It’s a bit antiquated to call Natalya a swan (she’s not a product of a time where they made plywood cinemas and shops and dance halls). But the principle remains – the fact that she trades on her long white-blonde hair and blue-violet eyes, her soft voice and sylph-like frame.
Targets are often negotiated carefully between agencies and groups and families – especially when she is not on her own grounds of Minsk and Moscow and Kiev. When she’s sent to Tokyo and Seoul and Shanghai and Hong Kong – that is where things are potentially…sticky.
Natalya rather doesn’t like most of the Asia jobs – it generally means taking on whispery accent (she speaks near perfect Japanese) and wearing cheap clothes and huddling in on herself. It means going back to being the rustic naïve desperate beauty – she’d rather be the ballerina or the pianist, able to wrap herself in aristocratic, coddled hauteur with her couture coats and fine perfumes. The artist is a bird in a gilded cage and thus she is untouchable in a sense.
It could have worked out worse, when she gets the file with the tickets to Tokyo and small stipend and contact information for a joint job. If not for delicate negotiation and carefully drawn terms, she could have ended up on the business end of a gun or stabbed through or strangled. It wouldn’t have been better knowing that he would have been very sorry for it – “I have a weakness for pretty girls, you see,” he says and looks so earnestly boyish and admiring – because she would have been dead and there’s no use in sentiment when it ends with her as a cooling corpse. Because he would have killed her anyways for being in the way and not been troubled by it except in the way you feel sorry for bumping into a crystal vase and shattering it to a thousand pieces.
And he does find her beautiful in a way that is not all about lust.
(but there is lust involved because he’s hardly asexual)
She remembers his look of honest admiration when they first meet in a small bar in Roppongi – a bar that offers good cocktails and some semblance of privacy. It’s in the basement of larger business building – no rival to the finer, trendier bar a flight and a half up.
She’s in a black shift dress and Miu Miu heels – no lace and pastels for her if she can help it. The bartender is solicitous to a near fault – providing an ash tray and mixing her a Godmother that is neither sickly sweet nor overpowering. She sips it and watches the man clean glasses.
The young man who slides into the seat next to her is all flash – close fitting jeans and close fitting jacket. He can wear the stuff at least – he’s lean despite his round face.
“Miss, you have a light?” he asks her in careful Japanese.
She gives him a cool look, the last third of her cocktail starting to taste that bit watery. Her cigarette is also down to its last third. She mutely passes a hotel matchbook to him and he then says, “And if I can cover the next round?”
She looks at him again through the corner of her eye as he lights a cigarette. He’s got pop-star good looks – the one who would be cast as the lovable one in a group, the clumsy athlete. He isn’t fit for this kind of little bar that has the bartender with a thin but welcoming half-smile who doesn’t choose Smirnoff for her. This one should be drinking beer, not cocktails.
Natalya talks past him to the bartender, “Manhattan.”
The bartender then goes to assemble bottles on the scarred bar top. Rye whiskey, vermouth, Angostura bitters. He fills a beaker with ice and chooses a long-handled spoon. His stirring is near silent and he pours two glasses with the ruby-red cocktail and passes them over to them both.
The young man next to her sniffs at the drink. She ignores him and sips from her glass. It bites her before it blooms with sweetness across her tongue, a ghost of brandied sour cherry lingering like a laugh after she swallows.
“A truly classy lady,” he says in his careful Japanese, the admiration sneaking into his voice behind the polite tones.
She doesn’t do something so coarse like shrug. The bartender takes a hint and as he clears the bottles, he leaves through a door behind the bar. The young man – she knows his name, Im Yong Soo, she’s had his minimal file for a while now – exhales.
“If I’d known, I would have dressed better for the occasion,” he says, gesticulating at his artfully ripped jeans.
She actually deigns to snort at him as she extinguishes her cigarette. “This isn’t a movie,” she says.
He smiles. “It’s fun to play at it, isn’t it?” He takes an exaggerated sip of the cocktail.
Natalya would have her doubts by this time but she sees the predator in his too honest, too earnest eyes. He wouldn’t command the fees he does if he wasn’t somehow good at what he does. She’s learned to mistrust the laughing smiling ones anyways – they are often that way because they are good enough to smile so brazenly.
But she gives him a thin wintery smile and lets the back of her hand graze his for the briefest of moments. He very nearly blushes at the touch but he takes liberty to lean in to murmur against her ear, “It will be a pleasure to work with you.”
