nextgenerationmarvel | Getting to Know You (Ilya)

That reaction stirred something inside him, and he didn't quite know what it was or why he felt like something was shifting in their dynamic. But he pressed another kiss to Dolemeck's skin, gingerly, testing the waters without really knowing what response was good or bad.

"I'd rather get help from you than anyone else. I'm sorry if that's selfish. I just I want to be with you. You're everything I didn't know I needed." He presses little kisses inbetween his next words to punctuate them. "Unprejudiced. Sweet. Optimistic."

With each kiss, he came closer to blurting out that three word phrase he'd never had use for in the English language: I love you. But that was crazy, right? He'd be crazy to say that. Or worse, he'd scare Dolemeck off. Is there a book on romance? He needs to find it, and read it, immediately. Instead he slips back into Russian. "Zvezda moya, zolotse..."

His mind was starting to fog up. On one hand, he knew they were moving rather quickly. More at the speed of light, actually. On the other, he had feelings for Ilya unlike any other person.

Gently, Dolemeck's hands moved to Ilya's shoulders, pushing him back some so he could look at his face. He had such a beautiful smile, and looked quite adorable when blushing.

"Ilya, you said you wished to do something for me, Aye? Then I want you to at least once a day compliment yourself. Look in a mirror and say something good." He wanted Ilya to love himself, as much as he had started to fall in love with him. "I just... I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. See how much of a gentle soul you are. How everything you say to put you down is so wrong."

He then leaned in, kissing Ilya's forehead, and then his lips.

"You will have to teach me Russian. I know you called me those words last time, and that they must mean something special to you..."

"Okay. I can try that," he promised, looking into Dolemeck's eyes. They were such a remarkable color up close that he could get lost in them. Dolemeck was right, too; he probably liked Ilya more than Ilya had ever liked himself, even before being kicked out of school and working in the mines. There was just nothing there that struck Ilya as worth remarking on, not in a good way.

But Dolemeck could change that, maybe. He must not be too terrible, if he could make the other boy happy. And wasn't the point of a new beginning to see things with new eyes? Ilya could try, with people like this backing him up, to see beyond the labels. It wouldn't be easy, but it'd be worth it to get Dolemeck to smile.

He kissed him back, still new and not sure of how to do it, feeling a rush of warmth go through him at the simple affection. "It's just a term of endearment. You'd probably think it's silly if I translated it - Russian has a lot of things that foreigners think are crazy." After all, it was a language where 'mouse' and 'sun' were terms of endearment, too. Ilya didn't deny they were important words, though. He was bad at lying unless he actually believed the lie completely. Biting his lip, he looked away for a moment. "It means 'my star'."

"I do not find that silly in the least." His smile was as large as it ever could be. "I really like that. "My Star". I truly mean that much to you?"

Dolemeck's own self esteem could be questionable at times. Kids back home did not want to be his friend, even before he was hit by the car. The only time anyone wanted to be his friend, was when they wanted an autograph or something from his father's band. It could have truly effected him in the worst ways, but his brother reminded him that he was a wonderful person, and would one day make real friends. To never give up, even when times got hard.

He wanted to give that same knowledge to Ilya. To have him see he was worthy of not just love, but friendship, education, the world if he wanted it.

"Ilya, thank you."

"Yeah. It's... my mother always told me that when people are meant to be together, when they die, they stay together in death as stars in the sky. And there aren't any stars that are completely alone. When I was working in the mines in Pevek, the only thing I really had were the clothes on my back and a small window in my room. I used to wonder if maybe she was wrong. Maybe there were stars that were too far from the others to be connected. It was easy to lose hope, but sometimes having that window gave me a hope, too, that she was right."

He's nervous now, scared that his beliefs are about to get the laughter they usually pulled from non-Chukchi people. Even his grandparents had barely concealed their dismissal of ideas like that. And it's continually surprising and scary just how much he keeps pouring out to Dolemeck. He knows he shouldn't, and it just all comes out anyway in droves.

"I guess I was looking out the wrong window all that time. My star is here." He kisses Dolemeck tenderly on the cheek for emphasis.

"Your Mum had some beautiful ideas. What she said is very poetic." He did enjoy such a theory. It was so beautiful and heartfelt. Ilya's mother must have been a wonderful woman. He just felt bad he could not meet her one day. "You know, some stars are too far away to see, just as you said. But, sometimes you need to travel to find them."

The kiss on his cheek was very welcome, and the two just continued to hold one and other. Ilya was so honest with him. They shared things, personal things, things that made them both nervous. And once they did that, they they felt closer and less nervous.

