She ignored him. "There's a bear in here, a giant grizzly bear wearing glasses. It's not supposed to be here. Someone call animal control." She pointed an accusing finger at him, a very serious, solemn gesture ruined by the bulky, flashing pulse oximeter clamped over it.
Alexei rested his hand over her uninjured one and stroked it. "There's no bear, it's just me." He sounded much more calm and patient than he was actually feeling. He was worried that she might open up her wounds if she kept moving and shouting like that. She might need even more medicine. Fortunately she settled down without any more convincing and slipped back into a drooling sleep.
Strange as this was, he took this over seeing Melina in pain any day. It had broken his heart to see her in the midst of that car wreck, her face twisted in agony. Never mind that he could have exposed them with his show of super strength. He'd do anything to protect her and keep her from getting hurt again.
Natasha and Yelena peeked their faces through the curtain, triggering a rush of joy and relief through Alexei.
"Hey, come say hi to Mom."
They edged up at the other side of her bed, on the verge of tears.
"Mom..." Natasha's voice shook.
"Mommy..." Yelena reached out to touch her shoulder.
Melina stirred awake and stared at her with genuine wide-eyed horror. "Why do you have three eyeballs?" And she actually started to cry.
Natasha wrapped her arms around Yelena and took a step back. "Dad, I'm scared."
"It's the pain medicine, sweetheart. It makes her act very silly."
Honestly, he was scared, too. Melina, the Iron Maiden, breaking down crying like a baby...was this a sign of the world coming to an end? Still holding the styrofoam cup in one hand, he grabbed a tissue with the other to dab her face dry. Drooling and crying? Melina reminded him of those Yellowstone geysers he had read about, just spewing gallons and gallons of water.
She told him once that Black Widows underwent rigorous, grueling training to make them essentially immune to pain. This increased their pain tolerance exponentially and they required less pain relief for treatment. A dose for an average untrained individual, the "civilian" dose as Melina called it, would be considered excessive for a Widow. So for her to get too much ketamine, even for regular people...Alexei got the brunt of the bizarre result.
It took several overnight stays in the hospital for Melina to recalibrate back to normal. On the day she was discharged home in a wheelchair, she asked, "Did I say anything stupid?"
Alexei pursed his lips. Finally he said, "You didn't say anything that would jeopardize the mission."
She tilted her head. "That didn't really answer my question, but I'll take it."
Her memories of the hospital were quite hazy, though what stood out to her was the telltale shuffle of feet, that sure sign of Alexei coming in to see her. She could single that out even amid the coming and going of hospital staff, the clip-clops of hundreds of different shoes and gaits. Even now at home, in her limited mobility, she knew when Alexei was coming up to help her get around and take care of her. It gave her comfort to know that she could always rely on him and have him by her side.
That walk used to annoy her so much. Not anymore.
She knew that she had gotten a large amount of ketamine after surgery, and for a while that was all Alexei could tell her. She kept pressing him for more details, if she did or say anything to compromise not just the mission, but her dignity.
Finally, one day, he said, "You really want to know? Fine, I'll tell you." He paused, staring out the patio window, and turned back to her with a straight face. "There was...spit. So. Much. Spit. You kept insisting that I was a bear. You wanted to call animal control on me. And you thought that Yelena had three eyeballs."
The absurdity of it all made her burst out laughing, even as it made her side hurt. It left her gasping and wincing. Alexei rested a concerned hand on her shoulder. When she could catch her breath, she managed to say, "Next time I get a leg crushed, tell them not to give me so much ketamine."
He returned her grin. "Noted."
He was able to get a real laugh out of her, after all. It was the most wonderful sound in the world.
The Smarts
Alexei's repertoire of knowledge left much to be desired, to say the least. He knew how to punch, kick, and wrestle his way out of a fight and come out on top, he knew how to drink everyone under the table, but that was pretty much it. Interest in any subject besides that was long abandoned, back when his age was in the single digits.