(ooc: Allegedly, the KGB would train attractive operatives in Western customs in these Hollywood-like sets with movie theaters, restaurants, etc. The males were called ravens and the women were called swans. The term “honey pot” is still in use – meaning a specialized spy who extracts information through seduction. A documentary in 2012 called Girl Model featured a disturbing practice of exploitation – Russian girls lured to Tokyo by promises of becoming models and often fired for no reason and left in “debt” to the agency for travel and other costs. “untouchable in a sense” – even Belarus isn’t too sure on that (and she’s cynical enough to not believe in a position offering total security), considering nasty rumors that Bolshoi ballerinas were, and still are, unwillingly prostituted to wealthy patrons… Roppongi – a Tokyo neighborhood with no few night clubs and popular with expats. Readers of the seinan manga “Bartender” may recognize the set-up of the bar… Godmother – a cocktail consisting of vodka and amaretto – I think it would suit someone like Belarus – sweet but with a kick Manhattan – the recipe will depend on who you ask but generally will consist of whiskey, vermouth and bitters garnished with a cherry; supposedly the “Queen’s cocktail” to the gin martini, which is the “King’s cocktail.” A sweet but very complex flavor - something that would probably turn off Korea – who I think would prefer beer and soju (Korean distilled rice/sweet potato spirits) shots. Also, yes, it is rather funny that Belarus would drink a cocktail that is very much American.)
Wow! This was really good. It's amazing how much you know or researched. The writing is strangely fascinating, it's also kinda confusing exactly what happened but I like it so far, really! I had wanted to fill this myself but I had something very different in mind. I'll definitely see how this goes and maybe I'll write my fill as well. Please do continue!
He’s her “agent” (read: pimp) and she’s a naïve Russian hoping to make it big. They get her clothes from fast-fashion shops in Shibuya (the black dress and Miu Mius are left locked in storage somewhere else under a different name) – leggings that don’t leave much to the imagination, graphic shirts with nonsensical English, off-shoulder sweaters, knit dresses in (to her mind) particularly vile bright colors. They eat at good restaurants and she plays the enchanted country virgin, blushing and giggling into her too milky sweet coffee drinks held in hands decorated with elaborate nail art. It’s a dull life for its whirlwind pleasures and she would be happy to have to leave this charade as soon as possible.
The target is an heir, an inconvenient one that is still insulated with presumptions and the perks associated with them. The young man in question is also stupid enough to realize that he’s been shuttled off to a place where he could do least damage, a place where he is an ornament at best and a liability at worst. But to compensate, he has a decent security detail and an uncanny amount of luck.
So she and the smiling tiger she’s been paired with circle around and around, making themselves known for a little bit, preparing for an overture. Yong Soo sets himself up as a wheedling dangler – someone trying to get in, someone ghoulishly excited about being “bad.” That type is low level scum – never going to be much better than a pimp and procurer, the one who smiles sweetly to get his girls and beats them where the bruises won’t show up too much or drugs them to insensibility. But that type won’t get any more power than over frightened women and he’s terrified at the thought of it or too stupid to even contemplate that.
Their target buys it, hook line and sinker – as Yong Soo comes back to their hotel room with a bloody lips and black eye, his shirt torn and a lot of defensive wounds. He grumbles loudly as she silently gets some ice for him.
“I could take them,” he grouses and she’s ready to throttle him for being so damned stubborn about his machismo when he’d already been doing the ingratiating act already. As he puts the wrapped ice against his eye, he looks at her and says, “Saturday night.”
Yong Soo’s special ability, Natalya has since realized, is beyond his way of oozing into social circles and playing the oversexed pompous big fish in a little pond. Those things can be taught – that can be measured. But this is something different. It’s the talent to make people to underestimate him, even seeing him knowing what he can do and meeting his honest wide eyes and then realizing the hungry tiger in them just as he breaks your neck without a moment of hesitation. They see the puppy, some big furry happy stupid beast who wouldn’t think of malice at all, right up until he killed them.
It is all the more apparent when they end up running into a group of delinquents in an alley outside of a pachinko parlor one night.
Natalya is in provocative Tokyo street fashion in high-heeled boots and very snug sweater dress that has a neckline wide enough to slip down one shoulder. Yong Soo is in gaudy ostentation - mostly knock-offs. He smiles fearlessly at the delinquents as Natalya tightens her hold on his arm.
There are five of them and they’re smiling back in that unpleasant way that promises that there would only be a brief toying before they leapt.
“Pretty girl,” one says, giving Natalya an once-over. “We can give her a good time out, you know.”
“She’s expensive,” says Yong Soo with a wink. “I should warn you about that.”
“If you’re offering, that’s very good of you,” said the one who first spoke and Natalya sees them slowly grouping around, getting into place.
“I wasn’t. Don’t have enough money to treat all of you, sorry.”
“Hey, hey, I’m trying to be nice here. No need to be so difficult? Got it?” A baton slides into the man’s hand and it extends. “We can all be friends here, can’t we?”
