From Acquaintances to Enemies [Ivan&Francis]

[ivanbraginsky]

The day was becoming increasingly dull. It was as if life was punishing him for things he had never done. Never mind that now. Pondering about his life would only make the feeling of loneliness worse. He knew being in the military would cost him his freedom and probably even friends but he had been foolish before. Now he knew how tiring it was to train and train and train until he just... gave out. Ivan looked at the glassy surface of his shot, a gloved hand clutching it tighter than necessary. Was there really nothing worth to do anymore besides listen to superior officers and follow whatever their orders were? It seemed like a dreary life to lead. Not that it mattered anymore. He had already set his sights on becoming a Captain before the year ended.

Ah but what was he doing thinking about the military again when he already promised himself to forget about his troubles for the time being. Though his attempts of forgetting these unwanted memories were being quite impossible. Ivan had settled himself down on a stool and began ordering every single alcoholic drink he could lay his hands on, not caring if he came back to the Base broke and drunk. The drunk part was becoming less promising as time passed by. He had arrived at the bar an hour or two ago and yet all he could feel was the slight buzz and dizziness. He had yet to feel the complete drunken stupor where one would find themselves sick, angry and desperate. Ivan chuckle humorlessly, suddenly finding something funny in the misfortune of others. He ignored the sudden stares he received from other patrons.

This was hopeless. He should've known from the start that this was never going to work. All he'd up doing in the end would be emptying up his pockets which were already running low anyway. If only there was someone out there who was actually competent enough in distracting himself from such negative thoughts. Someone interesting enough, a possible friend even. But the room was filled with drunks from all places, all groaning and whining about their pathetic lives. Ivan snorted sardonically. He had never considered himself pathetic, not ever. Although his current circumstances seemed to prove otherwise. "Another drink, da?" He signaled the barkeeper for an actual drink and not all those meaningless shots he consumed one after another. The very thought of spending the day here proved pathetic. Maybe he was turning into a drunken hooligan. Whatever. It wasn't as if anyone cared. And even if they did Ivan probably didn't care about them in exchange.

His thoughts came to his family, his old friends, his old job... they were all so distant from him now. As if he could never see or touch them ever again. And this scared him a little, sending a shock wave of fear and panic through his guts. Not yet drunk but feeling a little sick. Ivan figured he should stop and leave but something was compelling him to stay. So he did stay, sitting on the bar stool with a melancholy expression, shot glass empty once more. When was all this monotony going to end...?

[ Soooo... I wasn't exactly happy with the way I wrote this but I could never find the right atmosphere to try and tackle it with. I hope that wasn't too dull or senseless. But I figured Ivan wouldn't talk to people unless he was all bored and lonely so... he's bored and lonely. And quite possibly, broke by now;; ]

[Francis "France" Bonnefoy]

The life of an outlaw was a constant stream of new things – places and faces coming and going like the ebb and flow of a river slowly-winding towards an uncertain future. Recollections of people and locations were often hazy and light-bespeckled, like illusory reflections on moving water – the details all muddled and the best bits made blindingly bright. This was how Francis Bonnefoy recalled these past few months – nothing but a few images of time-tested taverns and sun-stung smiles floating in the translucent depths of an unceasingly moving stream. There was no coherent narrative when you lived your life on the run. It was all interiors of passenger ships and dingy hotel rooms, crowded marketplaces and emptying bars. The last was what had led Francis to take to the streets – a small saloon which was suffocating in its vacancy. Normally the fugitive would have preferred such a setting, but as the evening wore on and Francis consumed more drinks, he’d found himself possessed with the inclination to chatter, and his current prospects were not very promising. He was certain that there was another bar down at the end of the street. It had looked larger and nicer (qualities that Francis had lately tried to avoid, but was now past the point of caring about), so he paid the tab he had built up and stepped back onto the street.

In the time that it had taken the Frenchman to develop a decent buzz inside the building, a heavy rain had begun to fall. He did his best to keep underneath awnings as he walked the short length of the street, and pulled his hat down on his head to keep his face from getting wet, but it did little to help. He should have felt a bit colder, but the artificiall warmth created by the liquor meant that even after his jacket had been soaked, Francis wasn’t much bothered by it. The door of the next bar gave up a fight as the wind blew against it, and he slipped inside before it slammed shut, and dripped on the floor of the entry way for a few moments before venturing farther inside. This bar did indeed hold many more people, and Francis made a note that if he ever came back to this city, he’d be sure to avoid that other dank place entirely and come straight here.