That much Melina knew of him from the assignment briefing and word of mouth, and that was all she needed to deem him well below her respect.
They could discuss fighting, yes, but this mission that put them together didn't call for fighting. When it was going right, anyway. If they couldn't talk about the one thing they knew in common, they couldn't talk at all. And she was supposed to be partnered with this man for months, maybe even years. When she and Alexei had to make their new house habitable and befitting a typical American family, she went on a liquor buying spree. She stocked up a cabinet full of the hardest stuff to guzzle down on occasions when she couldn't tolerate his idiocy.
His lack of knowledge never ceased to astound her. The first time was on a brisk autumn, a Friday night, when Alexei hunkered down in a fort of blankets and pillows with Yelena to watch Nature on PBS. And he asked, "What are those?"
Melina followed his finger, the long-necked and long-legged birds dashing over the African savannah. "You're kidding, right?" He sounded like he wasn't, so she said, "Those are ostriches."
"They're so big. And so funny. Look how they run." He laughed with Yelena over that.
Melina continued to eye him with disdain. "Doesn't everyone know what ostriches are?"
"I know what they are," Yelena said with triumph.
"Well, I didn't until now," Alexei said.
Melina turned away from the living room. "Unbelievable," she muttered. Even the three year-old knew. That called for a shot or two of vodka.
She assumed from then on that he knew absolutely nothing and would treat him as such. Sometimes Alexei had the nerve to complain of this mission being boring, and that was worth at least three shots. He thought he was bored? He had no idea.
Melina was a scientist with no other scientist to talk to. That was boring. That was torture. She would try in vain to relieve her boredom with burying her nose into book after book, and that only helped mildly, briefly, like cold medicine that didn't bring a cure.
Sometimes she entertained the idea of explaining an intriguing concept or phenomena to him, but then she'd remember that Friday night and think twice about it. The man didn't know what a fucking ostrich was. How was he supposed to comprehend anything requiring a higher level of thinking?
Despite all that, she'd still rather entrust him with the role of infiltrating the North Institute. She had the misfortune of living in a world where intelligent women tended to draw attention in the worst possible ways, and with the mission being a priority over her pride, she couldn't risk any of that attention. So Alexei was designated the mole while she was the puppeteer pulling strings from afar, making sure he moved the way she wanted him to.
At least he never challenged her better judgment. He went about his work with quiet, dutiful obedience. The last thing she wanted for a partner was an idiot with a smart mouth.
The more time she spent with him, though, the more she learned that he was far more than her unfavorable first impression. She learned that he could be very good at being funny, and effortless at being kind. Since the car accident, and breaking what felt like half of her body, she learned that he was a reliable pillar she could lean on for comfort and support.
She'd feel that the most when he helped her in and out of the wheelchair, carrying her bridal-style in his arms. So gentle and soft, on top of so much strength under restraints...she didn't need to look to know that could only come from one man, a man made unlike any other. With Alexei, she felt safe. No one else had that kind of effect on her. Sometimes Melina wondered what it would be like to fall asleep with that kind of embrace around her. And she'd shake her head and furiously chastise herself for thinking such a silly thought.
Since regaining strength to her right leg, she would walk around the house as light exercise. One night, after Natasha and Yelena were tucked into bed, she noticed Alexei wasn't anywhere inside. She found him outside. More like spotted the glow of a cigarette butt first. He had his back to the house, leaning on the patio counter to watch the fireflies.
Melina stepped outside to join him, and the crunch of dead leaves under her shoes gave her away. He turned to her just after a puff of smoke left his lips.
"Oh, did you need something?"
"No."
"How's your arm and leg doing?"
Melina answered by smoothly settling into a barstool next to him and leaned with her formerly injured arm on the counter. "I ditched the Tylenol yesterday."
Alexei nodded and made a sound of approval.
An open pack of cigarettes sat on the counter between them. Melina pulled out one and he flicked on the lighter for her. She grunted thanks and together they smoked in companionable silence.