Natalya doesn’t even have time to warn him but Yong Soo easily sidesteps the bottle swung at him from behind. He throws the ambusher forwards with his own momentum and the beer bottle smashes onto the ground. Natalya is ready when someone tries to grab her from behind. Her heel goes partly into an instep and as the man howls, she reaches into her purse and pepper sprays him before she raises her foot again and cracks the man’s knee. Without a qualm, she slams the heel of her hand up against his chin, sending him back.
She looks back to see Yong Soo slam his own foot down onto a fallen opponent’s fingers, making a dull cracking noise as the man screams. It’s cut off with a swing of the extending baton. Two of the gang have already fled. Yong Soo then turns to the main speaker. The main speaker is backed up against a wall, holding a knife in both hands.
Yong Soo is smiling – at least, his lips are up-turned and his eyes are slightly creased at the corners. He tilts his head as he hefts the weight of the baton in his hand.
“Well?” he asks.
His remaining opponent screams and rushes him, hoping to get through with wild animal strength. Yong Soo meets him and there is the sound of the knife clattering to the ground and the sickening thud of a mallet meeting meat. The delinquent falls to his knees and sprays vomit. Yong Soo then reaches down, grabs a handful of greasy hair, and with that same, unwavering smile, slams the delinquent’s face into the pavement. There is the dull crunch of a nose shattering and teeth cracking and a gurgling scream.
Yong Soo stares down at the man, face-down in his own vomit, struggling to get back up but for Yong Soo’s foot on his back. Then after a bit, he takes his foot off but by then, the struggles are far too feeble.
Natalya meets his eyes without any hesitation. Yong Soo looks down at his stained shoes and grimaces before sneezing.
“How do you stand that?” he asks, rubbing at his nose.
Natalya’s eyes are prickling from the remaining pepper spray but as if she’s going to let him know that. Yong Soo looks at the carnage without any real emotion. “Come on then,” he says.
They do have dinner but they get a change of clothes before then, including new shoes (he throws out the baton into a sewer). And before they head in for the last dinner service at a quite fancy Italian restaurant, he takes her to a jewelry store and picks out a necklace of amethyst and tanzanite for her, one that sits low on her neck in a glittering collar of blues and purples. She accepts the present, even deigning to pull her hair back so that she can wear it right out of the shop, but her eyes narrow.
“Pretty girls should have pretty things,” he says blithely to her and the hovering shop assistant looks vaguely approving. Natalya blushes, as part of the game – and as she fingers the faceted stones as she lets him order spaghetti alle vongole and Pinot Grigio, she does grudgingly admit that he has her taste down to pat.
(ooc: The necklace that Yong Soo buys Natalya - http://www.rubylane.com/item/477593-20bje/Swarovski-Cardinal-Amethyst-Tanzanite-Rhinestone I admit to stealing from another request that said that a Belarus headcanon is that she loves big, ostentatious jewelry. Spaghetti alle vongole – spaghetti with clams)
Natalya wears white and has her hair loose. They pondered making her the vamp (black lace and red lips and sleek styled hair) but discarded the idea. Make her innocent and flustered – the dress is tight on her shoulders and the necklace too bright against the snow white fabric. She’s both innocent and sexual – playing at being mature when she doesn’t know what those games actually entail but still desperate enough to do whatever she can to escape a life of drudgery and into glamour. The special added touch is the leather and silver bangle on each wrist – the bracelets are connected with three silver links that he had fastened before they had entered the suite.
The two of them are still searched and nothing comes up except for a knife in the inside of Yong Soo’s jacket pocket. He grimaces as it’s taken and pretends that sitting down in a chair in the common area of the suite was his idea all along as Natalya is escorted into the bedroom.
Their target (they? since when?) is looking her over as Natalya blushes and says softly, “Good evening.”
Natalya lets fingers trace across her cheek and down her neck against the necklace. He probably thinks that it is rhinestones and cheap metal. She makes sure to wince as she’s dragged forward by the cuffs and then thrown on the bed. The dress is ripped off – no patience here, just wanting to see the merchandise, and she’s absurdly glad that it’s really a rather cheap dress (she doesn’t like to see herself in white for the most part, not on missions).
His hands sweep over her body and caress her hair. She trembles, seemingly frozen until he flips her over onto her back. He looms over her and presses his lips against hers. No crying but if she must… Then she doesn’t have to force herself to freeze as he presses a knife against her cheek. The edge graces against her skin so gently, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, even as she comes so very close to smiling at this.
“Careful,” their target says with a smile. “I wouldn’t want to mark this pretty face of yours.”
She shudders visibly as he runs the knife over her, not quite nicking her skin. Natalya waits until he’s distracted – generally when the man is unfastening his pants – and then she strikes. She wraps her legs around his waist, rolls until she’s on top of him. It’s quick so he can’t recover, enough that she can force his knife to his own throat and stabs him with it, one two three.