It was a long, drippy walk up to the bar, and out of courteousness, Francis took off his coat and folded it over his arm to try and reduce the damage. He took the first empty seat he came to, next to a man who seemed to be self-medicating over some private thoughts. Francis had been that man plenty of times before – exhibiting the proverbial “drowning” of one’s sorrows. He wasn’t sure if he had made the right choice in sitting here, if he was after a good conversation, but Francis could at least give him the benefit of the doubt and stay for a moment. Because Francis felt certain that by this point, he was going to talk anyway, whether or not anyone was listening. He gestured to the bartender to come take his order. “I’ll have a glass of cognac, s’il vous plait. I need to warm up after that soaking. It has become quite the downpour out there!” As if to accentuate the point, Francis removed his sopping wet hat and placed it on the counter, shaking his head a little to toss his hair back into place as the water had made his bangs stick to his forehead unpleasantly. He wasn’t actually cold, but any excuse to drink cognac was a good excuse. The liquor arrived and was downed quickly before another was immediately summoned. Francis turned to the man beside him and smiled, raising his glass to him when his second drink arrived. “Better to drown in here than out there, non?”


[This took foreeeever to write, and I am sorry. I knew it was going to be a longish one, so I had to keep hacking away at it. I'm not super-pleased with mine, either. (You can totally tell I wrote the first paragraph when I was awake(!) and inspired(!) and all that jazz. >.<0 ) But I will *make* France find a way to get Ivan to talk to him.]

[ivanbraginsky]

“I’ll have a glass of cognac, s’il vous plait. I need to warm up after that soaking. It has become quite the downpour out there!”

Ivan stirred in his dazed stupor, electric violet eyes sliding to the side where a young man with bright blond hair and curious blue eyes sat. However, he was not pleased as droplets of water hit him in the face due to the man's dramatic emphasization of the 'downpour'. Of course he merely grunted under his breath, languidly raising his shot glass up to his lips and swallowing thickly. Fire burned in his throat as he swallowed the Vodka though it only ceased to make him even colder. The barkeeper moved to give the stranger his order while Ivan somberly rested his chin on his arms, the shot glass glistening in the dim light, making him wince at the sudden brightness. He winced and buried his head in his arms deeper. The thought of passing out in a bar was something Ivan wanted to avoid. Time passed by horrendously slow for him until he had to sit up to breathe, the air becoming stale in his arms.

“Better to drown in here than out there, non?”

Ah there he goes again except this time Ivan knew the man was talking to him. He answered in a slow nod, fully turning his head to the stranger as he propped his head up on a hand. "Da," he murmured. "Though I would not know." A slow, morbid smile crept through his visage. "After all I have been here for... ah, several hours..." The exact time of how he came upon the bar was lost to him. He supposed the Vodka was starting to take its effects or maybe it was was just him imagining things. Well whatever, it seemed as if conversing was inevitable and he didn't want to be rude--even with his slight hesitation.

"But never mind me, I am merely a distraction, da?" Ivan smiled, taking his time to signal the barkeeper rather hastily as he points to his empty shot glass. The burly man grunted in reply, refilling his glass again, muttering something about 'you better pay for this'. Ivan waved a hand absentmindedly, his other hand picking the glass up. "Of course, of course. You should learn to trust me my dear man." He said, quirking an eyebrow before turning back to his new conversation partner. "Aha, do not mind him. He is just angry that I have been drinking for quite a while now." Ivan flashed the barkeeper a small smile, raising his glass as if to mock him.

"Ah look at him he isn't pleased with my teasing," he shrugged, suddenly feeling talkative as if the presence of the odd stranger made him want to talk. "But now that you have mentioned a downpour, I fear I will have to stay here for a few more hours."

