True Love
Part Three: Unconditional
Rating: R
Summary: Between a rock and a hard place.
A/n: part three of four.
"Lena," he gasped, his tired arms collapsing under his own strained weight. Vanya felt stifled between the heat of their breath, of their bodies - between tangled limbs and jumbled sheets, he was suffocating. "H-how many..." he faltered, starved for oxygen, "how many times was that, Lena?" he asked. The only thing left that needed stroking, after all, was his ego.
Blushing furiously, Alaina rolled over, burrowing her face in her haphazard stack of pillows. "Five," she groaned, "and a half."
"A half?" Puzzled, he sat up, sheets pooling around his slim hips. "Oh, right..." He remembered fondly, now that enough blood had circulated back into his brain. He beamed, despite himself. "If you like, I'll make it up after dinner, but," he glanced at the ornate clock, ticking away on the mantle, "we should leave soon. I don't want to be late."
Another moan escaped between the voluminous pillows and Alaina forced herself onto an elbow, a curtain of dark tangles framing her face. The blotchy red on her cheeks had spread, meeting in a terrible clash with the bruise on her temple, forming a dark, intriguing front, like thunderheads during the violent peak of sundown. Vanya spared her another moment of appreciation before sliding out of bed, leaving her behind.
Only after he had disappeared behind the bathroom door did Alaina finally extract herself from the mess they had made. She dithered, dangling her feet just inches above the plush rug - an import from the south, it still smelled of jasmine from that time she had spilled a bottle of perfume and it had soaked all the way through to the floor.
Although it had long since faded, the sting of the subsequent bruise pounded blindingly through Alaina's ribs at the memory.
Standing - still naked - before her vanity, she listened idly to Vanya singing in the shower. He has such a lovely singing voice, she thought. She loved to listen to him hum in the morning, as he went about his routine, voice cracking in exhaustion; when they would go for walks together, he would sing under his breath - around the holidays, his gruff voice transformed into a cheerful medley of Christmas hymns, spattered of course with the usual pagan chants. But her favorite thing in the world was when Vanya, in the middle of the night, would pull her close and sing her to sleep. He crooned, smooth and exquisite into her ear the songs of old - the kind of thing a person might be arrested for on the street. His voice would dip and rise and ebb and surge with all the muted passion of the Royalist lullabies, tales of flurried snow and grand carriages and elegant sashes. Of course, these ancient tunes always ended in a note of sadness, but she usually fell asleep before he got to that part.
Alaina was mostly dressed by the time Vanya emerged from the master bath, steam billowing into the room behind him. As he toweled himself off by the bed, he observed her with a calculating eye: he was ever critical of her taste for modern fashion, consistently torn between the glory of her figure and the sheer lack of dignity that accompanied such immodesty. It could be worse, he often told himself. She could dress like a common whore.
But tonight, he really felt nothing but proud of her: she was draped in the magnificent plum gown he had bought her on a lonely trip to Paris, and it fit her snugly, shimmering even in the dim light of their bedroom. Only half-dressed, he approached her from behind, kissing her neck and saying, "You look stunning," before fastening a layered pearl choker around her slender neck. It did not slip his notice, the stark contrast between their skin. Against any other man, Alaina would be divine - that never-tired adage of peaches and cream. But compared to Vanya's arrant pallor, she might well be a Macedonian goddess of old. To further abstract them, her hair - dark and down as raven feathers - cascaded over her bare shoulders in big, loose curls. His own hair was nearly as light as his skin, the strands fine and silky but unnaturally fair. He glanced at their joined reflection in her mirror; total opposites, in every way.
From afar, he continued to watch her as she applied her makeup. Fascinated, he kept his eyes glued to her as he fastened his belt buckle, watching Alaina apply - of all things - orange lipstick to the right side of her face.
"What are you doing that for?" he inquired, genuinely curious. For one thing, he couldn't imagine the demand for a lipstick in that garish shade; for another, what use did it have on the side of her face?
"Oh," she said, matter-of-factly, "it hides the bruises very well. Like this," she demonstrated, wincing a little as she rubbed the color into her battered skin, "you see?" And sure enough, as if by magic, the bruises faded from sight, soon to be completely masked behind a masterpiece of foundation and powder.