He dies with a quiet gurgle and surprisingly little blood spray. She makes sure he’s dead before she gets the remains of her dress, undoing her cuffs in the process.
Natalya pauses before she opens the door to the common area. Had Yong Soo been taken down? And she couldn’t get the knife – let that be a message. She then raps against the door, two quick and two slow.
It responds with two slow and two quick and it opens and Yong Soo is there waiting. The bodyguards are sprawled on the floor behind him. There is no blood to be seen at first glance. He quickly goes to get her coat upon seeing her state of undress. Natalya mutely lets him hold the cream colored garment for her to put it on and doesn’t say anything as he gets an eyeful of her. Her hand catches his wrist as he reaches out to touch her face and she glares at him.
“Bloodspray,” he says, succinct for once. She rubs at her cheeks then silently lets him dab a handkerchief on her face to clean off all traces. He doesn’t ask for confirmation and she finds that rather flattering.
There is no quiet warmth yet of a job done – she doesn’t let herself have that luxury until she’s actually out of there. Assassins have gotten caught for letting themselves get cocky like that. He seems to understand that too but he’s smiling at her with something like genuine admiration (he’s seen the corpse she left on the bed surely – he has to have seen it with those sharp eyes of his).
It’s a young couple that walks out of the hotel later, her hair hidden under a colorful scarf and his eyes obscured with thick lenses. She exhales as they make a leisurely getaway (leisurely if you can – because those who chase will go after those who run as a general rule) and then makes a show of blushing and ducking her head as he pauses to buy and hand her a ready-made bouquet of sunflowers from a street-stall.
The two of them walk into the night and she sees some truth to what he had told her the night he had met, as she holds the bouquet in one hand, his arm in the other, and feels the warm comforting weight of the necklace against her neck and shoulders.
It should have ended with them tumbling into her bed at the hotel. But no, it ends with him leaving her at the bar after they get their things from the hotel.
She offers one for the road and he accepts. They watch the silent bartender bring out Calvados and Benedictine and Cointreau and lemons. There is remarkable economy of movement in the juicing of the lemons and the cutting of the peel into long swathes that are kissed by the brief flame of a match, sending the hot citrus smell of a summary memory briefly into the air.
The two of them drink the sweet gold cocktail in silence and Natalya ponders killing the otherwise flawless bartender for the sheer cheek. But it is a quite good drink – sweet and complex and soothing to palate and soul – and she knows that it is just not worth it, not in this moment, not in this place. So she sits in stoic silence instead, ignoring the two men in the bar. This time, there is music – something low and melancholy sung by a woman with a fragile voice.
His cheeks faintly flushed, Yong Soo reaches out just shy of touching her unbound hair and when she doesn’t show that she’s going to knife him, he touches the long strands and kisses the ends chastely but affectionately. Then with that bright boyish smile, he heads out the door, pausing for a moment to put on his jacket and perhaps catch her eye for one last time. She doesn’t look back at him and the door quietly swings shut.
Natalya stays at the bar for a while with the cocktail she never finishes and a cigarette she smokes as if it had personally offended her. She leaves a ¥10000 note for the bartender and goes out to hail a cab, leaving the paper wrapped sunflowers on the bar.
As soon as she lands in Minsk the next day, she receives a text in English from him from the temporary phone she hasn’t had time (or possibly the inclination) to wipe and dump.
txt bk, k? <3
She does text back.
Bye.
Natalya destroys the phone a week later and she will always deny that her fingers trembled as she does so.
((ooc: Belarus’s leather cuff bangles – actual jewelry! http://www.ahalife.com/product/3046/leather-handcuffs Though there are variations, the cocktail they drink together is called a “Honeymoon.” You can replace the Calvados (apple brandy) with mead (fermented honey liquor). And if the mention of “honey” seems familiar… the origin of the term “honeymoon” has been suggested to refer to a Babylonian tradition that the bride’s father pays to the couple enough honey wine to last a month. Please note that it is a mostly unsubstantiated claim. I have no real song in mind for what was playing at the bar but I would suggest Billie Holiday, who I find has a charming fragility and alluring melancholy to her voice. As of current exchange rates - ¥10000 = US $101.48. As a general rule, I tend to just push the decimal places two places to the left to do a rough conversion from yen to dollars.))
Good! Bittersweet was exactly what I was looking for - without killing either or both of them off in the process (don't think that I didn't contemplate it at one point though).
