Day 6: Moroi Ski Resort, Idaho | Friday Evening FH-Time
When Lissa and a fuming Rose had left Dimitri the night before, they'd quickly ended up corralled into a royal Moroi party by Adrian. Okay, so it hadn't taken much corralling, but Adrian had deserted them by the time Rose and Lissa, Christian and Mason, and two more students - Eddie, another novice, and Mia Rinaldi of all people settled into one of the whirlpools.
It had proved to be an interesting night. Arguing about how best to fight the Strigoi left Rose frustrated with more Moroi inaction and drinking far more than she should have. Drinking led to stepping in the middle of a fistfight between two Moroi guys and defending Tasha's (ugh) actions at the meeting earlier. Dealing with the aftereffects of drinking - or, okay, of being drunk, had ended up with Lissa and Adrian experiencing some sort of moment together that Rose wasn't thinking of.
Not thinking about it was easier in the morning as Rose tried not to die from the hangover she'd woken up with. The box of perfumes that had been delivered to her room hadn't really helped with the hangover part. Which didn't mean that she hadn't sat down right on the floor of her and Lissa's room to check them all out.
She only kept one and the rest were bundled back into the box to be given back to him. Dealing with the sensory overload of way too many smells plus the headache clouded her senses as she got directions to Adrian's room at the resort, carrying the huge box in front of her.
The hallway outside the room almost reminded her of the hallway at the Arms though at the Arms, she didn't have to remember that Tasha Ozera's room was nearby. She shifted the box in her arms, trying to get so she could knock on the door.
To say Adrian was surprised to see Rose at his door, especially now, would be an understatement. There was something to be said for her timing. Surprised as he was, he still greeted her with a calm, "Little dhampir. Didn't expect to see you here."
"I'm returning these," she said darkly, shoving the big box at him before he could react. "Don't send me any more gifts."
He hadn't been expecting that, either, so his grip on the box wasn't as good as it could have been, and he staggered back a bit. "Didn't you like any of them?" he asked, confused. He knew he'd gotten good stuff for her, or at least he'd tried. "You want me to get you some more?"
"Don't do it again," Rose told him. "I don't want your gifts."
"Rose?" Lissa looked out the door behind Adrian. "Is that you?"
Rose frowned, tugging her hair over her shoulder. Between the hangover and assuming that Lissa was doing something romantic with Christian, Rose'd blocked her out as much as possible this morning so she hadn't even felt her presence. Letting up the blocks, Rose could feel Lissa's surprise at seeing her there. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"What are you doing here?" Lissa shot back.
Not the first time Adrian had been in a situation like this. That was a story for later. "Ladies, ladies. No need to fight over me." Said half to try and change the subject, half because he was Adrian.
"We're not," Rose said, turning her glare on Adrian. "I just want to know what's going on here."
"Me too," Dimitri added from where he'd appeared behind Rose.
Of all the playboy Moroi Dimitri could find Rose (and Lissa, shh) hanging around it would be Adrian Ivashkov. Dimitri felt an instantaneous distrust at the sight of him here at this resort.
Somehow in her overloaded head, Rose had smelled a whiff of aftershave just before Dimitri spoke, and she spun ahead to see him standing behind her.
On the way to Tasha's room, probably.
Dimitri was used to Rose being in trouble, but he didn't have the same expectations of Lissa, and Rose worried about what he'd think of her friend.
This would probably be better if Adrian was a spectator, but it wasn't like he'd done anything wrong. Besides, he was relatively sure the only one who'd try hitting him was Rose.
He just looked sort of amused by the whole thing, waiting to see how this was going to go.
Stepping past Rose, Dimitri entered the room, looking between Lissa, Rose, and Adrian. Somehow, he felt he should have expected something like this, but he never really did.
"Male and female students aren't supposed to be in each other's rooms." There was no doubt he was lumping Adrian into the student column for this sort of activity.