In the very depths of his stomach, Vanya felt for the first time a twinge of guilt. It hurt him to see her flinch as she tried to hide the evidence of his most recent outburst. He turned his attention uneasily to his leather shoes, then, regretting how often he procrastinated polishing them. Anyone else would find them lustrous and attractive - but Vanya's standards tended to be of a different class. By the time he'd finished with his black dinner jacket, he was tucking a plum kerchief into his breast pocket - to match Alaina's dress, of course.
"It's somewhat cool outside," he warned her, unable for some reason to meet her smoky eyes in the mirror. "You might wear a scarf." It was strange, this rotten feeling that had nestled in the pit of his gut. And stranger was how genuinely happy and at ease Alaina seemed to be, a far cry from her usual brooding state.
"Alright," she smiled warmly at him, and his heart sank. She disappeared into their shared walk-in, declaring, "I shall wear one of yours!"
He wondered if she was quite serious as he listened to her dig through his half of the closet, all manner of silks and furs and wools rustling against one another. At last she appeared, his finest black cashmere draped around her shoulders, winding more tightly around her neck. On anyone else, it would have looked downright stupid, but in her way, Alaina carried it well. She was aglow, still basking in what had been, avoiding what was to be.
Vanya shrugged. "I'll allow it," he said.
On the street, Alaina was surprised to find herself being led into the black Mercedes, Vanya holding the door for her like a real gentleman. "We are not walking?" she asked.
"Not in those shoes," he nodded at her dainty feet, clad in daunting stilettos - the kind she never wore around the house. "I wouldn't do that to you," he said, only half-teasing her. "You have everything?" he asked, fitting the key into the ignition and revving the engine.
Alaina scanned through her clutch, trying very hard to ignore the pleasantness of the car purring underneath her and nodded. She sat back, otherwise relaxed but for her hand, hidden between door and seat, knuckles white from digging into the leather interior. There was something inexplicably sexy about Vanya when he drove. Perhaps it was his gloved hands, the way they manfully caressed the steering wheel; just as easily, it could be the intensity of his focus, the heavy silence he imposed within the car, russet eyes tuned strictly onto the road. In all likelihood though, it was the rarity of it, the novelty of seeing Vanya behind the wheel, for more often than not, they walked through the city, hardly making use of the fine car.
Alaina shifted in her seat, constantly avoiding biting her glossed lips. There were two types of dinners with Vanya: those she enjoyed, and those she did not. Tonight was likely to be one of the latter, as it was a dinner with a colleague and - presumably - his wife. Of course, sometimes the 'wife' was really a working girl in wife's clothing, but being that she had no ring of her own to speak of, Alaina felt it wasn't her place to know or care about those details.
Whenever they went out alone, Vanya was a fabulous date. As a conversationalist, he exceeded all expectation, again and again and again: he was well-versed in many subjects, wide and varied. He had an impeccable way of making the person he was speaking with feel very important, while still maintaining a degree of affable superiority. Besides, his sense of humor was witty and dry, and Alaina appreciated the extra three seconds it usually took for one of his punchlines to sink in.
When on these business affairs, however, Vanya became a startlingly staunch dinner companion - at least, from where Alaina sat. He was everything mentioned before, for their added guest, ignoring Alaina and all but sweeping her to one side, leaving her to terse and usually awkward conversation with the stand-in Missus. It was not a place she enjoyed being put, but nonetheless, he put her there.
At the restaurant, they parked and sat in the car for a moment, steeping in the last of the evening's silence. Vanya turned then, and without warning, he planted a kiss on Alaina's cheek; it was a paltry thing, gentle and sweet. She touched the skin there, for it felt as if it were tingling deep below the surface. When she turned to ask him for an explanation however, he was already out of the car, making his way over to her door to let her out.
It wasn't to be spoken of, then. Like so many things in her life, it would remain an unfathomable mystery, one of an endless set relating to this man of hers.
