During one of the happiest walks of his life, Nikolai fruitlessly tried to block out the feeling of being followed. It wasn't anything new to him, catching stray eyes anywhere he went, but this particular set felt different. It did not have the usual oil slick of desire that made him shudder, but a strange intensity. And this person had been watching him since he stepped out of the car in the morning.
It was odd how he could tell. Out of the thousands circulating this nondescript building, he knew immediately when his "stalker" was nearby. Usually he had no trouble meeting the adoring, obsessive gazes in the crowd, but this one kept eluding him. It was as if that person knew exactly when to disappear to hide their position.
He tried to forget and focus on Dylan, who was waxing poetic about the stage design and how these YouTube animatics gave him the artistic inspiration. He walked and nodded, offering a polite hum when the conversation lulled, until they reached the corridor where the tour began.
"Well, this is where I drop you off." Dylan huffed, in what seemed like slight disappointment. "I would have loved to chat to you more, but the bell tolls for us all."
"Can I have your number?" Nikolai asked a little too loudly, fearing that his lifeline might disappear as quickly as he found him. Realising that it might have been a bit too forward, due to the surprised expression on Dylan's face, he added.
"I am new in this town and barely know anybody. It would be nice to have a friend outside of school too."
Dylan beamed. His face transformed completely when he did so. He was the type to be able to blend into a crowd when he wanted, if he kept his head low and covered those unusual eyes. But as he was typing his number into Nikolai's phone, his expression appeared to exude the summer sunset over fields of gold wheat. Nikolai felt his own face twitch in a smile as a response, and pointedly ignored a few quiet gasps from around them.
As Dylan was passing the phone back to him, his hand was yanked all of a sudden, and a loud voice barked at them from the side.
"Trying to pick up dudes in the corridor now, Ward? What, not enough man-meat in that queer club of yours?"
The guy must have been a football player, given his athletic build and the calloused fingers gripping Dylan's wrist, leaving bruises. He had these garish frosted tips, thankfully a bygone fashion, that did no favours to his overall image. Tanned, brown-eyed, but ultimately blandly average facial features would have benefited from a more classic, neat look, Nikolai thought, before the guy turned his face towards him and started a bit at having to look up.
"Not seen you around. You must be new?" the jock snorted and shook Dylan slightly, causing him to wince "Piece of advice: stay away from this degenerate and his club. He lures unsuspecting people in and brainwashes them with his woke agenda."
"Wow, didn't know you even knew words with more than three syllables, Spencer" Dylan smirked at this brute and tried to wrench his wrist back unsuccessfully. Nikolai frowned, as Dylan managed to somehow interpose himself between them, clearly trying to keep this guy's attention off of him.
"The fuck did you say to me?" this Spencer hissed, and Nikolai recognised the look in his eyes as one he had seen often even since he was a child. This was a man used to getting his way with violence. A man too weak to deal with his issues through personal growth and would rather drown them in drugs, sex, alcohol or through different forms of violence on those weaker than himself. This type of man was all too common where he grew up, where toxic masculinity was celebrated, and those that did not conform were beaten into the mould by force. He could feel his palms getting sweaty, remembering his father's towering figure bellowing at him as he tried to hold his tears from spilling over a bruise on his cheek that throbbed so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
But he was older now. Taller, broader and a lot more powerful than he thought himself to be in his youth. He had the power to make men like this cower and bend to his will if he wanted to. And looking at Dylan, bravely placing himself between an obvious threat and a barely acquainted friend, he really wanted to do so now.
"How do you know?" he asked, turning all of the attention in the nearest vicinity towards himself for the second time today. They were gathering quite the crowd.
"Erm… what?" Spencer was momentarily distracted from his looming over Dylan as he looked up.
"How do you know that I am not already part of this…woke agenda?" He said, shrugging his long silver hair from his shoulder and crossing his arms around his chest.
Spencer paused, confused. He gave Nikolai a once-over and gestured at his appearance.
"Well, you are Russian, right? And clearly seen the inside of a gym. Unlike this Maryanne," he emphasised that last sentence with a shove, causing Dylan to stumble dangerously, still attached to his hand. Nikolai could already see a red bruise forming under that grip.
He knew exactly what this idiot was referring to. While his face could launch a thousand ships to war, as Nastya liked to tease him, he made sure to keep his naturally lean and willowy body in excellent athletic shape. While he enjoyed elegant fashion that would suit a dainty figure, he had enough experience being mistaken for a girl when he was younger. And when he was found to be a boy, he definitely had enough experience dealing with violence. Contrary to common misconceptions about him, Nikolai relished the feeling of his own masculinity. Being able to express himself through the controlled movements of his body in anything from gymnastics to swimming was a joy in and of itself. And once he built up a lean and powerful form, it was easier to keep the filthy hands away, leaving only the filthy stares.