Writing Natalya was oddly fun - someone who is brusque, business-like but strangely attracted to lovely things (and the meanings of those lovely things).
i have no coherent words for this, only delighted cooing. this pairing thrills me, as much for the contrast of the characters involved as for its rarity, and to see it presented in such an enigmatically beautiful style was wonderful. author, you have such a grasp on coloring a situation with a character's perspective; the detached narration fit in so, so well with natalya's demeanor, and the way that you cast yong-soo in this scenario was masterful (especially given that for a lot of authors, he seems to be a difficult character to balance and pin down well).
i sincerely hope that you're still writing, especially here on the kink meme, and i hope doubly that you'll visit these characters again. thanks so much for sharing your skills.
OP here! Oh my god. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to find this again, but yes, that was worth it. I love the way Natalya knows she has to move on, but still, it was so bittersweet, I nearly cried. Thank you for making my day (and week, it looks like)!
Bitter Honey [1a/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-16 03:16 am (UTC)(link)Targets are often negotiated carefully between agencies and groups and families – especially when she is not on her own grounds of Minsk and Moscow and Kiev. When she’s sent to Tokyo and Seoul and Shanghai and Hong Kong – that is where things are potentially…sticky.
Natalya rather doesn’t like most of the Asia jobs – it generally means taking on whispery accent (she speaks near perfect Japanese) and wearing cheap clothes and huddling in on herself. It means going back to being the rustic naïve desperate beauty – she’d rather be the ballerina or the pianist, able to wrap herself in aristocratic, coddled hauteur with her couture coats and fine perfumes. The artist is a bird in a gilded cage and thus she is untouchable in a sense.
It could have worked out worse, when she gets the file with the tickets to Tokyo and small stipend and contact information for a joint job. If not for delicate negotiation and carefully drawn terms, she could have ended up on the business end of a gun or stabbed through or strangled. It wouldn’t have been better knowing that he would have been very sorry for it – “I have a weakness for pretty girls, you see,” he says and looks so earnestly boyish and admiring – because she would have been dead and there’s no use in sentiment when it ends with her as a cooling corpse. Because he would have killed her anyways for being in the way and not been troubled by it except in the way you feel sorry for bumping into a crystal vase and shattering it to a thousand pieces.
And he does find her beautiful in a way that is not all about lust.
(but there is lust involved because he’s hardly asexual)
She remembers his look of honest admiration when they first meet in a small bar in Roppongi – a bar that offers good cocktails and some semblance of privacy. It’s in the basement of larger business building – no rival to the finer, trendier bar a flight and a half up.
She’s in a black shift dress and Miu Miu heels – no lace and pastels for her if she can help it. The bartender is solicitous to a near fault – providing an ash tray and mixing her a Godmother that is neither sickly sweet nor overpowering. She sips it and watches the man clean glasses.
The young man who slides into the seat next to her is all flash – close fitting jeans and close fitting jacket. He can wear the stuff at least – he’s lean despite his round face.
“Miss, you have a light?” he asks her in careful Japanese.
She gives him a cool look, the last third of her cocktail starting to taste that bit watery. Her cigarette is also down to its last third. She mutely passes a hotel matchbook to him and he then says, “And if I can cover the next round?”
She looks at him again through the corner of her eye as he lights a cigarette. He’s got pop-star good looks – the one who would be cast as the lovable one in a group, the clumsy athlete. He isn’t fit for this kind of little bar that has the bartender with a thin but welcoming half-smile who doesn’t choose Smirnoff for her. This one should be drinking beer, not cocktails.
Natalya talks past him to the bartender, “Manhattan.”
The bartender then goes to assemble bottles on the scarred bar top. Rye whiskey, vermouth, Angostura bitters. He fills a beaker with ice and chooses a long-handled spoon. His stirring is near silent and he pours two glasses with the ruby-red cocktail and passes them over to them both.
The young man next to her sniffs at the drink. She ignores him and sips from her glass. It bites her before it blooms with sweetness across her tongue, a ghost of brandied sour cherry lingering like a laugh after she swallows.
“A truly classy lady,” he says in his careful Japanese, the admiration sneaking into his voice behind the polite tones.
Bitter Honey [1b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-16 03:16 am (UTC)(link)She doesn’t do something so coarse like shrug. The bartender takes a hint and as he clears the bottles, he leaves through a door behind the bar. The young man – she knows his name, Im Yong Soo, she’s had his minimal file for a while now – exhales.
“If I’d known, I would have dressed better for the occasion,” he says, gesticulating at his artfully ripped jeans.
She actually deigns to snort at him as she extinguishes her cigarette. “This isn’t a movie,” she says.
He smiles. “It’s fun to play at it, isn’t it?” He takes an exaggerated sip of the cocktail.
Natalya would have her doubts by this time but she sees the predator in his too honest, too earnest eyes. He wouldn’t command the fees he does if he wasn’t somehow good at what he does. She’s learned to mistrust the laughing smiling ones anyways – they are often that way because they are good enough to smile so brazenly.