Inside, the atmosphere was warm and jovial, a pinkish glow emanating from the chandeliers overhead, Austrian crystal jingling amiably. There was a low din that hummed throughout the place, as conversations swelled into one another, a meaningless blur to the casual bystander. They were escorted to their reserved table and received by their guests: the man, a husky fellow by the name of Joseph, greeted them with a booming voice, and went so far as to kiss Alaina's hand. Alaina had to physically restrain herself from gagging. His wife - who appeared to be the real deal, if the gold band on her finger was any indication - was a frail, mousy woman, and seemed to be the polar opposite of her boisterous husband, nodding politely at Alaina and smiling, only seating herself after everyone else. Alaina noticed that the missus didn't seem at all offended by her husband's habit of hand-kissing, a gentle contrast to Vanya, who was visibly annoyed, his mouth a thin line.
When the wine had been brought out, Vanya did the honors of testing it, swilling a crimson sample around his glass, inhaling the pungent scent. After a protracted taste, savoring the bouquet as he pleased, he pronounced it satisfactory. The poor waiter who had served them the bottle looked as though he were on the verge of breaking a sweat, waiting for Vanya's approval; Vanya had that effect on people, Alaina knew best of all. Once the wine had been poured and the waiter had disappeared, Alaina watched as Joseph tucked his magnificent silver case, sleek and modern in the style of the Red Army generals.
This dinner was, for the most part, the usual political affair for Vanya. He was climbing that most complicated ladder, that of the social hierarchy of academia, striving for tenure. As Alaina understood it, this was a court of stranger and more complex etiquettes than that of ballrooms and bureaucracy. Grace and charm might only get one so far: in order to succeed at the game Vanya was playing, one must be willing to risk hiding their impunity behind courtesy, and to masquerade as one man while really being another - all without ever uttering a real lie. Fortunately, that was the kind of thing Vanya was good at, due mostly to his dual nature, his innate aloofness.
At that point, the missus - Emilie - excused herself to the powder room, and in an unforeseen act of kindness, invited Alaina to join her. Saving herself the torture of listening to the men garble about politics and professional gossip, she accepted the offer, taking Emilie's arm into her own in acquiescence. When they had slipped through the door, Emilie took a seat on one of the plush chairs, ignoring the row of lit mirrors.
"I thought you might enjoy a few minutes away from that dull business," she said, smiling. She was a beautiful woman, but the years she had over Alaina showed around the edges of her thin face. "You know, making contacts, forging alliances and all that." She shook her head dismissively.
Nodding, Alaina took a seat at the little table, trying not to drum her fingers on it.
"It's funny, how they pretend not to know," mused the gorgeously blonde Emilie, grey eyes twinkling with amusement. "I can be certain, I think, that Mr. Vanya must have complained quite as much Joseph on the way here."
"No," Alaina defended him, though not meanly, "but only because he'd never say it out loud." She smirked, thinking of the sickened expression that had plagued his face on the ride over. She could imagine him, grumbling quietly to himself in the shower over what he was about to do. For him, pride was a matter of life and death, and these staged social outings forced him to tread dangerously along the line between his dignity and outright humiliation - publicly, at that.
"Well, he is the better man then." Emilie examined her reflection in one of the mirrors behind Alaina's head, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. A younger woman might have attempted to resculpt the entire bun. A moment of silence passed between them, and it was difficult for Alaina, who could not sense if there was tension or not. But, if there hadn't been, Emilie's next inquiry made it so. "You aren't Mrs. Vanya, are you Alaina?" She glanced pointedly down at Alaina's ring finger, pristine and bare.
"No," she said, averting her eyes.
"It is odd," Emilie noted, "how he treats you as if you were. I've seen a lot of girls like you in my time, girls like you with men like him." Her tone was rife with the hollow wisdom of the disappointed housewife, the woman who had never imagined thirty and who was swiftly approaching forty.
Alaina shook her head in gentle defiance. "Maybe you've seen a lot of girls like me. In fact, I don't doubt it. But..." she hesitated, praying that she would not screw Vanya with her vindication, "but you've never seen them with a man like my Vanya, because you've never known a man like him. I know how he must seem, on this stage, in this role," she gestured vaguely at the restaurant, "but he is more than that. So much more." And that was where Alaina stopped herself, for she could feel her voice beginning to rise, and she would not make herself out to be what she wasn't.