Rose kinda stared at him for a moment, forgetting that St Vlad's had stupid rules about boys and girls sharing a room.
"First of all," Rose argued. "Adrian's not a student. Second -" and she turned to Adrian, obviously annoyed. "How do you keep doing this?"
He had to hear this. "Do what?"
"Keep making us look bad!" she snapped.
At Fandom, here, it didn't matter.
Oh, Rose. "You guys are the ones who came here," Adrian chuckled, looking between her and Lissa. See, did nothing wrong.
"You shouldn't have let them in," scolded Dimitri, narrowing his gaze on Adrian. And to think they'd started almost getting along. "I'm sure you know the rules."
Eh. "Yeah, but I don't have to follow any school's stupid rules," he pointed out.
At Fandom, here, it didn't matter.
"Perhaps not," Dimitri said coldly. "I suppose I should know better than to expect you to respect those rules."
Adrian rolled his eyes. Some things never changed, did they? In fact... "I'm kind of surprised to find you lecturing about underage girls."
If Dimitri had been angry before, well, those dark brown eyes of his could set Adrian on fire now. Apparently it wasn't common knowledge that Dimitri had spent any downtime he took during this trip with a certain older woman.
Still, he maintained his composure and didn't kill Adrian.
"Besides," Adrian went on, like he was oblivious to the fact that he could probably be killed for saying that, "nothing sordid was going on. We were just hanging out."
It wasn't often that he could say he didn't do anything wrong. He was clinging to that right now.
The glare continued, Dimitri's hands clenching into fists at his side. "If you want to 'hang out' with young girls, do it at one of the public areas. And I don't mean taking them to a bar."
There wasn't anything in particular that triggered it, but Adrian found himself laughing at that even if there was nothing funny about it.
"Young girls? Young girls? Sure. Young and old at the same time. They've barely seen anything in life, yet they've already seen too much. One's marked with life, and one's marked with death... but they're the ones you're worried about? Worry about yourself, dhampir. Worry about you, and worry about me. We're the ones who are young."
He said it like every word was completely normal, like there was nothing wrong with anything that had just come out of his mouth. And he really believed it, too.
Rose just stared. She'd kinda expected a lot of things to happen once Dimitri had showed up, but Adrian taking a fast trip down the short road to Crazyville was so not one of them.
Um.
Just like that, it was over. No more weird laugh, no crazy talk. Looking completely normal, he turned to stroll towards the window, pulling out his cigarettes like nothing had just happened.
"You ladies should probably go," he said, looking back at them. "He's right. I am a bad influence."
She exchanged weirded out glances with Lissa as they both turned to go, following Dimitri down the hall and back to the lobby.
"So that was - strange," Rose commented finally. Just because someone had to do it even if it was stating the obvious.
"Very," Dimitri agreed, less angry now and more confused as he wondered if Adrian had a gift or simply drugs.
When they reached the lobby, Rose started to follow Lissa in another direction, but Dimitri felt the need for further discussion about what had just gone down and possibly about what had happened the day before. "Rose," he said. "Can I talk to you?"
Rose gave Lissa a little smile as she felt a rush of sympathetic feeling from her, and she turned to follow Dimitri instead.
A party of Moroi swept past them, obviously leaving to try to find somewhere they considered safer, and Rose got distracted, watching them as she wondered if they'd find it.
"What were you doing hanging out in Adrian Ivashkov's room? And why is he here?"
Even if Dimitri hadn't expected to find Rose in that Moroi's room, he did expect Rose to have answers.
"We hang out sometimes," Rose said, glaring at him then shrugging. Like he could say anything after yesterday. After how he'd reacted just now. "And he's a Moroi royal. I think he gets to be wherever he wants."
But most of the time, she was still on his side, and she added hurriedly, lowering her voice. "He's not the same Adrian that's at home. Or - well, he is, I think, but he's two years older."
Dimitri arched an eyebrow.
Give him a moment to wrap his mind around the idea of a time warping Adrian Ivashkov.