But she gives him a thin wintery smile and lets the back of her hand graze his for the briefest of moments. He very nearly blushes at the touch but he takes liberty to lean in to murmur against her ear, “It will be a pleasure to work with you.”
(ooc:
Allegedly, the KGB would train attractive operatives in Western customs in these Hollywood-like sets with movie theaters, restaurants, etc. The males were called ravens and the women were called swans.
The term “honey pot” is still in use – meaning a specialized spy who extracts information through seduction.
A documentary in 2012 called Girl Model featured a disturbing practice of exploitation – Russian girls lured to Tokyo by promises of becoming models and often fired for no reason and left in “debt” to the agency for travel and other costs.
“untouchable in a sense” – even Belarus isn’t too sure on that (and she’s cynical enough to not believe in a position offering total security), considering nasty rumors that Bolshoi ballerinas were, and still are, unwillingly prostituted to wealthy patrons…
Roppongi – a Tokyo neighborhood with no few night clubs and popular with expats. Readers of the seinan manga “Bartender” may recognize the set-up of the bar…
Godmother – a cocktail consisting of vodka and amaretto – I think it would suit someone like Belarus – sweet but with a kick
Manhattan – the recipe will depend on who you ask but generally will consist of whiskey, vermouth and bitters garnished with a cherry; supposedly the “Queen’s cocktail” to the gin martini, which is the “King’s cocktail.” A sweet but very complex flavor - something that would probably turn off Korea – who I think would prefer beer and soju (Korean distilled rice/sweet potato spirits) shots. Also, yes, it is rather funny that Belarus would drink a cocktail that is very much American.)
Re: Bitter Honey [1b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-16 02:24 pm (UTC)(link)Bitter Honey [2a/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-17 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)The target is an heir, an inconvenient one that is still insulated with presumptions and the perks associated with them. The young man in question is also stupid enough to realize that he’s been shuttled off to a place where he could do least damage, a place where he is an ornament at best and a liability at worst. But to compensate, he has a decent security detail and an uncanny amount of luck.
So she and the smiling tiger she’s been paired with circle around and around, making themselves known for a little bit, preparing for an overture. Yong Soo sets himself up as a wheedling dangler – someone trying to get in, someone ghoulishly excited about being “bad.” That type is low level scum – never going to be much better than a pimp and procurer, the one who smiles sweetly to get his girls and beats them where the bruises won’t show up too much or drugs them to insensibility. But that type won’t get any more power than over frightened women and he’s terrified at the thought of it or too stupid to even contemplate that.
Their target buys it, hook line and sinker – as Yong Soo comes back to their hotel room with a bloody lips and black eye, his shirt torn and a lot of defensive wounds. He grumbles loudly as she silently gets some ice for him.
“I could take them,” he grouses and she’s ready to throttle him for being so damned stubborn about his machismo when he’d already been doing the ingratiating act already. As he puts the wrapped ice against his eye, he looks at her and says, “Saturday night.”
Yong Soo’s special ability, Natalya has since realized, is beyond his way of oozing into social circles and playing the oversexed pompous big fish in a little pond. Those things can be taught – that can be measured. But this is something different. It’s the talent to make people to underestimate him, even seeing him knowing what he can do and meeting his honest wide eyes and then realizing the hungry tiger in them just as he breaks your neck without a moment of hesitation. They see the puppy, some big furry happy stupid beast who wouldn’t think of malice at all, right up until he killed them.
It is all the more apparent when they end up running into a group of delinquents in an alley outside of a pachinko parlor one night.
Bitter Honey [2b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-17 08:34 pm (UTC)(link)There are five of them and they’re smiling back in that unpleasant way that promises that there would only be a brief toying before they leapt.
“Pretty girl,” one says, giving Natalya an once-over. “We can give her a good time out, you know.”
“She’s expensive,” says Yong Soo with a wink. “I should warn you about that.”
“If you’re offering, that’s very good of you,” said the one who first spoke and Natalya sees them slowly grouping around, getting into place.
“I wasn’t. Don’t have enough money to treat all of you, sorry.”
“Hey, hey, I’m trying to be nice here. No need to be so difficult? Got it?” A baton slides into the man’s hand and it extends. “We can all be friends here, can’t we?”
Natalya doesn’t even have time to warn him but Yong Soo easily sidesteps the bottle swung at him from behind. He throws the ambusher forwards with his own momentum and the beer bottle smashes onto the ground. Natalya is ready when someone tries to grab her from behind. Her heel goes partly into an instep and as the man howls, she reaches into her purse and pepper sprays him before she raises her foot again and cracks the man’s knee. Without a qualm, she slams the heel of her hand up against his chin, sending him back.