Never taking her eyes from the impassioned girl in front of her, Emilie sighed. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to assume. And it isn't my place, but, you remind me so much of myself, ten or twelve years ago." She offered Alaina a withered, genuine smile. "Beware of wedding rings for a while yet, Miss Alaina," she chuckled, "for too often they turn out to be gilded shackles." And with that, she rose from the seat, signaling that it was time to return to the dinner table. The appetizers awaited them when they arrived.
"I hope you don't mind," Joseph grinned, "but we took the pleasure of ordering for you ladies! We trust ourselves to know what you like." Judging from the shadow of disappointment that glanced over Emilie's face, Joseph had guessed wrong. Vanya, however, had ordered with impetuous accuracy, and Alaina loved him the more for it.
Selecting his second cigarette of the evening, Joseph offered one to Vanya. With once glance inside the fashionable case, he politely declined, shaking his head. "I prefer mine unfiltered," he explained.
Joseph laughed heartily, obscenely, digging into his food without any tact. "It would seem you cannot take the savage out of the man!" he joked, callous and inconsiderate.
Vanya did not so much as raise an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said coldly, dismissing the comment on his decidedly mixed heritage. Of course, only Alaina could see the gears of his mind ticking along, the way his fingers itched to run self-consciously through his bright, unusual hair. In that moment, she hated this Joseph, sympathized for Emilie (who looked most off-put by her husband's insensitive remark), and most of all, she yearned dearly to comfort Vanya. He had always been sensitive not only about his appearance, but of its origin as well.
This man, Joseph, with his feminine cigarettes and his obnoxious laugh, had affronted Vanya, and through him, Alaina. She decided she would not speak with him for the rest of the night, if it could be helped.
The food was actually quite good, the introductory bisque savory and delicate; the bread was of a fine, soft grain that practically melted across the palette. Unfortunately, it was difficult to properly enjoy it, what with Joseph and his wise cracks and his unbecoming table manners. How could Vanya stand these people, she wondered. Why did he subjugate himself to such torture? It was not like him to demean himself, even for a title. Then again, this Joseph was different from the rest. Usually, watching interactions between Vanya and a comrade from work was easy and dull, for neither said what they really meant. But Joseph was loud and boorish and - if Alaina said so herself - rather pigheaded.
How does she come home to him every night? Alaina wondered of Emilie. But then, her eyes caught the sparkling diamonds around the woman's neck, and her nose got a whiff of the expensive perfume that adorned her collar. Alaina nodded quietly to herself, acknowledging the tired look at the edges of Emilie's seasoned eyes. Marry for money, she thought, and you earn every cent.
Unable to cheapen himself any further, Vanya cut the meeting short just shy of the cheesecake. He made some infallible excuse, pulled from an obscure corner of his mind in case of such an emergency. Proper as he was, he could be impetuously curt in the face of such indolent company as these two, and besides, he hated to watch Alaina suffer through these affairs. It was bad enough she was usually bored out of her skull, unable to get a leg in the conversation. Most of his colleagues were still of the archaic opinion that women could not possibly cram any thoughts outside of homestead and hapless indulgence inside their tiny little minds, and though he vehemently disagreed, it was not his place to object...yet. That's what all this was for, after all; he would feign subservience until someday, he too would be free to voice his opinions aloud - opinions that would inevitably be rendered obsolete by the irony of time.
That's life, he thought, getting into the car. There's no getting around it. He cringed, recalling how many times he had wanted desperately to clout Joseph over the head with his china, if only to knock a bit of sense into him. They're ignorant, all of them, he thought, bitterly, and someday this chronic ignorance will germinate into terminal stupidity. He gnashed his teeth quietly, eyes narrowed as he focused on the road, fingers gripping the steering wheel like talons. He'd forgotten to put on his gloves.
"Are you alright?" Alaina asked. She was concerned for him, but she also didn't feel like having the bruise on the side of her face made into a set. Timidly, she placed a hand on his thigh, still, without intent.
He smiled all the same. "I am fine, princessa. Let's get home and have dessert." He could see in her face that her thoughts ran to coffee and some cake. He thought it only considerate to correct her, lest she find herself irrevocably surprised. "I said I would make it up to you," he reminded her.
"Oh..." she said absentmindedly. Then, "Oh." She tried very hard not to giggle the rest of the way to the apartment, if only to preserve her integrity as a lady.