"I am honored to be your Star, then." His voice was soft once again. "You make me believe in things I never thought about. Good things, Ilya."

"There are a lot of Chukchi beliefs like that. And a lot of Russian jokes about them, too. I don't know much about the actual science of stars. But I know they look different down here out of the Arctic Circle. Different in a good way, not a bad one," he clarified, growing more comfortable as the embrace went on. He could live like this, really just being close to someone who understood him. Ilya didn't need the world, he just needed not to be alone.

"What kind of things?" Ilya's curious still about how Dolemeck's mind works, how someone raised in such a less than ideal situation who had something so awful happen to him can be so smart and strong and yet so very human at the same time.

"Wonderful things, I can assure you." He looked up at the sky. "I will be honest, soon after the accident, people treated me worse than when I could walk. I would go crying into a pillow at night because of the isolation. People just wanted to be my friend for albums and autographs from me Da. Once they got those things... well, they stopped caring, wanting me around, or being my friend. I was never invited to go out to have fun, and often made fun of."

He looked a little hurt, but just for a moment.

"My brother kept encouraging me, telling me to never give up hope. He kept telling me one day I would make a good friends who I would have for life, and that I would find the right person who would love me more than I could imagine."

His smile returned, as his hand went to play with Ilya's hair.

"At this school, I met people. Friends I think I will have for life. And I met you, someone who i think is that special someone me brother talked about. Like it was just... fate, as silly as that may sound to you."

"Then they weren't people you needed in your life, Dolemeck. They weren't going to be any good for you if they'd stayed around. The people here are different, different from anyone I've ever met. You can trust the friends you've made here. And you can trust me in. Because I don't think fate is silly. I don't think anything you've said is silly."

He kissed Dolemeck on the forehead, almost reverently. "It must have been fate. I don't believe that SHIELD took an interest in me when they did, that I was where they could find me in the first place, that my healing factor kept me from dying of radiation sickness, all for nothing. All those things had to be leading somewhere, to something or someone, and who's to say it wasn't to you?"

"Perhaps it was more than just me." he was trying to be somewhat modest. "You are in a good place here, Ilya. You will get a wonderful education, have friends, a future of your choosing and not anyone else's!"

He wondered if they were two of the sappiest people in the school. Not that he cared. They were both happy, and that was all that mattered.

"So, aside from fate, and me manly arms..." That was a joke, as he was rather "lean". No, that was too generous a word. Dolemeck was scrawny. "What are you thinking about right now? Honestly."

"Maybe. But you're the important part to me." There will be no argument here. This is not, to Ilya, up for discussion. "I know that I'll have someone by my side as I figure out why things fell into place for me to be here, and that's more than I've had in a long time."

He smiles, running a hand up Dolemeck's side. He was on the thin side, true, but not in an unhealthy way. Ilya had seen all the degrees of unhealthy skinniness, from the alcoholics who didn't eat to the undernourished miners to those dying of radiation poisoning, and he knew the difference. He might nag Dolemeck to eat a little more, but only if it meant doing that together. Any excuse was a good one, after all.

"Honestly? That... well, don't be mad? But there's still sort of, well, something big that I'm afraid to tell you. I don't want to lose you. I've lost a lot of people - everyone, even my town and at the rate that things are shifting, maybe the entire island. And yet I don't ever want to lie to you because you've never lied to me and you've opened up, so it's stupid that I'm not being that open back." A pause, and he sighs. "My own thoughts give me a headache sometimes."

The feeling of his hand moving along his side was a new one. Dolemeck was worried his body might give off a reaction that could spook the two of them and ruin the moment. Instead, he tried to focus on what Ilya was telling him.

"Ilya, you can tell me anything. I am not going to judge you, nor am I going to tell anyone else if you do." He did his best to reassure him, kissing his forehead to try and ease up on that headache he had. "You are not going to drive me away. And if you are not ready to tell me, I can just wait until you are, aye? No pressure."

Edited 2014-12-07 10:14 (UTC)

He swallows thickly, not sure what to do or think. He has an out. Dolemeck just gave him a magnificent one, a way to bow out and never bring up the whole truth again with a simple deflection of 'I'm not ready'. It's tempting. It's horrifically tempting to just abandon thinking and the past and fall headlong into this, this love, this moment, a world he finally has a tiny bit of control over.