She was the first to break it as she said, "What are you doing out here? Smoking moodily in the yard...that's my thing, not yours." Her rare attempt at humor earned a weak smile from him.
He lost the smile as he said, "Sometimes do you ever just feel how lucky you are to be alive?"
She paused as she took a drag. "All the time," she murmured.
He let out a mirthless chuckle. "I said sometimes, but really, you and me both." He tapped ashes into a nearby tray. "I'm not the first man to get the serum. I'm just the one who made it the farthest."
She knew that. But she didn't know that it weighed on him this much.
"So many others went before me. None of them made it out alive. The serum makers, the scientists, they picked the best first: the smartest, the noblest, the most worthy. Then, when they got desperate, they went for the scraps. The lowlifes. The ones they can still make a miracle story. Finally they got to me: the high school dropout, a criminal, a thug living on the streets. I became their miracle. The glory of the Soviet Union." Smoke billowed out with a heavy sigh. "I got lucky. I didn't become the Red Guardian because I earned it. I'm here only because I could take some chemical like a tank, even if it wanted to kill me."
Melina said nothing for a while, because she struggled for an adequate reply. But at what he had just said, she did have something for that. "I'm glad you're here," she said softly. "With the girls, and with me."
He turned to her with eyes wet behind his glasses. "You really mean that?"
She merely stared back at him with that wall of seriousness she never put down. As a spy she was a master of lies, but this wasn't one of them. With a partner she grew to be genuinely fond of, she had no reason to lie.
Alexei stubbed out his cigarette and slowly flexed and relaxed his biceps. "It's funny, I use my muscles all the time, but I don't know how they work. Tell me."
"You want the short, easy answer, or the real long one?"
"Hit me with the nitty-gritty science. Fire away."
"If you say so." Melina took a drag, the gears in her head spinning and clicking the way they did when she got to share something she found fascinating. "Imagine a bridge, a gap, between your nerves and muscle cells. It's called the neuromuscular junction."
"A bridge...yeah, I follow."
"There's this neurotransmitter that has to cross the bridge. It's called acetylcholine."
"Mm-hmm, got it."
"Think of a chemical domino effect. The acetylcholine binds to sodium channels in the muscle, which triggers a signal called an action potential, and that signal goes down some T-shaped tubes and tells the tubes to release calcium..."
She had all of his attention through every step in the biochemical process of muscle contraction. By the end of her explanation, he leaned back in his barstool.
"Wow. That's what happens every time we move? The human body is amazing."
"Right?"
He grinned. "I love seeing you so excited about science. And I could listen to you talk all day." Admiration in his eyes glowed like the fireflies around them. "You're so smart, the smartest person I've met. You're incredible."
Melina looked away, fighting hard to ignore the warmth blooming in her ears. "There's always someone better and smarter."
"Maybe. But I haven't met them yet. For now, and for a while, I'm sure, you're the best."
She was no stranger to flattery, as she was long acquainted with giving and receiving it during missions. But Alexei had an earnest spirit and almost aching sincerity she hadn't found in any other man, and she showed her appreciation for it with a smile.
"Thank you being a good listener," she said. "To be honest, that's what I like about you."
He waved a hand, his turn to look embarrassed and flattered. "Anyone can do that."
"You'd be surprised. A lot of people can hear but a lot don't know how to listen."
"Is there anything else you like about me?"
She hid a smile behind fingers curled around her cigarette. "I could think of a few more reasons." The eagerness as he waited for an answer from her was incorrigible. She went on, "You're silly and stubborn, kind and simple. And I mean simple in a good way. You're simple because there's nothing to you to build around. 'What you see is what you get' when it comes to you. You're not like me, where I had to study and work very hard for the role I'm playing here. You can just be yourself and be the good father and husband you're told to be." She stubbed out her cigarette, watched the last of the smoke curl away into the air. "I was wrong about you. I thought you'd be the worst possible partner for this mission. Now I know better. You're the best partner I've ever had."