Not that it would count for much, before the night was out.
Rating: R
Summary: Between a rock and a hard place.
A/n: part three of four.
"Lena," he gasped, his tired arms collapsing under his own strained weight. Vanya felt stifled between the heat of their breath, of their bodies - between tangled limbs and jumbled sheets, he was suffocating. "H-how many..." he faltered, starved for oxygen, "how many times was that, Lena?" he asked. The only thing left that needed stroking, after all, was his ego.
Blushing furiously, Alaina rolled over, burrowing her face in her haphazard stack of pillows. "Five," she groaned, "and a half."
"A half?" Puzzled, he sat up, sheets pooling around his slim hips. "Oh, right..." He remembered fondly, now that enough blood had circulated back into his brain. He beamed, despite himself. "If you like, I'll make it up after dinner, but," he glanced at the ornate clock, ticking away on the mantle, "we should leave soon. I don't want to be late."
Another moan escaped between the voluminous pillows and Alaina forced herself onto an elbow, a curtain of dark tangles framing her face. The blotchy red on her cheeks had spread, meeting in a terrible clash with the bruise on her temple, forming a dark, intriguing front, like thunderheads during the violent peak of sundown. Vanya spared her another moment of appreciation before sliding out of bed, leaving her behind.
Only after he had disappeared behind the bathroom door did Alaina finally extract herself from the mess they had made. She dithered, dangling her feet just inches above the plush rug - an import from the south, it still smelled of jasmine from that time she had spilled a bottle of perfume and it had soaked all the way through to the floor.
Although it had long since faded, the sting of the subsequent bruise pounded blindingly through Alaina's ribs at the memory.
Standing - still naked - before her vanity, she listened idly to Vanya singing in the shower. He has such a lovely singing voice, she thought. She loved to listen to him hum in the morning, as he went about his routine, voice cracking in exhaustion; when they would go for walks together, he would sing under his breath - around the holidays, his gruff voice transformed into a cheerful medley of Christmas hymns, spattered of course with the usual pagan chants. But her favorite thing in the world was when Vanya, in the middle of the night, would pull her close and sing her to sleep. He crooned, smooth and exquisite into her ear the songs of old - the kind of thing a person might be arrested for on the street. His voice would dip and rise and ebb and surge with all the muted passion of the Royalist lullabies, tales of flurried snow and grand carriages and elegant sashes. Of course, these ancient tunes always ended in a note of sadness, but she usually fell asleep before he got to that part.
Alaina was mostly dressed by the time Vanya emerged from the master bath, steam billowing into the room behind him. As he toweled himself off by the bed, he observed her with a calculating eye: he was ever critical of her taste for modern fashion, consistently torn between the glory of her figure and the sheer lack of dignity that accompanied such immodesty. It could be worse, he often told himself. She could dress like a common whore.
But tonight, he really felt nothing but proud of her: she was draped in the magnificent plum gown he had bought her on a lonely trip to Paris, and it fit her snugly, shimmering even in the dim light of their bedroom. Only half-dressed, he approached her from behind, kissing her neck and saying, "You look stunning," before fastening a layered pearl choker around her slender neck. It did not slip his notice, the stark contrast between their skin. Against any other man, Alaina would be divine - that never-tired adage of peaches and cream. But compared to Vanya's arrant pallor, she might well be a Macedonian goddess of old. To further abstract them, her hair - dark and down as raven feathers - cascaded over her bare shoulders in big, loose curls. His own hair was nearly as light as his skin, the strands fine and silky but unnaturally fair. He glanced at their joined reflection in her mirror; total opposites, in every way.
From afar, he continued to watch her as she applied her makeup. Fascinated, he kept his eyes glued to her as he fastened his belt buckle, watching Alaina apply - of all things - orange lipstick to the right side of her face.
"What are you doing that for?" he inquired, genuinely curious. For one thing, he couldn't imagine the demand for a lipstick in that garish shade; for another, what use did it have on the side of her face?
"Oh," she said, matter-of-factly, "it hides the bruises very well. Like this," she demonstrated, wincing a little as she rubbed the color into her battered skin, "you see?" And sure enough, as if by magic, the bruises faded from sight, soon to be completely masked behind a masterpiece of foundation and powder.