But it would be lying. Lying by omission is still lying. So he takes a deep breath and tries to find a starting point. He won't lie to Dolemeck. He cares too much to do that. "The mines in Pevek were a cover. They - you know about Captain America, how he was given the super soldier serum and changed? The government was trying to recreate it, but everyone kept dying in the trial runs of the serums they came up with. So they took people who wouldn't be missed, trumped up charges to put them away in places like the mining camp, and then picked off people from that to try the latest attempt at a serum on. If it poisoned everybody and ten people were suddenly dead, it was a mining accident or disease caused by living in close quarters. It helped uranium was in the mines and that was legendary in how toxic it was.

I was picked as one of the people they were going to do a trial run on. It didn't work, obviously. But my mutations all got revealed at once, and they thought that meant it had worked. So they were going to send me to European Russia, to be trained. I don't know what they were going to do to me. I didn't have anywhere to run to and they promised me my family would be compensated. I was stupid. They could've had horrible plans and I just went along with it, got on the train like an obedient little olovyannyy soldatik."

Give him a moment. There's a lot of memories that stall him, make him have to take steadying breaths. He realizes belatedly his voice has gotten quiet and he's shaking slightly - he remembers the pain, writhing on the floor, things thrown about in a telekinetic maelstrom, telepathically crying out while his healing factor fought at the poison burning him from the inside out. The floor was cold, uneven wood. He thinks he'll remember that kind of tiny detail for life.

He falls silent, lost for a bit in the memory.

Dolemeck fell silent for a bit. He held Ilya against him, feeling him shake so badly as he spoke. This must have pained him so much. How could anyone... how could such things happen?

Instead of asking questions, he just held Ilya, allowing him to continue when ready. Applying pressure might cause more harm than good, so it was just best to sit and listen. Let him know he was there and being as supportive as possible.

His hands moved up and down Ilya's back, trying to keep Ilya from shaking so badly.

"The train was attacked, in the mountains. I think SHIELD hates how few answers I have about that, because they've questioned me on it over and over again, but I didn't see anything. It was night and it was snowing; I had never been so far south that trees were everywhere like they were in those mountains. I was watching the window when there was this huge, fiery explosion. Everything was too bright and everyone was screaming and I think I remember falling.

The train car I was in tumbled down the mountainside and landed in the Omolon River. It iced over, and formed an air bubble. I survived, but I was beyond hurt - SHIELD thinks I might have actually remade entire organs. I don't know the science of it. My healing factor kept going and I stayed unconscious and on ice until eventually, the ice thawed out enough to make the train car fall into the river, and I woke up."

He shuts his eyes to get through the next part, because he's too scared of seeing Dolemeck's rejection. "The ice melted because they built a dam upstream. I was in Pevek because Pevek had the only fully operational gulag at the time because I was in the ice for fifty nine years. Dolemeck, the reason I don't have family is because I outlived them, my town, and my government. I outlived my usefulness. A remnant like me is a liability to the current government, and if SHIELD... if SHIELD hadn't found me..."

And now he really is shaking, the kind of shudder that comes from the memory of icy water, blinding sunlight as he washed up onto the riverside, the cold cutting at him as the mountain winds blew across his exposed skin and tattered clothes. He curls up as if seeking shelter in Dolemeck's arms. He's such a freak. Even among mutants, he's something out of a horror story.

It was shocking to hear that Ilya was much, much older than he was. But his story did not appear to impact Dolemeck in the way he had feared. Instead, he continued to hold him as he clung to him. His green eyes closed, as his chin came to rest on Ilya's shoulder.

"I am sorry." His voice was a whisper. "I am sorry people treated you like some science experiment. I am sorry you lost your family, and can only imagine all the pain you are in. But I am not sorry that I still love you, Ilya. Your age does not matter to me, nor does what your government had done to you. What matters is... you. That gentle soul who smiled when I gave him a chocolate cake for the first time. Who gave me my first kiss. The young man I find myself just drawn to and never want to let go... despite our short time together."

"I love you," he whispered back, and he might be crying, he honestly can't tell because Ilya loses himself a little when he has to go over what happened - and SHIELD made him go over it again and again, until they had every detail they could get from him. "I don't lie to people I love. I know - I know all this is crazy and I don't understand why I'm here any better than you do but what happened is a part of who I am now. And I needed you to know all of me before you said you loved me, even the parts that are ugly." He nuzzled his head into Dolemeck's shoulder, taking shelter in his presence where things were warm and safe. "I couldn't keep what we have going on any lies, zvezda moya."