He stepped over, face to face with Spencer now, feeling morbid satisfaction at the widening of the jock's pupils as he extricated Dylan's wrist from entrapment and held this brute's hand leisurely in his own.
"As a matter of fact, I do go to the gym," he lilted, feeling Dylan watch with concern from the sidelines. "And most of the time it is filled to the brim with other…degenerates… was it?"
He leaned back a bit, sending an assessing gaze up and down Spencer's body, causing him to shudder and flush involuntarily. Nikolai smirked venomously and whispered, barely audible to the three of them.
"But looking at you, I bet you know all about this from personal experience…" He pulled the words like honey from a jar, watching Spencer jerk and shift with the direction of his voice. "...Fellow degenerate."
That last bit was accented by a light squeeze to Spencer's hand, causing the brute to whimper quietly like a dog. Nikolai grinned maliciously as the full effect of his powers washed over this unsuspecting fool like a tidal wave. He blinked away the stupor, flushed and yanked his hand out of Nikolai's grip, looking around the corridor in a panic. Nikolai chuckled, knowing that he could get this physical response out of a statue if he wanted to, making the angry, confused face in front of him even funnier.
It was fun for all of five seconds, until the embarrassment overtook the jock in front of him and he lurched towards Nikolai, red like an enraged bull. He gripped the lapels of his shirt and yanked. Nikolai, not reacting in time, stumbled forward and gripped the wrists currently ruining his branded button-down.
Before Spencer could speak, Dylan barged in between them once more. "Yo, Spencer. My man! You came to find me, right? Nik here just transferred; he doesn't know the rules yet. Leave the new kid alone and let's go have that chat you wanted."
Both Nikolai and Spencer looked at Dylan with confusion. Both at the complete change of topic and the nickname. He continued, pointedly only looking at the jock. "You wanted to find Adam, right? To talk about game tactics? I'll take you to him, so let's just go, ok?"
Nikolai could hear a note of fear in the fake-friendly tone of Dylan's voice, as the latter separated them and somehow managed to clear the crowd. Spencer hesitated, debating between his pride and some other feeling Nikolai couldn't figure out. Eventually he switched his focus and placed an arm around Dylan's shoulders in a friendly fashion.
"Yeah, you are just the guy I wanted to see. Kyle! Andy! Let's go find our captain. Dylan here is gonna show us the way." As he began walking away, two of his cronies stepped into stride with him; he turned.
"I'll let it go today, Russki. But watch yourself around here. Or you'll be dealing with me!"
The self-satisfied smirk on his face only garnered cringing looks from the onlookers. It seemed he adopted the cliché mannerisms from the 90s along with that hair. Nikolai watched as the group headed towards the stairs to descend to the lower floors of the building. In a span of less than a minute, Dylan Ward once again controlled the situation and redirected the attention to himself. Violent attention that Nikolai was not going to leave him to deal with alone. However, as he began to step forward to follow them, someone crashed into his side full force. He stumbled and tried to regain his balance among flying printouts and books that were ejected from the grip of the clumsy student that barreled into him.
"I'm so sorry. My bad!" a quiet, measured voice came from somewhere under his shoulder as deft hands began to collect the scattered stationery with astonishing speed.
"It's fine…" he muttered as he quickly looked up to keep an eye on the group, but they were long gone. He straightened out, seeing his sister marching towards him from the ladies' room, concern painting her face. He glared down at the poorly timed inconvenience, only to find empty air. The student was gone.
Terrified chill ran down his back as the remnants of that quiet, measured voice reverberated in his mind. Along with the fact that the timing of this entire encounter seemed too precise to be accidental. He jerked upright and searched the crowd for any trace of that student, realising too late that the only recognisable features he had to go by were a quick glimpse of his hands and that voice. As well as the feeling of that insistent pressure he had been trying to avoid the entire day. His stalker was getting bolder by the hour, it seemed.
Nastya's insistent grip on his sleeve and a hiss of angry Russian pulled him back to the present, breath evening out. Looking at his sister's concerned face, he used all of his might to keep calm and try to hide the onset of a panic attack. He couldn't tell her this was happening again. Not after what she went through unravelling that mess in California, while he was nearly catatonic with terror. She would never admit it, but Nikolai knew he was a burden of magnificent proportions. If not for him, she wouldn't have to leave Russia or learn to manage a house full of staff at the age of twelve. She wouldn't have to spend her weekends drowning in legal paperwork months after the incident to make sure their lives continued as normal. She would be free.