In the very depths of his stomach, Vanya felt for the first time a twinge of guilt. It hurt him to see her flinch as she tried to hide the evidence of his most recent outburst. He turned his attention uneasily to his leather shoes, then, regretting how often he procrastinated polishing them. Anyone else would find them lustrous and attractive - but Vanya's standards tended to be of a different class. By the time he'd finished with his black dinner jacket, he was tucking a plum kerchief into his breast pocket - to match Alaina's dress, of course.
"It's somewhat cool outside," he warned her, unable for some reason to meet her smoky eyes in the mirror. "You might wear a scarf." It was strange, this rotten feeling that had nestled in the pit of his gut. And stranger was how genuinely happy and at ease Alaina seemed to be, a far cry from her usual brooding state.
"Alright," she smiled warmly at him, and his heart sank. She disappeared into their shared walk-in, declaring, "I shall wear one of yours!"
He wondered if she was quite serious as he listened to her dig through his half of the closet, all manner of silks and furs and wools rustling against one another. At last she appeared, his finest black cashmere draped around her shoulders, winding more tightly around her neck. On anyone else, it would have looked downright stupid, but in her way, Alaina carried it well. She was aglow, still basking in what had been, avoiding what was to be.
Vanya shrugged. "I'll allow it," he said.
On the street, Alaina was surprised to find herself being led into the black Mercedes, Vanya holding the door for her like a real gentleman. "We are not walking?" she asked.
"Not in those shoes," he nodded at her dainty feet, clad in daunting stilettos - the kind she never wore around the house. "I wouldn't do that to you," he said, only half-teasing her. "You have everything?" he asked, fitting the key into the ignition and revving the engine.
Alaina scanned through her clutch, trying very hard to ignore the pleasantness of the car purring underneath her and nodded. She sat back, otherwise relaxed but for her hand, hidden between door and seat, knuckles white from digging into the leather interior. There was something inexplicably sexy about Vanya when he drove. Perhaps it was his gloved hands, the way they manfully caressed the steering wheel; just as easily, it could be the intensity of his focus, the heavy silence he imposed within the car, russet eyes tuned strictly onto the road. In all likelihood though, it was the rarity of it, the novelty of seeing Vanya behind the wheel, for more often than not, they walked through the city, hardly making use of the fine car.
Alaina shifted in her seat, constantly avoiding biting her glossed lips. There were two types of dinners with Vanya: those she enjoyed, and those she did not. Tonight was likely to be one of the latter, as it was a dinner with a colleague and - presumably - his wife. Of course, sometimes the 'wife' was really a working girl in wife's clothing, but being that she had no ring of her own to speak of, Alaina felt it wasn't her place to know or care about those details.
Whenever they went out alone, Vanya was a fabulous date. As a conversationalist, he exceeded all expectation, again and again and again: he was well-versed in many subjects, wide and varied. He had an impeccable way of making the person he was speaking with feel very important, while still maintaining a degree of affable superiority. Besides, his sense of humor was witty and dry, and Alaina appreciated the extra three seconds it usually took for one of his punchlines to sink in.
When on these business affairs, however, Vanya became a startlingly staunch dinner companion - at least, from where Alaina sat. He was everything mentioned before, for their added guest, ignoring Alaina and all but sweeping her to one side, leaving her to terse and usually awkward conversation with the stand-in Missus. It was not a place she enjoyed being put, but nonetheless, he put her there.
At the restaurant, they parked and sat in the car for a moment, steeping in the last of the evening's silence. Vanya turned then, and without warning, he planted a kiss on Alaina's cheek; it was a paltry thing, gentle and sweet. She touched the skin there, for it felt as if it were tingling deep below the surface. When she turned to ask him for an explanation however, he was already out of the car, making his way over to her door to let her out.
It wasn't to be spoken of, then. Like so many things in her life, it would remain an unfathomable mystery, one of an endless set relating to this man of hers.