[ Oh my Gooodd I'm sorry for making you wait so long >> I hope you're not mad at me xD I didn't mean to make you wait that long D: ]

[Francis "France" Bonnefoy]

It is astounding the varied effects that alcohol can have on a man, Francis mused to himself, even as he sampled the first sip of his second cognac. At its best, a delightful distraction. At its worst… Well… Francis preferred to stay focused on the positive whenever possible. He had seen the depths to which himself and other men could go. The man beside him looked like he’d fallen far, his face cradled into the crook of his arms. Francis observed him with a sort of bemused expression, feeling a little sorry for the silver-haired man, who finally crawled out of his stupor at France’s direct questioning. With a soft drawl and the sound of a foreign tongue, the bar-goer confirmed the Pariisien’s suspicions that he had been here quite awhile, with a half-shadowed smile that Francis found a little unnerving – teeth glinting in profile, edged like razor blades.

“ After all I have been here for... ah, several hours..."

Time was such a curious thing. Men in this day and age were revolutionizing technology by creating the most accurate clocks the world had ever seen, advancing both maritime navigation and aviation techniques. But these same men who put pieces of time in their pockets like some kind of prized and precious personal possession… were the very same men who let that grip on time slip, every incalculable moment coalescing in a blur of hours gone awry, lost in the strike of a hand or the tick of a clock. But his companion continued on as if wishing to not draw attention to the number of hours which he seemed to have been totaling up just like his tab, and he appeared to take the same blasé attitude towards both. Francis chuckled softly, seeing at least one small resemblance between the two of them. France was just as likely to ditch his bill as he was to pay it (at least in cities he didn’t think he’d be ever see again).

"But never mind me, I am merely a distraction, da?"

And this, Francis thought, was a bit of a strange thing to say. He turned to comment on this, but before he could, the other drinker continued on, thoughts tripping forward in the way they often did when one was inebriated, until they were talking about the weather again. The most harmless subject of all, the weather. No matter where you went or who you spoke to, anywhere in the world, there was always one thing you had in common, and that was what was happening to the sky. Francis thought it was such a shame that it had to be so very nasty this night. “Ah, it appears that we are of one and the same accord in that matter!” and he barked out a laugh. “I have no intention whatsoever to subject myself or my poor clothes to that torrent again. We’ll have to keep each other company until this insipid storm subsides.” And the Frenchman finally seated himself on a stool, setting his drink down as he cast his eyes back at the windows of the bar, glaring at the rain pattering against the panes as if he had taken a personal affront to its presence. He gave a slight sigh as he ran his free hands over his hat on the countertop, attempting to wring some of the water from the material gently as he let his thoughts drift for a second.

It only took a moment before he gave up, wiping his hands uselessly on his pants and frowning, before retrieving his drink from where he’d place it. As France lifted the glass back to his mouth, his eyes slid back over to gaze at his newfound drinking companion, whose pale hair and eyes and face made him look a little like a ghost. “So you think you are just a distraction, mon ami? You underestimate yourself…” he said somewhat softly, before he downed a large sip of his cognac and then erupted suddenly into a short and raucous laugh. “Or perhaps you over-rate reality! You think there’s anything more distracting then every single part of every single day? You think there’s anything more important than this?” Francis gestured around at the crowded bar, his voice rising in something that felt like passion, or exasperation, or maybe just indifference, and even as he said it, the words felt a little hollow, as if they were echoing from the edges of an unceasing sense of inevitability. In the same moment the loud laughter and vaulted voices resounded both like the very essence of life, and hummed like the thrum of a deadly insect buzzing, a room so filled with the sounds of a crowd’s cacophony that it became silent, noises overlapping into nothingness. “This is the main event!” Francis shouted out with the slightest sneer, and turning back to gaze into his glass as he poised to take another drink. “Everything’s a distraction, so everything is equally important…,” he half-muttered, speaking more to his liquor than anyone else before he savored a sip. The Frenchman looked back up and felt a silly grin slip onto his face. “That’s why you’ve got to try your damnedest to enjoy life to the fullest. You’ve only got the one.” And then he lifted his glass for a brief moment - as if toasting to the other man’s life, or to his own, or perhaps just life in general – before he downed the last sip and the ice clicked noisily before sliding coldly against his teeth. A shiver escaped him as his lowered the empty glass to the counter, the feeling of fire and ice transmuting on his tongue and he felt his gaze slacken so-slightly as he shifted in his seat.



[OMG FINALLY!!!! It took me almost an entire week to respond! I am SO sorry! I tried to fill it with extra-special awesome to make up for it, dear.]