He had taken all this in with rapt silence. Finally he managed to say, "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. That anyone has said, really. Thank you." He rested his hand over hers, and she didn't pull away.
She turned her palm up to link her fingers between his. Their wedding rings glowed faintly under the patio light.
Alexei glanced down at them, stroked his thumb over Melina's ring. "Maybe this is me being silly, but I wish this could be real."
"I wish it could be real too." The confession left her lips before she could rein it in. She was sure that he heard the ache in her voice, because he raised his other hand to rest it on her cheek. She leaned a little into it, leaned closer to him. Closer and closer. Before she knew it, their lips met in a soft kiss. They held it for a few tender moments, then broke apart to share a drawn in breath. Between their gazes was the unspoken understanding of carrying this on inside.
They barely made it back to the bedroom they shared before they fell into the searing ebb and flow of kisses. She moaned at the taste of him, yet somehow still had the sense and clarity to fumble for the lock at the doorknob with her free hand. Maybe the girls stumbling in on their "parents" would fulfill the picture of an authentic American family, but she would rather do without that tonight. His hungry mouth ran next along the contour of her jaw and down her neck. She wanted him to go down even further and she cursed her shirt for getting in the way. Everything they wore was in the way, really.
They made quick work of freeing each other of their clothes, and the unhindered union of her skin on his sent a flare of heat down her navel.
Her fingers found a firm hold over knotted muscles of his back as he rocked her. One hand gripped a post on the bed frame while the other tangled itself in her hair and cradled the back of her head. Her breath came out hot on his bare shoulder with every join of their hips, then she sucked in a gasp as they peaked and came together. He muffled a shuddering groan against her neck. He collapsed on her, weak and trembling all over, then he tried to roll out of her way when she dug nails into his back in protest. So he stayed, so she could keep savoring the feeling of him inside her for the rest of the night.
They shared a kiss as soft as the very first one. They laid there in breathless silence, arms wrapped around each other like they didn't want to let go of these precious moments they called their own. Soon their pants subsided into even breaths as they drifted off to sleep together.
Melina was the first to wake up the next morning. What happened last night...was that all just a dream? Pleasurable soreness from where Alexei had touched her proved otherwise. Her movement stirred him awake. He sat up beside her, blinking sleep from his eyes.
"Morning."
"Good morning."
She twisted to lie on her belly, to soak up just a bit more sweet moments of laziness before she had to really get up. Then she noticed the bed post. "What the hell happened there?" She pointed at the cracks webbed along the wood.
The expression Alexei took on next aged him down by two decades, so he looked like a schoolboy in trouble. "My bad."
More memories of last night streamed into Melina and it bubbled out through laughter. "It really felt that good, huh?"
Alexei's cheeks turned as red as his suit. "Should we get that fixed?"
"No, leave it," she said with a wave of her hand, and she couldn't stop grinning. "It adds character."
It was the weekend, so Alexei didn't have work and they didn't have to rush Natasha and Yelena to school. Melina thought about taking them to the park later today. She was in the mood for a nice stroll with the people she came to call family.
She kissed Alexei on the cheek before rolling out of bed to get ready for a great rest of the day. She went into the bathroom to change into new clothes, and as always since the first night of fortune cookie readings, her lips thinned into the kind of tight smile of remembering something funny.
She didn't need to say that she loved Alexei for that reason and so much more. He already knew. He wasn't an idiot.
2) The fortune cookie readings are inspired by my dad doing that for my family. He unexpectedly passed away in January 2020, so I wrote this part and put a little bit of my dad in Alexei while remembering him fondly.
4) I'm an anesthetist in-training, so I have firsthand experience of dealing with patients high on anesthesia. Ketamine is great for being a pain-relieving anesthetic and ideal for stabilizing trauma patients, but those side effects can be…really something else. If nothing's done to mitigate them, anyway. I had so much fun writing Melina being high on anesthesia. I hope it was just as fun to read.