Inside, the atmosphere was warm and jovial, a pinkish glow emanating from the chandeliers overhead, Austrian crystal jingling amiably. There was a low din that hummed throughout the place, as conversations swelled into one another, a meaningless blur to the casual bystander. They were escorted to their reserved table and received by their guests: the man, a husky fellow by the name of Joseph, greeted them with a booming voice, and went so far as to kiss Alaina's hand. Alaina had to physically restrain herself from gagging. His wife - who appeared to be the real deal, if the gold band on her finger was any indication - was a frail, mousy woman, and seemed to be the polar opposite of her boisterous husband, nodding politely at Alaina and smiling, only seating herself after everyone else. Alaina noticed that the missus didn't seem at all offended by her husband's habit of hand-kissing, a gentle contrast to Vanya, who was visibly annoyed, his mouth a thin line.
When the wine had been brought out, Vanya did the honors of testing it, swilling a crimson sample around his glass, inhaling the pungent scent. After a protracted taste, savoring the bouquet as he pleased, he pronounced it satisfactory. The poor waiter who had served them the bottle looked as though he were on the verge of breaking a sweat, waiting for Vanya's approval; Vanya had that effect on people, Alaina knew best of all. Once the wine had been poured and the waiter had disappeared, Alaina watched as Joseph tucked his magnificent silver case, sleek and modern in the style of the Red Army generals.
This dinner was, for the most part, the usual political affair for Vanya. He was climbing that most complicated ladder, that of the social hierarchy of academia, striving for tenure. As Alaina understood it, this was a court of stranger and more complex etiquettes than that of ballrooms and bureaucracy. Grace and charm might only get one so far: in order to succeed at the game Vanya was playing, one must be willing to risk hiding their impunity behind courtesy, and to masquerade as one man while really being another - all without ever uttering a real lie. Fortunately, that was the kind of thing Vanya was good at, due mostly to his dual nature, his innate aloofness.
At that point, the missus - Emilie - excused herself to the powder room, and in an unforeseen act of kindness, invited Alaina to join her. Saving herself the torture of listening to the men garble about politics and professional gossip, she accepted the offer, taking Emilie's arm into her own in acquiescence. When they had slipped through the door, Emilie took a seat on one of the plush chairs, ignoring the row of lit mirrors.
"I thought you might enjoy a few minutes away from that dull business," she said, smiling. She was a beautiful woman, but the years she had over Alaina showed around the edges of her thin face. "You know, making contacts, forging alliances and all that." She shook her head dismissively.
Nodding, Alaina took a seat at the little table, trying not to drum her fingers on it.
"It's funny, how they pretend not to know," mused the gorgeously blonde Emilie, grey eyes twinkling with amusement. "I can be certain, I think, that Mr. Vanya must have complained quite as much Joseph on the way here."
"No," Alaina defended him, though not meanly, "but only because he'd never say it out loud." She smirked, thinking of the sickened expression that had plagued his face on the ride over. She could imagine him, grumbling quietly to himself in the shower over what he was about to do. For him, pride was a matter of life and death, and these staged social outings forced him to tread dangerously along the line between his dignity and outright humiliation - publicly, at that.
"Well, he is the better man then." Emilie examined her reflection in one of the mirrors behind Alaina's head, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. A younger woman might have attempted to resculpt the entire bun. A moment of silence passed between them, and it was difficult for Alaina, who could not sense if there was tension or not. But, if there hadn't been, Emilie's next inquiry made it so. "You aren't Mrs. Vanya, are you Alaina?" She glanced pointedly down at Alaina's ring finger, pristine and bare.
"No," she said, averting her eyes.
"It is odd," Emilie noted, "how he treats you as if you were. I've seen a lot of girls like you in my time, girls like you with men like him." Her tone was rife with the hollow wisdom of the disappointed housewife, the woman who had never imagined thirty and who was swiftly approaching forty.
Alaina shook her head in gentle defiance. "Maybe you've seen a lot of girls like me. In fact, I don't doubt it. But..." she hesitated, praying that she would not screw Vanya with her vindication, "but you've never seen them with a man like my Vanya, because you've never known a man like him. I know how he must seem, on this stage, in this role," she gestured vaguely at the restaurant, "but he is more than that. So much more." And that was where Alaina stopped herself, for she could feel her voice beginning to rise, and she would not make herself out to be what she wasn't.