She looks back to see Yong Soo slam his own foot down onto a fallen opponent’s fingers, making a dull cracking noise as the man screams. It’s cut off with a swing of the extending baton. Two of the gang have already fled. Yong Soo then turns to the main speaker. The main speaker is backed up against a wall, holding a knife in both hands.
Yong Soo is smiling – at least, his lips are up-turned and his eyes are slightly creased at the corners. He tilts his head as he hefts the weight of the baton in his hand.
“Well?” he asks.
His remaining opponent screams and rushes him, hoping to get through with wild animal strength. Yong Soo meets him and there is the sound of the knife clattering to the ground and the sickening thud of a mallet meeting meat. The delinquent falls to his knees and sprays vomit. Yong Soo then reaches down, grabs a handful of greasy hair, and with that same, unwavering smile, slams the delinquent’s face into the pavement. There is the dull crunch of a nose shattering and teeth cracking and a gurgling scream.
Yong Soo stares down at the man, face-down in his own vomit, struggling to get back up but for Yong Soo’s foot on his back. Then after a bit, he takes his foot off but by then, the struggles are far too feeble.
Natalya meets his eyes without any hesitation. Yong Soo looks down at his stained shoes and grimaces before sneezing.
“How do you stand that?” he asks, rubbing at his nose.
Natalya’s eyes are prickling from the remaining pepper spray but as if she’s going to let him know that. Yong Soo looks at the carnage without any real emotion. “Come on then,” he says.
They do have dinner but they get a change of clothes before then, including new shoes (he throws out the baton into a sewer). And before they head in for the last dinner service at a quite fancy Italian restaurant, he takes her to a jewelry store and picks out a necklace of amethyst and tanzanite for her, one that sits low on her neck in a glittering collar of blues and purples. She accepts the present, even deigning to pull her hair back so that she can wear it right out of the shop, but her eyes narrow.
“Pretty girls should have pretty things,” he says blithely to her and the hovering shop assistant looks vaguely approving. Natalya blushes, as part of the game – and as she fingers the faceted stones as she lets him order spaghetti alle vongole and Pinot Grigio, she does grudgingly admit that he has her taste down to pat.
Bitter Honey [2 ooc/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-17 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)The necklace that Yong Soo buys Natalya - http://www.rubylane.com/item/477593-20bje/Swarovski-Cardinal-Amethyst-Tanzanite-Rhinestone
I admit to stealing from another request that said that a Belarus headcanon is that she loves big, ostentatious jewelry.
Spaghetti alle vongole – spaghetti with clams)
Re: Bitter Honey [2 ooc/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-18 07:08 am (UTC)(link)Re: Bitter Honey [2 ooc/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-18 10:45 am (UTC)(link)Love your writing style. It's poetic and slightly blunt. The characterizations are wonderful.
Looking forward to more!
Bitter Honey [3a/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 12:22 am (UTC)(link)The two of them are still searched and nothing comes up except for a knife in the inside of Yong Soo’s jacket pocket. He grimaces as it’s taken and pretends that sitting down in a chair in the common area of the suite was his idea all along as Natalya is escorted into the bedroom.
Their target (they? since when?) is looking her over as Natalya blushes and says softly, “Good evening.”
Natalya lets fingers trace across her cheek and down her neck against the necklace. He probably thinks that it is rhinestones and cheap metal. She makes sure to wince as she’s dragged forward by the cuffs and then thrown on the bed. The dress is ripped off – no patience here, just wanting to see the merchandise, and she’s absurdly glad that it’s really a rather cheap dress (she doesn’t like to see herself in white for the most part, not on missions).
His hands sweep over her body and caress her hair. She trembles, seemingly frozen until he flips her over onto her back. He looms over her and presses his lips against hers. No crying but if she must… Then she doesn’t have to force herself to freeze as he presses a knife against her cheek. The edge graces against her skin so gently, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, even as she comes so very close to smiling at this.
“Careful,” their target says with a smile. “I wouldn’t want to mark this pretty face of yours.”
She shudders visibly as he runs the knife over her, not quite nicking her skin. Natalya waits until he’s distracted – generally when the man is unfastening his pants – and then she strikes. She wraps her legs around his waist, rolls until she’s on top of him. It’s quick so he can’t recover, enough that she can force his knife to his own throat and stabs him with it, one two three.
He dies with a quiet gurgle and surprisingly little blood spray. She makes sure he’s dead before she gets the remains of her dress, undoing her cuffs in the process.
Natalya pauses before she opens the door to the common area. Had Yong Soo been taken down? And she couldn’t get the knife – let that be a message. She then raps against the door, two quick and two slow.
It responds with two slow and two quick and it opens and Yong Soo is there waiting. The bodyguards are sprawled on the floor behind him. There is no blood to be seen at first glance. He quickly goes to get her coat upon seeing her state of undress. Natalya mutely lets him hold the cream colored garment for her to put it on and doesn’t say anything as he gets an eyeful of her. Her hand catches his wrist as he reaches out to touch her face and she glares at him.
