Prompt 1: "Give me a chance."
It wasn't that Marina found him incredibly attractive, not objectively. Striking, sure. Compelling from the first. Even—she couldn't be ashamed to admit it—rather her type: the brooding, earnest, old-fashioned type, who wore his flaws like an old patch coat and carried about him an aura of foreboding like too-sharp cologne. But objectively. Objectively not the sort of strapping hunk her girlfriends could gush over if they knew of him. Not the sort of man one could reasonably forgive her becoming infatuated with, so soon after all that had happened. Certainly those girlfriends wouldn't understand her moving on with any man less than objectively perfect.
And yet. Here she was. Moving on, with abject imperfection. She still woke in the night with Kostya's name on tear-soaked lips, still caught fists in the stomach at the memories that came unbidden in the day, but as days turned into weeks she dreamed of him less and less, found fewer and fewer reminders of him in the trivialities of everyday life. The sun shone through the grimy windows, and she no longer thought of how the light turned golden-haired Kostya into a fallen angel, or how it made him sneeze. The rain fell, and she no longer wept in time to its patter on the roof, to the phantom drumbeats of nimble fingers against her thigh. Instead, she pictured the sun catching amber glints in Anatoly's dark eyes as he flinched away from the brightness, and how the rain made flyaway strands of his hair curl and faint twitches wrack his rangy frame because he refused to replace his Swiss cheese umbrella. The old army songs that Mishka clapped along to, the gentle ballads he dropped into sleep to, were no longer sung in full, bright voice smooth with everyman's accent, but mumbled, hummed, consonants softened and vowels drawn in a way no amount of formal schooling could erase. When she went to bed yearning, aching, for something to warm her innermost self, she no longer wrung out her emptiness with mechanical fervour and salt tears, but filled herself with the memory of careful, caring hands that dwarfed her own. And she no longer hid from the pictures she had banished to the old briefcase beneath the bed. She had even begun to take them out, and with Mishka babbling in her lap, plump hands grabbing for a face he could not remember but would come to know well in story, had gone through them all, not allowing herself to collapse under the weight of guilt that welled up where tears had not.
She had taken the pictures out again earlier that afternoon. They sat in an innocuous stack just in front of the pillow that no longer smelled like Kostya. Part of her itched to run and lock them away, out of sight out of mind—but another, more timid part begged her to leave them be. They were as much a part of her as anything attached by blood and bone, and Tolik deserved to be shown all of her. When he came. If he came.
It had been seven hours since she'd called him. Seven hours that felt like years, seven hours she would never get back. The rain had fallen hard all day, hard enough to drown even the most buoyant of spirits, and as shadows began to crowd the corners of the empty living room she'd felt herself possessed by a sudden panic, that locked her heart and lungs in a cage and brought her, heaving, to her knees. Over and over a single thought chipped at her brain with an ice pick, you are alone, you will always be alone, Kostya's going and you will be and die alone, and fuck, she couldn't bear to be alone.
So like a madwoman she'd run to the phone, deaf to Mishka's worried cries, and dialled Tolik's number. By now it was burned into her memory like the scar on her wrist from her university dormitory's oven. In a voice that was only a little breathless, she asked if he wanted to come round for dinner. She could make kotlet. Pour out the good wine. Georgian. A gift from one of Kostya's so-called friends. No worries if he couldn't come, no, there was nothing wrong. She just could use the company. Nothing was wrong. Of course she was sure of that.
Well, alright. Okay, I'll come, he'd said, sounding harried as he always did over the phone. Only I've had a commission, the short works of the Strugatskiys, a major project. Due next week, but no, no, I'll find a good place to stop and I'll come around. I don't know when. But I'll come. I promise.
He didn't come, and didn't come, and she was beginning to think he never would. Sighing, she picked up the heavy glass dish, ignoring the way it stung her hands, and carried it towards the fridge. Four quick knocks broke the silence; she jumped. Nearly dropped the damned thing. The devil ever had fine timing.
''A minute!'' she shouted. Mishka, in his high chair, shouted too, delighted as much by his mother's voice as the prospect of a visitor. Haste made her limbs clumsy as she fairly threw the dish back onto the stovetop, scrambled to lay out plates and cutlery, rushed to hug her boy and ruffle his curling hair. Kostya's hair. Straining for her blurred reflection on the side of the toaster, she tucked a few errant wisps of hair behind her ears, fixed the collar of her blouse, and took a deep breath. Moved, with what she hoped resembled grace, to open the door. ''The prodigal fool returns, though I was beginning to think he never would,'' she teased, hoping he couldn't see the desperate relief hiding behind the frayed edges of her smile. ''I almost put your damn kotlet back in the fridge!''
''I'm sorry.'' Anatoly ran both hands over his face and through his dripping hair; grimaced as he went to wipe them off on his scarcely-drier trousers. ''My watch is broken, so I lost track of time, and then—well, never mind, you don't need to hear excuses. Sorry.'' One corner of his mouth curled up, a nervous facsimile of a smile. She still had never seen him smile. ''Fuck, and I'm getting everything wet, too, I'm so sorry-''
''Did you ask the sky to explode today? Don't worry about it.'' Marina stepped to one side, waving him in. When he didn't move to enter, but instead bent to untie his shoes, she leaned over to press a kiss to his cold cheek. ''I'm glad you're here.''
He nodded, in that brusque, awkward way she was growing ever fonder of, and moved to embrace her before drawing abruptly back and ripping off his drenched coat as though it had offended him. Tolik moved like a stranger in his own skin: nothing like Kostya, who had confidence enough for five men. He had never quite managed to be unassuming no matter how hard he'd tried. There was something about him, some brightness or magnetism that drew both women and men to his side and kept them there. A warm mien, a mischievous grin, that haunted stare, all more powerful than a poem. Kostya was a flame, and like a moth she had flown to him, hapless, burning in the heat of love snuffed out too soon. Tolik was a shadow. The sort of person you'd have to look twice at to even see, the sort of person you'd never think to miss when they were gone. But he had stumbled into her life right when she'd most needed someone, and she could do nothing but thank every god she could name that she had seen him.
Work title taken from a line of Dima's in the film, after Tolik asks him if Kostyra was his friend. Dima expounds on the transactional nature of relationships in this new post-Soviet era.