Never taking her eyes from the impassioned girl in front of her, Emilie sighed. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to assume. And it isn't my place, but, you remind me so much of myself, ten or twelve years ago." She offered Alaina a withered, genuine smile. "Beware of wedding rings for a while yet, Miss Alaina," she chuckled, "for too often they turn out to be gilded shackles." And with that, she rose from the seat, signaling that it was time to return to the dinner table. The appetizers awaited them when they arrived.
"I hope you don't mind," Joseph grinned, "but we took the pleasure of ordering for you ladies! We trust ourselves to know what you like." Judging from the shadow of disappointment that glanced over Emilie's face, Joseph had guessed wrong. Vanya, however, had ordered with impetuous accuracy, and Alaina loved him the more for it.
Selecting his second cigarette of the evening, Joseph offered one to Vanya. With once glance inside the fashionable case, he politely declined, shaking his head. "I prefer mine unfiltered," he explained.
Joseph laughed heartily, obscenely, digging into his food without any tact. "It would seem you cannot take the savage out of the man!" he joked, callous and inconsiderate.
Vanya did not so much as raise an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said coldly, dismissing the comment on his decidedly mixed heritage. Of course, only Alaina could see the gears of his mind ticking along, the way his fingers itched to run self-consciously through his bright, unusual hair. In that moment, she hated this Joseph, sympathized for Emilie (who looked most off-put by her husband's insensitive remark), and most of all, she yearned dearly to comfort Vanya. He had always been sensitive not only about his appearance, but of its origin as well.
This man, Joseph, with his feminine cigarettes and his obnoxious laugh, had affronted Vanya, and through him, Alaina. She decided she would not speak with him for the rest of the night, if it could be helped.
The food was actually quite good, the introductory bisque savory and delicate; the bread was of a fine, soft grain that practically melted across the palette. Unfortunately, it was difficult to properly enjoy it, what with Joseph and his wise cracks and his unbecoming table manners. How could Vanya stand these people, she wondered. Why did he subjugate himself to such torture? It was not like him to demean himself, even for a title. Then again, this Joseph was different from the rest. Usually, watching interactions between Vanya and a comrade from work was easy and dull, for neither said what they really meant. But Joseph was loud and boorish and - if Alaina said so herself - rather pigheaded.
How does she come home to him every night? Alaina wondered of Emilie. But then, her eyes caught the sparkling diamonds around the woman's neck, and her nose got a whiff of the expensive perfume that adorned her collar. Alaina nodded quietly to herself, acknowledging the tired look at the edges of Emilie's seasoned eyes. Marry for money, she thought, and you earn every cent.
Unable to cheapen himself any further, Vanya cut the meeting short just shy of the cheesecake. He made some infallible excuse, pulled from an obscure corner of his mind in case of such an emergency. Proper as he was, he could be impetuously curt in the face of such indolent company as these two, and besides, he hated to watch Alaina suffer through these affairs. It was bad enough she was usually bored out of her skull, unable to get a leg in the conversation. Most of his colleagues were still of the archaic opinion that women could not possibly cram any thoughts outside of homestead and hapless indulgence inside their tiny little minds, and though he vehemently disagreed, it was not his place to object...yet. That's what all this was for, after all; he would feign subservience until someday, he too would be free to voice his opinions aloud - opinions that would inevitably be rendered obsolete by the irony of time.
That's life, he thought, getting into the car. There's no getting around it. He cringed, recalling how many times he had wanted desperately to clout Joseph over the head with his china, if only to knock a bit of sense into him. They're ignorant, all of them, he thought, bitterly, and someday this chronic ignorance will germinate into terminal stupidity. He gnashed his teeth quietly, eyes narrowed as he focused on the road, fingers gripping the steering wheel like talons. He'd forgotten to put on his gloves.
"Are you alright?" Alaina asked. She was concerned for him, but she also didn't feel like having the bruise on the side of her face made into a set. Timidly, she placed a hand on his thigh, still, without intent.
He smiled all the same. "I am fine, princessa. Let's get home and have dessert." He could see in her face that her thoughts ran to coffee and some cake. He thought it only considerate to correct her, lest she find herself irrevocably surprised. "I said I would make it up to you," he reminded her.
"Oh..." she said absentmindedly. Then, "Oh." She tried very hard not to giggle the rest of the way to the apartment, if only to preserve her integrity as a lady.
Not that it would count for much, before the night was out.