“Bloodspray,” he says, succinct for once. She rubs at her cheeks then silently lets him dab a handkerchief on her face to clean off all traces. He doesn’t ask for confirmation and she finds that rather flattering.
There is no quiet warmth yet of a job done – she doesn’t let herself have that luxury until she’s actually out of there. Assassins have gotten caught for letting themselves get cocky like that. He seems to understand that too but he’s smiling at her with something like genuine admiration (he’s seen the corpse she left on the bed surely – he has to have seen it with those sharp eyes of his).
Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 12:22 am (UTC)(link)The two of them walk into the night and she sees some truth to what he had told her the night he had met, as she holds the bouquet in one hand, his arm in the other, and feels the warm comforting weight of the necklace against her neck and shoulders.
It should have ended with them tumbling into her bed at the hotel. But no, it ends with him leaving her at the bar after they get their things from the hotel.
She offers one for the road and he accepts. They watch the silent bartender bring out Calvados and Benedictine and Cointreau and lemons. There is remarkable economy of movement in the juicing of the lemons and the cutting of the peel into long swathes that are kissed by the brief flame of a match, sending the hot citrus smell of a summary memory briefly into the air.
The two of them drink the sweet gold cocktail in silence and Natalya ponders killing the otherwise flawless bartender for the sheer cheek. But it is a quite good drink – sweet and complex and soothing to palate and soul – and she knows that it is just not worth it, not in this moment, not in this place. So she sits in stoic silence instead, ignoring the two men in the bar. This time, there is music – something low and melancholy sung by a woman with a fragile voice.
His cheeks faintly flushed, Yong Soo reaches out just shy of touching her unbound hair and when she doesn’t show that she’s going to knife him, he touches the long strands and kisses the ends chastely but affectionately. Then with that bright boyish smile, he heads out the door, pausing for a moment to put on his jacket and perhaps catch her eye for one last time. She doesn’t look back at him and the door quietly swings shut.
Natalya stays at the bar for a while with the cocktail she never finishes and a cigarette she smokes as if it had personally offended her. She leaves a ¥10000 note for the bartender and goes out to hail a cab, leaving the paper wrapped sunflowers on the bar.
As soon as she lands in Minsk the next day, she receives a text in English from him from the temporary phone she hasn’t had time (or possibly the inclination) to wipe and dump.
txt bk, k? <3
She does text back.
Bye.
Natalya destroys the phone a week later and she will always deny that her fingers trembled as she does so.
((ooc:
Belarus’s leather cuff bangles – actual jewelry! http://www.ahalife.com/product/3046/leather-handcuffs
Though there are variations, the cocktail they drink together is called a “Honeymoon.” You can replace the Calvados (apple brandy) with mead (fermented honey liquor). And if the mention of “honey” seems familiar… the origin of the term “honeymoon” has been suggested to refer to a Babylonian tradition that the bride’s father pays to the couple enough honey wine to last a month. Please note that it is a mostly unsubstantiated claim.
I have no real song in mind for what was playing at the bar but I would suggest Billie Holiday, who I find has a charming fragility and alluring melancholy to her voice.
As of current exchange rates - ¥10000 = US $101.48. As a general rule, I tend to just push the decimal places two places to the left to do a rough conversion from yen to dollars.))
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 01:22 am (UTC)(link)Your writing style is so oddly hypnotizing, too, if you don't mind me saying. It's oddly detached and clinical, but yet powerful.
I liked it. Thank you for gracing us with this fill!
Author
(Anonymous) 2013-10-20 02:07 am (UTC)(link)Writing Natalya was oddly fun - someone who is brusque, business-like but strangely attracted to lovely things (and the meanings of those lovely things).
I'm glad you enjoyed it
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2013-12-22 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)i have no coherent words for this, only delighted cooing. this pairing thrills me, as much for the contrast of the characters involved as for its rarity, and to see it presented in such an enigmatically beautiful style was wonderful. author, you have such a grasp on coloring a situation with a character's perspective; the detached narration fit in so, so well with natalya's demeanor, and the way that you cast yong-soo in this scenario was masterful (especially given that for a lot of authors, he seems to be a difficult character to balance and pin down well).
i sincerely hope that you're still writing, especially here on the kink meme, and i hope doubly that you'll visit these characters again. thanks so much for sharing your skills.
Re: Bitter Honey [3b/3]
(Anonymous) 2014-01-23 02:05 am (UTC)(link)Oh my god. Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm so sorry it took so long for me to find this again, but yes, that was worth it.
I love the way Natalya knows she has to move on, but still, it was so bittersweet, I nearly cried. Thank you for making my day (and week, it looks like)!