Page 51 of Marked by the Demigod

"Wow," she says, out of a lack of anything else, her mind reeling, but in a tired way, in a way where she feels that she will definitely freak out later. But right now she's jet lagged and it smells amazing. "What's good here?"

A faint hint of a smile, and it's beautiful. "Pierogies, mostly. I'll get some, I love them."

As if summoned, the waiter appears, and Aimes sits back as Iakov converses with him for a few minutes, and glances around.

Everything feelslike it would be upsetting if she had more energy, but as it is it's just soothing to be warm. "What've you been up to lately?" she says, her mouth on automatic, as if this is a normal date.

He raises a sharp eyebrow at her, before shrugging and leaning forward. "International crime."

He has to be shitting her, and she cracks a smile at him. "Right. Anything impressive?" The waiter sets down two beers in front of them, and she takes a swig. It's warm, yeasty, and not at all what she expected.

He drinks his own beer for a second, looking all too posh to be drinking something as common as beer. "Mostly been running," he says, muted, like the act of saying that hurts something deep inside. "It's not been an easy few months."

Again, way more than she wanted to deal with while jet lagged, so she takes another drink. "Somehow I gathered that. What with the shooting." And the running. And the fact he slept with her in the first place, which sits weirdly in her stomach with the warm beer.

The waiter drops by a steaming platter of pierogies, with a dish of applesauce and sour cream. Iakov's eyes light up for a brief moment, before he visibly gets control over his expression. "More people've tried recently, but haven't gotten that far."

"Why though?" Aimes asks, too tired to not be direct, her eyelids heavy already.

His face shutters closed. "Katya tell you to ask that?"

She shakes her head. "She hasn't told me to ask you anything, really." She reaches and grabs a pierogi, imitating his movements. "I think, I really think, she strongly doesn't want to be involved."

A brief flicker of satisfaction races across his face.

"I think she's scared of you." And now she's rambling, the words tumbling over themselves in her mouth. "She sorta skates around anytime I bring you up, unless it's to give some measurable detail."

He smiles, quick, and his entire face seems to soften with the action. It's a good look on him. "Katya's decent, just overly dedicated to her job," he says, grudgingly. "She keep my secret?"

"As far as I know."

"Good." He sits back, face pinching closed again. "So my brothers want to rule the world, as you do."

"As you do." Aimes repeats.

"Exactly. For...for a while they thought they needed me." It feels that the amount he's not saying is large, a gaping distance between their knowledge. "Now they think they don't."

The implications lay heavy between them, and Aimes finally takes a bite of the pierogie. It's warm, with something resembling potato and cheese inside, and is pretty much the best thing at the moment. "Wow," she says, gesturing with the pierogie.

He cracks a smile again. "Told you it was comfort food." And his voice slips deeper into the accent, the vowels clipping out.

"So you're really Russian?" She blurts out. At his surprised look, she amends it with "It's hard to tell. With the accent."

He mulls that over for a few seconds. "I just told you my brothers want me dead, and you ask about Russia?"

"I'm tired?" She suggests, and now that she's eating she feels like she's going to keel over and fall asleep any moment. "I'm tired, there's a lot here I don't get, I'm apparently in Poland, with a guy I’ve somehow married, and I've had a beer?"

He's perfectly still for a few seconds, unreadable. As if instead of showing confusion he just freezes all expression. "I was born in Russia, yes. Haven't been there much lately."

It's like she’s stepped on a land mine again. "I don't get a lot about you," she says, out of a lack of anything else to say. "Doesn't mean anything bad, just that there's like...always questions circling around." She wants to touch him, suddenly, to press herself against his side and lean into him, feel how warm he is and fall asleep. "From my perspective, this whole thing is weird."

He sits back, sudden, as if relieved. "From mine too." He blurts out, and it reminds her of how scared shitless he looked when they first fucked, with his face slack and his mouth open.

He must've been terrified, if he picked up the first girl that showed interest.

He runs his hand through his hair. "I haven't had a human I talked to this much outside of making money or the waiter in decades." He sighs, as if her humanness is the odd part out. "There's just everything that you don't seem to know and it doesn't even occur to me to talk about what it is or anything, or what you do know, and..." He trails off, eyes wide for a second, before slumping.

She gets the feeling that this is the first time he's being completely honest with her, and it's not flattering. "I'm also jet lagged."

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