"He's the same--wait." Dimitri jerked his head back toward where they'd just come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?" Someone might be rethinking his radio-listening policy so as not to be blindsided again.
Rose glared at him for a few moments before she hit on the perfect reply. "What happens between him and me is none of your business," she told him, trying to mimic the tone he'd used when commenting about himself and Tasha.
Oh, she knew just how to twist his jealousy, but Dimitri was not above a good retort. "Actually, as long as you're affiliated with the Academy, what you do is my business."
"Not in my personal life," Rose shot back. "You don't have any say in that."
"You're not an adult yet," he snapped.
"Close enough," she told him heatedly. "And it's not like I'll magically become an adult on my eighteenth birthday."
"Clearly," he said, allowing one simple word to convey the most personal meaning.
Rose looked down, blushing. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant - "
Dimitri frowned at himself for shaming her. "I know what you meant," he sighed. "And the technicalities don't matter right now. You're a student. I'm your instructor." It was good to remind them both of those facts. "It's my job to help you and to keep you safe. Being in the bedroom of someone like him is not safe."
"I can handle Adrian Ivashkov. He's totally weird, but he's harmless," she grumbled under her breath.
He'd just pulled her away to talk to though, and not Lissa, and Rose was wondering just a little if Dimitri was actually jealous. It was a good thought, but then she wondered again why he'd just happened to be wandering by.
"Sooo, speaking of personal lives...guess you were off visiting Tasha, huh?"
It seemed to Dimitri that Rose couldn't go five minutes into a conversation without mentioning Tasha these days. "Actually, I was visiting your mother."
It was an excellent observation of his. Almost like he was a trained observer.
"What, you going to hook up with her too?"
He clearly wasn't, but she couldn't let the snark go.
Yes, he wanted the mother-daughter combo. Dimitri shot her a weary look. "No, we were looking over some new data about the Strigoi in the Drozdov attack."
Oh shit. All of Rose's anger and pissyness left, and everything that had happened over the past few days seemed trivial. She was being an idiot and standing here arguing with Dimitri about stupid romances when he and other guardians were trying to protect them.
"What'd you find out?" she asked quietly, not expecting him to tell her much.
He really shouldn't tell her anything, but Dimitri trusted Rose as an accomplished novice under his tutelage. "We've managed to track some of the Strigoi," he said. "Or at least the humans with them. Witnesses spotted a few of the cars the group used. The plates were from all different states--the group appears to have split up, probably to make it harder for us. But one of the witnesses did catch one plate number. It's registered to an address in Spokane."
"Spokane?" Rose's jaw dropped. Spokane was a boring little town that she'd been to once. "Why would they be there?? Spokane, Washington?"
"Shopping," Dimitri deadpanned. "The address was fake, but other evidence shows they really are there. There's a kind of shopping plaza that has some underground tunnels. There've been Strigoi sightings around that area."
"So..." Rose frowned. "Are you going to go after them? Or somebody is, right? This is what Tasha's been saying all along. We know where they are so if we just go..."
Dimitri shook his head, how he wished it was that easy sometimes. "The guardians can't do anything without permission from higher up. That's not going to happen anytime soon."
"The Moroi talk too much," Rose said, sighing.
"They're just cautious," he said.
"But - come on," Rose said, feeling her temper start to flare up again. "You actually know where Strigoi are hiding out. Strigoi who massacred children. You can't want to be careful on this one. Don't you want to go after them right now? When they least expect it?"
She - sounded a little bit like Mason there.
"It's not that easy, Rose," Dimitri said, knowing why she would respond to this so viscerally. "We answer to the Guardian Council and the Moroi government. We can't just run off and act on impulse. And anyway, we don't know everything yet. You should never walk into any situation without knowing all the details."
"You're sounding Zen again," she sighed, tugging her hair over her shoulder. She looked way up at him, trying to see what he was thinking. "So why'd you tell me this stuff anyway? Not usually the type of thing novices get in on."