"Well, there are now more lies." He closed his eyes, feeling Ilya's head rest back on his shoulder. He continued to rub his back. "And I am glad you felt safe enough to tell me all of this. I will keep my promise, I will not tell anyone."

He wanted to melt when Ilya called him his Star, again. It now meant so much more than before. After all he lost, after all the torture he went through, Dolemeck vowed to remain by Ilya's side. He would do everything he could to protect him, no matter the cost.

"Do you feel better now?" He asked, trying to sound as gentle and caring as he could. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"I feel better. Lighter, I guess. It's hard to carry it all inside and SHIELD just acted like I was this thing they'd discovered and wanted to study. I talked about it but they just made me feel worse. You... you never treat me like that. Not even now." He manages to uncurl enough to look at Dolemeck, feeling lighter inside and yet immensely tired. His eyes are teary, but the shaking subsides as he moves his hands against Dolemeck's side, moving up to his shoulders. This is real. This is the present. The past is in the past.

"You help just by being here. I know there's a lot in the future to look forward to, I just... I don't know if I could face it alone. Would it be stupid, if I asked you to just... hold me?" He's clearly embarrassed by that last part. It's hard to shake the old-fashioned values that a man has to be strong, but if they're both men, can he be allowed to break down, just for a bit?

"Aye, you can ask me that." His smile was reassuring as he held Ilya, then allow his body to flop on to the side, so they were both laying down. Ilya looked exhausted, so he thought that was a wise move to make, so he would rest a bit. His hand continued to rub at the other young man's back, just doing everything he could to let him know he was there and not going away.

"It's okay now, Ilya. It's going to be okay now. No one will ever treat you like that again." He whispered.

It's a more than welcome move, and it feels so good to press himself closer, get tangled up together and let the moment sink in. Just from having gotten that out he feels like he can breathe easier; the sun seems brighter and warmer as Dolemeck soothes him. The shaking stops.

"I know. I know, I'm fine. Or I will be. I have you now. I'm not alone," he said softly with a tone of real wonder in his voice. "And I'm not going to be." The thought calms the rabbit-like racing of his heart, and he takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry I threw all of that at you. I didn't know how else to explain it. I don't if I'll ever be able to talk to other people about it."

"There is no need to be sorry." He continued to speak in that hushed tone. "As I said before, I am just glad you felt safe enough to tell me this. And hopefully, we can work on a future in where you will have many happy memories to focus on."

Now perhaps was time to shift the conversation to something more pleasant. Now that all the skeletons were out of the closet and Ilya had calmed down.

"Would you like me to make you some clothes? Maybe a new blanket to keep you warm when it turns to fall?"

"I have happy memories from the past. They're just overshadowed, sometimes. Being out from under SHIELD's questioning helps. And you've already introduced me to new things and helped get me out from under all this. I should be the one trying to make you happy."

A startled, genuine laugh escapes him. He quickly smothers it with his hand and tries to explain himself. "Sorry, sorry. It's just - when a Chukchi woman wants to marry a man, she gives him a handmade quilt with a special gift wrapped up inside." And sure, they moved ridiculously fast, but even Ilya and Dolemeck wouldn't do marriage after their first proper date. (Hopefully.) "If he takes the quilt in, he's saying 'yes'. And then the family negotiations start."

"M-marriage?" His eyes went wide at that. "My brother would kill me if I got married before I completed school! Figuratively of course, not literally!"

There was a slight panic over the thought. And not because it was Ilya, but because they were still teenagers. Despite it being obvious Ilya was much older, Dolemeck still saw him as one.

"Well, now that I a Chukchi marriage tradition, if we ever... you know, decide we one day want to get married, when we're adults, I will know what to do. I will hand-make you a quilt. No machine, no powers, just a needle and thread."

His grin returned.

"Until then, you are getting a regular blanket from me, so you can stay warm."

"That would a phone call worth listening in on, though," Ilya grins, still chuckling. "And it'd have to be you. I can't sew up a hole in my own clothes, let alone a quilt. Though, who knows? Maybe I'll learn and surprise you one day, after we graduate."

It was a far-off thought, but a sweet one. Sewing couldn't be as hard as learning English was. Besides, some things were worth the struggle. Still smiling, he rolled his eyes.

"America doesn't even get a real winter," he pointed out. "We used to have days so cold that birds dropped dead from it back in Elvuney. Besides, the cold only bothers me now if it's at night. I - get flashbacks, sometimes. Of waking up in the river, in the ice."

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Going to sleep after this tag, sorry.

Re: Going to sleep after this tag, sorry.

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