Dimitri considered what he could say to explain this properly and his expression softened to match his lightly accented words. "I've said a few things...the other day and today...that I shouldn't have. Things that insulted your age. You're seventeen...but you're capable of handling and processing the same things as those much older than you." Or at least, he believed she was.
Rose took a quick breath, feeling her heart beat faster. "Really?"
He nodded, "You're still really young in a lot of ways--and act young--but the only way to really change that is to treat you like an adult. I need to do that more. I know you'll take this information and understand how important it is and keep it to yourself." Because obviously it wasn't something anyone else would approve of him sharing with her.
"Dimka," came a pleasant voice as Tasha Ozera walked up to where anyone would notice Dimitri standing. She placed a hand on Dimitri's forearm, sliding her fingers over the leather of his coat.
Anyone would also notice the wave of Tasha's jet-black hair and the raised purplish scars marring her left cheek. Their shape and formation looked very much like someone had bitten into and torn out part of her cheek, which, was exactly what had happened.
Still beautiful as ever despite her scars, Tasha smiled upon noticing Rose. "Hello, Rose."
Rose had been about to be respond to what he was saying. The idea that he'd talk to her like an equal and - okay, being told she acted young sucked, but the rest sounded really good.
And then Tasha came up with her pet names and being able to touch Dimitri without worrying about it, and her mood hit rock bottom again. "Hey," she said, barely on the edge of polite.
"You've got that look," Tasha told Dimitri.
"What look?" he asked, smiling almost playfully down at her.
"That look that says you're going to be on duty all day."
"Really? I have a look like that?" Dimitri asked teasingly, his eyes sparkling in amusement.
She nodded. "When does your shift technically end?"
Dimitri gave her a sheepish look, knowing Tasha would not like his answer. "An hour ago." Even on vacation he worked 'round the clock.
"You can't keep doing this," Tasha groaned, tugging on his arm. "You need a break."
"Well...if you consider that I'm always Lissa's guardian..." Dimitri knew it was the only way to win this constant argument about his duty.
"For now," she said knowingly. "There's a big pool tournament going on upstairs."
"I can't," he said, but he was still smiling and really wishing he had the free time for it. "Even though I haven't played in a long time..."
Rose watched their interplay, trying not to show how much she was fuming, how much she wanted him to relax his guardian persona with her instead of always being the perfect guardian and instructor. At home - at Fandom, he acted like that sometimes, when he'd baked the bread or she'd coaxed him into coming with her on the training runs, but here she wasn't even someone he could share a smile with.
She hated Tasha Ozera so much. It didn't even matter that he'd just told her he wanted to treat her like an adult. He obviously didn't mean it when it came to this.
"Come on, then," Tasha begged, oblivious to Rose and her issues. "Just one round! We could take them all."
"I can't," he repeated, the twinge of regret slipping into his voice. "Not with everything going on." It seemed no matter where Dimitri was, there was some duty to keep him from relaxing.
Tasha sobered a little. "No. I suppose not." Glancing at Rose, she said teasingly, "I hope you realize what a hard-core role model you have here. He's never off duty."
"Well," Rose said, tilting her head and answering in the same annoyingly sweet tone Tasha had used earlier. "For now, at least."
Bitch.
While Tasha may have looked puzzled by the comment, Dimitri knew exactly what Rose was doing, and didn't appreciate it, especially right after their talk. "We're finished here, Rose. Remember what I said."
"Yeah," Rose answered dully, turning away from them.
Dimitri's look told her he'd noticed what she'd done, and she realised right away that she'd totally killed whatever progress she'd made as an adult.
Yeah.
[ Day 1 A B | Day 2 A B | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 A B | Day 7 A B C | Day 8 | Day 9 A B | Day 10 | NFB, NFI, OOC gets cake! Preplayed with the dynamic duo of guardianborn and whos_got_spirit and LOOK, THERE REALLY IS A TASHA!]